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.

Didn't Anne also leave an iron on and cause a fire?

Today in my chalet school readings they’re drinking iced coffee, I never thought of that being a thing in 1930

Yes and Jo’s precious manuscript for her first book was in the building, someone ran in the rescue it. Not sure who - could have been Anne 🤔

Observation number two today, why do people under the age of 11 always trot in the CS book. Constantly trotting off some rate, they aren’t horses!

Indeed 😂

See also servants “stumping” they stump off to do as they have been ordered.

I think Hilary Burn ran in...( And was still made head girl...)

While filled with adoration for their mistresses.

Not to mention the fact that all the pupils march everywhere.
Even just going downstairs, they march all round the school.

Not forgetting Grizel and Joey walking through Portsmouth with a ‘graceful swing that drew the eyes of passers-by to them’, AND making unEnglish hand gestures as they went, which suggests they looked weirdly conspicuous! I think we’re told somewhere else that the ‘graceful swing’ is from continually practising English folk dances, which cracks me up…

I have a vision of the two of them leaping and twirling down the street. 😂

Maybe its like one those musical films with the local population leaping into a coordinated dance and song number, with the sudden appearance of a maypole for Joey and Grizel to dance around?

I am now visualizing Chalet School - The Musical!
Coming to a cinema near you!

Can you imagine? A solo Ode to the Robin, a solid lump of comfort number...
Actually if anyone made it, I'd watch!

So would I.
Malory Towers has been made into a TV series.
Why not the CS?
Someone would have to learn The Red Sarafan, for verisimilitude.

Add some yodelling, a few golden/silvery voiced solos, some obscure Czech carols and quaint English folk dances.

Finishing with a big group number of "She's a real Chalet girl now!"

The Malory Towers TV series was narrowed down to half a dozen girls, Miss Grayling and Miss Potts.

I suppose if they stuck to the first few books they'd get away with a small cast - Jo, Madge, Grizel, Robin, Jem, Simone, one other teacher and two Tyrolean girls?

It seems unlikely and I wonder how well it would translate to the screen. Robin Stevens mentioned on her website that a tv or film version of the Murder Most Unladylike books would cost millions to produce and they have relatively few characters, I think that would work well on TV.

Prompted by this thread I'm reading the Lorna books, that I bought years ago when GGB issued them. I thought I'd tried tham and not 'got on' but have no memories of them at all. Definite Mrs Cochrane vibes from Lorna's mother - sends her daughter to live with her sister, siezes the opportunity to refuse to have her home for half term, is thoroughtly nasty to her when the two do meet, and as soon as L's father is dead, goes to Madeira, marries a rich widower and sends his children back to England to live with the same sister.

Very odd stuff, and does make me wonder who EMBD based it on? Boarding schools nowadays do get a disproportionate number of children from dysfunctional and marginally neglectful families, so maybe even way back then she'd heard stuff from friends.

The Lorna's are my favourites. EBD does explain her behaviour but doesn't excuse it.

I like the domesticity of the Lorna books.

Lorna's Mother's behaviour that is.

Heather Leaves School, Monica Turns up Trumps and Lorna at Wynyards all have a similar these of a girl being taken out of a school for unsatisfactory behaviour. I like to read them like a trilogy but then I'm sad 😬

I agree with you about the domesticities, and the descriptions of the rooms and furnishings. Poor Marigold has just been removed to hospital - I suppose she'll be reformed.

I was very struck by the similarities with Monica in particular. It's interesting that in this one it's the younger girl who is difficult, whereas in both of those it's a superior older one who challenges the girl on home ground.

EBD does seem to have a lot of girls who live with their aunts for whatever reason.

I wonder why it never occurred to Dick & Mollie Bettany to move somewhere that Peggy and Rix could live with them?

I think it did happen a lot more (for all sorts of reasons). And the ones who lived with their aunts might have been the lucky ones - there's a heartbreaking short story by Kipling about a boy and girl who are sent from India to stay with a woman who's being paid to have them as lodgers. Admittedly that would have been set pre WW1, but the first Chalet School books aren't that far from WW1.

Outside of the boarding school level of society, it also happened. My great grandmother (I think, I'm not totally clear on which relative this was) lived with her grandparents simply because she was one of a large poor family and her grandparents could house and feed her. That would have been in the 1910s/1920s. Add in high levels of maternal mortality, and a fair few children would have ended up with no mother, and a father who would need to work to support them.

Society definitely saw the parent-child relationship very differently as well (did high levels of maternal and infant mortality factor in to this? Probably.) I remember in Noel Streetfeild's auto-biography she talks about her brother being sent to boarding school at a young age and I'm sure she said everyone was upset about it, but it (in those days) had to be done, no one would have considered not sending him.

Roald Dahl was sent at around the 7-9 age as well, I believe? I remember reading his auto biography and being a bit shocked, although of course it happens still- some boarding schools take children as young as 8- for military families especially.