The Chalet School 2 - Still talking about it a century later!

[ShellacB]

Hi everyone. Here is the new thread!

I'm not sure. I think they still have a facebook page.

I have bought the fill in “Chalet School in Peril” but haven’tmanaged to get past the first chapter based on a few girls eating a bit too much chocolate (although TBF this is quite EBD). Should I persist?

I misread the title you were referring to as Chalet School in Hell, and was thinking, 'Gosh, Merryn Williams wrote another dark CS spin-off?' 😀

Do persist - it really is very good

Hopefully it’s okay if I join as I just sank back into old habits and bought three EBD hardbacks in a second hand book store. One is early prototype I think, not chalet school, but A Thrilling Term At Janeways? Mad but brilliant and strangely riveting.

Also Eustacia and Jo at the chalet school (think that’s its title, she’s about to be head girl, 16.

😱😂

Yes, it's very good and well researched I think

I think GGB and ebooks has come up on a number of occasions on various threads -- I think the issue is partly that GGB is pretty much a tiny cottage industry, and they just don't want to/think it isn't in their capabilities. Ditto for only a few books being in print at any one time.

Yes, I understand that that is the case.

It's a shame, though. I think that if they were all published and for sale in bookstores/available in libraries they would still sell and be borrowed.

I understand that the Armada editions sold well up until they stopped publishing them! Also, I remember them being very popular in my local and school library up until at least the late 1990's, which would have been close to the time Armada stopped publishing them.

I know they might be considered old fashioned by young children, but no more so (or even less so) than What Katy Did, Heidi, Little Women, Enid Blyton's school stories.

They would be very much children's classics by now. Particularly Exile, which has such historical significance. Also, as we have seen on here they attract such an interest from adults too.

This is my understanding and I think they maybe tried an ebook some years ago and it didn't go well. It is a shame though, when I was in hospital earlier this year I would have loved to have had a stack of them on my Kindle

Belsornia slowly ebbed out as a plan, until it was done away with completely.

We were told after Madge's wedding that it was Joey's future and that she would leave school relatively soon to go, so it was very much her original planned storyline ending in my opinion.

Then it was put off for various reasons, firstly as she was to stay on at school to the end, after that Madge needed help in the Nursery. When she was to stay on longer at school she was still meant to be going, so EBD may have considered ending the series again when Joey finished school.

It was mentioned in Camp that she wouldn't go the next year as Madge needed help. That was also the first book where there was any real subsantial hint of Joey and Jack Maynard being a plan. Jem makes a fuss of her talking to him. Jack looks at her in a funny way and reminds her that she has to grow up sometime etc. Belsornia was pretty much done away with as an idea after Camp and that book was first published in 1930, so Belsornia was no longer a plan long before the War. I also don't recall any more substantial mention of Joey and Jack until Exile was published 8 or 9 years later. Although there was only around 3 years in Chalet School time between Camp and Exile as EBD was producing one a year at that period with only a term or a summer/holiday period covered per book. I would presume this was to keep Joey at school in the series for as long as possible without her ageing too much.

Yes, I remember the comment about Jack looking at her in a funny way. It would have gone straight over my head as a child, but as an adult it stood out! He must have been quite a bit older than her too, for him to already be a qualified doctor and fairly well-established in his practice to get a job overseas at the San. Similar (or even bigger) to Reg Entwistle meeting Len as a toddler!

Yes, it is never specified what the age difference is but it must be at least ten years and probably more likely to be around 12 years or more.

He arrives in Tyrol when Joey is 13 and is a qualified Doctor by then, so he must be 23 at the very least. It appears that he has also had some experience in practice too, so in reality he is more likely to be 25 or 26 when he arrives.

Joey is 17 in Camp I think, based on previous school years and ages so he must be at least 27 to 30, so that is quite a difference at that age. Or at least it would be considered to be now.

Joey is 20 when they get together properly and he must be 30 to 33 by then.

Thanks for the new thread 😊

I'm reading one of the Tyrol books I always rather overlook, Exploits, but actually, it has lots of lovely set-pieces, like the incredibly detailed account of halfterm at the Sonnaple, which in some ways is completely mad -- the entire school goes to the Sonnalpe, and is accommodated between an already crowded Die Rosen, the Annexe, Das Pferd and the hotel, and when there's a thunderstorm followed by a snowstorm, they all, including the staff, spend the entire time at Die Rosen playing hide and seek, billiards, battledore and shuttlecock and presenting elaborate tableaux and singing and having snow fights.

It's hardly surprising that Madge comes across on this halfterm as more than a bit frazzled and obsessed with dirt, her oak floors, sheets and curtains!

Poor Robin gets a thin time of it, as she keeps being sent off to the nursery to play with Peggy and Rix and David.

And we get the detail that the motor-road has just opened, but that until that, the only way up to the Sonnalpe had been via the mountain path! How on earth did seriously ill patients get to the San before the motor-road opened? It sounds as if it is quite a strenuous climb!!

Actually, I'd somehow completely overlooked that Joey has them do Burne-Jones' The Golden Staircase as one of the tableaux, or what it must have looked like with the girls all draped in sheets posing on a stairs made out of boxes and stools!

The ‘staircase’ itself was made out of sundry boxes, a table, a stool, a chair, and two low step-ladders, along the tops of which rested a couple of broad planks on which were standing Vanna and Elsie, draped in their own sheets. Descending them, were Sophie Hamel, Evadne, Cornelia, Ilonka, Margia, and Simone. The musical instruments of the original were represented by Sophie’s violin, Rix’s toy saxophone, a tambourine, two pan-lids (to represent the cymbals), and a harp made out of cardboard and string. The ‘stairs’ were draped with green velvet draperies in which the horrified Madge recognised her two new portières, only just put up; and the balustrading on which the pair at the top were leaning consisted of a couple of scarves stretched across the embrasure of the french window and firmly nailed into place. The singing girls were Joey herself and Yvette Mercier. As for dresses, they had all robbed their beds, and Madge shuddered for the holes in her good linen sheets as she saw the light gleaming on multifarious safety-pins.

collection of 50 original hardbacks sold at Glasgow auction house yesterday for £837 including commission someone wanted them very badly
way over my price limit 😥

Wow they got a bargain though, £17 per book, a lot of them still go for much more than that (I paid around £25 per book to complete my collection but many are tatty, without dust jackets etc)

My Chambers hardbacks from I think a reprint in 1988 (all the rest of my collection is Armada paperbacks) - I have not yet started my search to find the same Chambers edition of School at the Chalet.

I love the early books and agree that they are an absolute treasure in terms of a contemporaneous account during WW2. The later books become a little too formulaic for me - I don't think I've read past Wales.

I tend to skim Switzerland on a re read. Tyrol and Armiford (Hereford) are by far the best, in that order.

If you like the older books I would recommend The Chalet School Reunion out of the Swiss ones. It is a really good book. More of an adult read really. I found others that harked back to the early era, ala Joey and Co in Tyrol and The Coming of Age to be disappointing and missed opportunities, but I loved Reunion!

Absolutely barking mad. Jem is quite irascible in this book too (I’m just reading it myself)- fretting about his billiards cloth, william and mary chair, fencing sticks… quite the country gentleman.

I would love to have gone on the Pertisau trip, I remember reading about it at the time. Dh has promised we will go for my 60th birthday (in two years).