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

by Helen McClelland

  For Sybil this caused no great pangs. She had never got on particularly well with Elinor; and, in any case, at sixteen she was able to enrol as a student at Hereford’s Art School, where the work was far more congenial to her than academic lessons had been. But her younger sister was heartbroken. ‘I only found out from my mother . . . years and years later, as to why we left’, Helen Colam recalls; ‘I shed many tears at the time.’ And since Elinor was genuinely devoted to Helen (‘my little pet’) it is clear that she, too, must have been most unhappy, especially that things had ended in the way they did. It is not easy though to find excuses for her, since the reason given for her many absences from the schoolroom does seem inadequate: ‘It was because Miss Brent-Dyer was working on a historical novel.’

  Probably Elinor was in fact doing just that. Although a question does arise on this point: for what became of that historical novel? None by Elinor was published in the years that followed. The Little Missus, as already mentioned, is too short and slight to qualify as a novel, and in any case did not appear until 1942. So what book was absorbing all Elinor’s time and attention in 1938? That she was indeed busy over something is clear; and that it was unsuccessful can be deduced, for in the following year not only did no historical novel appear but, for the first time since 1922, no book of any kind by Elinor was published.

  A possible solution to this puzzle was provided by Mr Edward West (some of whose memories of Elinor appear in the previous chapter). Mr West recalled that on one occasion, when he was having tea in the study at St James’s Road, he was somewhat taken aback to be given and asked to read the manuscript of an historical novel: it had the not very prepossessing title Ripe Corn (based on a verse in St Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 4) and concerned Elinor’s favourite St Thomas More. Apparently the novel had recently been rejected by a publisher — no doubt with reason, for it does seem to have been, in Mr West’s words, ‘pretty poor stuff’ (an opinion supported by the only part of the manuscript to have survived). But nevertheless it is probable that Elinor made an attempt to revise the book; and it might well have been this revision that kept her so busy during the summer of 1938.

  There could of course have been other reasons for that curious gap in 1939. At this point Elinor’s Chalet series, which then numbered only thirteen books, had reached what might easily have been the end of the road — incredible as this may appear today when those fifty-nine stories are known to exist. The fact remains that things looked different in the 1930s, when for a time sales were falling and Elinor’s publishers were even writing to announce that the series must be discontinued, both on financial grounds and (a statement that hindsight makes wryly amusing) because ‘there are now twelve [of the books] and that is enough’.

  Besides there were difficulties inherent in the stories themselves. For with Joey Bettany now irrevocably grown-up Elinor had yet to find her a new role. And it may well have been at this point that Elinor wrote about a visit to India by the grown-up Joey and the Robin, in a book entitled Two Chalet Girls in India. Unfortunately, the manuscript of this story, which was known still to exist in the late 1950s, has now disappeared. And although reference is made to Joey’s Indian trip in several of the later Chalet School books, no mention of it is made in any of those earlier than Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School (1943). In any case Elinor had a graver problem to face in 1938. For by this point it was becoming clear that even a fictional school could hardly remain in the Tyrol. That March the Nazis had over-run Austria; and then, in September 1938, the Munich crisis was to bring home to many people that war with Gemany, which now included Austria, was not far away.

  Elinor must be credited with having more real awareness of the Nazi menace, and at an earlier stage, than certain of her critics might imagine. There cannot, for instance, have been many children’s books written as early as 1933 where reference is made to ‘the spirit of young Germany’ — as it is in Chapter IV of The Exploits of the Chalet Girls — and in a manner that makes it quite clear this was something to be deplored. Nor was it usual for any school story to contain a scene of street violence, such as that in Chapter IX of The Chalet School in Exile (‘A Nazi “Sport” ’), which depicts with some realism the baiting of an elderly Jewish man by Nazi-incited crowds (Elinor is always most careful to distinguish between those who follow the evil creed of Nazism and the Germans or Austrians as such).

  Plainly Elinor would have felt unable just to ignore world affairs as a number of other children’s writers did. Some, including Elsie Oxenham and Arthur Ransome, simply disregarded the Second World War and continued to write in a timeless Never-Never Land. Elinor, on the contrary, managed eventually to turn the international turmoil to good account. Her Chalet School in Exile (1940) tells of an exciting escape from Austria (which may appear to have affinities with that in the famous Sound of Music, but of course Elinor’s book was written almost twenty years before the Von Trapp family’s adventures were generally known); and this book was to become one of the most popular in the whole series. Not only that: it was to ensure, and to prove along with the other wartime Chalet books, that the Chalet School as an institution could survive even being transplanted from its first exotic Tyrolean location.

  Oddly enough, it was also the international situation in 1938 that saved the Margaret Roper School. For the threat of air-raids, at the time of Munich and onwards, was to drive numbers of middle-class families from the cities to places like Herefordshire which were considered ‘safe areas’. Naturally, many of the newcomers needed schools for their children. And since few of the established schools in Hereford had vacancies, there were plenty of applications to the Margaret Roper School. Other new pupils came from local families who might in the ordinary way have sent their daughters to boarding-schools, but who now preferred a school that was, so to speak, on the doorstep.

  One way and another, by the end of September 1938 when the autumn term began, Elinor’s school — now advertised as a boarding and day school — had gathered enough children, even without the two Griffiths girls, and of sufficiently varying ages, really to be considered a school at last. From this point until after the war had ended there was to be no further problem over numbers. September 1939 saw more new arrivals, and the school began to accept small boys as well as girls. It also, according to the Hereford Times, had acquired ‘A GAS-PROOF ROOM’. Yet more pupils came in 1940, when the headmistress’s December report mentions the ‘air-raids on defenceless people [which] have brought an influx to our beautiful Hereford’. And by the summer of 1941 there were about forty-five children attending the Margaret Roper School, as can be seen in the school photograph (below).

  The Margaret Roper School in summer 1941. Elinor is in the centre of the second row, with her mother on her right.

  This photograph also reveals something significant about the two schools in Elinor’s life, especially when it is considered alongside certain passages in her writings. For example: The ‘brown-and-white checked ginghams, which were the summer uniform of the school . . . looked very fresh and crisp with their white collars and cuffs and their short sleeves. The girls wore the flame-coloured school ties with them, and belts of brown leather.’

  Here, as a glance will show, Elinor has provided an almost exact description of the uniform being worn at the Margaret Roper School in the summer of 1941, when that group photograph was taken. And that the Margaret Roper colours were indeed brown and flame has been verified by several ex-pupils. The only item to differ is the belt — those worn in the photograph do not appear to be made of leather. And yet the school described in the above passage is, of course, the Chalet School — not the Margaret Roper.

  This similarity of uniform is only one of many resemblances which existed between Elinor’s real and fictional schools. Often these parallels were deliberately contrived, as in the case of the uniforms. Some happened by coincidence. And one in particular: for it so happened that the Princess Elisaveta of Belsornia, who spent two terms at the Chalet School, was to be
matched in real life, when two granddaughters of Haile Selassie, Emperor of Abyssinia, became pupils for a time at the Margaret Roper School.

  The identity of these little Abyssinian princesses was meant to remain a secret (as was that of The Princess of the Chalet School), but in practice most people at the Margaret Roper School knew who the children were. One of their schoolfellows remembered them with affection but also with a touch of sadness; partly because of the fate that may well have overtaken these two during the troubled conditions prevailing in Ethiopia for many years past; partly because she cannot forget how one of them would sometimes be heard ‘praying aloud to be made white’.

  Not that there appears to have been any colour prejudice shown at the Margaret Roper School. Elinor, it seems, really did attempt to foster in practice the ideas of international co-operation and religious tolerance that had become familiar in the pages of the Chalet School. And it is no surprise to find that the basic aims and aspirations of the two schools had much in common. ‘ “We are trying to train our girls — and our boys — to become practising Christians and good citizens, two things which are going to be most vital to our land and indeed to the whole Empire,” said Miss Brent-Dyer, Principal of the Margaret Roper School, at the school’s ninth Speech Day.’ (Hereford Times, 6 July 1946). And, minus only the passing reference to boys, Elinor could have handed over her speech unchanged for Miss Annersley to deliver at a first-night assembly in the Chalet School. It is clear, too, that Elinor wanted her real-life school, wherever possible, to do the same things the Chalet School did. That at least is the impression to be gleaned from reports in the local papers, where the Margaret Roper School’s activities always had exceptionally good coverage — perhaps because of the headmistress’s reputation as a children’s author. Thus many traditional features of life at the Chalet School became familiar at Lichfield House, among them concerts, folk dancing, pageants in the garden, exhibitions and sales of work, collections for charity, Girl Guides, expeditions to places of historical interest, school songs and plays (these latter often being specially written by the headmistress).

  Of course it would be foolish to press the matter of resemblance too far. After all, the majority of schools do take part in some, perhaps all, of the activities listed above. Most schools have — or had in those days — prefects and headgirls. Schools other than the Margaret Roper and Chalet schools have magazines, accept pupils of different nationalities and religions, and may choose brown and flame for their school colours. Nevertheless the likeness between the summer uniforms — and the same was true of those worn in winter — could not by any stretch of the imagination have been a coincidence. And there were other parallels, equally unmistakeable — as in the following two descriptions of a Nativity Play.

  The first states that the play, The Youngest Shepherd, is ‘a cleverly written piece which, with effective simplicity, not only tells the moving story of the Nativity but brings out the significance of the various pilgrimages to the stable’; and it comments on the accompaniment of carols, and on the ‘striking finale in which the children of many lands join in the adoration of the Holy Child’.

  The second, after explaining that the play ‘is called The Youngest Shepherd, continues, ‘As you all know, it was to the “shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night” that the angel of the Nativity told the good news of Christ’s birth. Our little play is based on that story.’ Here, too, there are references to the accompanying carols; and to the finale where ‘one by one, the worshippers stole in to kneel before the Manger . . . The Shepherds . . . the Wise Men . . . the children eagerly laying their treasured possessions before the Holy child . . . The poor Man . . . the [great] Lady . . . the Youngest Shepherd . . . ’

  The first of those two passages comes from the Hereford Times of 23 December 1944, and it describes a real-life performance by the Margaret Roper School of a Christmas play written by their head-mistress, Miss Elinor Brent-Dyer. The second, which dates from 1926, eighteen years earlier, relates to a performance at the Chalet School of what is quite obviously the same Christmas play, but written, theoretically, by their headmistress, Miss Madge Bettany.

  And this trading of ideas between reality and fiction was to work both ways. Thus, when girls from the Margaret Roper School went hop-picking in the fields of Herefordshire, it was not long before the Chalet girls in ‘Armishire’ were doing the same. And when Elinor went with a friend to visit Bournville, there sure enough in the next Chalet book is a description of the chocolate factory, given in exhaustive and, it must be confessed, rather boring detail.

  All that was fair enough. The practice of basing fiction on reality is common and legitimate. But there is surely danger awaiting anyone who tries to do the same thing in reverse, as Elinor undoubtedly did with her Margaret Roper School. And this must inevitably have led to disappointments when the real school failed to match its fictional equivalent. For there can be no question: despite all those plays and other activities mentioned above, and the fact that numbers remained satisfactory during the war (seventy pupils in 1945), the Margaret Roper School was quite simply not in, or even near, the Chalet School’s league.

  For one thing, Elinor herself was totally unsuited to being a headmistress. As a teacher she had undeniable talents; and that she had a compulsion to teach is clear from the amount of instruction that she tries to cram into her books. She also had a gift, when she chose to exercise it, for getting on outstandingly well with individual children, and for building genuine friendships with them. Hazel Bainbridge and Helen Colam would testify to that; as would many others, including a former pupil of the Margaret Roper School, Luella Hamilton, who remembers her headmistress with much affection. But plainly Elinor was out of her element when it came to dealing with numbers. Not for her the fictional Miss Annersley’s capacity to quell with one glance a host of insubordinate girls. ‘Poor old B.D.! — we ran rings round her,’ recalls one ex-pupil. And another, now Mrs Margaret Mann, remembers the high jinks that went on when Elinor was late, as she nearly always was, in coming to take their Latin class; and that sometimes she completely failed to turn up: ‘We knew then that she’d got buried in something or other she was writing. And we used to dare each other to go up to the study and get her out.’

  It is more than likely, too, that Elinor became thoroughly bored with all the day-to-day routine of a headmistress’s life. She could, moreover, have been aware that she lacked certain essential qualities; for when Joey, with whom Elinor certainly identified, makes a suggestion (in Gay from China at the Chalet School) that she might act temporarily as head of the Chalet School’s English department, the idea is ‘instantly squashed’ by her sister (an experienced headmistress): ‘do you mind explaining how you imagine that you, of all people, could see to the organisation? It needs a tidy mind for that sort of thing, my child.’

  Whether or not that passage was autobiographical, Elinor was assuredly no organiser; and she was just as certainly not tidy, either in appearance or with her possessions. Nor was she a methodical person. Her friends agree unreservedly about that; and the number of inconsistencies in her Chalet books provide supporting evidence.

  One way and another, it is no wonder that things happened at the school in Hereford that could never, never, have happened at the Chalet School. There were, for instance, endless grumbles about the food. Now, in the stories, the cooking and household affairs were always in the hands of some matchless paragon — Marie Pfeiffen, or Rosa, or Karen; and generations of schoolgirls and other readers must have envied the menus that are lovingly described — particularly the Tyrolean specialities: those delicious spicy soups and the various concoctions made from recipes of which ‘Marie alone knew the secret’.

  At the Margaret Roper School it was Nelly Ainsley who took charge of domestic matters, which included the cooking; and in the recollections of many people ‘the school meals were awful’. Of course Mrs Ainsley was far from young: she had been seventy in the March b
efore the war began, and probably she had no previous experience of cooking for large numbers; In addition she had to contend, during all but the first year of the school’s life, with the many problems caused by food rationing. All the same it has to be faced that the general running of the house left much to be desired. ‘The kitchens were filthy,’ as one ex-pupil bluntly puts it. And much trouble was caused by Mrs Ainsley’s beloved cats; there were apparently five of them, and they were allowed to wander everywhere unchecked; moreover ‘they did what they should not all over the place, and would jump onto the tables and lick the milk out of the jugs,’ as one scandalised person relates. It has even been suggested that complaints were lodged with the health authorities; and further that it was rumoured the sanitary inspector was coming to close down the school.

  Presumably that particular rumour was unfounded, for the upheaval did eventually subside, and Elinor’s school was in fact to continue for several more years — with, it is to be hoped, different conditions prevailing below stairs. But the storm had not left the school undamaged. The assistant mistress, Miss A. N. Ovens, resigned; and was later to set up her own school in Hereford, which then ran in opposition to the Margaret Roper School, and even outlived it. And this must have been extremely hurtful to Elinor, not only professionally but personally, for Miss Ovens had been among her closest friends.

  An old acquaintance who knew the situation well at the time was inclined to blame much of the trouble at the school on Mrs Ainsley, who ‘simply ruled the roost’. And the impression does begin to emerge that the real Nelly Ainsley was by no means just a sweet, gentle and helpless old lady. On the contrary, many of Elinor’s friends have suggested that her mother was one of those people who can hide inflexible determination beneath a quiet manner; and that it was she who dominated her far more forcible-seeming daughter. ‘She had Elinor right under her thumb’ was the comment of one friend, Mrs Phyllis Matthewman — who nevertheless liked Mrs Ainsley a great deal.