The Chalet School Revisited

by Sheila Ray

  The following day we travelled from Edinburgh to the north-eastern coastal town of South Shields, birthplace of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer. It was a town she seldom mentioned in her work, and few who knew her in her later life would have imagined that she came from the north-east. Carol Mee, who met us there, showed us the street where Elinor had been born 99 years previously. Winchester Street was now a car park and modern houses, so would be an unsuitable location for a commemorative plaque. So, it transpired, was Belgrave Terrace, a street of large, imposing Victorian houses where Elinor had lived with her mother after the latter’s marriage to Septimus Ainsley. Belgrave Terrace, though once very grand, had certainly seen better days, and since it was quite a way from the town centre we doubted that the plaque would be seen by as many people as if it were placed elsewhere. Finally we drove to Westoe Village, a beautiful tree-lined area of listed buildings not far from the town centre. No. 3 Westoe Village was at that time the site of St Clare’s Hospice, and part of the route of the Catherine Cookson trail (for South Shields boasted another author!). This had been the home of St Nicholas’s School, run by the Misses Stewart, which Elinor had attended during the early years of this century and where she had later returned to teach for a term or two. Over lunch, Carol expressed a desire to make her own contribution to the celebrations. Blissfully unaware of the size of the task, she very kindly offered to make a small souvenir cake for each of the participants at the weekend. At the time we told her there would probably be 50.

  Tom Fennelly of South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council liked our suggestion for a commemorative plaque and said that the council would fund the plaque and its erection. He said that it might be unveiled by the Mayor of South Tyneside, an event to be followed by a town hall reception for Friends of the Chalet School. We were naturally delighted and returned home with a much clearer idea of how the centenary year would take shape.

  One of our members, Martin Spence, bravely offered to make a sponsored swim of the Achensee to raise funds for a commemorative plaque in Pertisau. This seemed to solve many problems, since our sketchy efforts to make contacts in Pertisau had so far come to nought. Indeed, a member of the Austrian Tourist Board failed to understand our reasoning behind wishing to provide a plaque. He had written back suggesting we got in touch with the Pertisau Tourist Office ourselves. The German, he explained, would present no problems for a former pupil of the Chalet School! Martin, however, being a fluent German speaker, both swam for, and arranged the erection of, a commemorative plaque. This was put in place early in 1994, adjacent to the Catholic church and library in Pertisau.

  By the autumn of 1993 it was clear that we had underestimated hugely the level of interest in the Hereford weekend. Over 160 Friends of the Chalet School (plus a handful of non-member other halves) wished to come to Hereford. The Bishop’s Palace and the hall at Belmont Abbey would be packed to capacity. (There is no truth in the rumour that we drew lots to see which of us would break the news to cake-baking Carol Mee!)

  With centenary year upon us, other offers of help came in. Linda Parkington from Bury, who had taken a course in calligraphy, offered to make individual name badges for weekend participants. “Prefects’” badges were to be embroidered by Lillian Smith of Dundee. Sister Julie-Anne Donnelly from the West Country designed place settings for our dinner tables; like the Chalet School dormitories, each table was to be named after an alpine flower or similar. In addition to Carol Mee’s individual cakes, Helen Ware of Wells offered to make a special birthday cake for the dinner with an icing-sugar Joey Bettany figure on top. We also planned to hold a small private book sale after church on the Sunday morning; Marie Hrynczak of London was keen to organise this. There were many others, to whom I apologise if I have failed to mention them by name, keen to give assistance. Many Friends of the Chalet School offered to be prefects in the hotels, to keep the other members in order and make sure they got on the appropriate “motor-coaches” — of course in “croc”!

  The intricacies of the centenary weekend needed to be finalised by the start of 1994. We wanted to hold a Chalet School mega-quiz on the same evening as the dinner. With my fierce competitive streak I was quite disappointed that I would have to organise the quiz, rather than take part in it. Gill did not wish to take part in the quiz, but was happy to set it, so she and Clarissa took on this task. West Sussex member, Gillian Priestman, had the excellent idea of having a school group photograph taken of the Hereford participants. We commissioned Vivian’s Studios of Hereford to do the honours. Thelma Holland, our photographer, had been trained by the original Vivian, and Vivian’s Studios had been used frequently by Elinor and her Margaret Roper School. They were responsible for the famous photograph of Elinor wearing a hat, which appears on the rear dustwrapper of Behind the Chalet School. Father Peter Fell of St Francis Xavier’s Church allowed us to choose the music for the Mass, and we got in touch with Adrian Officer, the authority on Elinor’s favourite composer, Ernest Farrar, so that Farrar’s music could be played and sung during the Mass.

  With over 160 people needing to be fitted into 4 separate hotels, Clarissa and I had the difficult task of matching people who wished to share rooms. We tried, wherever possible, to pair off people who were within ten years of each other’s age. We also had three members in a triple room — our own Chalet School triplets. This nightmare task took four hours on the telephone, breaking off the call every now and again to try out different permutations. Even when we had finished we had problems. In one instance we matched a profound snorer with somebody who couldn’t abide snoring!

  The Chalet spirit prevailed from the very first. Some members wanted lifts to Hereford, and others offered them. Many came to Hereford from great distances, such as Arbroath and Newcastle, and were glad of company on the journey. At this time we were thrilled to hear that our President and Founder, Ann Mackie-Hunter, would be making the journey to Hereford from Sydney, Australia, and staying with other Friends of the Chalet School during her three months in the UK. Three others also came to Hereford from Australia, in addition to a couple who lived in Switzerland.

  Hotels, caterers, museums, councils, coach companies . . . all were written to, and plans were checked and double-checked. We rehearsed the illustrated talk that we were to give jointly in Hereford, first to the general public and then to our members. I would introduce Elinor and her life and times, and Clarissa would talk about Elinor’s books and dustwrappers. Sweatshirts, posters and facsimile paperbacks of The School at the Chalet were provided by HarperCollins to celebrate the event. South Tyneside Metropolitan Borough Council produced a special souvenir leaflet about Elinor, quite unwittingly printing it in brown and flame, the colours of the Chalet School.

  Mindful of the mayoral reception in South Shields, the Mayor of Hereford offered to give us a small cheese and wine reception to begin our Hereford weekend. We were also lucky enough to have the Deputy Mayor of Hereford, Councillor Mrs Kit Gundy, to speak to us at our dinner. She, too, had known Elinor, and was therefore an appropriate person to unveil the commemorative plaque.

  On a bright, chilly April morning, exactly one hundred years after Elinor M. Brent-Dyer’s birth, a crowd of about 70 Friends of the Chalet School were bound for Westoe Village; most of them had boarded a coach at the South Shields Town Hall. Those who had travelled from as far afield as London, Dublin and Dundee mingled with the press and the three women in their 80s who had personal recollections of Elinor — two of them as their teacher, the third as a local celebrity. As the commemorative plaque was unveiled on the building which had once housed Elinor’s School by the Mayor of South Tyneside, her former pupil, Veronica Cheyne, made a poignant observation. “Miss Dyer would have been flattered and delighted,” she later wrote, “rushing among us, thanking us for being there.”

  Although she never publicised the town, South Shields was ready to forgive Elinor on the centenary of her birth and gave her fans a marvellous three-course spread, worthy of Karen the cook, or Frau Mieders, mistress
of “Dommy Sci”. Local press and radio coverage of the day was excellent (“Now it’s Wor Elinor!” was one memorable headline), thanks to a concerted campaign by the committee. Indeed, there was healthy local coverage around all Elinor’s key areas — and we even made the national press (Guardian, The Times, Observer and Independent). The town library had provided a small exhibition of Brent-Dyer artefacts, including the certificate of her parents’ ill-fated marriage. The council printed a map of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s South Shields.

  There was barely a breathing space between the South Shields plaque unveiling and our next centenary event, just nine days afterwards, the Hereford weekend. Those present as the Mayor of Hereford welcomed us to his city saw Clarissa and me, calm, unruffled and amazed at just what a large crowd over 160 Chalet fans made. The crowd had not seen the flustered beings in chaos just two hours before, as we prepared the Bishop’s Palace for the evening’s illustrated talk, struggling with the slide projector. Eventually we appointed a “projector monitor” to shoo people away from the rickety edifice lest it came crashing down.

  Two contributory factors to the Hereford weekend’s success were that everyone came determined to enjoy themselves and that the Chalet spirit (whether it be manifested in “sheepdogging” those who looked lost, or by all pitching in and “going to it”!) was in evidence throughout. For example, a condition of our being allowed to use the Bishop’s Palace was that we restored it to its previous state before we locked up and departed. Chalet fans from three of the hotels went away in coaches, while those from the Castle Pool Hotel nearby rolled up their sleeves to lift chairs, vacuum carpets and collect rubbish.

  Even the bookshops joined in our celebrations. The Hereford Bookshop produced a marvellous display including a schoolgirl’s straw boater. The proprietor lost track of the offers made to him for his display copy of The Chalet School in Exile with its rare Nazi dustwrapper!

  Gill Bilski recalled that she knew we had “arrived” when she saw a police cordon around Litchfield Lodge — former home of Elinor and her Margaret Roper School, now converted into flats. The Herefordshire constabulary had to be present since Litchfield Lodge is on Bodenham Road, one of the main thoroughfares into the city; traffic was directed around a milling throng, many wearing gentian-blue centenary sweatshirts. Although we had obtained permission to erect our plaque from the residents of Litchfield Lodge, and to swarm around their car park (formerly Elinor’s garden) taking photographs, many Bodenham Roadees were greatly amused by our presence. In her unveiling speech, Kit Gundy asked if Luella Hamilton would help her unveil the plaque. Elinor would have admired the neatness of this arrangement, since these two had known her personally.

  The city centre of Hereford was invaded for the rest of the morning by blue-sweatshirted Chalet fans. Some were anxious to take coffee at the Green Dragon Hotel, as their idol had done more than 30 years before. Others browsed in charity shops — who knows where a rare copy of The School by the River (1930) might be lurking? Still more viewed the cathedral, with its priceless treasure, the Mappa Mundi. For some, the attractions of Marks and Spencer’s proved too much even during the centenary weekend, and hopeful midnighters gathered in the food hall. After an hour it was time for the party to enter three of what Elinor would have termed “motor-coaches”, each with a large sign proclaiming “Chalet School” across the windscreen. Clarissa, Joy Wotton and I took one coach each, and narrated tour notes about the Golden Valley as we sped past Michaelchurch, Vowchurch and Peterchurch bound for Hay-on-Wye.

  Chalet fans are curious beings in many ways. The vast majority of us are not exclusively Brent-Dyer collectors. Hay-on-Wye, with its 20 or so second-hand bookshops, allowed us to break our croc and have a jolly good ramble — “I said ramble and I meant ramble” (Theodora and the Chalet School, 1959, p.41). No shelf was left unchecked in our search. Our final afternoon destination was Judith Gardner’s Children’s Bookshop, just outside Hay. Judith had erected a huge marquee for our tea tent, resplendent with magnificent signs showing jolly schoolgirls taking their tea and cakes.

  Saturday evening at Belmont Abbey began in a riotous way. We can all remember the military precision with which school photographs are staged. The task does not get any easier when the schoolchildren are mostly adults. Those who were young and agile climbed up to stand on chairs on top of tables at the very back of a frightening-looking edifice. Others of moderate agility sat on chairs on top of tables in front of them. Older fans and those who had difficulty standing were afforded the luxury of chairs, while the youngest and smallest of us squatted down at the front. Twenty minutes later it was “watch the birdie”, and we were immortalised on Kodak paper. Then the mental torture of Clarissa and Gill’s quiz, over which they presided dressed as a 1930s schoolgirl and a 1930s Girl Guide of the First Chalet School Company respectively, sent us ravenously into dinner.

  One fan wrote that it was a pure joy to sit back, close her eyes, and listen to the after-dinner speakers painting wonderful word pictures. From Helen McClelland’s tale of researching the elusive Elinor’s life, to Luella Hamilton’s memories of her Headmistress, to Gill’s message to all Friends of the Chalet School and Kit Gundy’s recollections of a highly effusive personality, everything was highly entertaining. The abbey’s brothers and fathers seemed rather amused at the strange variety of female guests. The FOCS committee (at that time Ann Mackie-Hunter, Gill Bilski, Clarissa and me) were kindly presented with cards and gifts, including alpine flower soap, which had been bought in secret by the members present at Hereford, and organised by Sue Sims, the other editor of Folly. Ann, as President and Founder of FOCS, cut Helen Ware’s centenary cake; the exquisite nature of the sugaring effect and the presence of our President from thousands of miles away brought a lightning dazzle of camera flashes.

  There were even a few speeches left over for Sunday, for the coach drivers were not allowed to exceed their legal maximum driving hours and had to take us back early to our hotels. This was not something which had happened to the stranded coach party in The New Chalet School (1938). (This, however, allowed some of us the opportunity to hold midnight feasts, and even for one miscreant prefect to re-enact the “Baby Voodoo” episode from The New House at the Chalet School [1935]).

  Sunday was not the “gentle” day that Margia Stevens described to her parents. It started by way of a moving tribute. Father Fell found his congregation at St Francis Xavier’s had virtually doubled, as many of the Chalet party attended a Mass that he had allowed us to dedicate to Elinor. Members of our committee read secular and Biblical pieces, and enjoyed renderings of Ernest Farrar’s “Brittany” and “The Knight of Bethlehem” from the church choir’s star soloist, Clare Quinn.

  Then from the sublime, to the ridiculous — the Sunday morning book sale, where Marie Hrynczak and her band of cashiers presided over a mad rush which knocked the January sales “into a cocked hat”. Members had been offered the chance to bring books — not just Brent-Dyer titles either — and rich pickings were to be had, more so even than at Hay- on-Wye. One member even emerged with three bursting carrier bags full of books.

  Carol Mee’s individual cakes were presented as souvenirs after lunch, where Clarissa and I made brief speeches, allowing the main ones — a humorous account of the founding of FOCS by our President, Ann, and a moving tribute from Elinor’s heir, Chloe Rutherford, read by Helen McClelland — more time. When the afternoon coaches rounded up the party, many tearful farewells were said — but many more new friendships had been forged and addresses been exchanged.

  With South Shields and Hereford over, the Edinburgh exhibition had now to be arranged. Several members lent us their prized artefacts for display, including Chalet School tapestries, a membership card and badge from the original Chalet Club, memorabilia from the Margaret Roper School — and of course the inevitable full set of dust-wrappered Brent-Dyer books! We were privileged to have Tony Chambers of Edinburgh’s famous publishing family to open the exhibition with his recollections of
Elinor. He deemed it “a pleasure because it brings back to me very pleasant memories of meetings with Miss Brent-Dyer — always Miss, never Elinor”.

  Almost all Chalet fans would covet the set of dust-wrappered Brent-Dyers displayed in glass cabinets at the exhibition. Indeed, one member, Alison Lindsay, wrote “somebody lend me a brick!” An interesting theory on the books’ timelessness is shared by several people, including Elinor’s biographer, Helen McClelland, who believes that the crusade against contemporary slang terms employed by the Chalet School authorities is a reason why the books have not dated. This is in contrast to many of Elinor’s contemporary authors, including Angela Brazil, whose books were riddled with fashionable slang of her time, and have not lasted the course into the last quarter of the 20th century.

  In fact, to my surprise, not all modern schoolgirl readers are aware that the books were written so long ago. When I was a child I would always turn to the publication details at the start of each book to find out its year of first publication. I thought all children did this. Having discussed it with adult Chalet friends, I now know this is only true for about half of us. At our exhibition Back to the Chalet School, which ran at the Edinburgh Museum of Childhood between 4 June and 16 July 1994, a member of FOCS watched a bemused Chalet School reader of about 12 gazing at the collection of first-edition Chalet School books in original dust wrappers. The girl could not understand why these old books, dating from 1925 to 1970, were there. To her, the Chalet School series was modern, and she had never questioned the fact that the girls in the books were not her contemporaries. The FOCS member, now fellow committee member, Fen Crosbie, explained about the timescale of their publication, which shocked and even disappointed the young reader, for whom the Chalet School series were just lovely new modern paperbacks!