If ten people were to read these books and write their impressions of them, the results would be as different as were the thoughts of the ten people. Because each result would add what the author has left out: a judgment, or an estimate of Miriam. And this judgment would be rendered upon the evidence, but according to the mind of the judge.
The question which everyone must decide for himself is: when such revelations of the conscious and the unconscious are spread before him in words and sentences, does the result constitute gibberish or genius; is it slush or sanity; is it the sort of thing one would try to experience; or should one struggle and pray to be spared? It may be the highroad to dementia—this concentrating of all one's thoughts upon oneself, and oneself upon a single instinct. And Miriam might well have been headed for it when she failed to differentiate between ideas based upon objective evidence and ideas created solely out of her instinctive craving, which is an approach toward the belief of the insane person in his own delusions.
We identify ourselves, motives, and conduct with the characters of fiction who cut a good figure; we identify with the ones who do not, those we dislike, disdain, or condemn. Has anyone identified himself with Miriam Henderson and added to his or her stature?
The strongest impression made upon an admirer of Miss Richardson's craftsmanship is a wish that it might be applied to the study of a different, a more normal, type of personality. But the wish that such a study might be given us is burdened with a strong doubt whether its fulfillment would be humanly possible. Could anyone but an extreme type of egocentric person make such a study of himself? Could anyone whose libido was normally divided in various channels follow its course so graphically? And would not such division destroy the unity essential to even so much of the novel form as Miss Richardson preserves?
Here is a deadlock for the reader: Miss Richardson's art and Miriam as she is; or a Miriam with whom one could identify oneself as a heroine of fiction.
The novel, according to Miss Richardson, may be compared to a picture-puzzle in a box. Properly handled, the pieces may be made to constitute an entity, a harmonious whole, a thing of beauty, a portrait or a pergola, a windmill or a waterfall. The purpose of the novel is to reveal the novelist, her intellectual possessions, emotional reactions, her ideals, aspirations, and fulfilments, and to describe the roads and short-cuts over which she has travelled while accomplishing them. People and things encountered on the way do not count for much, especially people. They are made up largely of women, whom she dislikes, and men, whom she despises. It should be no part of its purpose to picture situations, to describe places, to narrate occurrences other than as media of author-revelation. Undoubtedly it is one of the most delightful things in the world—this talking about oneself. I have known many persons who pay others, physicians for instance, to listen. But unless the narration is ladened with adventure, or interlarded with humour, or spiced with raciness, it is often boring; and reluctantly it must be admitted that when we have ceased to admire Miss Richardson's show of art, when we no longer thrill at her mastery of method, when we are tired of rising to the fly of what Miss Sinclair calls her “punctilious perfection” of literary form, she becomes tiresome. Egocentrics should have a sense of humour. Samuel Butler thus endowed might have been assured of immortality. Lacking that, they should have extensive contact with the world. That is what enlivens the psychological jungle of Marcel Proust. If Henri Amiel had had a tithe of Jean Jacques Rousseau's worldly and amatory experiences his writings might have had great influence and a large sale.
Miss Dorothy M. Richardson has revealed herself a finished technician. She may be compared to a person who is ambitious to play the Chopin Studies. She practices scales steadily for a year and then gives a year to the Studies themselves. But when she essays to play for the public she fails because, although she has mastered the mechanical difficulties, she has not grasped the meaning. She reveals life without drama and without comedy, and that such life does not exist everybody knows.
She may have had compensation for her effort from two sources: her imitators and her benefactors. The former are too numerous to mention, but Mr. J. D. Beresford and Miss May Sinclair would undoubtedly admit their indebtedness.
It is vicarious compensation, also, to be praised by one's peers and superiors. If Dorothy M. Richardson hasn't yet had it, in the writer's judgment she may look forward to it with confidence.