by Sheila Ray
A further reason that girls’ school stories largely ceased publication in the mid-1960s may have been the increasing hostility towards Enid Blyton, who with Brent-Dyer was the most popular of the post-war girls’ school-story writers and was therefore closely identified with the genre. Blyton became a focus of antagonism from librarians and educationists like Colin Welch who claimed that her books were mediocre, had a limited vocabulary and upheld class distinctions. This received enormous coverage in the national press.9
One girls’ boarding school-story series which is currently in production is Anne Digby’s Trebizon series, which began in 1978 with First Term at Trebizon and now numbers 14 books. This series does indeed concentrate on “realism”, with its foregrounding of a contemporary girls’ public-school setting, male masters and boyfriends. In this it differs fundamentally from its predecessors, and it is doubtful whether it can be considered part of the same genre.
However, despite the fact that the majority of authors ceased to write school stories, and that books by lesser-known authors quickly went out of print, girls’ school stories have continued to attract successive generations of readers. Brazil’s books were still appearing in paperback in the 1970s, Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Dimsie books were reissued in hardback in 1983-4, and Blyton’s school series and Brent-Dyer’s Chalet School books have remained almost constantly in print. The books are not only bought by children; a significant minority of both purchasers and readers are adults, as are the great majority of subscribers to the fanzines.
The Chalet School story
In 1922, when Brent-Dyer set out on her long writing career, she was entering into a distinguished field. Her first attempt, Gerry Goes to School, is nothing special as a novel, as Brent-Dyer herself admitted in later years, though it was certainly not bad for a first effort. Still, in a decade in which some of the greatest examples of girls’ school stories were published — among them Oxenham’s very finest work, including most of her school stories, and Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s first seven Dimsie books — Brent-Dyer’s output would hardly have excited any attention, were it not for her happy inspiration, following a holiday in the Austrian Tyrol in 1924, to write a series about a school set in this picturesque and unusual location.
In May 1994, a group of Chalet fans led by Daphne Barfoot, and including the editors of this book, returned to the site of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Tyrolean holiday 70 years before and retraced the fictitious footsteps of the Chaletians of those early books. It was not the first time that many of us had been there, since Pertisau-am-Achensee (Brent-Dyer’s “Briesau-am-Tiernsee”) has long held an attraction for Chalet fans since the secret of its location was revealed in a Chalet Club News Letter in the 1960s. But in this centenary year of Brent-Dyer’s birth it held a special significance. Thanks to other centenary events held earlier in the year, including the big celebration weekend in Hereford described by Polly Goerres in her chapter in this book, we were already steeped in Chaletiana; and, despite tourism, the Achensee is not so changed that we were unable to imagine the impact of the setting upon the young author in 1924, nor to understand how it inspired a whole series of books, which in turn have enchanted generations of readers.
In The School at the Chalet (1925), 24-year-old Madge Bettany travels to the Tyrol to open a school. She needs to earn a living to support herself and her 12-year-old sister, Jo, and Austria is chosen for its cheapness and the Alpine climate, since Jo’s “health had been a constant worry to those who had charge of her”.10 Their parents are dead, and Madge’s twin brother, Dick, is about to return to his job in India where they were all born. The school opens with 3 pupils; by the end of the first term there are 18, and by the start of the second, 33. (At its largest, many years later in Switzerland, there are over 400.) Madge’s teaching career is short-lived, as she becomes engaged at the end of the second book in the series and marries at the end of the third, The Princess of the Chalet School (1927), whereupon she retires from teaching. This was, of course, the norm at the time, when women were expected to choose between marriage and a career, and many schools operated a marriage bar.
Madge’s husband, Jem Russell, is a doctor who has come to the Tyrol to set up a sanatorium for TB sufferers, and so at first they remain close to the school, both geographically and emotionally. Later, however, when Jo becomes an adult, Madge is mentioned much less frequently, and in the 21st book, The Chalet School and the Island (1950), she travels to Canada with her family for an extended stay. By the 30th book, The Chalet School and Barbara (1954), this separation has become permanent: Jem remains Head of the Sanatorium in Wales, where it had relocated during the war years, while the school moves to Switzerland. Madge reappears periodically as a visitor, and is said to retain a financial interest in the school, but from the time she is married she never enjoys the ongoing relationship with the school that Jo does.
Jo is at the centre of the books. For the first 11 she is a pupil at the school, becoming Head Girl in the 7th, The Chalet School and Jo (1931). In the 12th book, Jo Returns to the Chalet School (1936), she returns temporarily to teach, and in the 14th, The Chalet School in Exile (1940), she marries a colleague of Jem Russell, Jack Maynard, who is also a brother of a former mistress at the school. Because of the links between the school and the sanatorium, Jack never works far from the school, and so Jo is able to remain associated with it throughout the series.
Jo’s a married lady and a proud mamma of many [11 eventually], and yet, in one sense, she’s a much a part of the school as ever she was when she was Head Girl — or a sickening little nuisance of a Middle, for that matter. In my opinion, she’ll still belong when she’s a doddering old woman of ninety-odd, telling her great-great-grandchildren all about her evil doings at school!11
This identification of Jo with the Chalet School becomes complete when the school moves to the Bernese Oberland and Jo and her husband, who is to head a new branch of the sanatorium there, buy a house next door to the school.
There is evidence to suggest that Brent-Dyer’s publishers, W. and R. Chambers of Edinburgh, wished to end the series after Jo Returns to the Chalet School (1936), both on financial grounds and because “there are now 12 [books] and that is enough”.12 This was perhaps not surprising, given that this was a series of school stories whose central character, Jo, had now left school. True, she returned to the school in the 12th book after leaving, to help the staff out during a bout of illness, but this was an artificial device to keep her there which could not be indefinitely maintained.
Yet the series continued for another 47 books and 34 years. Brent-Dyer was able to go on writing Chalet School stories to the end of her life because of her skill in developing the series and repositioning it whenever necessary. Following her publisher’s warnings, she made some major changes to the series in her 13th book, The New Chalet School (1938). She replaced the shadowy Headmistress, Mademoiselle Lepattre, who had taken over after Madge’s marriage, with Miss Annersley, a far more convincing figure, who steps in when Mademoiselle becomes ill (and eventually dies) and remains Headmistress for the rest of the series. She killed off the Robin’s father, always an anachronism since his daughter was being brought up by the Russells. New staff and girls are introduced by merging the Chalet School with a neighbouring school, and Joey’s future position as an author and helpmate to the school is established.
By the time Brent-Dyer wrote the next book, The Chalet School in Exile (1940), events in Europe had forced her to change the series again. Austria was annexed by the Nazis in 1938, and England went to war in the following year. In the course of this book the school is relocated from Austria to Guernsey, and this is dramatised around Joey and Robin’s flight from the Nazis, bringing in adventure elements which would be topical at the time and remain exciting today. Joey becomes engaged while in Austria, and after a ten-month gap in proceedings in the middle of the book (the only occasion when a single book does not follow a continuous time period) she is married, and later gives birth to t
riplet daughters.
Jack Maynard, Jo’s husband, had been a minor character in the series since the sanatorium opened, but had never been suggested as a suitor for Joey before this book. However, because men play only a minor role in the series anyway, Brent-Dyer was able to write quite convincingly that “for the past two years [he] had been quite decided about what she meant to him”13; and as men were expected to take the active role in relationships, perhaps the engagement is not unexpected after this. Robin, a romanticised character who has remained a “small girl” since she was introduced to the series, and who would have looked increasingly out of place in the late 1930s, is also transformed into a normal teenager. War thus provided a reason for Joey and Robin to grow up, in Jo’s case signified by the trappings of marriage and children, in Robin’s by the loss of the prefix “the” from her name and by improvements in her health, which were essential for the series to retain its credibility.
Unfortunately, the Channel Islands, which Brent-Dyer had chosen for her new setting, came under attack by Germany in the early days of the war, and by the 15th book, The Chalet School Goes to It (1940), the school has moved again, this time to the Welsh border in Herefordshire, where Brent-Dyer was now living. Once again she capitalised on the opportunities this offered the plot, and dramatised the move with a U-boat attack on the boat carrying Joey and her triplet babies to the mainland. After the war ended in 1945, there was a four-year gap in the series when it was possible that the publishers again wished to finish it, but in 1949 Brent-Dyer produced the twentieth book in the series, Three Go to the Chalet School. Of the three new characters mentioned in the title, one, Mary-Lou Trelawney, was to take over many of the schoolgirl Joey’s characteristics and importance within the school.
Three Go to the Chalet School was acknowledged to take place some years after the last published book, Jo to the Rescue (1945), though in between came the three Chalet Annuals (the second and third of which contained the full text of Tom Tackles the Chalet School, not published in book form until 1955). Into this gap falls also, as far as the chronology of the series is concerned, the unnumbered Chalet book, The Chalet School and Rosalie, published (in soft cover only) in 1951. The time lapse allowed the triplets to reach school age and many of the old characters to be dispensed with; Robin, for example, is now at Oxford. Others have altered subtly in relative age to suit the demands of the plot. It also allowed new characters to be introduced into the series without using the plot device of the “new girl”, together with suitable “back-stories” which helped to drive the plot of this and successive books. For example, Joey’s youngest triplet Margot, previously depicted as perfectly healthy, is now described as delicate, enabling Madge and Jem to take her with them to the better climate of Canada (The Chalet School and the Island, 1950). A more complex back-story underlies the appointment of Peggy Bettany — Dick’s eldest girl — as head girl (Peggy of the Chalet School, 1950), for the expressed reason that a member of “Special Sixth” had previously made a poor job of the post; this causes a member of the current Special Sixth, a new character Eilunedd, to bear a grudge, as she had a “history” of doing. Successful as these devices were in repositioning the series, they have since caused endless headaches to fans bent on establishing the “true” history of the school, since they often failed to fit into any rational chronology.
Although many of the new characters seemed to be popular with readers — Mary-Lou and the triplets were to be central to most of the succeeding books — the school relocated again in The Chalet School and the Island (1950), this time to a small island, “St Briavel’s”, off the coast of south Wales. This setting allowed for a variety of new interests, among them boating, swimming, water pageants and bird-watching, and water-associated incidents, such as a shipwreck and a near drowning. Prudently, Brent-Dyer invented a reason for the school’s removal — bad drains in the old building — which would allow her to send it back to Herefordshire if necessary. But by the following book, Peggy of the Chalet School (1950), the school had become established on the island so, due to subsidence in her own house, Joey is made to move to the mainland across the water from the island.
In 1952, with The Wrong Chalet School, Brent-Dyer began to set the scene for the school’s final relocation to Switzerland, with references to the establishment of a Swiss finishing branch. By the next book, Shocks for the Chalet School (1952), this branch is in operation, and it is the subject of the following book, The Chalet School in the Oberland (1952). (This is the only book in the series which focuses on the finishing branch. By common consent it is regarded as one of Brent-Dyer’s least successful tales, and this may explain why she produced no more with this setting.) Shocks for the Chalet School also introduces foreign girls again — the “English” school had been predominantly British during the war and immediately afterwards, for obvious reasons — and since some of these are related to former pupils, new links with earlier books in the series are forged. The 27th book in the series, Bride Leads the Chalet School (1953), is still set on the island, but the school has merged again, this time with another “Chalet School” founded on very different principles, thus providing a fresh supply of characters and a variation on a classic plot line which Brent-Dyer used no fewer than three times in the course of the Chalet School series.14
By the 28th book, Changes for the Chalet School (1953), it has been decided to move the bulk of the school to the Swiss Oberland, and by the 30th, The Chalet School and Barbara (1954), this has become a reality. Again, Brent-Dyer leaves part of the school behind as an “English” branch (actually Welsh) on a mainland site near the island, which could have functioned as yet another setting for the series. In fact she never used it, Switzerland proving a much more attractive location for the postwar reader.
In the 29th book, Joey Goes to the Oberland (1954), Jo and Jack also move to the Oberland. Brent-Dyer had experimented with removing Joey from the series, sending her to Canada with her family for a year in The Wrong Chalet School, but after the move to Switzerland she remains next door to the school until the end of the series. The link between school and sanatorium, broken while the school was on the island, is also resumed.
The Chalet School continues in its Oberland setting for another 27 books, written over 16 years (Prefects of the Chalet School was published posthumously in 1970), but covering 8 years in fictional time. The series ends with Jo’s triplets about to leave school and embark on their university studies. Although this was clearly a suitable point at which to end the Chalet story, Brent-Dyer was unable to resist the temptation to plot the triplets’ future lives beyond graduation, for one of them — Len, the eldest — is already engaged to be married and another, Margot, intends to enter the Church and work as a medical missionary.
The school, however, is set to go on forever, and so is Jo. That the series should have continued through 59 volumes is a tribute to the author’s considerable ability to reposition it when necessary to maintain its credibility and the interest of her readers. This was achieved through geographical moves and adept changes in focus but also, after the first few books, by ceasing to rely on a single protagonist or small group of protagonists, as in conventional literary narratives. Instead, Brent-Dyer made community life the centre of the series. This permitted it to undergo any number of permutations, and it is interesting to speculate what might have happened to the Chalet School in the years to come.
Coming out as a school story fan
One of the effects of the negative criticism levelled at school stories in the years following the Second World War has been that those of us who enjoy reading the books have often been forced to keep our mouths shut about it. To confess our preference would be to invite incredulity and ridicule. Many contributors to the fanzines have written of their relief at finding others through the fan clubs who share their preference; many use the metaphor of the closet, and speak gratefully of being able to “come out” in the company of fellow-fans. Like the lesbians and gay men from whom t
his metaphor is borrowed, the joy these readers’ experience at meeting others like themselves is in direct proportion to the pain they suffer at having to deal, in the rest of their lives, with other people’s perceptions (or misconceptions) about them and the books they love. What is abundantly clear to adult school story fans is that a liking for school stories is not simply disparaged in our society (as a liking for detective or romantic fiction might be, for example), it is generally considered bizarre, if not ridiculous.
In her contribution to this book, Sheila Ray considers the critical reception given to the Chalet School books across the 20th century. Unsurprisingly, given the treatment of girls’ school stories by literary and educational critics, they have been treated with no more respect by other cultural institutions. For example, the very title of the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood’s 1984 exhibition, Jolly Hockey Sticks — The World of Girls’ School Fiction, implies that the books should not be taken seriously. The emphasis of the exhibition was on book covers and illustrations, rather than on distinguishing individual authors or sub-genres, nor did the exhibition offer any sustained analysis of the genre, as might have been expected.
In journalism, Arthur Marshall began a lifelong interest in parodying girls’ school stories, particularly those of Angela Brazil, with a review in the New Statesman in 1935. He continued to publish parodies in a variety of magazines as well to to perform them on radio and later compiled Giggling in the Shrubbery (1985), a satirical account of the splendours and miseries of girls’ public schools. Ronald Searle published candid cartoons of the awful schoolgirls of St Trinian’s in magazines such as Lilliput and Punch, and collaborated with “Timothy Shy” (D. B. Wyndham Lewis) on The Terror of St Trinian’s (1952).
