Revolving Lights: Pilgrimage, Volume 7

by Dorothy M. Richardson

Oh, the hopeless eternal inventions and ignorance of men; their utter cleverness and ignorance. Why had they been made so clever and yet so fundamentally stupid?

She ordered her coffee at the counter and stood facing upstairs towards the oblong of street. The skirts of women, men’s trousered legs, framed for an instant in the doorway, passed by, moving slowly, with a lifeless intentness.... Is the absence of personality original in men? Or only the result of their occupations? Original. Otherwise environment is more than the human soul. It is original. Belonging to maleness; to Adam with his spade; lonely in a universe of things. It causes them to be moulded by their occupations, taking shape, and status, from what they do. A barrister, a waiter, recognisable. Men have no natural rank. A woman can become a waitress and remain herself. Yet men pity women, and think them hard because they do not pity each other.

It is man, puzzled, astray, always playing with breakable toys, lonely and terrified in his universe of chaotic forces who is pitiful. The chaos that torments him is his own rootless self. The key, unsuspected, at his side.

In women like Eleanor Dear? Calm and unquestioning. Perfectly at home in life. With a charm beyond the passing charm of a man. She was central. All heaven and earth about her as she spoke. Illiterate, hampered, feeling her way all the time. And yet with a perfect knowledge. Perfect comprehension in her smile. All the maddening moments spent with her, the endless detail and fussing, all afterwards showing upon a background of gold.

Men weave golden things; thought, science, art, religion upon a black background. They never are. They only make or do; unconscious of the quality of life as it passes. So are many women. But there is a moment in meeting a woman, any woman, the first moment, before speech, when everything becomes new; the utter astonishment of life is there, speech seems superfluous, even with women who have not consciously realised that life is astonishing. It persists through all the quotations and conformities, and is there again, the one underlying thing that women have to express to each other, at parting. So that between women, all the practical facts, the tragedies and comedies and events, are but ripples on a stream. It is not possible to share this sense of life with a man; least of all with those who are most alive to “the wonders of the universe.” Men have no present; except sensuously.... That would explain their ambition ... and their doubting speculations about the future.

Yet it would be easier to make all this clear to a man than to a woman. The very words expressing it have been made by men.

It was just after coming back from the Wilsons, in the midst of the time round about Leyton’s wedding, that Eleanor had suddenly appeared on the Tansley Street doorstep.... I was just getting to know the houseful of Orly relations ... Mrs. Sloan-Paget, whisking me encouragingly into everything.... “my dear you’ve got style, and taste; stunning hair and a good complexion. Look at my girls. Darlings, I know. But what’s the good of putting clothes on figures like that?” ... Daughterless Mrs. Orly looked pleased like a mother when Mrs. Paget said “S’Henderson’s got to come down to Chumleigh.” ... I almost gave in to her reading of me; feeling whilst I was with her, back in the conservative, church point of view. I could have kept it up, with good coats and skirts and pretty evening gowns. Playing games. Living hilariously in roomy country houses, snubbing “outsiders,” circling in a perpetual round of family events, visits to town, everything fixed by family happenings, hosts of relations always about, everything, even sorrow, shared and distributed by large rejoicing groups; the warm wide middle circle of English life ... secure. And just as the sense of belonging was at its height, punctually, Eleanor had come, sweeping everything away. As if she had been watching. Coming out of the past with her claim.... Skimpier and more beset than ever. Yet steely with determination. Deepening her wild-rose flush and her smile. It was all over in a moment. Wreckage. Committal to her and her new set of circumstances.... She would not understand that a sudden greeting is always wonderful; even if the person greeted is not welcome. But Andrew Lang did not know what he was admitting. Men greet only themselves, their own being, past, present or future.... I am a man. The more people put you at your ease, the more eagerly you greet them.... That is why we men like “ordinary women.” And always disappoint them. They mistake the comfort of relaxation for delight in their society.

Eleanor swept everything away. By seeming to know in advance everything I had to tell, and ignore it as not worth consideration. But she also left her own circumstances unexplained; sitting about with peaceful face, talking in hints, telling long stories about undescribed people, creating a vast leisurely present, pitting it against the whole world, with graceful condescending gestures.

It was part of her mystery that she should have come back just that very afternoon. Then she was in the right. If you are in the right everything works for you. The original thing in her nature that made her so beautiful, such a perpetually beautiful spectacle, was right. The moment that had come whilst she must have been walking, brow modestly bent, with her refined, conversational little swagger of the shoulders, aware of all the balconies, down the street, had worked for her....

The impulses of expansive moments always make things happen. Or the moments come when something is about to happen? How can people talk about coincidence? How not be struck by the inside pattern of life? It is so obvious that everything is arranged. Whether by God or some deep wisdom in oneself does not matter. There is something that does not alter. Coming up again and again, at long intervals, with the same face, generally arresting you in midway, offering the same choice, ease or difficulty. Sometimes even a lure, to draw you back into difficulty. Determinists say that you choose according to your temperament, even if you go against your inclinations. But what is temperament?... Uniqueness ... something that has not existed before. A free edge.... Contemplation is freedom. The way you contemplate is your temperament. Then action is slavery?