Is this a Mallory Towers or St Claire’s storyline?

[Remotelawfirms]

There is a poetry competition and there is a story about 2 girls each claiming to have written a poem. The first line is in fact an Emily Dickinson 1st line. The teacher knows this and asks each girl to continue from the line “there’s a certain slant of light on winter afternoons”.
the amateur poem continues rhyming “noon” with “dunes”
the Emily Dickinson poem continues about cathedral towers.

please help - I was in “slanting light” on a walk with DH and telling him how influential this story was. 40 years later and I realise how much of my life it has shaped!

She was. The other girls looked down on her for being a bit common.

I became a writer and sent my children to boarding schools. So maybe yes.

:)

The Trebizon books inspired my schoolfriend and me to practise tennis like mad over the summer when we were eleven. Look at my username and guess what my schoolfriend’s name was 😀

That's awesome.

@OnAFrolicOfMyOwn if you are also a Ransome fan (and even if not) there is an amazing set of Ransome/Marlows crossover fic that is supremely readable about the crapness of Captain Marlow’s parenting and the fallout of Rowan taking on the farm. I re read it every few months and dread it ever being taken down.

I think in one of the St Claire's books, a character is dreadfully shamed for saying "didn't ought" instead of - presumably "ought not". Some common scholarship toerag probably.

And YY to secretly worrying I was Gwen. I hated games and didn't fancy the sound of that outdoor swimming pool at all. Particularly if one of the heartier girls was going to slap me.

Alma wasn't head girl, you're confusing her with Anna Johnson who was amiable but a bit lazy.

Alma was shown in the end to have a medical problem with her glands and couldn't help being overweight. She was awaiting an operation. After the other girls found out they were kinder to her.

Alma wasn't liked at all. They eventually found out that she had a glandular problem that meant she was always hungry, so they decided it wasn't her fault by laughing as Doris did an impression of her gobbling food. But there was no unkindness in it, apparently.

Fuck you, Enid.

“Particularly if one of the heartier girls was going to slap me.”

rofl

There's also a plot line in Trebizon (Fifth year I believe) involving twins - one goes to Trebizon and the other goes to the local comp. Neither twin is happy about it.

Inworld theory: Carlotta in St Clare's was Lottie in the Galliano circus books. Galliano's circus does come to town in one of the St Clare's books. It would explain why Lottie called her parents by their names instead of Mummy and Daddy. They were adoptive parents.

You are absolutely right. Mea culpa.

<blames wine>

Anna was indeed "slow and lazy" but came into her own when Spiteful Elsie was ousted by the other girls.

I'm liking that theory, @SurprisedWithAHorse

Almost. Gwen gets her comeuppance that way. The others are far superior and start to pay attention to her once they realise she's pretty. She was ugly before because she had glasses and braces.

I really think it's true. They both had wild curly black hair too, loved horses, very acrobatic, fiery temper etc etc. I know Blyton liked to recycle characters but in this case I'm certain they were actually the same person.

Oh yes, I forgot the glasses. Once she takes them off, everyone is shocked and awed by her green eyes (clearly not visible behind her glasses).

I read them all but over time all the tales sort of blur into one.

EB wrote an adult novel called ‘The Caravan Goes On’ that wasn’t well received, poss these circus folk characters were recycled?

Blyton said somewhere that if Alma had laughed and said ‘Yes, I am rather puddingy but I’ll thin out soon!’ when the girls called her Pudding, it would have become an affectionate nickname. Not liking it clearly made her a Bad Sport.

I don't think Enid Blyton wrote a single nice character....

There was Gladys, who got her courage up enough to challenge her friend Mirabel when she knew Mirabel was wrong about something.

Definitely St Clare's but slightly different.

The poetry story line is that a girl who admired quite somber poetry was ridiculed by a teacher.
The teacher set homework to write a poem and the student brought in a poem which she had copied from a famous poet.
The teacher ridiculed it in front of the class and the student brought it to the attention of everyone that the teacher had in fact ridiculed a poem by a published poet.

Were you on Trennels on all? That episode caused a humongous, vitriolic fight among members about unfairness and bad parenting and equal shares.

The ghastly inherited tiara was known as the Last Ditch. And I always associate it with Pamela Marlow’s glossy past, as evidenced by the chest full of ball gowns and party dresses.

Im slightly impressed to discover that I can still recite both Rebecca’s Emily Dickinson tribute poem and the Dickinson original. Clearly it really impressed me 40 years ago!

Reading back the list of all these scenes makes me really realise how much of an effect the books had on my sense of what other people would/do think of me, even if they don't show it. I am sure I didn't realise at the time how much was actual bullying.

I have all the Trebizon, St Clares, Malory Towers, and Marlows books still.

I've recently started watching the fourth series of Malory Towers on TV, not quite sure why as the previous three have been so bizarre, very little link to the books apart from character names!, but it's still sort of nostalgic. But the fourth one is annoying me hugely already because they have so clearly pinched scenes from Antonia Forest! I didn't mind as much when the mixed up St Clare's and Malory Towers people/books/scenes/ideas, because those are both Enid Blyton, but it seems hugely unfair to take scenes from another (much better!) author and series. The first episode has Felicity and a couple of other new girls getting off the train a stop early and then deciding to walk to school, where older sister and teachers are getting in a flap - very like End of Term, where Esther and Nicola end up off the train a stop early (though not accidentally) and have to walk, while the flap goes on at school. I know it's not a total copy of the scene, nor is it improbable that someone could have made it up to fit with the other scenes at Malory Towers, but I am convinced they didn't. I wouldn't be surprised if various Trebizon scenes end up subtly incorporated as well. No acknowledgement of other authors.

Yes, because Fat Girls must be Jolly. In fact, that’s one school stereotype Trebizon just continues. They might have cool boarding houses, dishy surfing maths teachers, boyfriends, and a Head with a sex life, but Elf is still a jolly fat girl, teased for her appetite and laziness by her friends.

Presumably if Alma had been good-natured and jolly about her fatness, her small piggy eyes would have magically grown?