A fête worse than the Chalet School

[EmilyAlice]

Roll up, roll up!
Bid for a mortgage on the doll's house! Pin the tail on the St Bernard! Guess the weight of the handsome doctor! (Or pin the tail on the doctor and guess the weight of the St Bernard). Knit a lime green liberty bodice against the clock!
The Chalet School fête is open.....

After that she writes historical novels and ditches the school stories!

Hello my lambs! I got on the wrong train, wearing a slightly wrong shade of brown-and-flame uniform, and ended up at a completely different school. Fortunately I bumped into the cousin of a mistress and he sorted everything out and now here I am, back where I belong.

I love mornington's alternative Joey and I wish someone would write it. I have been meaning to read that fic for ages - the one where Madge remains the head - I wish the SDL had that clever download feature like AO3 does, then I could easily put it on my phone and get around to reading it.

YY to the historical fiction. Hopefully she'll have got over the Napoleon fetish.

That really was a bit heedless of you, Nell my poppet. And may I ask what's become of the five younger sisters, 13 cousins and 20 random wards you were supposed to be looking after on the journey?

Ooh Nell was there a train crash, and were you rescued by a manly doctor?

I enjoyed the Madge as Head story, loved details like the explanation for the Elise/Therese howler, and the attention given to European characters in the later chapters. It always annoys me that while Gisela, Bette, Simone et al are so central in Tyrol, by Switzerland anyone non English is relegated to helping ML with her French or weeping in a Continental fashion.

Oh, Rosli's got them, mornington my lamb. She's not quite faithful Anna yet, but she's shaping up nicely if I say so myself. We picked up a couple of extra babies in the wreckage too - their parents were alive and well but I thought I'd better take them anyway, just in case.

EElisaveta I was indeed rescued by a charming doctor. And now I'm going to be very busy soon. Or at least, faithful Anna is. I think she's excited - when I told her, she swooned slightly and went off to have some of her special juniper tisane.

I am reading Home Front! Was v excited but am slightly let down by confusion - how old was Joey when as a tiny frail baby she was placed in Madge's 16 year-old arms? Or am I mixing that up with Jacynth's Auntie? And why are there no references to Madge's nurse saying she was friendly like a puppy?

The frail baby was Jacynth I think. (and wasn't Auntie 22??) Wasn't Madge 12 when her parents died, so Joey must have been a small baby then...

Thank you, Hels. Do we know what happened to the Bettanys?

I am not massively gripped by Home Front. Everyone's so serious all the time - it's not very EBD! Where are the bubbly sparkling characters and the loving agony? Or the descriptions of beautiful girls? I was expecting at least some reference to Madge's sherry coloured eyes and round slenderness.

Something tells me cholera...but I may have totally made that up!!

I have just re-read the first chapter of School At. I think the big thing that EBD does is to give lavish backstory whenever she introduces a new character. That's what I'm missing here - I think EBD would have given much more insight into not only Madge and Dick, but Sarah, Nanny, Spider and Miss Harding. All of their opinions of Madge would have been aired, too. As it is, they have precious little personality.

I'm waiting for a maid called Clara who was a horrid cat to make her appearance, too.

Finished! I wasn't just too too madly impressed by that. Madge isn't energetic enough. She is supposed to have planned things for Dick all their lives and she just didn't in this. Also, surely the family set-up is a bit odd? No housekeeper? I thought the guardian should have lived in. If you recall, Eustacia is most definitely not allowed to run her own house at the age of 14 - why would Helen Barber imagine that Madge would be? There ought to have been a head of the household in some way. I think a more realistic option would have been for Madge and Joey to live a slightly neglected childhood in the household of either the guardian or one of the aunts. If it was the guardian, then he would probably have employed a housekeeper to see to the children. Sarah seems to be more of a general housemaid/cook (it's not very clear). A cook-general? The Chalet School abounds with motherless girls being raised by absent fathers and there is always someone whose job seems to be to direct the servants and oversee the children - perhaps an elderly cousin or something. A few other things grate - Madge uses terribly stately language most of the time. No slang at all? And at one point she 'span round'. But my biggest issue is the characterisation. EBD's heroines glow and leap off the page. Madge here was just flat.

Ah, I really enjoyed prequel-prequel - but my memories are now too vague to offer much of a defence. I do think an inconsistency about it being fine for Madge to run a household at 14 but utterly unthinkable for Eustacia to do so at the same age is perfectly in line with EBD though.

I am up to ch.28 on the Margaret Bettany: Headmistress fic. Really enjoying it! Especially loving her version of 'Mrs Maynard fixes Problem Girl' (the Betty Wynne-Davies storyline) which is 100x more convincing than any number of the 'Joey fixes every Problem Girl ever' stories in canon... My only complaint would be that she misses an opportunity to throw feathers around the garden in some sort of weird Sunday-school parable.

I wish there was more CS fic in the world though. :( Woe is me, and my unreasonably niche fic interests.

Cheddar, the explanation of how Madge came to be more-or-less running the household worked for me, and explained why her relationship with Joey was so close. There just wasn't anybody suitable they could live with, and it was wartime which I imagine made good housekeepers hard to find. easily pleased, me But like Nell it's a while now since I read it, so I can't defend it in any detail. There were several characters I wanted to know more about, especially the headmistress who was so memorable I can't even recall her name but I liked her at the time, and I'm hoping there'll be other books, including the one where Joey gets ill which must be soon after Home Front ends, so plenty of time to develop them. Have you read Five Children on the Western Front? I re-read that after Home Front got me into a wartime children's fiction mood. It really is brilliant, I think.

Nell, isn't there enough in the Sally Denny library for you? I've scarcely touched it because I never quite know where to start - I only found Margaret Bettany: Headmistress because it was on the front page for some reason. If your favourite CS fantasy isn't there, you could always write it, you know

Anyone else fancy livening up a gentle Sunday? Does this iteration of the school still have a summerhouse or other suitable venue where we can gather to imbibe the fruits of the staff gin fund fines box? I'll create a distraction by slumping to the ground still, grey and to all appearances dead, and the rest of you can get yourself unnoticed to wherever it is we're gathering. Then once the handsome doctor has departed and Joey has finished singing me back to life, I'll nip out of bed and come and join you. Sounds like a plan?

Isn't that quite a high-risk strategy, mornington? I mean, it'll see us safely into the summerhouse, but there's at least a 50% chance you'll emerge from this escapade engaged. Maybe we should pretend to be on an expedition and find ourselves obliged to take refuge in a handy goatherd's hut, conveniently stocked with black bread, oniony milk and gin. (Was ever a school so full of 'the weather-wise' so frequently caught out by the weather?)

Re: the SDL, there probably is loads of stuff in there that I'd love and haven't yet discovered, to be completely fair. 90% of the time I filter to read slash only, because a lot of the time that's the only real reason I'd be reading fanfic rather than canon. The other 10% I tend to search by authors I like, or by school era (Tyrol/Armishire), or occasionally by character. So I guess there is definitely some good stuff I've not come across yet, but I suspect I have probably read all my potential-favourite stuff...

However, I've still got loads of the Margaret Bettany one to go, so I can't really complain for now!

I enjoyed the Margaret Bettany one....all apart from Joey. Al; the rest kind of made sense, but I just could not cope with that Jo!

Hmm, I don't know... (Bearing in mind I am only halfway through, so disregard this if the worst of it comes later on, but) i think the basis of it is quite well-founded - I do think Joey is very self-centred, even as an adult, so I can buy it. The extremes of it are a stretch for me - I can't quite see her holding a grudge for such a long time in such a dramatic way - but I can totally imagine her fury at the idea of Madge marrying Jem, and I can imagine her almost accidentally spinning out a story that cast her in a better light at Madge's expense, to people who seemed so far away that she couldn't quite imagine them ever meeting Madge.

I think Madge would probably have had strong enough boundaries to empathetically tell her to fuck off, though.

I wasn't hugely convinced by Joey's selfishness in the first instance, because schoolgirl Jo isn't really like that. However, I can see that having made her stand, she'd stick to it long term - and I think her character stays constant throughout the fic.

Oh no! I should have listened to you, Nell, and we should have gone on the expedition. But no, I decided to take the risk and look what's happened. Five doe-eyed mistresses waited with me for the doctor's arrival, and three more escorted him from the school gate to my bedside. He didn't stay long. But disaster! They've taken him to the summerhouse for some light country wine and a thrilling discussion about his latest advances in the fight against the White Man's Plague. Meanwhile Joey is on the 173rd verse of the Red Sarafan and she shows no sign of stopping anytime soon. Rescue me, someone!

Ah, I think salvation may shortly be on the way mornington - I just saw the Abbess storming out in the direction of the summerhouse muttering all sorts under her breath. She didn't look like she was in the mood for a good old chat about the latest thinking on TB, and the dangers of standing in open doorways in winter...

Phew, Joey's away to bath the new girls and play slidey mats with the babies and the Abbess has placed the summerhouse out of bounds to all mistresses. Matey's been in with special milk, but I managed to slip it in the plant pots on the balcony while her back was turned so that I don't spend the next three days semi-comatose - I'm sure the gentians will recover though they're looking a bit droopy just now. Let's make a dash for it while the going's good. Last one to the summerhouse has to darn all Jem's socks.

Oops, I drank the special milk.

"A draught?" asked Herr Anserl in a stentorious whisper. Has anyone ever seen the word "stentorious" used anywhere else?

Arf at the tranquillised gentians - can't you just imagine that in one of the lovely descriptions of dormitory curtains, "light cretonnes spattered with dosed daffodils"?
Or one of those discussions about the uniform colours? "It's gentian blue," Mary-Lou informed Miss Ferrars airily in her clarion tones. "What's gentian?" one of the boring and plodding minor characters was heard to whisper to her partner. Unfortunately for her, The Head Of The Middles' hearing was better than her own volume control would suggest. Turning a knowing smile on the hapless new girl, she spoke clear German in a good English accent: "Oh, you know, just like those droopy flowers in the fourth form's flowerbed - the ones that look like Uncle Jack - sorry, I mean Dr Maynard of course - has been at them with his special milk."

Anyway. I think Len lost the summerhouse race and she's now sulking over Dr Russell's socks. I think she said something about having promised only to darn Reg's socks, and why was Aunty Madge slacking about Uncle Jem's?

Too I just had to google stentorious but it does sound super apt for Vater Bar and also I quite like it and shall endeavour to use it as often and as widely as possible. Given I am not often or widely discussing Vater Bar, this won't be as easy as it could be, but I'll give it a good shot. I suspect EBD often deliberately used obscure words in an attempt to responsibly educate her readers

I must have had too much special milk. It's stentorian, not stentorious! Oops. As you were...although I've still never heard it anywhere else.

Given I am not often or widely discussing Vater Bar, this won't be as easy as it could be, but I'll give it a good shot.

OK, that's this week's challenge then, girls. One point for every time you use 'stentorian' in a conversation, and a bonus three for mentioning Vater Bar. Points to be handed in on Friday, and you're on your honour to be truthful.