Not to have realised until now that Joey Maynard’s ‘displaced organ’ was a prolapse?

[QuaterMiss]

I know there is or was an enormous Chalet School thread but I can’t spend six weeks trawling through that.

Fascinated to note (because I’ve been reading the complete synopses how all the CS women taken seriously ill either went straight to the San or journeyed - over days - for a consultation with Sir James Talbot. It was he who diagnosed said ‘displaced organ’. At which point Joey had iirc nine children. May be wrong, lost count.

(I read and reread the entire series over my first three decades.)

Ha ha. I maintain my activities as an assistant investigator whilst living in a château in Normandy, humping the kapok and looking after dear Joey in her dotage. (Now that is outing).

Mary Lou runs off with Reg, doing Len an enormous favour in the process.

Just checking that all the Forest fans know about Hilary Mackay and her Casson books. Very different, but the same sort of “proper books for children” vibe.

I adore Gaudy Night and Have His Carcase -- basically, the more Harriet the better, which is my only quibble with The Nine Tailors.

I think the tone wavers all over the place in Busman's Honeymoon, which I do like, genuinely I think it's the combination of frantic below stairs/village jolliness and the Wedding Night as Sacrificial Rite that jars a bit, but interestingly. And I think it jars because DLS is working out stuff she found a genuine intellectual problem how do two complicated, intelligent people with notorious and involved amatory and professional pasts and an obsession with their work, from different social classes, one of them with an extremely involved, if discreet, butler, manage once married and having sex?

Mary Lou runs off with Reg, doing Len an enormous favour in the process.

I will refrain from making bad-taste jokes about Mary Lou being a 'champion butter-in'.

I love that this thread is so full of people all needing access to the books again. I hope onedrive works for people - I know it's been temperamental in the past.

Someone asked unthread about the chalet girls grow up - I once spect a lovely afternoon reading the amazon reviews of that. I've never come across any other book that raised blood pressure (and ire) in the same way. It's not the best book I've ever read from a literary standpoint but I absolutely recommend it if you don't mind that it is absolutely not a continuation of the series. It's not even a little in the spirit of the books. (Girls Gone By has printed many fill ins and also a continuation that the purists much prefer)

DLS didn’t want to write Busman’s Honeymoon- she’d written it as a play, but was persuaded to turn it into a novel. I think she’d got over Peter by then, and just wanted to devote herself to Dante.

The Jill Peyton Walsh follow ons do address the dealing with “staff” issue rather well.

Thrones, Dominations? Is that right? Long time since I read it. IIRC the relationship stuff was rather cool; the crime aspect was a bit heavy handed.

The line I must admit really annoys me in Busman's Honeymoon is when Harriet says that Miss Twitterton, unlike the Ruddles, gets her title right first time (addressing her as 'Lady Peter').

This strikes me as a bit insufferable, as well as a bit out of character. I mean, it's Harriet's wedding day, so she's hardly used to being married to the man she's loved for years, let alone her brand new title -- she's only been Lady Peter for a few hours, most of which she's spent in a a car alone with her husband and Bunter.

“n Harriet says that Miss Twitterton, unlike the Ruddles, gets her title right first time (addressing her as 'Lady Peter').“

Pretty sure Peter said that, not Harriet!

I think you just have to put your fingers in your ears and hum through all the snobbery or you’ll spoil the stories for yourself. It helps me to know that DLS was as alien to that world as most of us are. Apparently she made a lot of mistakes- and people who have used her as a guide to the upper classes have come croppers on occasion!

DLS used the stories as an escapism for herself- apparently she once had to walk home because she couldn’t afford the bus fare, so bought Peter a Daimler!

I get annoyed with the JPW ones because she gets basic facts wrong and muddles up the ages of Peter and Harriet's boys. Some of the writing is very clunky.

BTW returning to the Chalet School - is Joey 100 this year?

Harriet says that Miss Twitterton, unlike the Ruddles, gets her title right first time (addressing her as 'Lady Peter').

Whichever of them says it, I don't think it's intended to mean that Miss Twitterton 'should' address Harriet as Lady Peter - they are just surprised that a small-scale chicken farmer knows the intricacies of aristocratic titles.

There are whopping amounts of snobbery in DLS, with lots of rude mechanicals like the Ruddles, but Miss Twitterton is sympathetically written, and DLS is generally good on the many petty humiliations of being short of cash.

BTW returning to the Chalet School - is Joey 100 this year?

If she is then she's the same age as Jon Pertwee.

Please please could I have the link

Mary Ann was horrible and I can imagine Joey being really, really annoying.

For whoever warned the travel book reference in Problem - Tauchnitz editions designed for travellers.

I don't think it's intended to mean that Miss Twitterton 'should' address Harriet as Lady Peter - they are just surprised that a small-scale chicken farmer knows the intricacies of aristocratic titles

Yes, that's what I meant. I find it deeply annoying that two newly-married people are using a title one of them one of them has borne for only a few hours as a way of judging the level of education/sophistication/social savvy of a woman they've just dug out in the middle of the night for a house key! (I did think it was Harriet who said it, but can't put my hand on my copy of BH...)

I think you just have to put your fingers in your ears and hum through all the snobbery or you’ll spoil the stories for yourself.

You are right. I am better at it some times than at other, and alas, my seven year old is insisting on reading me the Five Find Outers at bedtime at the moment, which means I keep doing Marxist analyses of the treatment of poor working-class Ern by the insufferable Fatty.

I’m just hunting for the reference- I seem to remember that there is N additional piece of worse obnoxiousery in the scene ....

“ Our hostess has a certain refinement (I think that's the word) about her which I had not expected. She got your title right first shot, which is unusual. Her life has had some smatch of honour in it. Who was her father?"
"I think he was a cowman."
"Then he married above his station. His wife, presumably, was a Miss Noakes."
"It comes back to me that she was a village schoolmistress over at some place near Broxford."
"That explains it..”

Ah yes. That “smatch of honour”
Unforgivable, really.

There is a lot of snobbery in DLS, but that doesn't strike me in the same way. I would have thought that if you were Harriet, you would surely be very conscious of your new title, not hardly used to it? Because she's not from that world.

Yeah- but it was Peter said it.

I know - someone said so upthread - but the point stands. It's not necessarily about snobbery.

I suppose the parallel (and god knows MN thinks it's snobbery) would be if you'd newly got a doctorate, and your husband noticed that someone called you 'Dr Smith'. Even if he's been Professor Jones for two decades, he might still realise you were a bit unbelieving about being Dr Smith.