Sir James Talbot tackles Mrs. Jack Maynard's Displaced Organ

[QuaterMiss]

Would I be unreasonable to initiate legal proceedings against this man?

Previous thread here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3624032-Not-to-have-realised-until-now-that-Joey-Maynard-s-displaced-organ-was-a-prolapse?

With thanks to Jemima232 for rifling through Sir James’ archives to supply the title of this one.

Well we all know where the Maynards and Russells get their money from don't we?

Yes, Jem's international spy-ring, cunningly disguised as TB patients.

Did anyone else struggle with some of the slightly arcane language/words? When I first read the books, a rug to me was a piece of carpet placed on the floor. I was mystified on why people had them to hand and used them to wrap up girls who had got cold/wet. Of course, I now understand it to mean a substantial blanket or throw in today's terms. Makes a lot more sense! The penny only dropped for me when I met DH, as he is Scottish and uses 'rug' in this way.

The other thing I'd like to know about is the ink. In the Tirol books, much is made of Ink Monitor and incidents involving spillage of ink. Later books describe the Seniors not needing ink because they are allowed Fountain Pens or Biros. So what are the Juniors/Tyrolese using ink for? Surely not dip pens? Were Fountain Pens really that expensive/rare back in the 1920s?

Yes, dip pens! Fountain pens are moderately complex pieces of kit, and fairly pricey until quite recently. Compare Roald Dahl's memoir, he's also at school around then and gets horribly walloped for breaking a nib during prep, iirc. Dip pens aren't actually that hard to use once you're used to them.

I've also been quite entertained by the amount of cakes and sweet things they consume, which never seems linked to the rather high rates of toothache and decay! Reading A Problem for the Chalet School, Rosamund had a tooth pulled out and about an hour later is encouraged by a prefect to eat a large cream cake as long as it's not hurting any more!

Lightbulb moment for me then. Explains why fictional students of that era are always described as having inky fingers/clothes.

Agree on the cakes issue, I was wondering today how on earth they got their vitamins.

Also, given they were drinking vats of coffee/Kaffee, there doesn’t seem to be any concern about the amount of caffeine they were consuming. Was the milky coffee just really weak?

The rug thing is reminding me of how, when I read the books for the first time, I was baffled by some of the travel arrangements. Which novel it was where Miss Maynard had had Jo and Robin to stay at Pretty Maids and they meet Maria and ‘the Stuffer’ on the train back to Tyrol, and there’s all that admiration of Miss M and Joey’s cosmopolitan travel know-how?

I think they roll themselves up in travel rugs, and take off their hats and replace them with ‘soft tams’, and have some way of curling up comfortably in corners? Whereas the Stuffer and Maria, as well as insisting on shut windows, get it all wrong, and are uncomfortable.

And I was always fascinated by how filthy everyone got after train journeys — I wasn’t factoring in how dirty coal-fuelled trains are. Or how cold, clearly, hence the need for the girls travelling by train from England to bring travel rugs for the journey to Tyrol/the Platz. And presumably the tams are as much to keep the girls’ hair clean as for warmth when sleeping on trains?

We used dip pens ,I was at primary school in the 60s.At some point fountain pens were introduced - perhaps when our handwriting was good enough?
But all the desks had holes for inkwells to fit in,and the ink monitor filled the inkwells. Not at secondary though,we'd all moved on to fountain pens by then.
And at every school sale you could buy fancy blotters and pen wipers,mostly brightly coloured felt on the outside..... Happy days

I'm always a bit intrigued by the medical care and descriptions of ailments, too. Currently re-reading Rivals and this idea of any kind of feverish illness always involving 'the crisis' when the person spontaneously either dies or their temperature suddenly returns to normal... anyone with medical/historical knowledge got any idea what that's all about? Because it's not just EBD whose fever patients always have anxious friends/relatives plucking at the doctor's sleeve going 'is it The Crisis'?

Was it ‘brain fever’ that Joey got?

She got that in the first book; in Rivals she fell through the ice saving another girl and got pneumonia. Obviously EBD (like most people of that era) believed that getting cold and wet tended to give you things like TB and rheumatic fever rather than hypothermia...

Is Rivals in the Dropbox?

Also, why is it that they all have cold baths every morning BUT if they stand in a puddle for a nanosecond they have to have hot baths, heated pyjamas, castor oil, etc, lest they get pneumonia?

Could I have the drop box link too please 🙏🙏

I googled brain fever a while back (see also: A Little Princess) and it appeared to be most likely meningitis. How you get meningitis from spending the night on a cold damp cliff path and worrying a bit, I don’t know.

I think back then people just didn't know about viral/bacterial infections. I was reading something (probably on the CGBB) about the fact that the early books - up to the Armishire ones even - were pre-NHS so people tried to avoid seeing doctors, treated minor illnesses and injuries with home remedies (some of which were OK-ish and some of which useless) and had no idea about the causes of a lot of diseases.

OK they clearly did understand a bit about the usual childhood illnesses and how those spread, because there is a fair bit about quarantine in even early books, but that would probably be down to those being so very common that everyone had experience of them.

I’d like the Dropbox link please!

I only have the armada paperbacks so missing lots of stuff. There’s still some gold though....reading ‘Camp’ and Bill describes the importance of ‘domestic economy’ lessons and someone asks if it’s true that ‘some women’ simply cannot learn housework and Bill is forced to concede this but reassured them it is only a small minority.

If anyone wants access to the Dropbox, pm me your email address and I can add you to the kindle format folder.

They don’t seem to eat a lot of fruit and veg. Apart from occasional mentions of seasonal fruit or bottled fruit, the menu appears to consist of milk, milky coffee, fancy bread twists, and cakes. Honey and nut cakes in the early books appear to be replaced by cakes with vast quantities of cream in the later books!

the menu appears to consist of milk, milky coffee, fancy bread twists, and cakes

Don’t forget the crispy potato balls swimming in melted butter.

Oh my days.

I guess Karen’s famous lemonade had fruit in it. Stretching I know.

Ohhh yes, I’d love to try those little potato balls!

I’m sure I remember one mountain walk where they accidentally left the picnic hamper containing the drinks behind, but the mistresses said it would be fine because the juicy fruit in another hamper would quench everyone’s thirst.

I don’t agree about the thirst quenching qualities of fruit vs water, but the fruit would have been at least a healthier pudding option than cake.

I remember that picnic.
In the later books there seem to be a lot of rambles where they take a pack of sandwiches and a slab of cake.
Then there are Joey’s English teas which seem to take place on a virtually daily basis and consist of vast quantities of cake!
I love cake (can you tell?!) 🍰

You get the occasional mention of salad, particularly lettuce, and the Swiss books make more than one mention of vegetable stew and vegetable sausages.

But it's not surprising the poor little sods were forever being dosed with either laxatives or emetics...

They'd have all had scurvy, surely? Or is that what 'being delicate' meant?

Every time there's a reference to the Robin or some other girl's 'delicacy', I remember that bit in Antonia Forest's Autumn Term where the newly-arrived Marlow twins get put in Third Remove ('with the stupids'), and everyone gets involved in making a sarky list in which you can opt to be either 'Backward', 'Delicate' or 'Plain Stupid', depending on your reason for being put in the form.

Note that the twins, who are genuinely 'delicate' and haven't been to school at all before now because of illness, opt for 'Plain Stupid', and the only one who insists seriously on being a 'Delicate' is laughed at. (Whereas EBD clearly thinks that being 'delicate' is more interesting, and even though she tells us several times early on in the series that the sparkling Tyrolean air has cured Joey's delicacy, it still doesn't stop her having lots of brushes with death...)

Also, Kingscote, which is very much not a school that specialises in delicate girls, seems to have some structures in place to suit the 'delicate' that the health-minded CS doesn't -- Third Remove, a class expected to have 'delicate' girls in it, isn't allowed to play netball because it's considered too exerting, only rounders, and there's a 'light' supper option for anyone off-colour or without appetite.

You get the occasional mention of salad, particularly lettuce, and the Swiss books make more than one mention of vegetable stew and vegetable sausages.

As I'm vegetarian, I noted those, but from what I remember, they're nearly always in negative contexts -- we only hear about how delicious the salads usually are when the Platz bad kids break in and cover them with pepper just before they're hosting some other school, and I think the Karen's vegetable stew reference is in the context of 'the famine', when supplies don't arrive for some reason, and the girls, despite liking Karen's vegetable stews, do notice and grumble inwardly when there's a succession of vegetable-centred meals, and no boiled egg for breakfast.

Though I think I always imagined Karen's vegetable stews as being more like ratatouille or ribollita than than watery potatoes and carrots...?

Someone should write 'Vegans at the CS'.