A Room With a View by E.M. Forster

I finished re-reading A Room With a View this morning. I love this book and I love the movie based on it (same name) and I love experiencing the book having seen the movie and vice-versa. There are many lines in the movie that are pulled verbatim from the book. Since I’ve watched the movie so many times, I clearly hear the words in my mind spoken by the excellent actors. It’s given me a greater respect for actors. The way they say the words — the tone, the accent, the feeling — brings so much more to the story. I pretty much always think the book is better than the movie but this one is different. They complement each other. Do both - read the book and watch the movie. I think watch the movie first. That way you will hear the voices as you read.

This is basically a love story. Lucy Honeychurch goes to Italy with her cousin Charlotte as her chaperone. While there she meets the enigmatic young man, George Emerson, and his father. The Emersons are not quite in Lucy’s social strata but she cannot help liking them and, without meaning to, she sees in them a much more meaningful, joy-filled way to live than the rather hemmed-in life she leads in England. Also without meaning to, and without realizing — or at least letting herself realize —, she falls in love with George. He falls in love with her, too. But, alas, circumstances and Charlotte intervene. After returning to England, Lucy gets engaged to Cecil Vyse, a sophisticated, high society man. She’s in a muddle. Mr. Emerson, George’s father says this:

Take an old man’s word; there’s nothing worse than a muddle in all the world. It is easy to face Death and Fate, and the things that sound so dreadful. It is on my muddles that I look back with horror—on the things that I might have avoided. We can help one another but little. I used to think I could teach young people the whole of life, but I know better now, and all my teaching of George has come down to this: beware of muddle.

There are many lines and scenes I love and wait for whenever I watch the movie. The scenery is beautiful! Italy and England both are “glorious country,” as Mr. Emerson says. It’s a lighthearted, lovely story.

I think my “most-favorite” line of the movie is this one, which Mr. Emerson says when the Italian carriage driver’s girlfriend is kicked off because the stuffy parson, Mr. Eager, has caught them kissing. Mr. Emerson says:

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

It reminds me of a line from a poem by Elizabeth Alexander, which I heard on “On Being.” The line is:

…are we not of interest to each other?

The words pierce my heart.

My daughter and I often quote lines together. Some are:

“Good bye! Be good!” — with a foppish limp-handed wave. Said by Cecil as Lucy and the other females leave for church.

“Poor Charlotte!” — Oft repeated when discussing Charlotte.

“…all sorts of to-doing.” — Mrs. Honeychurch.

“Why not have a comfortable bath at home, with hot and cold laid on? … You are in no position to argue.” — Mrs. Honeychurch to Freddy, as he is crouching naked in the bushes, having been caught chasing Mr. Beebe and George around the pond they were “bathing” in.

“One more lump, if I might trouble you, Mr. Beebe.” —- Rev. Mr. Eager when having tea on the Italian hillside with Mr. Beebe and Mr. Emerson

“The ground will do for me, and if I feel a twinge I shall stand up…No, no, don't be alarmed, this is not a cold. I have had this cough for 3 days. It has nothing to do with sitting on the ground.” —- Charlotte (“poor Charlotte”) very subtly (ha ha) trying to get Lucy to leave her and Eleanor Lavish alone with their tea and gossip on the Italian hillside.

Even the chapter titles are amusing. In the movie they appear between acts like a beautifully decorated page from an illuminated manuscript. Titles such as:

• In Santa Croce with No Baedeker

• Possibilities of a Pleasant Outing

• The Reverend Arthur Beebe, the Reverend Cuthbert Eager, Mr. Emerson, Mr. George Emerson, Miss Eleanor Lavish, Miss Charlotte Barblett, and Miss Lucy Honeychurch Drive Out in Carriages to See a View; Italians Drive Them

• In Mrs. Vyse’s Well-Appointed Flat

• How Miss Bartlett’s Boiler Was So Tiresome

• Lying to George

• Lying to Cecil

• Lying to Mr. Beebe, Mrs. Honeychurch, Freddy, and the Servants

The soundtrack, too, is gorgeous — soaring Italian operas.

There are scenes I wait for. Of course the bathing scene — George, Freddy and Mr. Beebe racing around naked, surprised by the women — is hilarious. When the camera looks through the window and Cecil, unaware that anyone can see him, is balancing a teacup and saucer while practically twirling on tiptoe flailing his arm around at a fly. A tiny silent scene I wait for is when Freddy and Mrs. Honeychurch are on the piano bench together looking out the window where Cecil is proposing to Lucy. They both have this look — kind of resigned and disheartened, seeming to be thinking together, “Oh no.”

In this reading of the book, I was particularly struck by Mr. Emerson’s advice I quoted above. It does seem “Beware of muddle” is a wise motto to live by.

Years ago I made this bookplate. It is a photo of my library window. I need to find it again and get it into more of my books. It was fun to see it in this one.

First line of the book, first line of the movie.

Ars Poetica #100: I Believe

Elizabeth Alexander

Listen

Poetry, I tell my students,
is idiosyncratic. Poetry

is where we are ourselves
(though Sterling Brown said

“Every ‘I’ is a dramatic ‘I’”),
digging in the clam flats

for the shell that snaps,
emptying the proverbial pocketbook.

Poetry is what you find
in the dirt in the corner,

overhear on the bus, God
in the details, the only way

to get from here to there.
Poetry (and now my voice is rising)

is not all love, love, love,
and I’m sorry the dog died.

Poetry (here I hear myself loudest)
is the human voice,

and are we not of interest to each other?