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But each time that she avoided George it became more imperative that she should avoid him again. And now celestial irony, working through her cousin and two clergymen, did not suffer her to leave Florence till she had made this expedition with him through the hills.
Sigh. The more one tries to put someone out of mind, the greater a space he occupies in it. And if manifestation is real, or even if perception is reality, this means he has a greater presence in one's life.
“Perhaps as a student of human nature,” interposed Miss Lavish, “like myself?”
Gross lol. You've got a lot to learn, girlie pop
If you will not think me rude, we residents sometimes pity you poor tourists not a little—handed
This is rude… you know you're being rude by saying this, douchebag
“I quite agree,” said Miss Lavish, who had several times tried to interrupt his mordant wit. “The narrowness and superficiality of the Anglo-Saxon tourist is nothing less than a menace.”
Girl, you just got lost traveling around Florence a few days ago stfu
“It does indeed!” cried Miss Lavish. “Tell me, where do they place the scene of that wonderful seventh day?” But Mr. Eager proceeded to tell Miss Honeychurch
Oh, I seee. Mr. Eager hates Miss Lavish because seeing her is like looking in a mirror. Both criticize the vapid, superfical "Anglo-Saxon tourist." Both are Anglo-Saxon tourists who like to think of themselves as better or different than the rest
During this speech the two figures on the box were sporting with each other disgracefully.
Lmao Mr. Eager and Miss Lavish fighting for the soapbox
“Leave them alone,” Mr. Emerson begged the chaplain, of whom he stood in no awe. “Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there? To be driven by lovers—A king might envy us, and if we part them it’s more like sacrilege than anything I know.”
“Signorina!” said the man to Lucy, when the display had ceased. Why should he appeal to Lucy? “Signorina!” echoed Persephone in her glorious contralto. She pointed at the other carriage. Why? For a moment the two girls looked at each other. Then Persephone got down from the box.
“It is not victory,” said Mr. Emerson. “It is defeat. You have parted two people who were happy.”
“Fifty miles of Spring, and we’ve come up to admire them. Do you suppose there’s any difference between Spring in nature and Spring in man? But there we go, praising the one and condemning the other as improper, ashamed that the same laws work eternally through both.”
promontory
Unselfishness with Miss Bartlett had entirely usurped the functions of enthusiasm.
Humans have finite will power. I definitely get exhausted after putting effort into not responding to people who annoy me
Any one can find places, but the finding of people is a gift from God.
Standing at its brink, like a swimmer who prepares, was the good man. But he was not the good man that she had expected, and he was alone. George had turned at the sound of her arrival.
Awww the good man. The Italian probably intentionally took her to George because he's one of the only "good men" in this party. What a cute misunderstanding
For a moment he contemplated her, as one who had fallen out of heaven. He saw radiant joy in her face, he saw the flowers beat against her dress in blue waves. The bushes above them closed. He stepped quickly forward and kissed her.
AHHHH OMG. I gasped and smiled. Ugh I love this moment
He would look no one in the face; perhaps defeat was particularly mortifying for him. He alone had played skilfully, using the whole of his instinct, while the others had used scraps of their intelligence. He alone had divined what things were, and what he wished them to be. He alone had interpreted the message that Lucy had received five days before from the lips of a dying man. Persephone, who spends half her life in the grave—she could interpret it also. Not so these English.
The thoughts of a cab-driver, however just, seldom affect the lives of his employers.
Making me think of the movie Parasite
“Typical behaviour,” said the chaplain, as he quitted the carriage. “In the presence of reality that kind of person invariably breaks down.”
Lmao what does he mean by this? That men who think ideologically or theoretically are not adequately equipped to live in the real world?
If they had not stopped perhaps they might have been hurt. They chose to regard it as a miraculous preservation, and the floods of love and sincerity, which fructify every hour of life, burst forth in tumult.
If only this sincerity and enthusiasm were easier to access. It shouldn't take a near-death experience
The older people recovered quickly. In the very height of their emotion they knew it to be unmanly or unladylike. Miss Lavish calculated that, even if they had continued, they would not have been caught in the accident. Mr. Eager mumbled a temperate prayer. But the drivers, through miles of dark squalid road, poured out their souls to the dryads and the saints, and Lucy poured out hers to her cousin.
Tact/convention/performance versus drama/romance/poeticism/meaning
“He is really—I think he was taken by surprise, just as I was before. But 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.
Me slipping up and seeing DH lollll
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.”
Awww....
She thought not so much of what had happened as of how she should describe it. All her sensations, her spasms of courage, her moments of unreasonable joy, her mysterious discontent, should be carefully laid before her cousin. And together in divine confidence they would disentangle and interpret them all.
Such a special thing to have a confidante. Sometimes this is how I feel while considering how I might describe an event in my journal. But also (of course) to a good friend
toque,
plaintive.
There are still left some men who can reverence woman.”
The irony of complaining about a lack of reverance for women while implying male children have better judgment than adult women...
“Dearest Lucy, how will you ever forgive me?” Lucy was on her guard at once, knowing by bitter experience what forgiving Miss Bartlett meant.
Packing her bags for a guilt trip
“My only consolation was that you found people more to your taste, and were often able to leave me at home. I had my own poor ideas of what a lady ought to do, but I hope I did not inflict them on you more than was necessary. You had your own way about these rooms, at all events.” “You mustn’t say these things,” said Lucy softly.
So like the interaction between Grandma and myself 7/19/25
George would seem to have behaved like a cad throughout; perhaps that was the view which one would take eventually. At present she neither acquitted nor condemned him; she did not pass judgement.
Inaction is complicity
She had worked like a great artist; for a time—indeed, for years—she had been meaningless, but at the end there was presented to the girl the complete picture of a cheerless, loveless world in which the young rush to destruction until they learn better—a shamefaced world of precautions and barriers which may avert evil, but which do not seem to bring good, if we may judge from those who have used them most.
This is really resonating with me rn. A week ago, I texted DH "Just like you'll lie by omission, you'll justify your own behavior by /inaction./ 'I didn't do something bad, so it must have been good.' Yeah, well, you didn't do something good either.
the most grievous wrong which this world has yet discovered: diplomatic advantage had been taken of her sincerity, of her craving for sympathy and love. Such a wrong is not easily forgotten.
“Life like a dome of many coloured glass,”
Percy Bysse Shelley's /Adonais/
a bone which lay upon the piano.
???
because she tells me everything,
Right after Miss Bartlett said that Lucy tells her mom everything! I bet Mom doesn't know about George Emerson
the Honeychurch habit of sitting in the dark to save the furniture.
Symbolism goes crazy. Literally remaining in the dark to maintain outward appearances. Sad af
Well educated, well endowed, and not deficient physically, he remained in the grip of a certain devil whom the modern world knows as self-consciousness, and whom the medieval, with dimmer vision, worshipped as asceticism.
Cecil is a beautiful but insecure man.
“We mothers—” simpered Mrs. Honeychurch, and then realized that she was affected, sentimental, bombastic—all the things she hated most. Why could she not be Freddy, who stood stiff in the middle of the room; looking very cross and almost handsome?
The repression... This is a big occasion, and sentimentality is called for!
She moved across the lawn and smiled in at them, just as if she was going to ask them to play tennis.
Yeah, Lucy does not seem overjoyed about this match
That day she had seemed a typical tourist—shrill, crude, and gaunt with travel.
More like lovesick over George
Soon he detected in her a wonderful reticence. She was like a woman of Leonardo da Vinci’s, whom we love not so much for herself as for the things that she will not tell us.
Jesus Christ. He loves that she's dispassionate (and therefore mysterious)? Barf. She's reticent bc she likes someone else, you fool
no woman of Leonardo’s could have anything so vulgar as a “story.”
Women as possessions
So it happened that from patronizing civility he had slowly passed if not to passion, at least to a profound uneasiness.
"Profound uneasiness" is not a reason to be together :/
“I have no profession,” said Cecil. “It is another example of my decadence. My attitude—quite an indefensible one—is that so long as I am no trouble to any one I have a right to do as I like. I know I ought to be getting money out of people, or devoting myself to things I don’t care a straw about, but somehow, I’ve not been able to begin.”
Cecil Vyse is a loser
“You are very fortunate,” said Mr. Beebe. “It is a wonderful opportunity, the possession of leisure.”
Yeah, I love Beebe for diplomatically checking Ceci's privilege
He felt, as all who have regular occupation must feel, that others should have it also.
Rightly so. If we have to earn a living, how is it fair that some get a free ride?
Try the faults of Miss Honeychurch; they are not innumerable.” “She has none,” said the young man, with grave sincerity. “I quite agree. At present she has none.” “At present?” “I’m not cynical. I’m only thinking of my pet theory about Miss Honeychurch. Does it seem reasonable that she should play so wonderfully, and live so quietly? I suspect that one day she will be wonderful in both. The water-tight compartments in her will break down, and music and life will mingle. Then we shall have her heroically good, heroically bad—too heroic, perhaps, to be good or bad.”
Yes Beebe, PLEASE dissuade Cecil from marrying Lucy
a beautiful picture in my Italian diary: Miss Honeychurch as a kite, Miss Bartlett holding the string. Picture number two: the string breaks.”
Maybe the Emersons are nearby, holding scissors…
“It has broken now,” said the young man in low, vibrating tones. Immediately he realized that of all the conceited, ludicrous, contemptible ways of announcing an engagement this was the worst. He cursed his love of metaphor; had he suggested that he was a star and that Lucy was soaring up to reach him? “Broken? What do you mean?” “I meant,” said Cecil stiffly, “that she is going to marry me.”
Dear god. More like the string has been tightly spooled around Miss Bartlett's hand and the kite put away in the garage
Cecil, who naturally preferred congratulations to apologies, drew down his mouth at the corners.
Omg. An apology as a reaction is kind of funny…
Mr. Vyse had the art of placing one in the most tiresome positions. He was driven to use the prerogatives of his profession.
Professional at nothing. He gets paid to do nothing but simply exist
