Autumn Term at the Chalet School

[Vintagejazz]

Just starting a new thread here as I can't spot a new one.

So my lambs feel free to keep spreading the hanes, but watch the slang!

Like every other school the world over, they get the builders in over the summer holidays and don't tell anyone about it :o

Poor old Herr Braun weaved a 6ft willow fence all around the chalets over the summer holiday only for them to be swept away in the flood. Poor Herr Braun. That must've been soul destroying.

Sorry, this may have been brought up before (even by me ) - but Annis' aunt and her 'cruel letter'. Admittedly, the PS ('no you can't go and see those horrible friends of yours') is mean, but apart from that I don't really see the problem: actually I think she gives some very good financial advice that probably a lot of girls weren't fortunate enough to receive, even if they ended up needing it.

Annis' aunt, and Jacynth's, make for an interesting comparison: both inherit responsibility for their niece, though at different ages; Jacynth's aunt works herself into an early grave providing for Jacynth, and it's accepted that Jacynth will have to provide for herself in adulthood, even before her aunt dies; Annis' aunt claims to have "made sacrifices" to provide for Annis (I believe her), and calculates that Annis' inheritance will put her through uni but thereafter she will have to fend for herself financially. Jacynth's aunt sounds almost saint-like, but is it really so awful to fall short of this? Is it only awful in CS-world where everyone has a private income (usually invested according to renowned finance expert Dr Jem's advice) and most teachers can spend the best part of a year lounging around at their parents' while the school decides whether and where to reopen?

The really nasty thing about Annis' aunt is where you learn she's actually cyphering off Annis' inheritance for her own funds is at the end.

I think really it's the whole tone of the letter is nasty though. There's no "this is really hard to tell you, I love you so much but there isn't enough money". There's no way of teling from the little we know of her aunt at that point whether she means to be cruel or just isn't the best at giving bad news. So the letter in itself isn't necessarily terrible.

But it's very hard and factual-and we learn later that the facts aren't even true. If I remember rightly, then Annis' aunt only wants her to go through uni as then she (the aunt) stays in control of Annis' money for longer and so can gain more of it.

I must download The Island and read it next. I really hate leaving Amishire behind though, as I think from then on the books start to lose their uniqueness and become much more like typical school stories.
Also, I think it's around now that Madge takes a huge step back from the school which also changes things.

Ahhhh. Yes, there is that, DeWee.

I think by the end I am so overcome by my Penny Rest envy (it is Penny Rest where Jo bumps into the aunt, isn't it?) that I stop paying any attention to the story proper...

Vintage I know just what you mean, I feel exactly that way too. Island is the pick of the island books, I think. And I think Carola is also a strong one, and Shocks. They don't compare with Tyrol or Armishire, but they're not too bad. Wrong and Bride I'm less enamoured with.

Annis aunt is actually stealing her allowance from her, and there's an annuity or something which she is topping up from Annis's funds iirc. She's a bit of a stealy stealerson all round... definitely not a Chalet girl.

Although I will admit to a bit of at EBD's evident horror of 'trailing round hotels' - sounds like bliss!

Yeah but she only cares about holidays and getting a good screw.

One of the Tirol fill-in books mentions building work on the chalet, to make it bigger. I can't remember which one though.

grown up Elisaveta is fab

Oh joy and jubilation. A Chalet School Headmistress arrived today! I can abandon Peggy and slip back into Armishire again now. (Am one chapter in: so far, is v v good.)

I would have been such a better lady-in-waiting than that Jo

Nell
Tried to find that on GGB but it's not appearing. Is it just out?

No, it's out of print. I've wanted it for a while but not seen it available for less than £25 (and often a whole lot more than that) - got very lucky on ebay this week.

The other two out-of-print fill-ins I've been looking out for (Juliet and Gillian) are both on ebay atm too, ending tomorrow, and I really, really shouldn't bid for either. They're proving hard to resist though...

True Lonny - you, Margia and Evvy were all much more my age too, I'm not sure why I ended up with Jo. Probably a sense of obligation after the whole saving from crazy cousin up a mountain thing. Whatever happened to you in later life, anyway? Did we ever find out your later life adventures?

Can we really think of many who would have been worse than Joey?
Tactless
Doesn't like playing second fiddle
Doesn't like dressing up
Untidy
Inclined to talk to all and sundry

How long before she caused an international incident?

How long before she caused an international incident?

Omg, someone needs to write that. It manages that unusual combination of highly plausible and completely hilarious.

My Belsornian subjects would put up with Joey's scene stealing and lack if diplomacy out of gratitude for saving their Little Lady. It's not rudeness, it's just Joey, they would laugh through gritted teeth The Miranians, on the other hand, are simple, rural types and she would quite probably wind up garrotted soon after my marriage

Have finished Headmistress. It is excellent - fits v well in canon but still manages to be v sympathetic to both Sybil and Grizel, hurrah. Plus remarkably little Joey, hurrah again (and when she does appear, she's perfectly likeable - perhaps precisely because she's not all over the place being the centre of everyone's world). It made me cry, twice.

Alas Veta my love, I didn't marry a doctor or pop out millions of future Chaletians...

Actually I dont know what happened to me. I think I am one of the many lost touch with during the war whom Joey tends to fret about...

This is going some even for EBD - she contradicts herself within a couple of paragraphs, unless I'm misreading it?

“Now, IIIb, you go with Miss Burnett and Miss Moore, and your prefects are Primrose Trevoase and Jeanne Daudet. Your ramble is up to the toboggan path and down by the stream through the pinewoods.”

“And our escorts?” demanded a small voice.

“Miss Carey and Miss Lawrence, and Maria Zinkel and Con for prefects.”

Excerpt From: Barlow, Helen. “CHALLENGE"

Do we know why Joey never went to be lady-in-waiting? I seem to remember a line in And Jo where someone says that if Robin turns out to be seriously ill Joey wouldn't leave her for the planned lady-in-waiting-ship and 'Veta wouldn't ask it'. But I don't remember anything being said after that - Jo seems to settle into her role as Best Head Girl Ever and the planned year in Belsornia fades quietly into the background. Or have I simply forgotten?

I'm reading Wanted, An English Girl at the moment, and very struck by the portrayal of Germans as all things bad. It was published in 1916 which I know was when anti-German feeling in the UK was at its height, but where EBD is so careful to draw the distinction between Nazis and Germans during WW2, Dorothea Moore invokes just about every anti-German stereotype possible. It's quite a griping tale, though, and if you park any concerns about stereotyping and simply read it as Ruritanian fantasy on the one hand and a social history of the construction of The Enemy during WW1 on the other, it's both a good story and an interesting portrait of its time. Anyone read it? I wonder if Dorothea Moore and EBD would have known each other - going by what they wrote they had rather different outlooks on life and views of girlhood.

I am sure somewhere it says that Joey can't go to Veta as there is too much for her to do at Die Rosen with all the babies and whichever of Dick's are about to be left.
I have noticed that EBDism about the escorts....it's the one that really bugs me every time I read it!!!

Yeah, it's in New House: "Elisaveta can get any number of girls to maid-of-honour her; but Madge has only me."
It's a shame in some ways - I think EBD could have got quite an interesting story out of Jo spending some time at the court of Belsornia, if only for a year or so before returning (presumably she could have married Veta off, or had Madge 'need' Jo back at that point) - but I think the princess thing was quite fashionable in girls' own at the time of Princess? Maybe that had passed by the time of New House?

That sounds interesting mornington - as fantasy and as history. I'm sure I've read more than once that Dorita Fairlie Bruce is v loudly patriotic in her wartime books and it's rather put me off trying any of hers, in spite of recognising it as a normal and understandable sentiment of its time. (These different outlooks don't seem to have impeded EBD and DFB dedicating books to each other...)

Re: the amusing EBDism in Challenge - who is the Miss Carey mentioned? Not the same Miss Carey who leaves the school between Island and Peggy (or possibly between Three Go and Island)?

Just saw this on twitter- very funny! storify.com/chaletfan/lines-you-d-never-see-in-a-chalet-school-book-1