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'd quite like a house full of staff tbh! Though how Anna survives is beyond me.

Just finished CS Wins the Trick, which is definitely one of the weaker later ones. I was particularly struck by an incident where Anna gets boiling jam on her arm, and Rösli deals with this by wiping it and then sticking her arm in a jar of flour! I can't imagine this was ever good first aid advice for burns, surely?!

And Julie Lucy. I can’t remember whether she actually qualified as a barrister but then she happily chucked it all in to marry a housemaster at a boarding school.

Absolutely.

I would argue that the idea that adopted children were regarded as equal to biological children was equally as prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s as it is now. Especially as a lot of children didn’t even know that they were adopted then. They were just children of the family, as of course they always should be!

Very odd to hear any distinction made, especially from Joey who counted many other friends as family members.

Reunion is actually a very good book. Definitely one of the better of the later Swiss ones. The description of Grizel’s depression was very well done and quite insightful. Definitely an adult book rather than a children’s story. I loved it now but probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as a child.

I did find the obsession with Mollie Maynard’s weight odd. Particularly everyone being so rude and vocal about it. EBD appears to have had a bit of a weight obsession around then. Joey and Grizel spend a long time talking about how they have lost and gained weight at the beginning too and in Reunion earlier there is endless time spent talking about poor Madge’s weight gain.

I was disappointed that there wasn’t more detail about Juliet Carrick in reunion. It was mentioned that she was there, but apart from referencing her name, no details were given.
It almost seemed like a chapter might have been cut as everyone else attending got a background tale. I always thought it strange that as one of the central early characters, basically adopted by Madge she was just sent off screen at some point in Exile and then barely heard of again!

Also though Madge and Robin should have been included in Reunion!

Despite those few gripes it was a very good read!

Yes, and Daisy Venables is one minute an award-winning paediatrician, and the next is clucking in a wifely manner about she and Laurie, a GP, having to cut their honeymoon short because he needs to get back to relieve his locum — no mention of her medical career ever again.

Not to mention that Eustacia Benson is a prominent Oxford classicist who ends up living at Freudesheim, apparently with no need for a library!

i don’t think EBD took women’s careers seriously unless they were CS mistresses (and even then they get sniffed at if they opt not to move with the CS because they want a promotion) or wrote universally adored girls’ books.

Yes, and Daisy Venables is one minute an award-winning paediatrician, and the next is clucking in a wifely manner about she and Laurie, a GP, having to cut their honeymoon short because he needs to get back to relieve his locum — no mention of her medical career ever again.

And one of the most annoying lines in Joey & Co in the Tirol - ‘Thank goodness Laurie’s a doctor!’

Come to think of it though, Mary-Lou’s allowed to go off & become an archaeologist with no man dumped on her.

Also noted from Reunion, there was a very clear assertion by Joey that she intended to have a 12th child and hoped to have another girl. So EBD clearly intended to grow Joey’s family further had she lived and had the series continued for longer.

Obviously, I know that in the real world just because a woman expresses a desire to have a 12th child doesn’t mean she will have one. However, I think if EBD said Joey wanted another she was most likely going to have one and probably the girl she wanted too!

I forgot that! I think I assumed EBD was actually forgetful and had literally forgotten Daisy’s medical career had far outstripped her husband’s! At least, it makes it less horrifying if I think she had the beginnings of dementia…

I am not a Mary-Lou fan (well, not after Three Go and immediately after) and have always sympathised with Kathie Ferrars thinking she needed to learn to be less bumptious, but at least no one ever said ‘But you’re too sweet to dig up Cretan artefacts!’

I am not a Mary Lou fan either.

She is likeable at the start when she is a child and introduced with the other two, but as she gets further up the school she becomes more and more annoying.

I think essentially she is just forced on us too much as being wonderful and shoe horned into everything. Young Joey was a very likeable character, at times Mary Lou verges on being quite pious.

There was obviously an attempt to create a long term middle heroine to take us from Joey to Len being old enough to take over and it just didn't really work. Short term heroines like Lavender, Tom Gay, Daisy etc were actually much more likeable and I preferred Len, although for some reason EBD tried to keep pushing Mary Lou as the main heroine until Len was quite up the school when she probably would have been better focussing on Len earlier.

I think Mary-Lou had the makings of a fascist demagogue! In books like Barbara and Kenya, as well as ‘leading the Gang by the nose’, she essentially behaves like a dormitory prefect, issuing commands, ticking off slang, telling everyone their table placements etc. She’s ’Head of the Lower School’ in Kenya (a position I have no memory of ever existing at any other point in the series? Or does it?), and before the ramble she’s literally inspecting everyone’s uniform and hankies like a drill sergeant.

Had EBD not decided that this was charming and made her universally beloved, it’s not hard to imagine the same bossiness and inability to let people be making her deeply unpopular, and a teacher’s pet. I mean, you can see why a new mistress would think ‘Who’s this bossy, over-familiar creature who seems to think she’s on the staff?’

Tosh.

It's Joey, she would have got her girl alright but no doubt she would have got those quads at the same time

Girl quads, to be named. Frieda, Marie, Simone & Hilda.

The Robin is very like my own lovely little sister, so I always have liked her character.

She’s ’Head of the Lower School’ in Kenya (a position I have no memory of ever existing at any other point in the series? Or does it?),

I think Margia Stevens was Head of the Middles once in the Tyrol years, then I don't think it was ever mentioned again until ML.

ML thoroughly deserved the slap down Kathie gave her in the geography lesson. Any teacher I ever had would have done the same if you answered a question directly addressed to someone else. And most pupils would think you'd asked for it, and move on.

I preferred Len

I find Len a bit passive. Things happen to her, rather than her making things happen. She lets Jack Lambert get away with all sorts. Her solo storyline in Triplets was being accused of shoplifting - while Con's was saving the day for the Millies' panto - and she didn't have to face any challenges as Head Girl.

She is quite passive, I think I just preferred her more reserved and less out there character to the absolutely over the top Mary Lou.

In reality if you meshed the triplets up they would have made one good character overall.

Len and Reg was completely weird and wrong in every way. Even Joey talking about it as early as Reunion and him making his intentions known to Jack when she wasn’t even 16 and he was ten years older!! They should have told him get on his bike in no uncertain terms but they thought it was a great prospect! Joey goes as far as to say that Len has always liked him since she was four and he was fourteen. Just so weird.

Also, Margot ending up becoming a nun was totally unbelievable. Len or even Con might have been half believable, but not Margot who was presented until quite close to the end as selfish and shallow!

Margot - ooh, I don't know. Probably my view is coloured by my faith, but God does call the less obvious.

I read about a nun being interviewed and she was asked if she was ever suprised that God called her, and she said no, but she was surprised at some of his other choices 😂

Anyone read Chalet Girls Grow Up? Not canon and very Marmite. ML does not come out of it well, but Margot's life is spot on IMHO

I think Margot is EBD's heavy-handed attempt at a morality tale -- naughty child with a personal 'devil' turns nun. But to be honest, I find the way in which Jack and Joey parented Margot comically horrifying. I mean, it's very clear EBD, for all that she taught children, didn't know any young children, or was never around any parenting close up. It's frankly disturbing that her two ideal CS-world parents go along with their very young child's imaginary friend-type idea, that she has a personal devil that tempts her to do things, that her fellow-triplets seem to have missed out on. She gets set apart as someone with an extra moral burden to struggle with, like something out of Bunyan!

Margot's entire world, well into her teens, seems to accept her devil as some kind of fact, rather than her just being a child who struggles with self-regulation more than average.

But it's when she nearly kills whoever it is by throwing a bookend and hitting them right on the temple, and gets off scot-free, with Hilda actually rebuking the other girl (can't remember who?) for her tactlessness in saying whatever provoked the attack -- that's mind-blowing by any standards. And would have seen anyone else expelled in disgrace, a la Thekla Von Stift.

But I think EBD's ideas about religion and teenage girls had jumped the shark by the end of the series, anyway. The scene where nasty bully Jack Lambert and co get lost and kneel down and start praying in the snow feels about as likely as no one asking Mary-Lou to please stop quoting the same Psalm every time she looks at a mountain.

Poor Margot, being lumbered with the scapegoat role in such a long family. I wonder if becoming a nun gave her a respectable reason to distance herself from them all. It's notable that she seemed to thrive massively, including growing physically bigger, when she was sent away to Canada to live with Madge and Jem for a while.

Yes!

Mike was the other scapegoat child in that family. The way Joey and especially Jack talk about him in Joey and Co in Tyrol is terrible. He is just a young child. He couldn't have been more than eight or nine in that book based on the triplet's ages. One chapter titles him as a 'bad son.'

Poor Sybil was the obvious scapegoat in Madge's family all based on her being too pretty for her own good and having an accident when left caring for another child.

It's notable that she seemed to thrive massively, including growing physically bigger, when she was sent away to Canada to live with Madge and Jem for a while.

No rationing in Canada. She could be stuffed up with meat and dairy produce.

I have just finished reading Prefects. I had never read it before.

It really is quite a disjointed book. No major storyline thread at all, just several dramatic incidents. Some of the style is very different too. I do wonder if EBD had possibly written parts of it and intended to flesh it out but didn't end up being well enough to do so. Perhaps someone else ended up adding parts in to make it complete.

The last chapter does read as though the writer had a reasonable idea that it would be the last book, though.

I do wonder if EBD had possibly written parts of it and intended to flesh it out but didn't end up being well enough to do so. Perhaps someone else ended up adding parts in to make it complete.

Yes, I recall some discussion to this effect on the CBB. My opinion is that Althea and Prefects, which cover two halves of the same term, were originally intended to be one book but EBD couldn't finish it.

And I think Prefects was finished by Phyllis Matthewman, with whom EBD was living and who wrote girls' stories herself.

One reason why I think that is that Hilda seems very out of character at times.

I also wonder if Phyllis M. was responsible for the Len and Reg denouement. She wrote a lot of Mills and Boon romances.

All this pure speculation, of course.

It does give the series a definite end point, with the triplets leaving school, so I can see why the publishers wanted to bring it out.

This is very possible. Hilda especially sounds like a different character.

I suppose another possibility is that EBD was very unwell when she wrote it and possibly heavily medicated. However, I would agree the tone is just completely different.

I felt that Grizel and Peter’s romance in Reunion had a touch of Mills and Boon about it too and the idea of Reg and Len was mooted for the first time in that book too, so maybe Phyllis had input there too…

Miss Nalder in CS goes to the Oberland....anyone as confused as me?!? 🤔

I'm fascinated by the suggestion that Phyllis Matthewman wrote part or more of the later books. I think I've only read one of hers, and thought she was a definitely inferior writer of school stories. Wasn't her husband part of the set-up too?

EBD had several heart attacks in the last couple of years of her life, and then obviously the fatal one. So I think the last couple of books suffered from her poor health too, and yes many people believe that Phylis helped her with Prefects.