Behind the Chalet School: A biography of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer

by Helen McClelland

  ‘Herr Anserl has come up to give you an extra lesson, Margia, and . . . [Miss Wilson] said I was to tell you to go at once!’

  Margia’s face clouded over. ‘Bother him!’ she said ungratefully. ‘What does he want to do that for? I had a lesson yesterday, and that’s enough for one week!’ (The Chalet School and Jo, 1931)

  Not that Margia really lacks enthusiasm for work. In a later book (The New House at the Chalet School, 1935) Elinor makes this plain when Margia has an encounter with the new matron, an unpleasing lady whose attitude to music is strictly no-nonsense: ‘If you expect me to believe that any girl isn’t overjoyed at getting out of her practising, you’ve made a mistake,’ she proclaims at one stage.

  The said Matron Besly, being a new arrival at the Chalet School (she doesn’t stay long, either), is unaware that ‘Margia’s love of music amounted to a mania’, and in she sails with all guns firing.

  ‘What are you doing over here?’ she asked sharply. ‘And what do you mean by grinning at me like that?’ . . .

  ‘Mademoiselle sent me over here to practise, as the piano I generally use has gone — two strings snapped with the heat,’ . . . [Margia] explained . . . ‘And I beg your pardon, Matron, but I wasn’t grinning — at least, I didn’t know that I was. You see, I’m so longing to get at my new Brahms.’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Matron, curtly. ‘Don’t tell me such nonsense as that!’

  But Elinor clearly understood the possibility that this idea was far from rubbish and nonsense. Although not gifted with the fictional Margia’s ability to play the piano, she was genuinely able to share such feelings about music. And this capacity for getting inside a musical character, along with her more realistic view of the music profession, singles out Elinor from most other writers in her field. Elsie Oxenham, for one: Miss Oxenham, on good authority, cannot be faulted where folk dancing is concerned; but she always manages to give an impression that things are far too easy for her budding musicians: Queen’s Hall (akin to the Royal Festival Hall of today) is, as it were, just at the end of the school concert platform. And with Angela Brazil there is something about her schoolgirl performers that suggests more acquaintance with the romantic party piece than with the five-finger exercise.

  However, to balance things a bit, neither of those ladies ever made such an out-and-out blunder as Elinor once did in writing about a staff evening at the Chalet School (Exploits of the Chalet Girls, 1933): for during this entertainment: ‘four of the Sixth [Form] played a movement from one of Brahms’ Quartets for violin, viola, ’cello and flute [sic]. It went very well.’

  And maybe it did go well. But unfortunately, and to the possible chagrin of many flautists, Brahms never wrote even a single flute quartet, nor indeed any chamber music work that includes the flute.

  That really must have been an off-day for Elinor; and not much excuse for her, either. Because, as she herself often pointed out, her musical education, though perhaps less thorough than she claimed, had undeniably been lifelong.

  CHAPTER V

  SCHOOLMISTRESSES AND SCHOOLGIRLS

  THE music lessons that began on Elinor’s fourth birthday were to be continued through and even beyond her school-days; and at first her mother used to supervise her practice, so no doubt it was as regular as that of Margia Stevens at the Chalet School, or Gerry Challoner in Gerry Goes to School; although it perhaps did not include such impressive quantities of scales and arpeggios, finger exercises and studies (Czerny’s Etudes de la Velocité are frequently mentioned in the stories).

  Whether her piano lessons took place at school or elsewhere is not known. The Misses Stewart’s school did of course have a piano teacher; indeed such a school could hardly have done without one in those days, when to play the piano a little was considered to be a necessary accomplishment for young ladies.

  Nor was piano playing the only attraction offered by St Nicholas’ School. According to the Misses Stewart’s advertisement there was Swedish drill, for instance — the instructress at one time being a Miss Wilson, a name with strong Chalet School echoes. Also, and no doubt a matter for some complacency, a fully qualified Froebel teacher for the Kindergarten. However it is noticeable that the school’s advertisement does not until quite late in Elinor’s time mention any other qualified staff, which would rather imply that there were none. The two Miss Stewarts were almost certainly unqualified as teachers themselves, although both had behind them years of experience in their school, and one sister had also worked as a private governess.

  For some reason, though, it was not this sister but the younger of the pair, Miss Henrietta, who took charge of the teaching at St Nicholas’s. In the photograph (below) she is seated in the second row, the further right of the two ladies in black. Her elder sister, the lady in the terrifying hat who is seated beside Miss Henrietta, appears to have acted mainly as housekeeper, organising the catering, doling out the morning milk and so on. But she was obviously much concerned with the general running of the school and must have had a hand in all decision- and policy-making. Also, at a guess, with discipline.

  St Nicholas’s School (known as the Misses Stewart’s school), taken in the garden of the school’s premises about 1908. Elinor (May) is in the second back row, fifth from the right. Miss Stewart is in the second row, wearing a hat, with her sister on her left.

  Other mistresses to be seen in the photo include: mathematics, (did she and Elinor often clash?) third row, immediately behind the elder Miss Stewart; art and dancing, on extreme right of second row from the back; the French ‘mamselle’ — unmistakably French — in the third row, third from the left; and the Kindergarten teacher, second row, third from the left.

  It can be seen that the latter’s charges in the Kindergarten included a number of small boys. Pretty minuscule they look, too, but then not one of them can have been more than eight at the most, for by the conventions of the day it was around the age of eight that masculinity was adjudged really to set in, forever debarring boys from attending the same school as their sisters. From this point onwards the pressure was heavy on a boy to become ‘manly’. And this included a lot of things: the whole of the stiff-upper-lip cult, of course; and perhaps little matters such as no longer wearing button boots, which, in some circles at least, were thought ‘sissy’. All rather odd in a generation that was still putting small boys up to the age of three or even four into petticoats and dresses.

  Elinor’s brother, Henzell, was one of those who spent a couple of years in St Nicholas’s Kindergarten. But that had been during the school’s Ogle Terrace days; by the time this photograph was taken Henzell was at least twelve, and had long since moved on to the boys’ high school.

  The photograph does not make it clear whether the school had an official uniform or not. The younger children’s clothing shows a fair amount of variation, but many of the older girls are dressed similarly in blouses and skirts. (And only to think that in those days ‘a skirt for lasting wear’, as advertised in the Sunday Companion, could be bought for a mere three shillings and eleven pence — just under 20p.)

  Oddly enough, some of those 1908 garments look not unlike the clothes worn by some girls of the present day. However there is no doubt at all that the garments the camera does not tell us about were very different. Underclothes, to begin with — though they would surely never have been mentioned: the usual generous array included invariably a chemise, drawers and petticoat, of cotton or flannelette according to season; in cold weather a woollen vest or combinations would have been added; possibly stays; but no bras — in the present-day sense they were unknown; and, just to add to the joys of life, for Sundays the cotton petticoat and drawers were usually starched, which really must have made a torture of those prickly horsehair sofas that were all too popular at the time. But then comfort was hardly important. Legs, for instance, were always encased in long stockings: in winter these were woollen and usually black; even in summer they were long, although at least they were made of cotton, and mostly white. />
  Today’s schoolgirl, going comfortably bare-legged in hot weather, could spare a bit of sympathy for seventeen-year-old Madeleine in Elinor’s Seven Scamps (1927): during a summer holiday in Guernsey she actually has to spend precious time mending one of her stockings, and it is clear she wears them as a matter of course.

  Girls at the Chalet School also wear stockings more often than not, at least in the early books of the series, and from time to time this can make rather odd reading nowadays. As, for example, when Joey and Elisaveta, aged fourteen and twelve, are making a hair-raising (and unforeseen) mountain escape: here, although both the narrative and the illustration on the original dustwrapper make plain they are wearing only summer dresses, they must nevertheless be stocking-clad, since they are able to remove the said stockings and cut them up to make an improvised rope.

  And this particular scene throws some interesting light on the attitude of Elinor’s generation towards the whole subject of underclothing:

  Still . . . [the stocking rope] was not nearly long enough. They would land on a fairly steep slope, and they dared not risk a drop, [So how to lengthen that rope?]

  ‘Our frocks?’ suggested Elisaveta.

  Joey shook her head. ‘No; I don’t think we’d better do that. People might have fits if we wandered to Briesau in only knickers and camis.’

  This was so true that . . . [Elisaveta] said no more.

  (The Princess of the Chalet School, 1927)

  Well now — was it a matter of life and death to get down that precipice or wasn’t it? In fact, when the passage is read in context the urgency of the situation is clear; and, apart from this moment, the whole escape sequence is well managed. But then it is impossible today to appreciate Joey and Elisaveta’s dilemma. The elder Miss Stewart though, a lady who even in summertime wore a hat when being photographed outside her own house, would undoubtedly have grasped the niceties of the problem. Elinor too could understand, for that was the way she had been brought up.

  To return from that Austrian mountainside to the St Nicholas’s school photograph — it is obvious, since the picture was taken in about 1908, that the youngest person in the group would now be at least ninety. However, the people of South Shields appear to be not only longlived but gifted with long memories, and as recently as the mid-1970s, when the school photograph was published in the Shields Gazette, a surprisingly large number of the pupils were recognised and named. They include the owner of the photograph, the late Mrs Eva Oliver — front row, fifth from the left; Aimée Elizabeth Donald, described by Elinor in her dedication to Heather Leaves School as ‘my oldest friend’ — third from the right in the second back row; and Miss Kathleen Page, who supplied the description of Elinor’s story-telling sessions on the beach — second from the left in the third row, wearing a saucy bow in her hair.

  None of the others named have any special connection with Elinor. But, surprisingly, a girl who is definitely known to have been Elinor’s friend has not so far been identified. Her name was Elizabeth Jobling; and since her home was in Winchester Street, just opposite the Dyer family, she and Elinor used always to make the journeys to and from school together. Not in those despised trams: every day Elinor and Elizabeth, as described by Miss Mary Starling, a friend of both, were companions on the ‘long walk, up Winchester Street to Fowler Street along the Westoe Road and so to the Village’ and the Misses Stewart’s establishment.

  Of course there is no way of being certain that their friendship was a specially close one; but it is a safe guess that had the two disliked each other’s company they would have contrived in the usual manner of children to avoid it. In any case, there was much about Elizabeth’s sad and rather romantic story that would have appealed to Elinor. To begin with, Elizabeth, like so many school-story heroines, was an orphan. Elinor’s books were going to be thronged with orphans, right from the first story, Gerry Goes to School, where Gerry is an orphan — the first of a long line which includes Joey and Madge Bettany, Juliet Carrick, Robin Humphries, Eustacia Benson, Daisy and Primula Venables, Adrienne Desmoines and the pianist ‘genius’ Nina Rutherford, among the Chalet School’s generous quota. Then Janie Temple and her half-sisters Elizabeth and Anne, central characters of the La Rochelle books, are orphans, and so is Pauline Ozanne. In addition, scores of other people in all the various books are either fatherless or motherless, the latter being perhaps the more usual.

  Elizabeth Jobling had something else in common with Janie Temple of La Rochelle: her father, too, had been a sailor. But whereas Captain Temple, RN, dies peacefully at home, somewhere near the beginning of The Maids of La Rochelle, Elizabeth’s father suffered a more dramatic death having been drowned at sea (as had, of course, Elinor’s grandfather, William Dyer). At that time Elizabeth was still quite a small child and she had already lost her mother (who died at the time of Elizabeth’s birth). And so, following her father’s death, Elizabeth came to live in Winchester Street with her cousins the Hutchinsons. It was then that the two girls, who were much the same age, became acquainted, for Mrs Hutchinson was a friend of Elinor’s mother; hence it might well have been Nelly Dyer who recommended the Misses Stewart’s school.

  Almost nothing can be told about Elizabeth’s career at St Nicholas’s, only that it was not to be a very long one; for Elizabeth was one of the many unfortunate people at that time who contracted tuberculosis. Perhaps ill-health kept her away from school on the day that group photograph was taken.

  The disease may already have been established before Elizabeth came to live in Winchester Street — it would hardly be possible to discover this now. Nor is it known whether her illness was prolonged, or took the form that was grimly known as ‘galloping consumption’. All that can be stated for certain is that, at the age of sixteen, poor Elizabeth died.

  And it is a sobering thought that Elinor’s school-friend Elizabeth Jobling was only one among thousands of people, in all age groups and all parts of Britain, who died from tuberculosis during that one year, nineteen hundred and eleven. In South Shields alone the disease caused many hundreds of deaths. No wonder that the whole subject of tuberculosis became so important to Elinor, and was to play a significant part in many of her stories.

  CHAPTER VI

  ‘JOEY WILL GET WELL’

  IN the summer of 1911 when Elizabeth Jobling died Elinor was only seventeen. Yet it is highly unlikely that Elizabeth’s was the first death to have occurred among her youthful acquaintances. At that time it was still a common enough fate to die young; a quick look through the contemporary death registers gives melancholy confirmation of this. An instance at random: in the column where Elizabeth’s death is recorded, considerably more than half the total of seventy-five entries refer to people under the age of fourteen; and with this in mind it becomes easier to understand why there are so many death-bed scenes in Elinor’s books.

  Her own first experience of a death in her immediate family circle had come as early as January 1901, when her grandmother, Hannah Rutherford, died after a fortnight’s illness during which she had been nursed at home.

  Hannah’s death must have had a shattering effect on the household at 52 Winchester Street. Through it Nelly Dyer lost the mother who had always been her guide and support, and more specially so after Charles’s departure. The two children, Elinor and Henzell, then six and five years old, lost the grandmother who had been there in the background ever since, literally, the first moments of their lives; who had helped to look after them and no doubt also to ‘bring them up in the way they should go’.

  The immediate cause of Hannah’s death had been pneumonia with pleurisy — something else that plainly made a deep impression on Elinor, and was to appear frequently in her stories. In particular, her Chalet School books of the twenties and thirties contain many references to Joey Bettany’s having had ‘severe pleuro-pneumonia’ — the latter being the name Elinor always uses in her early writings.

  Nowadays the term ‘pleuro-pneumonia’ is far more often used in a ve
terinary context: and a present-day reader might even wonder why Joey should be afflicted with (as described in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary) ‘a contagious febrile malady peculiar to horned cattle’. But at the time when Elinor wrote these stories her readers would have been all too familiar both with this often fatal disease and with that particular name for it. That the name should now have become so unfamiliar to most people must be a tribute to modern antibiotic drugs, which have made the illness itself both much rarer and far less serious.

  Elinor’s books make plain that she did herself know something about the illness. Here, from The Rivals of the Chalet School (1929), is her picture of an eight-year-old girl, Robin Humphries, entering the room where Joey is lying dangerously ill with the aforesaid pleuro-pneumonia:

  Everything [in the room] was very spotless. A queer kind of bottle — that was what Robin called it [in her mind] — stood near, and a nurse in fresh uniform was at the fire. By the bed sat Madge . . . one slim hand holding Joey’s. Her lips were moving, though no sound came from them, and, baby as she was, the Robin realised that . . . [Madge] was praying. Then her eyes wandered past to the bed and its occupant. Joey lay propped up with pillows to make it easier for her to breathe. Her black eyes were half-open, and her cheeks were scarlet, as the Robin had never seen Joey’s cheeks before. A tearing rusty sound came through her parted lips, and she was muttering to herself in low tones.