Welcome to Litsy!

The second book in Dorothy Richardson‘s Pilgrimage includes The Tunnel and Interim. Miriam rents a room in London and works in a dentists office. She is enjoying her independence and having time alone, walking and bicycling all over. She seems to give the gentlemen in her life the wrong idea. It‘s not an easy read, as a stream-of-consciousness work, but it‘s worth it.

And after the summer thunderstorm:
‘Did you see the afterglow?... A fine...fuliginous...pink, wasn‘t it?‘

This quote perfectly matches what I think of a summer sky just about to break into a thunderstorm: 🌩 ⛈ The street was a livid grey, brilliant with hidden sunlight.

I was loving summer today, and here‘s a perfect quote:
Summer would never come again in the old way, but it set her free from cold, and let her move about unhampered in the summers of the past. Summer was happiness...

In Interim, the second novel in Pilgrimage 2, Miriam goes to a lecture on Dante:
“All these people were the cultured refined kind who did not trouble much about their clothes...In her black dress with her clumsy golf-cape thrown back from her shoulders...she could perhaps pass for a cultured person.”
What‘s a golf-cape? I think I want one! 😀

Richardson was an important feminist writer; I found a lot of interesting ideas and concepts in The Tunnel:
“They [men] invent a legend to put the blame for the existence of humanity on woman and, if she wants to stop it, they talk about the wonders of civilization and the sacred responsibilities of motherhood. They can‘t have it both ways. They also say women are not logical.”

And then this silliness:
“Shakespeare is extraordinary. I had no idea Hamlet was so full of quotations.”
In a letter to Miriam‘s sister Harriett.

An oldie but a goodie 😁!
“Exactly. You feel like a sprite you are so light.”
“And like a poet though you don‘t know it.”

“An A.B.C. appeared suddenly at her side.”
Had to do some research on this - the Aerated Bread Company, which started as a bakery and then ran a large chain of tea rooms. I envisioned a Panera Bread setting. 😁

And then there‘s this:
“She found the head parlourmaid rapidly wiping instruments with a soiled serviette...Telling her would not be any good...Besides, Mr Orly [dentist] himself would not really mind; and the things were ‘mechanikly clean‘”
Ewwww!

I shared a quote from Pilgrimage 1 where Miriam talks about her bad teeth. In The Tunnel, the first book in Pilgrimage 2, we find that Miriam now works in a dentists‘ office. She praises Dr. Hancock - “What always doing the best for the patient meant.”