REVIEW: For the School Colours
Jul. 13th, 2015 08:22 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllFor the School Colours: Angela Brazil. Blackie & Son.
I wish I could say this was a blossomy book, borrowing the top-hole slang that its characters use, but I can’t. Well, it isn’t too bad and it doesn’t feature that dreaded chapter of made-up stories that usually dog Brazil’s books. However, I did mentally say ‘Oh, Angela’ in a ‘what are we to do with you way’ quite a lot. It is set during World War One and features a great deal of propaganda that is glaringly cartoonish and yet sincere from a century’s distance. It’s also not quite the book it seems to be in the first chapter, and perhaps I would have preferred it if it was – I’ll explain.
I read the first chapter early one morning in an attempt to get myself to sleep, and even thought about writing a post about my first impressions based on it. Said post would have covered two things. The first is one of those classic ‘oh, Angela’ moments over character names. The book features an Ethelberga, an Adah and its heroine is an Avelyn, because Ethel, Ada and Evelyn would be what – far too commonplace?
Given the title, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the story will revolve around premise that is introduced in the first chapter: the school in question is called Silverside and the inhabitants of Cowslip dormitory are incensed on the first day of term having discovered that their headmistress has taken over the concern of the local day school in the town, the Hawthornes, a school they always looked down upon. Up until now, boarders have outnumbered day girls at Silverside and thus have ruled the roost. The new order and the threat to how things have always been outrages the conservative girls. Worse, they have a new girl to put up with in their dorm.
Avelyn Watson is to be a weekly boarder and, as she quickly confesses, she used to attend the Hawthornes too. This puts her in an awkward position, neither fish nor fowl as she puts it. The boarders, lead by the unfortunately patronising Adah, are determined to continue ‘Silverside traditions’, but the most important one for them is that they take the lead, even as the school has more than doubled in number. They continue their arrangements for societies and so forth and the new day girls are expected to toe the line. For some reason, they decide not to. The headmistress makes some unwise decisions such as choosing only boarders for prefects and then leaves the girls to it, and for a good two terms, that leads to rivalry and disharmony, with the larger group showing up the boarders over and over until Avelyn – fancy that! – forges some unity, which is seen as a good thing, indeed, it is presented as a patriotic act in a time of war.
I would really have liked Brazil to focus on this storyline. For one thing, she rather forgets an important group of girls in all this – the day girls who had already been attending Silverside, but had constantly been quoshed. They barely get a mention, but their feelings and position would be interesting to explore. At the beginning, I wondered if there was going to be an element of snobbery, there's a suggestion of it in how the Silversiders were encouraged to ignore the Hawthorneites in the past, and how Brazil would navigate that. What she does is to avoid it, by and large. Her elite are Britishers during wartime. There’s an underdeveloped point about how the day girls’ access to the town and cinema and greater freedom irks the boarders, who used to believe that their hobbies were automatically superior. All we get is a prank over a visit to the cinema.
But Brazil has plenty of other things to write about. We meet Avelyn’s family, who moved to the country for older sister Daphne’s health, but bringing on the house they’ve dubbed Walden is good for all of them, and allows Brazil to rhapsodise about Nature. Avelyn’s younger brothers are as well developed as the girls of Cowslip dorm.
It is also a wartime book, and to some extent, therefore, propaganda. There is no question that the British soldiers are fighting a just war. The Watsons’ new neighbour is a naturalised German, and the attitude of the author is not to condemn young Tony Watson’s knee-jerk violent urges toward him, because Mr H is depicted as a no-good Hun and it is up to the Watsons and Pamela Reynolds, another new girl at Silverside (who ought to have inherited the Hall over Mr H, her uncle by marriage, were it not for a missing will...) to find the proof that the authorities missed, but the neighbourhood knew by instinct existed. It’s a very silly plotline.
Oddly, there were moments that reminded me of L.M. Montgomery, but this book, with its wandering focus, could only have been written by Brazil. There is the theme of uniting the school and the wartime spy foiling, but the message that Nature is elevating (in England but not in Germany?) was undercut by Avelyn, out of sheer thoughtlessness, behaving in ways that her headmistress views as dishonourable. Evidence of thoughtlessness from the authoress, I fear. And then, late on in the book, a woman Avelyn thinks of as the Lavender Lady moves in nearby. Her real name is Lesbia Carrington (oh Angela) and although she is a white haired songwriter and poetess and Avelyn a schoolgirl, the latter falls for her and they develop a ‘soul friendship’ or something – far more romantical language is used about this relationship than Daphne’s engagement to a soldier. The Lavendar Lady makes a few inspiring suggestions about how Avelyn could heal the school fractures in time for the summer term. Only Angela Brazil could bring all these events together in the one book, which I imagine was never ever translated into German.
I wish I could say this was a blossomy book, borrowing the top-hole slang that its characters use, but I can’t. Well, it isn’t too bad and it doesn’t feature that dreaded chapter of made-up stories that usually dog Brazil’s books. However, I did mentally say ‘Oh, Angela’ in a ‘what are we to do with you way’ quite a lot. It is set during World War One and features a great deal of propaganda that is glaringly cartoonish and yet sincere from a century’s distance. It’s also not quite the book it seems to be in the first chapter, and perhaps I would have preferred it if it was – I’ll explain.
I read the first chapter early one morning in an attempt to get myself to sleep, and even thought about writing a post about my first impressions based on it. Said post would have covered two things. The first is one of those classic ‘oh, Angela’ moments over character names. The book features an Ethelberga, an Adah and its heroine is an Avelyn, because Ethel, Ada and Evelyn would be what – far too commonplace?
Given the title, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the story will revolve around premise that is introduced in the first chapter: the school in question is called Silverside and the inhabitants of Cowslip dormitory are incensed on the first day of term having discovered that their headmistress has taken over the concern of the local day school in the town, the Hawthornes, a school they always looked down upon. Up until now, boarders have outnumbered day girls at Silverside and thus have ruled the roost. The new order and the threat to how things have always been outrages the conservative girls. Worse, they have a new girl to put up with in their dorm.
Avelyn Watson is to be a weekly boarder and, as she quickly confesses, she used to attend the Hawthornes too. This puts her in an awkward position, neither fish nor fowl as she puts it. The boarders, lead by the unfortunately patronising Adah, are determined to continue ‘Silverside traditions’, but the most important one for them is that they take the lead, even as the school has more than doubled in number. They continue their arrangements for societies and so forth and the new day girls are expected to toe the line. For some reason, they decide not to. The headmistress makes some unwise decisions such as choosing only boarders for prefects and then leaves the girls to it, and for a good two terms, that leads to rivalry and disharmony, with the larger group showing up the boarders over and over until Avelyn – fancy that! – forges some unity, which is seen as a good thing, indeed, it is presented as a patriotic act in a time of war.
I would really have liked Brazil to focus on this storyline. For one thing, she rather forgets an important group of girls in all this – the day girls who had already been attending Silverside, but had constantly been quoshed. They barely get a mention, but their feelings and position would be interesting to explore. At the beginning, I wondered if there was going to be an element of snobbery, there's a suggestion of it in how the Silversiders were encouraged to ignore the Hawthorneites in the past, and how Brazil would navigate that. What she does is to avoid it, by and large. Her elite are Britishers during wartime. There’s an underdeveloped point about how the day girls’ access to the town and cinema and greater freedom irks the boarders, who used to believe that their hobbies were automatically superior. All we get is a prank over a visit to the cinema.
But Brazil has plenty of other things to write about. We meet Avelyn’s family, who moved to the country for older sister Daphne’s health, but bringing on the house they’ve dubbed Walden is good for all of them, and allows Brazil to rhapsodise about Nature. Avelyn’s younger brothers are as well developed as the girls of Cowslip dorm.
It is also a wartime book, and to some extent, therefore, propaganda. There is no question that the British soldiers are fighting a just war. The Watsons’ new neighbour is a naturalised German, and the attitude of the author is not to condemn young Tony Watson’s knee-jerk violent urges toward him, because Mr H is depicted as a no-good Hun and it is up to the Watsons and Pamela Reynolds, another new girl at Silverside (who ought to have inherited the Hall over Mr H, her uncle by marriage, were it not for a missing will...) to find the proof that the authorities missed, but the neighbourhood knew by instinct existed. It’s a very silly plotline.
Oddly, there were moments that reminded me of L.M. Montgomery, but this book, with its wandering focus, could only have been written by Brazil. There is the theme of uniting the school and the wartime spy foiling, but the message that Nature is elevating (in England but not in Germany?) was undercut by Avelyn, out of sheer thoughtlessness, behaving in ways that her headmistress views as dishonourable. Evidence of thoughtlessness from the authoress, I fear. And then, late on in the book, a woman Avelyn thinks of as the Lavender Lady moves in nearby. Her real name is Lesbia Carrington (oh Angela) and although she is a white haired songwriter and poetess and Avelyn a schoolgirl, the latter falls for her and they develop a ‘soul friendship’ or something – far more romantical language is used about this relationship than Daphne’s engagement to a soldier. The Lavendar Lady makes a few inspiring suggestions about how Avelyn could heal the school fractures in time for the summer term. Only Angela Brazil could bring all these events together in the one book, which I imagine was never ever translated into German.
