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?

Oh yes @NotMyRealAccount Problem is good too, though it's one where the full version definitely makes more sense!

Try fadedpage as suggested by earlier posters 😊
Edit due to quoting wrong post. Was referring to Kenya, can be found on that site if you've never read

What's everyone's favourite of the Swiss books?

There isn't an outstanding favourite for me.
I like New Mistress, because it was something quite different.
In no particular order, Barbara, Kenya, Genius, and the ones about the triplets and their friends - Problem, Richenda, Theodora. I think the quality does decline after Theodora.

Of the post-war, pre-Swiss books, I like Carola, because it was the first one I read, Wrong, Bride and Changes.

New Mistress starts so well with her instant dislike of Mary Lou. Alas.

In the last books there's an obsession with personal jealousy between two girls as the root of major school and other disruption. In the early Chalet School books jealousy is acknowledged as a motivating factor (Simone, obviously) but seen as something to get past. But at the end it really took over - I wondered did it reflect something EBD was experiencing, or just her reduced inventiveness.

Of the Swiss books I think Barbara is probably my favourite, the school has just arrived and it all feels fresh, Barbara seems like a realistic character as well.

Someone mentioned Eustacia from the Tyrol books. That one always upsets me, the way that poor girl who has just lost her parents is treated is appalling.

Yes, and EBD represents her totally unsympathetically, as if her mother’s death is both not sad because self-caused (because she’s not a San medic and male) and doesn’t really impact on her only child, and as if being catapulted into a big family of total strangers and then punished for not fitting in by being sent to the CS precisely so that she can almost never return to the UK, is somehow not a big deal because she’s has a weird name, is prim and wears tight plaits.

And Joey is absolutely outrageous to her about ‘causing’ Robin to fret over the night on the Stubai glacier and hence suddenly almost die.

The only thing I remember about Barbara is (1) that, despite being sent overseas to boarding school, she’s originally supposed to live next door with Joey and her sister who has mystifyingly used her Oxford degree to be Joey’s nursery governess and (2) at 13, with short hair, she doesn’t know how to brush it herself!

The books I inherited from my aunts were all the early ones from the Tirol so I am particularly fond of those. As a child, the ones I added to the collection were all Armada paperbacks and as we know they were heavily edited and in some cases split into two books so never grabbed me in the same way. So with that in mind my favourite 5 would be:

The School at the Chalet
School and Jo
Rivals
Lintons
Jo of the the Chalet

I built up my collection as an adult, pre children. On one occasion I went on a day trip to Hay on Wye with DH and the inlaws and we bought a vintage suitcase to carry home all my books.

This time, reading them in order I loved Exile and Goes to it and now Lavender.

Yes I have to say Eustacia is one of my least favourite of the Tyrol books for the reasons you have outlined above.

Eustacia is a young orphan and is really treated quite badly by all of them.

I also find her overnight extreme personality change to be quite unbelievable. She is essentially a different character after the accident!

Similarly, the way the adults behave towards the Balbini twins in The New Chalet School when their mother is dying and after they have just lost her is hugely unsympathetic, given that they are only children who have been through a traumatic time.

Also, whilst Thekla is horrible the way she is treated in comparison to Joyce Linton is pretty unfair. I recall Mlle Lepattre basically tells the child that if Joyce's mother had died it would have been her fault!

As a child, the ones I added to the collection were all Armada paperbacks and as we know they were heavily edited and in some cases split into two books so never grabbed me in the same way.

The covers of the early Armada editions were off-putting too. Characters in the Tyrol books in miniskirts and Jo with a 60s beehive do.

The original hardback covers, otoh, were (mostly) really nice artwork and accurate depictions of the characters and stories.

My favourites chime with everyone else's but my number one is Jo of the the Chalet School. It was the first one I read and even today I still love re-reading the account of a Tyrolean Christmas. I also have a sneaking affection for The Chalet Girls in Camp. "Goodbye, little Baumersee. Til we meet again."

It's a shame as lots of other things about Eustacia are actually well-written, and it's in many ways a classic Tyrol book, with good set-pieces like Bernhilda's wedding, Joey being told she's getting an extra year at school but has to be Head Girl, Middles, the snowfight, the halfterm trip, Robin's millionth NDE etc. But the school treats Eustacia absolutely monstrously. It's grimly hilarious that when one or two girls, both prefects and Middles, suggest treating her kindly at various crisis meetings, everyone poohpoohs it and says they already have -- which of course is nonsense. She's been sent to Coventry for long periods and deprived of her only pleasure, using the library, or even finding anywhere quiet to read.

She'd obviously have (eventually) done absolutely fine at a highly academic school that offered really good teaching in maths and classics, not the poor CS which sees lessons as secondary to health.

(Incidentally, I only realised from reading the edition on Faded Page that there were quite so many cuts in my Armada paperback. It left out a really interesting paragraph about how Simone had edited The Chaletian the term before when Joey was ill, and accepted funny contributions, and Joey thought she'd done a bad job of editing and been secretly furious, because she prides herself on the school mag's 'serious tone'! She then announces to the school that no one is allowed to send in limericks, fun facts or invented local legends. It must have been terribly po-faced! I always imagined it would be full of funny in-jokes and stories. And yet Joey, when it's suggested she ask Eustacia for an article for the Chaletian, rejects the idea because she doesn't want an essay on Euclid or Sophocles. Who knows what was actually in it other than sports notes?)

I also noticed in the uncut edition that the halfterm trips are arranged, weirdly, according to nationality, as explicitly described by Madge! The English and American girls (and Robin!) are going to one place, the Italians somewhere else, and 'the rest' somewhere else entirely! And Madge describes the English and American girls as 'all one nationality'. Even if what she means is 'native English speakers', it's still a bit weird for the multilingual CS!

Also, whilst Thekla is horrible the way she is treated in comparison to Joyce Linton is pretty unfair.

Thekla was older than Joyce, and she acted out of malice. Plus there was her general attitude - her rudeness to Frieda and Sophie in the previous book. They were two of the first pupils and the Mensches were close friends. Madge needed their goodwill far more than she needed Thekla.

I think Eustacia has the same problems as Rivals - Mary Burnett wasn't a very effective Head Girl and Mdlle Lepattre wasn't a strong enough Head.

I see poor Eustacia as what would now be an autistic girl who is forced into learning to mask. She is written exactly as a headteacher with no modern knowledge of SEN would see it - a sudden personality change into someone the authorities prefer.

At least she has plenty of time alone to let it all go and relax the masks when she’s alone.

Also, EBD just has a weird attitude to Prussians. Her usual 'other cultures are great and we're all just one big happy family' doesn't seem to extend to Prussians. Some of it's supposedly because Thekla is Junker class, but I doubt the Von Eschenaus (girls who spend their schooldays talking about wanting to get married and cook and clean for their husbands, though Marie gets around this by marrying a Baron, who presumably comes with a retinue) and Elizaveta were politically progressive. If it weren't for the fact that EBD has decided that Marie has to be lovely, she'd probably be as nonplussed about sharing classes with shopkeeper-class Sophie Hamel as Thekla is.

Also, EBD just has a weird attitude to Prussians.

It's not EBD's attitude and it's not 'weird'. It was a generally held opinion about Prussians, based on a couple of hundred years of Prussian history, and particularly more recent hidtory.

The von Eschenaus came to the school because they already knew and were friendly with the Maranis. Gisela had been at school with them in Vienna, at a lycée, which I think is equivalent to a high school. So they were accustomed to mingling with the middle classes.

It's a stereotype she leans into when she doesn't in other cases. It's certainly not only her personal opinion, no, but then she could have depicted former CS pupils wholeheartedly joining the Nazi party, or Karl Linders as happily bombing Coventry rather than throwing out peace missives and being delighted to be a POW. She is far more nuanced about ordinary Germans and Austrians vs Nazis for instance.

It's not just Thekla, either, it's also Frau Berlin and a generalised position in the books -- doesn't Jem or Madge, or one of the series' main authority figures, make some giant generalisation about how much he likes Austrians, but the Prussians are filled with hatred? Can't remember which book.

I mean, I'm not blaming EBD. She was remarkably open minded for someone writing between the wars and during WWII.

All I'm saying is that Thekla is a representative (like Frau Berlin, an unpleasant stereotype who spits and has appalling manners, and is overtly anti-English on a number of occasions) of a culture which is almost alone in being regarded entirely negatively in the series, so she was never going to be reformed.

I think she is probably using 'Prussia' to represent the negative stereotypes of German-ness that she resists everywhere else.

It was a conversation between Madge and Herr Marani. She says how lovely all the Austrians she has met are, and he says they are grateful to her - and that they are not Prussians!

Which book is that in? I have some vague memory of someone saying something quite dark about Prussians 'seeming to be filled with hatred' or something -- is that the same conversation?

I am pretty sure that that was The School at the Chalet.

Yes, it was the first book. Sets the tone for how they are seen going forward!

But it was a standard view in both the UK and Austria at the time. The Prussians were blamed for WW1, and the Austrians had that plus the Austro-Prussian war before that, in the 1860s. So within living memory for the old folk. They were historical enemies.

I have no idea how I remember that!

It's in School At:

<span class="italic">‘It is very good of you, Herr Marani,’ she said, addressing her host. ‘Indeed, I think everyone is kind in Austria.’</span>

‘Oh, bitte sehr,’ he said, glancing down at her with a smile. ‘We should be a rude people indeed if we were not grateful to the lady who is doing so much for our girls. And we are not Prussians, you know!’
‘It’s funny,’ said Madge slowly, ‘but the only discourtesies I have met with have been from Prussians. The Bavarians I know are all delightful, and as for the Tyrolese, I cannot say how much I like them. But the Prussians seem to be filled with a hatred as bitter and venomous as vitriol.’
(One of the advantages of Faded Page - one can do a text search)

You have to remember the context of the time when this was written. Not that long after the end of the Great War. Everyone blamed Germany for starting the war, and the German military class, which was largely Prussian, blamed everyone else for losing it. There was a lot of bitterness. It's one of the reasons Hitler was able to take hold. The traditional military classes despised him, but they were willing to go along with him.

Oh, don't know where that weird formatting came from.

OMG

I hadn’t discovered FadedPage!!

I’ve probably read about two thirds of them but all in Armada so cut down.
I just said to DP “See you in 10 years!”

Perhaps I’ll read them starting from the end!

My favourites: The School
at the Chalet; The Chalet School
and Jo; Exile…

Currently re-reading the first of the Swiss books. Is it just me, or does Joey become increasingly irritating once she comes back from her stay in Canada?

Jo becomes almost unbearable in the Swiss books unfortunately, I partly blame her for Mary Lou also becoming unbearable.