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is one of the most precious joys in life . . . but I am overstepping my limits as a critic. The worst of books like Regiment of Women is that they insidiously lead us to argue about their point of view and their novel doctrines rather than to confine our attention to their merits as pure literature.

T

VIII

DOROTHY RICHARDSON

HERE is no question about Miss Richardson's genius. As novel follows novel in rapid succession, all dealing with the development of Miriam Henderson, we feel more and more certainly that the authoress has justified her peculiar method of presentation. She has definitely cut loose from tradition: she relies on no incident to rouse our interest: there is neither beginning nor end: there is no reason why the series should not be continued to infinity. We are concerned entirely with the mind of the heroine. Her thoughts and impressions take up the whole of the book. She doesn't analyse: she doesn't explain: she does not narrate: she simply unfolds the workings of a girl's mind. As a result she gets closer to actualities than any writer outside the Russians. And yet the mere male is filled with apprehension: Miss Richardson seems to be attempting the impossible: she is trying to deny passion, sex, the whole domain of man. There arises a suspicion that her novels are the outcome of repressed sexuality. "There will be books," she writes in The Tunnel, "with all that cut out-him and her all that sort of thing. The books of the future will be clear of all that."

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At any rate in her books there is no "him and her" but most of us find that such ruthless pruning cuts out the greater part of life: few of us can rise superior to the insistent call of sex. 'Tis not only woman's

whole existence: it is rapidly becoming man's too : there are cynics, of course (but Miss Richardson is no cynic, she takes an extravagant joy in life), who would deny this and hold themselves aloof. But one begins to feel sometimes that the obsession of sex is not so baneful as the deadly fear of becoming obsessed with it.

But once remove from your mind the thought that passion is necessary in a novel and you will give yourself up with unending enjoyment to Miss Richardson's views of life. There is so much that one wants to say about them all. In order, however, to confine oneself to the limits of a chapter it is necessary to concentrate. I will, therefore, take only The Tunnel, a novel in which, as usual, nothing happens. Miriam escapes (her whole life is a series of escapes: she is a dreadful coward) from the Mornington Road. We are first shown the effect on this extraordinary girl of living free and alone in lodgings on a pound a week. "All the real part of your life has a real dream in it; some of the real dream part of you coming true. You know in advance when you are really following your life. Coming events cast light. It is like dropping everything and walking backwards to something you know is there. . . . I am back now where I was before I began trying to do things like other people. . . . Twenty-one and only one room to hold the richly renewed consciousness, and a living to There was no need to do anything or think about anything. . . . No interruption, no one watching or speculating or treating one in some particular way that had to be met. Reading would be real. I should never have gone to Mornington Road unless I had been nearly mad with sorrow. . . . Following advice is certain to be wrong. When you don't

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follow advice there may be awful things. But they are not arranged beforehand. . . . I will never again be at the mercy of people, or at all in the places where they are. That means keeping free of all groups. I run away from them because I must. They kill How frightfully happy I am." She finds silly conversation of casual friends whom she can pick up and discard exhilarating, real, and satisfying. . . . But—“ What a hopeless thing a man's consciousness was. A man could never be really happy with a woman unless he could also despise her. Any interest in generalities, any argument or criticism or opposition would turn him into a towering bully. All men were like that in some way. If a woman opposed them they went mad." It will be noticed that Miss Richardson indulges freely in generalisations, and, of course, goes wrong. It is a pity that she generalises so insistently upon man. She always fails to understand him. It is a pity, too, as The Spectator reviewer says, that she should be so anxious to be thought ultramodern. Her whisky and her cigarettes seem to be a necessity. We envisage her as ridiculously aping the male she so much despises. Then we forgive her at once because of her wonderful eye for observing details. No one has ever brought home an atmosphere so exactly as she does. Take this picture of a dentist's office. "Miriam swept from the bracket table the litter of used instruments and materials, disposing them rapidly on the cabinet, into the sterilising tray, the waste basket, and the wash-hand basin, tore the uppermost leaf from the head rest pad, and detached the handpiece from the arm of the motor drill while the patient was being shown upstairs. Mr Hancock had cleared the spittoon, set a fresh tumbler, filled the kettle and whisked the debris of amalgam and

cement from the bracket table before he began the scrubbing and cleansing of his hands, and when the patient came in Miriam was in her corner reluctantly handling the instruments, wet with the solution that crinkled her finger-tips and made her skin brittle and dry. Everything was in its worst state. The business of drying and cleansing, freeing fine points from minute closely adhering fragments, polishing instruments on the leather pad, repolishing them with the leather, scraping the many little burs with the fine wire brush, scraping the clamps, clearing the obstinate amalgam from slab and spatula, brought across her the ever-recurring circle . . . the exasperating tediousness of holding herself to the long series of tiny careful attention-demanding movements . . . the punctual emergence when the end was in sight of the hovering reflection, nagging and questioning, that another set of things was already getting ready for another cleansing process. . . . The evolution of dentistry was wonderful, but the more perfect it became the more and more of this sort of thing there would be . . . could God approve of this kind of thing ... was it right to spend life cleaning instruments . . . . . all work has drudgery . . . blessed be drudgery, but that was housekeeping, not some one else's drudgery . . . and no one knew what it cost. . . . It was keeping to that all day and every day, choosing the most difficult, tiresome way in everything that kept that radiance about Mr Hancock when he was quietly at work. I mustn't stay here think

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ing these thoughts ... it's that evil thing in me, always thinking thoughts, nothing getting donegoing through life like—a stuck pig. If I went straight on things would come like that just the same in flashes bang, bang, in your heart, everything

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