AIBU To Think Joey Maynard (Of Chalet School Fame) Was Insufferable

[TheShellBeach]

.............with her eleven children, infuriating husband and bizarre tendency to move house (and country) to live next door to the school her sister inexplicably started when Joey was a child.

She also managed to write (at least) two books a year, have a series of multiple pregnancies and poke her nose into the Chalet School's business on a daily basis.

Jo wouldn't have made that much from the Chalet School - even if it was making more of a profit than previously, it was very clear when Mlle LePattre retired that she wouldn't have been able to live on her school income alone, and Simone's parents had to come and start a boarding house to support them all. I think it is all Jack's family wealth. Jem was obviously also loaded, like when he was able to just buy a massive hotel and move the whole school up the hill into it at a moment's notice...

They were only paying for the boys education... and I don't think schools were as expensive in proportion to incomes back then.

The school probably had no money because they had to have a separate on call legal department to deal with settlements for girls falling from cliffs, being brained by bookends, kidnapped in error and the like😂

Also didn't they share Winnie Embury's son's tutor until they were a certain age?

And being assaulted by Margot Maynard.

On the other hand they might have charged enhanced fees if they successfully introduced a girl to a doctor she later marries. Like a dating agency but creepier

Yes, they weekly boarded with her in Montreux. Although I don’t know how often they actually went home at weekends.

I think that was only Mike (and potentially whichever boys came after him — Geofff? ), because they hadn’t met the Emburys earlier. Whichever staff member discusses this as if it is a straightforwardly excellent idea because it will allow Joey to get on with her new book — I think the suggestion is that poor Mike may not even come up at weekends in winter!

I think the older boys were simply left in England for the school year after the school moved to Switzerland and Joey, Jack and the girls (of course) moved with it. Mind you, even in the holidays, EBD is hilariously anxious to get the boys offstage somewhere so she can concentrate on Dutiful, Dreamy, and Deranged and whichever new girl/potential new girl they’ve taken on.

On the other hand they might have charged enhanced fees if they successfully introduced a girl to a doctor she later marries. Like a dating agency but creepier
Maybe that was the whole point of St. Mildreds!

Dutiful, Dreamy, and Deranged

🤣🤣🤣 Fantastic descriptive work there! 🤣

Hey, you knew who I meant! 😀

Of course!

I’ve never heard them described as that before, but it fits beautifully! 😃

There's a fun drabble somewhere where one of the boys gets accused of erm stealing or cheating at school and Joey turns up to sort out their headmaster.

Don't you mean Mary Dutiful, Mary Dreamy and Mary Deranged?

(I never understood them all having the same first name. Is it a Catholic thing?)

(I never understood them all having the same first name. Is it a Catholic thing?)

I don’t think so.
I believe that it was traditionally popular for Catholics to use names that could be considered associated with Christianity, such as the names of saints. But parents giving multiple children the same first name isn’t an expectation for Catholics.

It’s part of the Maynard Boys epic, though I can’t remember where it fits in. The whole thing’s well worth reading, though.

www.sallydennylibrary.co.uk/viewstory.php?sid=76

I have one family of cousins where all nine of them, male and female, have Mary as a middle name.

ps, yes, catholic of course, but so are all my other cousins.

(I never understood them all having the same first name. Is it a Catholic thing?)

my ex SIL and her 3 sisters all had Mary as their first name. They were Catholic, from Derry. born late 1950s onward.

i knew several Irish men with Mary as a middle name, but I don’t think that is very common now.

Catholics take on a Saints name at confirmation.

Catholics take on a Saints name at confirmation
None of them are ever revealed, are they? I wonder if any of them choose Scholastica 😂

I wanted Scholastika as mine, but the nuns said it was "outlandish". Ended up with Jude - the patron saint of hopeless cases. They should have had a St Jude's House at the CS for the hopeless case girls!

My dear old Dad told me that in the late 50s it was quite usual to put a baby in a wicker basket in the back seat, and if you were a particularly conscientious parent you would try to wedge the basket in tightly. One time my sister’s basket came loose and she ended up giggling on the floor of the car with the basket on top of her, IIRC (no harm done).

@Jourdain11
Surely the only hopeless case was that one whose dad won the pools, Joan baker…? I’m sure the rest had some redeeming qualities (by chalet school standards anyway, if it were up to me OOAO Mary Lou would be locked in the hopeless chalet on her own forever)

Thekla maybe, and that one who got expelled during war? Although I would totally put Margot in as a hopeless case with her 'devil'

Betty Wynne-Davis? Didn't she write a grovelling apology letter to Miss Annersley some years later or something?