Summary

The unnamed narrator of Chapter 4, Hyacinth Blues, is a wealthy socialite who feels that she has been exiled to the Netherlands with her husband Gerald, a minister. She misses Paris and hopes to return there. She has an affair with a musician, a violinist in an orchestra. The musician is clearly not Dutch, and this piques her interest in him.

The only Dutch thing the narrator likes is the painting of the girl looking out the window, which her husband bought as “a placating measure” (p. 85) to make her happy in the Netherlands. She looks down on the locals for their “inbreeding” (p. 84) and their coarseness. Gerald has a lover, the Baroness Agatha von Solms—his marriage is clearly not a love match. The narrator is appalled by the Baroness’ appearance, which is provincial and excessive in a way that the couturiers in Paris would have...