AIBU To Think That The Plots Of The Chalet School Books Were Really Improbable

The thing is though, when I read them as a little girl the linguistic accuracy wasn't really a big deal but the sense of the magic of being bilingual, and the sense of connections across countries and cultures, (even when those countries were at war) really did have a powerful impact on me.

I went on to study french through to university (it was part of my degree ) and spent a sixth form summer at an international summer school in France mixing and making friends from all over the world. I know these books were part of what led me to do that.

I can’t even remember which book that’s in…? I suppose we should be glad we don’t get the phrases of Romany Joey has somehow picked up? (From hanging round the Tzigane band at the Kron Prinz Karl?😀)

I think her own sad little tale of lower-middle-class marital breakdown, cover-ups and secrecy also partly explains EBD’s obsession with the very ‘public’ and publicly fertile marital lives of CS old girls. There’s no possibility of any of her medics hiding previous marriages and children from the eagle eyes of the School bush telegraph!

I wonder if one of the most grimly unidealised details of the entire series (Grizel’s existence having been hidden from her stepmother until she got home from honeymoon with her new husband) was what happened with EBD’s half brother, who never lived with his father after he remarried?

Not clear whether her father’s previous marriage had ended in divorce or the death of his first wife — or even whether his second marriage to EBD’s mother may have been bigamous? That might further explain the vagueness about her having ‘lost her husband’ when he moved on (again), if the marriage had never been valid at all. I think I remember reading too that her father had stayed living in the same general area with his new household, which must have been extra hard to live with/cover up for her mother.

Poor EBD. No wonder she’s so terribly attracted to depictions of masterful, clean-living doctors who not only confer unimpeachable social status and cure TB, but also stick around and seem totally enthralled by the wives they keep impregnating.

There’s also the occasional place where Jo speaks Italian and that’s just as bad as the French.

That's a perceptive comment.

Her father had been married before and had a son, Charles Arnold, who was never to live with his father and stepmother. This caused some friction between Elinor’s parents, and her father left home when she was three and her younger brother, Henzell, was two. Her father eventually went to live with another woman by whom he had a third son, Morris. Elinor’s parents lived in a respectable lower-middle-class area, and the family covered up the departure of her father by saying that her mother had ‘lost’ her husband.

In 1912 Henzell died of cerebro-spinal fever, another event which was covered up. Friends of Elinor’s who knew her after his death were unaware that she had had a brother.

Hard to blame her for being fixated on found, mended and reunited families.

https://www.chaletschool.org.uk/elinor-brent-dyer/

Sorry, I’m talking about family sizes rather than twins and triplets. Unless there’s a theory that sex had tobe particularly acrobatic to produce triplets…

I think it was the only way she could suggest ‘And they all lived very happily ever after with their doctors, and had blissful sex lives’?

I love the CS books but my mind boggles at the number of multiple births. There was clearly something in the water.

Adults marrying and then neglecting their children is a recurring theme. It's there in the Lorna books, and in poor Grizel Cochrane's backstory. I wonder is it something she'd either experienced or observed?

Bigamy at the Chalet School.😀

Thiugh EBD is very twitchy even about widows and widowers remarrying. Jessica Wayne’s mother marrying her bank manager is described entirely in terms of Mrs Wayne feeling sorry for his invalid daughter (so she married him?) and the marriage of Doris ‘Unbelievably Wet’ Trelawney and Commander ‘Back from the Dead’ Carey is presented as ‘two people trauma-bonding over Mary-Lou’s dead heroic father so that they can make Mary Lou and Verity ‘sisters by marriage’’…

Con Stewart appearing to have two different married names…

the stories EBD didn't tell us . . .

And there are glaring mistakes in EBD’s French! Not just in girls learning it, which would be understandable, but in native speakers’ French. I think Mademoiselle at one point claims that ‘est-ce que takes the subjunctive’. I mean, just throw in the odd ‘Bon jour!’ or ‘merci’ if your French isn’t good, Elinor!

Not to mention the strange case of Onkel Riese changing into Onkel Reise… (And I know some of that is proof-reading, like Biddy O’Ryan being Biddy O’Hara for one novel, and Con Stewart appearing to have two different married names…)

Ah Biddy. Famously ripe of brogue with neither French nor German to her absolute stereotype of a name

I always thought it might be from a book or series, which is one of the reasons I wanted to find it. But I am not reading your spoilers @Howyoualldoworkme ! Thanks @LittleMousewithcloggson !

@LittleMousewithcloggson @Gremlinsateit
SPOILERS!
https://clothesinbooks.blogspot.com/2015/04/dress-down-sunday-clue-in-castle-by.html

Found it! There's a great synopsis on Goodreads.
The chapter in Stories for Girls was obviously taken from it. And all this time I thought it was a standalone story!

Joyce Bevins Webb is the author
It is definitely the one with Zeporah aka Robin in

LittleMousewithcloggson
I do love your username btw 🙂

Off to investigate! What a wonderful thread this is!

@Gremlinsateit @Howyoualldoworkme there’s a full book called the Clue in the Castle (Joyce ? Is the author) Not sure how the short story fits in but this is definitely a book.
Robin is a main character in it, doing her work experience in law when she wants to be a nurse. Some of her friends teach her and invite her to stay with them - and there’s a twist when you find out who she really is.

Doris Pocock also wrote one of the stories in the collection that @Howyoualldoworkme identified for me - time to blow my budget on more books :)

Also - love the idea of parents calling their daughters Lalage, Pamela, and … poor little Joan.

Oh my goodness, shellbeach! That is the book! Mine had that dust jacket! Thank you so much! ( Too many apostrophes.) l wish it had occurred to me to post sooner. I’m off to order a copy right now. I wonder how it will be but l came over quite dewy eyed just looking at the photograph. Very many thanks.