1
"What a _huge_ room?"
"Isn't it a big room. Come in young lady."
Miriam crossed to the fireplace through a warm faintly sweet atmosphere.
A small fire was smoking and the gas was partly turned down but the room
was warm with a friendly brown warmth. Something had made her linger in
the hall until Mrs. Bailey had come to the dining-room door and stood
there with the door wide open and something to communicate waiting
behind her friendly greetings. As a rule there was nothing behind her
friendly greetings but friendly approval and assurance. Miriam had never
seen the dining-room door open before and sought distraction from the
communicativeness by drifting towards it and peering in. Once in and
sitting in the chair between the fireplace and Mrs. Bailey's tumbled
work-basket standing on the edge of the long table, bound to stay taking
in the room until Mrs. Bailey returned, she regretted looking in. The
hall and the stairs and her own room would be changed now she knew what
this room was like. In her fatigue she looked about half taking in half
recoiling from the contents of the room. "He stopped and got off his
bicycle and I said you don't seem very pleased to _see_ me." Already he
knew that they were tiresome strangers to each other. "I can't go
dancing off to Bournemouth at a moment's notice dear." "Well, I strongly
advise you to go as soon as you can." "Of _course_ I'm going, but I
can't just dance off." "Don't let him get into the habit of associating
you with the idea of worry." If she didn't _worry_ him and was always a
little ill, and pretty ... "he says he can't do without her. I've told
him without reserve what the chances are and given them my blessing."
Did he really feel that suddenly sitting there in the consulting-room?
If only she wouldn't be so mysterious and important about nothing....
There was a hugeness in the room, radiating from the three-armed
dim-globed chandelier, going up and up; to the high heavily-moulded
smoke-grimed ceiling, spreading out right and left along the length of
the room, a large enclosed quietness, flowing up to the two great
windows, hovering up and down the dingy rep and dingy lace curtains and
the drab coloured venetian blinds through whose chinks the street came
in. Tansley Street was there, pressing its secret peace against the
closed windows. Between the windows a long strip of mirror framed in
tarnished gilt, reflected the peace of the room. Miriam glanced about
peering for its secret; her eye running over the length of the faded
patterned deep fringed table cover, the large cracked pink bowl in the
centre, holding an aspidistra ... brown cracked leaves sticking out; the
faded upholstery of the armchair opposite her, the rows of dining-room
chairs across the way in line with the horsehair sofa; the piano in the
space between the sofa and the window; the huge mirror in the battered
tarnished gilt frame sweeping half way up the wall above the
mantelpiece, reflecting the pictures and engravings hung rather high on
the opposite wall, bought and liked long ago, the faded hearthrug under
her feet, the more faded carpet disappearing under the long table, the
dark stare of the fireplace, the heavy marble mantelpiece, the marble
cased clock and opaque pink glass fat-bodied jugs scrolled with a dingy
pattern, dusty lustres, curious objects in dull metal....
2
"It'll give my chicks a better chance. It isn't fair on them--living in
the kitchen and seeing nobody."
"And you mean to risk sending the lodgers away."
"I've been thinking about it some time. When the dining-room left I
thought I wouldn't fill up again. Miss Campbell's going too."
"Miss Campbell?"
"The drawn-room and drawn-room bedroom ... my word ... had her rooms
turned out every week, carpets up and all."
"Every _week_!"
"Always talking about microbes. My _word_."
"How awful. And all the other people?"
"I've written them" smiled Mrs. Bailey at her busily interlacing
fingers.
"Oh."
"For the 14th prox; they're all weekly."
"Then if they don't stay as boarders they'll have to trot out at once."
"Well I thought if I was going to begin I'd better take the bull by the
horns. I've heard of two. Norwegian young gentlemen. They're coming next
week and they both want large bedrooms."
"I think it's awfully plucky if you've had no experience."
"Well, young lady, I see it like this. What _others_ have done, I can. I
feel I must do something for the children. Mrs. Reynolds has married
three of her daughters to boarders. She's giving up. Elsie is going into
the typing."
"You haven't written to _me_."
"You stay where you are, young lady."
"Well--I think it's awfully sweet of you Mrs. Bailey."
"Don't you think about that. It needn't make any difference to you."
"Well--of course--if you heard of a boarder----"
Mrs. Bailey made a little dab at Miriam's knee. "You stay where you
_are_ my dear."
"I do hope it will be a success. The house will be completely changed."
"I know it's a risk. But if you get on it pays better. There's less work
in it and you've got a house to live in. Nothing venture, nothing
_have_. It's no good to be backward in coming forward nowadays. We've
got to march with the times."
Miriam tried to see Mrs. Bailey presiding, the huge table lined with
guests. She doubted. Those boarding-houses in Woburn Place, the open
windows in the summer, the strange smart people, in evening dress, the
shaded lamps, she would be lost. She could never hold her own. The quiet
house would be utterly changed. There would be people going about, in
possession, all over the front steps and at the dining-room windows and
along the drawing-room balcony.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
The Novels of
Dorothy Richardson
By MAY SINCLAIR
Extracts from an article published in "The Egoist," April, 1918.
... By imposing very strict limitations on herself she has brought her
art, her method, to a high pitch of perfection, so that her form seems
to be newer than it perhaps is. She herself is unaware of the perfection
of her method. She would probably deny that she has written with any
deliberate method at all. She would say: "I only know there are certain
things I mustn't do if I was to do what I wanted." Obviously, she must
not interfere; she must not analyse or comment or explain. Rather less
obviously, she must not tell a story or handle a situation or set a
scene; she must avoid drama as she avoids narration. And there are some
things she must not be. She must not be the wise, all-knowing author.
She must be Miriam Henderson. She must not know or divine anything that
Miriam does not know or divine; she must not see anything that Miriam
does not see. She has taken Miriam's nature upon her. She is not
concerned, in the way that other novelists are concerned, with
character. Of the persons who move through Miriam's world you know
nothing but what Miriam knows. If Miriam is mistaken, well, she and not
Miss Richardson is mistaken. Miriam is an acute observer, but she is
very far from seeing the whole of these people. They are presented to us
in the same vivid but fragmentary way in which they appeared to Miriam,
the fragmentary way in which people appear to most of us. Miss
Richardson has only imposed on herself the conditions that life imposes
on us all. And if you are going to quarrel with those conditions you
will not find her novels satisfactory. But your satisfaction is not her
concern.
And I find it impossible to reduce to intelligible terms this
satisfaction that I feel. To me these three novels show an art and
method and form carried to punctilious perfection. Yet I have heard
other novelists say that they have no art and no method and no form, and
that it is this formlessness that annoys them. They say that they have
no beginning and no middle and no end, and that to have form a novel
must have an end and a beginning and a middle. We have come to words
that in more primitive times would have been blows on this subject.
There is a certain plausibility in what they say, but it depends on what
constitutes a beginning and a middle and an end. In this series there is
no drama, no situation, no set scene. Nothing happens. It is just life
going on and on. It is Miriam Henderson's stream of consciousness going
on and on. And in neither is there any grossly discernible beginning or
middle or end.
In identifying herself with this life, which is Miriam's stream of
consciousness, Miss Richardson produces her effect of being the first,
of getting closer to reality than any of our novelists who are trying so
desperately to get close. No attitude or gesture of her own is allowed
to come between her and her effect. Whatever her sources and her raw
material, she is concerned and we ought to be concerned solely with the
finished result, the work of art. It is to Miriam's almost painfully
acute senses that we owe what in any other novelist would be called the
"portraits" of Miriam's mother, of her sister Harriett, of the Corries
and Joey Banks in _Honeycomb_, of the Miss Pernes and Julia Doyle, and
the North London schoolgirls, in _Backwater_, of Fräulein Pfaff and
Mademoiselle, of the Martins and Emma Bergmann and Ulrica and "the
Australian" in _Pointed Roofs_. The mere "word-painting" is masterly....
It is as if no other writers had ever used their senses so purely and
with so intense a joy in their use.
This intensity is the effect of an extreme concentration on the thing
seen or felt. Miss Richardson disdains every stroke that does not tell.
Her novels are novels of an extraordinary compression, and of an
extenuation more extraordinary still. The moments of Miriam's
consciousness pass one by one, or overlapping; moments tense with
vibration, moments drawn out fine, almost to snapping-point.
Transcriber's Notes
The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. In "The
Tunnel", Dorothy Richardson experimented with punctuation, in particular
leaving out many commas, in order to promote "creative collaboration"
with the reader. Therefore, punctuation was mostly left unchanged, as
was the varying usage of hyphens.
In a few cases, perhaps to mark Madame Szigmondy's pronounciation, "r"
has been substituted by "g" ("pgonounce", "Thégèse", "rgun",
"cgeature"). This seems to be intentional and has not been corrected.
On page 272, a few lines from Schiller's "Des Mädchens Klage" are cited
in German with numerous spelling deviations. This has not been changed,
as it was not clear whether the deviations (most present even in later
editions) were not intentional. The original reads like this:
Du Heilige, rufe dein Kind zurück,
Ich habe genossen das irdische Glück,
Ich habe gelebt und geliebet!
Likewise, on page 125, the correct German would be: "Es war ein König in
Thule".
On page 18, Richardson refers to Byron two times wrongly as Tennyson. On
pages 195-196, Bassanio (from the "Merchant of Venice") has in later
editions been corrected to Antonio. In both cases, the names have been
preserved as in the original.
A few obvious typographical errors were silently corrected. Further
careful corrections, some after consulting other editions, are listed
here (before/after):
[p. 11]:
... about the house, a heavy dark mountain, fringes, bugles, ...
... about the house, a heavy dark mountain, fringes, bulges, ...
[p. 81]:
... go right away to some other part of London. May answered ...
... go right away to some other part of London. Mag answered ...
[p. 89]:
... married. Besides anyhow; thing of the awful people." ...
... married. Besides anyhow; think of the awful people." ...
[p. 117]:
... unless they all know what she was. If she could say clever ...
... unless they all knew what she was. If she could say clever ...
[p. 117]:
... voice. Tho young men were quiet. For a few moments ...
... voice. The young men were quiet. For a few moments ...
[p. 126]:
... pieces of Chauminade, those things by Liszt whom somebody ...
... pieces of Chaminade, those things by Liszt whom somebody ...
[p. 168]:
... "Yes; John is Londonised; she looks German; her ...
... "Yes; Jan is Londonised; she looks German; her ...
[p. 187]:
... that had been a half-heard obligato to her vision of last ...
... that had been a half-heard obbligato to her vision of last ...
[p. 188]:
... felt it all, all the time, they would go mad or die." "No, ...
... felt at all, all the time, they would go mad or die." "No, ...
[p. 190]:
... the worrying challenge of is disappeared in the joy of the ...
... the worrying challenge of it disappeared in the joy of the ...
[p. 203]:
... the collar of the well-cut grey coat clothing the firm balk ...
... the collar of the well-cut grey coat clothing the firm bulk ...
[p. 222]:
... she was free to stop out and there was hardly any time left. ...
... she was free to step out and there was hardly any time left. ...
[p. 222]:
... Outside the life relationship men and woman ...
... Outside the life relationship men and women ...
[p. 247]:
... darkness by night of riding through the day. Leaning ...
... darkness by right of riding through the day. Leaning ...
[p. 280]:
... and gold then ever. There was a deep lace frill on the ...
... and gold than ever. There was a deep lace frill on the ...
[p. 282]:
... and the curious wide softness of his voice. Suddenly ...
... and the curious wise softness of his voice. Suddenly ...