Meanwhile, back at the old school

Jacky Gillott
The Times, Saturday Jan 06, 1968

When of an age to read the Chalet Books, I presumed that Miss Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was dead. My reason for thinking this was a dusty quaintness about the books that placed them in the Angela Brazil era: the school ethic of decency, the preference for cricket, and the intimate form of address, “old chap”. Indeed, one might so easily have been reading of small prep-school boys, a suspicion deepened by the number of people called Bill, Jo or Tom, and almost confirmed by Joey’s chiding of a young girl who had developed “a violent affection for her” with the kindly words, “Do buck up Simone and be – be a man.”

In point of fact Miss Brent-Dyer lives on still in stockbroker Surrey and produces a new Chalet book with the same regularity her Old Girls produce babies; once a year. Her hardback publishers are currently coping with “number fifty something”, they think.

The books stick in my memory chiefly, I must confess, for their peculiar lack of appeal. To start with, they were horribly fat. (Having been given 10 volumes of The Children’s Encyclopaedia for my eleventh birthday, I still retain a lively horror of fat books.) So it is with delight that I see these new paperbacks make Miss Brent-Dyer’s work seem very much smaller.

Secondly, they were set in Austria. Schoolgirls of my circle had never travelled farther than a day trip to the Isle of Man, so anything foreign brought out severe blockages. It meant one was continually tolling with nicht wahrs, gnadiges frauleins, peculiar fathers who would say “Canst though scale the mountain?” to their lieblings, and lieblings who responded with “topping scheme” or some such linguistic oddity.

Reading them again, I now have some more mature reasons for doubting their popularity. The Chalet books are characterised by an almost manic slaughter of parents, so that orphans abound in moving profusion and for every parent slain there is an Old Girl ready with equally copious new babies, the tendency for twins and triplets being quite remarkable.

The girls themselves are of delicate health (a suspense device, this), consistently lovely, and quick to see the error of their rarely wrongful ways. Not a soul has scabby knees or a snub nose, and rebelliousness, rather than being an attractive virtue, is swiftly punished and repented. This presumably is why school libraries are so happy to stock the books.

Structurally, the stories are episodic rather than plotty, and if Miss Brent-Dyer feels anything exciting coming on, the reader is warned with the preliminary phrase, “but little did they know that...” as if one were an elderly person of nervous disposition about to watch a piece of telly surgery. She cheats a bit by having her Tyrolean setting. This is largely responsible for any avalanche, fog or flood that accelerates the heartbeat beyond a sleepy tick, and though in fairness one must admit The Chalet School in Exile has a sinister Nazi spy in it, even she repents and the girls learn that Germans are really all very lovable.

Judged individually, the books are little more than guides on running a school with fees and moral tone equally high, but they score by sheer weight of numbers. Like the Archers, they lure the serial addict relentlessly on. So self-propagating have they become, indeed, that one feels certain they will continue to appear once a year even when Miss Brent-Dyer really has departed for the Great Alp.

Reading them again, I now have some more mature reasons for doubting their popularity. The Chalet books are characterised by an almost manic slaughter of parents, so that orphans abound in moving profusion and for every parent slain there is an Old Girl ready with equally copious new babies, the tendency for twins and triplets being quite remarkable.

...peculiar fathers who would say “Canst though scale the mountain?” to their lieblings, and lieblings who responded with “topping scheme” or some such linguistic oddity.

Sorry to laugh at such a nasty critical article, but that paragraph really is funny .

She cheats a bit by having her Tyrolean setting. This is largely responsible for any avalanche, fog or flood that accelerates the heartbeat beyond a sleepy tick

So self-propagating have they become, indeed, that one feels certain they will continue to appear once a year even when Miss Brent-Dyer really has departed for the Great Alp.

My own favourite bit was the parody of Herr Mensch:



I spent most of the time I was typing this up, roaring laughing!

When of an age to read the Chalet Books, I presumed that Miss Elinor M. Brent-Dyer was dead. My reason for thinking this was a dusty quaintness about the books that placed them in the Angela Brazil era: the school ethic of decency, the preference for cricket, and the intimate form of address, “old chap”. Indeed, one might so easily have been reading of small prep-school boys, a suspicion deepened by the number of people called Bill, Jo or Tom, and almost confirmed by Joey’s chiding of a young girl who had developed “a violent affection for her” with the kindly words, “Do buck up Simone and be – be a man.”

Reading them again, I now have some more mature reasons for doubting their popularity. The Chalet books are characterised by an almost manic slaughter of parents, so that orphans abound in moving profusion and for every parent slain there is an Old Girl ready with equally copious new babies, the tendency for twins and triplets being quite remarkable.

horribly fat

I think the "thee" and "thou" are supposed to be a way to portray the difference between Sie and du, with "thee" and "thou" representing the more intimate "du".