Today, this usage of ‘plumeau’ seems to have been dropped in the Tyrol — or at any rate in Pertisau. Obviously the word must first have come to Austria from France, along with various other words and expressions: ‘Das ist mir ganz egal’, is one that can be heard many times a day — meaning literally ‘It’s all the same to me’ and often used with an implication of ‘I don’t give a damn’. But nowadays, even in French, ‘un plumeau’ is more often used to mean a feather duster rather than a quilt, while most ordinary-sized German/English dictionaries do not appear to include the word at all. However, in support of Elinor, Langenscheidt’s eneyclopaedic volume does give ‘eiderdown or quilt’ as possible translations of ‘das plumeau (plural -s)’. So Elinor was evidently using the word, if not the ‘x’, correctly.
Anyhow, whatever its proper name, this piece of bedding was later to appear on every Chalet School bed. And naturally there is one in the bedroom of which Elinor supplies a detailed description in Jo of the Chalet School (1926):
It was a typical Tyrolean room . . . with walls and floor of polished pine-wood. There were a couple of mats on the floor, and in one corner was a huge wooden bed, with its big puffy plumeau, and pillows in pillow-cases edged with exquisite handmade lace. Two tiny wooden wash-stands stood side by side, with the usual baby bowls and pitchers on them [on another occasion Joey Bertany complains that ‘They never do give you more than a pudding-basin to wash in’]; . . . A tall wardrobe, a chest of drawers with a mirror [above], and three chairs made up most of the furniture. At the foot of the bed . . . hung a ‘beautiful copy of Guido’s ‘Blue Madonna’.
Now for the outside of the Chalet:
‘The building was [made] of wood and plaster, like most buildings in the . . . [Achen] thal’. A ‘fresco . . . adorned the walls’; and a ‘balcony . . . ran all round the house . . . about ten feet above the ground’. At the windows were ‘window-boxes full of geraniums and marguerites’. Today, such window-boxes are still a feature of the houses in Pertisau. On the other hand, it is now impossible to wander at will ‘across the flower-sprinkled grass that . . . [lies] between . . . [the Chalet] and the trees which cluster at the foot of Bärenbad’, since all the meadows are either fenced off or have properly surfaced paths. Nor could a present-day visitor find quite ‘such a wealth of bloom’ in ‘the stretch of meadow that lies between Seespitz and Torteswald’, or for that matter in any place nearer to Pertisau than the nature reserve in the mountains behind the village.
In any case most wild plants are protected nowadays. But in Elinor’s time it was possible, apparently, to gather in the fields quite near the Chalet ‘armfuls of gentian, anemone, hepaticae, heartsease, narcissi, and daisies’. Nor should anyone raise an eyebrow at the simultaneous presence of narcissi and gentian: this particular passage refers to ‘mid-May’ and, although the more common gentians are summer-flowering, at least a couple of species can be seen in flower from April onwards.
The early books are in fact pretty accurate in their presentation of local details; allowing, that is, that from the beginning Elinor did make changes, not only in place names but in topography. These were deliberate. The names were altered in order to disguise the identity of the ‘Tiern See’ — which Elinor was successful in doing for many years. The topographical changes were made to fit the requirements of the stories, and they are the result mainly of a scaling down in size of the district. For example, ‘the Tiern See is only three miles long’, because this allows Chalet girls on foot a wider and more varied territory than they could have covered had the lake, like the real Achen See, been five-and-a-half miles in length.
All this is perfectly understandable. It is only in the later books that the alterations sometimes get rather wild: as when the Bärenbad mountain, which the early books clearly establish in its proper place to the south of Briesau/Pertisau, is suddenly required by the demands of the ninth story to be situated on the opposite (Gaisalm) side of the village. (See Exploits of the Chalet Girls, Chapter VII, and compare with map.)
Of course by the time that book was being written nine years had passed since Elinor’s visit to Pertisau, and her memories may have faded a little. In the early stories she still recalled everything so vividly that she was able to present what amounts to a guide-book of Pertisau/Briesau; and moreover, as one of her fans points out, ‘A guide-book in the right way, making one want to see the places for oneself’.
The fictional Chalet School was to face the lake — ‘the loveliest of all the Austrian lakes’; for doubtless the front windows of the chalet where Elinor and Lilian stayed had ‘a glorious view of the [Achen] . . . See’; and perhaps from those at the back they ‘could see right up the valley toward the great “Tiern” Pass’; the latter being a semi-fictional amalgamation of the three different valleys which in real life stand behind Pertisau.
The position in the village of her Chalet is also clear. On leaving it and turning right, ‘once past the white fencing that [enclosed Pertisau] . . . the lake path . . . led to Seespitz at the lower end of the lake
. . . The lake-road at this point was narrow, the wall of the mountain-side rising not three yards from the margin of the lake’. (Today, with the aid of modern engineering, the road has been made much wider.)
From Seespitz, one possible route ‘lay round the south end of the lake, across the water meadows . . . and then . . . to Buchau, a tiny hamlet on the opposite side of the lake from Briesau [Pertisau]’. Another was to take ‘the mountain-path [leading] to Spärtz [Jenbach] by the banks of the little stream which frolics gaily down to the Inn, and supplies power for the saw-mills half-way down the mountain-side’.
Back once more to the Chalet, and then off again, but this time turning left, ‘down the road in the direction of the Post Hotel, one of the largest in Briesau [Pertisau]’. (It still is.) Here, a ‘little shop [was] situated beneath the hotel entrance — the only shop in the district’. And the shop remained there until 1977, although latterly it became a kind of boutique, selling expensive knitwear and the like, for the village now has a fair number of shops, including at least two supermarkets. In Elinor’s day, the Post Hotel shop ‘served the purpose of post-office and general stores to the lake-folk’; and it sold a variety of things in addition to such obvious items as stamps and picture postcards. Oranges and chocolate are specifically mentioned.
Now to range further abroad — still with Elinor as a faithful guide. ‘It was a hot Sunday, and . . . once she had left the fields, she turned towards the grateful shade of the pine-trees that grow up the slopes of the Bärenbad Alpe . . . [Soon] she had arrived at the foot of the path that led up to the Gasthaus, where . . . [they] often went to have saucers of cream and wild strawberries’ (The Chalet School and Jo, 1931). The cream cost only ‘threepence a saucer’ then — 3d. being the equivalent of 11/4 new pence. Today, what with inflation and an exchange rate notably unfavourable to the sterling, the price might well be over a pound.
‘It was too hot even for this climb . . . so she turned aside, and went along a narrow byway that led . . . to a point from which it was possible to get a glorious view of the lake.’ Signposts now direct the panting tourist to this ‘Aussichtsbank’ — literally, viewpoint bench.
So far, so good: all of this is basic stuff, simply if rather prosaically presented. But Elinor, like other school-story writers, was sometimes unable to resist the temptations of would-be fine writing:
Across the path, beaten hard by the tread of many generations of feet, bright-hued beetles ran, intent on their business; a scarlet-winged butterfly paused on the wing, and then darted off again as . . . [she] approached; . . . somewhere overhead a bird was carolling gaily; a faint breeze stirred the short grass, starred with gentian, heartsease and a hundred other flowers. On one bush the alpenroses were glowing with their warm fire.
Well . . . in fairness to Elinor it must be said that her descriptions very rarely have this contrived, over-lush quality. The above comes from the seventh book in the series, and pe
rhaps a romantic haze was beginning to cloud the original memories. But in any case Elinor is always much better when the demands of the action leave her no time for carolling birds and the fire — warm or otherwise — of alpen-roses. One example is her account (mentioned in Chapter V) of Joey and Elisaveta ‘scrambling and slipping down . . . [a] bare rock slope’ with nothing to catch hold of except ‘one or two naked tree-trunks’. Underlying the narrative here is a feeling that Elinor really knew what it felt like to skid precariously down a mountain slope, uncertain how, or even if, you would reach the bottom.
Perhaps she did know. In the terrain round Pertisau such hazardous descents can happen in real life, as witnessed by one of Elinor’s readers who once spent a holiday in the district with her family. They were making their way down through the woods high above Pertisau when they had an experience that recalls Joey and Elisaveta’s.
We thought we were on the proper way but we must have taken a wrong turning somewhere and the path just petered out. The trees grew so thickly that we couldn’t see ahead, and once we’d gone wrong we couldn’t find anything like a path again. The only thing seemed to be just to go on downwards. The next half-hour I shall never forget. We had to crawl down this awful slope that felt like the side of a house, and cling on to the tree trunks to stop ourselves sliding out of control. The children were really frightened and I don’t mind confessing my heart was in my mouth until at last we reached the bottom, shaking all over but safe. I used to think that maybe all those bits about the Chalet girls getting into difficulties on the mountains were only put in to make the stories more exciting. Now I know how easily these things can happen.
So possibly Elinor too had discovered how easily these things happen. However, the girls in her stories do occasionally go for more or less peaceful mountain climbs; and, on these expeditions also, it is clear that she herself had been there before them. Her description of a day’s outing to the ‘Mondschein-spitze’ could almost have come from the diary she never wrote.
‘The climb up the Mondscheinspitze is remarkably easy.’ This in fact is misleading, for Elinor here is applying the name Mondscheinspitze — which presumably appealed to her — to quite a different mountain: perhaps the Feilkopf, which more or less fits the bill. The real Mondscheinspitze is an awkward, even dangerous climb, far more like Elinor’s Tiernjoch and categorised in the local guide-book as ‘only for the very experienced’.
There is a well-defined path, which winds in and out among the dark pine trees, every now and then coming out into narrow — very narrow — grassy ledges. Presently, however, it left the woods, and . . . [the party] climbed up the bare limestone face of the mountain beneath the glare of the July sun. Tufts of grass, with wild scabious and white marguerites, punctuated the way, and gorgeous butterflies, brown and orange and scarlet and yellow, fluttered round them, so little afraid that often they settled on hat or frock. (The School at the Chalet, 1925)
Arrived on the alm they turn and look down.
At their feet lay the valley they had crossed that morning, cool and green, with the empty river-bed stretching like a white ribbon down its length. In the distance they could see Briesau [Pertisau], lying like a toy village some giant child had set out; and beyond it . . . the Tiern [Achen] See, a living sapphire, gleamed beneath the sun. (ibid.)
Here everything apart from one or two names is exactly true to life. And the same can be said of the passage in The Chalet School and Jo where a party of climbers look back towards Pertisau from the top of ‘a narrow rocky path’ on the Buchau side of the lake. ‘Opposite them were the mighty peaks of the Bärendbad Alpe, the Mondscheinspitze, the Tiernjoch and Bärenkopf . . . Away to the north they could see blue hills fading into the blue of the sky. To the south lay other and mightier peaks [the Zillerthal Alps], some still covered with snow, silent testimony to their height.’
Altogether, Elinor leaves no room for doubt that she and Lilian — with or without Jean and Flo — did a lot of walking in the district all round the Achen See. Many features of the real-life landscape are mentioned in the books, including the somewhat vertiginous path to Gaisalm, and the ‘Dripping Rock’. And Elinor probably found time for several excursions further afield: certainly to Jenbach/Spärtz, the Zillerthal, the Stubaithal and to Innsbrück, for her descriptions of all these places contain small personal touches. Possibly to Salzburg, although without a car it is difficult to get there and back in a day from Pertisau; and in the two books where Elinor writes about Salzburg there is nothing that could not have been gleaned from guide-books.
Nearer base, the four holiday friends probably enjoyed ‘rowing over the lake in one of the clumsy but serviceable boats . . . kept [by the hotel] for the use of the many tourists who came . . . during the summer months’.
And Elinor, if not the other three, may have been hardy enough to swim in the lake; after all, she had been accustomed to the sea at South Shields, so might not have been daunted by the Achen See, although it ‘is fed partly by [underwater] springs . . . [which] tend to keep it very cold’ and make bathing advisable only ‘during the day when the sun . . . [is] on the water’. One thing though, if the water was cold, at least the air was always wonderfully pure and clear; there are endless references to the ‘dry health-giving atmosphere of the Tyrolean Alps’.
Then there were plenty of less active occupations. Perhaps, sitting on the Fürstenhaus terrace at one of ‘the tables with their huge scarlet umbrellas’ and listening to ‘the Tzigane bands who frequently come up to the lake on summer Sundays’ to play their gipsy music with its ‘peculiar haunting wildness’.
That happened only on Sundays, of course. But every day there was the pleasant task of finding somewhere to have Kaffee und Kuchen, that delightful tea-time meal. This usually meant ‘milky coffee and delicious cakes, all nuts and cream’; but sometimes the cakes were replaced by equally ‘delicious little fancy-bread twists’. When food is described in the books, and it very frequently is, the word ‘delicious’ is almost done to death. Tea, as a beverage rather than as a meal, occurs very seldom. Perhaps Elinor had been nonplussed early in her visit (as Joey was) by a request to choose between ‘Thee mit Citron, oder mit Rhum?’! ‘She hated the one, and had no idea of taking the other’ — unlike the Tyroleans who are partial to tea with rum in it.
Menus for other meals are often given in exhaustive detail. They vary in style and scope. On Madge, Joey and Grizel’s first evening there was ‘Nothing really exciting,’ said Dick. ‘Only Kalbsbraten — all right, Grizel! That’s German for roast veal! — and Kartoffeln, otherwise spuds, and Apfelntorte, which isn’t apple-tart, although it sounds like it.’ Soon Grizel, and incidentally the reader, learns that it is in fact a kind ‘of cake with cooked apples on it’.
There are several appearance of ‘hot thick soup into which are ladled little sausages, very savoury and delicious’ — a dish that often is served today in the small mountain-huts around Pertisau.
One of Elinor’s more exotic menus includes first ‘soup with eggs in it . . . (‘They just let the eggs look at the soup, and they are so light they are gluey’) . . . followed by pink boiled ham served with prunes: . . . and then plates of something that looked, and tasted, not unlike porridge . . . [accompanied by] cherries steeped in spirits. The whole was topped off by excellent coffee, and rolls split and spread with jam of some kind.’
Even picnickers are seldom condemned to eat the humble sandwich. On a trip to the Zillerthal they have a ‘gorgeous feast: there were rolls, buttered, and with hard-boiled eggs beaten up with butter and cream and shredded lettuce; . . . There were delicious little cakes . . . from Vienna; . . . there were piles of apricots and plums and greengages [no doubt of incredible cheapness], and there were two huge melons.’
Meals are served by ‘smiling waitresses’, often in Tyrolean costume. Maids also wear national dress: Gertlieb, the maid-of-all-work at a house visited in Innsbruck, is ‘a rosy, smiling girl, wearing a full white blouse, short blue skirt, and
wonderfully embroidered apron’. Incidentally, Gertlieb ‘had been at work since half-past five [a.m. naturally], and [by breakfast time had] much of the ordinary housework . . . finished’. Moreover, after working all over Christmas, apart from ‘two hours off to go and see her mother’, she was nevertheless deeply grateful to be getting, the ‘next week, . . . a whole half-day and a gift of money’. This made Madge (and no doubt Elinor) think of ‘their own maid in England, who had demanded Christmas and Boxing Day in addition to her Sunday and weekly half-day; but . . . she knew that Gertlieb considered herself very fortunate.’
Elinor was plainly struck by the remarkable amount of work the Tyroleans did; also by the warmth of their kindness and friendliness. And it is interesting that in 1924, with the Great War not yet far behind, the English apparently were welcomed with special warmth: ‘We [Austrians] are grateful to you, . . . for . . . it is the great loans that England has made to Austria that are making it possible for us to become a nation once more’ — so Joey Bettany is told by a Tyrolean friend. And presumably someone must have made this same remark to Elinor, for it would be such an unlikely thing for her to have made up.
Another thing that struck Elinor, and with great force, was the poverty of the ordinary Tyrolean people. Her visit to ‘the . . . [Achen] valley had taught her how pitiably poor the peasantry were’; and time after time this is emphasised in the stories. Examples are easily found:
Most of . . . the people round about the lake . . . [depended] on the summer season for their livelihood. [Others] . . . were herdsmen, who watched the cattle up on the high alms or alpes during the summer months, but had to come down with them when the cold weather came. The cattle were housed in great byres and sheds, and only one man was required to care for them in place of two [or more] . . . The rest had to manage as best they could . . .
Behind the Chalet School: A biography of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer Page 15
