REVIEW: Christabel's Cornish Adventure
Dec. 24th, 2015 09:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllChristabel’s Cornish Adventure: Dorothy May Hardy Nelson (this reprint the second in 1958)
‘”Well, for cool cheek you have no equal, Chris.”
‘Thus spoke Jane with admiration’ p.83
I don’t know about that assertion, Christabel is part of the Dimsie Maitland, Mary-Lou Trelawney etc tradition. Speaking of the Chalet School, I will just say that Gay Lambert was introduced a decade before this book was first published – a certain supporting character has a more than glancing resemblance to her.
To the book itself, Christabel and her three best friends, Miranda, Jane and Nona, are enjoying spending part of their summer at a camp run by their school Cleave College (there is apparently a prequel called ‘Christabel at Cleave’). A running theme is that they’re always in danger of being late for meals, as they get absorbed in their doings. As her chums like to point out, ‘things happen around Chris’.
While exploring the Cornish coast, they meet a girl their own age, named Gay, who lives in a houseboat named the Golden Dolphin and has mysterious beginnings. They also meet a surly ferryman who may or may not offer them a lift as they try to return to camp from whichever beach they’ve been visiting in time for a meal.
At the camp, Christabel has unknowingly made herself an enemy in Pauline, a slightly older girl, who used to be more popular in the lower school before Canadian Christabel arrived with her undoubted charisma and made up a quartette with the others. Jealous and somewhat mean, Pauline sets out to make life difficult for the girl she sees as her rival, causing something of a worry for the senior girls at camp, Lesley and Lois, who are in the running to be the school’s next head girl.
The story grew on me, as what seem to be disparate escapades and events become more clearly important, and as we get to know Christabel, with her bright ideas and habit of amusing directness towards the seniors. Farseeing Miranda and teasing Jane are nice foils for impetuous Chris and overly sensitive Nona.
It is a bit much to have them find out more about the shipwreck that brought Gay to Cornwall i.e. her origin story, if you will, as well as find out about some rummy criminal doings on a coastline once well-known for smuggling – most books would settle for one of those as a main plot. But it’s the camp interactions that are most interesting, in the sea-scented heat, next to the fuschia bushes. There’s a notable tournament involving pillow-fighting, which is held at midnight, of course. No wonder Gay, who is somewhat lonely, living with her elderly grandparents, is longing to go to a school like Cleave.
I should like to read that prequel! As far as I can tell, Hardy didn’t get to write a proper series, eventually making Christabel et al the prefects with the authority to check juniors who weren’t being cheeky, but had committed some infraction.
For tomorrow, a merry Christmas!
‘”Well, for cool cheek you have no equal, Chris.”
‘Thus spoke Jane with admiration’ p.83
I don’t know about that assertion, Christabel is part of the Dimsie Maitland, Mary-Lou Trelawney etc tradition. Speaking of the Chalet School, I will just say that Gay Lambert was introduced a decade before this book was first published – a certain supporting character has a more than glancing resemblance to her.
To the book itself, Christabel and her three best friends, Miranda, Jane and Nona, are enjoying spending part of their summer at a camp run by their school Cleave College (there is apparently a prequel called ‘Christabel at Cleave’). A running theme is that they’re always in danger of being late for meals, as they get absorbed in their doings. As her chums like to point out, ‘things happen around Chris’.
While exploring the Cornish coast, they meet a girl their own age, named Gay, who lives in a houseboat named the Golden Dolphin and has mysterious beginnings. They also meet a surly ferryman who may or may not offer them a lift as they try to return to camp from whichever beach they’ve been visiting in time for a meal.
At the camp, Christabel has unknowingly made herself an enemy in Pauline, a slightly older girl, who used to be more popular in the lower school before Canadian Christabel arrived with her undoubted charisma and made up a quartette with the others. Jealous and somewhat mean, Pauline sets out to make life difficult for the girl she sees as her rival, causing something of a worry for the senior girls at camp, Lesley and Lois, who are in the running to be the school’s next head girl.
The story grew on me, as what seem to be disparate escapades and events become more clearly important, and as we get to know Christabel, with her bright ideas and habit of amusing directness towards the seniors. Farseeing Miranda and teasing Jane are nice foils for impetuous Chris and overly sensitive Nona.
It is a bit much to have them find out more about the shipwreck that brought Gay to Cornwall i.e. her origin story, if you will, as well as find out about some rummy criminal doings on a coastline once well-known for smuggling – most books would settle for one of those as a main plot. But it’s the camp interactions that are most interesting, in the sea-scented heat, next to the fuschia bushes. There’s a notable tournament involving pillow-fighting, which is held at midnight, of course. No wonder Gay, who is somewhat lonely, living with her elderly grandparents, is longing to go to a school like Cleave.
I should like to read that prequel! As far as I can tell, Hardy didn’t get to write a proper series, eventually making Christabel et al the prefects with the authority to check juniors who weren’t being cheeky, but had committed some infraction.
For tomorrow, a merry Christmas!
