the school with a handsomely bound edition of Shakespeare. Heaven knows what became of her."

Miss Dane obsessed by the failure of the segregated system advocates by indirect means the co-educational policy as a solution. It is at this point in her story that we feel a legitimate complaint. Her book is one of those very rare examples of propagandist art: she interests us enormously in her destructive mood; she is not so successful in convincing us about the practical results of adopting her Utopia. That is the first blow the second is her failure to satisfy us with her hero. Roger is a first-class prig, quite impossibly wooden. The amazing thing is that Alwynne seems to realise the enormity of the system to which she had given her life-blood when she attempts to construct her story anew for his sake. Talking of Louise's passion for Clare she hits at last on the truth. "If she had been grown-up it would have been like being in love." The appalling tragedy of the child's suicide, which had gone far to destroy her mental balance, could apparently be dispelled by Roger's “all-understanding sympathy." To me it seems rather that the gloom is dispelled and the ghost raised by Alwynne's own sexual impulses being stimulated: she meets for the first time in her life a man who is interested in her : from that moment the conflict is entirely one-sided. We know that the call of Nature will be more insistent than the barren unnatural cry of the lacerated selfish ell-woman (ell-woman is the nearest word I can get to define what has no adequate definition, but if we could imagine the "wretched wight" in Keats' poem to be a woman, then Clare Hartill is a perfect example of La Belle Dame sans Merci. After all, "vampire is Elsbeth's own word for her, and she had known her longer than any other person in the book). It is

perhaps Miss Dane's greatest triumph that she can make us almost sympathise with the bloodsucker when we see her outwitted by Nature: she puts up a splendid fight against overwhelming odds, but allpowerful Nature has only to produce the dullest type of man and all the elaborated schemes of the spiritual pervert fall to pieces.

The difficulty with Regiment of Women is that the reader gets so thrilled with the excitement and novelty of the idea that he is inclined to forget the artistry. It is only on a third or fourth reading that one begins to realise the consummate compactness of the language: here are no loose trimmings, no irregular irrelevancies. Slow but inexorable are the wheels of fate, and good artist as she is, Miss Dane presents her impression of life and leaves it to each of us to draw his own conclusions, if conclusions are necessary. I can foresee many worthy schoolmistresses, imbued with the purest ideals, enthusiastic, morally and spiritually energetic, pulling themselves up sharp and asking themselves whether they are not liable to fall into this most insidious of all temptations: "In the effort to control the spirit of a pupil, to make our own approval his test, and mould him by the stress of our own pressure-in the ambition to do this, the craving for moral power and visible guiding, the subtle pride of effective agency, lie some of the chief temptations of a schoolmaster's work." It is hideous to think that those who are keenest over their work, most anxious to produce noble citizens, may all unconsciously find themselves so far tampering with human souls as to drive them to ruin. The natural corollary of Miss Dane's book would seem to prove that no teacher can afford to try to win that human companionship or affection from the young, which

is one of the most precious joys in life . . . but I am overstepping my limits as a critic. The worst of books like Regiment of Women is that they insidiously lead us to argue about their point of view and their novel doctrines rather than to confine our attention to their merits as pure literature.

T

VIII

DOROTHY RICHARDSON

HERE is no question about Miss Richardson's genius. As novel follows novel in rapid succession, all dealing with the development of Miriam Henderson, we feel more and more certainly that the authoress has justified her peculiar method of presentation. She has definitely cut loose from tradition: she relies on no incident to rouse our interest: there is neither beginning nor end: there is no reason why the series should not be continued to infinity. We are concerned entirely with the mind of the heroine. Her thoughts and impressions take up the whole of the book. She doesn't analyse: she doesn't explain: she does not narrate: she simply unfolds the workings of a girl's mind. As a result she gets closer to actualities than any writer outside the Russians. And yet the mere male is filled with apprehension: Miss Richardson seems to be attempting the impossible: she is trying to deny passion, sex, the whole domain of man. There arises a suspicion that her novels are the outcome of repressed sexuality. "There will be books," she writes in The Tunnel, "with all that cut out-him and her-all that sort of thing. The books of the future will be clear of all that."

At any rate in her books there is no "him and her" but most of us find that such ruthless pruning cuts out the greater part of life: few of us can rise superior to the insistent call of sex. 'Tis not only woman's

whole existence it is rapidly becoming man's too : there are cynics, of course (but Miss Richardson is no cynic, she takes an extravagant joy in life), who would deny this and hold themselves aloof. But one begins to feel sometimes that the obsession of sex is not so baneful as the deadly fear of becoming obsessed with it.

But once remove from your mind the thought that passion is necessary in a novel and you will give yourself up with unending enjoyment to Miss Richardson's views of life. There is so much that one wants to say about them all. In order, however, to confine oneself to the limits of a chapter it is necessary to concentrate. I will, therefore, take only The Tunnel, a novel in which, as usual, nothing happens. Miriam escapes (her whole life is a series of escapes: she is a dreadful coward) from the Mornington Road. We are first shown the effect on this extraordinary girl of living free and alone in lodgings on a pound a week. "All the real part of your life has a real dream in it; some of the real dream part of you coming true. You know in advance when you are really following your life. Coming events cast light. It is like dropping everything and walking backwards to something you know is there. . . . I am back now where I was before I began trying to do things like other people. . . . Twenty-one and only one room to hold the richly renewed consciousness, and a living to earn. . . . There was no need to do anything or think about anything. . . . No interruption, no one watching or speculating or treating one in some particular way that had to be met. . . . Reading would be real. . . . I should never have gone to Mornington Road unless I had been nearly mad with sorrow. . . . Following advice is certain to be wrong. When you don't