AIBU To Think That The Chalet School Matron Would Be In Prison Nowadays

[TheShellBeach]

..........................for giving unprescribed sedatives to the girls so frequently.

(lighthearted) (in case a million people tell me that IABU)

The Chalet School Matron was forever doling out sedatives to the girls, without even asking Jack Maynard to prescribe them first.
Shocking stuff. Nowadays, she would be jailed and struck off the NMC Register.

Jo was sedated, leaving her breastfed triplets to be cared for by Frieda and Miss Wilson, and remained unconscious for about a week. The others had by then taught the 6-month triplets to feed themselves with cups and spoons, which is a very neat trick! This was described as she must ‘cast the babies’ in the original, which is a phrase I’ve never come across anywhere else. Funnily enough, that random line is left out of the Armada editions due to sheer weirdness!

I know Joey usually has a variety of helpers and domestic staff, but even so, breastfeeding triplets does sound exhausting.

It’s very precocious of the triplets if they’re really managing to competently feed themselves with cups and spoons at 6 months though.

I used to read those books so much. Escapism, like we all did. But towards the end, I was so sorry for EBD. She must have grown so tired of them and I don't think they ever made her rich, or gave her a literary life, in the way that Blyton had, or Beatrix Potter. I wonder what her publishers made of her, and what her advances were like. I heard that years after she died her grave was found and a gravestone erected. I think that says a lot. Does anyone know what happened to her in the end? Did she retire, or write till she dropped?

her life

Goodness. Thank you, Robin. (I suppose you of all people would know.)

Thank you!

She had no idea on babies barring teething could be difficult. One of my favourite lines is something along the lines of:

"Cecil was proving herself a very determined young lady, but, at the age of six months, was finally beginning to understand that no meant no."

Another memorable moment is one of the mistresses looking along the line of staff and coming to the conclusion that not many schools had such a good-looking staff. And EBD so liked to lecture people (through Len/Joey etc) that looks didn't matter. 🤣

I remember Joey looking at one of her nieces & thinking she must congratulate Madge (or possibly Mollie) on having three good-looking daughters.

That was Bride after stopping wearing glasses I think.

That sounds right.

I was so sorry for EBD. She must have grown so tired of them and I don't think they ever made her rich, or gave her a literary life, in the way that Blyton had

I am not so sure that Blyton had a literary life, though.
Her books were banned from public libraries for many years because librarians thought they were too preachy, middle-class and badly written.

EBD was very successful in that there were spin-off CS books, Christmas annuals and two CS correspondence clubs. Maybe she didn't make a fortune but I think she was fairly well regarded while alive.

She would be mightily pissed off by this thread though

More annoying abbreviations:

"Dommy Sci"

I had a list of annoying abbreviations but I've lost it

I've been reading that Life of EBD and it seems that she, too, started her school with only two pupils.

They were withdrawn when their parents discovered that EBD's mother (unqualified) was teaching them while EBD wrote CS books.

LOLOLOLOL

Isn't it strange how many pupils of the CS aspired to becoming PE teachers?

And market gardeners?

I cannot think of a single girl in my year at school who did either.

I was reading (via the Dropbox link, thank you!!) Highland Twins. Apart from all the crackersness of the story, I am quite taken aback by EBD's willingness to rip into the Nazis. At a time when most of the British public were apparently unaware of concentration camps, she refers to them explicitly. There's also a passage where one of the Linders girls says she wouldn't want children because she knows they would be taken from her and taught things she knows to be evil. Bearing in mind that Britain could well have been invaded at this time, EBD's bravery in writing this is quite remarkable. One might think the Nazis wouldn't bother about an author of school stories for girls, but I think they concerned themselves with far more petty matters! EBD would probably have been on a list if there had been an invasion in 40 or 41.

I suppose they were the only ‘respectable’ jobs for women EBD could think of that didn’t involve either caring for other people or sitting at a desk.

At a time when most of the British public were apparently unaware of concentration camps, she refers to them explicitly.

Yes, that's very telling.

At a time when most of the British public were apparently unaware of concentration camps, she refers to them explicitly

Yes. She wrote the wartime books pretty much after the war, when the atrocities were known about, so it must have been difficult not to have mentioned them.
I take your point that such things would not have been known about when the time period of the books was being written about, though.

Maybe it was just too difficult not to mention stuff like this after the fact, as it was so terrible?

If lessons were held in the language of the day, was the prep. for those lessons also expected to be in the language of the day?

I can see there being a lot of chaos if that was so. After all, once the prep. was handed back, had the mistresses marked it in a different language? And if they had, and if girls were expected to write e.g. English prep. in German or French, how were corrections to be made?

In a different language again?

Hang on - that sounds bonkers. Surely, if a Chemistry lesson was held in German, the prep. would be in English? But wouldn't that disadvantage girls whose grasp of German was poor (which seems to have been most of them, including the mistresses).

I do not think that EBD thought the whole Trilingual-Even-For-Lessons thing through.

Re - "Splasheries"

This was clearly EBD's coy reference to lavatories. I often think that the word would be more appropriate to male lavatories.

Eustacia is outraged by the word and claims that it is slang, which it is, but she is told that it isn't (by Joey, who is never wrong, as we all know).

The Nazis started setting up concentration camps in Germany for political prisoners etc soon after they came to power in 1933, so these camps were known about in the UK and it is to these that EBD is referring, I think.

The death camps were not widely known about in the UK until the end of the war, and are not referred to in the books as far as I'm aware.

It's still v admirable that EBD referred so explicitly to the concentration camps, as most children's and indeed adult writers didn't.

It's the Right Kind of Slang so it's OK. It's only the Wrong Kind of Slang they can't use

"The Wrong Kind of Slang"

Bahahahahahahaha thank you for that.

Can anyone remember which book has Miss Bubb returning to the CS to beg for work? I've been looking through the synopses but can't find it.

and one book morphs into another when all is said and done

She wrote the wartime books pretty much after the war, when the atrocities were known about, so it must have been difficult not to have mentioned them.

Some of the wartime books were written during the war - Exile, Chalet School at War, Highland Twins, Gay from China and the Lavender one were all published during the war.