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

[ShellacB]

Hi everyone. Here is the new thread!

I got it from Girls gone by when it wasfirst printed, but looks like they don't have it in print now. But the pace to look for it would be Chalet School sales and wants on FB, you can put on a "wanted" post. There's usually a good chance someone has what you want, and it will be a fair price.

Checking into the second thread.

Have been really enjoying these threads. I was a big fan of the books as a small child in the mid-late 80s, and came back to them in my middle age.

As a child, I'd have one or two of the books twice a year at Christmas and birthday, plus my friend's mum (who may be here!) generously lent me her copies. I have enjoyed some of the continuity errors being pointed out here (e.g. Biddy O'Ryan's name change, slightly random ages of the triplets) because I had always thought that the difficulty was that I'd only read a fairly random selection of books and in a completely random order!

And also that the things I thought were odd as a small child (eg the Robin, only a year younger than I was when I started the books, seeming more like a 3 year old; Jo having a zillion babies in quick succession like noone I knew, etc) and put down to the unknowable oddness of the 1920s or the adult world (or just Jo being wholesale, which again I didn't really understand) were in fact extremely weird!

In retrospect, 7 was maybe a bit young to start the books - although perhaps if I had known a few words of German or French it might have been easier! It took me a long time to work out which meal was which, and I never had any idea how to pronounce them (I always read a-BEND-asun). I'm guessing, though, that this was a pretty typical age to start reading?

Despite really enjoying both books, I hated the way that Jane was treated. This capable, straightforward (if slightly overly direct) girl just had to have shiny fingernails and shiny hair to be considered acceptable by her brother's pals. Even her brother, who up until that point had seen nothing wrong with her, is unpleasant to her for being herself. And it's all couched as 'it's important to make yourself pleasant looking for others'.

Somewhat similar to Madge's oft repeated diktat of 'her voice was ever sweet and low, a most wonderful thing in a woman'.

Have just realised that I have misquoted from memory -

'Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman'

I started reading them at around 7.5. I similarly struggled with the German and French. It wasn't until I re-read them as an adult that I realised it was Sonnalpe, not Sonnaple. I'm trying to remember what I thought of the various Chalet School oddities. I think I just assumed things were like that for posh people in the 1930s.

I have just read Tom Tackles the chalet school where Dick and Mollie return having not seen their older children for NINE years! But they don't even come straight to see them, instead going to look at their new house in Devon for several days. Then when they finally do arrive in Armishire, Dick comes to the school in the morning and Mollie waits until the afternoon.

I guess it was kind of an accepted thing for those who lived in India at that time, and presumably the war had an impact on them being able to travel back, but still. It also seems hard on the older four that the younger children got to spend their entire childhood with their parents while they were shipped off as babies.

There were a lot of oddities, but I just accepted them. Same as I accepted that the Agatha Christie books were full of retired Corporals and Generals and people playing bridge. And after dinner the men went off to together to drink brandy and smoke cigars.

Actually, the emphasis on religion went over my head a lot, because I grew up in a country where people were very religious and religion featured a lot in everyday life. It stands out more re-reading the books in my 50s as an atheist.

The one thing I wonder about is the girls' hairstyles. Joey is wearing plaits coiled around her ears like an old fashioned German hausfrau. I guess Joey's not all that fashion conscious and the style suits her and she never bothered changing it, same as Princess Anne has had the same hair style for as long as I can remember. But I'm surprised that teenage girls are still wearing plaits. In one of the Swiss books, I'm sure that one of the Seniors (or possible even a St. Mildred's girl) has a coronet of plaits. Obviously the pupils weren't allowed to wear their hair down, except maybe on special occasions, so they had no choice but to tie it up. But plaits seem a bit unlikely. Having said that, I wasn't around in the '50s and '60s.

I think it’s in Joey & Co in Tirol that Len persuades a reluctant Jo to let her have a ponytail.

I first started reading them at seven, over 35 years ago!

I can clearly remember that the first book I read was Camp. It wasn’t until much later that I realised that it was written so long beforehand. I thought it felt pretty current at the time! That might well have been because it was set on a campsite, so quite a lot wouldn’t have been hugely different between the 30s and the 90s as to what children would have done at Camp and the set up. There were still no mobile phones then, so it wouldn’t have seemed odd that the girls were completely remote for that week or so and doing outdoor activities.

I don’t think it was until Exile which I read about a year later, that I realised the books were written 50 to 60 years beforehand (then) with the references to the War etc. I remember Exile being the first thing I really knew about the War and asking my parents what year it took place in.

Like Tayto I grew up in a place where religion was a large part of everyday life and school life, so that didn’t strike me as being unusual. Even the distinction between the Christian denominations was something I would have been aware of as a child in the nineties, so it wasn’t unusual. Obviously, for a child reading it now even where I come from it would seem more old fashioned and dated.

I also really enjoy these threads.

Even apart from discussing the books, which we all love, everyone seems to be genuinely lovely on here. People are very respectful of the opinions of others and the comments are always interesting to read!

But plaits seem a bit unlikely. Having said that, I wasn't around in the '50s and '60s.

Adult women nearly all wore their hair short in the 50s. EBD was quite out of date with girls wearing their hair long and putting it up at 18. Even in the 20s and 30s, if you look at school photos from that time, nearly all the girls have bobbed hair. Although EBD was a teacher then, so maybe she knew girls with long hair.

I was at school in the late 50s-60s. Some girls at my primary school wore their hair long in plaits, but at secondary school, everyone had short or shoulder length hair. When I was in the 6th c.1970, long hair was just coming back into fashion, so I grew mine and wore it long for a few years into the early 70s. But just hanging loose, not plaited or put up. Sometimes I tied it back to keep it out of the way.

I have just read Tom Tackles the chalet school where Dick and Mollie return having not seen their older children for NINE years!

I think that as EBD didn't have any children herself, and she wasn't married, she was necessarily incapable of understanding and therefore writing about motherhood. Even today, on here, we see threads where this isn't understood.

She didn't comprehend marriage, either. It was generally blissful in her books.

But EBD was a teacher and her depictions of the mistresses in the CS very much ring true. I love it when they're all smoking in the staff room and eating biscuits and talking about the pupils. It definitely sounds authentic.

The rate of multiple births is also ludicrous in the books. As for Joey getting to term in a triplet pregnancy without her doctor husband noticing...... well, it's nonsense. She would have been enormous at an early stage of the pregnancy and would have had a lot of complications. Jack must have omitted to take anything he learned about obstetrics on board when he was training. Or he was unimaginably unobservant.

Dick and Mollie and the 9 years away interests me. My FIL was in a similar situation, he lived with cousins from age 7 - 14. Moving back in with quite elderly parents in the early 60s, who had been in an isolated rural place for 25+ years and therefore still working with the ideals of the late 30s, was very difficult. Whereas Peggy and co fit straight back in.

Can anyone recommend any other fiction which picks up on this theme?

Jack was at war for most of the pregnancy in fairness.

However, her brother in law Jem lived down the road so surely he would have noticed, being such an experienced medic!

As for Joey getting to term in a triplet pregnancy without her doctor husband noticing.

He wasn't there. He was with the army in France.

Though Peter Chester, the GP, should have had some idea.

What's odd is Janie Lucy asking Jo if she likes babies, when she must have been visibly pregnant at the time.

I guess the idea of wearing their hair up is a sort of shorthand for EMBD saying that the girl concerned is now to be regarded as an adult.

I have been trying to find pictures of what Joey's hair might look like. I suppose she must have looked something like Princess Leia.

Yulia Tymoshenko
Has/had Joey style hair

What only really struck me when rereading as an adult is how wildly ungrammatical and mistake-riddled the French in particular is (we hear far more of it than German, which is mostly just the odd phrase). And not just the Anglophone girls making comic errors, but the staff, including supposedly native speakers! Mademoiselle tells Joey at one point that ‘est-ce que’ takes the subjunctive, and the supposedly fluent Gillian Linton addresses individual girls as ‘vous’ rather than ‘tu’ in Three Go (‘vous’ would only be appropriate for multiple addressees, or when speaking to strangers or people in authority), and uses the ‘Vous’ form of verbs with the girls, who all also use the fo4mal form to one another — and her own French utterances are full of errors and literal translations, as are the supposedly correct phrases Mary-Lou has learned from the mistresses.

I mean, if EBD’s French wasn’t up to it, why not do the easy thing and just give us what people are saying in English, scattered with the odd ‘Merci’ and ‘ma petite’, which largely worked fine in the early books?

That's how I imagined the Austrian girls to be wearing their hair. Joey is described as having "large flat coils" over her ears. The other girls have plaits coiled around their heads.

It must have looked deeply bizarre, especially when Joey was older! Dorothy L Sayers gives the plaited earphones hairstyle to a weirdo minor character in Gaudy Night (who also wears a djibbah and sandals and is described as ‘curious’ in the sense of ‘odd’) and that was published in 1935!

Sort6, forgot to disagree — Frieda and co wear their hair like Yulia T. Joey wore hers like this.

Sorry, like this!

But Joey had a fringe. Or at least, she does on the over of Reunion.

Ah yes sorry my mistake! Forgot the earphones!

She was definitely eccentric!

I guess the idea of wearing their hair up is a sort of shorthand for EMBD saying that the girl concerned is now to be regarded as an adult.

Not just EBD. It was standard that a girl put her hair up at eighteen. It comes up in the Abbey books too. In one of them Rosamund decides to put her hair up even though she's not yet 18 because circumstances require that she acts like and is regarded as an adult.

It was increasingly outdated from the First World War, though, because so many girls had short hair and kept it short into adulthood, and older girls/young women had their long hair cut short.

Earphones must have made talking on the telephone very difficult.

(I always thought Yulia looks like Frieda!)