REVIEW: Excitements at the Chalet School
Jun. 16th, 2013 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
feather_ghyllExcitements at the Chalet School: Elinor M. Brent-Dyer Armada, 1987
It has been years and years since I last read a Chalet School book or got my mitts on one of the few in the series that I hadn’t read (a slightly longer list than that of the ones I own thanks to libraries and friends). I genuinely think that I never read this before, as it features an Aladdin panto and the return of Miss Bubb, the infamous stand-in headmistress, and I’m sure I’d have remembered both events.
In some ways, it’s an interlinking book, set in the Easter term following ‘The New Mistress’ and setting up ‘The Coming of Age’. Kathie Ferrars has settled in good and proper, so much so that she’s helping to create new traditions for the school and is a great favourite. She’s also the form mistress for Inter V, the form that, if anything, is the focus of this book. It contains quite a range of girls, from the precocious Maynard triplets to Yseult Pertwee, who is too old for the form in age, but not up to scratch academically and who sticks out like a sore thumb. She’s Artistic, thinks herself too mature to get on with the other girls and, rather childishly, riles them by acting so superior.The bulk of the form are girls who are making the tricky adjustment between being Middles and Seniors at their varied paces. However, under the influence of all the excitements of the title, the form does what had seemed unlikely at the start of the term, and unites.
For this is the term when Joey reminds what she calls the Founding Stones that the school will be twenty-one next term. I’d be inclined to call them the ‘Founding Stones’ because they don’t include Mr and Miss Denny who are still linked with the school and were certainly involved in the school long before Miss Wilson, Miss Annesley and Mlle de Lachennais.
Nit-picking aside, I’d like to read about how Brent-Dyer came to this realisation. Was it her own Eureka moment or the publishers’ or fans’? It tickles me that it’s this anniversary that’s so important, living in the age of the decimalisation of celebration, by which I mean, institutions’ fifth, tenth and so on anniversaries are constantly celebrated. It’s also striking, because I wouldn’t say that the school as a person isn’t an idea or metaphor that’s impressed itself on me as a reader of Chalet School books.
However, who could begrudge the fictional school its celebrations or the length of the series being celebrated either? We get references to the school’s past – as a reader who found the books after they were all published, I think that’s a gift to the fans, although I wonder if, in the fifties, many of the first readers of this book hadn’t read about the school’s adventures in the Tirol. After all, I’ve read the series higgledy-piggedly. We are reminded of the school’s finest hour, when it faced the Anschluss and the onset of the second world war. Mistresses like Biddy o’Ryan, Nancy Wilmott and Peggy Burnett, not to mention Rosalie Dene, can remember the school’s previous excitements.
The reader is in on the initial discussion about how to celebrate – there’s quite a glimpse into the staff’s perspective of things, perhaps a carryover from ‘The New Mistress’, or maybe it’s more exaggerated in the Chalet School series than in most school stories. Joey is centrally involved, making her a fitting guest at the end-of-term feast. Reading this quite freshly, Miss Wilson aka Bill struck me as the liveliest spark among the mistresses, despite her senior position – although as head of St Mildred’s she’s always coming and going, which may add to her making an impression.
The school at large is invited to provide suggestions for celebrating too, and the reader is a fly on the wall to the staff’s candid responses. The best and most apt suggestion comes from Inter V – Len Maynard trumping Mary-Lou Trelaweney here: starting subscriptions to build chapels for the school.
It’s also proposed to establish a medal for bravery shown by the girls since the school went to the Oberland. Despite the fact that it’s a brief period, hilariously, there are quite a few candidates. This idea is inspired by yet another fire in the school’s history, although one that’s less dangerous than some. The culprit is a simple local lad who wanted a smoke and lit up in the wrong place. Smoking is still seen as just a bad habit, not an addiction, and mostly a fire hazard rather than a danger of any other kind. For of course, the Abbess, Joey et al smoke.
This book isn’t just build-up for the upcoming celebrations, but seeing the preparations being discussed stokes the reader’s curiosity – the best and truest compliment that I can give this book is that it makes me want to reread ‘Coming of Age’, which I own, fortunately.
The prefects including Blososm Willoughby, Sybil Russell and Mary-Lou, and soon to be joined by Vi Lucy also appear quite a lot, and although the juniors and middles don’t get much of a look in it does feel like it’s a story about the whole school, mainly as it is now, but with a sense of its roots, which is apt. There are even hints about the future, wih the likely hood that Mary-Lou will be the next head girl, to Joey looking forward out loud to the day that her grand-daughters attend and inspiring a cheeky newish girl to look forward to the day her gread-granddaughters go.
It has been years and years since I last read a Chalet School book or got my mitts on one of the few in the series that I hadn’t read (a slightly longer list than that of the ones I own thanks to libraries and friends). I genuinely think that I never read this before, as it features an Aladdin panto and the return of Miss Bubb, the infamous stand-in headmistress, and I’m sure I’d have remembered both events.
In some ways, it’s an interlinking book, set in the Easter term following ‘The New Mistress’ and setting up ‘The Coming of Age’. Kathie Ferrars has settled in good and proper, so much so that she’s helping to create new traditions for the school and is a great favourite. She’s also the form mistress for Inter V, the form that, if anything, is the focus of this book. It contains quite a range of girls, from the precocious Maynard triplets to Yseult Pertwee, who is too old for the form in age, but not up to scratch academically and who sticks out like a sore thumb. She’s Artistic, thinks herself too mature to get on with the other girls and, rather childishly, riles them by acting so superior.The bulk of the form are girls who are making the tricky adjustment between being Middles and Seniors at their varied paces. However, under the influence of all the excitements of the title, the form does what had seemed unlikely at the start of the term, and unites.
For this is the term when Joey reminds what she calls the Founding Stones that the school will be twenty-one next term. I’d be inclined to call them the ‘Founding Stones’ because they don’t include Mr and Miss Denny who are still linked with the school and were certainly involved in the school long before Miss Wilson, Miss Annesley and Mlle de Lachennais.
Nit-picking aside, I’d like to read about how Brent-Dyer came to this realisation. Was it her own Eureka moment or the publishers’ or fans’? It tickles me that it’s this anniversary that’s so important, living in the age of the decimalisation of celebration, by which I mean, institutions’ fifth, tenth and so on anniversaries are constantly celebrated. It’s also striking, because I wouldn’t say that the school as a person isn’t an idea or metaphor that’s impressed itself on me as a reader of Chalet School books.
However, who could begrudge the fictional school its celebrations or the length of the series being celebrated either? We get references to the school’s past – as a reader who found the books after they were all published, I think that’s a gift to the fans, although I wonder if, in the fifties, many of the first readers of this book hadn’t read about the school’s adventures in the Tirol. After all, I’ve read the series higgledy-piggedly. We are reminded of the school’s finest hour, when it faced the Anschluss and the onset of the second world war. Mistresses like Biddy o’Ryan, Nancy Wilmott and Peggy Burnett, not to mention Rosalie Dene, can remember the school’s previous excitements.
The reader is in on the initial discussion about how to celebrate – there’s quite a glimpse into the staff’s perspective of things, perhaps a carryover from ‘The New Mistress’, or maybe it’s more exaggerated in the Chalet School series than in most school stories. Joey is centrally involved, making her a fitting guest at the end-of-term feast. Reading this quite freshly, Miss Wilson aka Bill struck me as the liveliest spark among the mistresses, despite her senior position – although as head of St Mildred’s she’s always coming and going, which may add to her making an impression.
The school at large is invited to provide suggestions for celebrating too, and the reader is a fly on the wall to the staff’s candid responses. The best and most apt suggestion comes from Inter V – Len Maynard trumping Mary-Lou Trelaweney here: starting subscriptions to build chapels for the school.
It’s also proposed to establish a medal for bravery shown by the girls since the school went to the Oberland. Despite the fact that it’s a brief period, hilariously, there are quite a few candidates. This idea is inspired by yet another fire in the school’s history, although one that’s less dangerous than some. The culprit is a simple local lad who wanted a smoke and lit up in the wrong place. Smoking is still seen as just a bad habit, not an addiction, and mostly a fire hazard rather than a danger of any other kind. For of course, the Abbess, Joey et al smoke.
This book isn’t just build-up for the upcoming celebrations, but seeing the preparations being discussed stokes the reader’s curiosity – the best and truest compliment that I can give this book is that it makes me want to reread ‘Coming of Age’, which I own, fortunately.
The prefects including Blososm Willoughby, Sybil Russell and Mary-Lou, and soon to be joined by Vi Lucy also appear quite a lot, and although the juniors and middles don’t get much of a look in it does feel like it’s a story about the whole school, mainly as it is now, but with a sense of its roots, which is apt. There are even hints about the future, wih the likely hood that Mary-Lou will be the next head girl, to Joey looking forward out loud to the day that her grand-daughters attend and inspiring a cheeky newish girl to look forward to the day her gread-granddaughters go.
