AIBU To Think That The Plots Of The Chalet School Books Were Really Improbable

[TheShellBeach]

.................................such as Prince Cosimo, the endless kidnappings, all the train crashes/bus crashes/car crashes/plane crashes/boat sinkings hang on a minute, were there any boat sinkings

Okay, I've just remembered that there were a couple of near misses with boats when the CS was on the island. Joey was nearly flung overboard once (a missed opportunity for EBD to get rid of her IMO) and there were probably others.

Anyway - all aboard and ahoy there.

There’s also the occasional place where Jo speaks Italian and that’s just as bad as the French.

I can’t even remember which book that’s in…? I suppose we should be glad we don’t get the phrases of Romany Joey has somehow picked up? (From hanging round the Tzigane band at the Kron Prinz Karl?😀)

I think her own sad little tale of lower-middle-class marital breakdown, cover-ups and secrecy also partly explains EBD’s obsession with the very ‘public’ and publicly fertile marital lives of CS old girls. There’s no possibility of any of her medics hiding previous marriages and children from the eagle eyes of the School bush telegraph!

I wonder if one of the most grimly unidealised details of the entire series (Grizel’s existence having been hidden from her stepmother until she got home from honeymoon with her new husband) was what happened with EBD’s half brother, who never lived with his father after he remarried?

Not clear whether her father’s previous marriage had ended in divorce or the death of his first wife — or even whether his second marriage to EBD’s mother may have been bigamous? That might further explain the vagueness about her having ‘lost her husband’ when he moved on (again), if the marriage had never been valid at all. I think I remember reading too that her father had stayed living in the same general area with his new household, which must have been extra hard to live with/cover up for her mother.

Poor EBD. No wonder she’s so terribly attracted to depictions of masterful, clean-living doctors who not only confer unimpeachable social status and cure TB, but also stick around and seem totally enthralled by the wives they keep impregnating.

The thing is though, when I read them as a little girl the linguistic accuracy wasn't really a big deal but the sense of the magic of being bilingual, and the sense of connections across countries and cultures, (even when those countries were at war) really did have a powerful impact on me.

I went on to study french through to university (it was part of my degree ) and spent a sixth form summer at an international summer school in France mixing and making friends from all over the world. I know these books were part of what led me to do that.

That's incredible. And you're not the only person I've heard say similar.

The soft power of these books are amazing. They definitely shaped me.

I'm sure you're right about EBD's strange, hidden background (probably filled with anxiety and shame) informing her view of families in general and men in particular. In fact, apart from the idealized doctors, neither men nor boys tend to feature in the Chalet School books as real people. Even Joey's sons have little importance in her life. They're shoved off to boarding school in England by the age of 8 and that's the last we hear of them.

EBD also has a rather disconnected view of half-siblings, which she refers to as 'step' siblings. Most of these 'half/step' siblings are described as almost total strangers, within the family. In one book, I think, an orphan girl is 'adopted' by her older 'step-brother', who is in fact her father's own son and therefore her half-brother. EBD's own background almost certainly explains this. An example of this confusion, is illustrated by the convolutions of language that Mary Lou and Verity go through, in order to describe their relationship - 'sisters-by-marriage', instead of step-sisters. The fact that each of them acknowledged the other girl's parent as their step-parent, doesn't seem to have clued them in.

EBD's lower-middle class background, coupled with the 'shame' of the absent father, would also explain her snobbery and silly class-consciousness. After all, lower middle class is just a step up from Rosamund Lilley's mother's lady's maid!

Grizel's friendship with the cook, the only kind person in her home, was regarded as a good aspect of her otherwise hard character. Apart from that there are the Tyrolean servants, and Janie's maids in Guernsey, but mostly the lower orders are reduced to 'noises, off'.

Just to say that if anyone is interested, Holybourne Rare Books (Farnham/Surrey near Waitrose) had three Chalet School books in stock yesterday, including the Chalet School in Exile. I don't know how much they were although I got a Malcolm Saville book for £3!

What ms book?

Strangers at Snowfell, I've not read any of that series before.

That was my first non-Lone Pine one too.

I love it, if only for the snowy setting.
I find the Jillies a little bit stilted and old fashioned compared to the LP-ers, but they are fun too.

I’m wondering if anybody has transcripts of EBDs non chalet school books such as The Lost Staircase?

I can’t get it to load at the moment but have you tried https://fadedpage.com?

Faded Page has most of the Chalet School books but only a few non Chalet School EBDs.

Loved all weird illnesses and accidents when I was a kid. Bill's hair turning white and Mary-Lou's hair coming back curly after the tobogganing accident are two that stand out. Now I'm thinking of another hair-related moment I enjoyed. When one of the teachers randomly gave Theodora a haircut lol.

I'm missing quite a few books in my collection and I saw something about a dropbox folder????? I'd love to get access, if possible.

Thank you so much for the faded page recommendation I have been enjoying reading some of the books I had never managed to get a copy of!

It was Hilda Annersley, though she just showed up with a brush, red ribbon and hairclips and apparently miraculously tamed Theodora’s hair, though Matey was supposed to take her to have it ‘thoroughly thinned’ later.

Still, I suppose at least no one plaited it and made it into earphones, Joey-style.

Or remember way back in one of the Tyrol books where, for some inexplicable reason, some of the Middles floured some other girls hair, and were punished by having to shampoo it out… ?

Yes, they went through a phase of playing pranks on each other. I think it was cornflour they put in the hair?

My hair went curly after starting some medication and I immediately thought of Mary Lou!

This is the dropbox link https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/3r6kxlo1ngyhgsbz6pte3/AGxOO_kMdJ2av8HUPkWUX6Q?rlkey=hq3ym3564n5dz5665t4ghq9wk&st=lh6pd5s0&dl=0

I was thinking of a period-specific AIBU post:

"DD's just started at a new school, it's great in many ways, we hope she'll be fluent in French and German, there's lots of extra activities such as Guides, winter sports, cultural expeditions, and meeting girls from across Europe. I'm a bit concerned about their theories of language learning, but hopefully it'll work out, and she's a pretty girl, so exams don't really matter and with luck she'll end up marrying a doctor and having ten children. At the worst she can probably teach at the same school.

Chatting to the girls and other parents when we dropped DD off, though, I'm a bit concerned about their risk analysis. They were full of exciting stories about skiing, hiking, boating and other things, but from all accounts several times a year a member of staff or pupil is at death's door from a near-fatal accident, falls in a frozen lake, gets stuck in a cave-in, stranded in a blizzard, etc.

AIBU to think that the school is a bit too casual about risk assessment, and should focus harder on not killing too many of its teachers and pupils?"

Yes, I always think imagine a school now that had some kind of near fatal accident on every school trip
Real school trips were always a bit underwhelming after a childhood with my nose in chalet school books

I did go on a geography school trip which involved climbing several thousand feet, being unable to eyeball the assorted geological features we had apparently been intended to admire because of the unexpected snow storm, and struggling down again hours late with a group of other over-tired, cold, hungry and fed up teenage girls - several of the group were reminded of Chalet School outings!

You've just brought to mind a geography trip we had to look at a limestone pavement and we were told to wear walking boots and one of the girls showed up in boots with 6inch heels Matey would never have let her pass the front door dressed like that!

YANBU.

AIBU to worry about the school matron’s habit of slipping something to help the girls sleep after one of the many traumatic incidents that happen on school trips?

Somehow I still find that less unsettling than Joey's husband repeatedly drugging her

I'm battling insomnia though and would quite like matey to appear and slip a little something into my drink (and just gently hint at the fact she has done so!)

YABU. It's standard for school matrons to slip prescription sedatives to children in their care, it doesn't result in an overdose or adverse reaction all that often, TBF. And sometimes the school doctors (or doctors vaguely connected to it, who might or might not know anything about the girls) are quite happy to fling them around too, so it's almost medicine. The same school doctors cheerfully drug their own wives, so 😳