The Chalet School Revisited

by Sheila Ray

  For our “La Rochelle” weekend, a smaller party than that at Hereford — about 40 — crossed the English Channel to Guernsey. We were relieved that the conditions were rather less tempestuous than for Jo’s reverse journey in The Chalet School Goes to It (1941). Although Clarissa and I, as the centenary committee, had sorted out the administration with excellent support from Gill, the real planning for the event had been left to Mo Everett, a resident Guernsey member. She gave over her home in true Freudesheim style to an evening of delicious food, a quiz and progressive games, with a beautiful La Rochelle cake on display. The rest of her family, husband Frank and daughters Katie and Ginny, joined in with a will and made sure the party had a splendid time on the island.

  A proper “croc”, albeit one on wheels, traversed Guernsey, taking in the sites familiar to the Temple, Willoughby, Atherton and Raphael clans and locating the site of the Chalet School at Sarres. New-found friendships were intensified by Chalet chats on hotel stairs until three a.m. and beyond. Matey would not have approved our unhealthy hours!

  On 20 September 1994, the day after we returned from Guernsey, Father Michael Sewell, a former children’s book buyer, conducted a thanksgiving service for the life of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, exactly 25 years after her death. This took place at the church of the Holy Family, Reigate, where Elinor’s funeral service had been held. Members of the FOCS committee, our Patron and Elinor’s biographer Helen McClelland and Chloe Rutherford, Elinor’s heir, read secular tributes, including an extract from Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School (1930) and a Chalet Club News Letter, and passages from the Bible. Again, the beautiful Edwardian notes of Ernest Farrar’s “Brittany”, sung by Sandra Ford, moistened many an eye. Finally, Ann and Gill laid a floral tribute on Elinor’s grave, newly marked with the headstone that Friends of the Chalet School had provided, and dedicated by Father Michael.

  So why the great excitement? Why did so many people wish to become involved in the centenary celebrations? Could it be the timelessness of the series? Chalet School books have been in print continuously since the mid-1920s and the original schoolgirls for whom Elinor Brent-Dyer wrote will now be in their 80s or 90s. These girls grew up in a world wholly different from the modern one. Before the 1950s, when teenage culture developed in the western world, there was no middle ground between childhood and adulthood; consequently a schoolgirl of the 1920s would read school stories for most of her teenage years, whereas many Chalet fans of my 1960s’ “baby boom” generation went through phases of embarrassment if they had to declare that they still read girls’ school stories during their teens and young adulthood. For many adult fans of Elinor Brent-Dyer, the reading of the entire Chalet School series is a biennial or even annual treat. They may have read each book dozens of times, and be familiar with them all, but, as one fan puts it, “I know the books so well by now that rereading each one is like greeting an old friend”. In reading certain titles again after a gap of several years, I always discover new and interesting themes, insights into characters and quaint turns of phrase.

  For me, the attraction is also in knowing what comes next. When I reread Gay from China at the Chalet School (1944), I had to find a comfortable place where I could not be disturbed because I knew I would cry my eyes out when reading how Jacynth Hardy was told of her only relative’s death. I am sure that the almost naive acceptance of death as “falling asleep to wake with God” has been a comfort to many readers, and has helped them come to terms with the natural process of grieving after a bereavement.

  The Chalet School books are part of my life, and have been for over 20 years. I cannot imagine a time when I will not read them. They are a piece of my childhood carried forward to my adulthood; I can remember where I was when I read each one, where I acquired them and the thrill of finding each new title. The books mature with the reader. Whereas a ten year old might read them for the lively adventures of the middle school, the adult reader can look at the skilful description of interpersonal relationships and the exquisite characterisation of almost 2,000 “paper children” (the term is Elinor’s). They are far from being childish, although ostensibly written for children.

  I am told that I have developed a “Chalet School mentality” in daily life. For example, my horror of procrastination stems from the teachings of “Matey”, the Chalet School matron. Each new girl at the Chalet School is told in exhaustive detail, often by Matron, that there is only one way to make and strip a bed, and that it is vital to keep one’s dormitory cubicle tidy. As Joey’s daughter, Len Maynard says to a new girl Richenda Fry in The Chalet School and Richenda (1958, p.49): “Matey insists on doing it this way, and it’s always best to fall in with her ideas. She’s a perfect poppet when she likes; but get across her and you know all about it!” In the same way, I have developed a desire for order. Other Chalet readers I know emulate the girls in different ways, including plunging into a daily cold bath, to emerge (one hopes) “glowing and fresh from the icy sting” of the water (The Chalet School and Barbara, 1954, p.42), visiting the locations of the books on holiday, writing in the style of Elinor (albeit unknowingly; I was often ticked off for this in the 6th form!) and repeating many of the book’s sayings. One Chalet friend of mine even calls her young son “Colin-a-bobbin”, borrowing the pet form used by Madge Russell to the Robin.

  For some readers, the Chalet books provide an alternative reality to an unhappy childhood, and the plots are relived in their imaginations or in role-play games in the school playground. For others, Christmas is not Christmas without reading about Jo, Madge and the Robin staying in Innsbruck with the Mensches in Jo of the Chalet School (1926). For others still, the world of the Chalet School is a logical extension of a fantasy world. The Chalet girls’ sense of honour, loyalty to the school and intellectual ability became traits to emulate, particularly the way in which each girl seemed to become almost effortlessly trilingual. As Joey explained to Zephyr Burthill in Jo to the Rescue (1945, p.169), having previously lapsed into French, “I am afraid we are so accustomed to speaking any one of three languages as they come handy, we tend to forget that it isn’t the same with everyone.”

  Each generation of fans finds that on one level the books are first class adventure stories set among the day-to-day minutiae of school life, but on returning to them in adulthood they entertain on a different level. It is the characterisation and lively interplay between diverse personalities which interest the reader more at 30 or 40 than at 10. I believe Elinor’s books form an adult saga written for children. One has to call it this, for, to borrow the style from a modern blockbuster, Elinor’s series sweeps majestically from the Austrian Tyrol through the war-torn Channel Islands to the peace of Herefordshire and Wales and back to the Alps, this time in Switzerland, taking about 28 fictional years and 45 real ones to do so.

  The series’ appeal to the child reader is easily understood. When a girl first encounters the Chalet School she is often in her last years of primary school, when the thoughts of a bigger secondary school excite her; the Chalet School takes on the form of that school in her imagination. On first attending my girls’ day school at its competitive entrance examination, I wanted it to be the Chalet School. To a girl of 10 or 11, the detail with which school life is described paints a picture of a fascinating world, cubicles with cabinets which have

  a place for toilet articles, all except one’s sponge-bag. For that, there was a hook attached to one of the standards that supported the curtain-rods round the cubicle. A second standard had another hook for your dressing gown . . . (The Chalet School and Barbara, 1954, p.40).

  She reads of cubicle curtains, bathroom lists, bedstripping, “showing-a-leg”, private prayers, the silence bell, window cubicles, dormitory prefects, Leafy and Gentian dormitories, splasheries, locker tidiness, Matey hauling transgressors out of lessons, cold baths, rising bells and the proper use of the back stairs.

  Elinor had a gift for describing worlds in which readers could lose themselves, whether it be the Tyrol of Joey a
nd Madge, the Tyrol of the peasant family from whom Joey rescues the St Bernard pup, Rufus, the hostile North Queensland climate where the Venables family failed to prosper or the genteel world of the Temple sisters’ Channel Islands. All human life is there, and all human life must conform — not to a stereotype, because there are many different characters at the Chalet School, but to the ideal of “a real Chalet School girl”. All Chalet readers will know who these are: Jo Bettany, Mary-Lou Trelawney and Len Maynard are the archetypes, while Rosamund Lilley, Elizabeth Arnett and Juliet Carrick begin shakily but get there in the end. On the other hand, Betty Wynne-Davies, Diana Skelton and Thekla Von Stift are never true Chalet girls. They fail to conform to the system, and in turn the system has little to offer them.

  Another highly appealing factor of the Chalet School series is the growth of the school. It is enjoyable to watch Madge Bettany’s small venture flourishing and a family feeling is engendered. We grow up with Jo — although Jo herself resists growing up, notwithstanding her marriage at the comparatively early age of 20, she still strives to be a schoolgirl when verging on 40. She acts as the universal matriarch to her 11 offspring, adopted children and the school as a whole. In addition to being schoolgirl adventures, the Chalet School books are about a family, initially the Bettany siblings, and later their spouses and a combined total of no fewer than 24 children. The school is the extended family; despite growing in size to several hundred, it still retains the essential family qualities.

  If the minutiae of school life fail to enthral the childhood fan, then the excitement and adventure of the plots will grip her. In the same way the adult reader will gain more from the descriptions of the development of a girl’s character, her conformity into the ideal Chalet School mould, and the pupils’ and staff’s interaction in peer groups and between groups. There are many examples of the dual-level of Elinor’s appeal. While a child might thrill at Cornelia Flower’s sortie into the Tyrolean caves, and her capture by a madman in The Head Girl of the Chalet School (1928), an adult will admire the subtlety with which Cornelia transforms from a firebrand into a Chalet girl (albeit a mischievous one!) and eventually Head Girl. Grizel Cochrane’s headstrong flight up the Tiernjoch in The School at the Chalet (1925) shows a wilful spirit; the writing is vivid and powerful, and Grizel’s sense of adventure transmits itself to the reader. But an adult will marvel at Elinor’s artistry in juxtaposing the characters of the younger Joey, Grizel’s rescuer, who is imaginative and impetuous, with the older Grizel, who is wild and vengeful.

  However, while an adult Chalet reader may still appreciate Elinor’s craft as a storyteller and adventure writer, and a perceptive child will marvel at the fine detail of Elinor’s characterisation, primarily Elinor is writing an adult tale for children. One unusual feature of her writing which illustrates this well is the staffroom dialogue. Nearly all the Chalet books contain at least one instance of a staffroom discussion, showing schoolgirl problems from the point of view of the staff. Readers learn that the Chalet staff are human, and the child reader also learns that grown-ups too are human, and that they too have their problems with the Eustacias and Theklas and Joan Bakers who inhabit the world of the Chalet School. The clearest insight into the adult world, the world of a teacher which Elinor knew so well, is offered in The New Mistress at the Chalet School (1957), when readers live and feel the trepidation and anxiety which young Kathie Ferrars, fresh from University, experiences when she takes her first class: “Kathie drew a long breath as the door closed . . . For a moment she felt almost panic-stricken. She also felt as if the world were made up of eyes which fixed firmly on herself.” (p.57). Would these have been the recollections of Elinor, whose own teaching career had spanned more than 35 years?

  But despite conforming to the ideal of a “real Chalet School girl”, Chalet School pupils are encouraged to express themselves individually in many ways. Tom Gay’s penchant for carpentry allows her scope to encourage others at the Hobbies Club. Nina Rutherford’s musical genius means that her school timetable is rearranged allowing her to specialise. For a while, in the middle Chalet titles, a Special Sixth form exists, in which 6th form girls study the subjects they wish to pursue in tertiary education.

  Elinor’s heroines provide positive feminine role models for her readers. Girls find that their storybook favourites do not have to identify with men to get on, albeit in the exclusively female world of the Chalet School, but that women can be encouraged to succeed for their own sakes. Examples of this include Eustacia Benson, who becomes a great classical scholar and as “E. Benson” has her academic treatise mistaken for that of a man; Tom Gay, a “missionary” after Oxford among the boys’ clubs of London; and Mary-Lou Trelawney, who thirsts to make her way in the field of archaeology.

  I cannot remember being moulded by Elinor Brent-Dyer’s religious teachings to make a positive effort to join the community of a church, but I can say that I felt keenly aware of the part that religion played in the lives of the Chalet girls. The idea of praying to thank God for blessings received, as well as to ask for His mercy in future things, was the single force which taught me to pray regularly, not just when I was in difficulties. Other fans have been shaped by Elinor’s ecumenical attitude. One fan, Winifred Crisp, now in her 70s, wrote in Friends of the Chalet School Newsletter 23:

  I don’t think anyone, even my parents, had a greater influence on me than E.B.D. From her I learnt the value of international understanding, leading me to become a member of the International Friendship League 47 years ago . . . She taught me religious tolerance, not very usual in those days, so that when I, as an Anglican, married a Roman Catholic, there seemed nothing difficult about it, and in fact has led me to become deeply involved in ecumenicalism.

  Pertisau pilgrimages are frequent among Friends of the Chalet School’s members. The Obergammeau Passion Play of 1930 was instrumental in Elinor Brent-Dyer’s conversion to Catholicism from Anglicanism. A Chalet fan in her early 30s wrote back from her first trip to Pertisau: “I feel very close to E.B.D. and the books here and am keeping a diary”.

  There is also another appeal in the books, the appeal of the author herself. I felt I knew Elinor Brent-Dyer as a person, but not her background, before I read Helen McClelland’s biography Behind the Chalet School (1981). Elinor does try, albeit unconsciously, to bring herself into the narrative. Having read the biography, I wondered how someone who seemed to be a great champion of realism, for example the Jew-baiting incident in The Chalet School in Exile (1940), sought not to mention that such a thing as divorce occurred, given the possibility it gave for interesting plot developments, and wondered too why there was an unusually high amount of deaths and families with only one living parent. Elinor liked to give away something of herself in her dedications, “To Mother and Dad” (A Thrilling Term at Janeways, 1927), to use the largely northern practice of referring to lunch as dinner, and to make her characters the mouthpieces of her opinions.

  The Chalet School books are all about wish fulfilment, the school we would have liked to attend, the friends we’d have liked to have. But they are as much a product of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s wish fulfilment as that of her readers. This is the school she had wanted to run. Joey is the child and woman she should have been. Miss Annersley is the embodiment of the headmistress Elinor had wished to become. She portrays secure families with steady, head-of-the-household father figures, as if to compensate for the lack of such a framework in her own.

  So who is the typical Chalet fan? I do not think s/he exists. There are members of Friends of the Chalet School whose ages range from seven to 83. They are about 99 per cent female. Some are schoolgirls at Chalet School-style boarding schools; others attend inner city comprehensives. Some are housewives; others are university lecturers or solicitors. They inhabit all social classes, and live in more than ten countries. Some have been reading the books since the age of eight. Others come to them later in life; in several instances through their daughters’ or granddaughters’ influence. T
he majority seem to be women who are rather forceful characters, by which I do not mean bossy. Could this be an unconscious wish to be Joey Bettany? I am convinced that, though we may like or dislike her as a person, we all aspire to be Joey in some way. We’d all love to be as popular and have as many friends as Joey does (and I’m sure Elinor wished this, too!) to be as fulfilled in career and family life as Joey is, and to be as financially secure. The force of Joey’s personality is one of the major factors which make the series so appealing. Perhaps other young fans, as I did as a child, identified Joey with a senior girl at school, or a popular young teacher.

  Why, as we approach the 21st century, are the books still selling nearly 100,000 paperback copies a year to the rising generation, and why are they so keenly sought in the second-hand market, sometimes for hundreds of pounds? Though the language and scenarios may appear dated to some, the characterisation and plots are as fresh and immediate as when they were first written. Today’s schoolgirls may experience the same rivalries, friendships and quarrels as their forebears in the 1920s. Whether it be a reflection or an ideal, of the schooldays we are now experiencing, or a nostalgia for our own far distant schooldays, there is something within the Chalet School series which grips us. To paraphrase Joey Bettany, even when we are ancient with great-great-grandchildren, fans of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer will still read the Chalet School series.Having said that, the overwhelmingly simple reason for Elinor’s continuing popularity — and the reason why her centenary was so keenly commemorated — is that she was also a jolly good storyteller!