A Room with a View: Chapter 6 Summary & Analysis

In the afternoon, Lucy and Charlotte go for the ride with Mr. Eager. A young Italian man drives their carriage, and stops to pick up a young Italian woman. The narrator compares both of the Italians to mythological figures. In the carriage are Mr. Beebe, Mr. Eager, Miss Lavish, the Emersons, Lucy, and Charlotte. Mr. Beebe had invited the Emersons along without asking Mr. Eager first, a “dreadful thing,” that put a damper on Mr. Eager’s plans.

Lucy thinks about George Emerson, who she thinks is eager to “continue their intimacy.” She is cautious “not because she disliked him,” but because she doesn’t feel she understands what has happened between George and her on the river, when they had intimately discussed the murder they saw and contemplated “the shadowy stream.”

Mr. Eager asks if Lucy is in Florence as a student of art, and she tells him that she is simply a tourist. He says that he often pities tourists, who are “unconscious of anything that is outside Baedeker,” and Miss Lavish agrees. As the party rides by various villas, Mr. Eager tells Lucy all about the British and American expatriates that live in them. Meanwhile, the carriage driver puts the horses at a full gallop, and lurches the carriage from side to side as he tries to kiss the young woman he has brought along.

Mr. Eager stops the carriage and tells the driver that his female friend will have to leave. Mr. Emerson, though, says that “the lovers must on no account be separated.” Mr. Eager speaks to the two young Italians in Italian, and they both appeal to Lucy. Lucy is confused as to why they should seek her support. Finally, the young woman leaves, to the delight of Mr. Eager. Mr. Emerson counters that Mr. Eager has “parted two people who were happy.”

Mr. Emerson talks with Miss Lavish and regrets the way that Mr. Eager treated the young driver, whom he associates with the youth and vivacity of spring. Looking around at the natural scenery, he asks, “Do you suppose there’s any difference between Spring in nature and Spring in man?” Mr. Eager ignores Mr. Emerson.

At last, the group reaches their destination of Fiesole, in the hills outside Florence, the setting that had inspired the Renaissance painter Alessio Baldovinetti. Mr. Eager and Miss Lavish wonder, “where exactly had he stood?” The party walks around the hills together for a bit, and then split into groups. Mr. Beebe and Mr. Eager go off together, the Emersons return to the carriage to talk to their driver, and Lucy, Charlotte, and Miss Lavish form a third group.

Charlotte tells Miss Lavish that she asked Mr. Emerson what his profession was, and he answered “the railway,” which she found “such a dreadful answer.” Miss Lavish laughs and says that Mr. Emerson looks like a porter. Miss Lavish and Charlotte encourage Lucy to go off and join Mr. Eager’s group, but Lucy doesn’t want to. They sit for a few minutes, and then Lucy finally goes to find Mr. Eager. She goes back to the carriage and, unable to speak Italian, tries to ask the driver where Mr. Beebe is.

The driver misunderstands Lucy and directs her over to where George is. Lucy walks through a wooded area and then stumbles onto a terrace with flowers all around in “rivulets and streams and cataracts, irrigating the hillside with blue, eddying round the tree stems collecting into pools in the hollows, covering the grass with spots of azure foam.” Immediately upon seeing Lucy amid all the flowers, George kisses her, and almost as suddenly Charlotte arrives on the scene, sees what has happened, and calls out Lucy’s name.