'ALF YEARS."]

* * * * *

OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.

(_By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks._)

Do you remember a clever, gloomy story that Mr. HUGH WALPOLE wrote, some
years ago, about a pack of schoolmasters who got so monstrously upon one
another's nerves that the result was attempted murder? I have just been
reading a new story that may be regarded as the female counterpart of the
same tragedy. _Regiment of Women_ (HEINEMANN) is described as a first
novel; and there are indeed signs of this in a certain verbosity and
diffuseness of attack. But it is at least equally clear that the writer,
CLEMENCE DANE, has the root of the matter in her. As in the book with which
I have compared it, the setting of this is scholastic--a girls' school
here, with all its restricted outlook, its small intrigues, and exaggerated
friendships, mercilessly exposed. You will be willing to admit that it is
at least aptly named when I tell you that not till page 135 does so much as
the shadow of a man appear, and then but fleetingly as the father of the
poor child, _Louise_, the tragedy of whose death is the central incident of
the book. Naturally it can be nothing else than a painful story; in
particular the figure of _Clare_, the adored teacher, whose cruel
egoistical friendship, with its alternations of encouragement and
brutality, first drives _Louise_ to suicide, and all but wrecks the life of
the young assistant-mistress, _Alwynne_, has in it something coldly
sinister that haunts the memory. But of its power there can be no question.
On one small point of psychology I am at issue with the writer. I doubt
whether the child _Louise_ could have played _Arthur_ in the school