The Chalet School Revisited

by Sheila Ray

  But it was not only her husband’s continuing existence that Mrs Dyer contrived to hide by her smokescreen tactics. Already, even before Charles Dyer departed, things had not been quite as they seemed at no. 52 Winchester Street, the red-brick Victorian terraced house in a most respectable district of South Shields where the Dyers resided. Outwardly this household contained a perfectly normal three-generation family: father, mother, two small children and a resident grandmother, with the occasional uncle or cousin staying for different lengths of time. But another person might by rights have expected to live in the Winchester Street house. Charles Dyer had been a widower at the time he married Elinor’s mother and by his first marriage he had had a son, named Charles Arnold Lloyd Dyer. This little boy, barely five years old when his father married again, had spent the years after his mother’s death in a pathetic kind of wandering passage between lodgings up and down the country, being for the most part left in the care of landladies.

  It is hard to think of any reason why poor Charles Arnold should not have come to live in South Shields with his father and stepmother once they had settled down after their marriage, for he had no other close relatives and there was ample room at 52 Winchester Street. The fact is, and this remains one of the mysteries in Elinor’s background, that the child never apparently so much as visited the household. Odder still: among Elinor’s surviving friends and relatives, including Mrs Matthewman and others who knew the family well in the early South Shields days, not one person to whom I talked could recall ever hearing a word of Charles Arnold’s existence. Elinor herself was possibly unaware of it during her childhood. Much later on she did learn about this vanished half-brother and his son; and she even had some correspondence with the latter, although a planned meeting during the war years never took place — being prevented at the last moment, in almost Chalet School fashion, by a car accident.

  So effective was the wall of secrecy built around Charles Dyer and his elder son that only the basic facts about them could be included in Behind the Chalet School when it was published in 1981. But in January 1983, following a broadcast in the BBC Woman’s Hour programme, when I’d been interviewed about Elinor and Kate O’Mara had read extracts from the Chalet books, a Mr Charles Dyer rang the BBC announcing himself as Elinor’s half-nephew, son of that long vanished half-brother, Charles Arnold Lloyd Dyer. And this exciting discovery led to a meeting, during which many gaps were filled. Best of all, as well as acquiring several photographs, I was at last given some impression of Elinor’s father as a person.

  Charles Morris Brent Dyer (no hyphen) turns out to have been quite a bohemian character, who had an unexpectedly artistic side. In particular, he played the organ and was a skilled amateur photographer. I gained the impression that he was a lively, sociable man, perhaps a trifle too fond of drink and pretty women. This seemed to fit the preconceived picture quite well and all round it was gratifying to have many of my deductions and guesses confirmed. Yes, Elinor’s half-brother had undoubtedly been the innocent cause of friction between Elinor’s parents. And her father had indeed formed a liaison with another woman after he and Elinor’s mother separated (he’d even had another son by her — something nobody could have deduced).

  It emerged, too, that Elinor’s paternal grandmother had been South African Dutch; and this explained why I’d never been able to trace anything about her — records of South African births, deaths and marriages not being generally available in this country. It could possibly explain also (or is this pushing things too far?) Elinor’s rather heavy physiognomy, so different from her mother’s more delicate features.

  Yet another thing I learnt from Elinor’s half-nephew was the reason why Brent had been among her father’s names. It appears that a Captain Brent (probably Morris Brent) had commanded the ship in which William Dyer (Elinor’s paternal grandfather) was serving at the time of her father’s birth (1856), and the captain had become godfather to the baby. Not only that: when William Dyer was drowned at sea at quite an early age, the good Captain Brent had made himself entirely responsible for his godson Charles’s education. I wonder if Elinor ever knew this? If she did, it could have been a further reason for her decision in 1922 to include Brent in her surname; a choice which, or so it has always seemed to me, was a way of declaring allegiance to her dead father, and distancing herself from her mother and stepfather.

  Whether Elinor and Henzell ever saw their father again after he departed from Winchester Street is unknown. In many ways it seems unlikely that they did, in view of the elaborate measures their mother had taken to make it appear he no longer existed. On the other hand, since Charles continued to live in South Shields for many years — though on the far side of the town from Winchester Street — this bizarre possibility cannot be ruled out altogether. But one thing is virtually certain: if any such meetings were arranged they must have taken place in darkest secret; and this could only have increased still further the obfuscatory atmosphere of Elinor’s upbringing. Either way, it seems improbable that Mrs Dyer would have informed the children when their father eventually set up house with another woman (who was not only to provide them with a second unknown half-brother, but also to inherit almost everything of which Charles died possessed).

  Nor was it only these so-to-speak discreditable matters that Mrs Dyer strove to conceal: she clearly considered that sorrow, too, even when it took the honourable form of bereavement, must at all costs be hidden. Thus when Elinor’s beloved brother died suddenly and tragically from cerebrospinal meningitis, at the age of only 17, the mourning was kept strictly within the family circle. And although there is no question that Henzell was ever forgotten (to the end of her life Elinor would still note in her diary that 28 June was Henzell’s birthday), it seems that after the tragedy his name was seldom mentioned, even at home. As a result people who made Elinor’s acquaintance later in life were often unaware that she had ever had a brother. One friend, Hazel Bainbridge, who was a child of nine when she first met the grown-up Elinor, did learn about Henzell’s sad death from her parents, but she still remembers how strongly they cautioned her never to mention the subject in front of Elinor, or more particularly her mother, for fear of upsetting them.5 Not surprisingly Hazel assumed Elinor’s brother must have died quite recently. It was only long afterwards that she learnt the actual date of his death and realised with astonishment that, by the time she heard the story, Henzell must already have been dead for almost ten years.

  Elinor’s mother unquestionably tended to deal with any form of unhappiness or unpleasantness by shutting it away and refusing to allow herself, or anyone else, to acknowledge its existence. And the lessons she gave on the vital importance of keeping up appearances, the desirability of concealing adversity behind a smooth facade and the near obligation of keeping personal sorrows hidden, were learnt early in life by Elinor, and she was to remember them always. In some respects it cannot have been easy for her. Elinor had inherited from her father an extrovert temperament, quite different from her mother’s more conformist personality; by nature she was full of enthusiasm and exuberance, was considered boisterous in behaviour as a child, and throughout life had a rather loud voice, a hearty laugh and a considerable disregard for conventions in dress and manner. Friends who visited her towards the end of her time in South Shields, when Elinor was nearer her 40s than her schooldays, recall being somewhat embarrassed by the uninhibited way Elinor had talked in detail about her Alsatian bitch being on heat — “People didn’t discuss such matters in those days”. Nevertheless, her mother’s abiding example and her early training at the Misses Stewarts’ decidedly old-fashioned school, did imbue Elinor with a certain theoretical respect for the accepted pattern of ladylike behaviour and a genuine belief in the importance of good manners. The latter emerged frequently in real life — “I remember the speed with which we had to leap to our feet and open doors”, comments Helen Colam, one of her former pupils — as well as throughout her books.

  Elinor’s restricted upb
ringing also fostered in her an attitude to social class that was not quite so liberal as she herself perhaps imagined. In her books Elinor had often written against snobbery, and at times with a fervour that suggests she may have known how it felt to be at the receiving end. Take, for instance, a scene in The Exploits of the Chalet Girls (1933), where the aristocratic Thekla von Stift is sternly rebuked for her attitude to girls who belong, as she considers, to “the trading classes”.6 Or the passage in A Problem for the Chalet School (1956) where Joey Maynard speaks forcibly and at some length on the subject, making plain straightaway that the Chalet School had “always been taught that what matters is the girl herself” (in other words, not her social background) and concluding: “It’s a pleasant thing to know that one comes from a long line . . . [but] when you come to the root of matters, it’s you — you — YOU that matters all the time — what you are!”7

  In that discourse Joey, who “had never had the slightest use for snobs”8, is undoubtedly stating in fiction the opinions that Elinor sincerely believed she held. Nevertheless there are signs that in real life Elinor had a rather ambivalent attitude to the whole question; tolerant in some ways but in others less than broad-minded, as shown by the occasional remarks she let slip in conversation, and still more by such revealing moments in her books as the following from Three Go to the Chalet School (1949), where Mary-Lou is told by one of Joey Maynard’s children: “There isn’t any other [school] near, ‘cept the village school, and you [with the accent on you] won’t go there”.9

  Of course it should not be forgotten how much social ideas have changed during this century. Had Elinor been a young teacher today in the 1990s, she would most likely have been proud to claim her working-class forebears. In the early 1920s things were different. At that period the most favoured boarding-school girl — in either fact or fiction — was simply not expected to come from places like South Shields, with its down-market image of shipyards and collieries; from South Uist or South Kensington by all means, from Southampton perhaps, at a pinch from South Wimbledon but not, definitely not, from South Shields. All very silly to present-day thinking; but there can be little doubt that, in Elinor’s anxiety to conceal her origins — as she most successfully did — an element of snobbishness played a significant part.

  One cause could well have been her reaction to other people’s attitudes. Elinor’s introduction to that exclusive world of the girls’ boarding-school must have happened around 1920 and hence in a fairly illiberal social climate. The actual date can only be fixed approximately; but it has now been established that for a short period before September 1923, by which time she had definitely arrived at Western House School in Fareham, Hants, Elinor was teaching at St Helen’s School in Northwood, Middx. This came to light some years after publication of Behind the Chalet School, when an “Old Girl” of St Helen’s sent me a copy of their 1969 school magazine which included Elinor’s name among obituary notices of former staff.

  Why Elinor should have chosen to forsake St Helen’s, which was (and still is) quite a well-known school, and move to a smaller, less prestigious establishment at Fareham, remains a matter for speculation. I was never able to find many details about her teaching career between July 1917, when her teacher-training course at Leeds finished, and September 1923 when she joined the teaching staff at Fareham. Elinor is known to have taught at various schools in South Shields, including the well esteemed Boys’ High School where her brother Henzell had been a pupil, but no dates are available. On the other hand a good deal, fortunately, has come to light about the time in the early 1920s when Elinor met and became friends with the Bainbridge family. And that was a specially important time, for it was the Bainbridges who provided the essential spark to ignite Elinor’s career as a published author.

  The middle years. A finished book at last

  In searching for information about this crucial period I was able for the first time to contact one of the people directly concerned: Hazel Bainbridge, to whom Elinor’s first book is dedicated. From her I learnt that during the early 1920s Hazel’s parents, Julian and Edith Bainbridge, were running a small repertory company in South Shields; and Hazel, who was a talented child actress, used frequently to appear in their productions during her school holidays. A warm friendship grew between the Bainbridges and Elinor, who found herself at home in their world of the theatre where her frequently exaggerated manner could be casually accepted. The Bainbridges moreover were to supply exactly the stimulus and encouragement that Elinor needed in her writing. In all previous attempts she had found it impossible, despite her natural facility for getting words on to paper, to complete anything full-length. The standard children’s novel was then expected to contain at least 60,000 words; and, as Elinor herself put it, “though I’d begun quite a number of stories I always got tired of them and left them unfinished”.10 Julian Bainbridge knew of Elinor’s writing ambitions, and he suggested that if she were to write a play his company would produce it. This gave Elinor not only a goal but a deadline; she accepted the challenge and the play, My Lady Caprice, was duly staged with both Edith Bainbridge and Hazel in the cast.

  In the mean time Hazel, who adored Elinor and liked nothing better than listening to “all the wonderful stories she could tell”, was so keen to know what happened next to Gerry Challoner in the story Elinor read aloud to her, chapter by chapter as it was written, that for the first time Elinor was carried triumphantly to the end of a full-length book. The result, Gerry goes to School, was published in October 1922 by W. & R. Chambers, who at that time was among the leading publishers of girls’ stories. And the copy Elinor proudly presented to Hazel included, in addition to the printed dedication, a handwritten one: “To my own darling little sister, Hazel Mary Bainbridge”.

  Once started, Elinor was never to look back. A year later Gerry had a sequel, A Head Girl’s Difficulties; and in the autumn of 1924 this was followed by The Maids of La Rochelle, the first of Elinor’s Guernsey stories.

  Earlier in 1924 Elinor had spent that momentous holiday in Austria which was to be the mainspring of her Chalet School series. This, at 58 full-length hardbacks and one shorter paperback, must be not only the longest running series of school stories ever known, but among the top ten series of children’s books to appear in the past half-century. Sales figures for the Armada paperbacks give testimony of this: for although Elinor Brent-Dyer has never been in the bestselling class of Enid Blyton, well over 100,000 copies of her Chalet School paperbacks are regularly sold each year; and this level has been maintained over a considerable period.

  Undoubtedly the Chalet School series was Elinor Brent-Dyer’s principal achievement; and it is the Chalet School which has carried her name all around Britain and into many far-off corners of the English-speaking world. But she did also publish more than 40 other books: they include adventure stories, family and historical novels, educational “Readers”, a collection of recipes, a couple of books with “doggy” themes, and around a dozen stories of schools other than the Chalet School.

  Quite a remarkable record; bearing in mind, too, that until she was past 50 Elinor had always been occupied, at least part-time, in some form of teaching. For one period of ten years she had even run, and acted as headmistress in, her own school. The whole idea of her Margaret Roper School in Hereford had intrigued me ever since I first heard of it in Phyllis Matthewman’s original letter. Especially the fascinating picture it presented of a “double life”. On one hand, the ideal world of the Chalet School where, despite troubles and occasionally sorrow and the many hair-raising adventures, the good end happily and things are always “all right on the night”. On the other, the endless niggling problems and the inexorable daily routine of running a real-life school, where people can sometimes be unhelpful and naughty girls cannot always be quickly reformed. Nothing I’d learnt about Elinor suggested she would be good at handling routine. How had she contrived to meet the, perhaps conflicting, demands of the real and fictional establishments?
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br />   The Hereford years. A real-life Chalet School?

  This part of Elinor’s life was far easier to chart than the early years. For one thing, with less time having elapsed, many of the people directly involved were still around; and although some of Elinor’s closest friends had predeceased her, former pupils of the Margaret Roper School responded well to my request for information in the Hereford Times, as did others from Hereford and round about.

  Moreover, the back numbers of the Hereford Times proved to contain much basic information about the Margaret Roper School11; and a few sessions at the British Newspaper Library in Colindale revealed that not only had the school’s principal, Miss Elinor Brent-Dyer, placed regular advertisements in the paper, there were also full reports on most school activities — speech-days, pageants in the garden, school plays, sales of work, and so on.

  From these accounts, and various personal interviews, it became clear that numerous parallels had existed between the Margaret Roper School and the Chalet School. The uniform, for one thing, was almost identical, with brown and flame being the official colours at both schools. And a remarkable number of Chalet School traditions were followed at the real-life school, among them the annual Christmas play — on at least one occasion the Margaret Roper girls were actually performing the same play as their Chalet School counterparts, which in the first case was “written by their headmistress Miss Elinor Brent-Dyer”, and in the second, theoretically, by their headmistress, Miss Madge Bettany.

  On a deeper level, further resemblances can be found: the Margaret Roper School, like the Chalet School, had a strong religious tradition but it, too, was undenominational (far more unusual in those days than it would be now). Elinor unquestionably aimed to foster in her school the ideals of religious tolerance and international fellowship that have become familiar in the pages of the Chalet School books. A former pupil who is Jewish was particularly struck by this.