‘The Signora had no business to do it, no business at all.’ Many of you will recognise this as Charlotte Bartlett’s words at the beginning of EM Forster’s ‘A Room with a View.’ Well, when we recently stayed in Florence, our room nearly had a view of the River Arno … almost. However, we had no complaints at all as we unexpectedly had a tiny terrace with room for two chairs and the view was of Florentine rooftops. I have probably read this book three times and watched the famous film on many more occasions. I fully intended to disassociate myself from the film but actually being there in the city this proved to be impossible. Helena Bonham Carter, Maggie Smith and Judi Dench, in their elegant Edwardian costumes, were with me at every turn.
A Room with a View is definitely the most romantic of Forster’s relatively small cache of novels. I’ve been thinking that it is Romantic too, with a capital R, particularly with the deep feelings about nature, consistent with Thoreau and Waldo Emerson. Reading it this time in Florence, Forster’s writing also resonated strongly with me as a very witty, social comedy.
Here are the middle classes at play. This is no longer the Grand Tour of the 18th and early 19th century, but it is still concerned with the improvement of oneself through exposure to culture: art, music and sculpture. Charlotte Bartlett, Lucy’s older cousin, is with her as companion and chaperone and is the embodiment of late Victorian morals and protocols. She is scandalised when a father and son at the pensione offer their rooms with a view. It takes the clergyman Mr. Beebe to convince Charlotte that this is just simply a kind gesture with no strings attached.
At the other end of the moral scale George fills his life with the larger concerns of love, freedom and openness to new experiences. He finds the values of the middle-class Victorians, now cast aside into the previous century, to be positively stultifying. (A Room with a View was written in the early years of the twentieth century.)
Well, social mores aside, we were in Florence to see and experience all that the city had to offer. We did of course visit the Uffizi. Our ‘skip the queue’ tickets had been bought months earlier but, on the day, we realised there was a queue for those who were skipping the queue, if you see what I mean. It was an achievement to even enter this monumental place. Amongst the overwhelming wealth of renaissance art, there was a smallish Madonna and Child by Filippi Lippi which I really loved. It had a very human quality to it. The postcard is now on my fridge door! After what felt like a very heavy four course meal, it was light relief to ‘uschita’ (Italian for exit I quickly learnt) and to come across a gallery of modern art with a stunning Modigliani …another postcard!
And then there was the Santa Croce where old Mr. Emerson disturbs and annoys Mr. Eager. Now of course guides are quiet! They talk into a radio microphone and all their group have earpieces. Would the stiff, upright priest have approved I wonder. There was the tomb of Michelangelo, alongside Machiavelli, Da Vinci and Rossini, and walls of beautiful, rather abstract frescos with an unexpectedly modern feel, possibly because of the chalky, flat finish.
‘I am here as a tourist,’ (chapter 6) says Lucy to the rather tedious and objectionable Mr. Eager, the Anglican priest in Florence. And, indeed, so was I. It sounds far more interesting to describe oneself as a traveller but to me that suggests large amounts of time is available and sometimes that is not the case. I want to understand the history of a place, albeit maybe in abbreviated form and to move from a photo on a page to the real thing is exciting. I hope I am a good tourist though. I do listen to the guide and I do not take endless selfies…or indeed any at all.
Lucy Honeychurch is an ingenue; an innocent in the ways of culture and matters of the heart. She does not know how to deal with George Emerson’s rather clumsy advances and is unsure whether or not she wishes to be kissed again. Charlotte’s decision is to remove Lucy from Florence immediately.
‘In the morning they left for Rome.’(end of chapter 7) And so did we, walking from our hotel to the station and catching a train to the capital. A 2-hour journey, fast, efficient and comfortable. That much further south, Rome was considerably hotter.
We had tickets the next morning for a guided tour of the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel and St Peter’s Basilica. A 3-hour tour beginning at 7.30 am. and no breakfast! Nothing could have prepared me for the enormous size of these places or the richness. Like nothing I have seen before. It was uncomfortable though as I struggled to find some essence of Christianity … and failed. The following day was full of Ancient Rome with the Colosseum, the Forum and Palatine Hill. I could half close my eyes and imagine the area full of Romans living their everyday lives. It was memorable to walk among the walls, the pillars and the towers.
Our trip was rather full on but there was time for some excellent eating: delicious pasta, tasty pizzas (although we had to ask for black olives to be added) beautifully cooked sea bass and a rich Tuscan stew in the hotel restaurant on our first night in Florence. Also, in Rome our hotel had a delightful inner courtyard; green, and with a cooling water feature. It was a perfect retreat, somewhere to have a long, cold drink and recover from the heat, the queues and the crowds.
Keats’ House at the bottom of the Spanish Steps was an unexpected find. A tiny English museum looking over the gelato sellers and the pizza stalls.
I was surprised by the fact that there are no high-rise buildings in either Florence or central Rome. Looking down on Florence is to see a medieval cityscape, quite complete. This is a very different approach from London where St Paul’s Cathedral and the City churches are surrounded by modern towers of all shapes and sizes. I don’t personally mind the old and new being side by side but the Italian approach is impressive.
We had a wonderful Italian adventure but on the journey home I pondered about what book I should have taken to read in Rome. Any thoughts? Just not anything by Dan Brown, thank you!