On balance, it is safe to assume that she stayed in one of the hotels along the waterfront: perhaps the Stephanie, or the Post Hotel, or the Alpenhof. Any of these would fit the description and all were there, indeed long-established, in Elinor’s day; moreover, at that time their buildings were much simpler than now, and were in the traditional style which could loosely be covered by the word ‘chalet’.
The Alpenhof hotel in the 1970s
The Post Hotel and the Stephanie are frequently mentioned in Elinor’s books. The Alpenhof, hardly ever; which may be significant for, in the opinion of many ‘Chalet experts’, this hotel has the situation most nearly corresponding with that of the Chalet School, as described in the stories — a matter that has given rise to much discussion among readers. The early books do supply a remarkable number of details about the school’s exact location in ‘Briesau’/Pertisau; and these details are so precise and, for Elinor, so unusually consistent that it seems she really did have a specific place in mind. And a careful study of the books will reveal the following six points of identification.
(1) The school was near, but — unlike many of the important hotels — not directly on the lakeside.
(2) It commanded splendid views, in one direction of the lake, in the other of the valley and mountains behind the village.
(3) It was on slightly higher ground than the waterfront (an important point during the flood in Jo of the Chalet School).
(4) It was ‘a good ten minutes’ walk’ from the steamers’ landing stage, going in the direction of Seespitz — in other words, southwards.
(5) It was even further south along the lakeside than the Post Hotel — hence well to the Seespitz end of the village.
(6) It was surrounded by a garden — something quite unusual in Pertisau.
Bearing in mind all these points, there is only one site in Pertisau that fulfils every requirement: that of the Alpenhof Hotel. Not that the Alpenhof building, either today or in 1920s pictures, bears much resemblance to the actual chalet described in the books. But then Elinor, like other writers of fiction, clearly enjoyed using a mixture of real life and imagination when describing places. And more often than not in her books she proceeds, after giving minute and topographically accurate details about an identifiable site, to place there an entirely different house — or in this case, chalet — from that occupying the site in real life. (Later this emerges frequently in the seven books which are set in Herefordshire.) That Elinor herself may actually have stayed at the Alpenhof is a possibility, although it is unlikely now this could ever be proved.The hotel was apparently a favourite with English visitors in those days, and, according to Baedeker, its tariff would have been modest in terms of British currency. The Alpenhof was in fact to remain a popular hotel right up to the 1970s. But since then, following the death of the owner, there have unfortunately been endless legal wrangles among the family about the future of the site — unquestionably one of the most desirable in Pertisau. Sadly, there seems no end to the quarrels, with the result that the hotel was closed many years ago, while the building has become more and more dilapidated. No chance now of holding a Chalet School Reunion there.
Of course the other place Elinor could well have stayed was ‘the big white-washed hotel which stood near the boat-landing’. This, the ‘Kron Prinz Karl’ of the stories, is in real life the Fürstenhaus, the oldest hotel in Pertisau. Its name dates back to the days when the Fürsten, or Princes, had a hunting-lodge on the site; and a very old engraving shows the Fürstenhaus looking much the same as it did until the rebuilding operations in the late 1970s. The Princes had also their own private chapel, a simple but charming little building, with carved wooden pews and some quaint frescoes around the walls. This was the original of ‘the little white-washed chapel’ which stood near the Kron Prinz Karl, where the Chalet School Catholics went on Sundays; and where Elinor almost certainly went too during her visit, for at that time there was no form of Protestant worship in Pertisau — nor, probably, in any place nearer than Innsbruck. Until the early 1970s this chapel could still be seen, but now it has sadly been demolished to make way for a car-park.
In general their regulations about preserving old buildings, and about the construction and style of new ones, have been so strict that Pertisau has changed far less than might be expected during the seven decades since Elinor’s visit. There are of course a great many new houses and hotels, for the tourist trade is booming. There is a new Catholic church at the top of the village, a pleasant enough building which successfully combines traditional and modern elements. (And in 1994 a plaque commemorating Elinor’s visit to Pertisau was placed on the wall of the library which stands beside the church.) Then today the pine-woods, which cluster over the mountain slopes all around Pertisau, and where in the stories the Chalet girls loved to wander, have as it were retreated in various places, having been cut back either to make room for ski runs or to allow more hay to grow; nowadays it is reaped on slopes that would appear to the uninitiated impossibly steep. And another change since Elinor’s time: today both a chair-lift and a cable-car are waiting to haul the less energetic up to the Bärenbad Alm. Her Chalet girls were of course to walk up there and back in an hour or two, without blinking an eyelash.
On the whole, though, building in the village has been restricted to the inland areas; and as a result the view of Pertisau from the lake — comparing old and new postcards — still looks recognisably the same as it did to Elinor.
And nothing can really alter the Achen See itself, or the surrounding mountains. Indeed this region is so spectacularly beautiful that it is difficult to write anything about it that does not sound like the lush paragraphs of some romantic novel. Even Baedeker’s Guide does not manage to keep its usual cool approach: at least, the 1911 edition (which was among Elinor’s books), after dutifully informing its readers that the Achen See is 3,045 feet above sea level, five-and-a-half miles long, about half-a-mile broad, and 436 feet deep, goes on to say that it is ‘a dark-blue lake, the largest and finest in Tyrol’ (which for Baedeker amounts almost to purple prose).
This opinion of the lake is backed by a far more recent publication, a guide produced locally in 1975; but this goes further than Baedeker, claiming that ‘The Achensee ranks beside the Vierwaldstättersee [Lake of Lucerne] and the Königssee [in Bavaria] among the most beautiful Alpine lakes.’
Elinor goes further still, writing, at the beginning of Jo of the Chalet School, that ‘the . . . [Achen] See in the North Tyrol is surely one of the loveliest places in the world’.
Thus, in the midst of all the uncertainty and speculation that surround many aspects of Elinor, her books make it possible to be absolutely certain about one thing. Until the end of her life she was to go on thinking of the Achen See as the loveliest place in the world.
Pertisau-am-Achensee in the 1950s, but very little changed from the 1920s
What became of Lilian?
The early Chalet School books do clearly contain much that is autobiographical; but they offer no help whatsoever towards a solution of one particular mystery, that surrounding Elinor’s companion on her Tyrolean holiday. Her first name was Lilian; but at the time this book was first published no other information about her could be found.
Elinor herself mentions this friend in the inaugural Chalet Club News Letter (of May 1959) referred to above:
Years ago, I was spending a holiday in Tirol and the friend who was with me and I made our headquarters at a chalet by the shore of the beautiful lake you know as the Tiern See. We met two other . . . friends and made many expeditions together, though they were there for only three weeks and my friend and I stayed for nearly eight. If you want to know their names, you will find them in the dedication of The School at the Chalet which was the first of the series to be written.
And, sure enough, there in the dedication are the three names: ‘TO LILIAN, JEAN, AND FLO — BUT ESPECIALLY TO LILIAN IN MEMORY OF OUR JOLLY TIME TOGETHER IN THE TYROL’.
No
thing could be clearer: Lilian was Elinor’s friend; Jean and Flo the two who were ‘staying in another chalet’. But who exactly was Lilian? In the circumstances it would be reasonable to expect that she was a friend of some standing — perhaps one of Elinor’s teaching colleagues. And yet no one could remember that Elinor ever had a friend with that particular name. Lilian had vanished completely. Or so it seemed — and for many years.
Then, in the spring of 1995, a Chalet fan, Mrs Gillian Hill, who was working in the library at St Helen’s School in Northwood, just happened to come across a reference to Elinor in the school’s magazine, St Helen’s Own. Intrigued by this, she searched further and found not only that Elinor’s name appeared on several other occasions (as already mentioned in Chapter XII), but that another contributor to St Helen’s Own during the early 1920s was a Miss Kirkby, whose first name was Lilian. Moreover it turned out that Lilian Kirkby had been at St Helen’s during exactly the same two-year period as Elinor, and that during this time she had been the magazine’s editor. Of course this in itself provides no proof that the Lilian Kirkby who taught at St Helen’s between 1921 and 1923 was the same person as the Lilian of Elinor’s dedication. But it does seem highly probable that she was. Especially in view of the fact that Lilian Kirkby’s contributions to the magazine include a piece describing her experiences during a visit to the Austrian Tyrol in 1922 or 1923. Making it a strong possibility that it was she who influenced Elinor’s choice of Pertisau for her momentous Tyrolean holiday, and that she did indeed become her companion on that visit.
Today it would be hard to discover any personal details about Lilian. The registers at St Catherine’s House in London record the births of only two Lilian Kirkbys who would have been of a suitable age during the relevant period. And of these two the more likely is a ‘Constance Lilian Kirkby’, who was born in Kensington in the spring of 1900. This would have made her between twenty-one and twenty-three during the years that Elinor was at St Helen’s, and twenty-four at the time of the Tyrolean holiday. And the particular name, Constance Lilian, is interesting in itself. Elinor always stated that she never based her characters on friends, and this may well have been true as regards the actual personalities of her fictional people. But there can be no question that Elinor was often influenced unconsciously in her choice of their names. No prominent character in the Chalet series is called Lilian; but it could be significant that Miss Stewart, who teaches history in the early stories and becomes a close enough friend of Jo Maynard’s to be chosen as godmother for the second of the Maynard triplets, is in fact called Constance. What’s more, Miss Stewart’s god-daughter is then named Constance after her. And this does suggest that the name had personal resonances for Elinor. Even in the late 1920s, when she bestowed it on Miss Stewart, ‘Constance’ was becoming old-fashioned; and by the time of the triplets’ birth (The Chalet School in Exile, 1940) it would have been quite anachronistic. Whereas Elinor’s schoolgirls are for the most part given names that are typical of their period.
One other point about Lilian is thought-provoking. She and Elinor must surely have known each other well to have embarked on an eight-week holiday together. But did the prolonged period of being thrown continuously into each other’s company prove too great a strain on the friendship? Otherwise it seems odd that Lilian should have vanished so completely from Elinor’s life. At least, it would be odd with someone other than Elinor. In her case, numerous people among her friends and acquaintances seem to have disappeared. Edith Le Poidevin, for one — although there was never the least mystery about Miss Le Poidevin’s existence; plenty of people remembered her, and spoke warmly of her pleasant appearance and friendly personality. And anyway there could have been reasons, as mentioned earlier, why she and Elinor lost contact. Lilian, on the other hand, seems to have left no trace in Elinor’s life apart from her name in the dedication. She might almost not have existed.
But then others, too, on the long list of people to whom Elinor dedicated books, have disappeared. Notably Madge Russell — not the fictional Madge, née Bettany, Joey’s much older sister who founds the Chalet School, but a real-life friend to whom Elinor dedicated The Maids of La Rochelle in 1924, Jo of the Chalet School in 1926, and The Princess of the Chalet School in 1927. This Madge would appear to have been a special friend not only to receive three dedications in as many years, but also to have her name bestowed on one of Elinor’s important and very special characters. And yet, after 1927 nothing further is heard of the real-life Madge Russell. At one time it had seemed possible that Madge Halliwell, the dedicatee of Changes for the Chalet School (1953), could be the same person, but this now seems unlikely. For although her son, David Russell Halliwell, to whom Elinor dedicated Condor Crags in 1954, has confirmed the odd coincidence that his late mother’s maiden name was indeed Madge Russell, he seems clear that she and Elinor only became acquainted in 1940. And, to date, no trace of the 1920s Madge Russell can be found.
However, in spite of all this, it would be wrong to assume that Elinor always dropped her old friends and acquaintances. To the end of her life she did keep in touch, in different ways and perhaps only at wide intervals, with many of them; including the Jewells, Miss Elsie Oxenham and Hazel Bainbridge. Also of course with Phyllis Matthewman, in whose house she eventually went to live.
Returning for a moment to Lilian — her disappearance was particularly frustrating at the time this book was first being written, for plainly she could have related much of interest about that Tyrolean holiday. As matters stood, the only thing was to make use of guesswork, the snippets of information (not always reliable) contained in the Chalet Club newsletters; and above all those early Chalet books where Elinor is remembering her own experiences. And it is at this point that one can be grateful that Elinor included such a profusion of small, everyday details in her stories; and that she presented them with such obvious affection. For in reading the books it becomes possible to picture everything: the beauty of the scenery; the house where Elinor and the elusive Lilian stayed; some of the different ways in which they occupied their time; the meals they enjoyed; and their reactions to some of the people whom they met.
In the chapter which follows, most of the material has been provided by Elinor herself.
CHAPTER XIV
‘WRITE IN YOUR OWN WORDS . . . ’
(An impression of the holiday as Elinor saw it)
The Chalet was a very large wooden building which had been designed for a hotel . . . There were no carpets on the floors but they were brought to a fine polish with beeswax and hard rubbing. The furniture . . . was all old.
[In the salon] was the inevitable sofa with its little table before it [and] in an alcove . . . stood a beautifully carved Brautkasten, or bridal-chest . . .
[In the dining-room, at breakfast time, baskets] piled high with brown rolls and dishes full of amber honey gave colour to the cloth-less table. The big, hand-made cups and plates, with their cheerful decoration of unknown flowers painted in vivid colours, which stood at each place, had come from Tiern Kirch [Achen Kirch]. The table looked un-English in the extreme, but very pleasant and inviting. Presently [the maid] . . . came in bearing a huge earthenware jug in which steamed delicious coffee such as one rarely gets in England. She filled the cups by the simple method of dipping a mug into the boiling liquid and pouring its contents into each cup.
[The coffee had come from] the long kitchen situated at the back of the house, where [the cook] . . . reigned, with a younger sister and a cousin to help her, while . . . [her brother] cleaned shoes and knives, and attended to the huge porce-lain stoves which warmed the place throughout.
Of course the stoves can hardly have been in use during Elinor’s stay in Pertisau, for summers there are warm. As she herself often points out: ‘Heat in the Tyrol can mean something that England may experience once in a century.’ The temperature in August and September probably seemed remarkable to anyone brought up in South Shields, for it can be hot enough even at the Achen See, w
hich ‘is 3,000 feet above sea level . . . [and where there is usually] a delightful breeze from the lake’. Most days ‘there . . . [wouldn’t] be a breath of air in the valley [and] it . . . [would] be stewing hot in Innsbruck’.
All the same, those tiled porcelain stoves are mentioned so frequently that it seems they must have made a big impression on Elinor. And another thing that plainly impressed her was the continental quilt, or duvet as it would probably be called now. In the stories this article is always referred to as a ‘plumeau’, sometimes spelt ‘plumeaux’ even when in the singular: ‘When she came back . . . her bed [N.B. one bed] had been stripped and the plumeaux hung over the balcony’.
Behind the Chalet School: A biography of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer Page 14
