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.

DFB's Nancy is really Anne.

There was a picture in the Irish Times on Saturday of a visit to Ireland by JF Kennedy in the very early sixties. He was accompanied by his sister wearing a suit in 'very fashionable at the time' lime green.

So it appears Joey was actually quite avant garde and cutting edge

And yet EBD seems rather pointedly anti-fashion, for the most part - all that endless long hair in the 1920s and 1930s, the disapproval of swing, that funny bit in Goes To It where the Middles dress up in red lipstick and headscarves...

I'm feeling really sad at all those (unexceptional, I realise) tales of children in hospital with hardly any visitors.

I'll make you sadder. When my older sister was in hospital in Dublin as a very small girl in the mid sixties, an even smaller girl was brought in from Northern Ireland and her crying mother had to say goodbye to her and go back up North knowing her daughter would be in hospital for months and she wouldn't have the money to travel down to see her (and no such thing as parents' accommodation then). My parents continued to visit her after my sister was discharged and my mum wrote to her mum every week with a progress report.
Eventually her dad managed to get a temporary job in Dublin so that he would be able to visit her.
Times were really hard for some back then, weren't they?

I loved the Middles dressing up in scarves and red lipstick. It was such a change from the normal docile, ladylike chalet girls. I think Biddy was one of them, wasn't she. Goes To It is a lovely book, one of the best of the series.

Goes To It is really dense, too, isn't it? I don't think that's the best word - I mean it's very full, all of it - there's little wasted space, and a lot happens. It's also really well researched I think - my shiny new GGB copy has a bit about how ridiculously accurate and well-written the passage by boat from Guernsey to England is (in terms of the precise route, the journey, the tides, the boat - it makes such perfect sense in a way that's kind of shocking given it was written at the time, and not researched as a historical novel years later), and I thought the same thing about the gardening bit - all that 'how to grow potatoes' detail is definitely stuck in there deliberately, but it works really well, unlike the massive bits of guide book which Biddy gets to recite at length during various trips in Switzerland which are just clunky.

Nb this does not get it off the hook for that mad bit in which Karl Linders drops a message of peace, with astonishing accuracy, instead of a bomb. But then that's exactly EBD - just like in Exile - vividly described attack on Herr Goldman, evocative escape through the mountains, followed by mad hair thing.

And that is indeed v v sad - we are SO lucky, for the most part, these days. :(

I love Goes To It. It is one of my favourites and just reads so true. (is that what I mean??)

Vintage how bloody dad but how lovely of your parents to visit that child and write to her parents.

I often think my dm generation,who were children in WW2, were so damaged. Just think their parents had seen 2 wars, one as idealistic youngsters and the next as middle aged adults with responsibilities.

That must have hardened them and so too their children.

As a 70s kid I knew my parents loved me but it simply wouldnt have crossed my mind to share my problems with any adults. You didn't. You just got on with it like they did.

Stiff upper lip was the way.

Dds school has a full time councellor in residence. How times change.

Still agree I love

Goes to and followed the potato planting instructions in my own garden with good results.

Would karl infers really really have been allowed out on licence just because he said he hated the Enemy???

Can anyone explain to me the thing about Rosalie in Highland Twins?

She seems to be 'pursued' by someone. Then she is picked up by someone 'foreign' who is remarkably close at hand, and carries her inside - turning out to be Evan Evans the gardener. I was quite happy to write this off as a misunderstanding on Rosalie's part, and a major etiquette fail on Evans' - it was only him the whole time, he wasn't actually chasing her, and it's just a kind of idle mini-story which adds atmosphere to the book. But then, pages later, Miss Annersley believes it to be connected to the twins' chart. And that's the final mention I can find! Is there a solution? Or at least a consensus?

Also, in that scene about the potatoes, it's explained that the reason the girls don't know that a potato is a stem is because the CS has never much gone in for botany, preferring to concentrate on chemistry and physics. I suspect this is a deliberate mention - quite probably along the lines of the debates about "girls' education" and whether it ought to be strongly based on masculine notions and skills (which on the whole is the side I think EBD comes down on, in spite of enthusiastic token nods to Dommy Sci) or whether it ought to embrace the differential needs of girls and women. It's followed up in the next chapter by Betty W-D (iirc) decreeing chemistry an unpatriotic science, because they should be learning about soil composition instead.

But then in Highland Twins we get the random detail that the Upper Fifth "remained wedded to botany", and the Lower Fifth have gone for biology which thrills Bill no end because she is a keen biologist. So why has she been mainly teaching other things, then? (And also, are botany and biology not mainly the same thing at this point in time? I had vaguely assumed that this is what Davida Armitage's "botany and hygiene" was about, and v much assumed that botany accounted for the lion's share of that.)

Nope, and it's bloody annoying! Rosalie is fine, stiff upper lip, no further mention necessary, nothing to see here. :o

Did she just forget?! Or get bored? If it wasn't picked up again 30 pages later I could very happily write it off as a misunderstanding and oh-dear-poor-Rosalie, but. Agh!

Poor Rosalie - her 14 minutes of fame fizzling out so unsatisfactorily.

I don't think EDB kept the most basic of plot notes.

Time and again she starts the threFs of a new plot line and it's forgotten by the next chapter.

On the exam question I am gum swizzled they apparently public exams are effectively cancelled that first year in Switzerland as Madge and Jo feel the school needs to settle in first.

So careers on hold girls.

And why why why don't the triplets go to welsen??? That really pisses me off. All the cousins do ( except josette( why wouldn't they?

Are they too clever or is EDB winding up things?

EDB didn't have family tree lines either as Rosalie had a sister in the early Tyrol books but sadly not in the later ones, just step brothers.

A tad annoying.

I wonder if the mention of botany In Gay is a nod to dig for victory in WW2? The girls planting vegs etc.

Does anyone have the transcript for Shocks? It's included on TheLibraryPree's list of books in e-format, but I can't find it amongst any of the attachments that I've been sent. Or failing that, if it's in the transcript library, could someone PM me with the current log-on / password please?

TIA.

Have PM'd you Sign.

Yes thebody I always laugh at how they casually decide the school needs to settle in the first year in Switzerland so they just merrily cancel exams. But then this is completely in line with a lot of odd things EBD says about university entrance requirements which I understand to be bonkers even at time of writing - the bit about Josette's place at the LSE 'not being ready' for her being a prime example.

I think it's quite telling that the triplets don't go to St M's. I think she perhaps couldn't work out what the point of the finishing school was any more - partly because it was a funny kind of finishing school, esp once the school proper is also in Switzerland so it's not even a finishing year abroad any more (as it is for Peggy and Bride).

Maybe, though, if she'd expected to live to write a few more, she would have sent them to St M's, written another book focused mainly at the finishing branch, and had Len's engagement happen then? I still don't like Len and Reg as a pairing, or the way Len is basically taken off the market like that before she gets to go out in the world, but it would be far less creepy if she wasn't actually still a complete schoolgirl at the time. Plus it would be interesting to see how she worked out some of the contradictions she always comes up with when her characters transition from schoolgirl to potential wife - how would it compare with Elma's unsuitable correspondence in Oberland? Peggy says something funny there about how pleased she is that she can't picture herself interested in men for years yet, then laughs as she remembers that her own mother and of course bloody Jo were married by that age, but I'm not clear what point this is making. Different generations? Different girls? Different suitors?
She could probably also have explored Margot's 'calling' a bit more if she'd had another year to play with them - another year in which they wouldn't be prefects or have any exams...

Totally Nell can't stand the thought of poor Len chained to the boring Reg before she had even left school or home.

Any sensible mother would have told Len to go to uni and bloody enjoy herself not get bloody engaged at 18.

Ridiculous nonsense.

Ah but Reg knew what he wanted! Far be it for Len to actually have any personal feelings either way...

And therein, I think, lies the crux of EBD's difficulties here: all girls, and esp all Maynard girls, are 'kept young', and even in some kind of oddly asexual way, EBD can't bring herself to depict a schoolgirl to be properly in love. And especially given that this one was published in 1970, it's jarring to basically see this young-minded schoolgirl betrothed to a much older man when there's no real sense that she feels the same or knows what she's letting herself in for.

But the girls who might be capable of making such big decisions sensibly have a 'worldliness' which EBD clearly disapproves of - your Joan Bakers and Elma Conroys.

With the various married-off Old Girls, EBD gets around it by sending them off-stage, often but not always to university, to grow up properly. But because she wants to cover every aspect of the triplets' (or at least Len's) life in detail, I don't think she would have done that even if she'd had the time.

Just for info, I finally found my 1st edition hardback of Genius, and since it's not in the currently available transcripts, I am attempting to turn it into a transcript, up to chapter 4 so far...keep reminding me to get on with it!

I love all the Armishire books but Goes To It is the best in my view. EBD really captures the war time atmosphere and the scenes with the girls in the garden digging for victory or perched on the roller chatting are really life like. The air raid scene was definitely ruined though by that ridiculous message from the Linders' brother dropping down.
Even Joey and her babies were likable and her ongoing connection to the school still had a realistic basis to it. And Madge still had a strong role and hadn't been totally sidelined. Lovely book.

Oh, I don't know - it's definitely in my top five, but I still find Joey quite hard going in it - she seems to crop up every five seconds shouting "look at me, look at my TRIPLETS! Triplets! Did you ever hear of such a thing?"

I also feel really unsympathetic about her spineless jellyfish moment during the crossing from Guernsey, too.

I really like Gwensi, Daisy and Beth though - they're one of my favourite groups in the series, second only to Corney and Evvy and co, I think. And the book is beautifully atmospheric and evocative - so much lovely detail. It feels - along with Exile which I love, and Three Goes which I think I'm alone in not really liking much - properly planned, redrafted etc, whereas most of the other books don't really. Madge is still brilliant at this point, if not quite as amazingly so as she is in the very earliest ones, and I think the staff are generally good too - later they all get a bit samey-samey, likeable but boring. Robin is a lovely senior too.

I'm sure I read somewhere recently that Madge was actually named after a friend of Elinor's (to whom she dedicated a number of early books) and who she later fell out with - I wonder if that coincided with Madge fading away into the background? I can't find where I read this though - it may even have been on one of our threads...

I forgot to add thanks to Rue for the forthcoming transcript!

Do we have a transcript for Exile / Goes to it? I couldn't see it on the list?
It is funny how bits suddenly come back to you. I was out swimming in the Med this morning (very un Chalet School) and I suddenly remembered how EBD talks about swimming sidestroke. My mother insisted that I wasn't taught to swim that way as she had taken years to un-learn it.