A Room with a View

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

don't mean by that that he has bad manners--and he will not keep his opinions to himself

I was hoping that he was nice; I do so always hope that people will be nice."

this time I’m not to blame; I want you to be­lieve that. I simply slipped into those vi­ol­ets. No, I want to be really truth­ful. I am a little to blame. I had silly thoughts. The sky, you know, was gold, and the ground all blue, and for a mo­ment he looked like someone in a book.”

“In a book?”

“Her­oes—gods—the non­sense of school­girls.”

“And then?”

“But, Char­lotte, you know what happened then.”

Men, de­clar­ing that she in­spires them to it, move joy­fully over the sur­face, hav­ing the most de­light­ful meet­ings with other men, happy, not be­cause they are mas­cu­line, but be­cause they are alive. Be­fore the show breaks up she would like to drop the au­gust title of the Eternal Wo­man, and go there as her trans­it­ory self.

There is much that is im­mor­tal in this me­di­eval lady. The dragons have gone, and so have the knights, but still she lingers in our midst. She reigned in many an early Victorian castle, and was Queen of much early Victorian song.

Lucy does not stand for the me­di­eval lady, who was rather an ideal to which she was bid­den to lift her eyes when feel­ing ser­i­ous. Nor has she any sys­tem of re­volt.

It was not that ladies were in­ferior to men; it was that they were dif­fer­ent. Their mis­sion was to in­spire oth­ers to achieve­ment rather than to achieve them­selves. In­dir­ectly, by means of tact and a spot­less name, a lady could ac­com­plish much. But if she rushed into the fray her­self she would be first cen­sured, then des­pised, and fi­nally ig­nored. Poems had been writ­ten to il­lus­trate this point.

It was un­lady­like. Why? Why were most big things un­lady­like?

I quite agree with you, Miss Alan. The Itali­ans are a most un­pleas­ant people. They pry every­where, they see everything, and they know what we want be­fore we know it ourselves. We are at their mercy. They read our thoughts, they fore­tell our de­sires. From the cab­driver down to—to Gi­otto, they turn us in­side out, and I re­sent it. Yet in their heart of hearts they are—how su­per­fi­cial! They have no con­cep­tion of the in­tel­lec­tual life. How right is Signora Ber­to­lini, who ex­claimed to me the other day: ‘Ho, Mr. Beebe, if you knew what I suf­fer over the chil­dren’s ed­ju­caish­ion. Hi won’t ’ave my little Vict­or­ier taught by a hignor­ant Italian what can’t ex­plain no­think!’ ”