The Chalet School

[ShellacB]

There seem to be plenty of old Chalet School Threads, but I can't find a current one.

In the middle of a re read. I have just finished the Tyrolean and Herefordshire ones. I loved them!

I do remember the Swiss books not being quite of the same quality, so not sure whether to read them all.

Could anyone recommend the best Swiss books if I was to skim through?

Yes I always found it incredibly odd that they cut that chapter from Exile- though I think you're right as to why. But it was a really important part of the story.
As for the Armada cut to HT, it was definitely excessive IMO and to the point where Armada definitely messed about with some of the original text to make it make sense. There are some interesting parts in the uncut version as well that make it more believable as being set at it's time, for example more about the women's forces, and general bits and pieces about life in general going on around.

Yikes!!! 🙈

My Mum went to a convent school where the uniform was brown, dark blue, orange with elaborate blazer and pleated skirt. Fast forward a few decades and I ended up at the comprehensive school next door, on the same bus as the same later generation convent girls, and the uniform according to Mum had not changed one iota...!Added to which my best friend and I who travelled that bus together had just discovered the CS books in Armada and were sharing them, often reading on said bus, and many a discussion was had about the uniform similarities and how our blue and white paled by comparison 😅 I was 11 at the time. When my best friend stayed over with me we would even go to the extent if shaking out our duvets and having them over the big balcony rail that ran around my upstairs landing (shades of plumeaux...!).My Mum drew the line though at us asking for bowls of delicious milky coffee 🤣

Is that the bit where Elisaveta reappears at Joey's and recounts her journey from Belsornia (or had she married into another imaginary Ruritanian country country?) to Wales via Turkey and North Africa? I liked Elisaveta, so it was nice to see her again, but it was quite weirdly written -- we never got to see her arriving at Joey's, only Joey telling Gillian Linton and some others about it the next morning, and then Elisaveta herself coming in to fill in the detail of her travels. If I were a creative writing tutor, I'd say 'Why are you pulling your punches here? if you want a dramatic reunion between two old friends in wartime, write it! Don't have one of them tell other people about it afterwards! Why not show us Joey being excited and delighted to see her old friend?'

Though the bit that never made any sense to me is why, having landed in Wales, knowing that close friends are living nearby and clearly having their contact details, Elisaveta spends six weeks working as a charlady (!) in a Welsh village, apparently to save money for a taxi and clothes from a secondhand shop in Cardiff, before traveling to Joey. Even then, rather than phoning Joey herself to say so, she gets her maid Arletta, who speaks almost no English, to make the call!

I mean, I can't imagine that there would be that much call for a totally inexperienced charlady in a Welsh village in wartime, and that an obviously foreign aristocrat showing up to scrub your floors would cause mass suspicion!

Yes the charlady bit, no, that would not have happened, she would have been able to get funds from Jo/Madge etc with just a wire or phone call!

I can't recall, but do we ever find out what happens to Elisaveta in the long term?

Does she retrieve her princely status etc?

Too proud to ask? I haven’t read this one yet so I don’t know what happens next.

I think she's mentioned in later books, but I can't remember if she regains her royal status again

She doesn’t regain her royal status, and doesn’t want to. I think they move to Australia, although I can’t remember which Swiss book that’s mentioned in.

Matron has received some post production embellishment in that copy. Here she is in my copy of Wrong

I can't recall, but do we ever find out what happens to Elisaveta in the long term?
Does she retrieve her princely status etc?

Belsornia is taken over by the Communists.* Elisaveta's father settles in Australia. Elisaveta is left a widow with young children when her husband is killed in a plane crash post-war. She ends up living on or near the Platz. Her daughter Jose attends the CS and is in with Ailie Russell, Janice Chester & co.

*Another instance of the CS being overtaken by real world events.

Elisaveta's husband was from Mirania, a country neighbouring Belsornia, which was the location of EBD's School by the River.

Yes, you can see that small, ordinary mouth under the giant clown mouth in the copy divided on Faded Page! The teddy looks a bit sinister in both, however…

www.fadedpage.com/csearch.php?author=Brent-Dyer,%20Elinor%20Mary

I found it interesting that it was seen as surprising (in 1952) to find a teddy in a schoolgirl's trunk. I bet nowadays it's fairly normal, and I remember reading that Diana, future Princess of Wales, had a cuddly frog at boarding school and that must have been in the late 1960s/early 70s.

How sweet of you dear one.
A po di mu with some tomato salad? There appears to be a glut.
One hears of a Miss Dyer visiting Mallards but that was in Liblibs day.
Could she have been the Pride of Poona? 😱

Thank you @Teaandscone and @BallybunionTao - I will enjoy reading the uncut versions.

Thiat was a lovely diversion into the world of EF Benson from @Fransgran and @Howyoualldoworkme !

Now I'm wondering how Quaint Irene might depict Joey and her Brood in a Riseholme mural ...

In The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, her artist lover painted his family in a line, down to the baby on a potty and the dog, all of them somehow with Jean's face. I imagine the Quaint One painting something similar of the whole Maynard clan. All of them would have the face of Irene's beloved Lucia. Mapp would be outraged! Georgie says "Chilren are so sticky, especially after tea." but the Maynard brood, brought up to instant obedience, would have been well scrubbed for the occasion by Anna and the Coadjutor.

I picked up a couple of EF Benson books I didn’t have in Rye, and it was absolutely the perfect place to read them.

Yes,l it’s obvious she’s upped her output. I’m on ‘Feud..’ atm, you know , the one where another school, St Hilda’s is foisted on them. So formulaic and I reckon she’d forgotten all about the classic writing advice “Show, don’t tell.”

I’m on ‘Feud..’ atm, you know , the one where another school, St Hilda’s is foisted on them. So formulaic and I reckon she’d forgotten all about the classic writing advice “Show, don’t tell.”

And rehashing old plots - she'd done that one in Rivals more than thirty years before.

Though it can't have been easy coming up with new ideas after so many books.

Georgette Heyer is absolutely brilliant on ‘Show, don’t tell.’

If a bit repetitive between books.

I always wanted to visit Rye when "across the water" as they say here. But part of me would be reluctant to test my rose-coloured imaginings against the real world. I think I will say "au reservoir" to that little fantasy and preserve the world as it is in the books and my head. I feel much the same way about Pertisau/Briesau.

I liked Rye very much. I think the biggest thrill was finding the inn that The Gay Dolphin was based on, from the Lone Pine books.

If / when I go back I’m going to stay there.

I remember reading all the Lone Pine books - I didn’t know the Gay Dolphin was based on an actual place, @EmpressaurusKitty. I particularly liked the ones set in Shropshire, because I lived there from about the age of 8, so they mentioned places I knew.

I don’t have my Lone Pine books any more.