REVIEW: Gerry Goes to School
Feb. 20th, 2017 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllI haven't posted much about books so far this year, but I haven't read many books, or so it feels, but I tried to make up for it over the past weekend.
Gerry Goes to School: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, Chambers, ‘latest reprint’ 1952.
Is this the Gerry who turns up to introduce some Chalet girls to strawberry lemonade? Anyway, she is a familiar type for EB-D, an orphan who has been brought up by very old-fashioned great-aunts. One of those great-aunts needs to go to Madeira for her health’s sake, and as they feel it would be unsuitable to take their twelve-year-old ward with them, they turn to an old family friend, Arthur Trevennor. He is a rector with that other EB-D staple, a large, happy family, and he and his wife agree to take her in.
Paul and Margaret have left school and are the oldest of ten – TEN! – siblings. Family life is often about getting all and sundry where they need to be, dressed in the right clothes. There is a delicate child to worry about in Cecil. They are loud and lively, five girls and five boys, and nothing at all like the secluded, sedate and Victorian life Geraldine Challoner has known thus far, but everything she has longed for.
Soon after she has arrived to her strange new life, with a mother figure who kisses her and older girls chivvying her about what to do next, she is dubbed ‘Gerry’ and enrolled at St Peter’s, a day school for girls, which also has a parallel boys’ school of the same name. The school has echoes of the Chalet School – its government resides mainly in the hands of the prefects, the girls wash and change in the Splasheries and there’s the cosmopolitan element – they’re required to speak French at certain times. There was also a strong Italian element – that’s the secret language mistresses speak when they want to pass on messages the British girls shouldn’t understand, although there are a few Italian girls in the school – which is never really explained.
Unfortunately for Gerry, the Trevennor girl who is closest to her in age, Gillian, takes an immediate hate to her. I sided with most of Jill’s siblings, who are disgusted by the fourteen-year-old’s behaviour, although the author was more sympathetic, setting out how a demon of pride possessed Jill (it visits Gerry at times too) and how her siblings’ tactless handling of Jill made it worse. To be honest, I’m surprised that, even though they didn’t know the worst of Jill’s behaviour, her parents didn’t step in – Gerry was their guest, an orphan and it did Jill no good to be so full of hate. But plot needs must.
For Gerry finds Jill, who is impish and clever when she is not being rude or bullying, attractive. Indeed, having spent next to no time with children or young people for the first twelve years of her life, Gerry is ready to adore the pretty, eldest Trevennor girl, Margaret, and also St Peter’s head girl Marcia. She makes friends with girls of her own age at the school in Con and Gwen and others and gradually commands general respect as she settles down. In fellow musician Paul (though Gerry is no Nina of the Chalet School, she is certainly a musical talent), she finds a ‘pal’ and a champion – there are more than ten years between them in age, but it is that affinity that irrationally drives Jill to her jealous hating – even though she has always been more attached to her twin Bernard, aka Bear, than Paul.
‘Modern’ family life at the rectory is full of adventure (there are a couple of near-death incidents) and school life is full, with good teaching, spirited school fellows and slang to absorb readily as Geraldine becomes lost to Gerry. I don’t have as many criticisms to make as I did with ‘A Thrilling Term at Janeways’, except perhaps it might have benefitted from a narrower focus on fewer characters, but I don’t really think this book is much better. It does have some interest in not being a boarding school story – lower school girls and senior school girls become sisters and companions on the train when the last bell of the day rings. There is one mysterious point when a ‘Gertrude Trevennor’ whom we’ve never heard of turns up to argue a point, which editor and author missed out on.
Gerry Goes to School: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, Chambers, ‘latest reprint’ 1952.
Is this the Gerry who turns up to introduce some Chalet girls to strawberry lemonade? Anyway, she is a familiar type for EB-D, an orphan who has been brought up by very old-fashioned great-aunts. One of those great-aunts needs to go to Madeira for her health’s sake, and as they feel it would be unsuitable to take their twelve-year-old ward with them, they turn to an old family friend, Arthur Trevennor. He is a rector with that other EB-D staple, a large, happy family, and he and his wife agree to take her in.
Paul and Margaret have left school and are the oldest of ten – TEN! – siblings. Family life is often about getting all and sundry where they need to be, dressed in the right clothes. There is a delicate child to worry about in Cecil. They are loud and lively, five girls and five boys, and nothing at all like the secluded, sedate and Victorian life Geraldine Challoner has known thus far, but everything she has longed for.
Soon after she has arrived to her strange new life, with a mother figure who kisses her and older girls chivvying her about what to do next, she is dubbed ‘Gerry’ and enrolled at St Peter’s, a day school for girls, which also has a parallel boys’ school of the same name. The school has echoes of the Chalet School – its government resides mainly in the hands of the prefects, the girls wash and change in the Splasheries and there’s the cosmopolitan element – they’re required to speak French at certain times. There was also a strong Italian element – that’s the secret language mistresses speak when they want to pass on messages the British girls shouldn’t understand, although there are a few Italian girls in the school – which is never really explained.
Unfortunately for Gerry, the Trevennor girl who is closest to her in age, Gillian, takes an immediate hate to her. I sided with most of Jill’s siblings, who are disgusted by the fourteen-year-old’s behaviour, although the author was more sympathetic, setting out how a demon of pride possessed Jill (it visits Gerry at times too) and how her siblings’ tactless handling of Jill made it worse. To be honest, I’m surprised that, even though they didn’t know the worst of Jill’s behaviour, her parents didn’t step in – Gerry was their guest, an orphan and it did Jill no good to be so full of hate. But plot needs must.
For Gerry finds Jill, who is impish and clever when she is not being rude or bullying, attractive. Indeed, having spent next to no time with children or young people for the first twelve years of her life, Gerry is ready to adore the pretty, eldest Trevennor girl, Margaret, and also St Peter’s head girl Marcia. She makes friends with girls of her own age at the school in Con and Gwen and others and gradually commands general respect as she settles down. In fellow musician Paul (though Gerry is no Nina of the Chalet School, she is certainly a musical talent), she finds a ‘pal’ and a champion – there are more than ten years between them in age, but it is that affinity that irrationally drives Jill to her jealous hating – even though she has always been more attached to her twin Bernard, aka Bear, than Paul.
‘Modern’ family life at the rectory is full of adventure (there are a couple of near-death incidents) and school life is full, with good teaching, spirited school fellows and slang to absorb readily as Geraldine becomes lost to Gerry. I don’t have as many criticisms to make as I did with ‘A Thrilling Term at Janeways’, except perhaps it might have benefitted from a narrower focus on fewer characters, but I don’t really think this book is much better. It does have some interest in not being a boarding school story – lower school girls and senior school girls become sisters and companions on the train when the last bell of the day rings. There is one mysterious point when a ‘Gertrude Trevennor’ whom we’ve never heard of turns up to argue a point, which editor and author missed out on.
