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’m working my way through them again. Currently on 22. Peggy of the Chalet School. Great comfort reading during this heatwave.

I'm using fadedpage because they are free - also no stress about losing a book anywhere!

I am so amused by the language and the way language has changed. I keep looking at the normal books on my Kindle and none of them seem as attractive as these ridiculous stories with zero consistency and formulaic plots. At 80% into the story there is always the big dramatic plot device all tidily finished by the end.

Some CS customs feel madder the older I get when rereading. Like the entire school setting up deckchairs (in Hall? Their common rooms?) after lunch for their rest and then putting them all away again afterwards! Imagine the clatter and hassle as a hundred girls tried to set them up correctly, dragged them around or collapsed them and then had to stack them all somewhere in storage!

Why not just lie down on their beds for a half hour with the dormitory prefect checking there were no riots? But I suppose it would get in the way of Matey’s prescriptive ideas about hospital corners and bed making ..,? 😀

Yes I began a read through last year and am planning to finish it this summer!

In my opinion The Chalet School at Exile is the best book in the series and The Chalet School at War is probably the second best.

Apart from that all of the Tyrolean years are wonderful too

Over the past six months I have re-read the books for the first time in a few years. I was very struck by delicate Joey, lady of the swoons and always needing careful medical supervision lighting up a cigarette on occasion. Although she points out to her daughters that they haven't often seen her smoking, she reminds them that they might not smoke themselves until they're 18. She does add, I think, that if they're sensible, they won't start but it's certainly not verboten. How times have changed! I must admit to skimming the later books where EDB seemed to be phoning it in. They were frankly dull but I don't think I could ever deny (or want to) what an impact they had on young me.

Yes I like the Austrian years and the war years best, the books go downhill a bit in the Swiss years.

She was churning them out far more rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. Two or three per year until the last few. Previously it had been one a year. Obviously less time to develop plots and characters or catch errors. (See the Chalet School Wiki page for publication dates.)

Ignoring the spy in the school, and the hair going grey literally overnight, I would argue strongly that Exile is actually an important historical document. Its description of the lynch mob - by boys the girls actually knew - attacking the Jewish jeweller, in a book published in 1940, is shocking. And the constant distinction between Germans and Nazis when Britain was at war with Germany was humane in the extreme.

I agree. I think it's a really important book for those reasons
Also the sense of identities and friendships that transcend nationality.

I’ve just realised this was an old thread and I said something very similar near the beginning. I also expressed my dislike of the Robin!

A spy story was really obligatory in a wartime book. And EBD handled it in quite a low key way with more emphasis on character than thriller elements.

Though the CS did seem to attract more than its fair share - Frau Whatsit and her son in the first part of Exile, then Gertrud, then the attempt to get hold of the Chart of Erisay in Highland Twins.

It was Gertrud I was thinking of - other schools caught a German spy. The Chalet School went one up on this by having their very own spy. I was never entirely sure that the Nazi leadership would be that interested in the CS Pact.

Yes Exile was far ahead of it‘s time. A brave and bold book and so impressive when you consider the period it was written and published in.

It is perhaps a better read as an adult than it was as a child.

I have often wondered if it had been published as a stand alone novel, rather than as part of a series of school stories would it have received more accolade for being the classic that it is!

My cousin and I have been discussing the books and we wondered whether Robin had learning difficulties and now in Goes To It she's suddenly grown up.

Also can I put in a word for Ann Seymour who was passed over for head girl because she got stuck on a waterfall the previous term whereas Grizel was forgiven for running off to see waterfalls.

Grizel’s character chopped and changed repeatedly throughout the series and particularly in the Tyrolean books.

She was very unlikeable in the first book and then learned a lesson and improved and her and Joey became close. We are then told in (Princess I think it is) that Joey has no time for her and they could not be friends etc and she is presented as being nasty etc.

Despite this and having no apparent qualities that would make her suitable for the role, she somehow becomes Head Girl. We are told that this is the making of her and she seems to be lovely and reformed any time we hear of her for a few books after.

Then suddenly by Jo at the Chalet School, Camp etc, she is back to being cutting and difficult and rubbing Joey up the wrong way.

Sometimes I feel quite sorry for her. Particularly when she longs to be Joey’s lead bridesmaid and Jo basically tells her that of course it won’t be Grizel, because she much prefers the Robin 😂

Also can I put in a word for Ann Seymour who was passed over for head girl because she got stuck on a waterfall the previous term whereas Grizel was forgiven for running off to see waterfalls.

EBD seems to have had it in for Anne Seymour. She always seemed miss out or get a raw deal.

I think it was a mistake for Grizel to stay so long at the CS. She could have gone to a big dayschool in a town where there'd be no-one who knew her as a tiresome schoolgirl and she could have had a much bigger circle of friends and range of interests.

I think it's a pity she didn't go and do war work. I think she'd have done very well in one of the women's services.

Did we ever find out in the later books what became of Juliet Carrick or Eustacia?

Juliet was such a central early character, as much so as Grizel and more favoured by Jo. She was like another sister to Joey and Madge at one point and then she seemed to disappear after she got married and was barely mentioned again

Eustacia reappears in the Swiss books at some point. She's an academic I think,.and comes to stay in Joey's chalet while she writes a book and at one point she gets roped into teaching some lessons at the school

Yes she's Dr Benson.

It annoys me that she has a successful career and is living independently in Oxford with libraries, museums, other academics all close at hand - a lifestyle many people would envy - but Joey/EBD decides she'll be better off living halfway up a Swiss mountain with no access to academic resources.

Delighted somebody revived this thread so I could find it in Active! Was an enormous CS fan as a child, and after a recent house move have just lovingly unpacked my collection of the books (mostly Armada paperbacks) and put them on a shelf in the hope that one of my offspring will be moved to pick one up some day…

As for Inter V, I always pronounced it Inter Fifth!

The deckchairs are clearly a plot device, see the Highland Twins when Fiona manages to get Betty Wynn-Davis’s fingers caught in one thereby rendering the two sworn enemies.

EMBD never seemed to make up her mind whether or not she liked Grizel - sometimes the story lines are full of sympathy for her and sometimes she is depicted as "hard". Her backstory is every bit as sad as Juliet's but EMBD never cuts her any slack.

And how can they move Biddy O'Ryan around Europe as they do? Who is responsible for her? And don't get me started on Dick and Molly's children 😂

But I am enjoying the books so much!

I’ve just reading Carola again , when Biddy returns to the school to teach after four years spent in Australia. Apparently after befriending a terminally ill child /teen /young woman (it’s not clear which). I guess the narrative of all this must have taken place off-stage as I can’t remember any mention of it in previous books.

I assume Madge and Jem must have become Biddy's legal guardians at some point. Getting a passport for her must have been a bit of a nightmare, though. Did they have any documentation for her? Birth certificate? Did she know where she was born? Her father was in the British Army, so it could have been anywhere. Though I suppose she was entitled to British citizenship and Jem would know someone who could fix it.

I’ve just reading Carola again ....

I think it was a girl she'd been at Oxford with who became ill. Biddy travelled home with her, then stayed with the family.

Carola was the first one I read and I assumed all that had happened in a previous book. Only much later realised it was just to explain why we hadn't seen or heard of Biddy for so long.

Some of them are on this site to borrow, if the format works for you?
https://archive.org/search?tab=all&query=Elinor+Brent+dyer&sort=-addeddate