Some Fretwork and the Interminable Christmas Play at the Chalet School

I love Highland Twins. Mostly.

I really dislike Joey's reaction to Jack's death. She basically abandons her triplets. If he really had died, then when would she have come out? Weeks? Years?
She goes upstairs leaving Robin and Daisy, young teenagers who would be upset themselves to deal with the toddler triplets-Daisy has to run out to fetch help.

But I think what really irritates is when in subsequent books Joey tells people how she knew she had to keep strong for the girls... she doesn't give the impression she thinks about them at all.

The Highland Twins copy I read described Miss Dene being chased. Every other character faints and has to be carried off at some point so why not the head's secretary?! It's not very clearly explained but I think the spy chases her and then the gardener or whatever he is sweeps her up into his brawny arms.
It was nice to catch up with Elisaveta again. And Frieda, and others like the Linders sisters too.
We have oblique references to Jo's pregnancy and Jem appears with his trusty syringe when it seems Jack has died. No bathchair thing though.
In War Jo's escape from Guernsey was very tense. Although I obviously knew she survived to give birth to another 100 kids.
Loved the Scottish accents although I had to translate in my head. As for the Armitage locals, of course they have to throw in the odd "look you" just to remind the readers that after years of peasants cheerily calling "Gruss Gott" we are now in Wales!

Oh, how did I forget Elisaveta?! I love her in Highland Twins. And yes lovely older Robin too. Is it also the one with Dr Jack travelling around in a bathchair chariot thing?

I really like Highland Twins. It's got grown-up sensible Robin, and Betty is handled very well, with the emphasis that actually, Floppy Williams is wrong to refuse to forgive her. It also has the deleted-from-Armada bit with Elisaveta escaping and doing charring for a living. The bit with Miss Dene being chased and then fainting - I have a vague idea that the actual chase is cut from Armada but not the bit where the twins see someone (not Gaudenz, but similar brawny handyman type - Griffith Griffiths?) carrying Rosalie in, and it didn't make any sense! Can anyone remember if that's true?

Aw. I think EBD gets herself in a bit of a pickle because she really wants to include the second sight thing but also really doesn't want to condone it, and ends up trying to reconcile this by making it 'special exception for Jo' territory and including a rosary.

I think that, if you suspend judgment on the second sight, the burglar in pursuit of the map of Erisay, the twins' 'Highland' accents (so, possibly everything relating to the title characters), Highland Twins is really good. I think the Betty Wynne-Davies bit is very well done, i think (?) it's got some excellent staff room scenes and evocative wartime stuff too. I like At War best of those three though.

Miss Annersley definitely does not approve, though! ''Tis all a bit odd.

I've just read Highland Twins, Bride Leads and the Chalet School at War, borrowed from the library. Enjoyed all three but especially Highland Twins. These German spies that turn up at the school with surprising regularity during the war do amuse me! Was surprised by the second sight storyline though. I'd expect anything a bit "woo" to get short shrift from the sensible Miss Annersley!

Finished Hilda Annersley Headmistress. Agree with whoever said before that it is a good story but poorly edited. Somewhat ironic that a book about the esteemed Chalet School English teacher, with her love of beautiful English should be so badly punctuated. A shame because it did hamper my enjoyment of it.

Going to ask for Bettanys of Taverton High for birthday!

Ah, I didn't remember any of that, Cheddar, which makes it quite a bit better, I think. Although still not sure anyone ought to be missing out on seeing the glacier (and arguably Jo is one of those most likely to get another chance to see one/ that one in particular, given she is basically indefinitely resident in the Tyrol)...

I also missed Captain Humphries also having Taverton connections, which makes far more sense of it. Although it's unusual for EBD to (if she has) specifically put Taverton into a 'real' place, isn't it? I think it kind of jumps around between Cornwall and Devon for no obvious reason.

as Captain H has some business to attend to in Devonshire

Smuggling, of course. Isn't that what one does in Devonshire?

In Eustacia, Jo misses a couple of trip days looking after Robin. They go buy some wood carving amid obligatory exclamations of 'das Engelkind!' But Madge says she wants Jo to see the glacier, so Anne volunteers to stay behind. She does give some sort of excuse why she doesn't care about seeing it, but I can't remember what.

Captain Humphries used to be a friend of the family so presumably lived in Taverton at some stage...maybe?

Reading Princess - Miss Denny and Captain Humphries take Juliet to college and see her settled there, which is convenient as Captain H has some business to attend to in Devonshire.

What on earth does he do, that he has business to attend to in Devonshire?! Was it a bustling region in those days? Wasn't he some sort of military / civil service type? Devonshire's not even necessitated by plot - Juliet is going to Royal Holloway...

(Also, though, over Princess generally. I'd forgotten what a very good one it is.)

In Richenda, does it not say that her father has sent her a letter saying she has to stay at school for half term as she does not deserve treats and that he refuses to bear the cost of the trip? Doesn't one of the staff talking about it say something along the lines of.."You know how it is, we send out the letters saying this is going to happen......and he wrote back saying she was not to go"/..

That would suggest that the trips are added to the bill as extras..

I would've thought no, to both of those suggestions of a refund. Definitely where it's a punishment for poor behaviour. With the half term trips - I can see the possibility of parents having an option some time in advance to either pay £xx for the school's provision or otherwise make their own arrangements, but it wouldn't really surprise me if the trips were funded through a general school budget (i.e. through fees) and if parents chose to take their girls out of them then that's their concern, and it would all be frightfully infra dig to raise the question of a refund. (Disclaimer - I know absolutely nothing about private education so this is wild speculation! But perhaps scarcely more so than EBD's own suggestions might have been.)

Who is it that misses the glacier trip in Eustacia because she's looking after the Robin - I think Anne Seymour? Regardless of the payment arrangement, I would be v hacked off if I were her parent! If Robin had to go on this trip which she wasn't actually capable of properly participating in, surely Jo should have been the one to miss out and stay with her. Messes up that part of the plot, obviously, but still. (Currently re-reading Princess and seeing all the comments about Madge being harsher, if anything, on Jo... This is not consistent with Jo getting the freebie fun in Fulpmes while Anne has to miss out!)

The idea that it's safer to stagger around carrying an eight year old by water, rather than let them stand and walk, is kind of hard to believe. Even making allowances for EBD's cast of nonchalantly exceptionally strong women.

I always imagined a coronel of plaits to be one long plait wound tightly from the base like a snail shell if that makes any sense (can't find a sensible term to google to get a pic!), with of course packets and packets of kirbygrips to hold it in place.

I think I'm going to have to read Feud in the Fifth Remove. I think I have it at home somewhere lurking amongst the teetering piles immaculate shelves.

OK, so Head Girl. I don't know whether Armada cut a fair few of them, but I found myself getting truly hacked off with references to Robin as the baby. At eight it seems she had to be carried almost everywhere - e.g. when they go to the landing stage Miss Durrant carries the baby and holds onto her firmly. Really? I can see that you'd want to carry a toddler, and hold a child of three, four or even five very firmly by the hand. But surely the implicitly obedient Robin could have been trusted to walk safely on the landing stage without going for a dip.
I've also been thinking about payment for school trips, especially in the more formal Swiss part of the series. I think I've always assumed that the cost was covered in the fees - and some of the expeditions would have been very costly, with transport, hotel accommodation, endless kaffee und kuchen and so on. So if they were covered in the fees, did the girls who didn't go (e.g. because they were going home for half-term) get rebates? And what about the threat of punishment by being deprived of expedition - did that mean your parents would be refunded?

That's right a coronal of plaits.

Dd1 (when I did it on her) said it made her head feel unbearably heavy though. Then she had to dance with it!

What exactly was the famous coronal of plaits? Something like this ? Yeah, definitely all that's another happy indulgence - which takes us back a few posts to the bonkers bit where one teacher regards her colleagues with satisfaction and reflects what an unusually good-looking staff they are. I think she tries to reconcile her enjoyable preoccupation with prettiness and her moral belief that pretty doesn't equal better by pointing out that prettiness is just another god-given talent.

Off to the ROW thread!

I think another of EBD's best things was imagining how each girl looked, with ropes of burnished hair swung round her head in a coronal and eyes of speedwell blue, set in a flower-like face. That and doing awesome backstory.

Yes please to RoW!

Aw, I feel rather fondly towards EBD's penchant for outrageous names. Apparently she renamed herself Patricia Maraquita whilst at college... I get the impression that choosing names for her characters was one of the things she liked best, right up there with imagining ducky little dormitories.

I am now keen to read Fifth Remove, as well as why-has-nobody-written-this fanfic from Miss Bubb's perspective, or about the illustrious life of authorial Joey...
(Since we're sort-of on the subject of Clemence Dane, is there any interest in revitalising the ROW thread? I have a question for it!)

And doesn't Jo write a book about a Dora, and picks plain names, and then dedicates it to "my sister, who prefers names of the Plain Jane variety"? I think some of the Chalet names are a bit suspect, but like you I read them so early on that it never occurred to me that Grizel/Cornelia/Loveday/Vanna & Nella (think their real names are Giovanna and Peronelle)/Ghiselaine & Lesceline/Margia/Elisaveta etc are names that I have rarely or never come across elsewhere.

What made her choose such ridiculous names for her non-Chalet School school stories? Chalet School names are varied but relatively normal (or maybe I just grew up thinking they were normal as I'd read them???). I nearly had to stop reading Janeways because of the absurd names - it reminded me of the book that Jo ends up burning in Jo Returns and / or an 11 year old girl writing a story and picking the 'best' names she could think of.

I meant to say earlier that fanfic from Miss Bubb's point of view would be utterly ripping! If anyone finds any please post it here!

I would recommend A Feud in the Fifth Remove pretty highly - it was written in 1932, so when EBD was going very strongly, and is set in an English High School, and it's all about snobbery. Reading EBD's views on snobbery is delicious. There is one racist passage where a maid is commenting that Miss Brenda usually treats her "like I was a black", which made me , though. However, that aside, it's a delightful tale about what makes a lady - you can be a lady whether you're the daughter of a duke or a dustman, and it doesn't matter whether your father is In Trade or not (although somewhat undermined by the fact that heroine's father is in trade, but has aristocratic ancestry). And the names are hilarious. There's also a Dorinda.

I then moved on to The Susannah Adventure, which is just a ripping adventure yarn - reads a bit like an Enid Blyton adventure book, with added descriptions of hair, elaborate names and one girl running a fever from nervous strain. The two girls are called Anstace Roseveare and Kennetha MacKenzie, and it features rather too much of the boys suggesting that they should go and do the cooking for my liking. It is a decent enough story and is definitely a break from the EBD norm - and much better than the likes of They Both Liked Dogs! The characters are mainly a bit older - Humphrey is 19 and Anstace 18 by the end - and a Navy Commander is expressing particular interest in her, which did make me wonder just how old he is! He must be at least 40 to have become a Commander, surely?

Would she have ended the series after New House/Jo Returns/New CS, or written the Life and Times of Joey instead of continuing with the school itself, or continued the CS series largely without her (probably the occasional half-term cameo when she came to visit Madge etc, maybe stepping in to teach during incidents of laryngitis)?

Well, I'd like her to have done both of those, but I'm not sure she had enough life experience for a really interesting Life and Times of Joey. I'd love it if Jo had been friends with the likes of Jean Rhys, Agatha Christie and Muriel Spark - Clemence Dane even! Now that would have been really interesting, and just think of the tales she could tell on her cameo appearances.