A Room With a View quotes

He has the merit—if it is one—of saying exactly what he means. He has rooms he does not value, and he thinks you would value them. He no more thought of putting you under an obligation than he thought of being polite.

It is so difficult⁠—at least, I find it difficult⁠—to understand people who speak the truth.

”

“

I think he is; nice and tiresome.

I differ from him on almost every point of any importance, and so, I expect—I may say I hope—you will differ. But his is a type one disagrees with rather than deplores. When he first came here he not unnaturally put people’s backs up.

But a wind down the side streets cut like a knife, didn’t it? Ponte alle Grazie—particularly interesting, mentioned by Dante. San Miniato—beautiful as well as interesting; the crucifix that kissed a murderer—Miss Honeychurch would remember the story. The men on the river were fishing.

(Untrue; but then, so is most information.)

Then Miss Lavish darted under the archway of the white bullocks, and she stopped, and she cried:

Now, this was abominably impertinent, and she ought to have been furious.

But it is sometimes as difficult to lose one’s temper as it is difficult at other times to keep it.

Lucy could not get cross. Mr. Emerson was an old man, and surely a girl might humour him.

“So you ought.

A baby is worth a dozen saints.

And my baby’s worth the whole of Paradise, and as far as I can see he lives in Hell.”

“Then make my boy think like us.

Make him realize that by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes⁠—a transitory Yes if you like, but a Yes.

”

It so happened that Lucy, who found daily life rather chaotic, entered a more solid world when she opened the piano. She was then no longer either deferential or patronizing; no longer either a rebel or a slave.

The kingdom of music is not the kingdom of this world; it will accept those whom breeding and intellect and culture have alike rejected.

The commonplace person begins to play, and shoots into the empyrean without effort, whilst we look up, marvelling how he has escaped us, and thinking how we could worship him and love him, would he but translate his visions into human words, and his experiences …

He did not doubt that she loved his sermon also. But before he left Tunbridge Wells he made a remark to the vicar, which he now made to Lucy herself when she closed the little piano and moved dreamily towards him:

“If Miss Honeychurch ever takes to live as she plays, it will be very exciting both for us and for her.”

Lucy at once reentered daily life.

The Loggia showed as the triple entrance of a cave, wherein many a deity, shadowy, but immortal, looking forth upon the arrivals and departures of mankind.

It was the hour of unreality⁠—the hour, that is, when unfamiliar things are real.

An older person at such an hour and in such a place might think that sufficient was happening to him, and rest content. Lucy desired more.

“

I shall want to live, I say.

”

“Leave them alone,” Mr. Emerson begged the chaplain, of whom he stood in no awe. “

Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?

To be driven by lovers—A king might envy us, and if we part them it’s more like sacrilege than anything I know.”

“The point is, we have warred with it. Look.” He pointed to the Val d’Arno, which was visible far below them, through the budding trees. “

Fifty miles of Spring, and we’ve come up to admire them.

Do you suppose there’s any difference between Spring in nature and Spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.”

“How tired one gets,” said Miss Bartlett. “Oh, I do wish Freddy and your mother could be here.”

Unselfishness with Miss Bartlett had entirely usurped the functions of enthusiasm.

Lucy did not look at the view either. She would not enjoy anything till she was safe at Rome.

Italians are born knowing the way. It would seem that the whole Earth lay before them, not as a map, but as a chessboard, whereon they continually behold the changing pieces as well as the squares.

Anyone can find places, but the finding of people is a gift from God.

He only stopped once, to pick her some great blue violets. She thanked him with real pleasure. In the company of this common man the world was beautiful and direct. For the first time she felt the influence of Spring.

He only stopped once, to pick her some great blue violets. She thanked him with real pleasure.

In the company of this common man the world was beautiful and direct.

For the first time she felt the influence of Spring. His arm swept the horizon gracefully; violets, like other things, existed in great profusion there; “would she like to see them?”

Of course, it was most unpleasant; she had seen his black head in the bushes; he might make a tavern story out of it. But after all, what have we to do with taverns?

Real menace belongs to the drawing-room.

It was of drawing-room people that Miss Bartlett thought as she journeyed downwards towards the fading sun. Lucy sat beside her; Mr. Eager sat opposite, trying to catch her eye; he was vaguely suspicious. They spoke of Alessio Baldovinetti.

The luxury of self-exposure kept her almost happy through the long evening.

She thought not so much of what had happened as of how she should describe it.

All her sensations, her spasms of courage, her moments of unreasonable joy, her mysterious discontent, should be carefully laid before her cousin. And together in divine confidence they would disentangle and interpret them all.

“I don’t understand,” she said at last.

She understood very well, but she no longer wished to be absolutely truthful.

“How are you going to stop him talking about it?”

… of a cheerless, loveless world in which the young rush to destruction until they learn better—a shamefaced world of precautions and barriers which may avert evil, but which do not seem to bring good, if we may judge from those who have used them most.

Lucy was suffering from the most grievous wrong which this world has yet discovered: diplomatic advantage had been taken of her sincerity, of her craving for sympathy and love.

Such a wrong is not easily forgotten. Never again did she expose herself without due consideration and precaution against rebuff. And such a wrong may react disastrously upon the soul.

“For goodness’ sake go out of my drawing-room, then?” cried

Mrs. Honeychurch, who hoped to cure her children of slang by taking it literally.

Freddy did not move or reply.

“No.

I mightn’t have seen Miss Honeychurch rise, but I should certainly have heard Miss Bartlett fall.

”

Freddy, now full of geniality, whistled the wedding march.

Youth seldom criticizes the accomplished fact.

“Indeed I have!” he cried. He looked at Lucy. In her presence he could not act the parson any longer—at all events not without apology. “Mrs. Honeychurch, I’m going to do what I am always supposed to do, but generally I’m too shy.

He took his tone from her. There was no more heavy beneficence, no more attempts to dignify the situation with poetry or the Scriptures. None of them dared or was able to be serious any more.

An engagement is so potent a thing that sooner or later it reduces all who speak of it to this state of cheerful awe.

Away from it, in the solitude of their rooms, Mr. Beebe, and even Freddy, might again be critical. But in its presence and in the presence of each other they were sincerely hilarious.

“Difference?” cried Mrs. Honeychurch, suddenly alert. “I don’t see any difference.

Fences are fences, especially when they are in the same place.

”

“

A parson fenceless would mean a parson defenceless.

”

“The rent is absurdly low,” he told them, “and perhaps I am an easy landlord. But it is such an awkward size. It is too large for the peasant class and too small for anyone the least like ourselves.”

Cecil had been hesitating whether he should despise the villas or despise Sir Harry for despising them.

The latter impulse seemed the more fruitful.

A rebel she was, but not of the kind he understood—a rebel who desired, not a wider dwelling-room, but equality beside the man she loved.

For Italy was offering her the most priceless of all possessions⁠—her own soul.

Playing bumble-puppy with Minnie Beebe, niece to the rector, and aged thirteen—an ancient and most honourable game, which consists in striking tennis-balls high into the air, so that they fall over the net and immoderately bounce; some hit Mrs. Honeychurch; others are lost.

“Miss Lavish cannot have told you much about me, for I am not at Windy Corner at all, but here. Please do not put ‘Private’ outside your envelope again. No one opens my letters.

Secrecy has this disadvantage: we lose the sense of proportion; we cannot tell whether our secret is important or not.

Were Lucy and her cousin closeted with a great thing which would destroy Cecil’s life if he discovered it, or with a little thing which he would laugh at? Miss Bartlett suggested the former. Perhaps she was right. It had become a great thing now.

On the cornice of the wardrobe, the hand of an amateur had painted this inscription: “

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

”

“You have not reflected at all,” rapped the clergyman. “

Let me give you a useful tip, Emerson: attribute nothing to Fate.

Don’t say, ‘I didn’t do this,’ for you did it, ten to one. Now I’ll cross-question you. Where did you first meet Miss Honeychurch and myself?”

He could detect no parishioners except the pine-trees, rising up steeply on all sides, and gesturing to each other against the blue. How glorious it was! The world of motorcars and rural Deans receded inimitably.

Water, sky, evergreens, a wind⁠—these things not even the seasons can touch, and surely they lie beyond the intrusion of man?

“I may as well wash too”; and soon his garments made a third little pile on the sward, and he too asserted the wonder of the water.

“Come this way immediately,” commanded

Cecil, who always felt that he must lead women, though he knew not whither, and protect them, though he knew not against what.

He led them now towards the bracken where Freddy sat concealed.

That evening and all that night the water ran away. On the morrow the pool had shrunk to its old size and lost its glory.

It had been a call to the blood and to the relaxed will, a passing benediction whose influence did not pass, a holiness, a spell, a momentary chalice for youth.

Indoors herself, partaking of tea with old Mrs. Butterworth, she reflected that it is impossible to foretell the future with any degree of accuracy, that it is impossible to rehearse life.

A fault in the scenery, a face in the audience, an irruption of the audience on to the stage, and all our carefully planned gestures mean nothing, or mean too much.

“I will bow,” she had thought. “I will not shake hands with him. That will be just the proper thing.” She had bowed—but to whom? To gods, to heroes, to the nonsense of schoolgirls! She had bowed across the rubbish that cumbers the world.

He did not want to join the C.O.S. When cross he was always elaborate, and made long, clever answers where “Yes” or “No” would have done. Lucy soothed him and tinkered at the conversation in a way that promised well for their married peace.

No one is perfect, and surely it is wiser to discover the imperfections before wedlock.

Miss Bartlett, indeed, though not in word, had taught the girl that this our life contains nothing satisfactory. Lucy, though she disliked the teacher, regarded the teaching as profound, and applied it to her lover.

So the grittiness went out of life. It generally did at Windy Corner.

At the last minute, when the social machine was clogged hopelessly, one member or other of the family poured in a drop of oil.

Cecil despised their methods—perhaps rightly. At all events, they were not his own.

“This isn’t very kind of you two. You have each other and all these woods to walk in, so full of beautiful things; and poor Charlotte has only the water turned off and plumbers.

You are young, dears, and however clever young people are, and however many books they read, they will never guess what it feels like to grow old.

”

Cecil frowned again.

Oh, these Honeychurches! Eggs, boilers, hydrangeas, maids⁠—of such were their lives compact.

“May me and Lucy get down from our chairs?” he asked, with scarcely veiled insolence. “We don’t want no dessert.”

It is obvious enough for the reader to conclude, “She loves young Emerson.” A reader in Lucy’s place would not find it obvious.

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.

She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?

A reader in Lucy’s place would not find it obvious. Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice, and we welcome “nerves” or any other shibboleth that will cloak our personal desire.

She loved Cecil; George made her nervous; will the reader explain to her that the phrases should have been reversed?

But the external situation—she will face that bravely.

“Minnie, don’t be late. Here comes the horse”—it was always the horse, never the carriage. “Where’s Charlotte? Run up and hurry her. Why is she so long? She had nothing to do. She never brings anything but blouses. Poor Charlotte—How I do detest blouses! Minnie!”

Paganism is infectious⁠—more infectious than diphtheria or piety⁠—and the Rector’s niece was taken to church protesting.

As usual, she didn’t see why. Why shouldn’t she sit in the sun with the young men? The young men, who had now appeared, mocked her with ungenerous words. Mrs.

“There is a certain amount of kindness, just as there is a certain amount of light,” he continued in measured tones. “

We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows.

Choose a place where you won’t do harm—yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.”

“We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows.

Choose a place where you won’t do harm⁠—yes, choose a place where you won’t do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.

”

“Not for me, thank you,” said Cecil. “I will not spoil the set.”

He never realized that it may be an act of kindness in a bad player to make up a fourth.

“Oh, come along Cecil. I’m bad, Floyd’s rotten, and so I dare say’s Emerson.”

“Then it will have to be Lucy,” said Mrs. Honeychurch; “you must fall back on Lucy. There is no other way out of it. Lucy, go and change your frock.”

Lucy’s Sabbath was generally of this amphibious nature.

She kept it without hypocrisy in the morning, and broke it without reluctance in the afternoon. As she changed her frock, she wondered whether Cecil was sneering at her; really she must overhaul herself and settle everything up before she married him.

The ups and downs in his voice were noticeable, but they did not affect her. She had dwelt amongst melody and movement, and her nerves refused to answer to the clang of his. Leaving him to be annoyed, she gazed at the black head again.

She did not want to stroke it, but she saw herself wanting to stroke it; the sensation was curious.

“How do you like this view of ours, Mr. Emerson?”

“

Because they’re all alike. Because all that matters in them is distance and air.

”

“

For a crowd is more than the people who make it up. Something gets added to it⁠—no one knows how⁠—just as something has got added to those hills.

”

Though the danger was greater, she was not shaken by deep sobs. She said to Cecil, “I am not coming in to tea—tell mother—I must write some letters,” and went up to her room. Then she prepared for action.

Love felt and returned, love which our bodies exact and our hearts have transfigured, love which is the most real thing that we shall ever meet, reappeared now as the world’s enemy, and she must stifle it.

She sent for Miss Bartlett.

She sent for Miss Bartlett.

The contest lay not between love and duty. Perhaps there never is such a contest.

It lay between the real and the pretended, and Lucy’s first aim was to defeat herself. As her brain clouded over, as the memory of the views grew dim and the words of the book died away, she returned to her old shibboleth of nerves.

Remembering that she was engaged to Cecil, she compelled herself to confused remembrances of George; he was nothing to her; he never had been anything; he had behaved abominably; she had never encouraged him.

The armour of falsehood is subtly wrought out of darkness, and hides a man not only from others, but from his own soul.

In a few moments Lucy was equipped for battle.

“You say Mr. Vyse wants me to listen to him, Mr. Emerson. Pardon me for suggesting that you have caught the habit.”

And he took the shoddy reproof and touched it into immortality.

He said:

She watched him steal upstairs, while the shadows from three banisters passed over her face like the beat of wings. On the landing he paused strong in his renunciation, and gave her a look of memorable beauty.

For all his culture, Cecil was an ascetic at heart, and nothing in his love became him like the leaving of it.

She could never marry. In the tumult of her soul, that stood firm. Cecil believed in her; she must some day believe in herself. She must be one of the women whom she had praised so eloquently, who care for liberty and not for men;

She put out the lamp.

It did not do to think, nor, for the matter of that, to feel.

She gave up trying to understand herself, and joined the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catchwords. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk.

She gave up trying to understand herself, and joined the vast armies of the benighted, who follow neither the heart nor the brain, and march to their destiny by catchwords. The armies are full of pleasant and pious folk.

But they have yielded to the only enemy that matters⁠—the enemy within.

They have sinned against passion and truth, and vain will be their strife after virtue. As the years pass, they are censured. Their pleasantry and their piety show cracks, their wit becomes cynicism, their unselfishness hypocrisy; they feel and produce discomfort wherever they go.

Lucy entered this army when she pretended to George that she did not love him, and pretended to Cecil that she loved no one.

The night received her, as it had received Miss Bartlett thirty years before.

‘A really comfortable pension at Constantinople!’ So they call it out of decency, but in their hearts they want a pension with magic windows opening on the foam of perilous seas in fairyland forlorn! No ordinary view will content the Miss Alans.

They want the Pension Keats.

”

I haven’t been to Greece myself, and don’t mean to go, and I can’t imagine any of my friends going. It is altogether too big for our little lot. Don’t you think so? Italy is just about as much as we can manage.

Italy is heroic, but Greece is godlike or devilish⁠—I am not sure which, and in either case absolutely out of our suburban focus.

All right, Freddy—I am not being clever, upon my word I am not—I took the idea from another fellow; and give me those matches when you’ve done with them.” He lit a cigarette, and went on talking to the two young men.

Lucy sank back. The carriage stopped at the Rectory. She got out to call for Miss Bartlett. So the Emersons had gone, and all this bother about Greece had been unnecessary.

Waste! That word seemed to sum up the whole of life.

Wasted plans, wasted money, wasted love, and she had wounded her mother. Was it possible that she had muddled things away? Quite possible. Other people had. When the maid opened the door, she was unable to speak, and stared stupidly into the hall.

“I taught him,” he quavered, “to trust in love. I said: ‘When love comes, that is reality.’ I said: ‘

Passion does not blind. No. Passion is sanity, and the woman you love, she is the only person you will ever really understand.

’ ” He sighed: “True, everlastingly true, though my day is over, and though there is the result. Poor boy! He is so sorry! He said he knew it was madness when you brought your cousin in; that whatever you felt you did not mean.

“And she agreed that baptism was nothing, but he caught that fever when he was twelve and she turned round. She thought it a judgement.” He shuddered. “Oh, horrible, when we had given up that sort of thing and broken away from her parents.

Oh, horrible⁠—worst of all⁠—worse than death, when you have made a little clearing in the wilderness, planted your little garden, let in your sunlight, and then the weeds creep in again!

A judgement! And our boy had typhoid because no clergyman had dropped water on him in church! Is it possible, Miss Honeychurch? Shall we slip back into the darkness forever?”