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

by Helen McClelland

  However there would probably be general agreement with the point made in a letter by the late Sheelagh Tatham, who was an acknowledged authority on the girls’ school story: ‘It was the fact that the Chalet books were a series that really ensured their continuing success, I think.’ For there is no question that a series does tend to become self-propelling once it really gets going. At some point a kind of soap opera syndrome begins to operate, and people once hooked will find no rubbish too great to swallow. (Certain radio and TV serials come to mind.)

  Neverthless, the cumulative factor alone cannot account for the success of the Chalet books. Apart from anything, it does not explain why the popularity of these stories has been greater and has endured for longer than that of other comparable series.

  At quite an early stage Elinor’s publishers already had their own ideas on this matter; and these were embodied in a blurb which appeared on the dust wrappers of pre-war Chalet books from about 1933 onwards:

  The ‘Chalet School’, situated among the Alpine pastures of the Tyrol, has . . . become to girl readers a romantic world in itself.

  The doings, ordinary and extraordinary, of Jo Bettany and her fellow Chaletians hold the reader’s attention to the last page. At the same time, the descriptions of Tyrolese scenery and of the life and manners of the people make the stories as instructive as they are entertaining.

  There is a delightful freshness of incident and conversation, coupled with a skilful use of humour and pathos. Girl character is accurately drawn, and nowhere is the transition from rollicking girlhood to joyous womanhood more naturally portrayed.

  Today the wording of that last half-sentence may be hard to take; but, allowing for the period language, the three short paragraphs manage to encapsulate in an expert fashion most of the ingredients in the Chalet School’s magic recipe.

  The exotic Tyrolean setting of the early books was unquestionably of prime importance. An informal straw poll among readers showed that this came high on their list of reasons for liking the stories. And Elinor’s ‘Briesau-am-Tiernsee’ caught her readers’ imaginations not only because of its beauty, but because it was fun. What girl would not prefer to forsake the ordinary bus or suburban train and travel to school by that ‘quaint little mountain railway’, and then onwards in ‘the little white steamer’ across the sapphire-blue lake, with breathtaking views on every side?

  In this setting ‘the doings ordinary and extraordinary of Jo Bettany and her fellow Chaletians’ immediately became both more interesting and more convincing. The most ordinary school activities — walks, for instance — can seem glamorous in such a beautiful place; and the extraordinary adventures — two girls getting lost in the mist on a mountain precipice, or the Chalet being engulfed by floods during the spring thaw — can appear credible, given the school’s alpine situation.

  Then, right from the beginning, the Chalet School had the advantage of being ‘different’, with its mixture of nationalities and religions, its near-family atmosphere (in the early books) and its delicious-sounding meals. And the stories all contained — as indicated in the publisher’s blurb, and expressed in the words of a grown-up fan: ‘so many interesting historical and geographical facts, to say nothing of the local legends, which the reader could painlessly absorb.’

  Another facet of the books was mentioned by a schoolgirl whose letter is quoted in Chalet Club News Letter 7: ‘In reading the French conversation of the Chalet girls unknowingly I learnt quite a few words, phrases and idioms.’ And although Elinor’s own knowledge of French and German appears to have been, to say the least, limited (she sometimes makes glaring errors in both languages) there is no doubt that her stories really have encouraged many schoolgirls to try and emulate the prowess of trilingual Joey Bettany and her friends.

  However, in spite of all this, it is plain that had there been no more to the books than a glamorous background and a lot of instruction more or less attractively packaged, the Chalet Series would long ago have been forgotten — like so many other school stories. Probably the stories’ picturesque locations, in Austria, the Channel Islands, Herefordshire, Wales and Switzerland have helped; but today this aspect of things is probably less important than it was, for now holidays abroad have become almost the accepted thing for children, and this may rob the books of some of their former novelty.

  That the Chalet School continues to survive after more than seventy years is mainly a tribute to the entertaining stories, the sense of comedy and fun, and above all to the characterisation shown in the early books. Here the pupils are neither the paragons of virtue nor the monsters of depravity so often found in school stories, but credible schoolgirls who may have a rather unusual number of adventures but still manage to behave and talk like human beings.

  In fact, Elinor’s principal achievement would seem to lie in having created, at the beginning of her series where it mattered most, a set of characters who (as discussed in the previous chapter and elsewhere) gradually assumed an almost independent existence in her eyes and those of her readers. It was this conviction that her characters were real people that carried Elinor through book after book; and it also helped to persuade all those thousands of readers into following the Chaletians’ progress — and later that of their multitudinous children with unwearying devotion.

  ‘I have read and re-read the series over the years [wrote a middle-aged fan whose daughter was beginning to follow in her footsteps] and . . . have always felt that with a very few words Miss Brent-Dyer was able to depict the character of any one of her numerous schoolgirls.’ Another fan considered that Elinor’s characterisation is of a very high order, and that in judging it ‘the [school-story] context seemed irrelevant . . . [because] these characters are apt to explode out of the school gate’.

  Yet another admirer paid tribute to the reality of the whole Chalet School world when she described how ‘at Christmas time . . . and this has been in Japan, the USA, and once going up the Suez Canal’ she is often ‘far away, walking down the mountain path to Spärtz . . . having coffee and delicious rolls with Herr Anserl in the station refreshment room . . . setting out with Madge, Joey and the Robin to visit the Mensch family in Innsbruck’. And the author of this biography wrote to a friend about her experience in reconstructing the story, Visitors for the Chalet School, which is woven around the early Chalet School characters: ‘People can say what they like — but I found it as easy to write about Elinor’s Chalet School people as about my own family and the friends I know really well. That must mean something.’

  What it does mean, or at least indicate, is that Elinor had managed in an extraordinary way to build what amounts to a personal relationship between her characters and her readers. And once this is borne in mind it becomes easier to understand why even the least satisfactory among her later Chalet books always found a faithful public.

  It mattered nothing to the ‘Chaletomanes’ that the ideas in most of these books had already been used — and usually far more effectively — in earlier stories. And, seemingly, they were not bothered to find that genuine humour, which had been a delightful feature in the early days, was now in short supply, and that the jokes were often laboured. Decidedly nothing to match the fun of ‘Shakespeariana’ in the second book, or the snails episode in the third.

  Nor were the faithful readers put off by Elinor’s increasingly heavy-footed style of writing. And yet the interesting thing is that so many of them were obviously conscious of all these defects. For example, Judith Humphrey, who is herself an honours graduate in English and French, will allow that: ‘Stylistically many of . . . [the later Chalet books] are awful, at best pedestrian and at worst incredibly clumsy’; also that ‘by then [Elinor’s] ability to sustain the structure had collapsed’. But she added — and is probably speaking for many: ‘Despite this, there are good bits even in the worst books. I wouldn’t really scrap any of them. Good “set pieces” with the parts in between [to be] got through as quickly as possible!’

  Nevert
heless, it would be fair to mention at this point that Elinor’s style in her earlier books, which might still be open to criticism when compared with the standards prevailing among children’s writers today, is noticeably superior to that of many others in her genre and period.

  After all’s said and done, it remains true that Elinor, on top form, did produce some first-rate school stories. These undoubtedly rank among the best examples in their field. Whether they are judged to be the best of all will depend largely on taste. But it is worth noting that Jo of the Chalet School, published in 1926, is one of the few school stories of its period where an attempt is made to keep the story moving around ordinary school activities and characters (as in the books Antonia Forest and Mary Harris were to write twenty-odd years later); and where all the adventures, allowing for the Chalet School’s alpine terrain, might easily have happened in real life.

  Four further points should be taken into account in any assessment of the Chalet School’s amazingly enduring popularity. One results from the tireless crusade that, throughout Chalet School history, was waged against the use of slang expressions. In the stories, the avowed object of this anti-slang rule was to prevent the girls who were not native English speakers from acquiring a vocabulary of undesirable slang expressions; and in real life, the fictional ban has meant that much of the dialogue in the Chalet School books now appears less dated than that in some other school stories.

  Another important factor has been the role played by religion in the series. This has already been considered at length in Chapter XVI; so here it need only be emphasised once more that a majority of Elinor’s readers have quite evidently welcomed and appreciated this religious aspect of the stories.

  Then there is the theme of international fellowship, which is sometimes discussed and always implicit in the Chalet books. Here the reaction of Elinor’s most fervent masculine admirer, Hilary Maurice Bray, to a particular side of the wartime books is of interest: ‘for me, with the recollection of those years of genophobia and the deliberate “strategic” generation of hatred, E. B.-D. lighted a small but inextinguishable candle — in the Chalet School Peace League.’

  Finally, there is the concept of the Chalet School itself as an abiding institution, with defined and well-established traditions, which through much repetition became comfortably familiar to the fans. And clearly Elinor’s readers enjoyed the idea of being, as it were, part of the Chalet School’s extended family. There can be no doubt that this quasi-reality of the school has been one of the two most powerful factors in binding together and even to a certain extent unifying the whole mammoth series. Only the continuity of the characters has been more important, ‘Whatever happens to us, the Chalet School must go on,’ Joey Maynard proclaims at the end of’ The Chalet School Goes to It, published in 1941.

  ‘The Chalet School . . . [books] are not just school stories; they are an entire way of life’ (Chalet Club News Letter 18, July 1968) a schoolgirl fan wrote —an opinion that some might dismiss as an exaggeration, but one that nevertheless expresses a genuine tribute to the books.

  And the last word in this review of the Chalet School legend may fittingly be given to Elinor herself. When asked in 1964 about the future of her series, she replied: ‘I can’t say, for I honestly don’t know how long the series is likely to continue. As long as I do myself, I hope’ (Chalet Club News Letter 12, December 1964).

  At least that hope was to be more than realised, as will be demonstrated in the chapter which follows.

  CHAPTER XXII

  THE CHALET SCHOOL SEVENTY YEARS ON

  BEFORE coming to the final years of Elinor’s life, some consideration of the events that took place during 1994 follows logically from the previous chapter.

  It is always tempting to try and picture how people of a bygone era might have reacted had they suddenly been transported a hundred years forward in time. No doubt about it — Elinor’s family and their friends and neighbours in South Shields would surely have been dumbfounded if, on the day of her birth, 6 April 1894, they could have foreseen what would happen on that same date a hundred years later. For, on 6 April 1994, a ceremonial gathering in South Shields, attended by the Mayor, with other officials of the South Tyneside Borough Council, and numerous Chalet School fans, not to mention local visitors and representatives of the media, marked the first in a series of events to commemorate Elinor Brent-Dyer’s centenary.

  At this first celebration, a memorial plaque to Elinor was unveiled; not at the actual place of her birth, which of course no longer exists, but, by an ironic twist of fate, on the house in Westoe Village where the Misses Stewart had their school, recording, as well as the dates of Elinor’s birth and death, the fact that she had been a pupil there between 1906 and 1912. Would the ladies perhaps have been a little surprised?

  South Shields certainly did Elinor proud that day. ‘Now it’s wor Elinor’ — announced the headline in the Shields Gazette; and the Borough Council not only provided transport to and from Westoe Village for the many guests but, after the unveiling ceremony, laid on a splendid reception and sit-down lunch at the Town Hall — itself an impressive building, and one that must have been a familiar sight to Elinor as she walked around the town.

  Next came the turn of Hereford, where the City Council was also most co-operative. Among other things, they sponsored the erection of a plaque at the gate of Elinor’s former home in Bodenham Road (where she had run the Margaret Roper School); assisted with the arrangements for a Brent-Dyer exhibition at the Central Library; and laid on an evening reception in the Bishop’s Palace.

  More than 160 Chalet School enthusiasts attended an April weekend of celebrations in and around Hereford — some had come from as far afield as Australia. And the non-stop programme of official events included a celebration dinner at Belmont Abbey (where one of the speakers was a former pupil of the Margaret Roper School, Mrs Luella Hamilton); a visit by coach to the second-hand bookshops of Hay-on-Wye; a special Mass of Thanksgiving at St. Francis Xavier’s Church in Hereford — the church Elinor herself attended; a fiendishly difficult quiz, covering just about every aspect, known and unknown of Elinor’s books; and a hilarious group photograph session. Throughout the weekend the flow of chatter and laughter could hardly have been matched on a first day of term at the Chalet School itself.

  Later in the year a comprehensive exhibition was staged at Edinburgh’s Museum of Childhood; and this was opened by Mr Tony Chambers, a former director of Elinor’s publishers, W.& R. Chambers, who, in relating some of his own memories of Elinor, provided a direct personal link with the Chalet School’s author.

  During the summer (thanks to the good offices of Martin Spence, who is prominent among the Chalet School’s group of male admirers), a plaque commemorating Elinor’s Tyrolean visit was erected outside the library in Pertisau-am-Achensee (as mentioned in Chapter XIII). This plaque particularly stresses the important role played by Pertisau as Elinor’s inspiration in her Chalet School series.

  The weekend of 16-18 September then saw a gathering in Guernsey, where the interest focused on both the Chalet School and the La Rochelle series. And, on Tuesday 20 September, the twenty-fifth anniversary of Elinor’s death, a memorial and thanksgiving service was held in the Church of the Holy Family at Reigate, her parish church and scene of her funeral. This was followed by the blessing at Elinor’s grave in Redstone Hill Cemetery at Redhill, Surrey of a specially commissioned headstone, paid for by subscriptions from Chalet fans all around the world.

  The centenary year was rounded off in December: first with a conference in London, held at the University of Westminster. This not only dealt with many aspects of the girls’ school story, but also provided an occasion for launching Bettany Press’s newly published The Chalet School Revisited (a collection of nine essays on different facets of the Chalet School books), as well as giving an opportunity for Chalet fans to see Juliet Gosling’s centenary video of the same title. And that evening a final celebration took the form of a
Christmas party, Chalet-School-style, with the whole-hearted singing of Christmas carols being a notable feature. The programme even featured three of Elinor’s own carols, including ‘Oh, Busy World’, from Challenge for the Chalet School, sung to the melody of ‘Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem’.

  Altogether a notably eventful centenary year. And its resounding success was undoubtedly due to the hard work of innumerable people in many different places, but above all to the enterprise and tireless energy of the Elinor M. Brent-Dyer Centenary Committee, Clarissa Cridland and Polly Goerres.

  The former, who was at the time rights manager for an international publishers and is now working as a freelance agent, has made a special study of the illustrations and dustwrappers of the Chalet School series, on which she wrote an article for The Chalet School Revisited. Polly Goerres, who also contributed an essay to the book, had first made her mark in Chalet School circles when, in 1983, she chose to write the official dissertation for her degree at Sheffield University on: ‘The Language, Traditions and Genre of the Chalet School’. And that, in the early 1980s, was both an unusual and an adventurous choice. At that time, critical attitudes towards the girls’ school story were still predominantly hostile. And, although ideas have changed perceptibly in recent years, this softening in the climate of opinion did not begin to show itself until near the end of the 1980s.

  Up till that point, even Armada, despite the excellent selling record of Chalet School paperbacks, had always tended to adopt an attitude to the stories that was more apologetic than enthusiastic. It was only in 1989 that a change of outlook led to their commissioning, first, in September of that year, Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School — a large format paperback including numerous coloured illustrations; and, four years later, The Chalet School Companion, which was published in 1994 as part of Armada’s programme for the centenary year. Their other centenary contributions included the first ever completely unabridged paperback of The School at the Chalet, which was produced in facsimile style, with a reproduction on the cover of the original Nina Brisley dustwrapper. And it must surely have given Armada cause for thought, if not surprise, that during the summer of 1994 this book became number five on the list of bestselling children’s books!