Behind the Chalet School: A biography of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

by Helen McClelland

  A storybook family

  Edith and Julian Bainbridge, and Hazel their talented only child, might have walked straight from some children’s novel of the theatre by, perhaps, Noel Streatfeild. Edith came of an established theatrical family: she represented the third generation; Hazel, who by nine years old was already quite an experienced actress, represented the fourth; and today the fifth and sixth generations of this remarkable family are carrying on the theatrical traditions, for the well-known actresses Kate O’Mara and Belinda Carroll are Hazel Bainbridge’s daughters, while Kate’s son, Dickon, is an actor-producer.

  Hazel Bainbridge (to whom Elinor’s first book was dedicated), with her parents Julian and Edith who later owned the Marina Theatre.

  Hazel’s father also belonged to the theatre world. He, on the other hand, had not been born into it; in fact his family had been rather less than delighted when Julian, a couple of years after leaving school, had announced his intention of going on the stage. It did turn out though that Julian had some talent: and not only for acting but as producer and manager; later also as playwright. And by the time he first met Edith Boughton, his future wife, he could claim a fair amount of success in all these capacities — even if financially he was only just keeping his head above water.

  Oddly enough Edith at this time had done no acting at all. Her father (Hazel’s grandfather) had for personal reasons been fiercely determined that none of his seven children was to enter the theatrical profession. Thus, although the theatre was in her bones, Edith was past twenty and a married woman when she first took part in a professional production. Then her success was immediate. ‘But of course, of the two, it was my mother who had the real acting talent’ — Hazel recalls about her parents.

  Once started, Edith found plenty of opportunities to continue acting, since nearly ten years were to elapse between her marriage and Hazel’s birth. And it was just as well that Edith did have real ability: for when the Great War came Julian Bainbridge joined up almost at once, and he was then sent off to the Middle East, where he was kept for the best part of four years. During all this time his wife and daughter — little more than a baby when the war began had to remain on their own in England; and most of the family’s financial responsibilities now fell on Edith. Because of her undoubted gifts she was offered enough engagements to keep things going. But it was a tough life. Certainly for her, and perhaps also for the small Hazel, who until 1917 went everywhere with her mother. Not surprisingly, most of Hazel’s earliest memories are of continual touring round provincial theatres and living in theatrical digs.

  Hazel’s own first appearance on the stage was made in true storybook fashion, when at the tender age of five she went on as Little Willie in East Lynne. But this event, unlike those in stories, was not a great success. At least not from Hazel’s point of view: she found Little Willie ‘altogether too soppy’ and ‘hated the whole thing’. With the result that she flatly refused to take part in any other play. Her mother wisely made no attempt to persuade her; and two or three years were to pass before Hazel changed her mind.

  By that time the war was over; Hazel, at about seven, had gone off to a boarding-school near Portsmouth; and Julian Bainbridge was back in England trying to pick up the threads of his career. He had got himself the job of managing a small repertory company; and, because they suffered from the usual lack of funds, Julian decided to put on a play he himself had written some years previously, called The Little Witness. His motives were primarily economic: no royalties had to be paid on his own play. But just possibly Hazel’s father had something else in the back of his mind, for this play did contain a most important part for a child actor. And Ned, the ‘Little Witness’ of the title, was a very different matter from Little Willie. He was a tough child, a real little cockney urchin. Something about him appealed greatly to Hazel; and her parents had no difficulty in getting her to take the part. The play was a great success. So was Hazel. And from then onwards, quite literally from that day to this, she was to be heart and soul in the theatre.

  This particular play appears always to have been a sure winner with audiences. So it is no surprise to learn that when the Bainbridges’ company began their season in South Shields, around the middle of April 1921, they chose to open with — as advertised in the Shields Gazette: ‘The Little Witness. Written by Captain Julian Bainbridge. The leading part being taken by little Hazel Bainbridge.’

  And it is more than likely that Elinor had her first glimpse of Hazel and her parents during a performance of this play. Certainly Elinor and her mother, and also more unexpectedly her stepfather, were great theatre-goers. However this is to anticipate. First of all, back for a moment to 1919 in order to discover why the Bainbridges — who had no local connections — should have chosen to set up a company in South Shields in the first place.

  The Marina Theatre

  It had always been Julian Bainbridge’s ambition to have his own theatre, and to manage there a repertory company of his own, in which he and his wife would both appear. His daughter too, of course. Edith Bainbridge had sympathised with and even shared his dream. But they had both felt that the plan was unlikely ever to be realised. For one thing they had no capital. And, money apart, the task of finding a theatre was certain to prove lengthy and time-consuming. In the mean time there was always the urgent necessity of earning a living, not to mention putting aside enough to pay for Hazel’s school-fees.

  Then suddenly, in 1920, everything was changed. Edith came into a legacy, and although by no means a fortune it was enough for them to be able to get Julian’s project off the ground at last. All that now remained was to find a theatre; and here again they were to be lucky. Julian at this time had been touring with the Frank Marriott Watson Company; and early in 1920, while the company was playing at the Theatre Royal in South Shields, he learnt that the new Under the Clock Pavilion was going to be available. It was only a tiny little place, not suited to anything but concert parties; nevertheless it offered a starting-point.

  So in June 1920 Julian and a friend became joint-lessees of the Clock, as it was known locally. And perhaps it does provide an indication of how much times have changed that the first concert party to appear in their theatre was named simply the Queers.

  The venture at the Clock seems to have run successfully, but Julian was still far from having reached his goal. For one thing, the Clock did not on its own provide a living, which meant that he and his wife had often to be working with different companies, and Hazel had to spend all her holidays living out of suitcases.

  So it must have appeared the most splendid piece of good luck when, in March 1921, the opportunity arose for Julian to take over another and far more suitable theatre, conveniently close at hand in South Shields. This was the newly converted Marina Theatre, which stood then on the South Pier (on the site of the present-day Majestic Ballroom).

  Of course there had to be some snags. Outwardly the Marina was not very attractive: a large, gaunt-looking building, it had originally been used as an indoor sea water swimming bath. For that purpose its situation on the pier had no doubt been extremely healthy and suitable. For a theatre the position was rather on the exposed side. And complaints from the audiences about the cold, especially in winter, were to cause recurrent trouble that even the installation of ‘A New and Efficient Boiler’ was unable to cure altogether.

  All the same, the conversion had provided an adequate little theatre. In addition there was plenty of living accommodation available in the rooms above. This latter particularly attracted the Bainbridges. Now at last their small daughter could have something approaching a permanent home. It was too good a chance to miss. And in April 1921 the Bainbridge family took over the Marina and settled down to the luxury of an extended season in one place.

  Hazel’s parents threw themselves and their capital into the new venture with huge enthusiasm. In only one matter did they remain cautious: Hazel, who of course would now spend all her holidays in the flat above the Marina
, was to continue at her boarding-school in Southsea — at least for the time being.

  Hazel herself was happy enough with this arrangement. On the whole she enjoyed school, the only drawback being that it restricted her opportunities for professional acting. However, each holiday her father did contrive to choose for the company several plays which involved her. And everyone at the school took a great interest in Hazel’s stage career. The headmistress, according to the memory Hazel still retains today, was a remarkably understanding woman and ready to provide her gifted pupil with every kind of encouragement. The girls too, were always eager to hear details of life in the theatre and about Hazel’s latest roles. They seem to have regarded Hazel with only a romantic kind of envy, quite unmixed with any real jealousy. And that her schoolfellows did accept her in this way suggests that Hazel must have been an unspoilt and likeable child.

  There is no doubt at all that Elinor found her so. Nor that between Elinor and Hazel, despite the wide gap in age that separated them, a genuine friendship was to grow.

  A stage-struck year

  No one can remember exactly how or where the Bainbridges and Elinor first became acquainted. It seems they could have met at the house of a local lady, a Mrs Jessie Anne Fisher, who regularly held Sunday tea-parties. (Did the unusual name of Jesanne, borne by the heroine of The Lost Staircase, perhaps originate with Mrs Fisher?) Or their first meeting might have occurred quite casually at the Marina Theatre. Julian Bainbridge, according to his daughter, was a very sociable man who considered it part of a theatre manager’s job to be around after the performances and to talk to the patrons as they left: ‘rather like the vicar after church, you know’.

  In any case, however the friendship may have begun, it certainly grew fast. Both sides found the other attractive. The Bainbridges enjoyed Elinor’s vitality and enthusiasm. Elinor enjoyed their society and felt at home in their world of the theatre, where her extravagant manner and general excitability could be accepted with hardly a raised eyebrow.

  Most of all though it was Hazel who captivated Elinor. And looking at the photograph of a charmingly grave little girl seated between her parents, with one arm clasped around her mother, it is not hard to understand Elinor’s reaction. Especially since Hazel was to offer a warmth of affection and an unstinted admiration that would bring out all the very best in Elinor.

  To Hazel ‘Len’, as she always called Elinor, was quite simply everything that was wonderful. Not only was she endlessly kind, she was so entertaining, so interesting; she had so much to talk about — books and poetry and history; famous people and countries on the far side of the world (not that Elinor had as yet been out of Britain, but that made no difference to her imagination). Above all, Elinor, in the phrase used by an eight-year-old Chalet schoolgirl about Joey Bettany, could tell ‘the most gorgeousest stories’.

  Before those Easter holidays of 1921 drew to their close Hazel had become a regular and much welcomed visitor to 5 Belgrave Terrace. And she still retains a memory of childhood clarity about the house and its inhabitants. Mrs Ainsley was ‘delightful and so nice-looking’. Of Mr Ainsley she always stood in considerable awe: not that he was actually disagreeable to her, just generally taciturn; and Hazel was continually aware that Elinor disliked him, which tended to make things uncomfortable during the formal tea that began each afternoon visit. ‘We always had tea in the drawing-room. That was upstairs on the first floor, like it usually is in those houses.’ And Nelly Ainsley, who had now come a long way from Winchester Street, always liked everything ‘to be done just so — with pretty china and silver, and all that sort of thing’.

  Hazel grew to be very fond of Mrs Ainsley, who not only returned the affection but was to mark her approval in a significant way. On this particular occasion Hazel was acting in a schoolboy role at the Marina Theatre, and when Mrs Ainsley learnt that the company possessed no suitable clothes, she immediately offered to lend a grey flannel suit of Henzell’s, which was then ceremonially unwrapped from the tissue-paper and mothballs in which it had been preserved through the years.

  Nevertheless, Hazel always found it was nicest when the formal tea was over and she and Len could escape to Len’s own room. This during the earliest days of their acquaintance was only a small bedroom. But later Elinor was allotted a room right at the top of the house where, although the ceilings sloped, there was plenty of space and she was able to arrange herself a proper bed-sitting-room (quite a progressive notion for the early twenties). In one corner there was a large divan bed; but it was disguised as a sofa with cushions during the daytime; and there was a minimum of other bedroom furniture. A couple of cats were often to be found snuggled up in some nook or other. Books were everywhere; and not only on the shelves, although these covered ‘the whole wall behind the door, from floor to ceiling’.

  In addition to those books, of which many hundreds would accompany Elinor to the end of her life, there was always a vast quantity of papers lying around the room, for it was here that Elinor did her writing. Hazel knew all about that. Quite early on she had been told of Len’s intention to ‘become an authoress’. Julian Bainbridge also had learnt of this ambition with considerable interest; and soon he was able to provide practical encouragement. With the result that when Hazel returned home after the summer term of 1921 she found that exciting plans were being made. Len had written a play; it had parts specially tailor-made for her mother and herself; and at the end of August her father was going to produce it with the company at the Marina Theatre.

  Whether this idea had originally been Julian Bainbridge’s or Elinor’s, it is obvious that the plan held advantages for both of them. It gave Julian the chance to offer the public ‘An entirely new play by Miss Eleanor Dyer, a resident of South Shields’, which with luck would attract local interest. It gave Elinor the chance to write for a professional company; and, almost more important, with an actual performance date in view there was a built-in compulsion for her to get the thing finished. Which was exactly what she needed.

  Nor can there be any doubt that she enjoyed it all immensely; and must have learnt a great deal in the process. Many years later, in Jane and the Chalet School (1964), Elinor was to describe just how differently a seasoned professional and an amateur may react when considering the same play. In this story Jane Carew has been asked to take part in a play written by some of her schoolfellows. Jane’s parents (like Hazel’s) are both actors, and Jane has grown up in the theatre.

  For schoolgirls, The Little Germaine was quite a good effort, but some of the stage directions struck [Jane] . . . as funny and once or twice she murmured, ‘Oh, no! That’s not good theatre!’

  ‘I can learn it all right,’ she decided when she had [read] . . . to the end . . . ‘But I wonder if I dare suggest some alterations. That speech of Germaine’s won’t do here. It ought to come much earlier. And I’m sure she ought to begin crying before this one.’

  . . . Finally she decided that she had better wait for a rehearsal before she said anything.

  ‘And then only if I see a good chance,’ she thought. ‘It’s their play, after all. It’s all very well for Father to insist on changes in the script.’

  And it would be hard to believe that Elinor was not recalling here the various occasions more than forty years earlier when Julian Bainbridge had insisted, though no doubt with great tact, on having alterations made in her script.

  All in all her writing must certainly have benefited from her experience of the theatre, brief as it was. And in many of the earlier Chalet School books, where her quality — always uneven — is often at its best, Elinor does show herself able to produce natural-sounding schoolgirl dialogue, something she could well have learnt from writing plays.

  Not that her plays (either of those she wrote for the Bainbridges) had anything to do with schoolgirls. For her first attempt she had chosen a historical subject. My Lady Caprice was, in fact, billed as ‘A Costume Drama’ and was set in the reign of George III — a favourite period of Elino
r’s (and also of the grown-up Joey Bettany’s when she turned authoress). Hazel still has a poster showing her mother in costume as the heroine, and wearing a high powdered wig. Hazel’s own part was that of a small boy (‘I nearly always did have to play boys. I got dreadfully bored with it sometimes’). This particular boy was called Hugh; but whether the name was inspired by that probably mythical war-time friend of Elinor’s cannot be said.

  Nor is it possible to say much about the public’s reception of My Lady Caprice. In those days the local paper did carry a weekly column on plays and films, but this usually gave no more than a bald report. In the case of Elinor’s My Lady Caprice it has nothing of interest to say.

  However the play itself, against all odds, has survived, the script having been unexpectedly run to earth in 1994, when Miss Janet Backhouse of the British Library had the brain-wave of searching for a copy among the plays submitted for licence to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office. And, according to Miss Backhouse, My Lady Caprice could be well worth resurrecting since it might prove a useful play for a school or amateur dramatic club.

  At the time of the production in South Shields, Hazel was still too small for her to have kept any detailed memory of the performances. She does recall that it was all enormous fun; and that on the last night her mother was presented by Len and the company with a minute puppy, who had been named George after either the monarch or the play’s leading male character.

  (George deserves a short paragraph to himself. A small black mongrel, he grew up to become what is known as a character. For years he went everywhere with the Bainbridges and appeared regularly on stage. The height of his fame was probably reached during a season in Berwick, when George became so well-known in the town that policemen would salute him as he crossed the road.)