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!

It is indeed!

Also, I take it back about Mlle not having character development. She's Felicity Maynard's godmother, what with that and the coffee and the French Alpine Club, how could she ask for anything more?

Poor woman I bet she regretted offering to make coffee that first time.

There is still quite a bit if intermarriage in small communities and a dare say it was far more common back 60/ 70 years ago.
Have to be carefully in my village what you say about anyone as you may be talking to their cousin or sister in law. Must have been similar on the platz.

thereis I did a proper lol at that. She should have been all, 'mais non mes petites, I can only make the so-English tea with my French fingers. What is that you say cherie? There is none in the whole of the Tirol? Eh bien!'

Someone should count up how many times her name is mentioned in connection with coffee vs not .

In Changes she diversifies into lemonade - lemonade she is "famous for making" apparently!

The poor woman is wasted teaching languages, isn't she?

UniS I once lived in a village where the local school had been left to the area on the condition they married within the 3 local villages- so the story went, can't see how it would be enforced!

It was just over the valley from the Chalet School in Armishire oddly enough! Maybe that's why the village schools were looked down on

Maybe she is after Frau Meiders job? Maybe she yearns for a school year full of sulphur cakes and garlic-flavoured apple pie? Maybe she cries herself to sleep every night over the thinnest potato parings known to man?

And she can't change, mais non, because she is French and therefore has to teach French for the rest of her life! What a waste of French Fingers (TM)! And that old boot of a hausfrau has her life.

Oh, write it Lonny! We could surely work it into the Christmas play somehow too.

(I properly snorted at "that old boot of a hausfrau has her life".)

Eating I am afraid I am completely confused by this bequest! Who had to marry within the three villages - everyone who ever went to the local school? Why was the local school considered a reward worthy of such a commitment?

Vaguely related to oversized commitments: have finished Changes and am having a bit of thinking time before moving on to the Swiss ones. I think a number of other people are roughly at this point too, which is handy. Pam Slater (another favourite of mine) - my memories, before this re-read, is that she is rather condemned for being a bit anti-CS. Actually, Ive found her more sympathetically portrayed than Id remembered. Thoughts?

There's an interesting line in Lavender where she says she was 'sat on' at school for showing too much 'bounce' when she got good marks in maths and basically sees it as a commendable strategy (not unusual for the time, I'm sure, but it's roundly disagreed with in Lavender's case by Nell and Hilary). There's an equally interesting line in Changes saying that earlier in her career she'd worked hard to overcome her natural dislike of girls who can't be arsed with maths, but in recent years she's stopped trying so hard. I think she's a deliberately imperfect 'not quite the CS' character with a convincing background for it, but I don't think she's actually held up as a bad example, even when she decides to leave the school to advance her own career.

I'd put her in the same grey area as Grizel and Joan Baker in that sense - she's never really a true Chaletian but she's also not a true baddy because of it. I'd say these three are somewhat separate from eg Sybil who I do think EBD really seems to have it in for.

And Ivy Norman, too: not perfect but nonetheless has some outstanding features and a clear and sympathetic motivation. Is never 'reformed' to be any good with older girls but still generally shown as being a good teacher because she is so good with the younger girls. Apart from Simone, I think she's the only teacher we ever see who definitely needs the money - are there any others?

I'm also a bit confused by the hierarchy among the KG/junior mistresses: Ivy Norman is at some earlier point senior (if only by longevity of tenure) to Dollie Edwards. But it's the latter's absence in Gay that contributes to a lack of potential internal candidates for pro tem headship. When the KG sets up house separately at St Agnes (later Glendower House) in Carnbach, the head of it is initially Miss Alton - and Miss Edwards is also based there. But when it becomes the English branch/all of the under-twelves, Miss Edwards is the Head! Conceivably Miss Alton retains a 'Head of KG' role (or leaves? I should check the encyclopaedia) but isn't it a bit odd how Miss Edwards skips up and down between being considered senior staff and just being some random underling?

Being good at maths, I always rather liked Miss Slater.

The girls generally like her until after she's left when I think they complain that she favours those who are good at maths. Being a fairly obvious generalisation that she liked Phil Craven over OOAOML!

But I actually don't think we even see that happening (can anyone correct me here?) - the only occasion I can think of where she's in the same scene as Phil Craven, she's telling her off, and although I can happily believe she favours the more mathematically-able students I'm not certain we actually see that either! I think we tend to see her just being Con-like snappy with everyone. And I always quite like the reference to her fucking up her reports one year and having to crawl round the other mistresses getting them to rewrite theirs... She's unapologetically un-Chaletian, but not a total outcast for it either.

New EBDism: "I teach the Thirds. They're a jolly crowd - mostly ten-year-olds. As you've heard, we don't really take Juniors though it sounds rather as if we might begin next year. There's a big Junior school at Carnbach, of course. Most p
eople, you see, don't fancy sending their girls abroad earlier than about thirteen or fourteen."
So how is it that Sharlie Andrews has a class of ten year olds?

Thank you for the matron explanations but I fear Its the booby prize my lambs as still rather confusing in a lovely EBD way.

But Slater didn't like Margot( who does) and wasn't it Slater who wasn't a guide either? Obviously not on.

Didn't Rosalind Yolland have to return to teach as her family had money losses?

I liked Ivy Normans character but was a bit surprised she still was anti Joyce years after the native incident.
Mind you Joey always bloody drags up Sybil's apparent incident in the kitchen at the drop of a hat.

It wasn't the 10 year olds fault the 5 year old was scalded.

Coming Nell, just wanted to say that ha ha.

Also, is anyone else totally confused by ages/forms? Third Form seems to vary from about 9 to 13, all the divisions of the Fourth seem to cover 12-15, and as for Inter V, well!

The ages seem to vary at different points in the series. Isn't 13 year-old Clem in the third, and it's inconceivable that 10 year-old (or 11 by then?) OOAOML should be able to join her without working herself into brain fever? And yet a few years later Margot is being derided for not having worked hard enough to join her sisters in Inter V at the age of 12.

Perhaps this was partly because the triplets had to go into the fourth absurdly young because of the move to Switzerland? I haven't read the Swiss books in ages - what does EBD do next? Do the triplets spend forever in various fifth forms, or do they go swiftly to the sixth and stay there?

I think that Inter V basically comes into being to deal with the triplets almost rushing into the Sixth Form at age 12 or whatever, yeah. I have a vague feeling that they also spend a year longer than necessary in the Sixth - can anyone confirm/correct this? I recall it because it struck me as odd that they didn't spend a year at St M's - suppose proof of some kind that EBD/publishers definitely didn't want another story set at the finisher.

I think it begins with them having to be cleverer for their age in order to get them to Switzerland, but presumably then she gets a bit addicted to having them all stupidly advanced. Interestingly this clever-for-their-age thing, in Changes, seems at least partly attributed to the convent school in Canada - not sure what this is supposed to say about the CS in comparison!

I'm always oddly charmed by the comments which compare exact age, in months, to the exact average age of the form! Especially when they're oddly used to illustrate something they don't really seem to show, along the lines of 'Bride was unusually clever and so at eleven years and three months had already earned her remove to the Third, in which the average age was eleven years and six months' or something.

I snorted at the Sharlie EBDism, although I suppose you can make sense of it if you add "except for the feckless parents who spawned this lot" to the end of it.

Agreed thebody about all the grudge-bearing. Not very christian is it?!

Slater doesn't like Margot or Biddy, and she's not mad keen on Joey either. Or Mary-Lou. All of these examples of independent thinking surely outweigh any sins committed against the Guides!
I really do think she's an approved-of character after all: she gets her headship in the end, doesn't she? I can't imagine she would have done by that point in the series without EBD's personal seal of approval.

I only had the Armada, so maybe more was said in the hb, but I always took Ivy Normans comment about Joyce as a slight joke. She says something like "How's my arch nemesis Joyce getting on?"
That could actually be said in a sort of affectionate way. Certainly I had teachers that would have greeting old pupils with similar things, which we all took to be that way.

It's the other teacher's reaction of looking round to check Gillian hasn't heard that makes it sound as though it's nasty. If Gillian had been there and said somethng along the lines of "Oh that was such a turning point for her, she says how grateful she was that you didn't let her get away with it" or laughingly replied "Oh she'll be fleeing the area now you've arrived!" it would make it quite different.

Yeah, the other teacher's reaction suggests the tone she's speaking in is hardly affectionate. I also found it a bit odd that that seemed to be her abiding memory of her many years' work at the school - but I suppose, practically, it is her five minutes of fame, so for series continuity etc I can see why that's the comment.

I skipped Joey Goes cos I can't bear it. Reading Barbara instead: all the joys of a long list of Matey's One Correct Way Of Doing Everything, plus the brilliant moment when Rosalie warns ML that she might turn into one of those domineering women nobody likes if she's not careful. That remark is funny in its own context, but all the more so for wondering who else might be such a woman? Joey, perhaps? Matey? They both fit the bill beautifully...

Ooh, I've gone straight to Barbara too. I have just come across the description of a minor character as "a fat podge of a girl" so looks like the sizeism is beginning .

I had a bath this morning, and when I got out, I dried myself before getting onto the bathmat, then wiped round the bath. I then started Barbara, and realised I have whole chunks of my life where I am complying with The One And Only Matey Way. I turn my bed (and those if DCs) down every morning, take my wash things to the Splashery bathroom in a wash bag which is then returned to a specific place, and sleep with the window open, even if just a crack in winter. My life is ruled by a fictional domestic tyrant of indeterminate surname.

Barbara is one of the first CS books I ever read. I was so persuaded by its lyrical accounts of cold baths that I tried one myself. Never again!

Dd2 started calling me "Mamma" a couple of weeks ago. Have just enquired why (with a little hint it might be a bit babyish for a 11yo). Apparently it's fine because Len, Con and Margot do. Help! Am I turning into Joey?

My life is ruled by a fictional domestic tyrant of indeterminate surname.

I've said this before I'm sure, but I've done cold morning baths on and off throughout my life (thank you CS) and I've never yet managed to experience it as 'stinging' in the way that sounds so appealing in the books. Perhaps I'm unwittingly taking them chill-off, London tap water not quite being equal to alpine mountain springs or whatever.

Yes, I noted the "fat podge of a girl" too. But mostly, I don't understand why Ruth Derwent is suddenly Senior Mistress? She's only been there a year and she's not even an Old Girl. Why not Biddy, or Mlle? Verily, why not Nancy Wilmot, whose arrival is heralded in a rather bizarre and disproportionate way? (Also, much retrospective moaning about poor Pam Slater, but I think mainly as a foil to Nancy's general brilliance.)

Anyone else spot Josephine and Margot next to each other in Baby Names?
Anyway, have been having a lovely wallow as I got my Old Girls' newsletter last night. Full of reminiscences right back to the founding of the school in the 1890s and how they chose the brown and pink uniform (it had morphed via apricot to orangey by the time I got there). One bit that brought me up short was someone who remembered the smell of linseed oil in the sports equipment store. Had a very Proustian moment recalling my terror of lacrosse (but not as Proustian as my OH when he actually got hit on the head by a Madeleine thrown from the Tour de France cavalcade).
It is really interesting to read the tone of the writing from the girls of the 20s, 30s and 40s. Some of it is so EBD like.