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Other Schools: Braemer House, Medbury http://www.the-cbb.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=6825

Author:	Fiona Mc [ Thu Nov 05, 2009 1:16 am ]
Post subject:	Other Schools: Braemer House, Medbury
A number of schools were started during the Chalet School books notably; St Scholastika, and Ste Cecilies. Braemer House in Medbury is the only one to merit its own book before amalgamating with the Chalet School. It is first mentioned in Monica Turns up Trumps (published in 1936) and then closes during The Chalet School at War (published in 1941) when the majority of its pupils join the Chalet school. The school is a small one and the Headmistress deliberately never takes more than 25 pupils at any one time. There are three forms in which the girls study some subjects with their form and the other subjects are studied in sets, where the girl are placed by ability, not by age. The school has a strong tradition of working hard with a reputation of being well educated. The Headmistress Miss Cundell is well liked and a strong disciplinarian. There are five mistresses with a visiting mistress for art. There is no lessons for sport, which is played by some of the girls out of school hours. The main character of the school is Monica Marilliar who is removed from The Gables which is a large boarding school for bad behaviour and poor school work. She is sent to a smaller day school which she initially hates and does not settle in well. Her cousins Vicky and Alixe McNab come to live with her and after some upsets between Vicky and Monica, the three settle down together. Other notables are Myfanwy Tudor, Clare Danvers and Jocelyn Redford. Many of the old Braemer girls are the Prefect during the Chalet School’s early English years So what did people think of the school and does it compare with the other school stories EBD wrote? How do you think the school compared with the early years of the Chalet School? How well do you think the mistresses and girls alike cope with an obviously problem girl like Monica? Were you happy to have many of the characters from Monica Turns up Trumps transfer to the Chalet School and do you think it was a good way for the Chalet School to gain a number of new characters for the series? How did you like the main characters of Monica, Vicky and Alixe? Please discuss these questions and any others you may think of.

Author:	JB [ Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:23 am ]
Post subject:	Re: Other Schools: Braemer House, Medbury
I really like Monica Comes Up Trumps and the Marilliar family, so it was good to see Monica join the Chalet School. It would have been nice to see a bit more of her though as she becomes “big Monica Marilliar” who’s good at games, somewhat two-dimensional. I think that Dr Marilliar’s decision to remove Monica from boarding school and send her there is understandable. It’s a plotline EBD uses more than once – in Heather Leaves School (boarding school to governess) and Lorna at Wynyards. It makes more sense to me for Monica to live at home and go to a local school than Lorna’s situation where poor Lorna is sent away from home to go to another school (although IMO she’s much better with her Aunt than with her horrible mother). Anyway, rant over and back on topic …. I like that in EBD’s non-Chalet books we see a range of girls’ education –boarding schools, large high schools, governesses and small day schools such as Braemar House. A school with 25 girls seems very small to me but this was a similar size to EBD’s own school, so presumably not that unusual for the time. I don’t think it’s comparable to the early years of the CS because Braemar House isn’t a new school (IIRC). We see the school through the eyes of a difficult new girl who isn’t happy to be there who quickly settles in. The girls deal with Monica well. She knows some of them socially already and there’s none of the bullying we see in other books. Nor is there a feud between Monica and another girl. The staff are firm but reasonable and understanding. The closure of the school and the dispersal of some its pupils to the CS is a good idea to bump up CS pupil numbers in a new location but I think EBD missed a trick by not developing any of them. When the Saints join the CS, some of the characters become important CS characters but we don’t see that in subsequent amalgamations. It must have been a godsend for the Braemar House for a new girl to open up locally so they didn’t have to make a decision to send their children away from home during wartime.

Author:	Alison H [ Thu Nov 05, 2009 11:53 pm ]
Post subject:	Re: Other Schools: Braemer House, Medbury
Having no games lessons would've been a dream come true for me - the fat kid who was always the last to be picked for any teams! - , but I can see how the lack of sports and extra-curricular activities generally must have got Monica down. I thought the idea of working in sets by ability rather than age was interesting, although from a social point of view I'm not sure that it would've worked ... although maybe with so few pupils it would've been OK, like it was in the first few weeks of the CS's life. It seems as if EBD just introduced the Braemar House girls to the CS as a way of giving the newly-restarted CS a job lot of new pupils fairly quickly (which, as JB said, was a clever trick): they don't really feature much in the CS books, which is a shame. Vicky and Monica in particular were very interesting characters. & I'd love to've seen Gwladys invite all the CS Seniors to a dance with her brothers and male cousins (although the CS girls weren't as prudish then as they were in the Swiss books!) . & it would have been nice generally to see the BH girls settling into a school which offered a wider choice of subjects and activities but was so different from their old place. I'd like to've seen Barney again too: it's rare in an EBD book for a brother to play such an important role and I really liked the relationship between Barney and Monica.

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