by Sheila Ray
29. Ibid., p.143.
30. Ibid., p.111.
31. Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School, pp.57, 142.
32. Gay from China at the Chalet School (1944), p.71.
33. Tom Tackles the Chalet School (1955), p.30 (first published in The Second Chalet Book for Girls, 1947).
34. The Wrong Chalet School (1952), p.130.
35. Ibid., pp.129-37.
36. Changes for the Chalet School (1953), p.98.
37. McClelland, ibid., p.111.
38. Challenge for the Chalet School (1966), p.41.
39. For example, Dorothea Moore, Terry, the Girl Guide (Nisbet, 1912).
40. The Highland Twins at the Chalet School, p.106.
41. Dorita Fairlie Bruce, Dimsie Intervenes (Oxford University Press, 1937), pp.129-30. In this scene, the elderly Miss Carver speaks up for pacifism and internationalism, and against militarism, to be furiously rebuked by schoolgirl Dimsie who takes the jingoistic, pro-military line. Dimsie clearly represents Bruce’s own views though, as Cadogan and Craig observe, “In a book written today, Miss Carver’s standpoint would be Dimsie’s, and vice versa (You’re a Brick, Angela!, p.186). See also Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig, Women and Children First. The Fiction of Two World Wars (Gollancz, 1978), pp.225-6,235-6.
42. Jo of the Chalet School, p.261.
43. In the first issue of The Chaletian, editor Daphne Paintin (now Barfoot) recalled (p.1) that when she first went to boarding-school in 1941 she was shocked that “Guide’s honour” was even then not taken seriously. “The [Chalet School] books certainly gave me very high standards of honesty which I found, sadly, were not the norm.” If Daphne was considered “very odd and rather priggish” for her views, then notions of “Guide’s honour” may well have been considered hopelessly old-fashioned a decade and more later.
44. History Notes (Girl Guides Association, 1980), pp.27,7.
45. Thompson, ibid., pp.17, 19.
46. The Rivals of the Chalet School, p.132.
47. Jack Lambert in A Leader in the Chalet School (1961), p.89.
48. Rose Kerr, The Story of the Girl Guides (Girl Guides Association, rev.ed., 1937), p.29.
49. Ibid, p.30.
50. Kitty Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides (Girl Guides Association, 1946), p.24.
51. Kerr, ibid., p.243; Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig, You’re a Brick, Angela! A New Look at Girls’ Fiction 1839-1975 (Gollancz, 1976), p.155.
52. The Chalet School and Jo, p.63.
53. Marion Lochhead, A Lamp was Lit. The Girls’ Guildry through Fifty Years (1949), p.28.
54. See, for example, the “Camp Fire Girls” books of Hildegard G. Frey, Margaret Love Sanderson and Jane Stewart.
55. The Chalet Girls in Camp, p.224.
56. Lochhead, ibid., p.25.
57. See Sheila Fletcher, Women First. The Female Tradition in English Physical Education 1880-1980 (Athlone Press, 1984), Chap.1.
58. Eva Löfgren, Schoolmates of the Long-Ago. Motifs and Archetypes in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s Boarding-School Stories (Symposion Graduale, 1993), pp.96-7.
59. D. F. Bruce, “Adventures in Extension”. Lamp of the Girls’ Guildry (Oct. 1935), p.21.
60. That Boarding School Girl (1925), The New Girl and Nancy (1926), Nancy to the Rescue (1927), The Best Bat in the School (1931), Nancy in the Sixth (1935), all published by Oxford University Press.
61. D. F. Bruce, “London Extends”. Lamp of the Girls’ Guildry (May 1936), p.21.
62. D. F. Bruce, Dimsie Intervenes, p.14.
63. British Camp Fire Girls Inc., (Birkenhead,1925) p.5.
64. Helen Buckler, Mary F. Fiedler and Martha F. Allen, eds., Wo-He-Lo. The Story of Camp Fire Girls 1910-1960 (Camp Fire Girls, 1961), p.22.
65. Ibid., p.23.
66. Elsie J. Oxenham, The Abbey Girls Play Up (Collins, 1930), p.112.
67. Wo-He-Lo, p.23.
68. Ibid., pp.39, 37.
69. British Camp Fire Girls, p.11.
70. See British Camp Fire Girls and E. J. Oxenham, Ven at Gregory’s (Chambers, 1925), p.191.
71. The Chalet School Wins the Trick (1961), pp.31-2.
72. British Camp Fire Girls, p.8.
73. Wo-He-Lo, p.54; also quoted in E. J. Oxenham, A School Camp Fire (Chambers, 1917), p.214, The Junior Captain (Chambers, 1923), p.300, and other novels.
74. E. J. Oxenham, The School of Ups and Downs (Chambers, 1918), p.172.
75. Gillian Avery, The Best Type of Girl. A History of Girls’ Independent Schools (Andre Deutsch, 1991), illus. p.11.
76. Census of 1921. The First World War played a significant part in this, but there had been more women than men in Britain since the middle of the 19th century, and a growing reluctance to marry among both men and women as the century progressed. See Rosemary Auchmuty, “Victorian Spinsters” (unpublished Ph. D. thesis, Australian National University, 1975; in the Fawcett Library, London Guildhall University).
77. E. J. Oxenham, The New Abbey Girls (Collins, 1923), p.233.
78. E. J. Oxenham, The Junior Captain, p.301.
79. E. J. Oxenham, The Crisis in Camp Keema (Chambers, 1928), p.103.
80. In The Abbey Chronicle No. 18 (September 1994), Olga Kendell recounts how, having advertised in her local (Croydon) paper for information about Camp Fire, she met two women who had belonged to a Camp Fire attached to a local Congregational Church until 1939. This, she says, “is the nearest to ‘today’ I have heard of”. As far as American Camp Fire is concerned, I discovered on a visit to the US in 1990 that some of my American cousins had been Camp Fire girls in the 1960s and 1970s, but gave it up (as they claimed all girls did then) when they reached their teens.
81. Alix Liddell, Story of the Girl Guides 1938-1975 (Girl Guides Association, 1976), pp.9, 10, 64.
82. Gill Bilski is one dealer who specialises in Guide stories and ephemera.
83. Löfgren, ibid., p.109.
84. E. J. Oxenham, The Abbey Girls Play Up.
85. E. J. Oxenham, Song of the Abbey (Colllins, 1954) and Two Queens at the Abbey (Collins, 1959).
86. Guardian 5.1.94, p.2; Liddell, ibid., p.107; “Girl Scouts?” Good Housekeeping (Nov. 1990), p.125.
87. Prefects of the Chalet School (1970), pp.166-7. It’s also possible that Brent-Dyer realised this was to be the last Chalet School book and wanted to settle the destinies of her favourite characters before she died.
88. The New Chalet School, p.303.
89. Joey Goes to the Oberland, p.62.
VI. MY GOD, IT’S THE HEAD!
JUDITH HUMPHREY
AT the time when most school stories were written, Britain would have defined itself as a Christian country, with religious structures having a much greater cultural importance than is now the case. Religious training for the young was considered essential, chapel was (and is) an integral part of boarding-school life, so it is not surprising that some sort of religious experience is fundamental to many of the texts. This varies from an obligation to make the right noises to a faith which undergirds the whole of the author’s life and, therefore, her work as well, and Elinor Brent-Dyer provides a striking example of the latter.
Typically for her time, Brent-Dyer was brought up to be a conscientious church-goer; this is made very clear in her biography, and we have evidence of her membership of the congregations of St Jude’s in the Laygate, South Shields, the Church of St Bede’s in the same town and of St Francis Xavier’s Church in Hereford. However, the fact that her religion is much more than mere form is clear from its great importance in the texts, and Helen McClelland, Brent-Dyer’s biographer, has even identified this as one of the reasons for the author’s popularity: “the majority of Elinor’s readers have quite evidently welcomed and appreciated this religious aspect of the stories”.1 Indeed, religion is present in Brent-Dyer’s texts to an extent which has caused great irritation to critics unsympathetic to her beliefs; Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig state, in their 1976 study of girls’ fiction, You’re a Brick, An
gela!, that:
a serious weakness of the Chalet School series is the religious sentimentality . . . this kind of simplistic Christianity was the logical outcome of the moral function which they [school-story writers] had assigned themselves . . . God, when properly appealed to, will not let anyone down.2
For Craig and Cadogan, the attitude to religion is an unforgivable attempt to mislead and delude impressionable readers, but this view is, itself, simplistic in the extreme, overlooking most of what is important about the treatment of religion in the texts. Brent-Dyer’s use of religious elements in her writing springs from a deep personal faith, and is expressed with a breadth of view astonishing for her time.
By upbringing an Anglican, she entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1930, but no one reading her books could make even an approximate guess at the date of her conversion. McClelland suggests that contact with the deeply devout Tyrolese Catholics might have influenced Brent-Dyer’s outlook and given her a breadth of vision unusual for her time. Whatever the reason, at a time when evangelical Christians regarded the Roman Catholic Church as the Anti-Christ (with the Church of England only one notch better off), and when Roman Catholics were strictly forbidden to join in the services of any other denomination, Brent-Dyer’s priests and pastors were fraternising happily, and the vicar in Fardingales (1950) even shares his vicarage with a Presbyterian minister. The main characters of the Chalet series are fairly evenly divided between Anglicans and Catholics (for example, Miss Annersley and Madge Bettany are Protestant, Miss Wilson and Jo are Catholic), and the books themselves range from the specifically evangelical trio Nesta Steps Out (1954), Beechy of the Harbour School (1955) and Leader in Spite of Herself (1956) to The Little Marie-José (1932), which, while being an historical novel, deals in very sympathetic terms with the Roman Catholic Church. None of this is surprising in our own ecumenical age, but for its time it was positively startling in its tolerance — and it is worth remembering, too, that while in our own secular philosophical climate tolerance is a virtue, it is frequently seen in church circles as lack of conviction and a tendency to condone sin. To write in this way in such a climate argues a robust courage which is far from sentimental, and the outworking of the religious beliefs of Brent-Dyer’s characters is accomplished in terms of a rigorous analysis of faith which never shrinks from the difficult areas.
All this is crystal clear from the most cursory reading of the texts. Less obvious, but of crucial importance, is the way in which the combination of the woman-centred world of the school story and these strong religious elements culminates in perceptions of spiritual possibilities for women which are strikingly unusual and deeply empowering. Many of Brent-Dyer’s readers are women of faith, and this is surely one of the reasons for our strong responses to the texts. In order to appreciate fully the function of religion in the work of Elinor Brent-Dyer, it is helpful to see her work in the context of her fellow-writers, for certain basic traits are common to all.
Prayer in despair
For almost every author of girls’ school stories, religion is very definitely there; however unorthodox their personal beliefs, it was essential to make the right noises, and God is always in the background, there to help if needed. Angela Brazil, herself a conscientious if pantheistic Anglican, illustrates the principle in many of her books. Muriel and Patty, for example, are dramatically reminded of this background faith when they are threatened with death by drowning (The Nicest Girl in the School, 1909). Muriel questions Patty’s lack of fear, is reminded by the other girl that God can look after them whatever the circumstances, and joins her in a familiar prayer:
“Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by Thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.”
How often they had repeated the familiar collect in church or at evening prayers in the big schoolroom at The Priory, sometimes with little thought for its meaning; and how different it sounded now in the midst of the real peril and danger that surrounded them.3
Mary Louise Parker’s Amy and her brother are in trouble of a different kind, but the remedy is the same:
Judith and I have agreed to remember you and Robert in our prayers every night. You do, too, I expect, and you know there’s a text in the Bible about people agreeing to pray about anything and Mummy says God gives us what we ask for if it is for our good. So don’t worry, is what she would say, just trust Him.4
For these authors, prayer is very much a last resort. They presumably meant what they said — it would be unwarrantable to suppose otherwise — but prayer is only a support in trouble. It is in no way integral to the life of the characters, and the deletion of the above passages would certainly make no difference to the rest of the book. Turning to God in desperation is neither an uncommon nor an unrealistic reaction — Elinor Brent-Dyer’s Jo and Grizel also use the “Lighten Our Darkness” collect as they enter the caves where the madman has hidden Cornelia in The Head Girl of the Chalet School (1928) — but Dorita Fairlie Bruce, herself a devout and committed Christian, highlights in her books the lack of impact of this very formalised and peripheral religion. The younger girls at Jane’s are only too eager to escape the chapel ritual; indeed Molly, plaiting her hair to make it curl, rejoices in the prospect that it might “frizz”:
“Perhaps she’ll say it’s so bad I musn’t go to church,” said Molly hopefully. “She might, you know. And I’ve got such a lovely book out of the Junior library.”5
The same girls pray fervently during Dimsie’s illness later in the book, but again this is little more than desperation. Indeed, in Captain of Springdale (1932), Peggy is bitterly attacked by her fellow-seniors for taking seriously Sunday’s sermon and applying it to the very undesirable atmosphere in the school; her attempts to relate theology to everyday life are seen as embarrassing and almost shocking.
Church was church and school was school, and people didn’t mix them — except the Head in her Scripture lessons, and even that was held by some to be taking an unfair advantage. To be kindly affectioned one to another didn’t mean that you were not to criticize people’s peculiarities, or try to find out what they’d done to be deprived of a prefectship.6
This attitude is very different from Elinor Brent-Dyer’s. Certainly her girls find it difficult to talk to others about their deep faith. Mary-Lou, when called upon to justify her faith, “made a big effort. . . for she was speaking of things that lay deep down and she rarely talked of them, even to her nearest and dearest”7, and Rosemary, in Leader in Spite of Herself, has to force herself to encourage younger girls to pray for an unpleasant classmate: “Rosemary flushed, but she knew now what she must say and though she found it hard, she spoke up sturdily”.8 When the girls do challenge their school fellows, however, there is always a positive response and a basic acceptance of their credo, which is not found in Dorita Fairlie Bruce’s arguably more realistic approach. Very similar to Peggy’s situation is Rosemary’s attempt to impress on her juniors the link between their religious observance and the reality of their everyday lives:
Here you’ve just come from church. We had a sermon on love and on trying to imitate the way Christ was a Friend to all His friends, and you deliberately propose to treat another girl in the most unfriendly way anyone could imagine!
The reaction to this is not embarrassment or horror, but a schoolgirl equivalent of conviction and repentance — “she had given them plenty to think about. No more was ever heard of that wonderful plan”.9
Born again Christians
Obviously if religion is to mean anything at all, it must be more than a socially acceptable external form, and the opposite extreme is provided by a group of authors of evangelical beliefs, with the emphasis on personal contact with God in repentance and conversion. This is certainly a much more fundamental and challenging human experience; unfortunately, however true the message, it is a sad fact that the vast majority of books of this type are unbelievably dreadful. They are written expressly to convert, and the message
matters much more than the book, with the inevitable result that the plot is trivial and the characters incredible.
Elinor Brent-Dyer herself made at least token gestures in this direction. Nesta Steps Out, Beechy of the Harbour School and Leader in Spite of Herself were written for Oliphants, a religious press, and my own copies of Nesta and Leader were given respectively as prizes for Sunday School attendance and for gaining the highest number of points at a Girls’ Brigade camp. The Sunday School in question was at the Glad Tidings Gospel Hall, an Assemblies of God Church in Hull, and certainly nothing which was not impeccably evangelical would have found its way into such an establishment. However, Brent-Dyer was incapable of producing a mere tract and, although the religious content of the books is certainly less diluted than in the Chalet series, it is expressed in very human terms of girls struggling for victory over their own negative characteristics. Nesta has to overcome a violent temper, Rosemary her diffidence and shyness, while Beechy has both to come to terms with the death of her mother and conquer her reluctance to own publicly her new-found faith. These can hardly be counted as Brent-Dyer’s most successful books, yet she still keeps within the bounds of believable and involving characterisation.
In contrast, Dorothy Dennison, a fairly prolific author in this field, provides a graphic illustration of the principle that the worth of the book varies in direct proportion to its evangelistic message. Miss Dennison is a very competent writer, both humorous and realistic, and her Rebellion of the Upper Fifth (1919) is a delightful account of a mistress’s battle with a form who idolised her predecessor and are unwilling to accept her. It is both funny and true, the situation is well-controlled and the characters live, but it is noticeable that the evangelistic content, though present, is very slight. Sliding down the scale a little is Rival Schools at Trentham (1923); the humour is still in evidence, and the girls’ lofty ideals of social service are brought down to earth with a satisfying bump by aggresssive children and parents who grab all that they can get and then complain about it, leaving the girls in a “disturbed state of disillusionment”. In this book, however, the message is more strongly given, and Marigold, the heroine, reaches the perfection seemingly inseparable from committed Christianity. Marvellously popular and sporting, Marigold has been at the school only a few weeks before she retrieves the fortunes of the netball team:
