I seem never to find myself in Rome but at the dead season.
I pass through in August or September on my way somewhere or other and spend a couple of days revisiting places or pictures that are endeared to me by old associations.
It is very hot then and the inhabitants of the city spend their day interminably strolling up and down the Corso.
The Caffe Nazionale is crowded with people sitting at little tables for long hours with an empty cup of coffee in front of them and a glass of water.
In the Sistine Chapel you see blond and sunburned Germans, in knickerbockers and shirts open at the neck, who have walked down the dusty roads of Italy with knapsacks on their shoulders; and in St Peter's little groups of the pious, tired but eager, who have come on pilgrimage (at an inclusive rate) from some distant country.
They are under the charge of a priest and they speak strange tongues.
The Hotel Plaza then is cool and restful.
The public rooms are dark, silent and spacious.
In the lounge at tea-time the only persons are a young, smart officer and a woman with fine eyes, drinking iced lemonade, and they talk intimately, in low tones, with the unwearying fluency of their race.
You go up to your room and read and write letters and come down again two hours later and they are still talking.
Before dinner a few people saunter into the bar, but for the rest of the day it is empty and the barman has time to tell you of his mother in Switzerland and his experiences in New York.
You discuss life and love and the high cost of liquor.
And on this occasion too I found that I had the hotel almost to myself.
When the reception clerk took me to my room he told me that they were pretty full, but when, having bathed and changed, I came down again to the hall, the liftman, an old acquaintance, informed me that there were not more than a dozen people staying there.
I was tired after a long and hot journey down Italy and had made up my mind to dine quietly in the hotel and go to bed early.
It was late when I went into the dining-room, vast and brightly lit, but not more than three or four tables were occupied.
I looked round me with satisfaction.
It is very agreeable to find yourself alone in a great city which is yet not quite strange to you and in a large empty hotel.
It gives you a delectable sense of freedom.
I felt the wings of my spirit give a little flutter of delight.
I had paused for ten minutes in the bar and had a dry Martini.
I ordered myself a bottle of good red wine.
My limbs were weary, but my soul responded wonderfully to food and drink and I began to feel a singular lightness of heart.
I ate my soup and my fish and pleasant thoughts filled my mind.
Scraps of dialogue occurred to me and my fancy played happily with the persons of a novel I was then at work on.
I rolled a phrase on my tongue and it tasted better than the wine.
I began to think of the difficulty of describing the looks of people in such a way as to make the reader see them as you see them.
To me it has always been one of the most difficult things in fiction.
What does the reader really get when you describe a face feature by feature?
I should think nothing.
And yet the plan some writers adopt of taking a salient characteristic, a crooked smile or shifty eyes, and emphasizing that, though effective, avoids rather than solves the problem.
I looked about me and wondered how I would describe the people at the tables round me.
There was one man by himself just opposite and for practice I asked myself in what way I should treat him.
He was a tall, spare fellow, and what I believe is generally called loose-limbed.
He wore a dinner jacket and a boiled shirt.
He had a rather long face and pale eyes; his hair was fairish and wavy, but it was growing thin, and the baldness of his temples gave him a certain nobility of brow.
His features were undistinguished.
His mouth and nose were like everybody else's; he was clean-shaven; his skin was naturally pale, but at the moment sunburned.
His appearance suggested an intellectual but slightly commonplace distinction.
He looked as though he might have been a lawyer or a don who played a pretty game of golf.
I felt that he had good taste and was well-read and would be a very agreeable guest at a luncheon-party in Chelsea.
But how the devil one was to describe him so as in a few lines to give a vivid, interesting, and accurate picture I could not imagine.
Perhaps it would be better to let all the rest go and dwell only on that rather fatigued distinction which on the whole was the most definite impression he gave.
I looked at him reflectively.
Suddenly he leaned forwards and gave me a stiff but courtly little bow.
I have a ridiculous habit of flushing when I am taken aback and now I felt my cheeks redden.
I was startled.
I had been staring at him for several minutes as though he were a dummy.
He must have thought me extremely rude.
I nodded with a good deal of embarrassment and looked away.