A Room with a View: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

On a “Saturday afternoon, gay and brilliant after abundant rains,” Mr. Beebe and Freddy pay the Emersons a visit. They go into the Emersons’ villa, looking for them, and examine the Emersons’ things, including many books. Mr. Beebe asks Freddy how Lucy enjoyed her stay in London, and Freddy says that Lucy is closer than ever to Cecil.

Freddy tells Mr. Beebe that Cecil “is teaching Lucy Italian,” and that he is worried Lucy will become smarter than he is, as “she will read all kind of books,” with Cecil. George enters, looking like his “face wanted washing,” and Freddy asks if George wants to go for a swim. Mr. Beebe laughs at this quick invitation to “have a bathe,” and says that it would only happen between men. He adds, “And yet you will tell me that the sexes are equal.”

Mr. Emerson, just entering the room, says that men and women will be equal, and says that the Garden of Eden “is really yet to come.” He says that “when we no longer despise our bodies,” when the sexes are equal, and when people truly discover nature, mankind will attain a kind of utopian existence like that of the Garden of Eden.

Freddy tells Mr. Emerson that he will call on him later (a long-standing social tradition of visiting someone and leaving a calling card), and Mr. Emerson laughs at the old-fashioned custom, calling it “drawing-room twaddle.” But Mr. Beebe insists on the practice, and tells Mr. Emerson to return calls within a ten-day window. Freddy, George, and Mr. Beebe leave to go to the Sacred Lake for a swim.

On the way, Mr. Beebe comments on the coincidence of the Emersons meeting Lucy in Florence and then ending up so near to Windy Corner. George says that it is fate, as “everything is fate.” Mr. Beebe disagrees, and says that George first met Lucy in Florence, and then ran into Cecil at the National Gallery, looking at Italian art. He says that an interest in “things Italian,” has brought the Emersons together with the Honeychurches. The three men arrive at the Sacred Lake, and Freddy and George disrobe and prepare to swim.

Mr. Beebe stays out of the water at first, but both George and Freddy tell him that the “water’s wonderful.” Mr. Beebe sees no one else around and notices “water, sky, evergreens, a wind.” Admiring all the nature around him, he takes off his clothes and jumps in the water. The three start to play, splash each other, and run around the pond and through “the willow-herbs and in the bracken.” Freddy and George are “delirious,” with fun.

Suddenly, Mr. Beebe alerts George and Freddy that people are coming by. Mrs. Honeychurch, Cecil, and Lucy happen to be walking through the woods. They see the three men, who then run off into the woods or back into the water. Cecil leads Lucy and her mother away, feeling “that he must lead women, though he knew not whither, and protect them, though he knew not against what.”

Mrs. Honeychurch is not shocked, though, and tells the three to dry off before coming inside, so as not to get a cold. After putting some clothes on, George, “barefoot, bare-chested, radiant and personable against the shadowy woods,” says hello to Lucy, and Mrs. Honeychurch tells her to bow in return. She bows awkwardly. That night, the pool—which had swelled to a greater size with rainwater—“shrunk to its old size and lost its glory,” becoming again nothing but a little pond.