The Chalet School 2 - Still talking about it a century later!

I'm not sure. I think they still have a facebook page.

I have bought the fill in “Chalet School in Peril” but haven’tmanaged to get past the first chapter based on a few girls eating a bit too much chocolate (although TBF this is quite EBD). Should I persist?

I misread the title you were referring to as Chalet School in Hell, and was thinking, 'Gosh, Merryn Williams wrote another dark CS spin-off?' 😀

Do persist - it really is very good

Hopefully it’s okay if I join as I just sank back into old habits and bought three EBD hardbacks in a second hand book store. One is early prototype I think, not chalet school, but A Thrilling Term At Janeways? Mad but brilliant and strangely riveting.

Also Eustacia and Jo at the chalet school (think that’s its title, she’s about to be head girl, 16.

😱😂

Yes, it's very good and well researched I think

I think GGB and ebooks has come up on a number of occasions on various threads -- I think the issue is partly that GGB is pretty much a tiny cottage industry, and they just don't want to/think it isn't in their capabilities. Ditto for only a few books being in print at any one time.

This is my understanding and I think they maybe tried an ebook some years ago and it didn't go well. It is a shame though, when I was in hospital earlier this year I would have loved to have had a stack of them on my Kindle

Yes, I remember the comment about Jack looking at her in a funny way. It would have gone straight over my head as a child, but as an adult it stood out! He must have been quite a bit older than her too, for him to already be a qualified doctor and fairly well-established in his practice to get a job overseas at the San. Similar (or even bigger) to Reg Entwistle meeting Len as a toddler!

Thanks for the new thread 😊

I'm reading one of the Tyrol books I always rather overlook, Exploits, but actually, it has lots of lovely set-pieces, like the incredibly detailed account of halfterm at the Sonnaple, which in some ways is completely mad -- the entire school goes to the Sonnalpe, and is accommodated between an already crowded Die Rosen, the Annexe, Das Pferd and the hotel, and when there's a thunderstorm followed by a snowstorm, they all, including the staff, spend the entire time at Die Rosen playing hide and seek, billiards, battledore and shuttlecock and presenting elaborate tableaux and singing and having snow fights.

It's hardly surprising that Madge comes across on this halfterm as more than a bit frazzled and obsessed with dirt, her oak floors, sheets and curtains!

Poor Robin gets a thin time of it, as she keeps being sent off to the nursery to play with Peggy and Rix and David.

And we get the detail that the motor-road has just opened, but that until that, the only way up to the Sonnalpe had been via the mountain path! How on earth did seriously ill patients get to the San before the motor-road opened? It sounds as if it is quite a strenuous climb!!

Actually, I'd somehow completely overlooked that Joey has them do Burne-Jones' The Golden Staircase as one of the tableaux, or what it must have looked like with the girls all draped in sheets posing on a stairs made out of boxes and stools!

The ‘staircase’ itself was made out of sundry boxes, a table, a stool, a chair, and two low step-ladders, along the tops of which rested a couple of broad planks on which were standing Vanna and Elsie, draped in their own sheets. Descending them, were Sophie Hamel, Evadne, Cornelia, Ilonka, Margia, and Simone. The musical instruments of the original were represented by Sophie’s violin, Rix’s toy saxophone, a tambourine, two pan-lids (to represent the cymbals), and a harp made out of cardboard and string. The ‘stairs’ were draped with green velvet draperies in which the horrified Madge recognised her two new portières, only just put up; and the balustrading on which the pair at the top were leaning consisted of a couple of scarves stretched across the embrasure of the french window and firmly nailed into place. The singing girls were Joey herself and Yvette Mercier. As for dresses, they had all robbed their beds, and Madge shuddered for the holes in her good linen sheets as she saw the light gleaming on multifarious safety-pins.

collection of 50 original hardbacks sold at Glasgow auction house yesterday for £837 including commission someone wanted them very badly
way over my price limit 😥

Wow they got a bargain though, £17 per book, a lot of them still go for much more than that (I paid around £25 per book to complete my collection but many are tatty, without dust jackets etc)

My Chambers hardbacks from I think a reprint in 1988 (all the rest of my collection is Armada paperbacks) - I have not yet started my search to find the same Chambers edition of School at the Chalet.

I love the early books and agree that they are an absolute treasure in terms of a contemporaneous account during WW2. The later books become a little too formulaic for me - I don't think I've read past Wales.

Absolutely barking mad. Jem is quite irascible in this book too (I’m just reading it myself)- fretting about his billiards cloth, william and mary chair, fencing sticks… quite the country gentleman.

I would love to have gone on the Pertisau trip, I remember reading about it at the time. Dh has promised we will go for my 60th birthday (in two years).

Thank you for the tip - I'll give Reunion a try!

The Golden Staircase scene is an example of what would turn me from a faking-it-but- almost-good-sport, into an angry person sending everyone to bed early.

I'm not so keen on the Swiss books overall, but I really enjoyed 'A Problem for the CS' and 'The New Mistress at the CS'.

When I first read 'Problem', I was firmly in Rosamund's camp. I went to a tough, working class school and I had a few Joan Bakers in my class. I was a quiet, well-behaved kid and they made my life a misery. I could 100% relate to Rosamund's shock and unhappiness, when she discovered that Joan had followed her to the CS. With the added complication that Joan was threatening to expose her as the daughter of a lady's maid and market gardener.

But as an adult, I felt a lot more sympathy for Joan than I expected. For one thing, she had to sacrifice her half-term trip to spend it with some older school girls. She wasn't even consulted about it - it was presented to her as a done deal. She was probably a bit out of her depth already, staying in a strange house with older pupils. Then she overheard them talking about her in disparaging terms. To add insult to injury, Miss Annersley herself described Joan (to her face) as ill-bred! If I was Joan, I would have immediately asked to be moved to another school, where I would be with girls more like myself, instead of feeling like a fish out of water. She capitulated way too quickly and was just a shadow of herself after that. In the book, it's presented as a good thing and that the school has moulded her into a decent CS girl. Her transformation is even more remarkable than Eustacia's. But, to use modern parlance, it strikes me that, from then on, Joan was masking and pretending to be something she wasn't, and hiding her true nature. The book is an interesting study in class differences. I found myself wondering about scholarship pupils irl and the difficulties they might experience, trying to fit into a world with very different social codes and mixing with pupils from much wealthier backgrounds than their own. A poster on one of these threads was talking about writing a thesis on depictions of class in school stories. I wonder if they ever finished it? I'd love to read it, if they did. The message in 'Problem' is that money can't buy class.

There's a lot of talk about tennis at the start of the book and the younger pupils really admire Katherine Gordon, who's a star tennis player. I felt sorry for Rosamund, who accepted that she would never be as good as the likes of Katherine or Blossom, because she had come to tennis too late. She'd written herself off before she had even started.

I was wondering why Joan's grandfather wrote to the school and not her own parents. I was wondering if Joan's grandfather was well to do and Joan's father had come down in the world and/or married beneath him? Not that it matters terribly. It's just idle speculation on my part.

On a lighter note, I was amused that the news of the Bakers' Pools win was spreading like wildfire, along with the news of Edna's broken engagement. That must have set tongues wagging! I was surprised to read that Joan had a perm, because I associate perms with the '80s. But the book was published in 1956, so perms are obviously around a lot longer than I'd realized.

I'd forgotten that it was Jack, of all people, who explained Joan's background to Mary Lou. And I was a little uneasy at how willing Miss Annersley was to give permission for Mary Lou (a teenage schoolgirl) to go for supper on her own with Jack. But I guess Jack, as a doctor at the San, was seen having an impeccable character. And he and Jo were friendly with Mary Lou's parents, so he would have been perceived as a trusted family friend.

I always liked 'New Mistress'. We often get glimpses of staff meetings and hear the teachers' opinions on pupils and school matters. But the entire book is written from the perspective of a newly qualified teacher, finding her feet and getting the balance right in terms of discipline. Also, Kathie wasn't an old girl. As well as adapting to the practice (as opposed to the theory) of teaching, she also had to adapt to a new country and new experiences e.g. skiing. And she also had the challenge of being a very young teacher (22) and teaching Seniors who weren't much younger than she was.

I was a bit annoyed at Joey phoning Miss Annersley and recommending that she retain Kathie as a mistress. For one thing, Joey herself isn't a qualified teacher and isn't in a position to judge anyone's teaching capabilities. Also, she's never seen Katie in action as a teacher. This opinion is based entirely on hosting Kathie for afternoon tea.

It strikes me that Joey is stuck in arrested development. She never moved on from the school. I think it's because she didn't go to university, didn't pursue a career which involved working with other adults and married and started a family so young. I'm not for a minute dismissing her career as a writer. But it's very much a solitary profession. These days, Joey would probably be expected to take part in a lot of promotional work - book signings etc. And she might have participated in writers' workshops etc. But there probably wasn't much of that in the '40s and '50s. So she never really moved on from the school environment. And it doesn't help that the school and San are intertwined. But she's involved in the school way more than Madge, who is the actual founder and Chairman of the school. In one of the Swiss books, Mary Lou complained to Joey that she and Verity had been split up and were in different dormitories. Joey explained that she told the school to do this, because it was time that Verity learnt to manage on her own. It's ridiculous that Joey was micro managing things at the school to that extent. And that Miss Annersley and Bill were listening to her and taking her advice.

For all that Joey has travelled extensively (Austria, England, Wales, Switzerland, Canada, the US etc.) and has given birth to nine children (at this point), her character hasn't really developed much.