International Incident at the Chalet School

[RueDeWakening]

Hear ye, hear ye! Gather ye hence, all angels (be-costumed with slightly tacky silver halos and suchlike) with your lark-like notes and prepare to dazzle us all with your charm.

No, not you Joan. Shop bought cake and cheap looks for you, my dear. See Matron for some milk on your way out.

Yes Mlle Chablis is engaged to Dr Smirnoff and Fraulein Schnapps is to marry dear Dr Saumur.
We are hoping for a future pupil named Chardonnay.

EmilyAlice

To b fair to the girls-2 minutes of cheering Joey probably meant 2 minutes less of the first lesson. AT least I'm sure that would have been the way we thought at school If we'd been allowed to cheer like that we could have gone on some time with that in mind.
although the best we could usually manage was such bad hymn singing that the music master refused to let us go until we'd sung the hymn properly

Oh, I was thinking of the mistresses due to marry Firefighter Absolut and Station Officer Strongbow, Emily!

I've just finished the Müller Twins fill-in. I very much enjoyed it and would totally recommend - it's well written, nice and pacey and EBDish. But. BUT. I'm actually slightly surprised GGB OK'd it. I thought they were supposed to be very constrained by 'not too much can happen, because if Big Things happen, the books would have been constantly referring back to it' thing, and to me the central characters violate this idea in a pretty big way.
The twins' appearance is explained by a throwaway line in Exile where the staff are commenting on the German girls they can't expect to bring with the school to England - Alixe, the Linders, and these mysteriously never-mentioned Müller twins. Nice idea. But the fill-in is set between Jo Returns and New and of course the twins don't get a mention at all in New. Later in the series, that would be totally normal - as per recent comments on this thread about Prunella - but I don't think it would have happened at that point. Also, there's a big thing about them being "the school's first twins" and I think it's unimaginable that they wouldn't therefore have been recalled as such in every bloody subsequent book at least on particular occasions, such as the arrival of the Highland Twins, Dawbarns, possibly the various births of Maynard twins etc.
I really have to emphasise that I don't particularly think this detracts from it being a v enjoyable read - but it did surprise me, for all I've read about the difficulties of creating GGB fill-ins for that reason.

Probably more subjective: I actually also found the title characters rather unengaging because they feel so caricatured as 'good twin' and 'bad twin', pre-reformation. I can't exactly call it un-EBDish because there are a number of occasions of EBD herself doing precisely that (in spite of having Matey criticise Jo's first draft for it!) - Eustacia is the obvious example that springs to mind, or indeed Len. But on those occasions, I always feel that EBD is being somehow un-EBDish, and I wish she wouldn't, and I do feel similarly about this.

It is a great book, though. Would recommend. And it is so, so nice to abandon Feud to return to late Tyrol... For me, the very best period is the run of books from And Jo to Gay from China, so smack-bang in the middle of those is a very nice place to revisit. :)

Oh - it also has Madge coming back to teach for a couple of weeks, which is full of win!

Also some repeated particular concern for the Robin and Jo, following Ted Humphries' death. Why why why Jo? It irritated me in a very-authentic-EBD kind of way!

I wonder if EBD had just kept the series in Amishire after the War, would the standard have been upheld for longer? It was really around then that they began to become very 'typical school story' and that Jo became this smug, boastful mum of many.

I don't know that it would have... For me, the decline is evident by the time of Mystery, Tom, Rosalie which are all Armishire (and contrary to popular belief, only Rosalie was published out of sequence). But then I can't place what the exact nature of that decline is, so it's not an especially robust line of argument!

I always thought Tom was written in the 1950s but slotted into the War years? I haven't read Mystery or Rosalie, but I thought Tom was pretty weak.

I hate Tom because I can't get over her vile mysogynistic father lurking in the background and want to punch him.

I so agree with joeys reinvention as the champion butter in of the school. She wasn't. She didn't want to be a prefect let alone head girl and while head girl was fairly mean to Joyce and Simone.

I think those three are collectively weaker than the 'proper' Armishire books, but better than most of the island ones. I'm quite fond of Rosalie but it doesn't compare with the earlier books.
Tom was first published as a proper book in the 1950s, but originally published (in two parts) in Chalet annuals - either 47/48 or 48/49, I think. Definitely in correct chronological order, anyway (before Three Go). So it must have been written at the right time. Rosalie was first published 'out of sync' (after Three Go) though I suppose that's not proof it was written out of sync.

I wonder if it might have worked better if she hadn't thrown all the LR characters in? Between them and the various Bettanys, that rather narrowed the field. Plus I think the absence of Tirol-style internationalism is a loss, if perhaps inevitable. I wonder how the series might have panned out if she'd never had to leave Austria?

I'm trying to think of when Joey butted in as a school girl.
I'm guessing you could count the times she rushes off to rescue someone. But if you don't count that, the only time I can think is the Juliet episode, when she goes and shouts at the ex-boyfriend. And that wasn't butting in because she wanted to help for Juliet-it was because she was angry.

There are a few times the prefects (to my mind) butt in. When a middle's been told off by Miss A/any other teachers around and then the prefects summon them to be told off and often punished by them too, strikes me as a perfect example of butting in. What a way to really get the middles resentful! But EBD obviously thought that was the sign of a good prefect system as she used it quite a bit.

I wonder if that kind of officious butting-in increases as the series goes on? It's very much OOAO's defining characteristic (and, in fairness, she's usually quite judicious about it - and often specifically instructed to 'butt in'). It's also greatly bigged-up during the post-OOAO years, mainly through those stupid comments about Len inheriting the mantle.

But Jo doesn't really do it (perhaps a bit with Joyce?). I definitely don't recall Gisela or Grizel doing it. Mary Burnett calls that odd school meeting for slagging off Eustacia, or something - but in fairness, the staff aren't doing much at all about those issues (which is part of why it's such a weird book). I can't think of Louise Redfield or Beth Chester doing it. Peggy and Bride (not just as individuals, but the associated groups of prefects) do it quite a bit, I think.

I bet Marilyn Evans, otoh, never decided to interfere after justice (tempered with mercy, natch) had been meted out by a mistress!

She only butts in with Joyce when Gillian begs her to-and even then she's pretty ungracious about it.

What in later years "butting in" is mentioned as "you saw what needed to be done and did it". Can't remember the actual quote or what book, bit I'm sure that sort of sentiment is said to Jo at some point, I think by a member of staff comparing either ML or Len to her.

I don't know about being a "butter in" (certainly goes with featherbeds of whipped cream) but EBD certainly painted Joey as a character who noticed someone was upset and could get that person to open up and say why. Like how she was with Simone in the very beginning when Simone was miserable. Then later on when she noticed Juliet was miserable and so Joey wrangled it that they were on the train together. Also she did a similar thing with Gillian - noticed Gillian was upset and found out why.

Definatly butting in becomes a theme. When joeys at school she thinks new girls should find their own feet and doesn't even like doing sheepdog.

I love CS but surely even EDB gets heartily sick of writing things like yet again Joey was to see where everyone else had failed she was sucessful or similar bollocks as when Sharlie has the flu. She falls asleep to joeys golden voice singing song after song! shoots self in head!

So why is it the triplets have to tip toe around the place so as not to wake babies who apparently sleep through a thunderstorm And an air raid rolled into one at 6 weeks.

Make your mind up!

Can't imagine anything worse than someone singing to you when your head is pounding and you just want to go to sleep. I imagine Sharlie faked sleep in the hopes she'd go away.

exactly you would fake death.

Butters in and featherbeds of whipped cream.

With Gillian, isn't it Gillian herself who requests Jo as a walk partner so she can talk about Joyce? I may be remembering that wrong.

It's interesting how 'doing sheepdog' evolves: Jo is reluctant; Bride (in Lavender ) tells Madge she'll show Lavender the ropes but she can't just 'be friends' because friendship doesn't work like that; Len, otoh, almost never seems to question it - and most of her friends (Prunella, Ted, Ros) are those she's formerly sheepdogged.

Alas, DeWee, bad singing never worked for us to miss lessons. I remember once, apparently we hadn't been singing properly in Assembly (whatever that means...) and so we had to come back at break and sing "I could sing of your love forever" over and over and over again... that song was already repetitive enough, without having to sing it about five times in a row...

Last night, I helped DM locate, order and pay for a HB of Jo to the Rescue as her Christmas present to me! It's now the only book I've never read, and it'll be my first HB (I have two GGB, but all the rest are PBs) so I'm excited for Christmas now even though I don't have a part in the Christmas play

I don't think any of us have a part in the Christmas play anymore .

Miss Annersley has put another notice on the board:

"Please note that the nativity play has been cancelled. Instead, the staff -apart from Matron who will be on crutches until mid-January - will give a short carol service on 18th December, before the school breaks up for Christmas."

I wonder why she's cancelled the play. Did something happen?

Well Lens always obliging bless her.

She would go sheepdog if asked. And be boringly consciencous.

Oh like rescue Marie teases jack about his hair thinning. I like Marie she's a good sport.

No play! Could they do a mrs Jarleys for us instead.? I will need 2 hankies for that.

I think 'sheep' is actually a good word to describe Len. EBD just got it so wrong with her. She has none of Jo's scatterbrained charm (in the earlier books before she became mother of the century obv) or Mary Lou's force of personality. She is the kind of girl who would just have blended into the background in school - neither particularly popular or unpopular, and the sort who would have made a good stationery prefect !

I shall come to the carol service in my angel costume. After I made it so carefully I must get some wear out of it. and the halo has stuck to my curls as I didn't wait for it to dry before trying it on

Opens mouth and songs Random German carol with golden voice full of tears.

DeWee Miss Annersley's looking for you... I think I heard her say it wasn't appropriate to turn up to prayers wearing a halo. :(

I wonder how the later books would have panned out, if she'd decided on Margot for HG and Len as Second Prefect? Obviously Leader need never have happened (Jack would never have existed?); Margot's near-murder of Betty Landon could have been given a weightier treatment (or not even happened? Margot's semi-reformation in Theodora could have stuck). I do think Margot is a fairly problematic Games Prefect, but a lot of that derives from her never being allowed to outgrow her original badness and I think at least some of that is about keeping her from upstaging Len - she is much more charismatic, a natural leader, decisive etc.

I think Len is very likeable and responsible and hard-working, but those are Second Prefect qualities, aren't they? Frieda Mensch, Dickie Christy, Rosalie Dene. (Is Rosalie Second Pree, or have I made that up? She certainly should have been!)