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.

Wasn’t there some sort of justification along the lines of Len, Con, Ted etc being shortened versions of the birth certificate name, whereas Copper was a nickname unrelated to Flavia?

Although even if you accept that argument as valid, you’d think that the extenuating circumstances of Copper essentially being in some sort of witness protection program should have allowed for a bit of flexibility.

Thank you for the dropbox link 🙂

Thank you for the link - this thread is making me want to go back and re read them and I only have a couple of them. I expect being insufferable is a common complaint in the school - perhaps a side effect of all the sedatives? Or due to the constant changes between fresh air and exercise and complete bed rest?

Another long-time fan here!

so weird the EBD had the Robin singing a Russian folk song, when her mother was Polish. Don’t think she knew a single thing about either country.

I don't think I've read these since working in education which may add to the entertainment value. I seem to remember scenes of great consternation about rearranging the timetables for their total of 15 students or however many it was (I may be exaggerating slightly).

The family had lived in Russia hadn't they? (While Ted Humphries was spying presumably).

Wasn’t Tom Gay’s real name Muriel or something? Before her frankly sinister misogynist father took over and not only raised her as a boy, but a boy who thought girls were both thick and dishonest?

I think she was Lucinda Muriel.

Ah, but that was before Miss Dene arrived to boss over the timetable and moan about the large quantity of post the CS received.

Joey once asked Rosalie Dene if she was pissed off because no handsome doctor had married her, insinuating that she was a lesbian.
I may be paraphrasing a little.

Just finished Rivals. The Ku-Klux-Klan business was pretty WTF, but something else that stood out for me was the hair powdering prank & the girls’ horror that their hair might have to be washed and shampooed. Why was this such an awful prospect?

Poland was part of Russia before WW1 wasn't it? Or at least part of Poland was. The borders moved massively after WW1 and then again during and after WW2. I agree it's a bit odd though - no Polish national(ist) would be singing Russian folksongs...

This thread got me thinking about what happened to EBD's missing Chalet School manuscript 'Two Chalet Girls in India', written in 1939 between New Chalet School and Exile and a quick google found this,

"The Indian story's non-appearance may have been due to Brent-Dyer's insistence that her heroine should grow up and yet still remain a central character. It says much for her seriousness as a writer that she should have wished to tackle the subject of conversion in a children's book — and little for her Presbyterian publishers that they should have rejected it. (Amazingly, however, they sanctioned Brent-Dyer's brave war-time pacifism — the Chalet School had an active Peace League — just as Latimer House later left her references to the atom bomb as legalised "mass-murder" in her 1950 story, Fardingales .) But perhaps it simply comes down to Chambers' reluctance to publish any 'Chalet School' book which was not specifically a 'school story', an unwillingness which was to continue across the years." (Book & Magazine collector).

Hair washing is discussed so endlessly in some EBD discussion groups that the topic had to be banned. I think the consensus usually is that hair was not washed anywhere near as often as it is now and was much more of a chore due to heating water, hair being very long, and taking a long time to dry.

See Madge, Jo and Grizel going to a hairdressers to get their hair washed in School At, and EBD's emphasis on hair brushing as a way of keeping your hair clean.

I hold out hope that it will one day be found!

There is a fill in written by an Indian author that was published by Bettany Press.

I hope so too TinselAngel, I couldn't get into that fill-in but I did like Helen McClennand's Visitors.

Interesting!

So it’s not because they’d have to go to the trouble of obtaining Heiliges Wasser every time for the rinsing?

I read the India fill in on kindle, pretty sure it’s still available.

I adored the CS books as a child and, as someone with few friends, took Joey, Mary Lou etc as role models. Going through life trying to emulate them in even a minor way doesn't end well. When I re-read them now, it is immediately obvious why!
I'm now friends with someone who worked in a boarding school in Switzerland for years. They have some brilliant anecdotes but none involve near death experiences, sedating pupils, trilingualism or feather beds of cream or whatever it was.
There's a fascinating book about life in girls' boarding schools in the 40s, 50s & 60s. I loved the fact that the author is called Ysenda as that is an EBD worthy name.

Yes, that seems to be a recurring theme.
("Matron declared that her hair would have to be washed, unfortunately")

I am interested to see PP's post saying that hair-washing as a topic had to be banned from the CS FB pages.

FFS. There are so many things on that FB page which one cannot mention. Chalet Girls Grow Up (which is awful because it is full of bad syntax IMO, not because it portrays Joey as a nutter), Two Chalet Girls In India (because GGBP did not publish it, Lesbianism (because EBD could not possibly have been one or written about them).

The FOCS are so precious and I absolutely guarantee that I never read their newsletter

Blimey. What else is banned?

Talk of GGB publishing e-copies.

Well, I was foolish enough to think that the page would be like this thread (and all the other CS threads on MN) and people would deride the books, while gently and amusingly being unable to resist reading and collecting them.

I mean, I read them and I collect them, too.

But my first post on the FOCS FB page was about how ridiculous EBD was to use the adjective "pretty" every three paragraphs (Madge's pretty drawing room, Miss Annersley's pretty bedroom, Dr. Jem's pretty wife, etc. etc etc.) while also adjuring the girls of the CS not to use "smashing" (because it is slang and because "there are other adjectives available").

Although a few people agreed with me, someone said "Well, nobody is forcing you to read the books,"

And then I was foolish enough to mention CGGU - oh dear. I said that I'd rather enjoyed the storylines (which is true) but thought it was very badly written (which is also true).

The next time I tried to post on the page, my post was hidden until the mods could look at it. FFS.

I gave it up as a bad job after that.

Really?

I suppose that some hard copies will become as rare as hens' teeth, in that case.

TBF I don't think it was the FOCS page that banned hair washing discussion, IIRC there was a split between people who wanted to discuss the Chalet Girls Grow Up (or whatever it's called) and those who didn't because they were horrified by it, so a new group was formed where CGGU could be discussed and one of the ways they differentiated that group was to say no endless discussion of hair washing.