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....

Oooh. I would love to go in summer, but now I want to go in winter too and skate on the lake! Or attend the carnival and drink Schnapps.

Skate on the lake, Cheddar?

There's an absolutely bonkers bit in one book, where one of the mistresses looks along the rows (I think just before a play or something) and considers that not many schools have such a good looking staff.

For someone who wants people to think it doesn't matter if they're pretty or not, she makes a huge song and dance about it. Me thinks the lady doth protest too much.

I've just gone right off Peggy Bettany. Reading Coming of Age, which is not one of the better Swiss ones, and came across the following quote (Peggy to Miss Bubb): "My sister Bride is hoping to teach, but I'm just an old-fashioned girl with domestic tastes!" She laughed gaily...

Gag. I'm firmly with Miss Bubb in not being massively impressed with Peggy Dearest.

There could be an interesting piece of analysis in looking for those sorts of remarks and incidents through the series in relation to wider shifts in social attitudes. I forget roughly when Coming of Age was written, but I think it's from the "get back in the kitchen, woman" era, isn't it? Whereas at other times EBD has been extolling the variety of careers possible to girls in a relatively radical fashion.

Of course, it'd be entirely typical of EBD to hold opposing views within a single book. But she also had an eye for a fad, I think, and I wouldn't be surprised if she followed general views around women's roles fairly faithfully.

I don't like Peggy, either. She has nothing to commend her, except for a determined chin or somesuch - I don't think she's really the leader she's made out to be, and she doesn't really have much character either. Marriage almost straight out of school makes sense for her, whereas it doesn't make sense for Bride (or Josette, or Sybil ).

I would quite like to imagine Miss Bubb as having some sort of philosophical/political objections to "the CS way". I think a touch of strident feminism would go some way to redeeming her!

There's an absolutely bonkers bit in one book, where one of the mistresses looks along the rows (I think just before a play or something) and considers that not many schools have such a good looking staff.

Do you think EBD is trying to commend the healthy, outdoors life, with lots of early nights, mountain-climbing and delicious cream cakes because we all know how healthy they are by constantly telling us how pretty everyone is?

I'd love to read some fanfic told from Miss Bubb's point of view. There must be some out there somewhere!

I remember that bit about the staff - I think it's struck me as a bit odd each time I've read it. I always feel sorry for the one girl (there's only ever one in a gang) who is the 'plain' one (although they do always have 'plenty of character' which apparently makes up for it).

Just finished Difficult Term and enjoyed it. I thought it was mostly quite EBD like, though there were odd phrases that didn't quite ring true, and Verity Ann was very un-Verity Ann like in my view. Have the one about Hilda Annersley to read next (ebay bargain at £2.00! ).

Jo sent her uncontrollable massive dog off to Hilary Burn's chalet on the day Hilary gave birth? And then has a perfectly cringeworthy conversation with Phil Graves about how she's still beaten Hilary in every way by having also had a 10lb baby - and can I just say, ouch? and think even more that Joey must have a wizard's sleeve situation going on down there after 11 natural births? Oh, and she keeps the Trips home to let them rest after the Sale but actually they spend all day hosting her friends and are packed off to bed at 8, at the age of 13/14?

I like to think that Rufus was a lovely well-behaved dog because he was trained by Madge and Jem, whereas Bruno is the product of Jo and Jack's less-than-stellar dog parenting. It's a subversive metaphor for reality - maybe EBD herself was growing bored with Jo but didn't know how to end it?

Argh the mean birthweight competition really annoys me!

Maybe EBD had contemplated the notion of writing Jo out, at least partly? There are books in which she hardly appears, almost as if she's testing the water. I suppose by then she's more or less bound her in by having her daughters at the school! Jo never should have married...

I love the Rufus V Bruno indicator of effective parenting strategies!

One of my great regrets is that EBD married Jo off, and after everything Jo had always said about marriage. I'd love Jo to have gone to university and become the great world expert on the Napoleonic wars, and maybe written fiction in her spare time. That's the future she was crying out for. No wonder her life of domesticity drove her rather more than a little bit nuts - if only she'd had the proper intellectual stimulation of a university education and a like-minded group of friends she wouldn't have been reduced to competing over birth weights, playing slidey mats though that sounds like fun and taking far too much interest in the moral welfare of teenage girls who were none of her business.

On a completely different note, I've been researching the route that Mr Lannis took on the Salzburg trip in Head Girl. EBD tells us that the road ran through the mountains, following the junction of the Tyrolean and Bavarian alps, but never crossed into Germany, and then ran down to the Salzach valley. Now, the modern route would take you quite a long way into Germany, so either the border changed (I can't find a large enough resolution map of Europe for 1928 to tell me) or they went via a southern route. Maybe they took the road to Kitzbuhel and made their way through Saalfelden and Hinterthal to Bischofshofen where they picked up what's now the A10 and was probably quite a major road even then, staying close to the Salzach where the modern road goes to the west of the city. When I put that route into google maps it gives me a three-hour journey which I think makes it a bit long - I think Mr Lannis and party must have taken about four hours at most because they reached Salzburg in time for lunch. I would have thought that allowing for the roads being less good and the 'big Hispaniola' not doing anything like today's speeds, you'd have to double journey times from 1928. Or is this an over-estimate? I think I might have to buy this map to help me out!!

I neither drive nor remember Head Girl very well, so big pinch of salt with this, but is it possible they left at 8ish and arrived for lunch at 2ish? That gives you your six hours for the journey...

I wonder what would have happened if EBD hadn't married Jo off? Would she have ended the series after New House/Jo Returns/New CS, or written the Life and Times of Joey instead of continuing with the school itself, or continued the CS series largely without her (probably the occasional half-term cameo when she came to visit Madge etc, maybe stepping in to teach during incidents of laryngitis)?

Also - Juniors is edging its way up my to-read pile - should I re-read Princess first?

I splurged on A Feud in the Fifth Remove and The Susannah Adventure yesterday and they have arrived! So far, Feud features a Philathea and a Salathiel, known as Sally. That's about all I've read and I was so tickled I had to come and post it here!

Enjoy your reading, Cheddar. I don't think I've read either of those - do tell us if you recommend them.

Another thought about Head Girl. Some of the events that in later books would be drawn out for pages get done and dusted in a paragraph. I'm thinking of the sale itself - there are a few mentions scattered through the first half of the girls wanting to have a good showing, but the sale only gets a paragraph. Then there's Madge's near-death childbirth experience. Within about a third of a page Joey has been called away as an emergency because Madge wants her, has reappeared flushed and tearful, has assured the girls that the baby is a darling and Madge is alright, and is uncannily reserved and taciturn for a couple of days. That's it. Obviously later EBD wouldn't have actually shown childbed scenes, but we'd have had pages of discussions about how much Joey and Madge meant to each other, some praying, Jo breaking down once Madge was out of danger, and rhapsodies about the loveliness of the baby. One would almost think that the school was the main part of the plot, and EBD was keen to get back to the Cornelia action.

I don't personally think there's any real need to read Princess before Juniors but it's a good excuse to read one of EBD's finest

Would she have ended the series after New House/Jo Returns/New CS, or written the Life and Times of Joey instead of continuing with the school itself, or continued the CS series largely without her (probably the occasional half-term cameo when she came to visit Madge etc, maybe stepping in to teach during incidents of laryngitis)?

Well, I'd like her to have done both of those, but I'm not sure she had enough life experience for a really interesting Life and Times of Joey. I'd love it if Jo had been friends with the likes of Jean Rhys, Agatha Christie and Muriel Spark - Clemence Dane even! Now that would have been really interesting, and just think of the tales she could tell on her cameo appearances.

I would recommend A Feud in the Fifth Remove pretty highly - it was written in 1932, so when EBD was going very strongly, and is set in an English High School, and it's all about snobbery. Reading EBD's views on snobbery is delicious. There is one racist passage where a maid is commenting that Miss Brenda usually treats her "like I was a black", which made me , though. However, that aside, it's a delightful tale about what makes a lady - you can be a lady whether you're the daughter of a duke or a dustman, and it doesn't matter whether your father is In Trade or not (although somewhat undermined by the fact that heroine's father is in trade, but has aristocratic ancestry). And the names are hilarious. There's also a Dorinda.

I then moved on to The Susannah Adventure, which is just a ripping adventure yarn - reads a bit like an Enid Blyton adventure book, with added descriptions of hair, elaborate names and one girl running a fever from nervous strain. The two girls are called Anstace Roseveare and Kennetha MacKenzie, and it features rather too much of the boys suggesting that they should go and do the cooking for my liking. It is a decent enough story and is definitely a break from the EBD norm - and much better than the likes of They Both Liked Dogs! The characters are mainly a bit older - Humphrey is 19 and Anstace 18 by the end - and a Navy Commander is expressing particular interest in her, which did make me wonder just how old he is! He must be at least 40 to have become a Commander, surely?

I meant to say earlier that fanfic from Miss Bubb's point of view would be utterly ripping! If anyone finds any please post it here!

What made her choose such ridiculous names for her non-Chalet School school stories? Chalet School names are varied but relatively normal (or maybe I just grew up thinking they were normal as I'd read them???). I nearly had to stop reading Janeways because of the absurd names - it reminded me of the book that Jo ends up burning in Jo Returns and / or an 11 year old girl writing a story and picking the 'best' names she could think of.

And doesn't Jo write a book about a Dora, and picks plain names, and then dedicates it to "my sister, who prefers names of the Plain Jane variety"? I think some of the Chalet names are a bit suspect, but like you I read them so early on that it never occurred to me that Grizel/Cornelia/Loveday/Vanna & Nella (think their real names are Giovanna and Peronelle)/Ghiselaine & Lesceline/Margia/Elisaveta etc are names that I have rarely or never come across elsewhere.

Aw, I feel rather fondly towards EBD's penchant for outrageous names. Apparently she renamed herself Patricia Maraquita whilst at college... I get the impression that choosing names for her characters was one of the things she liked best, right up there with imagining ducky little dormitories.

I am now keen to read Fifth Remove, as well as why-has-nobody-written-this fanfic from Miss Bubb's perspective, or about the illustrious life of authorial Joey...
(Since we're sort-of on the subject of Clemence Dane, is there any interest in revitalising the ROW thread? I have a question for it!)

I think another of EBD's best things was imagining how each girl looked, with ropes of burnished hair swung round her head in a coronal and eyes of speedwell blue, set in a flower-like face. That and doing awesome backstory.

Yes please to RoW!

What exactly was the famous coronal of plaits? Something like this ? Yeah, definitely all that's another happy indulgence - which takes us back a few posts to the bonkers bit where one teacher regards her colleagues with satisfaction and reflects what an unusually good-looking staff they are. I think she tries to reconcile her enjoyable preoccupation with prettiness and her moral belief that pretty doesn't equal better by pointing out that prettiness is just another god-given talent.

Off to the ROW thread!

That's right a coronal of plaits.

Dd1 (when I did it on her) said it made her head feel unbearably heavy though. Then she had to dance with it!

I always imagined a coronel of plaits to be one long plait wound tightly from the base like a snail shell if that makes any sense (can't find a sensible term to google to get a pic!), with of course packets and packets of kirbygrips to hold it in place.

I think I'm going to have to read Feud in the Fifth Remove. I think I have it at home somewhere lurking amongst the teetering piles immaculate shelves.

OK, so Head Girl. I don't know whether Armada cut a fair few of them, but I found myself getting truly hacked off with references to Robin as the baby. At eight it seems she had to be carried almost everywhere - e.g. when they go to the landing stage Miss Durrant carries the baby and holds onto her firmly. Really? I can see that you'd want to carry a toddler, and hold a child of three, four or even five very firmly by the hand. But surely the implicitly obedient Robin could have been trusted to walk safely on the landing stage without going for a dip.
I've also been thinking about payment for school trips, especially in the more formal Swiss part of the series. I think I've always assumed that the cost was covered in the fees - and some of the expeditions would have been very costly, with transport, hotel accommodation, endless kaffee und kuchen and so on. So if they were covered in the fees, did the girls who didn't go (e.g. because they were going home for half-term) get rebates? And what about the threat of punishment by being deprived of expedition - did that mean your parents would be refunded?

I would've thought no, to both of those suggestions of a refund. Definitely where it's a punishment for poor behaviour. With the half term trips - I can see the possibility of parents having an option some time in advance to either pay £xx for the school's provision or otherwise make their own arrangements, but it wouldn't really surprise me if the trips were funded through a general school budget (i.e. through fees) and if parents chose to take their girls out of them then that's their concern, and it would all be frightfully infra dig to raise the question of a refund. (Disclaimer - I know absolutely nothing about private education so this is wild speculation! But perhaps scarcely more so than EBD's own suggestions might have been.)

Who is it that misses the glacier trip in Eustacia because she's looking after the Robin - I think Anne Seymour? Regardless of the payment arrangement, I would be v hacked off if I were her parent! If Robin had to go on this trip which she wasn't actually capable of properly participating in, surely Jo should have been the one to miss out and stay with her. Messes up that part of the plot, obviously, but still. (Currently re-reading Princess and seeing all the comments about Madge being harsher, if anything, on Jo... This is not consistent with Jo getting the freebie fun in Fulpmes while Anne has to miss out!)

The idea that it's safer to stagger around carrying an eight year old by water, rather than let them stand and walk, is kind of hard to believe. Even making allowances for EBD's cast of nonchalantly exceptionally strong women.