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?

I remember reading about Joan’s failings for the first time & wondering a bit guiltily if I was just as bad because I didn’t strip my bed & hump my mattress every morning.

Nowadays, I don’t think I’d be physically able to hump my double mattress & anyway, I’d be worried about my cat deciding to sleep underneath it & potentially getting squished.

I'm Team Joan on the cold baths and spending your Saturday night free time playing compulsory paper games that involve trying to think of the name of rivers beginning with N.

While pretending to begin with D.

Re, the cold baths - they had the option of 'chill off' - I would certainly be 'pushing the envelope' on the chill off option boiling hot 😁

Oh, you'd have been taken to task within minutes by whoever followed you in the bath queue, because they could feel the tap/bath enamel was suspiciously hot, or noted the traitorous steam on the tiles or whatever, and called it to your attention in 'bell-like' tones back in the dormitory.

Or Matron came in on your first day, demonstrated the precise upper limit for acceptable bath temperatures, probably with a water thermometer, and warned you of the terrible punishments that awaited anyone who went sybaritically warm.

Is it Barbara on her first day at the school who chooses cold rather than lukewarm because her sisters have mocked the 'sissies' who choose the latter?

It was Barbara yes, also who (SHOCK HORROR!) leaves the bathroom in disarray.

I'm reading Barbara at the moment. I'm 85% of the way through and am waiting for Mary Woodley to cause a crisis for Babs and then be redeemed.

And who can't brush her own hair at the age of fourteen, despite the fact that it's not some Frieda Mensch mane but a short 'Bubbles' crop! She says her mother always did it for her.

I mean, if Barbara had actually lived at Freudesheim initially as planned, was their mother expecting Beth to brush her hair for her daily??? However 'delicate' Barbara has been, it seems as if there's some weird under-preparedness for boarding school going on here. No wonder Vi wasn't keen on her arrival.

I mean, Joey was also supposed to be phenomenally fragile and sickly at 14, but there's no suggestion Madge arrived in her cubicle daily with a hairbrush!

(ETA, plus Barbara then does an unusually good job of plaiting Mary-Lou's hair for her!)

As regards leaving the bathrooom in disarray, I'm surprised it didn't come up all the time. The vast majority of CS girls would have come from homes with servants, some of the grander early pupils from houses with huge numbers of servants, and, while we're told the Tyrolean girls have been taught to cook, it's pretty unlikely most CS girls would have been scrubbing out baths or mopping up spills on a regular basis, or that it would even occur to them it was their job to sort out.

To be fair to Nancy, I seem to remember that by that point she'd had years of being called fat by most of the school, including Joey, so it probably felt entirely reasonable and justified!

I have just finished a re read of Goes to it and Simone confirms in the final chapter that Joey did have a proper wedding with bridesmaids etc. She notes that Joey, Frieda and Marie had all had this and that she feared that she would not be able to. In the end they are able to arrange it for her.

I did find one part particularly humorous, when Joey basically just tells Simone what bridesmaids to have, Robin, Daisy, a few of Joey's nieces (so essentially those who are close to Joey rather than Simone) and poor Simone just nods along and is grateful that Joey is organising it all for her ;0

Also definitely no mention of Joey's conversion in either Exile or Goes to it. The only mention at all that we have is Jack noting that they are different religions when arranging the wedding and Joey later noting that Madge can't be a Godmother as Joey's triplets are being raised Catholic.

I wondered if Jack Maynard himself was a convert? His sister Mollie (Maynie) is identified as Cof E when she teaches at the Chalet School and they do that elaborate splitting up for prayers thing all the time. Reading the books as a child, I was curious. In my experience (Irish) families were one thing or the other and anyone who converted on marriage, was spoken disapprovingly by both sides as "turning their coat." I remember looking at my unyielding navy blue school coat and wondering how they did it.

It would have been really interesting to have the logistics of a "mixed marriage" and conversion woven into the story rather than skimmed over.

Yes, absolutely.

Although, I do appreciate that it might have been quite controversial at the time and EBD was probably conscious of the fact that it might have been considered to be inappropriate for a children's book. Hence, she may have opted to skim around it.

Completely possible that Jack Maynard himself was a convert. Although equally possible that EBD simply forgot that Mollie Maynard was ever COE :)

When Jack's rosary gets used as a conduit for Highland F's (can't remember which of them) second sight, it is described as being something he had used since his schooldays. So if he converted, he did it young.

By Rescue, Jo is going to St Aloysius with everyone else except Sybil, which isn't to say she was Catholic at that stage, but is suggestive.

I’ve just finished Joey & Co in Tirol.

Did anyone else read the results of the book reviews game & think that for the lot of them to be rolling about helpless with laughter was going a bit far?

Hi. Any other NCC and/or CBB members here? I love the books and read them over and over again. I've currently nearly finished 'Gay From China at the Chalet School'. Maybe it should have been titled 'Trials' rather than the later title as a lot goes wrong in this book.

I used to lurk on CBB. Having run out of canon, I’m so desperate for my daily Chalet School fix that I’ve joined Lime Green Musing. Great for revisiting old Sally Denny Library content and for channelling my inner frustration with Joey.

Did the CBB die off? If you google, it just seems to bring you to a FB page, but it used to be its own fairly big website when I was a member, aeons ago.

I've now finished the Armiford/St. Briavel's Island books. 'Exile' was an excellent read - every bit as good as I remembered it. This time around, I was struck by the resemblance of that story to the story of the Von Trapp family in 'The Sound of Music'. In the movie, the Von Trapps used the convent to make their escape and Joey and Robin etc. escaped via the church. I wonder if the scriptwriter of 'The Sound of Music' had read the Chalet School books? Although iirc, in real life the Von Trapps simply boarded a train to leave Austria and the Nazis weren't in hot pursuit.

My only criticism of 'Exile' was that EBD gilded the lily a bit. Not only did the pupils and mistresses have to flee the Nazis (and in such dramatic circumstances), but the school had a German spy in their midst (did nobody question the fact that she was German?) and then some of the pupils rescued some airmen who had been shot down. Anyway, it all made for a very eventful book. The romantic scenes between Joey and Jack were a bit cringy though. And I couldn't help wondering if they had trauma bonded.

I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't much mention of the war after 'Exile'. I mean, there was the odd reference to old girls joining the war effort and at one point, Joey refers to petrol being rationed. But there's no discussion about the progress of the war and no mention of the war coming to an end, which would have been a huge deal irl. Maybe EBD just wanted to focus on the school again, or maybe her publishers advised her to keep things light.

I found Flora (or was it Fiona?) having second sight and 'seeing' Jack a bit melodramatic, but I'm sure I would have lapped it up as a 10 year old. Occasionally I have to remind myself that the books were written for schoolgirls and not middle aged women .

'Jo to the Rescue' was a bit odd, because it's not set at school. For those of you haven't read it yet (or have forgotten), Joey and her three old pals Frieda, Simone and Marie (and their assorted kids) rented a holiday house and made friends with a disabled lady who lived next door. I don't think I'd read it before. At least, I don't remember encountering Reg Entwistle as a child. Then again, maybe I just didn't make the connection. I was amused at the name Zephyr.

Between Madge, Mollie and Joey having huge families and then all of the old girls getting married and starting families, I felt like I needed to do up some family trees to keep track of everyone. I was amused at the various mistresses marrying doctors. Gillian Linton was an exception - she married an artist.

I think Carola Johnston would be perfectly entitled to start an AIBU along the lines of, AIBU to think my Dad should know how old I am? And various pupils have been abandoned by parents and left in the care of very distant (often elderly) relatives.

Occasionally there are glimpses of attitudes at the time. Hilda Annersley frequently consults Jem and Jack about school matters, even thought they're doctors and have zero experience of teaching or running a school. Obviously Jem has a financial interest in the school (I'm not sure about Jack), but there's a sense that Hilda respects their opinion simply because they're men. In 'Jo to the Rescue', there was an attempted break in. Joey decided not to report it to the police. Her doctor didn't approve of this course of action and threatened to ring her husband and tell him!

I've also been interested in the references to clothes. Little things like the adults putting on a hat and gloves before leaving the school. Or wearing driving gloves. in the last book I read ('Shocks for the Chalet School'), Madge turns up at the school wearing an astrakhan fur coat and hat.

I know we slag off the books a bit (although we love them really), but I'm still impressed that EBD managed to write so many books and come up with so many different plotlines - new pupils, new perils, new pranks etc. There's a bit of repetition (like the new matron and new headmistress causing trouble and all of the cookery mishaps), but on the whole, I think she succeeded in creating a very convincing school world. And she manages to blend in the old characters and the new characters quite well.

Right, I'm about to start 'The Chalet School in the Oberland'.

no mention of the war coming to an end, which would have been a huge deal irl. Maybe EBD just wanted to focus on the school again, or maybe her publishers advised her to keep things light.

If you look at the publication dates (there's a list on Wikipedia), there's a gap of several years between Rescue, published 1945, should be set in 1943, but internal chronology is a bit muddled, and Three Go, published 1949 but should be set in 1947. By the time Three Go was published, it was probably deemed too long after the end of the war to be writing as if it was still ongoing; by 1949, EBD's youngest readers might not remember much about it. Though there is the mention of the 'war horrors' with reference to Verity's refusal to sing German carols.

How can one get hold of these books? I keep seeing them mentioned on here and they sound fab!

You can find them on Faded Page, here:
Search: fadedpage.com

Best read in order of publication, except that Tom Tackles the Chalet School was published out of sequence, and should come after Jo to the Rescue.

Enjoy!

In respect of the War, I think it is referenced almost as much in Goes to it later titled The Chalet School at War, as it is in Exile. Albeit that by that time the girls are in England and it is a slightly different experience for them.

I do agree that it drops into the background a bit more in Highland Twins and then even moreso progressively in Lavender, Jo to the Rescue etc. I think that may well be because by that time war was an everyday reality for people and they had no idea how long it might go on for.

Perhaps EBD was of the view that her readers needed a distraction and I would imagine that children in England were getting on with their daily lives, although always conscious of what was going on in the background. I do wonder whether she might have been concerned that referencing it in too much detail when a lot of her younger readers might have had fathers away at war by that time mightn't have been attractive to younger readers and their parents.

I do agree that it would have been good to have some reference to the ending of the war, but as the poster above stated that is probably largely due to the break in time of nearly 6 years between events in Jo to the Rescue and Three, and by 1949 the war had already been over for quite a few years.

I always found that break quite unusual and wonder if EBD planned to end the series around then. Obviously I am aware that she was probably focussing on those Chalet School Books for Girls in those years. Perhaps she saw a bit of a gap in having no main heroine and wanted a break before creating Mary Lou and waiting until the triplets were old enough to be involved in proper plots.

I agree that Jo to the Rescue is unusual for the series in that not only is it not set at school but unlike other holiday books there is no school age heroine focussed on. In many ways it is more of an adult story and might have fitted better as a spin off than in the main series. I do think it is a lovely book and actually one of the best in the series. I had never read it until last year and it is one of the better ones overall and probably the best 'holiday' book. As I said earlier, I am not sure how much I would have appreciated it as a child, though.

I'm coming across lots of books that I hadn't read before, Jo to the Rescue being one of them. I thoroughly enjoyed it but agree that it was very odd to be a part of a series of school stories. Joey goes to the Oberland is similar in that it isn't about school at all, just Jo's journey to follow the school.

Really from the early 1940s onwards EBD could have had a spin off series for adults with Joey, Madge etc being the main focus. By that time the majority of her early Chalet School readers would have been adults and there probably would have been a market for it.

Jo to the Rescue, Joey goes to the Oberland, Reunion etc could have fitted into this and had more adult conversation etc.

Might have made more sense than constantly shoe horning Jo into a school series in the Swiss years...