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?

Also much discussed on the CBB back in the days I was a member, as was Dr Graves’ completely unethical behaviour towards the seriously ill Phoebe Wychcote who was his patient! — I thought the CBB no longer existed, though?

I’m not sure whether the Trennels fan community still exists? I was a member when I was on Livejournal, but while I know it moved to Dreamwidth, I’m not sure it still exists either? I loved Trennels. The read-through threads were always very well done, everyone was terribly well-informed, and the debates could get very heated!

Dr Graves’ completely unethical behaviour towards the seriously ill Phoebe Wychcote who was his patient!

That was Dr Peters. Dr Graves married Hilary Burn, former Head Girl and PE mistress.

The most controversial relationship on the CBB was Reg and Len!

I think Doria Fairlie Bruce was probably the best of them in terms of the development of her characters and the credibility of their challenges. She also wasn't bad at world building, but her choice to self limit by keeping the 'Jane's'/Nancy/Springdale series to one character's 'school life' each (6 - 10 years) mean they didn't have the immersive magic of the Chalet school.

Though Bruce's characters interconnect, and there must be about 20 or 25 years of reference to Dimsie's existence between them, she has her own adult life in a way that Jo didn't - and most of it happens outwith the books. Nod there to DFB's championing of Scottish words.

Query: we hear plenty about baths and the splasheries, but never I think anything explicit about loos. Also, the Chalet girls never talked about menstruation, pretty typical of the era, but were those 'sick headaches' and 'bilious attacks' and 'toothaches' that took characters offstage at critical moments sometimes euphemisms for dysmenorrhea?

Sorry, I’m always confusing them!

I think the CS had a high proportion of 'delicate' girls because its selling point (wherever it moved to) was its healthy location, and proximity to a sanitarium, so there was more illness generally in the school than average. Girls tended to start their periods later in those days, I think the average was more 15 than 12 as it is now, so it wouldn't have affected as large a proportion of the school as it would in modern times. A 'bilious attack' was a bit of a catch-all for nausea/stomach ache so it could well have encompassed dysmenorrhea.

As you say, lack of reference to menstruation or loos was par for the era. Even the much more candid Antonia Forest only mentioned them glancingly and euphemistically - Ginty calculates whether she would be 'cursed' during a diving competition, and Nicola, desperately wanting a word with Patrick without Ginty glued to his side, speculates that there might be an opportunity when Ginty is 'in the loo'.

I always assumed the actual toilets were in the 'splasheries'. It probably wasn't considered polite in the very middle class world of the CS to call them lavatories, toilets or loos, and 'bathrooms' used in that sense was American so a total no-no if you go by Joey's horror of other Americanisms!

Having just finished Changes for the CS I was horrified at the thought of the girls travelling to Bournville without a toilet break. Considering they were leaving at 6 a.m. and having lunch on the way they must have been desperate to do more than "stretch their legs" when they arrived.

All those nights stranded in haysheds or huts or buses must have had their challenges too. All very well melting snow and mixing it with your chocolate, but what next?

I was pondering this too - I assume the peasants they gate crash must have some sort of facilities even if it's a chamber pot. But it would definitely add to the general aroma!

Topics like toilets and periods were definitely not naice or polite for school stories of this generation - see recent discussion on pregnancy too! There are some discussions about girls having growth spurts, and the particularly difficult (?hormonal) behaviours of the 4th form, who at 13-15 would be peak puberty age, so she's definitely aware of what's going on, but actual blood in knickers would be a step too far.

I sometimes think EBD is just free associating as she writes. Know someone with Graves’ disease? Whack it all in.

I think that 'hand-washing' is one of the other governing euphemisms covering loo usage.

I think EBD didn't really think the whole 'delicate girls' thing through. Assuming many CS pupils were considered pre-tubercular, and/or had had close contact with tubercular family members now at the San with active TB, surely the last thing anyone should have done is stick them all together in close quarters with other girls and risk them infecting one another, especially when everyone is snowed in for periods in winter?

Although, of course, other than Joey, who practically dies every time she stands at an open door in winter, no one else at the school is ever ill at all, so presumably the 'delicacy' is largely imaginary? Even the Robin, who is viewed as pre-tubercular, considered fragile and cosseted, is actually never ill.

And the one time we do see the arrival of a pair of new CS girls whom we know have been in close contact with an active TB case, (Joyce and Gillian Linton, whose mother is told by her doctor to avoid public gatherings like the cinema), no precautions are taken, and Joey immediately takes against Joyce for not kissing the notoriously fragile and TB-prone Robin goodnight, when she's literally just travelled across Europe with an infectious TB case!

Ah, but to be fair, Joey is able to pop out eleven children, including three sets of multiples, follow this up by hiking an Alp two weeks later and further in winds an open water swimming event.

EBD was a sheltered maiden lady.

But Joey did manage to 'displace an organ' along the way 😆

My money's on a prolapse

I think Joey’s displaced organ might have been a diaphragmatic hernia - if I recall correctly, she gets bilious attacks as one of the symptoms, and that suggests to me her stomach coming up through a weakness in her diaphragm.

Whatever it was, she was pregnant with twins almost immediately afterwards.

So far in my reading (Chalet School and Barbara) she only has 8 so I have a lot to look forward to.

I am re reading Exile at the moment and it really does get better every time I read it. I genuinely think that it is one of the best books that was ever written.

EBD was so far ahead of her time in 1940 with her insight on contemporary world events that it is amazing that the book was actually published in 1940.

It is such a brave and insightful book. So much more than just a children's school story.

As a child I loved it as an adventure story, but as an adult I can appreciate the significance and depth of it. It could easily stand up as a text for english literature exams.

Yes, the Swiss era was repetitive and long past it's best, and she made errors with names and details in some books. However, at her best she was absolutely brilliant.

There are many authors of both children's and adult's fiction who are much more famous and could never produce a book of the quality of The Chalet School in Exile.

When you put it like that, she has the constitution of an ox!

But EBD has definitely absorbed the idea from somewhere that it's more interesting to be 'delicate' than to have robust good health. Obviously, it also gives her health-related cliffhangers on a regular basis, which is helpful for a bit of plottiness.

(Some of them are outrageous, though. Joey blaming Eustacia for Robin having some kind of relapse which is definitely going to give her galloping consumption because J has to stay out on the Stubai glacier in a hut overnight is a real stretch! And don't start me on Joey falling into a packing crate requiring sedation...)

I do love Exile, but I do also mentally call the break in the middle during which Joey and Jack marry the Sex Break, involving Madge giving her euphemistic, sisterly advice ahead of the honeymoon and Jem probably having some terrible man-to-man with Jack about Joey's delicacy and taking it easy on her.

I just marvel at all the sedation Jack, Jem et al got away with. Does make you wonder. I mean- did the pupils’ parents give permission to have their delicate’ daughters dosed with goodness knows what every time they had so much as a sniffle or slight shock? Talk about damping down emotions ! A therapist would have a field day with some of them years down the line.

That's exactly what my cousin and I have been discussing. And don't forget Matey with her drafts and jorums.

Something that sits really uncomfortably with me now is that although there is such an emphasis on manners and such it was perfectly acceptable to call each other "idiot" and "ridiculous" for normal childhood curiosity and Nancy Wilmot is appallingly rude to Jo, commenting on her increased weight and calling her "chubby".

A lot of the manners stuff seemed to be about avoiding 'vulgarity' - that is, not sounding working class - and being respectful to elders. I think they could be as rude as they liked to their peers as long as they didn't use slang!

Enid Blyton characters happily called each other Ass. In the donkey sense, obviously.

Or bad grammar. The triplets are so shocked when Ros Lilley says 'have a lend of' instead of 'borrow' on her first day that they 'exchange glances' because apparently 'they had never heard this particular piece of bad grammar before'.

Fortunately, however, given that her mother is one of the 'respectable' working class and a former servant, who passed on all the little niceties she learned from her employers, Ros is made satisfactorily middle-class within weeks. All she has to do is lose her accent (and presumably work on her grammar). Whereas Joan Baker, a feckless working class stereotype if there ever was one (her family blowing their pools win, allowed to hang around on the streets with boys, eating chips and shop cake, wearing makeup and 'sophisticated' clothes and with permed hair etc.) is never allowed to entirely reform.