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

by Helen McClelland

  Nevertheless a perfectly cordial relationship was established following the Matthewmans’ first visit to Hereford. And after that Phyllis and Sydney were to be regular guests at Lichfield House, visiting Hereford at least once each year, and sometimes bringing with them their young niece, Chloe, who became much attached to Elinor. ‘She was extremely kind to me and surprisingly understanding. I always remember that she gave me my very first lipstick as an Easter present. It was a very pale one, of course, but I was only thirteen or fourteen and no one else would have thought of anything like that, so I was thrilled.’

  Sydney Matthewman was later, in about 1949, to set up a literary agency, Books for Today, and Elinor then became one of his first clients. That unquestionably was a piece of good luck for Sydney in his new venture, for at that time Elinor was both well established and successful as a children’s writer. But there is no doubt that Elinor, too, was fortunate in that she now had someone reliable to advise her and to look after her career. Sydney had some experience of publishing and had worked on the editorial staff of a magazine. Most important, he also had a certain amount of ability for organisation, whereas Elinor herself was always hopelessly disorganised and unmethodical.

  It seems, too, that she was incapable of any kind of order even where her beloved writings were concerned. ‘The most peculiar things used to happen to Miss Brent-Dyer’s manuscripts,’ according to Mrs Phyllis Kerr (then Miss Peattie), who for many years worked at W. & R. Chambers. Once it was ‘the puppy eating some of the pages for his dinner’. Once — far worse — publication of a book actually had to be delayed because Elinor’s cat had chosen the current manuscript as a suitable place to have kittens and could not be disturbed. ‘The then Managing Director was not amused on these occasions.’

  However it is clear that on the whole Elinor had quite a friendly relationship with her publishers. And as recently as the 1980s the mention of Miss Brent-Dyer and her extraordinary manuscripts — ‘typed from edge to edge of the page’ — might well have brought smiles at Chambers, where those who remembered Elinor, clearly did so with not only amusement but affection.

  As formally recorded in the final Chalet Club News Letter (November 1969), which announces ‘the death of our authoress and very dear friend, Miss Brent-Dyer’, the firm who had ‘been publishing her books for over fifty years remember her indomitable spirit, often in face of great difficulties, her wonderful letters teeming with kindliness and interest; the tremendous fertility of her imagination that gave schoolgirl literature the most varied yet lovable assortment of characters it has ever known; and behind it all that deep sense of religious values that has meant so much to her thousands of reader.s.’

  That, of course, was an official pronouncement by the firm. But their comments in letters and during informal conversations suggest that the sentiments expressed were genuine.

  It is evident, too, that anyone at W. & R. Chambers whose work concerned Elinor and her books began, over the years, to feel a genuine involvement with the Chalet School. And this interest was not purely financial, but personal. Of course the series did undoubtedly hold money-spinning attractions for a publisher. There are not many figures available; but, for example, a letter from Sydney Matthewman’s agency refers to sales of Three Go to the Chalet School (1949), which had reached almost 10,000 copies within a month or two of publication. And although sales probably did not remain at that level, there was obviously a continuing demand for Chalet books throughout the fifties and sixties, since Elinor had to produce the astonishing number of thirty-eight new stories in an effort to satisfy her fans.

  This kind of success might not have appeared unusual during the heyday of the school-story genre. But for Elinor to have kept such a faithful following all through the post-war decades is remarkable. By this time ideas and fashions in children’s literature had changed radically and there was no longer a ready market for the school story as such. Yet enough people went on reading — and buying — the Chalet books to make their production a paying proposition.

  Still more extraordinary — there was the Chalet Club, which began in May 1959 and lasted until after Elinor’s death more than ten years later. Fan clubs are of course familiar in the world of pop music, and among football supporters. In the literary field, too, there are societies, dedicated to such widely different figures as Sherlock Holmes and Rupert Bear. But the Chalet Club was then unique in the history of the girls’ school story.

  The club moreover enjoyed an astonishing growth rate, not unlike that of the Chalet School itself: in five years the numbers rose from an initial thirty-three to just under 4,000; and the members came from an impressive number of different countries. They were not all schoolgirls, either; but this point, and others connected with the Chalet cult, including the revival of Chalet School fan clubs in the 1980s and nineties, will be discussed in the next chapter.

  Originally the idea of a Chalet Club had come from Elinor’s publishers; and the club really owed not only its beginning but its entire existence to Mrs Phyllis Kerr (mentioned above) and Mr Thomas Collocott, a director of W. & R. Chambers, who was one of Elinor’s principal editors for many years. These two were long-standing Chalet fans and together they worked out a scheme; at the beginning of 1959 this was put to Elinor, who gave her enthusiastic approval, and also her agreement in principle to write a couple of newsletters each year. (In practice it was often difficult to get these out of her on time.) A badge and a membership card were designed; and in May 1959 the club was launched.

  Its avowed object was ‘to form a closer link between Chalet enthusiasts the world over’. And the huge quantity of fan mail, that arrived from quite literally ‘the world over’, proves beyond doubt that the club was successful in doing this. There were times, in fact, when the correspondence threatened to get out of hand, for Elinor was not always very good about answering letters. And it is easy to understand something the former Miss Peattie wrote in a letter to another publisher who was considering whether to set up a similar club: ‘For your sake I can only hope that all your authors do not have such a prolific fan mail as Miss Brent-Dyer!’

  Unquestionably the running of the club entailed a tremendous amount of work. But of course there were sound business reasons behind the whole enterprise. Perhaps it may never have struck the members, but, as Mr Collocott was quite frank in stating, their Chalet Club gave splendid publicity to both Elinor and her publishers. It also provided a handy way of testing what might be called audience reaction. Here, the fan mail was obviously helpful as it gave direct information about readers’ likes and dislikes. And the competitions (there were two every year, one in each newsletter) were often ingeniously slanted. Perhaps the readers might be asked to state which character they considered should take a leading role in the next story, giving their reasons. Or sometimes there would be a list of ten or more Chalet titles which had to be placed in order of preference. The latter type of competition proved doubly rewarding: the winner — that being the entrant whose list most nearly matched Miss Brent-Dyer’s own — naturally got a prize; and Messrs Chambers got valuable material to help them in planning which Chalet book to reprint next.

  The newsletters usually gave a list of all the Chalet titles that were currently available. And they always contained a snippet or two of information about the story that was to be published next — just enough to whet the appetite.

  Regular features included a letter from the author, where Elinor would range over a variety of topics — usually but not always connected with the Chalet School. Advice for aspiring young writers was a favourite subject. And, as can be seen in the issue for June 1961, it was all good down-to-earth stuff with the emphasis on hard work and technical preparation:

  Remember this: you [cannot] . . . hope to sit down and reel off a book that some publisher will accept without long and severe training . . . you must learn your craft . . . pay attention to your English lessons . . . Learn to use words well and correctly

  . . Vary the wo
rds you use . . . you can [also] prepare . . . by reading . . . the standard authors.

  . . . Write about people, places and things that you know. Otherwise you may make fearful mistakes . . .

  Avoid fairytales like the plague. It takes a genius to write a good [one] . . . another tip . . . [count] the number of words that go to a . . . [page] of print in a book . . . [multiply] that by the number of pages to a chapter . . . Think that [total] over and then you won’t send out something that is, perhaps only 15,000 words in length and hopefully call it ‘a book’.

  Requests for still more advice on writing books would often appear in the correspondence columns. But most of the letters did of course concern the Chalet School. There might be just an occasional query about one of Elinor’s other books; but these were already becoming scarce in the 1960s and they are now all out of print.

  Certain questions were asked again and again. Was the Chalet School a real school? Some people simply took for granted that it was and wrote to ask for prospectuses . . . Were all, or any of the places described in the stories real? Were the characters modelled on real people? — and especially was Jo — or sometimes Madge — modelled on Elinor herself? (See previous chapter.)

  Then there would be people who needed help to disentangle the complications of the Bettany or Maynard or Russell families. (From time to time these seemed to puzzle even Elinor herself.) And there were endless queries about what certain characters were doing now — the word ‘now’ being used apparently in the sense of ‘right here and now in the present’. In fact the manner in which the questions were asked often suggested that the enquirer had real people in mind; and the answers would be given in the same spirit:

  The triplets are still at school. Elisaveta is living at Arosa in Switzerland. Robin is a member of the La Sagesse Order.

  Joey [Maynard] has eleven children now.

  Rosamund left at Christmas . . .

  The Maynards have succeeded in buying the place that was once St Scholastika’s School, and spend summer holidays there.

  It all becomes disconcertingly like the ‘News of our Old Girls’ page in some real-life school magazine.

  Others among the multitude of correspondents wrote with enthusiasm about their holidays abroad, especially when they had visited Switzerland or the Tyrol. Even more fans expressed a desire for foreign travel. A grown-up reader, typical of the first group, wrote (issue no. 18, July 1968): ‘It is now 12 years since I first visited Austria as the direct result of reading the Chalet books, and since then I have been six times. Strange to think that but for the books I might have missed these wonderful holidays’. And a fifteen-year-old from Newcastle upon Tyne probably spoke for many other schoolgirls, besides the two she mentions, when she wrote: ‘Because of reading the Chalet books I have gained a longing to visit Austria, Switzerland and Oberammagau. I find you have also created such an idea in two of my friends’.

  And in view of all this enthusiasm it seems odd that a plan for the Chalet Club to visit Austria in order ‘to celebrate the Golden Jubilee of the Chalet School’ (in other words, the appearance in 1963 of Chalet book no. 50) had to be abandoned for lack of support. The proposal had been that members would spend a short holiday in ‘the Chalet School country in the Austrian Tyrol’, and it had all been carefully thought out. The expedition was to have been ‘organised by Cooks . . . led by Miss Brent-Dyer herself and accompanied by adult friends of the Chalet School Club’. The estimated cost was only ‘in the neighbourhood of £33’ to include ‘travel . . . reserved seats and couchettes where available; food on the journeys; insurance . . . full board and accommodation at a good-class hotel or pension’.

  Today, thirty-odd years later, that seems remarkably good value, even keeping an eye on inflation. But comparing prices can be tricky, and at the time it may have compared unfavourably with, say, a package tour to Majorca. Possibly it was also more than parents could afford, or wanted to spend, when the outing, being aimed mainly at schoolgirls, was not going to replace the family holiday.

  At any rate, whatever the reasons, the plan for visiting the Tyrol was fated not to get off the ground. But 1963 did nevertheless see a number of celebrations to mark the Chalet School’s ‘Golden Jubilee’. And that fiftieth book, The Chalet School Reunion, was in itself a rather splendid production: it had a special binding in white and blue; and in addition to ‘a coloured frontispiece and four illustrations in colour’ there was a picture on the dust jacket, ‘extending over the back and “spine” of the book as well as the front’, which portrayed ‘many of the “Old Girls” at the Reunion’, not to mention staff, present pupils and Joey Maynard’s St Bernard dog. (A key was supplied to help in identifying the characters.)

  Then there was a jubilee edition of the Chalet Club News Letter, with six pages instead of the usual four; and in it were several most attractive colour pictures of Pertisau and the Achensee district — the original ‘location’ of the Chalet School. (‘So my secret is out at last’ — Elinor wrote, in characteristically dramatic fashion, about this final identification of the ‘Tiernsee’.) An extra touch: on the back was reproduced a collage that had been made with stamps and envelopes from Elinor’s overseas fan mail, and this too was in full colour.

  However the most important event was undoubtedly the party at the National Book League in London, which was held in November 1963. Here Elinor met a large number of her fans (one came all the way from Denmark) and was given a presentation: ‘A lovely bouquet and, more valuable because more lasting, the original of the jacket for The Chalet School Reunion . . . beautifully mounted and in a white frame’ (July 1964). (The latter was presented to Elinor on behalf of the club by W.& R. Chambers.)

  That day was probably the most memorable to date of Elinor’s writing career. But something yet more important in terms of publicity was to follow. She herself gives a minutely detailed description of it in the Chalet Club newsletter for July 1964.

  On January 2nd [ 1964] I had a new experience — I was on Television in the programme “Tonight”

  . . . It was most interesting. First the official interviewer, Brian Redhead, met me and explained to me the sort of thing I should be expected to answer. The editress, Elizabeth Cowley, came along and joined in and then we were escorted to the studio . . . a great room filled with cameras moving about the floor and brilliant lighting. Cliff Michelmore was in charge of the programme as usual and when we sat down, we found he was about to interview someone with some most beautiful fowls. We were all warned to be prepared to leap to the rescue if the birds became restive and showed signs of scuttling. Far from it, they seemed dazed by their unusual surroundings and declined to show off in the least Then came a recorded interview with the Astronomer Royal, and finally myself. Everyone I know who saw me has informed me that I might have been accustomed to being interviewed daily. I seemed so calm. It wasn’t like that, you know. It was simply that there was such a friendly atmosphere about the whole place I couldn’t have felt nervy if I had tried.

  To this day a few people still remember that interview. And apparently Elinor did not exaggerate in saying that she had ‘seemed so calm’. By general agreement she really had spoken extremely well. ‘Unexpectedly well’ was the verdict of Mrs Phyllis Matthewman; but another friend was in no way surprised, having always considered her ‘a larger than life, flamboyant sort of person’; and Miss Farr Smith commented that ‘Elinor could make a most amusing speech, just like that — anytime’.

  That ‘gift of the gab’ was something else that Elinor shared with Joey, who naturally was to follow her author on to television. And Joey too discovered that ‘thanks to . . . [the interviewer’s] experienced questioning and her own lack of real shyness, it was . . . easy enough’ (Chalet Club News Letter 18, July 1968).

  For Elinor, the thrill of being on ‘Tonight’ was followed the next day by an official tour of the Children’s Book Exhibition at Olympia, which she visited at the invitiation of W.H. Smith and Son. This, not being a new e
xperience, ‘wasn’t quite such an excitement as the Television’. Nevertheless, ‘everyone was delightfully kind’, and Elinor wrote that she had ‘thoroughly enjoyed it’. No doubt, too, her TV appearance the previous night had given an extra boost to the Chalet School, for, as she herself puts it: ‘Honestly, I signed autographs until my hand was aching!’

  And throughout 1964 the Chalet School boom was to continue. That June Elinor ‘paid a surprise visit to the magnificent World Book Fair at Earls Court [where] an . . . announcement over the loudspeaker brought dozens of . . . young readers’, all clamouring for autographs.

  In the mean time Elinor went on adding to her series; and although her rate of production fell noticeably in the sixties, she was to manage another eight Chalet stories after that Golden Jubilee number. She also published a couple of ‘non-Chalet’ school stories in 1962 and 1963 — but from 1964 onwards the Chalet School monopolised her entire attention.

  Elinor in the early 1960s, taken in a friend’s garden

  The Chalet Club was also flourishing. Numbers kept up well and there were several new club activities, including: a penfriends’ service, with sections for French and Swedish correspondents; a scheme whereby readers could buy sixpenny (21/2p) savings stamps and put them towards the eventual purchase of a Chalet book; and even some ‘Chalet Club groups’ in various parts of Britain which met ‘in one another’s houses about once a month’ to discuss ‘Chalet and other matters’. One newsletter contains an advertisement asking for club members in India to form a group of this kind, although it seems that at the time this particular venture did not succeed.