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?

Sure, but many Brits would have taken a similar view of Germans at large when writing an Austrian-set book with significant German characters and everyone speaking German a lot of the time, and where key terms in the schools’s culture like the names of meals, are in German, whatever language is being spoken.

(I mean, everyone behaves as if Verity is being an utter weirdo to refuse to sing or speak German in Three Go, but in reality it wouldn’t have been a particularly unusual position, and a school with strong German, Austrian and Italian affiliations in England during WW2 would have been regarded with suspicion.)

EBD is generally an ‘other cultures are wonderful’ writer, but makes this major exception for Prussians, about whom she and her major authoritative characters are invariably negative, and Prussian characters (Thekla , Frau Berlin) are irremediably awful xenophobes, given to spite, anger and bad language.

It wasn’t an unusual view, no, but it’s unusual in the context of the ‘everyone’s lovely’ CS.

She usually weights the scales on other conflicts. Like the two prominent Irish characters at the start of the series (when the Irish War of Independence had happened only a few years earlier) Deira O’Hagan and Maureen Whatsit of the Saints are both written as Anglo-Irish, UK-loyal, future debutantes, rather than characters likely to have had nationalist sympathies. Biddy, a Kerry peasant from a place that was a hotbed of revolutionary activity, is carefully positioned as the child of a loyal servant of an Anglo-Irish woman and a British army soldier, rather than a rebel..

She does. So does Mary-Lou. Unfortunately, I think EBD sees only a very few ways of being an adult woman in school stories that are unusual for their regular centring of adults — they are either brisk CS mistresses, go wifely and sweet offstage, or they become insufferable, zany butters-in.

I didn’t much like Merryn Williams’ The Chalet Girls Grow Up, but it cracked me up that she makes Mary-Lou a scarlet woman and home wrecker. It’s like meek Frieda Mensch turning out to be Mata Hari!😃

I think that might have been in Exploits referring to Thekla

I think there was a similar reference when talking about Thekla in Exploits, but the initial discussion happened in The School at the Chalet.

I think it was also referenced in one or two of the other Tyrolean books.

So far I think that nearly everyone has either Exile, The School at the Chalet or Jo of the Chalet School as their favourite.

I noticed that at least one poster referred to The Chalet School and Jo rather than Jo of the Chalet School and I think they may have meant the latter. Maybe I am wrong and they did actually mean The Chalet School and Jo!

I had to check the titles as I always get those two titles confused (surprised EBD named two book so close together in the series so similarly!)

For clarity I was referring to the second book of the series at number two in my list, which contains the lovely Christmas at Innsbruck

Actually it is at number three in my list!

You're absolutely right, when I saw it quoted from The School At The Chalet I realised 😊

Really?! I've never read it! Mary Lou the prim becomes a home wrecker?!!

I have read it, but didn’t enjoy it because I felt it took settled characters and made them completely different people. It seemed to me as if Merryn Williams was being controversial for the sake of it, not because it made sense in the Chalet School universe.

The whole book is very dramatic and non-canon. Mildly satisfying for those who dislike Jo and Mary-Lou, but it's very much not a classic Chalet book

I've been thinking and I'm not sure as I devotee I could read it 🙈

I've been reading 'The School at the Chalet' (thank you everyone for the Faded Page recommendation) and only read about the incident with Frau Berlin the other evening. I was surprised there was so much animosity between Frau Berlin and the English schoolgirls, especially as the book was published in 1925 (well before the rise of the Nazi party). But as @HonoriaBulstrode pointed out, it wasn't all that long after World War I had ended. Obviously the book is a work of fiction, but I wonder if it was based (even loosely) on a real encounter or incident.

I was also intrigued by a reference to the War of Independence in Ireland. Early in the book, Madge tells Dick that she's planning to open a school abroad. ‘Then where were you thinking of?’ he demanded, not unreasonably. ‘Ireland? Shouldn’t advise that! You might wake up one morning to find yourself burnt out!’ I don't think this reference was in the Armada paperback, although I could be wrong.

I really must visit Tyrol and Innsbruck, although I probably won't see any of the local inhabitants sporting hats with feathers. Or encounter a Tzigane band.

I'm really looking forward to reading all of the books (complete and unabridged). I only ever read the paperbacks as a kid.

I was surprised there was so much animosity between Frau Berlin and the English schoolgirls, especially as the book was published in 1925

As I recall, Grizel and Jo made matters worse.
But there was a lot of resentment among Germans about Germany being held solely responsible for the war and made to pay for it - that's what the policy of Appeasement was intended to address.

Maybe EBD had had some encounter with Berliners or Prussians on her Austrian holiday.

Some of the Faded Page versions are from the Armada editions. They do tell you when you download a book if it's an abridged version.

I read all the early ones again a couple of years ago when we went to Achensee. It's so pretty there, highly recommend it. You can walk round the lake and imagine Grizel's mountain escapade.

Rereading them, there were loads of bits that I hadn't really considered as a child, mainly the shipping children off to relatives for years on end - and I said that as a boarding school kid who travelled back to my folks every holidays. I remember feeling very bad for Daisy Venables whose mother just slips away off page after her stressful time in Australia (!) egg manages to kill her husband and sons.

I feel sorry for the Bettany children who are brought to visit their Aunt and Uncle and just abandoned. Such a different time.

It’s a million years since I read it, but it goes full-on grim kitchen sink drama. If you can imagine The Chalet School Goes Eastenders. 😃 Mary-Lou has an affair with ghastly Reg, Len’s (possibly violent?) husband, Joey’s obsession with the School and not growing up turn out to be symptoms of early-onset dementia, and Jack dies by suicide, from what I remember. (I may be remembering wrongly!)

I think I found the way it took various CS tropes and did grimly realistic things with them vaguely blackly comic (I mean, Joey following her former school around Europe and making a special gate in the hedge so she can bob up in the staff room isn’t normal, so it’s quite funny to see someone run with that idea), and it’s never damaged my pleasure in the dainty cubicles-and-trilingualism stuff.

But on the old CS fan board (now defunct I think — the CBB?) you couldn’t even mention it without causing mass panic and horror.

I thought it was mostly hideous and am sure the author intended to have that effect, but I enjoyed the way some of the characters and situations were developed, such as Con's career trajectory mirroring Jo's, the outcome of poor Margot having been saddled with the "problem child" label throughout her childhood, and Reg being even more awful than we thought he would be when we were reading the original books and going, "Please, Len, no!"

Yes, I think it was absolutely intended as a two-fingered salute to the odder, twee-er, most improbably cosy elements of the CS world, but as you say, even in its grim delight in dragging Freudesheim et al into the world of the kitchen sink drama, it does capitalise on some of the odder faultlines in the later part of the series, when EBD's writing had jumped its own shark by some way, by taking them to their logical RL conclusion.

I don't even mean the drug gangs, meteors hitting the cricket pitch, motorboats etc, I mean things like the (to me genuinely chilling) way in which a supposedly devoted mother like Joey pressures her naive, sheltered schoolgirl daughter into agreeing to an engagement with a profoundly unpleasant, much older family friend because to say no or 'Not till I'm done with Oxford' would be (I quote) 'playing fast and loose'!

Reg (possessive, sulky, chippy, acquisitive) had all the hallmarks of a domestic sociopath. It was just that this is the CS, so EBD thought that it was completely normal to pair off a 17 year old schoolgirl with a much older medic who'd known her since she was a toddler and wanted her, whereas she hadn't given him a thought because he was her dad's colleague. For her that was a happy ending. Merryn Williams just says 'Look, here's what would actually have happened.'

But I agree it's not intended as any kind of fill-in or sequel in the sense in which these things are normally done, in the spirit and the voice of the series.

I feel sorry for the Bettany children who are brought to visit their Aunt and Uncle and just abandoned.

Abandoned is what happened to Juliet. Not what happened to the Bettany children.

I have read it, but didn’t enjoy it because I felt it took settled characters and made them completely different people.

Yes. Jack Maynard was a devout Catholic. No way would be have done what he did in the book.

I don't mind fanfic which develops characters' established personalities, even if it goes a bit ott at times, but not when they become unrecognisable. Same with making ML a homewrecker. Love her or loathe her, she had a strong moral code and would not have done that.

Blimey 🙈😲😅

Not abandoned in the same way that Juliet was of course but it was still a strange way to bring up children - to bring them to their aunt and uncle and then vanish for years without seeing them.

I remember my reaction to Len and Reg Entwhistle was "Nooooo!" but for very personal reasons. Having been lumbered with an ugly surname that just invited juvenile ribbing, I decided when young that his surname would be my number one consideration when meeting any potential suitor.. I read all the CS books thinking "Oh, that's a nice name!" and imagining myself as a Russell, Bettany, Maynard etc etc. I wasn't alone. I remember one of my brothers, aged six, coming home from school very excited that his teacher had got married and was now Mrs X. He was looking forward, he said, to getting married and changing his name. He was crushed when told this wasn't customary! When he did get married, his wife wisely decided to stick to her own name and though long divorced, it didn't occur to me to resume mine. I hated to think of Len having Entwhistle inflicted on her. And "Reg"! Didn't she suffer enough having to answer to "Len", tha name of a Welsh shepherd on The Archers once upon a time? She was clearly a finer person that trivially-minded, frivolous me!

I'm reading "Joe to the Rescue" and have come across Reg for the first time. I hope for Len's sake that he loses the sulky attitude before she marries him although what man would want to marry a woman that he first met as a toddler when he was a teen?

I don't know if someone has already mentioned this(I've not managed to read the whole thread yet) but Catherine Goes to School has just been released by Books to Treasure and is available as a paperback on Amazon. Also on Kindle for much less money ...

Alas, Reg doesn’t change much. Still possessive, touchy etc , though enmeshed with the Maynards rather than Phoebe Wychcote.

I kind of love Jo to the Rescue. It’s like the holiday from hell, where everyone has brought their million babies with them, and then old Debbie, someone else’s faithful retainer, decides to start doing there housework in gratitude because they’re nice to her drippy employer.