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?

That's a really good point! I had forgotten that Joey didn't convert to Catholicism until around that time. It is hard to work out exactly when she would have done it, though.

I know that there is a reference to Madge not being able to be Godmother because the triplets are to be raised as Catholic (although iirc it isn't specified that Joey has actually converted herself at that time) and later when Madge's daughter is christened there is some reference to the fact that Madge is Church of England and Joey is a Catholic.

I understand that converting from COE to Catholicism was quite a big deal in those times and I recall a biographer of EBD stating that when referring to her own conversion in the 30s, so you are quite right she might not have wanted to describe the intricacies of the marriage and conversion and felt it easier to gloss over it.

.....sometimes it would have been in the presbytery), in plain clothes.
I assume that this is part of the reason EBD chose not to depict Joey and Jack's wedding, not just the war setting.

We hear later that Jo did have a wedding veil. Was it Simone or Phoebe (or both) that she lent it to?

It was 1938, so not yet war time. But it would have been difficult to present it as a happy joyful occasion, given all the circumstances.

We see Madge's, Bernhilda's, Simone's and Daisy's weddings, don't we? I think Simone's is the nicest.

For all her series-long commitment to characters of both faiths happily co-existing, attending one another's services etc,.....

We see Protestants attending Catholic services. I'm not sure we ever see Catholics attending Protestant services, unless for a specific occasion such as a wedding.

Absolutely not! When you go again take a large swag bag 😅

Yes, I think she does lend it to Simone, but she can't have had one, not if we're being realistic about an actual mixed marriage in the late 1930s, because it would have been a distinctly hole-in-corner bare basics exchange of rings and vows. I doubt that even the friendliest priest, who might also, I suppose have been superintending Joey's conversation, would have done otherwise. (Do we know in what country they actually got married?)

I remember mention of them "all" having to get married in normal clothes before Simone's wedding...? I'd assumed this included Joey so the veil reference always confused me.

There’s a fill in which covers the Maynard’s /Russells arriving in Geurnsey. Also covers Jo and Jacks wedding, and the death of Jem’s sister (Daisy and Primula’s mum). It’s called “A Refuge for the Chalet School”, it’s really good and fills in lots of the gaps about that time.

Do we know in what country they actually got married?

I don't think it's ever stated, but assume Guernsey. Madge wouldn't have been able to travel easily.

Just checked; in the cut chapter of Exile, Jack says when they reach Guernsey, they'll probably have to wait a week or two before they can get married. So if it did happen as quickly as that, it'd definitely be no frills.

Is it Bernhilda or Gisela's wedding we see in the early books? I remember it being lovely.

I just love the Tyrol celebrations! Christmas with the Mensches is a highlight.

Yes we also see Madge’s wedding illustrated beautifully in the early Tyrol books too!

It is possible that Joey actually converted before she left Tyrol. I am not sure when her religion is mentioned in the earlier part of Exile. There is quite a lengthy period of time they get through in not much ‘book time’ in the earlier part of that book.

I suspect it was deliberately left quite vague as EBD didn’t necessarily want to get into the ins and outs of a religious conversion. It would be likely to have been considered a bit much for a children’s book written in that period of time. Skimming over the details of the wedding might also be one of the reasons that the first few months in Guernsey are skipped in Exile before the story picks up again over a year later.

It is possible that Joey actually converted before she left Tyrol. I am not sure when her religion is mentioned in the earlier part of Exile.

She hadn't converted before they went to Guernsey. Here's the relevant passage from the cut chapter (from Faded Page):

‘Joey!’
‘Jack! At last! What an age you’ve been. I thought the Gestapo must have got you this time. Where have you been?’
‘To see about our wedding, my child. And I’ve come to the conclusion that we’d better wait till we get to England for it. There’s so much red tape over being married out here, especially as we are of different religions, that I felt we’d far better leave it till we get to our own country. Besides, if we do that, you’ll be able to have some of your own people with you.’
Joey sat up in the hammock in which she had been lounging, and, as a natural result, rolled out on to the grass.
‘Hammocks may be very comfy, but they are the limit,’ she declared, as she rubbed an elbow ruefully. ‘Jack, what did you mean?’
‘Just that I’ve heard from the Sonnalpe today. Madge left last Thursday, bound for Guernsey, and Margot and the babies. The Government is taking over the San, and Jem is following her as soon as possible.’

Then there's a whole lot about how all the others who fled from Austria with them have gone to their various homes, and how Jack and Jo and the Robin and Miss Wilson will travel to Guernsey. Then it continues with Jack saying

You ought to be with Margot and Madge and the babies—let’s see; this is Tuesday—well, Friday or Saturday at latest. Then, I suppose, we’ll have to wait a week or two before we can be married.

Then there's more chat about whether they can do the journey more quickly, then we move to Miss Wilson and preparations for the journey and departure.

I suppose her actual conversion and acceptance into the Catholic church must have happened in the ten month gap that follows.

Ah that makes sense! I had forgotten about that passage.

From what I recall it isn’t actually mentioned later in Exile that she has become a Catholic. Rather that the triplets are to be raised Catholic and then some time in a later book we just find out that Joey is now a Catholic.

I could have missed that though!

I don’t see when, though. There’s no indication she considered converting until marriage to a Catholic is on the cards, and, as so often the CS world schoolgirlish Joey has absolutely no idea Jack has been in love with her for years until the disappearance of Robin and Hilary on the Chalet School League document-hiding picnic, and she’s only been engaged about a month before the anti-Semitic riot in Spartz.

Actually I’m pretty sure Jack refers to the being different religions and it adding to the difficulty of getting married in Switzerland in the current chapter, and a reason why they postpone it till Guernsey.…?

ETA x-post!

Oh, and while we’re on Exile, an I say I was very disappointed to discover that the famous Guernsey gâche with which all the children are obsessed is just a fruit bread/brack!

(And it’s in that first scene after the break, when Joey is correcting proofs and giving the Russell/Bettany/Venables children gâche, that we suddenly hear that Anna, who formerly worked at the CS, has ‘managed, no one knew how, to get herself smuggled out of Tyrol and so reach her beloved Fraulein Jo’! Maybe Anna was a Nazi spy chasing the Peace League document …?😃)

It's interesting to compare how fellow Catholic convert (though from Judaism not Anglicanism), Antonia Forest, wrote about Catholicism in her books. AF was very anti 'Vatican II' and Patrick Merrick is her mouthpiece for this. Ann Marlow, who is devout CofE, is in favour of bringing the two branches of Christianity closer together, but this viewpoint is presented unsympathetically.

The idea of conversion is rarely mentioned. Ginty thinks of it flippantly when contemplating a future as a missionary if she was expelled from Kingscote ('from what Patrick said, it wasn't much different from being CofE nowadays). Nicola goes to a Tridentine Mass at Patrick's house and is moved by it to the extent she decides she'd better not go again in case she 'gets hooked'.

AF allows her characters to express scepticism, and there is no explicit 'trust in God and everything will be OK' message as you frequently see in EBD's books. The nearest we get is Patrick praying when Giles and Peter are lost at sea, and Patrick (again) observing to Nicola that whenever he is doubting his faith, something comes along to reinforce it (in that case, when Nicola gave him Edwin's research about 'Tyburn Anthony'.)

I don't know if AF and EBD knew each other. There is one reference to The Chalet School in Attic Term, where Nicola sees a copy of The Chalet School Does It Again in the Oxfam shop.

The Marlow books are light years ahead of the CS (much though I love the CS!) for sophistication of theme and character and range of reference. I mean, AF clearly took her Catholicism very seriously, and it’s a serious theme throughout the series, but most of her characters are still cheerfully non-believers, or don’t give any of it much thought (or like Lawrie, class it with Greek myth and think everyone else does too!), whereas Mary-Lou is gobsmacked by meeting unbeliever Naomi, and there are religious moments of incredible unlikeliness which are clearly wish-fulfilment for EBD, like tough Jack Lambert and her gang kneeling down to pray when they get lost!

My sense is that AF was pretty reclusive and didn’t move much beyond Bournemouth, but I realise I know very little about EBD’s life after she stopped teaching. I know she ended up settling in Surrey with the Matthewmans.

Giles Marlow’s One and Only is the crossover! It’s of legendary brilliance

I’d forgotten all about that!

https://rose-and-lizard.livejournal.com/15073.html

There’s also a very long-running series on Archive of our own in which Charles Maynard is married to Lawrie Marlow.

I am not sure that anyone knows a great deal about EBD's life, with the exception of the places she lived, the job she did, her school, her religion, the identity of her immediate family etc.

Most of the biographies I have read have not had very much detail. With the exception of describing her as being a very nice woman who was a bit eccentric.

The fact that she didn't have children, or nieces and nephews has probably meant that there weren't many people to provide great detail once her contemporaries passed away...

No, you never get any sense whatsoever of what she was like as a human being. I take your point about her contemporaries dying off and no younger family members, but she was reasonably famous in her own lifetime, so you'd think there would be more interviews, profiles etc, surely?

Do I remember someone saying, somewhere that she was a rather flashy, untidy dresser who liked costume jewellery?

She knew younger people - she had god-daughters, I think, and daughters of friends. And there were the girls who attended her school - but I suppose no-one ever gathered their reminiscences. And they'd only know her as Miss Brent-Dyer, not intimately.

I would love to read her correspondence and working notes, but I suppose she either didn't keep stuff, or the Matthewmans, with whom she lived at the end of her life, didn't think it worth saving.

And I think her publisher was bombed, so pre-war stuff would have been lost anyway.

Jo always seemed very high church to me, they studied scripture and related topics on Sundays (there’s something about it when the visit the Sonnalpe in an early book) and she attended almost as many Catholic services as Anglican ones (conversation with Eustacia). I think all of her best friends were Catholic, so she’d probably been considering converting for a while anyway. So she would have fast tracked her way through conversion.

Her veil was probably a gift from Madge or one of the other proper grown ups who could see which way the wind was blowing. If it had been inherited then Madge would have used it too (lace was expensive) and that would definitely have been mentioned.

There's a whole breakdown on the Chalet School Bulletin Board online about the income that Russell/Maynard/Bettany families receive

Light years ahead indeed in terms of sophisticated wiring and intelligence (caveat - I do enjoy CS).

There's a very good FB page of AF of anyone's interested. Apologies if already mentioned, I haven't RTFT. Everyone on it is very knowledgeable and friendly!

Could you post a link to the site? I'd like to read that.

My cousin who is also binge reading the books at the moment suggested a title for an essay on the ethics or otherwise of the behaviour of Jack Maynard given his constant sedating of Jo and others.

The Marlow books are light years ahead of the CS

Though EBD at her best was in my opinion a much better writer than Angela Brazil and E J Oxenham, her older contemporaries and the other big names in girls' fiction at the time.