New Home for the Chalet School

[Vintagejazz]

Welome everyone. Dormy lists on the board as usual and I know you are all hoping like mad that you are all not in the same dormitory as Mary Lou. But only some of you can be the un lucky ones and the rest of us will have to make do with each other.

Oh, and the good news is that Joey has sabotaged discovered something wrong with the roof on her house and believe it or not, the only property available to rent is right next door to the school.

Shit Hurrah, lucky us.

Got to go. Matey wants me for unpacking.

Those traditional school pinafores. They were originally developed for sport, hence the name - much more free-fitting and compatible with proper physical movement than the girls' clothes they replaced, but still suitably female-looking. (I think the original Guides uniforms were designed with similar concerns in mind, too.)

Is there actually any difference between a gymslip, a tunic, and what people now call a school pinafore?
In my mind, probably influenced by Chalet and Jo etc, a pinafore is a big apron to go over a dress, usually with no back. A tunic was what I wore in primary school, basically a gymslip with a waist, over a blouse. But now tunics aren't mentioned and girls' uniforms include 'pinafores', which is a use of the word I'd never seen until a year ago.
Regional, change of meaning, or ignorant modern uniform suppliers?

Gym slips are lovely and easy to sew too. They just have 3 box pleats front and back sewn onto a square yoke. Mine wore them in the infants because they found them really comfortable and found them easier for getting changed after PE. Dd2 had them in various colours for out of school too.

If you have seen Prince Caspian (Narnia) what Lucy is wearing for school is a gym slip.

NotCitrus a gym slip doesn't have a waist, except where a belt, or tie (often called a girdle) draws it together.
It specifically has 3 big box pleats front and back, and may have button fastenings at the shoulder, although may just pull over the head.
It is a pinafore, but a specific sort of one.

We used the term pinafore (or pinny) when I was at school. Never heard of tunic for that-I'd think of a tunic as the 70s style long tops that went over trousers.

Here is a photo of Lucy from prince Caspian wearing a gym slip. You can see the construction if the item. Without the belt tie it would just hang loose from the yoke.
costumes.narniaweb.com/pc_pevensiesfiles/39.JPG

EmilyAlice the Chaletians seem to have all missed the fact you had a pocket in your knickers. I have not. What was it for?

Your hanky???

They change from brown and flame to gentian blue in Barbara, and then change the style to dresses in Ruey or thereabouts. Seems like lots of switching - I would have been annoyed if my kids' school switched uniform 3 times while they were there! The triplets at least had all 3 uniforms.

Tampons? Seems logical.

Nice Chalet girls do not need/want tampons !

I think a knicker pocket sounds very sensible, though there is a lot of angsting about pockets (not of the knicker variety) and how the girls will just keep silly things in them in the Ruey dress debates. (This discussion makes me smile - it is so very EBD, such overwrought passion over the most inconsequential details, and you can see how very very keen she is on the new dresses when she describes them.)

"But I don't see what they have to complain about in our gymmers," Nancy insisted. "After all, they are very smartly cut - none of your awful pleats, but fitting tops and flared skirts with short blouses which always look trim."

Then Mlle de Lechenais on one of the proposed new designs they are contemplating:
"It is truly chic in design and yet it is simple and jeune fille and therefore what we need."
"But what about the folk who can't stand blue unrelieved?" Miss Yolland asked. "I know it's a lovely blue and does suit most folk; but there are certain people who would look awful if there weren't a touch of white to relieve it..."

It is gloriously ridiculous. I love it.

Which evidently contradicts the usual box-pleat style of gymslip, though all the earlier illustrations at least do show pleated ones. They seem to be using the term gymslip and tunic interchangeably btw. Otoh, I definitely recall Robin in the early books wearing pinafores and I get the impression that EBD was referring to something quite different here - prettier and daintier and probably pink with small frills, or something suitably befitting Das Engelkind.

I think the pinafores that Robin wore and Joey was also forced to wear when they spent Christmas with the Menschs are like an apron made out of cloth that tied at the back. If you've seen Mary Poppins, Jane wears them.

Has anyone visited or know of anyone who has visited Pertisau, the real-life Austrian village which apparently Briesau was based on?

Considering travelling to Innsbruck next year so I might see if I can combine it with a trip up to the Chalet School villages :)

The pinafores that Robin and Joey were wearing I would imagine are the ones that children wore over the top of clothes to keep them clean. More like pretty aprons.
I used to have a couple for my dds when they were little for things like weddings/party, which looked nicer than bibs but still kept them clean.

Theoretically the knicker pocket was for your hankie, but most people used it to hide bits of the school lunch that they didn't want to eat (dried figs in my sister's case). They were a horrid a sort of flannel that went bobbly and stiff with washing. I had two clean pairs a week (ugh), the same for blouses and dresses, skirt dry cleaned every four weeks and blazer once a term.
We had fantastic brown smocks for art as well.

I think pinafores were mostly round-necked and gym slips square and pleated as described above. We didn't have either; we had pleated skirts. We had felt hats because the common sort of gel in the fifties had backcombed her hair into a beehive to hide her beret.
Tampons? You must be joking. I didn't have those until I was in my twenties.
I am beginning to feel like the Emissary from the Planet Fifties.

I was in Pertisau this summer, you can go the way the Chalet girls went from Innsbruck, so train to Jenbach, then the mountain train to SeeSpitz then walk into Pertisau, and you can talk a boat trip all around the Lake. There are also plenty of places to stay, we got a lovely apartment in Achenkirche for a very reasonable rate. If you take the cable car up to one of the alps there is a very unusual cable car at the top.

I would go back to achensee again, and it's a great area for a holiday whether or not you are into the Chalet School, and pretty undiscovered by the Brits.

Thanks for the info on uniforms, I love things like that. Dd's uniform still includes a boater in summer and a felt hat in winter, the rest of the uniform is normal though, luckily they stopped having to wear hats in the seniors years ago so dd hasn't got much longer to wear them, not that she seems to mind them.

Is real-life Jenbach the town that EBD calls Spartz? I was in the area briefly this summer, and noticed that Jenbach was the place for the mountain train to Achensee, but I didn't have time to go. Loved what I saw of Innsbruck, though.

Thanks for the info mummytime! That picture is gorgeous and eerily like a scene which used to regularly feature in my dreams as a child. I always swore I'd try and find the place when I was old enough to go travelling.

Think I may find it soon

Yes I think Jenbach is Spartz. It is at about 500 m above sea level and Pertisau is at more than 900 m.

The other interesting thing is that EBD had obviously heard about the Hydro electric scheme but didn't know how it worked. The lake isn't damned but there is a huge pipe (which you can't see) which diverts some of the water down towards Jenbach and drives the pump. This is actually the main outlet of the Lake, although the natural drainage is North into Germany. (Well since the last Ice Age.)
Another thing that struck me is just how close that area is to Germany, and it's easier to get to Italy than Switzerland.

phonebox, I'm going to Innsbruck again next July, and this time I'm so determined to actually get to the Achensee area that I've already booked an apartment for me and (grown-up) DDs in Pertisau the week before I have to be in Innsbruck. I can't believe I was so near this summer, actually went through Jenbach on the train. Next year I'll be better organised! Is Pertisau a good place to stay, anyone know? If not, I've got plenty of time to change the booking.

I'm reading Gay From China at the moment. Apart from feeling sympathy for Miss Bubb, this little gem has just jumped out at me. I don't remember ever noticing it before, maybe it was cut from the PB editions - I'm reading the Girls Gone By edition.

Marie had wedded Sir James Russell's servant, Andre Monier, and the two had remained in the service of the doctor and his wife... The Monier babies had been among the earliest playfellows of the Russell children, and Greta, Jacques, Jose and Petit Andre had been brought by their parents to England when the Chalet School and the Sanatorium had been forced to leave Tirol... Jose and Petit Andre had been born in England, so they, at least, could claim British nationality.

Do we ever see the Monier children? I can't remember them appearing in any of the domestic scenes in the Russell home. Do the girls go to the School?

Throughout the book I'm struck by the theme of how times have changed, and a kind of musing on how much children should be 'petted' (the word appears several times) and indulged versus brought into line. The gruff, firm-but-fair Grandma is shown as old-fashioned but good and caring at heart, while Miss Bubb is shown as old-fashioned but motivated only by her own best interests. I wonder if these were some of the things EBD was grappling with in her headteacher existence at the time.

I remember Marie's wedding. I think the school went, and Marie's wedding present was a photo of the school, which she adored because Madge had the same one

I've half a feeling that there may be one line entry about her children being playing in the nursery with Madge's, but it may be that my mind is making it up from the bit in Gay. I don't think there was more than a one liner though.

Heh. EBD's depiction of loyal and ever-loving servants does leave a lot to be desired! I think Biddy is v interesting in relation to this too - I think you can definitely frame her in these terms, both as a child and an adult, at least as much you can view her in the standard Old Girl Returns model.

I similarly vaguely recall a reference to the Monier children playing in the Russell household's nursery, but I could well be only thinking of that one reference in Gay. I'd be astonished if the girls were allowed to go to the School though, which I suppose is only realistic...

I find EBD's fairly outright views on child-rearing (both in terms of school and family) interestingly ambivalent. It makes sense that this reflects issues she was grappling with practically at the time. There is an odd bit on the correct amount of physical petting in one of the earlier books, wrt baby David. She also says something I can't quite make sense of about corporal punishment in Shocks, wrt Emerence. I know we've discussed before on one of these threads that 'instant obedience' is mutually incompatible with 'strong helpful women'. And she seems inconsistent wrt whether children's behaviour is shaped by nature (Mike Maynard?) or nurture (Eustacia, Emerence, Rolf Maynard)... I would definitely never have noticed any of this as a child but I'm fascinated by it as an adult, and esp as a parent I suppose.

I'm reading Ruey and wondering if I might have given up on it previously because I feel a mixture of disillusion and disbelief in characters I usually really like: Madge drags her eldest daughters around the world with her, just because. And Hilda tells Josette she won't be going to St Mildred's as she expects, in front of all her friends, but refuses to expand on it when questioned (alone), simply saying Josette will have to discuss that with Madge at half-term. No amount of amusing earnestness over new frocks which are both chic and jeune fille makes up for this kind of disappointment.