Pilgrimage 4

Pilgrimage #9-13

by Dorothy M. Richardson

Includes 'Oberland', 'Dawn's Left Hand', 'Clear Horizon', 'Dimple Hill' and 'March Moonlight'.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, 20th Century, Literature, British Literature, Feminism, Novels

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Dorothy Miller Richardson

Richardson was born in Abingdon in 1873. Her family moved to Worthing, West Sussex in 1880 and then Putney, London in 1883. At seventeen, because of her father's financial difficulties she went to work as a governess and teacher, first in 1891 for six months at a finishing school in Germany. In 1895 Richardson gave up work as a governess to take care of her severely depressed mother, but her mother committed suicide the same year. Richardson's father had become bankrupt at the end of 1893.

Richardson subsequently moved in 1896 to Bloomsbury, London, where she worked as a receptionist/secretary/assistant in a Harley Street dental surgery. While in Bloomsbury in the late 1890s and early 1900s, Richardson associated with writers and radicals, including the Bloomsbury Group. H. G. Wells (1866–1946) was a friend and they had a brief affair which led to a pregnancy and then miscarriage, in 1907. While she had first published an article in 1902, Richardson's writing career, as a freelance journalist really began around 1906, with periodical articles on various topics, book reviews, short stories, and poems, as well as translation from German and French. During this period she became interested in the Quakers and published two books relating to them in 1914.

In 1915 Richardson published her first novel Pointed Roofs, the first complete stream of consciousness novel published in English. She married the artist Alan Odle (1888-1948) in 1917 – a distinctly bohemian figure, who was fifteen years younger than she. From 1917 until 1939 the couple spent their winters in Cornwall and their summers in London, and then stayed permanently in Cornwall until Odle’s death in 1948. She supported herself and her husband with freelance writing for periodicals for many years. In 1954, she had to move into a nursing home in the London suburb of Beckenham, Kent, where she died, forgotten, alone and ignored, in 1957.

Richardson was one of a select group of writers who changed the rules of prose fiction at the beginning of the twentieth century. With James Joyce in Ireland, Marcel Proust in France, William Faulkner in the United States and, in England, Virginia Woolf, Richardson invented a new form of writing. She can claim, with Proust and Joyce, to have been at the forefront of a revolution in literature. The first ‘chapter’ of her long work, Pilgrimage, was begun in 1912 - a year before the publication of the first volume of A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, two years before the first appearance of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and seven years before Woolf’s first experimental novel Jacob’s Room.

Richardson also published short stories in a variety of periodicals (a collection was published by Virago in 1989) and a handful of poems. She was the author of numerous articles in periodicals such as Adelphi and Vanity Fair. She began her literary career reviewing for the vegetarian journal, Crank. Between 1912 and 1921, she wrote a regular column, ‘Comments by a Layman’, for the Dental Record. She translated eight books into English from French and German. Between 1927 and 1933 she published 23 articles on film in the avant-garde little magazine, Close Up.

Richardson’s aesthetic was influenced by diverse currents of thought. She was part of the alternative, bohemian culture at the turn of the century that embraced vegetarianism, feminism and socialism. Olive Schreiner and Charlotte Perkins Gilman made an early impact on her work and one of her first reviews was of a book by the advocate for homosexual rights, utopian socialist, and Whitmanite poet, Edward Carpenter.

If you are interested, please join the Goodreads group on her that can be found here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...

Reviews

[Ronald Morton · Rating 5 out of 5]

We all have different sets of realities

It's difficult to parse a 2000 page novel; whether presented in 13 books or 4 volumes, that is what this is: a major, singular novel that took the vast majority of Richardson's life to compose. I'm in no way going to write long about this - stuff has come up that is stealing my attention but I have the memory of a goldfish nowadays and I need to put something down before it all escapes via my sieve-like-mind.

I'm not 100% sure how much time the novel as a whole covers - if I had to guess I'd go with 20 years, but that seems long to me. Once Miriam gets to London time ceases to have a defined flow; where the first three novels could be said to roughly encompass a year each, I'm uncertain the length of time the other volumes cover. There are gaps in chronology not only sometimes between chapters, but frequently between the volumes themselves. There is a sense of the passage of time, but the markers are missing, and I never felt that the novel allowed the reader to get their bearings. It is possible there are historical signposts in the texts, but I was too ignorant of them to recognize them if so.

Not that the time matters, I just found myself attempting to orient myself on occasions - an example: during some of the suffrage conversations I had wondered where the novel was at that time in relation to 1919, and found I had little to no idea.

It Is never less than fascinating - many times enthralling - to follow Miriam through these years. Starting with her appointment at a German school, the reader is introduced to Miriam - at this time she is already showing strength and independence of thought, but it is only beginning to develop awareness of the void between male and female, and she only catches glimpses of the expectations of (and her dissatisfaction with ) women-as-wife in her early vocations. It's really only when she moves to London where she begins to assert her own independence, and begins to cultivate a greater independence of thought. Richardson's writing of Miriam's interior thoughts - and the shifting from third to first person narration and back - captures this process, and the changes are present in her method of writing. Starting in The Tunnel and continuing through The Trap, Miriam's thoughts and philosophical explorations (and thus, much of these books) are filled with quick transitions, recurrences of themes, and frequent usage of the ellipsis. It's basically a long form textual representation of an individual finding what they believe in, and establishing identity. And while the process is not complete in Oberland, it is furthered, it is emblematic of the process that the presentation of Miriam's thoughts become more orderly, and more fluid. And truthfully, this growth is subtle, but significant over a long period of time. Fairly obviously, this growth and path of exploration is probably a full half of what "Pilgrimage" references.

[the other half is somewhat more spoiler-y Miriam has a great distrust for words in the novel - I'm grasping and failing to come up with a good way to put this, but she basically lumps them in with religion and science as being anti-feminist / male-centric which she is attempting to move away from. She refers to books and art as poisoned. And yet, at the end of the work as whole, she begins to truly write, and for me, the Pilgrimage as whole was leading to that moment.]

Honestly, I'm not sure why this work is not more widely read, it ticks almost all the scholarly modernist checkboxes; it has a scope that incredibly few novels attempt, let alone succeed it; in Miriam DR has created a singular literary/feminist heroine and allowed her to grow and evolve over 13 books; and, tying that all together, the writing is exceptional. It didn't make sense to me, but these sorts of vagaries of taste and popularity rarely do to me.

I'll end this with a long block of text that I loved, hopefully to highlight the skill with which DR wrote.

But the movement of time, because she was consciously passing along the surface of its moments as one by one they were measured off in sound that no longer held for her any time- expanding depth, was intolerably slow. And so shallow, that presently it was tormenting her with the certainty that else. where, far away in some remote region of consciousness, her authentic being was plunged in a timeless reality within which, if only she could discover the way, she might yet rejoin it and feel the barrier between herself and the music drop away. But the way was barred. And the barrier was not like any of the accountable barriers she had known in the past. It was not any abnormal state of tension. It was as if some inexorable force were holding her here on this chill promontory of consciousness, while within the progressive mesh of interwoven sounds dark chasms opened.

The increase of this sense of unfathomable darkness perilously bridged by sound that had, since it was strange to her, the quality of an infernal improvisation, brought, after a time, the fear of some sudden horrible hallucination, or the breakdown, unawares, of those forces whereby she was automatically conforming to the ordinances of the visible world. Once more she raised her eyes to glance, for reassurance, at Michael seated at her side. But before they could reach him, a single flute-phrase, emerging unaccompanied, dropped into her heart.

Oblivious of the continuing music, she repeated in her mind the little phrase that had spread coolness within her, refreshing as sipped water from a spring. A decorative fragment, separable, a mere nothing in the world composition, it had yet come forth in the manner of an independent statement by an intruder awaiting his opportunity and thrusting in, between beat and beat of the larger rhythm, his rapturous message, abrupt and yet serenely confident, like the sudden brief song of a bird after dark; and so clear that it seemed as though, if she should turf; her eyes, she would see it left suspended in the air in front of the orchestra, a small festoon of sound made visible.

No longer a pattern whose development she watched with indifference, the music now assailing her seemed to have borrowed from the rapturous intruder both depth and glow; and confidence in an inaccessible joy. But she knew the change was in herself; that the little parenthesis, coming punctually as she turned to seek help from Michael who could not give it, had attained her because in that movement she had gone part of the way towards the changeless central zone of her being. The little phrase had caught her on the way.

But from within the human atmosphere all about her came the suggestion that this retreat into the centre of her eternal profanity, if indeed she should ever reach it again, was an evasion whose price she would live to regret. Again and again it had filled her memory with wreckage. She admitted the wreckage, but insisted at the same time upon the ultimate departure of regret, the way sooner or later it merged into the joy of a secret companionship restored; a companionship that again and again, setting aside the evidence of common sense, and then the evidence of feeling, had turned her away from entanglements by threatening to depart, and had always brought, after the wrenching and the wreckage, moments of joy that made the intermittent miseries, so rational and so passionate and so brief, a small price to pay.

[Deanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oberland
Miriam heads to switzerland for a rest cure, there's a lot of descriptions of the mountains and their effect on our heroine. There's also a chance to meet a whole host of characters who seem to all get on and look out for each other.

Dawn's left hand
Starts with Miriam returning to London and her job, there's the man in her life who Miriam seems to feel doesn't understand her or what she feels. There's a new place to live and new house mates.
There's also the suffragettes, a movement which Miriam watches but doesn't seem to get involved with. Finally a sense of when Pilgrimage is set, there was mention of the Boer war earlier but as something which had already happened.


Clear Horizon
Miriam's journey continues, she attends lectures with friends, visits a friend who has been arrested, and ends a friendship by sending back an insulting letter with the message that she doesn't possess a wastepaper basket. Must remember to use that one day.


Dimple Hill
Named after the farm where the book is set, and where Miriam goes for a rest. The farm is owned by quakers a way of life which attracts Miriam. There are new characters who quickly become important to Miriam.


March Moonlight
The final installment, Miriam's still a young woman, she's faced disappointment and rejection through the series, but this does end on a high note.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5/5

Schuld und Sühne. German translations are in general very faithful and good, Michael had said. Guilt and Redemption, much more Dostoievski's meaning than Crime and Punishment, suggesting a handbook of jurisprudence.

2110 pages later, at the end of this fourth section, the rating I give above is the equivalent of that of the entire piece, rather than this single. I do so somewhat in the interest of fairness, but also to minimize the deflation that comes after spending so much time on a single work regardless of whether it went well or ill, but is certainly exacerbated if the latter ends up being the final judgment. For I came to this chapter sequence looking for an origin point of a particular period/style/kind of writing that I have had an on and off love affair with since the very start of my more serious pursuits into that entity known as literature, and what I found told me much of what I knew of the ideals, but also gave me a rather comprehensive picture of the stodgier, more hateful side of a movement looking to render reality itself in the form of physical print. I've no idea whether these hypotheses have any kind of merit, and the fields of making a living being what they are, there's next to no chance that I would receive any measure of monetary compensation for looking into it more thoroughly than real world circumstances allow for. However, I can at least get some cursory thoughts down here, leaving any potential dialectic to the casual passerby, as well as my own future self.

Whether, when socialism came and every one was a worker, there would be any joy left uncontaminated? [...] She remembered shrinking from the mere spectacle of the family in Barnes who did their own housework and kept their garden in order [...] They enjoyed their outings, a little too obviously and excessively, with the joy of those temporarily set free, never with the rapture of inhabiting unthreatened territory.

Much as Henderson writes down what she senses, feels, and experiences over the course of thousands of pages, so too does she increasingly judge all and sundry, resulting in an intimately detailed portrait of that sociological construct of 'habitus' that is interesting to the detached scholar, but not so much to the engaged reader. It's made me think about how other participants of that increasingly retroactively termed 'Modernism' movement contributed to such, as well as what world events and pressures of the changing times could have instigated such reactions. For Henderson is a veritable savant of categorizing along lines of dichotomous gender, class, nationality, religion, accent, mental capacity, and race, and as I described in the previous work, she has a hysterical instinctive reaction to those she deems to be 'other'. Possibly in reaction to the immense quantities of such that informed the previous piece, this final volume is the most imbued with her musings on what 'English' is in terms of behaviors, ethics, spiritual beliefs, and, in instances that increase in prophetic urgency with every repetition, the best way to transcribe language as it engages with the reality in the form of the written word. Combine this with the briefly, and increasingly dismissively, engagements with the broader sociopolitical shifts of the diaspora of the Bolshevik revolution, English women's suffrage, and the onset of WWI with Henderson's beloved Germany, and I have to wonder whether Modernism had its own obsessions with building up an ideological bulwark with a literary, yet ultimately propagandist, output that translated 'stream of consciousness' not out of a sense of communion with others, but in an effort to put out the right form into art while the right form of Anglo supremacism still largely held supreme. I wouldn't throw over the whole field for such, but as was the case with some of the strongest members of Futurism doing all they could to ingratiate themselves with Italian Fascism, I do have to wonder.

On the one hand memories, rare but vivid, of outlying elders who, in thus distinguishing herself and Harriett from the surrounding adults, had inspired only nausea and reaped only contempt, and on the other a sly voice requesting her to note the difference between masculine and feminine contributions, and to admit St Paul justified in forbidding women to give voice in public.

As for everything else, there is a real sense of homecoming throughout a great deal of this volume that ultimately originates from the bucolic paradise of Irish Quakers that the main character finds herself a residence of for what seems to be a significant number of years. Meditation on what has become recognizable as the main character's preferences for nature, silent communion with those she instinctively 'gets' (aka, they pass all the tests of her constant appraisal of the potential 'other', plus as a bonus if they are able serve as a mother/father figure), returns to various places and peoples rendered familiar by earlier volumes, the characteristically extremely brief acknowledgements of the more dramatic aspects of life (the marriage of two people within one's social circle and the suicide of another), and rather long and meandering rhapsodies on the 'rightness' of a particular religious sect, but that last is more a consequence of my agnostic atheism than anything else. If one reserved judgment on this volume up until the first 94% had passed in reading, one might well think that it was concluding as best a piece like this can. If one hadn't already gathered from the history of the author's own compositional impetus, that sense is false, but seeing as how the fifth chapter of this volume, the thirteenth of the entire novel sequence, was published posthumously, any potential continuation will be revealed to the public either piecemeal or retrospectively cobbled together by outsiders. Unfortunate, but considering how much I preferred the earlier parts to the latter, it's not something I can honestly say to be too disappointed by.

For I knew he would have described what he dislike by its defects and what he approved of by its qualities, and both very tamely, so that inevitably the editor would 'regret.'

This is the end of my Long Read for 2021, and it's left me with as much a sense of fresh insights into long dwelt upon tenets of literature and associated paradigms as with one of satisfaction with my efforts. As per usual, I am unable to join those who unequivocally praise this piece, but I've written too much about such in my own mind to believe myself unfairly swayed by any statements made by certain writers who have proved extremely influential in my development as reader, writer, and human being (Woolf being the most obvious suspect in this regard). After having finished this, I'll be reading the one work of H.G. Wells that I have on hand in a more gossipy mindset than I would have otherwise, as well as revisiting some authors, works, and other material avenues of the 'classics' with some new thoughts to throw around during my perusal (Ward (Mary Augusta for those not in the know), James, Dostoevsky, to name a few). In terms of this work existing in its own right, I'd be interested in reading some of the critical commentary that is supposed to be released to the public in a few years time, but I don't see myself ever rereading it. Such a decision is not exactly unusual when it comes to anything numbering in the multiple thousands of pages, but this is a piece that, ultimately, in certain vital ways, proved itself to be completely the opposite of what I expect to find in literature: to put it plainly, this is not Forster's 'only connect' or the more powerful sections of the written word within which I've discovered myself to be embodied. It's not Richardson's fault that our personal preferences for literature to be at such loggerheads, but it's still rather jarring to read someone who writes out a pure sense of judgmental self satisfaction without having encountered commentary on such previously. So it goes. For now, I am finished, and I leave any and all further thoughts on it to the future. Now, it is time to shift to much shorter pastures, something that I am much in need of as the days of 2021 wind on from the exigencies of 2020.

'We all have different sets of realities.'
'That, believe me, is impossible.'

[Pip · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the characters in The Pilgrimage tells the protagonist that if she could write about people the way she writes about nature she would become a good novelist. Dorothy Richardson wrote something unlike any novel written up until that time. Her meticulous descriptions of everyday events reminded me of Proust and his madeleine; the harking back to previous events such as the incidents in tearooms reminded me of Powell, and having finished this mammoth tome I have an equal sense of satisfaction in having completed it. Actually, I believe I enjoyed it more than Proust, because I could identify much more easily with Richardson's description of social gatherings where she stops to wonder what she was doing there, rather than Proust's enjoyment of them. I also felt more affinity for Richardson's love of solitude and her appreciation of living and insisting on the Being rather than Becoming which she labelled a more masculine outlook. Her careful examination of how married women responded their spouse made her heroine, Miriam, decide against giving up her liberty to a man and one of the important themes is how differently men and women view the world and, in particular, how women are more attuned to what men want while men remain oblivious to women's needs. How much did that resonate with this reader! She was describing the time of the suffragette movement and the rise of socialism, both of which feature in interesting ways, particularly when Miriam gets rather strident. So like my young self! I especially relished Richardson's descriptions of living independently in London. She did not seem to have the fear of getting about (even at midnight) in the big city that one assumes a young woman at the turn of last century would experience. She dared to enter an unsalubrious cellar late one evening that became an habitual haunt. She had little money but she made little of that because she so valued her independence. Her descriptions of nature were, however, spectacular. Her sojourn in Switzerland made one want to spend a winter in the Alps and her stay on a farm near the sea in a Quaker community made one appreciate the patience and solidity of those people. Altogether a most meaningful and satisying read. Oh, that more men would read it!
Notes on Oberland
I enjoyed the different setting for Oberland, too. Especially the description of light in the Alps and Miriam's shock and disapproval of the amount of electric light in her bedroom! Her description of sunlight on mountain snow was really evocative, and I particularly enjoyed her description of tobagganing, skating and ski jumping. But just as I identified so very much with Miriam's descriptions of her social interactions (I really loved the New Year's Eve Party in The Trap) I absolutely identified with Miriam as a tourist. Her description of a tour group, as opposed to an independent traveller, is absolutely spot on: All these people were serene; had come in groups, unscathed, knowing their way, knowing how to quell the bloused fiends into helpfulness. By then, also, the journey to them was uniformly grey, a tiresome business to be got through; not black and sudden gold exactly how I feel about travelling independently rather than in a group. Again " people who travel in groups and bring with them so much of their home surroundings that they destroy daily, piecemeal, the sense of being abroad.
She also reflects on how being in a different environment affects her sense of self, remembering when hearing the Chopin played on the piano how much music had meant to her when she was in Germany. She used "freemasonry" as shorthand for people being more friendly and less rigid about class and gender than at home. There are indelible descriptions of her interactions, especially sitting on the stairs deep in discussion with Vereker and Eaden, or haranguing Guerini about the merits of socialism. She almost has another proposal from Guerini, which she contemplates until he suggests coming to London, which was much less appealing than to live in Italy! Her descriptions made me long for a winter holiday even though I am too decrepit for skiing these days.
Notes on Dawn's Left Hand
I also very much liked the reference to how incredibly hard the work of keeping a man charmed is. "...having no idea of the difficulty, the sheer hard work of holding herself in his world and keeping him at his ease even for an hour." I noted the same quote as Gail did, and thought it another instance of how much Richardson manages to write about things that are important to me, too, like social situations and travel and gender bias, but which I have never expressed. A lot happens in this volume. Miriam finally loses her virginity (or at least this is what I guess) with Hypo Wilson, not because she is fatally attracted to him, but more, I guess, because she is 28 and wants to experience sex for herself. Before that happens she enjoys dinner and a night at the opera with Hypo and his wife Alma. The affair seems to be over by the end of the chapter, but there are some wonderful discussions along the way. I was interested in the idea of discreet private dining rooms which allow for sexual escapades. Who knew? At the same time Miriam gets involved with a young French woman, Amabel, who has fallen in love with her, who learns about socialism to understand her and moves into the room next door so she can be with Miriam all the time. Whether this relationship has a sexual component is even more difficult than usual to work out. Oberland now becomes shorthand for individual freedom and happiness. I have done similar things, using a sojourn in Biarritz, for example, as a key word for certain states of mind. The themes of the importance of music and asking "what am I doing here" crop up again and also the role that wives of professional men play, subsuming their own personalities. Like so many of the wives of professional husbands, she seemed to be both her husband's guardian and a masked being who betrayed, by the emphasis of her statements, how little of her inward self was behind what she said. An eager, busy, well-dressed ghost, fearful of anything that seemed to threaten the ideas he represented. Wearing her husband's attainments as a personal decoration....Reminding herself of the many wives in whose eyes she had surprised private meditation going its way behind an appearance of close attention to a familiar voice . Miriam has no intention of ever being that kind of wife. She discusses as much with Hypo, while trying to convey what Amabel is like. He has stated "Men and women are incompatible. It's one of life's little difficulties and Miriam replies that Amabel Regards the colossal unawareness of a man as an amiable defect. But she agrees, although she finds it also screamingly funny, that the way all down the ages men have labelled their sexual impulses "woman" is quite monstrous" The best quote in the whole book so far!
Notes on Clear Horizon
I am still intrigued by the titles Richardson chose. Is the Clear Horizon a description of the decisions she was coming to make in the course of this volume? Because we have no idea where she is going, a hint that it is going to be longer than the six months she has told people she is going for, and a hint that she may (or may not) have had a nervous breakdown. Was this in relation to the out-of-body experience that she described as the world of hard fact she had just visited? Neither Hypo or Amabel believed it as fact, only as metaphor. But Miriam believed that it showed a change; that the whole of the past had been a long journey in a world of illusion and in her immovable new condition (pregnancy?) this cold contemplation of reality stripped of its glamour were all that remained. She attends a concert with the spurned Michael, where she contemplates the end of her relationship with him and the pain it had caused. She admitted the wreckage, but insisted at the same time upon the ultimate departure of regret, the way sooner ot later it merged into the joy of a secret companionship restored; a companionship that again and again, setting aside the evidence of common sense, and then the evidence of feeling, had turned her away from entanglements by threatening to depart, and had always brought, after the wrenching and the wreckage, moments of joy that made the intermittent miseries, so rational and so passionate and so brief, a small price to pay. So she is contemplating breaking off her relationship with Hypo, despite or because of the pregnancy, and with Amabel, too. Her independence is more precious than any relationship. She describes being pregnant as bodily youth mysteriously decayed and by the gathering, upon her person of cumbrous flesh. Unable either to impose and make it comely, or to check its outrageous advance. She becomes unimpressed with Hypo's intelligence and decides that he is just a collector of virginities and equally of Amabel's posturing and recollects that the latter has probably deliberately broken open her casket to read the letters of the former. The ever reliable Densley, whom she visits only because she needs help for her ailing sister, gently suggests that she is in need of recuperation herself. And so she leaves her job and both her current relationships.
Notes on Dimple Hill
I particularly liked Miriam describing how fresh and healthy the food was on the farm. Also the description of how she meditated in the Quaker meetings she attended. Both episodes exemplified Richardson's burrowing down through exquisite detail into the essence of the experiences. Her relationship with Richard was puzzling. Did she do more than admire his stoic physicality? As with all of the preceding books there are gaps we need to fill. I liked her description of the alphabet of Quakerism having some letters missing. The same could be said for Richardson's writing!
Notes on March Madness
I was expecting this to be much more disjointed than it was. Perhaps I no longer expect too much plot from Richardson anyway! There were unexplained vignettes from a pension in Switzerland, but not the one in Oberland, where she gets involved with a young, pious Scotswoman who also has a thing for a Bishop; family interaction with a young nephew; more ruminations on women's disappearance after marriage and the advantages and drawbacks of life in a small community; a fling with a young ex-priest from France back at Dimple Hill, from which she is evicted, partly because of a postcard from a young Russian emigre of Rodin's The Kiss; the suicide of said Russian: and boarding back in London at a Young Women's Hostel with prayer times and a strict curfew which inexplicably doesn't seem to worry Miriam. Maybe there was more plot than I thought! The novel ends with Miriam holding Paul, the baby of Michael and Amabel and surprisingly noting how serene she felt with the baby against her breast. She wonders if Jean and her husband had a child whether she would feel the same sense of fulfillment. We are left wondering.

[Samuel Maina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow!

DMR's Pilgrimage took me a long time but I can now say I finally done did it. You can be sure she is truly one of the best as far as stream of consciousness comes and also she is one of the best when we talk about gaps in narrative.

I will say at this point that silence is also one of her strong themes across all books, on this same line I will also say that after reading DMR...all descriptives ( a term I coined to describe rooms, places, situations, people et al.) by other writers seem to always come short.

Here are some of her illuminated instances in this last bit of her installation on the Pilgrimage series....

"Slipshod English manner"

"Selfishness of a bachelor of thirty – but charming"

"Science insists on indestructibility – yet marks for destruction the very thing they enables it to recognize indestructibility"

"Beethoven AND Bach are experiences of adventures of the solitary human soul in all it’s moods. Wagner is everybody speaking at once."

"Anemones in woods"

"Vicarious suffering is the only kind that instructs"

Oberland's setting is in Switzerland while Dawn's left hand is her return to London. There is always something about London and the whole Europe when DMR writes.

She talks about music in a very deep way stating that there is no possible representation that can compete with the vast scenes music brings to your mind. It is so deep. Of course she talks lengthily about classical music and how Wagner through your ears makes you see so hugely humanity pouring itself into space.

Beethoven worked at his themes washing and rewashing his hands.... this is deep.

When talking about weather she intimates that the world's weather cannot be arranged as a conversation with one small person....

Bias still gets tackled with men being blamed for making art, literature, systems of thought all the fine products of masculine nature to be so lightly called "immortal" A few men of each generation who are in the same spirit as the creators is how she describes "immortal"

I like everything about DMR.

[Jennifer Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pilgrimage is a 13 volume, 2110 page novel published between 1915 and 1967. From what I’ve found it is currently out of print, but fairly easy to access through used copies of Virago Modern Classics which published the work in 4 volumes. Originally, each volume was published individually until Dimple Hill, the 12th volume. It and the final installment, March Moonlight, were only published in full volume sets.

Pilgrimage is highly autobiographical. It follows the interior thoughts and experiences of Miriam Henderson, a young woman starting out in the world. I believe it covers her life from about age 17-30. Miriam leaves her home when her family falls on hard times financially to become a teacher in Germany. She teaches in different locations for the first few novels and then becomes a secretary at a dental office in London. While in London, she truly finds her confidence in being an independent and single woman. She explores the city and finds a deep connection to the city itself. As the book progresses, she develops her skill as a writer, begins and ends relationships with several men, and travels, gaining a wide array of experience.

The plot in the novel is buried deep within Miriam’s experience. Her reactions and thoughts are always primary, sometimes (often) to the point that the plot is indiscernible. This can be frustrating. Characters come and go sometimes without introduction and even large life events aren’t spelled out. Both her mother’s death and her first sexual experience I had to go back pages later and say, wait - what???

As such, this is not an easy reading experience. The book meanders and definitely loses its way, especially, I felt, later in the work. I think that by about half way through these novels, Richardson knew NO ONE was reading anymore and was truly writing for herself. I wonder if anyone was editing at all. Also, the book is unfinished which feels frustrating at the end of 2000 pages. I’m not sure Richardson ever intended to stop writing Miriam’s life experience.

All that said, I still highly recommend reading this. I thought a lot of the writing and ideas were truly groundbreaking. I’ve never read anything quite like this, and I’ve read Proust, Woolf, Faulkner, and some of Joyce so I did have plenty to compare it to as far as interior, stream of consciousness writing. At her best, Richardson writes beautifully and intelligently, with great insight into the female experience. There is a definite feminist slant to her writing. There are certain scenes (Miriam exploring London on bicycle) that I will never forget.

If I were to be honest, I think you can get an excellent feel for Richardson’s talent and importance by reading the first 4 novels in this series of 13. I recommend those without reservation. And if you are a completist like I am, then, by all means, read the whole thing. But I definitely recommend trying at least part of this neglected novel. I think it deserves to be read.

[Christina Ek · Rating 3 out of 5]

This volume is the last of the four comprising "Pilgrimage," a novel by Dorothy Richardson, that I read with a dedicated group on twitter, #PilgrimageTogether.

Reviewing the entire novel here -

Miriam observes, explores and breaks with convention to be her own woman. The book is, refreshingly for that time, written from a woman's point of view. She runs through various countries, religions, philosophies with zeal and sincerity.

I found the first two volumes to be the strongest in terms of coherence, sustaining one's interest in the heroine and her pursuits, eloquent prose and passionate descriptions of personalities, music, landscape and travel. The painterly stream-of-consciousness passages are a window into her mental state and reveal what inspires and touches her, or irritates her.

Volume I (5 stars), II (4 stars), III (3 stars), IV (2 stars).
(IV should have ended with "Dimple Hill." "March Moonlight" is a convenient, cheap conclusion to a masterful novel.)

[Harriet S · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this stream of consciousness series of novellas which mirror the author's own early life. I sometimes found it hard to follow the events and characters as there is no "narrators voice" to foll in any gaps so it did need my undivided attention. Her descriptions of London and Sussex and even of everyday office life were very effective and I found myself gazing out of the window with her. I found all four voulimes of the Virago edition of Pilgrimage in an Oxfam bookshop together

[emilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

finally finished the last of this 2000+ page thing... one of the most incredible (and sadly underrated, practically unknown) things I've ever read! however unfortunately the last few books of Pilgrimage are quite badly written, hence only 3 stars for this volume

[Yan · Rating 5 out of 5]

FINALLY FINISHED PILGRIMAGE YEAH 'everyone lets u down,' i guess?

[1001shelf]

completed annual read 2019

[Catie]

#PilgrimageTogether group read-along 2022
Oberland (August) -
Dawn’s Left Hand (September) -
Clear Horizon (October) -
Dimple Hill (November) -
March Moonlight (December) -

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful...lets face it though, if you made it to Volume 4 you really are not going to need any encouragement from me by way of a review...