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?

Yes there is no doubt that Biddy was a favourite of EBD’s. She actually had one of the longest running and most extensive character arcs of all, after such a harsh start to her life.

She was a good Chalet School girl who was there from close to the very beginning of the series and stayed right to the end. She was very bright and performed well at school and was also well liked by most. She made it into Oxford (a huge achievement then) had the chance to go off on her exotic travels and then came back to the school as a very well respected and able teacher. After having the chance to fulfil her career goals, she ultimately received EBD’s ultimate reward for her most favoured characters: a lovely Doctor husband and several small children. In many ways she had one of the most complete life stories of any of the characters!

Oh you will enjoy Reunion, Tayto. That was actually the first time I had read it and it was definitely one of the best of the later books in my opinion. A few missed opportunities, but all in all a good read and nice to see Grizel treated sympathetically for a change!

I'm re-reading Does it Again. Please tell me I'm not the only one who thinks that Con's mistake in the Old Testament quiz is really not funny enough to make a Chalet School legend (and be referred to repeatedly later on)?!

Along with the other hilarious slips of someone saying that a moraine was a godmother & someone else pronouncing Empedocles as Empydockles?

Yes, I would agree.

Also not sure that Grizel’s mistake about hot water warranted being retold in books until the end of the series… Although that one was amusing at first read.

Usually they fall off their chairs with peals of laughter - I always thought I'd missed a joke there.

Like the helpless hilarity triggered by paper games. Maybe you just have to be there.

And the pantomime! I might need to cling to someone and weep gently

I’ll own up to skipping over those blow by blow accounts of the pantomime…Christmas play…sale.

Oh yea- and tennis matches

It took me until I was an adult to understand why that was wrong/funny at all. Clearly my Classics is not up to scratch.

It took me quite a while too! I also remember a Geography teacher being shocked that while Ruey could draw the outline of a map of the UK freehand, she couldn’t mark all the rivers.

And presumably you also 'had to be there' to get something out of the plays, with their heavily laboured morality plots.

I did think, though, that the obstacle course they make the staff do - can't remember which book it's in now, was it it Shocks? - where the obstacles include eating exceptionally bitter apples - was something of a work of genius😄

And Biddy's history lectures when they are on their expeditions.

The trips to various places in Austria & Switzerland have actually been very useful in quizzes for me!

Someone upthread mentioned "No Irish, no blacks. no dogs" which reminded me of my seven year old (Irish) granddaughter's response when she overheard this (during a discussion with an older child.) "That's so unfair!" she spluttered. "Dogs are lovely!"

Apparently I had a similar reaction myself around that age when hearing the grown ups discussing prejudice.

I've just re-read Highland Twins. It's a good story, with lots happening. But it's the one where Biddy O'Ryan becomes Biddy O'Hara. Friedel von Gluck becomes Friedel something else. She mixes up the matrons. And seems to have forgotten Grizel's existence - Miss Denny and someone we've never heard of are said to be responsible for piano teaching.

Yes... and I never got my head around Joey proffering Jacks's rosary to benefit from the "Second Sight".

Complete character break there.

How so? I genuinely don't understand. It reminded me slightly of "Exile". Jo knew some words of Romany (because of course she did!) and offered to read palms for some passing Nazis. I seem to remember she nearly got whacked with a riding crop for her pains but it did the job and the Nastys rode on by.

Catholics of that time would have seen it as disrespectful to the point of blasphemy to use a rosary in such a way. My late Mum, approx 25 years younger than Joey, was upset when she saw people wearing rosaries as if they were ordinary bead necklaces - using them for something she would have seen as supserstitious and maybe vaguely occult would have been an absolute no-no.

This.

I think even I would be uncomfortable with this and I am only vaguely observant.

Oh okay, didn't know blasphemy was involved!. I'm not catholic but as a child over sixty years ago I had what EDB would have called a brevet aunt. She was very observant/devout, went to mass daily etc but was always consulting fortune tellers, tarot cards, the whole nine yards. My father was furious when she took me and my sister (13 and 12) to have our fortunes told. Aunt Mary clearly saw no dichotomy. She once pinned a miraculous medal to my liberty bodice. She said it would bring me luck in my eleven plus exam. I had a fresh liberty bodice for the grand occasion and I never saw the medal again. Aunt Mary probably thought it was down to her that I passed that exam 😂

Maybe it was meant to show how desperate Joey was, and as a convert maybe she wouldn’t have understood.

Completely agree. The commonality with the 'gypsy fortuneteller' incident is EMB knowing some things, but having a gaping hole about others - the Nazi attitude to gypsies was such that Jo could have got them all killed. 'Bill' had a genuinely Catholic attitude to the highland necromancy.

Converts are usually far more doctrinaire!

@Fransgran, it’s not even just blasphemy, the Church sees fortune-telling, spiritualism, divination, clairvoyance etc or any truck with the occult as a very serious breaking of the first commandment.

Obviously, in RL, as with your aunt, there have always been Catholics who have engaged in occult practices, just as there have always been schoolgirls who have midnight feasts without getting caught, or who pranked teachers and got away with it, but EBD just doesn’t do that kind of realism! She is positively heavy-handed about any wrong doing being punished, whether it’s bilious attacks after midnight feasts or the naughty Balbinis missing their mother’s deathbed or Miss Bubb almost starving to death for having dared to care about academic standards!

I agree it’s a weird blip in Joey’s character. I can only think that EBD was somehow unaware of the grave sin she was depicting Joey as committing!

Because Joey is perfect, and if she’d gone off the rails in EBD’s view, the obvious ‘punishment’ would be for Flora/Fiona (I never remember which one has second sight) to get it wrong and say Jack is dead, so Joey is punished for using the occult, before Jack returns, fine, to remind her that God etc etc.