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?

The Oberland Joan Baker was Elma Conroy, I thought.

That will teach me to rely on ChatGPT :-) I think the characters were similar so I assumed they had the same name. I stand corrected!

Didn't help me that she suddenly seems to become is it Pam or Phyllis Nalder in Oberland?

OK, they say they’re coming to Guernsey, but transatlantic travel in wartime wasn’t going to be easy, safe or straightforward.

War hadn't yet broken out when Marie wrote that letter, had it? It was when they were talking about restarting the School. Then EBD says term was to begin on 31 August. Germany invaded Poland on 1 Sept and Britain was at war on 3 Sept.

Should have been ok anyway as long as they travelled on a US ship.

I'm interested in the influence Sydney Matthewman, Phyllis's husband, may have had. According to Sims and Clare's Encyclopaedia of Girls' School Stories he 'assisted [his wife] with plotting, characterisation and revision' and in the late 1940s set up a literary agency with Brent-Dyer as one of the clients. In 1964 they all moved in together.

Brent-Dyer's decline in quality is obvious from the mid 50s - I'd see New Mistress (1957) as the last fairly good book - and nose-dives through the 1960s.

I know a lot of UK authors felt driven to write too much and publish too often because of the post-war tax regime, but I wonder was there an extra problem with EMB getting helpful advice from a man who knew sod all about women and girls.

I wonder was there an extra problem with EMB getting helpful advice from a man who knew sod all about women and girls.

That would parallel quite nicely with various Heads asking doctors for advice.

The 'look at aa the big feet' body-shaming incident in I think Althea when they have to sleep on a bus felt very off, as did the insistence vis a vis that or another bus breakdown on the cause being a worm in a pipe or a tube or a filter or some other dull bus innards.

Reminded me of vowing never to get driving lessons from my dad because every single time I'd have to have the workings of the internal combustion engine explained to me. Don't care.

According to the Encyclopedia Phyllis M was a snob and Stanley M made her tone it down in the books, but again, I wonder.

I have to say that while I would agree with the decline in quality on the whole, I do think that Reunion (written in 1963 I think) was a very good book. Reminded me of a later Jo to the Rescue. It was different and not just the same repeated storylines we were getting in the Swiss books by that point. So EBD did still have sparks of brilliance, even then.

I actually thought that some of the earliest swiss books from the 1950s were quite weak. It was very clear that EBD hadn’t been to Switzerland and we were already into recycled plots by that stage. New Mistress was an exception of course!

I always put the decline in quality overall down to there simply being too many trotted out too quickly by that stage. I think it went from one a year to three a year post 1950. They just became samey and whilst I still enjoyed them it was obvious that Switzerland wasn’t known by EBD an that she just didn’t have the same feel for the location as Tyrol, Herefordshire and Guernsey for example.

However, you could be right in that Sydney had an input.

Ps I agree with the post about the body shaming. It became pretty bad in the later books and there seemed to be quite an obsession with women gaining weight and being teased or chastised for it. Obviously that wouldn’t be acceptable by today’s standards, especially in children’s literature.

Also the importance of being a beauty, looking your best because others have to look at you (including the importance of using makeup properly) but also of never acknowledging your own prettiness or commenting to anyone on theirs. ‘Praise to the face is open disgrace.’

I always put the decline in quality overall down to there simply being too many trotted out too quickly by that stage.

And she was writing one book per term, whereas in the Tyrol years she skipped over quite long periods, or covered two terms in one book, so the overall story moved along more quickly.

Exactly. Even the best writer in the world would struggle to invent something, unique, exciting and book worthy every single term….

If ever a woman needed a spreadsheet, it was EBD...

I have always been amused that when Jo writes her first book (Jo Returns) she mixes up her characters, so she makes up a huge list of every kid in her fictional school, presumably with a tag for each relevant event. But EBD does not appear to have done this herself!

I only noticed recently, but I am sure that the age gaps between Jo's children change several times. Also, I think that at various times Jo is either 20, 21 or 22 when she gave birth to the triplets.

I am pretty sure that Evadne's and Cornelia's ages change too.

That added to the confusion over names etc...
Still it is part of the appeal! :)

Cornelia starts out as being around Jo's age but she's still at school in the Guernsey part of Exile when Jo is married and has given birth to the triplets. She's the same age as Evadne but Evadne doesn't return to the new Chalet School in Guernsey, which I find quite jarring given they're presented as a pair for so many books. Kitty Burnett is another one whose age jumps around. She's originally in Eustacia's class but is somehow still at school in The Chalet School at War.

That bit never makes any sense to me. We’re told Jo discovers she’s ’mixed up two of the prefects’ and thus ‘must rewrite one of the early chapters or else the five succeeding ones.’ The two prefects clearly aren’t main characters or the confusion wouldn’t have arisen, so surely you’d just go back and change ‘Marjorie’ to ‘Joan’ or whatever? And if their backstories are important, you’d just swap them too?

Yes and Evadne first appeared in The School at the Chalet so she was always around Jo's age.

I did think that Cornelia was slightly younger than them both when she first arrived, but I agree Cornelia and Evadne were very much a pair from shortly after Corney arrived and they were certainly around the same age at one point.

I also found it quite jarring that Evadne pretty much just disappeared with no departure story. That was the negative side of the large gap in the middle of Exile and also the fact that we didn't really see the events occurring in the school itself prior to the flight. We lost quite a few characters who got no real departure storyline..

Did we ever see any examples of the "mothering" Mme Lepattre apparently gave Corney?

I'm just coming to the end of "Coming of Age" and wonder when the Chalet School gave way to "the Joey and Mary-Lou show"? Also, does anyone else wonder if there were any celebrations at the St Briavels branch?

I certainly wasn't particularly aware of that until it was explicitly pointed out after Mme Lepattre became unwell. If anything, I would have thought Joey and Madge took Cornelia under their collective wings. Although, she didn't really seem to get any specific mothering from anyone. Certainly not to the extent that Robin did anyway!

I always found it slightly odd that after being so central to everything the Robin basically disappeared off stage to be mentioned briefly every so often. She was such an annoying small child character, but this wasn't even her own fault she was annoying because of the way Joey and Madge constantly babied her and Joey took personal vendettas against people purely because they didn't love her as much as Joey did! Then post Exile and after she arrived into Guernsey and Hereford, actually got to attend the main school on her own without Jo etc, she had actually blossomed into a really lovely character. Thoughtful and kind, without being annoying and intrusive. Then shortly after she became lovely she basically disappeared. I don't think we even had very much focus on her period as Head Girl!

Oh, I know re Jo and Mary Lou. Now it was always the Jo show from the start and in fairness she was actually a likeable child character even if her constant appearing at the school did become increasingly odd as she got older. I never got the fascination with Mary Lou, though. I did find it hilarious when she turned up in the middle of the night in Prefects just so she could be shoe horned into a random drama which was nothing to do with her. Likewise, in Reunion she wouldn't have met Grizel since she was a child of around ten years old and suddenly she is all over Grizel's lovelife, attending the hospital with Jo etc.

I am SO glad it's not just me! I felt clueless as never noticed it either!

I think it’s one of those retrofitted stories, probably to try to make Mademoiselle’s illness seem more poignant. otherwise she’d just be ‘nothing-y Head after Madge left”, like Miss Nipson in What Katy Did At School.

I mean, EBD does a lot of retrofitting anyway. The classic one is Joey as ‘champion butter-in’ when in fact she was anything but at school — she moaned when anyone asked her to ‘babysit’ any problem girls, and did her best to wriggle out of any responsibility, however minor! Her butting- in started way later when there needed to be a reason to keep Joey involved with the school.

Absolutely right, @ByLimeAnt!

I know. There is definitely a lot of retrofitting.

Joey is definitely not keen at being called into action to deal with anyone's else's business at school and she is horrified when it is first suggested that she should be Head Girl.

Elizabeth Arnett and Betty Wynne Davies are swapped around in character too. It is always Elizabeth who comes up with the terrible ideas and then persuades Betty to carry out the evil acts. Betty is presented as someone who is just a bit daft and under Elizabeth's bad influence. Then halfway through Goes to it Elizabeth is suddenly reformed and Betty is the one who is horrible to the core.

Interesting to reflect on how "champion butter-in" is framed.

I would say it's not a positive thing to say about anyone! But maybe because it's Jo (and later OOAOML) it automatically becomes a compliment.

I am almost certain that I read in one of the biographies that EBD herself was a ‘butter in.’

Perhaps it was something friends repeatedly said to her as she grew older and she decided to make both Jo and Mary Lou one too…