Some Fretwork and the Interminable Christmas Play at the Chalet School

[EmilyAlice]

Now girls, line up and listen because this term is a busy one. Firstly we are combining our hobbies club and the Christmas play, so we will need our fretworkers to get busy on the scenery, some beautiful découpage for decorations, our nimble-fingered needlewomen on costume duty and some scrapbooks for - er...
Now one other thing girls. As you know the Chalet School has moved from the Tyrol, to Guernsey, to Armishire, to some island or other and thence to Switzerland.
This term we have moved again and the first thing I want you to do is to find out where the bloody hell we are....

Apologies, as I am not actually enrolled in the CS, just passing by on a healthy walk, as you do - but I read 'nicht wahr' as No Worries ( in spirit if not in the letter of the translation!).
I'm now at the thought of cries of "no worries!" drifting along the CS corridors!

Oh dear me "no worries". Three order marks for slang. Have you been talking to Emerence Hope?

Ooh, how exciting - I say 'no worries' at least twice a day. I'm going to start saying 'nicht wahr' instead!

Emmy Hope? Yes, she's spiffing, isn't she?
Order Marks? But I'm not even a Chalet School girl! (Though for many years I have dreamt of being multilingual,and doctors and fretwork, not necessarily together, are very appealing.,,)
Disclaimer: I am pretty sure nicht wahr does not actually mean no worries!

I always thought it meant something like "isn't it?"

Hi can I join? My papa has taken a job at the San and my mother's aunt's best friend knows Mrs Trelawney and recommended the school. I've been practising my needlework and bending my knees when hiking so my legs don't get tired. I don't want to stand out as a new girl...

Can I join too?

I have been busy all day cutting monster jigsaws for the sale with Aunty Joey and just stopped for while I have Anna's matchless lemon biscuits and the nectar of her coffee.

I live with Aunty Joey now as both my parents died yesterday in s train smash but I am quite happy as starting at the chalet school tomorrow and Aunty Jo says it's naughty to fret and they were both glad to go even though they were only 30!

Can I ask a question that always intrigued me though? Why didn't the triplets become Millie's.

Guten Abend everyone. What's everyone up to this evening, hobbies club or enjoying a spot of country dancing?

I always assumed that EBD had just run out of steam by the time the triplets were old enough for Millies, and it was easier to keep them in as characters. Maybe after Oberland she decided she didn't really enjoy writing about the older girls - it certainly seems out of her comfort zone! I always thought it would be more fun if the focus passed on to say Felicity towards the end, but I don't suppose she was planning for the future of the series much by that stage.

I always think it a bit of a shame, and slightly surprising given that Millies is right there. I think probably she was much more comfortable writing the main school, for a number of reasons - including the age of the girls but also her familiarity with the sort of school it was/had become - the 'finishing' school is a particularly peculiar one (with an unusually academic culture, probably mostly to justify Miss Wilson's headship but perhaps also because EBD had so little understanding of what a normal finishing school was really like) and I guess (?) finishing schools generally were becoming more and more unusual at the time of writing. I mean, if they were real, I suspect it's very unlikely the triplets would have gone to a finisher, especially since they were already at school in the Alps (ie it wouldnt have offered any benefits related to having a year or two abroad).

I wonder what she would have done if she'd lived to write another, say, 5 or 6 books: the triplets do one last year (=3 more books!) at St M's, or the mantle passes to Jack Lambert / Felicity Maynard? Or would she actually have ended on Prefects anyway?

And! If time had been no object, would creepy Reg still have got poor Len to pledge herself to him when she's no more than a schoolgirl? Or would he have waited for her to at least start uni and maybe even finish it before asking?

I think they both felt pressurised because of the gossip.

If Len hadn't got engaged before she left she'd have had people saying "she doesn't really like him" and Joey accusing her of playing fast and loose.

Not sure it would have lasted college-both Len would have met other men which she hadn't had much opportunity for, but also I suspect with Len not there and Joey's expectations of his behaviour round her, I suspect Reg would have seen it as it was-an infatuation because he wanted to feel accepted and part of the family.

I did know a couple who had the sort of similar "when's it going to happen" type nudges. They got engaged at the time when people were saying "oooh, they've been going out a long time" and were expecting this to happen. And, I think, fairly quickly realised that it wasn't right after that. They didn't break the engagement immediately, but there was fairly quickly a change in their relationship and they drifted apart fairly quickly.
I think they got engaged because the expectations were there, and once they'd started feeling committed the worries came forward.

Yes good points. Honestly why on earth would joey have encouraged len to get engaged at 18 just as she's starting adult life and the adventure of uni and all those other boys! Poor Len.

I bet Margot had a ball at uni never mind the nun stuff.

Infathomabie things in CS, why didn't Carolas mother fly out to see her dd with her husband?

How on earth was Sybil born 7 weeks premature and seems fine when it was around 1936/37?? No health issues at all.

Why do people develop curls after cutting their hair? Isn't that genetic? Ooaoml, the saintly Adrienne and that's a basket case of a book etc.

Particularly given Joey's insistence, at Len's age, that she was never going to get married and wanted to be an old maid! I've read somewhere though that Prefects was finished off by someone else either during EBD's ill-health or after her death. I've never really thought of the engagement as what would "really" have happened

Unfathomable things in CS, why didn't Carola's mother fly out to see her dd with her husband?

I like Carola as a book. But it really doesn't stand up to any adult scrutiny.

1. Why on earth doesn't Carola think of writing to her parents and asking to go to the Chalet school. Surely her cousin/aunt/whoever couldn't have made that decision anyway and a 14yo would know it. That's what her cousin/aunt/whoever would have said. I know she's not meant to think, but that is ridiculous.
2. That bit where Carola is looking at Joey's house and saying "ooh they must have children" is totally . She's stayed in it for not inconsiderate time. No way she wouldn't have recognised it.
3. Why didn't her mum come? Dad is apparently incapable of looking after himself, so no way would the mum on that basis entirely let him go on his own. Surely she'd want to go anyway.
4. The bit where the dad can't believe she's 14yo. Are we to believe they've had no communication at all over that time. (see point 1)
5. At the end when Len's been set on fire (but is apparently relatively unhurt-no signs of bandages etc in the armada version anyway. But Carola is heavily bandaged because she put out the fire with her bare hands. Len would have had far more contact with the fire than Carola.
6. Something that always irritates me in children's books: Teacher says "oh I know we've used cotton wool for years, but it worries me that it's flammable, and I've never worried about it before..." and then that's the year that Grizel throws a match into it.

It's something a lot of children's writers do, EBD isn't usually guilty of it, but as a child you can pick these out and think "okay, that's going to go up in flames at some point" a mile off.

Always that's interesting yes you would think jack at least would interfere and tell Reg to leave well alone until she's much older.

Totally agree with the opinion on carola surely she wrote to her parents and they back? Oh well.

Just re read joey goes The Oberland and had to laugh at how joey pisses on simones parade by dissing her inherited chateau.

Joey in The Oberland is just so obviously jealous it's ridiculous. I think Simone doesn't say anything because it's so obvious rather than not minding.

If my DH is anything to go off not knowing Carola's age is not impossible...DH lives with our DD and still can not recall her age. Maybe it's a good job I don't have a "real family"!!

Taking a small diversion back to the Discworld, I love the idea of retrophrenology - the ability to alter your personality by dint of having a retrophrenologist whack you over the head with a hammer, thus changing the shape of your skull :o

Well the chateau does have more rooms than beloved Plas Gwynn but the stairs are horribly steep and it's a bit of a white elephant really! Cheeky cow. :)

My dh is similar in being a huge lump... sometimes convert but generally irritation and we have only 4 children so definatly not a real family.

I need to be very busy soon and have my hands full

Rue sounds interesting me too.

I love Sybil Russell and think they are all mean about her.

hels yes dh might well get their ages wrong (didn't Princess Di famously get one of the Prince's ages wrong at some point-I think I remember a Giles cartoon on it) but he wouldn't say "oh no she can't possibly be 14yo". He'd be more likely to be the opposite-believe whatever he was told that way.

Then you have that they haven't visited in about 5 years. Poor Cousin Maud (or am I confusing my cousins) she probably thought it would be 6 months max before they came back.

I always wondered how the forms in the school worked. They seemed to move up a form if they were doing well. How on earth did the teachers teach them when pupils were coming and going each term? Especially something like maths, surely some pupils would miss large chunks because they were only in a particular form for a term or two.

Going back to the Len/Reg thing, I think yes it's true that the gossip etc forces Len to move quickly to show her hand, as it were - but EBD contrives all that to have things tied up before she herself runs out of time to finish the series, right? It's odd - the only other girl I can think of who is engaged even before she leaves school is Marie, a generation earlier (and not English). EBD's take on boyfriends is a bit peculiar - Oberland is still fresh in my mind, and she's v approving in that of Peggy Bettany's total innocence and lack of interest (contrasted with precocious Elma, who turns out to be in deeper than she can handle).
Later on, in/after Problem, it's agreed that Joan's interest in boys isn't quite naice, but it's sort of understandable because the working classes grow up younger. Whereas Jo and Jack deliberately keep their family 'young'. It's very bizarre then that their responsible eldest commits herself to a man before she leaves school, and I don't think EBD would have written such a thing if she'd thought she had time enough to see the triplets through college.

As a related asides - were those sort of v unromantic proposals popular generally in real life / fiction? Thinking of Neil Sheppard and Reg in particular - did that casual "so we're engaged then?" thing have a sort of caddish charm?

I think though she thought of Len and Reg being very romantic whereas in Oberland it was a fling and so disapproved of.

However I do agree that it was a finishing the series off. Although I think seeing Len excited about going off to Oxford could have done.

So, I'm about halfway through Oberland (not getting much reading time at the moment). I think this is the first time I've read the uncut version, and I've realised how savage the Armada cuts were. For instance, when Elma and the others are smoking and playing cards, in the Armada version they're just playing cards, and it doesn't even say that it's contract bridge, so the reader is left puzzling over why a game of cards isn't nice, especially on Sunday. And the early discussion of Elma's boyfriend proclivities is cut out, so the plot doesn't make a lot of sense. It's one of the ones that's infinitely better uncut. So far, my big outrage moment was at the start, when Peggy greets Hester with the words, 'My dear! You're fatter than ever!' Did schoolgirls really talk to one another like that? And given that we hear later about how sensitive Mollie Bettany is about her weight, having become 'stout' because of her goitre, you'd have thought Peggy would have just a little more thought for someone else.

I don't think I'd have read the question about whether Elma was engaged as meaning was she sleeping with Stuart, but now that you've mentioned it, Nell, I can see that might have been what was intended.

I wonder whether EBD intended to write more novels set in the finishing branch, but got told not to by her publishers. She'd written Jean of Storms for an older audience, and maybe wanted to have some books for her readers to graduate to, as the audience for girls' novels was getting younger by the 1950s. I'm enjoying it, and I think it's a pity there aren't more.

Can I ask a question that always intrigued me though? Why didn't the triplets become Millie's.

Welcome, Footinmouth. You not only can ask this question, you equally well may . Anyone ever had to fight the urge to say this in real life?

I'm getting towards the end of Oberland and I'm really enjoying it. It's much, much better than I'd remembered, probably because Armada absolutely ruined it with their cuts and substitutions. If you have the Armada edition, it's worth considering asking Father Christmas (too late for St N) to bring you the GGBP version. I'm tending towards it being a publishers' decision not to have her write anything more about the finishing branch, and to do with them marketing the book to an increasingly younger audience. By the time I was reading CS (starting early 70s, not long after EBD closed up her typewriter forever) they were very definitely children's books, marketed for the 8-13 age range, so books about a finishing branch would have looked quite odd, and between audiences. But I agree, I would loved to have read about the triplets as Millies, and it would have been so much better for Len, the put-upon elder sister, to have a year at least free of the responsibilities of being head girl.

I've now read the part where Elma gets her second letter, and realise that's when you thought Peggy meant 'have you slept with him' when she asks if she's engaged. I agree, that's definitely how it reads. What did you think was actually in the letter, Nell? I think it was a highly indecent proposal - asking her to join him for a night/nights of debauchery with not even a hint of marriage.

I always read nicht wahr as is it not but corrected in English to fit the subject of the verb - e.g. 'you like coffee with featherbeds of whipped cream nicht wahr' = 'you like coffee with featherbeds of whipped cream, do you not' and 'it's going to snow today, nicht wahr' = 'it's going to snow today, is it not'.