Lucy & her Florentine muddle

By Kohinoor Dasgupta

The long life of the Merchant Ivory adaptation of A Room with a View (1986) makes one unsure about the historical time of the original material, the novel by E. M. Forster. Besides, Forster lived until 1970, and it is easy to entertain the fallacy that all his novels belong to the 1920s and 1930s. His Aspects of the Novel, duly thumbed through by English Lit. Crit. students of the last century, including myself, was published in 1927. Another 1920s work of particular interest to Indian readers of English-language novels, and a David Lean movie with the superb Victor Banerjee, was A Passage to India.

Naturally, anyone who has seen A Room with a View knows that the characters wore period costumes when they wore anything, but do you know that the novel was published in 1908? A Room with a View was Forster’s second novel.

The film, with its engaging cast of established performers and young talent, and gliding on Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Oscar-winning screenplay, had the easier job of presenting Forster’s 1908 world. Right away, it had a more likeable Lucy (played by Helena Bonham-Carter). The girl in the novel finds the façade of Florence’s Santa Croce surpassingly ugly and the church itself like a barn which has "harvested many beautiful things inside its walls”. She is aghast at the "horrible fate” of three "Papist” toddlers at the church.

Modern-day Santa Croce

Lucy unfiltered, however, is a treat for readers. She begins with such smug certainties at a beautiful Florentine church but, through three subsequent months in Rome, cannot shake off Florence, which has bequeathed to her a life-changing muddle! Forster tells us that even back in tranquil Surrey, Italy keeps offering Lucy "the most priceless of all possessions – her own soul”.

Lucy, despite her ignorance and inhibitions, is an extraordinary twenty-year-old. For one, her piano playing shows individuality. The following thought is from Mr. Beebe, a clergyman who happened to hear Lucy playing Beethoven’s Opus III at a church in Tunbridge Wells, England:

"But that some sonatas of Beethoven are written tragic no one can gainsay; yet they can triumph or despair as the player decides, and Lucy had decided that they should triumph.”

"Disjoined from the music-stool, [Lucy] was only a young lady with a quantity of dark hair and a very pretty, pale, undeveloped face”, who, not unlike many young women of today, "loves” everything from going to concerts, stopping with her cousin [Miss Bartlett at Tunbridge Wells), iced coffee and meringues, and also Mr. Beebe’s sermon. However, in spite of this curtain between Lucy’s pianist avatar and her mundane self, Lucy trusts her instincts when evaluating people, a quality which is observed and appealed to by those rare people she comes across who care neither for decorum nor for an anachronistic chivalry which expects women to appear perfect and artificial.

Lucy is twenty-year-old Lucy Honeychurch, first-time tourist in Florence, Italy. She is chaperoned by her much older cousin, Miss Charlotte Bartlett. One late spring, a couple of months after that Easter meeting with Mr. Beebe, they arrive at Pension Bertolini and are dismayed that their smelly, north-facing rooms do not yield romantic views of the Arno, churches, hills and the cypresses of San Miniato. Their grousing is overheard at dinner by another guest, Mr. Emerson, who offers to trade his room as well as the one occupied by his adult son, George. The Emersons have rooms with views. Lucy recognizes the kindness in the childlike old man’s overture, but Miss Bartlett, hyper-conscious of her paid role, is defensive and suspicious.

Soon enough, however, Miss Bartlett accepts the trade, saying that all she had against it was the inconvenience it would cause to the Emersons. She is persuaded by Mr. Beebe, who also happens to be holidaying in Florence and staying at Pension Bertolini. Mr. Beebe, furthermore, is soon going to be the parish priest of the Honeychurches. Miss Bartlett is not blind to a win-win.

Miss Bartlett, fiftyish, has spent long years on small means and the dutiful affection of relatives such as Lucy’s mother. She is, one suspects, a perfectly competent person when no one is looking. However, she prefers not to test the limits of tolerance, in society and among supportive relations, for self-confidence and competence in a woman of her age and means. As such, she often regales with public role-play, and is now a stickler for Victorian rules, now a melodramatic martyr, and now pure comic.

Here is Mrs. Bartlett keeping her money safe in Florence. The voice is Lucy’s.

(This scene did not make it to the film.)

"Happy Charlotte, who, though greatly troubled over things that did not matter, seemed oblivious to things that did, who could conjecture with admirable delicacy “where things might lead to” but apparently lost sight of the goal as she approached it! Now she was crouching in the corner [of the "newspaper-room” at the English bank] trying to extract a circular note from a kind of linen nose-bag which hung in chaste concealment round her neck. She had been told that this was the only safe way to carry money in Italy; it must only be broached within the walls of the English bank.”

And here is Miss Bartlett plotting to take a break from chaperoning because she enjoys Miss Eleanor Lavish’s gossip too much:

"Whether it is Mr. Beebe who forgot to tell Mr. Eager, or Mr. Eager who forgot when he told us, or whether they have decided to leave Eleanor out altogether – which they could scarcely do – but in any case we must be prepared. It is you they really want; I am only asked for appearances. You shall go with the two gentlemen, and I and Eleanor will follow behind. A one-horse carriage would do for us.”

Rosemary Leach, Maggie Smith & Helena Bonham-Carter in 'A Room with a View'

Maggie Smith, the beloved British actress who passed away this past Friday, was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1987 for playing Charlotte Bartlett. She gave us all of Miss Bartlett’s strategic personae, through her interactions with Helena Bonham-Carter, Rosemary Leach (Mrs. Honeychurch), Judi Dench (Miss Lavish), Mr. Beebe (Simon Callow) and Rupert Graves (Lucy’s younger brother, Freddy), and even with a stranger on a train.

The film accepts George Emerson’s read on Miss Bartlett’s role in resolving Lucy’s Florentine muddle. Prawer Jhabvala carved out of Lucy’s dialogue with Mr. Emerson a crucial scene for Miss Bartlett towards the end of the film. Maggie Smith brought the real Miss Bartlett to this one, a scene with the formidable Denholm Elliott, whose Mr. Emerson was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1987.

Now I track back to the beginning of the novel. A small group of English tourists is staying at Pension Bertolini. It is unclear whether there are guests from other parts of the world. A couple, at least, of the English guests had chosen the Cockney Signora’s Pension on purpose: "…here you are as safe as in England. Signora Bertolini is so English,” says Miss Catharine Alan to Miss Bartlett.

Not everyone in this group is a tourist. Florence is work for Miss Bartlett, as Lucy’s mother is picking up part of her travel and board bill. As for Miss Eleanor Lavish, the unlucky romance novelist, she is soaking in local color and other English people’s Italian scandals.

That morning at Santa Croce, Lucy runs into the Emersons, who are rejected by words such as “Socialist” and “strange” by all but Mr. Beebe at Pension Bertolini. Miss Bartlett not being up to sightseeing on the first full day in Florence, entrusts Lucy to Miss Lavish’s care, but the latter, distracted by someone she knows, abandons Lucy in front of the church. She enters the edifice and wanders about until the Emersons notice her, and they make their way to the Peruzzi Chapel to see the frescoes by Giotto. There, an Englishman is guiding a group of prayer-book holding tourists, including the Miss Alans from Pension Bertolini. The guide is someone Mr. Emerson knows from many years ago in Brixton in England, when George was twelve years old. Reverend Cuthbert Eager, who used to be a curate at Brixton, now resides in Florence. He snubs Mr. Emerson. George wanders away after making a few pithy remarks on how the polite world receives true brotherly love. Still unchaperoned, Lucy has an extended exchange with Mr. Emerson. Mr. Emerson’s conversation is nothing like what she has ever heard in her “world of rapid talk”. He even discusses his son’s unhappiness and cynicism and requests her, as she is close to George’s age and will be stopping for a few days at the Pension, to “understand” him. By the time Miss Bartlett finally arrives at Santa Croce looking for Lucy, Lucy has had her first close encounter with the unfamiliar.  Although she appeases Miss Bartlett with a vague report, privately she keeps puzzling out the Emersons. Being, as I said, somewhat extraordinary, even while misreading Mr. Emerson as irreligious, Lucy is not frightened of him and judges that he is a good man.

At Santa Croce Lucy hears Rev. Eager telling his flock of tourists that Giotto’s art is true et cetera because he was "untroubled by the snares of anatomy and perspective”. I wonder, does Lucy detect any similarity between Miss Bartlett’s objection to Botticelli’s 'Birth of Venus’ and Rev. Eager's glib explanation of Giotto's appeal? Miss Bartlett is against Lucy buying a photograph of that famous painting because "Venus being a pity, spoilt the picture, otherwise so charming”. In other words, Venus being nude, spoilt the charming picture. I think Lucy does subliminally associate Rev. Eager’s view of art with Miss Bartlett’s. Certainly, she is loath to cast herself, at twenty, as a version of the ancient Miss Alans. As a small gesture of rebellion, one early evening when Miss Bartlett and Miss Lavish have not yet returned from an expedition to Torre del Gallo, Lucy ventures out alone to Alinari’s shop and does buy a photograph of 'Birth of Venus’ (and covers up even her symbolic rebellion with several other purchases of suitable art photographs). Lucy drifts into the Piazza Signoria, where she happens to witness a death: an Italian man is killed right in front of her over a five-franc note. Fortunately, George Emerson is on the scene and Lucy is spared the notoriety of having fainted in a piazza, amidst strange men. George throws Lucy’s art photos into the Arno because the packet is blood-spattered.  

The next day Lucy seems to have new eyes. Whereas Miss Bartlett continues to be under the spell of Miss Lavish and defers to Rev. Eager, Lucy fears that the former is not clever, and the latter is not good.

Meanwhile, congenial Mr. Beebe has been planning a large group outing. Rev. Eager too is keen on an outing and has invited Miss. Bartlett and Lucy. No one is sure whether the two outings are, in fact, one, and who is invited to which. On the appointed day, seven people, including the Emersons and Miss Lavish, get onto two carriages bound for a particular hillside near Fiesole whence, according to Rev. Eager, Renaissance artist Alessio Baldovinetti painted views of Florence.

They reach the hillside. The party breaks up into twos and threes. Once again, Miss Bartlett gets absorbed in Miss Lavish’s gossip and allows Lucy some unsupervised time. Once again, the view plays havoc with Lucy. It takes her several months to blurt out the truth to Miss Bartlett:

"It makes such a difference when you see a person with beautiful things behind him unexpectedly.”

Miss Bartlett and Lucy go to Rome the morning after the Fiesole trip. There they catch up with Mrs. Vyse and her son Cecil. Lucy and Cecil have known each other for years because their mothers are friends, but Lucy never interested Cecil romantically. During their extended interaction in Rome, Cecil notes a change in Lucy. She is less shrill, more silent, suddenly a woman, and one with a secret to boot. He has no intention of ferreting out her secret. He adores women who might be da Vinci enigmas. He proposes to her but is rejected twice. Lucy returns home, which is a house called 'Windy Corner’ in the idyllic Surrey hills. She lives with her mother and brother. Her father, who was a prosperous local solicitor, is dead. Miss Bartlett returns to Tunbridge Wells.

Cecil arrives in Surrey and proposes to Lucy for the third time, and she accepts him at last. The distinguished-looking fiancé hangs out at Windy Corner and is shown off to the locals. Cecil inhabits a dream world from which he occasionally surfaces to decry a "hopeless vulgarian” or two. None other than Daniel Day-Lewis played Cecil in the film. Only Daniel Day-Lewis can make Daniel Day-Lewis an unsympathetic cinematic character. Cecil’s London education and Roman holiday have not opened his eyes or awakened his soul. He has simply acquired information about art, literature and culture. Only in his last scene with Helena Bonham-Carter does the actor permit Cecil to hold out the possibility that he may become less blind. The book says there are more hurdles to overcome on that journey.

Mr. Beebe is now the Rector of the Summer Street church. In due course, the Emersons, Miss Bartlett, and even the Miss Alans and Miss Lavish reappear, either to stop by or to remote-engineer the plot.

A Room with a View is full of opinions. Most of the characters are of their time. The young people - Lucy, Freddy, Cecil and George - all became adults in the short Edwardian era, before World War I broke out. At this time, it is still possible to worry and about maids and puddings and not about a son’s mortality; it is possible for the ancient Miss Alans to go in a cargo steamer down the Illyrian coast. It is possible to muddle through or be medieval. Modern times have arrived in ideas, but not the murderous darkness of a World War. Still, the opinions of the characters, expressed in conversation or only in behavior, and severely judged in any case by other characters, brings this slice of 1908 up close.  

The author too, speaks in the reader’s ear. He knows the past and the future: he mentions Miss Bartlett’s misery thirty years ago, and Lucy’s upcoming discovery of George Emerson’s face on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. He knows when Lucy is lying and makes sure that we readers know too. Just look at these chapter titles: "Lying to George”, "Lying to Cecil”, "Lying to Mr. Beebe”, "Lying to Mr. Emerson”.

George Emerson was the famous movie critic Roger Ebert’s favorite character in A Room with a View. He was played by Julian Sands, who died in January 2023 during a winter climb of Mt. Baldy in California. Mr. Ebert wrote: "George is my favorite character because he is such a strange bird, so intense, so filled with conviction, so convinced of Lucy’s worth.”

Julian Sands & Denholm Elliott in 'A Room with a View'

George’s love for his unconventional father, a truthful and modern man in any time, is a grand thing in the novel. Although his father’s philosophy of life has denied the young man any glibness or material ambition or social success, he is a devoted son who does not doubt that he was educated the right way. In the second chapter of the novel, the same chapter in which Lucy ventures into Santa Croce without chaperone or Baedeker, George tells Lucy, whom he barely knows: "he [his father] is kind to people because he loves them; and they find him out, and are offended, or frightened.”

Mr. Emerson does not hate. He could have, for instance, borne a grudge against Rev. Eager, who, when he was a curate at Brixton, had convinced Mrs. Emerson that her husband’s rejection of baptism had put George’s life in danger (George, then twelve, had typhoid). George recovered, but Mrs. Emerson died. But Mr. Emerson does not hate people, he rejects their superstitions.

Rev. Eager, however, does hate, even though he is a clergyman and lectures to pious tourists about St Francis’s "innate sympathy”, "quickness to perceive good in others” and "vision of the brotherhood of man”. He does not draw the line at slandering Mr. Emerson to Miss Bartlett and Lucy.

When Cecil, on a whim, persuades the Emersons to rent a house in Surrey, we are given a glimpse into the private world of the Emersons. Their eclectic collection of books includes new work, such as A Shropshire Lad and The Way of all Flesh, of which the apparently well-read Mr. Beebe has not even heard.

This is an extremely funny novel with a grand vista and many views.