A Woman of da Vinci's

Of watertight compartments I know quite a lot, I feel, though less of others and more of my own. It was therefore reassuring to read of Lucy Honeychurch's, although perhaps she herself was unaware of them, and only an outsider – the narrator or the reader or Mr Beebe – had the luxury of that insight. Maybe it is something you only gain the knowledge of having been told, or maybe only when you are in the possession of leisure i.e. without a regular occupation, and to the dissatisfaction and annoyance of others, can be wholly self-absorbed; perhaps then, you think oh, why is it that, say for example, reading and life do not mingle? And should they? Or even can they? Is that possible?
Mr Beebe holds the theory that watertight compartments will, if the right circumstances force or present themselves, break or wear down, and will prove therefore not so watertight. Life will no longer be separated from them and them from it, and the person who might before have lived rather quietly and appeared without fault, will develop some flaws and become more vocal. But surely the compartmentlist must be complicit? They must secretly, subconsciously, want this: water to get in and wash away any divide.
Compartments, after all, often work, and allow more, not less, satisfaction to be felt, since a protected place or time has been set aside for them, which if they weren't might mean there would be no place or time for them at all, or if there was some it might be hurried, or cause untold problems. And no distinction between compartments can lead to blurring of lines, where lines you did not want to be crossed are crossed, either by yourself or some innocent other; life, in other words, gets in and things get messy, and messiness, if not naturally inclined to, can be, for the compartmentalist, overwhelming, and cause some to act out of, rather than in, character.
Lucy Honeychurch, however, is attempting to compartmentalise more than just music and life, for George Emerson is Florence, Italy and Cecil Vyse, more than any other meeting place, Windy Corner. That the two manage to conjoin is meddlesome Fate, because otherwise Lucy would only think of either of them in their watertight compartments, and so still appear, at least on occasion to admiring eyes, a woman of da Vinci's: loved , as E. M. Forster puts it, 'not so much for herself as for the things she will not tell us.'

Picture credit: Woman's Head, c.1473, Leonardo da Vinci (source: WikiArt).

See A Room With a View by E.M. Forster. Journal entry from July 2021.