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....

Haven't read Juniors, but I don't mind if people discuss it!

And I agree that Reunion's a good 'un! Even if it does feature the first Len/Reg bit, grr.

Now on the joy that is Redheads and being irritated that Flavia can't be called Copper, because nicknames aren't allowed, but Lucinda Muriel can be called Tom!

And Cecilia Marya is called Robin, Delicia Christy is Dickie, and Vanna and Nella upthread apparently have fancy names, or even just in the Swiss books Jacynth Lambert is Jack!

Ah, well, shortened forms are allowed. Hence Joey, Len, Con, Margot etc etc. But not outright nicknames. So Dickie, Jack, Vanna and Nella are ok, as are people with accepted variants (Daisy, Peggy). But yes, Robin is the ultimate example!

Do any of the continental girls have nicknames or shorts? I'm trying to think of some, but the only one who comes to mind is Simone's Therese who is addressed as 'Tessa' by the trips in To the Rescue. Are there others who are routinely shortened/nicknamed (as opposed to the occasional affectionate shortening)?

Look what I've found!! A little something for breakfast tomorrow. I'm quite tempted to give them a try - mind you I haven't got a Tyrolean maid-of-all-work to bake them for me so it might be brunch, though, rather than brekker.

Veta?

I'm going to make that for breakfast next weekend! Funnily enough I thought of this thread when I was making breakfast today anyway - the first couple of pancakes fell to pieces thanks to DS adding far too much milk to the batter, grr and I cheerfully renamed it kaiserschmarrn.

There's a bit where I think they say that Marie was known as Cinders for her legendary beauty-but it's one of those EBDisms, where she tells you later, but I don't recall it ever happening at the time. However, I've only read the Armadas so I may have missed it.

Lonny?

The rolls are yummy! I made some this morning - though I have to confess to not having them with a bowl of milky coffee because I can't bear milky coffee. They're quite filling though, so I had another one this afternoon and I've got one each for breakfast and tea tomorrow. If I make them again it'll be when I have guests as they're much nicer freshly baked.

I can't ever, ever, recall Marie being called Cinders.

Oh, I want to be your guest. I had another look at the recipe earlier and I note it involves an awful lot of faffing about proving, which is v poorly suited to my un-Anna-like cooking preferences. Still, I shall persevere and not be a spineless jellyfish in the face of convoluted baking...

I drank a lot of milky coffee in AchenkirchTiernkirch, mostly because I thought it was compulsory. Now every time
I have one (weekend breakfast, mostly) I have really strong memories of the lovely Chaletian setting and it makes me so happy.

Mormington I'm trying to remember where it comes up.

I think it's a newcomer seeing Marie's daughter/niece and thinking she's beautiful. Maybe it's Jack Lambert in Leader? Was Wanda Marie's daughter perhaps?
Something along the lines of "...little knowing her mother had been known as Cinders at school for her legendary beauty and her Aunt was known as the most beautiful girl to go through the school."
That's not word for word, but there's something like that, might swap mother and Aunt.

I recognise it too (the years-later comment, not as something anyone ever said when Marie was actually at school), but I've just checked the encyclopaedia and it seems to be mentioned only as coming from one of the newsletters. I'm sure that's not right - I haven't read them, so I'm certain it's in one of the Swiss books too.

It doesn't make sense for that to be Marie's nickname anyway, given that virtually every mention of her beauty has to be followed up with a reminder that Wanda is the pretty one really...

Oh, I wasn't doubting that there was a retrospective comment somewhere in the later books which I can't be arsed to re-read - just that I can't recall any of the books where Marie is a schoolgirl being called Cinders.

It doesn't make sense for that to be Marie's nickname anyway, given that virtually every mention of her beauty has to be followed up with a reminder that Wanda is the pretty one really...

And isn't the point of Cinders that she''s the downtrodden younger stepsister dressed in rags and tatters, her beauty scarcely visible under layers of grime and soot? That hardly describes anything we're told about Marie.

I had another look at the recipe earlier and I note it involves an awful lot of faffing about proving, which is v poorly suited to my un-Anna-like cooking preferences.

It might sound complicated, but in fact it's a lot easier than the recipe makes it appear. Having said that, I don't think I'd fancy doing it every week, much less every day which I bet Anna would fall over herself to do if she thought Joey would like it.

Poor Anna is punished by her own competence. I bet she wished she'd never baked Joey those lemon biscuits in the first place...

And then we have the "no one except Joey would ever think of sending the school such an amazing treat as greengage jam"... which Anna had made and no doubt carted over to the school, and then probably had to make more to use it in the way she'd planned.

But also, I think it's in Peggy or something where Matey has donated jam for the fair and Peggy says something like "we've been rationed to one tablespoon a fortnight-we knew then she was planning on donating jam" which always makes me think of the dreadful Matron in Noel Streatfield's "Thursday's Child" who starved the children in order to take stuff to her family.

Can you imagine those Sale raffles, though? You'd buy your tickets out of politeness / obligation to the San's worthy cause, and then stand there the whole time crossing your fingers that you weren't about to win Joey's infamous lime green twinset, school jam which Matey has been siphoning off over the last term, some sort of dolls house monstrosity built by fourteen year olds...

Any sentiment along the lines of "no one except Joey" is always brilliantly misplaced. It's always the most mundane, unexceptional non-idea of the chapter, but "it takes Joey to come up with a thing like that" nonetheless.

Now reading Jo Of and young Joey is just so much better and more rounded, likeable, interesting, realistic!

Also the Robin is described as having lived amongst older people and therefore the other girls shouldn't find her too much of a baby - not sure what happened there!

Jo and Grizel's relationship is so utterly sisterly in this, fighting, snapping at each other and all the rest of it. I forgot that Grizel lived with Joey from the age of about 14 to her early 20s and was essentially her sister, and yet it's Robin who is her adopted sister and her chief bridesmaid, not Grizel. Anyway, I set out to say that this portrayal is realistic. Jo the Bountiful in Reunion and Carola, not so much.

Jo of is one of my favourites. I was about the age of Robin when I read it, but thought of her as way younger though

It's so lovely with the arrival of the Robin and the way they all adore her as the baby, the Christmas scene, Madge still in school, Joey's at my favourite character wise, still young and fun, and they're still small and family like in school.

I don't think EBD really knew what to do with Grizel and Joey though. She gets a fairly realistic sister relationship here with them scrapping like siblings but still getting on well. But then you get in subsequent books I think it's Juliet who says "Oh they've never got on well" and similar remarks. Then at other times EBD seems to suddenly put them as really close.

Thermogene, goose grease and turpentine!

Ye-es. In Head Girl they get really quite close and then all Grizel's maturing/deepening vanishes again until Reunion!

As an adult, I think you could make an interesting and plausible narrative around their lives diverging very naturally as they reach adulthood: one goes in for further training, a job, the difficulties and the financial independence (ish) that that brings, the other marries young and has loads of kids and her life is inevitably hugely different, they're absorbed into different groups of peers. I can also totally see why none of this would appear in a CS book! But for me, that's what happens, and Jo the Bountiful in Carola and Reunion makes sense in that context for me: sisterly teenage years, then a big gulf due to being on such different life trajectories, but still an underlying familial relationship which resurfaces on a couple of occasions, and I'm willing to believe that Jo is sufficiently matured by life (eternal schoolgirl status notwithstanding) for it to happen as it does.

I think though that EBD gets into difficulties with Grizel after Head Girl. She doesn't want her to be wholly reformed (because she's a foil to Joey?) so it all drifts a bit. Not entirely dissimilar to Margot, years later! Difference there is that Grizel is a fantastic character in spite of Elinor's intentions. Margot is one of the better characters for her era, but that's not saying much.

I also love Jo of. The first time I re-read it as an adult, I think I actually wept a bit over the Christmas bit, where Frau Mensch puts Madge to bed.

I think it's interesting that you rarely see much Joey/Grizel/Madge interaction after Jo gets married. This despite the fact that Grizel lives in the School - does Grizel come back immediately to teach when the School re-opens in Guernsey, does anyone recall? She appears briefly being bad tempered Cocky in Gay From China, but apart from that I seem to think that she sings very small during the war years.

Witchend, yes, I must have only been 7 or 8 when I first read Jo of, but in my head I was ages with Joey and Robin was a baby!

Tis half term so may have to return to the Chalet School. I did notice one of my girls reading a Trebizon book. I muttered that she would make a good Chalet School girl. She looked a bit nonplussed but my aim is to get someone reading a Chalet School book though not sure how as no copies in the library and I'm not lending mine!

Look what I have just discovered! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Wertheimer The Wertheimer family still own the House of Chanel and rose to prominence from their association with Coco Chanel in the 1920s! I bet that's where EBD got the name from!