REVIEW: Neighbours at School
Apr. 12th, 2026 03:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllNeighbours at School: Ethel Talbot. Nelson.
In my defence, it’s over five years since I last read an Ethel Talbot book, so I’d forgotten about her breathless style and unique punctuation choices. (Really, woman, there’s no need for so many semi-colons in a children’s book!)
When I first started this, apart from said style, I was mostly concerned that I’d accidentally bought a boys own book, although I associate Talbot with girls own, because we’re deep in the mind of one Jack Hylton, a boy who tends to think himself superior to younger children, to girls and to magic tricks. He gets injured at a house party and is treated by a girl, about his own age, Stella Dane, a Guide, who rather impresses him.
But the last person he expected to see several weeks later, on his way to Peel School in Cornwall, is Stella, alongside several other girls in green tunics and red caps. For a new girls’ school has been established in nearby Polgelles House. In his confusion, Jack – Hylton at school – snubs her and then feels bad about it, and that’s before he gets a letter from the ‘mater’ after he admits to what he did.
Fortunately, because of my reading preferences and also because Talbot turns up the slang whenever writing boys, and her girls are quite slangy, we follow Stella for the rest of the book. Puzzled and hurt, she told the girl who’d taken charge of her on the way to school, Phyllis, about Jack cutting her. Both are Guides, although I wouldn’t call this a Guide book, as we never follow the girls to a Guide meeting and it’s not confirmed whether Stella joins a school patrol, it’s just a side detail about these characters, a shorthand for their being sensible at bedrock. Stella is attending school for the first time, but only for a year, because of a family windfall. (Talbot used a similar set-up in ‘Terry’s Only Term’.)
Stella and Phyllis meet a Cornish girl, Barbara Tregant, who is to be a weekly boarder, and impresses upon them that Cornwall is different (although there’s only one reference to the Cornish language and the headmistress seems under the misapprehension that an old Cornishman is an Englishman.) The word ‘Celtic’ is never used, and the word ‘tourist’ is used as often as ‘foreign’, but the locals believe in myths and the uncanny, and the past is almost a living part of their present. Although there is talk of the old smuggling days, there is more emphasis on the ugly history of wrecking.
On her first night, Stella is sent to visit the headmistress, but instead finds a five year old girl, Betty, who is to be the school baby because her father had to leave for India, (Empire business again, don’t you know) and there was no other family. Betty eases Stella’s homesickness for her younger stepsiblings, one of whom is called Bimbo of all things, and Stella is more or less allowed to adopt her, with the two girls joining Barbara and Phyllis in the same dorm. Phyllis thought she’d love being a dormitory head, but finds she’s not so sure, because an atmosphere grows between Barabara and Stella. Stella is confused by it, Barbara attracted her, but she seems to have taken against her after the first night – it turns out to be a misunderstanding, but Barbara is also an intense sort.
Their friendship does grow, and Stella is invited to Barbara’s house one Saturday for a fateful visit, although Talbot handles it interestingly. We’re with the girls as Barbara takes Stella there, passing mine shafts, explaining family history and the shadow of wrecking days, but we only hear about the actual visit in flashback, although it leaves a deep impression. Stella, Betty and Phyllis usually spend weekends together, and bump into Hylton and his best friend Sinclair, who love to row. Sinclair loves to sing when he’s in a good mood, but is actually more bookish than Hylton, who doesn’t know what to do with his feelings, although he takes the first opportunity offered to him to apologise to Stella. There are adventures with tides and caves that bind Stella and Phyllis closer, thanks to the responsibility for little Betty.
The idea of finding wreckers’ treasure, for different reasons, grows in Stella, Phyllis, Hylton and Sinclair, as the girls meet the ‘quaint’ old characters of seaweed-collecting Biddy, who has the sight, and the man called Wrecker Joe, who both seem to recognise Stella, although she’d never been to Cornwall before. But she’s also haunted by a recurring dream, which seems to have been inspired by the tales that Hylton and Barbara have told her of the happenings of about a century ago.
The book demands a lot of suspension of disbelief, and the final chapter, where all is explained to us and Stella, involves a lot of unlikely coincidences. All the while, the reader has to suffer Talbot’s idiosyncratic writing style. Looking back, I can see some similarities with ‘Carol’s Second Term’ in the idea of the school as an entity, a wise and understanding headmistress and a tower (at the boys’ school).
In my defence, it’s over five years since I last read an Ethel Talbot book, so I’d forgotten about her breathless style and unique punctuation choices. (Really, woman, there’s no need for so many semi-colons in a children’s book!)
When I first started this, apart from said style, I was mostly concerned that I’d accidentally bought a boys own book, although I associate Talbot with girls own, because we’re deep in the mind of one Jack Hylton, a boy who tends to think himself superior to younger children, to girls and to magic tricks. He gets injured at a house party and is treated by a girl, about his own age, Stella Dane, a Guide, who rather impresses him.
But the last person he expected to see several weeks later, on his way to Peel School in Cornwall, is Stella, alongside several other girls in green tunics and red caps. For a new girls’ school has been established in nearby Polgelles House. In his confusion, Jack – Hylton at school – snubs her and then feels bad about it, and that’s before he gets a letter from the ‘mater’ after he admits to what he did.
Fortunately, because of my reading preferences and also because Talbot turns up the slang whenever writing boys, and her girls are quite slangy, we follow Stella for the rest of the book. Puzzled and hurt, she told the girl who’d taken charge of her on the way to school, Phyllis, about Jack cutting her. Both are Guides, although I wouldn’t call this a Guide book, as we never follow the girls to a Guide meeting and it’s not confirmed whether Stella joins a school patrol, it’s just a side detail about these characters, a shorthand for their being sensible at bedrock. Stella is attending school for the first time, but only for a year, because of a family windfall. (Talbot used a similar set-up in ‘Terry’s Only Term’.)
Stella and Phyllis meet a Cornish girl, Barbara Tregant, who is to be a weekly boarder, and impresses upon them that Cornwall is different (although there’s only one reference to the Cornish language and the headmistress seems under the misapprehension that an old Cornishman is an Englishman.) The word ‘Celtic’ is never used, and the word ‘tourist’ is used as often as ‘foreign’, but the locals believe in myths and the uncanny, and the past is almost a living part of their present. Although there is talk of the old smuggling days, there is more emphasis on the ugly history of wrecking.
On her first night, Stella is sent to visit the headmistress, but instead finds a five year old girl, Betty, who is to be the school baby because her father had to leave for India, (Empire business again, don’t you know) and there was no other family. Betty eases Stella’s homesickness for her younger stepsiblings, one of whom is called Bimbo of all things, and Stella is more or less allowed to adopt her, with the two girls joining Barbara and Phyllis in the same dorm. Phyllis thought she’d love being a dormitory head, but finds she’s not so sure, because an atmosphere grows between Barabara and Stella. Stella is confused by it, Barbara attracted her, but she seems to have taken against her after the first night – it turns out to be a misunderstanding, but Barbara is also an intense sort.
Their friendship does grow, and Stella is invited to Barbara’s house one Saturday for a fateful visit, although Talbot handles it interestingly. We’re with the girls as Barbara takes Stella there, passing mine shafts, explaining family history and the shadow of wrecking days, but we only hear about the actual visit in flashback, although it leaves a deep impression. Stella, Betty and Phyllis usually spend weekends together, and bump into Hylton and his best friend Sinclair, who love to row. Sinclair loves to sing when he’s in a good mood, but is actually more bookish than Hylton, who doesn’t know what to do with his feelings, although he takes the first opportunity offered to him to apologise to Stella. There are adventures with tides and caves that bind Stella and Phyllis closer, thanks to the responsibility for little Betty.
The idea of finding wreckers’ treasure, for different reasons, grows in Stella, Phyllis, Hylton and Sinclair, as the girls meet the ‘quaint’ old characters of seaweed-collecting Biddy, who has the sight, and the man called Wrecker Joe, who both seem to recognise Stella, although she’d never been to Cornwall before. But she’s also haunted by a recurring dream, which seems to have been inspired by the tales that Hylton and Barbara have told her of the happenings of about a century ago.
The book demands a lot of suspension of disbelief, and the final chapter, where all is explained to us and Stella, involves a lot of unlikely coincidences. All the while, the reader has to suffer Talbot’s idiosyncratic writing style. Looking back, I can see some similarities with ‘Carol’s Second Term’ in the idea of the school as an entity, a wise and understanding headmistress and a tower (at the boys’ school).
