"She looked at the two rows of English people who were sitting at the table; at the row of white bottles of water and red bottles of wine that ran between the English people; at the portraits of the late Queen and the late Poets Laureate that hung behind the English people -(13 "It made a curious little scene, this attempt of the Cockney to convey the grace and geniality of the South
And even more curious was the drawing-room, which attempted to rival the solid comfort of a Bloomsbury boarding-house. Was this really Italy?-(20). It would take a grand stretch of the imagination to consider this a place where one might find the "true Italy-.
2. Forster is at his best as he jabs at the ridiculous conventions of the English gentility. The amusing appearance of the "to do- or "not to do- concept attacks the ability of a self-respecting society to silently, but permanently; judge those who are unlike themselves. Anyone who might raise the voice unpleasantly or smile too broadly, or cross any one of a thousand unspoken commandments, might be summarily rejected and put "out in the cold-. We see two examples in the Pension dining room: "The young man named George glanced at the clever lady, and then returned moodily to his plate. Obviously he and his father did not do. Lucy, in the midst of her success, found time to wish they did. It gave her no extra pleasure that anyone should be left out in the cold; and when she rose to go, she turned back and gave the two outsiders a nervous little bow.""(19). And again, "And indeed, a perfect torrent of information burst on them. People told them what to see, when to see it The Pension Bertolini had decided, almost enthusiastically, that they would do-(19). Forster forces the society to see itself as it is, not genteel but snobbish and insecure.
3. What Mr. Beebe says in Chapter 1, reveals Forster's disillusion with the class from which he was a member.