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

by Helen McClelland

  Today this particular ‘difficulty’ would not exist. But, at the time, the only acceptable solution, in real life as well as fiction, would have been to adopt the arrangement that became traditional at the Chalet School, where ‘Prayers was always a dual affair . . . As it [the school] had begun in a Catholic country, it had been necessary to separate the girls for religious teaching . . . Miss Wilson, as second-mistress and a Catholic, always took Prayers for the Catholics; while Miss Annersley, the Head, and a staunch member of the Church of England, did the same office for the Protestants.’

  This custom was to persist at the Chalet School. And descriptions similar to the above (from Lavender Laughs in the Chalet School, 1943) can be found in a majority of the Chalet books up to and including the fifty-seventh of the series, which was published in 1969. But here Elinor betrays a certain failure to move with the times, for by 1969 Catholics and Protestants in a real-life boarding school would probably have been holding joint prayers.

  However there is nothing remarkable in anyone of her age (Elinor had reached her seventies in 1964) being slow to change. The unexpected thing in Elinor is that, when younger, she had been quite unusually forward-looking and also tolerant in her own religious outlook. And, interestingly, in this respect her change from Protestant to Catholic brought no discernible change of attitude. At least, it appears to be impossible for anyone to guess from her books alone, even approximately the year in which she became a Catholic.

  Nowadays there would probably be widespread agreement with the point of view expressed by Joey Bettany when, during an argument, she defends the Catholic Church although, at the time, still a member herself of the Church of England: ‘ . . . after all, . . . it’s only one of the roads to God. If you think that way, then it’s best for you. If you think another way, then that’s best. But they all go to the same end.’ Yet in 1930, when Elinor wrote the words for Joey to speak (in Eustacia Goes to the Chalet School), the ecumenical idea they embody was years ahead of its time.

  And it is because Elinor did have a different attitude from many of her contemporaries that her school stories differ from others in an important way. Up until the coming of the Chalet School, in 1925, the typical schoolgirl of fiction — or, for that matter, schoolboy — had been a Protestant, and more often than not a member of the Church of England. Angela Brazil’s girls, for instance, are Church of England to a man — stroke person. Even when their school is situated in a Catholic country, as happens in The School in the South, they still ‘On Sundays . . . paraded to the British Church [which] . . . the school liked [although] . . . It was so utterly different from anything to which they had been accustomed in England or America . . . [being] simply a big room in the basement of the Hotel Anglais . . .’ (Indeed, where else?)

  Thus the whole concept of Elinor’s Chalet School, with its high proportion of Roman Catholic girls associating happily and on equal terms with Protestants, must have seemed revolutionary to schoolgirl readers of the time. On the other hand, readers then would have found nothing unusual in the strong religious feeling which, to a greater or lesser degree, permeates all Elinor’s books. A religious element was considered an almost obligatory ingredient of pre-war schoolgirl fiction; and all the best-known writers in the genre had their own ways of bringing religion into their stories.

  Today some people find this side of Elinor’s writings totally off-putting; among them, predictably, Mary Cadogan and Patricia Craig, the authors of You’re a Brick, Angela! (1976), who declare that: ‘A serious weakness of the Chalet School series is the religious sentimentality which [so they inform us] accompanies each episode of physical danger.’

  Now the two parts of this pronouncement require separate consideration. The first can in itself pass muster, even if one disagrees. The second is simply inaccurate. A reader need look no further than theepisode (in The Rivals of the Chalet School) cited only two pages earlier by these same authors, where Joey ‘[drags] a foolhardy skater out of an icebound river [sic]’. This rescue is unquestionably fraught with physical danger, but Elinor’s paragraphs describing it contain not one sentence that could possibly be construed as religious.

  And although Chalet girls in danger do sometimes have audible recourse to prayer (a reaction not absolutely unknown in real life), innumerable hair-raising emergencies occur where they do not. But then neither is it exact that ‘In the first five books Joey . . . [comes] near to death herself only once’; nor is the Tiern/Achen See a ‘river’.

  However there is no denying that a vein of sentimentality exists in Elinor’s books. Nor that it sometimes comes to the surface in her manner of writing about religious matters. But of course it does also in connection with many subjects: friendships, schooldays, families, engagements, marriage, babies, loyalty and patriotism are among them.

  Here, it is important once again to remember the passing of time, for certainly Elinor does not exceed in her modes of expression other writers of her type and period. Angela Brazil, for one, whose books are often filled with a far more cloying sentimentality. And both Elsie Oxenham and Dorita Fairlie Bruce were in their different ways capable of greater extremes in sentimental writing. As to the affirmation of religious and moral principles that underlies all Elinor’s stories, it is plain that a majority of her readers, past and present, have felt this to be sincere. Further, that many have derived from it a genuine sense of security. Three letters from three different periods may be quoted here as being typical of many others. The first correspondent, who described herself in 1975 as ‘now middle-aged’, had been a Chalet fan from childhood; she wrote in special praise of the ‘sense of deeply held religious views [which is] running through the series, without the books being at all “pi”.’ The second, also an admirer from her early years, wrote in the 1960s to thank Elinor, not just ‘for writing the Chalet books’ but specifically for their ‘religious aspect’; and she explains that, after ‘a long time [when] I . . . suffered from lack of faith, the fact that characters I admired so much in [your books] . . . were Christians inspired me to try to rediscover my faith’. The third, who at the time of writing was in her early thirties, made the point that although ‘the verbal expression can sometimes be coy and perhaps sentimental, the underlying faith and trust are not. It is the trust and faith to which . . . [the readers] are responding and in which they find hope and support.’

  There is also evidence in letters concerning a particular passage in The Head Girl of the Chalet School (1928) where some lines were singled out for unfavourable mention by the writers of You’re a Brick, Angela! (who were, to be fair, writing in the extremely unsympathetic climate of the mid-1970s, and might perhaps be less severe today).

  To put the scene in context: Joey and Grizel, aged fifteen and seventeen at this point, are staying with Joey’s sister Madge, whose husband James Russell is a doctor; on this particular evening they have just heard some bad news about a patient of Doctor Russell’s; and, as they sit with books in front of them:

  [Joey’s] thoughts were all on that mysterious thing that was happening at the sanatorium.

  Madge divined it as soon as she entered the room . . . ‘Joey, you need not be sorry for this poor fellow. He has nothing to live for, and he will be joining those he loved best to-night. The priest was here this morning, and he is prepared.’

  The two girls came and sat on the floor beside her.

  ‘Madame, what is death?’ asked Grizel suddenly.

  ‘Just falling asleep with God — to awake in His presence — that’s all,’ said Madge Russell quietly.

  ‘Then why are we afraid of it?’

  ‘Because it means a change, and most of us are afraid of changes that we don’t understand. But, Grizel, there is nothing to fear, really, any more than there is anything to fear when we fall asleep at night.’

  Grizel sat silent, thinking this over.

  ‘God is with us through it all?’ asked Joey.

  ‘Yes, Jo. He never leaves us if we have faith in Him.’
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  It was those lines about ‘falling asleep to wake with God’ that incurred the censure of the Cadogan/Craig team. And perhaps no one would claim that this description of death, with its echoes of Victorian tombstones, was particularly striking or original. But it should not be forgotten that The Head Girl of the Chalet School was written in 1928 and within the conventions of a particular genre. Bearing all this in mind, it must be allowed that the passage quoted above represents an honest attempt by Elinor to grapple with a universal problem: that of facing death.

  Even today the particular form of reassurance that Madge offers to the younger girls would not be rejected by everyone. And Elinor’s fan mail makes it clear that the phrase about death did in fact make a special appeal to many of her readers. One, who was a young nurse during the World War II air-raids on London wrote that she could remember finding ‘comfort for . . . [herself] and others’ in the words. And surely nurses working in the Blitz cannot have retained any sentimental illusions about death.

  Another fan, the writer of an article about Elinor which appeared in The Scotsman in February 1970, voiced particular appreciation of the way that ‘in each [book] Miss Brent-Dyer managed to convey her own clear-cut moral values, her belief in loving kindness towards our immediate circle and then outwards into the world beyond’.

  On the other hand there were some, right from the beginning, who would not have agreed. One, who is now herself a well-known writer for children, recalls that although in her youth she liked some of the early Chalet School stories, ‘even those were too religious for me’.

  However she does go on to make an interesting point concerning this over-religious side, as she found it, of certain books — (she mentions also E. J. Oxenham’s ‘Abbey’ series): ‘somehow that rolled over me when I was young. I just thought it odd and left it at that.’ And this last describes neatly a typical child reader’s capacity for selection; something that may well explain why so many children today, including the growing number who have had no formal religious upbringing, continue to enjoy reading Elinor’s books.

  One thing does not admit of question: despite her sometimes dated phraseology, Elinor herself, whether as a member of the Church of England or as a Roman Catholic, emerges from her writings as a firm believer, and someone to whom religion mattered greatly. No one could read her books with an open mind and fail to be convinced of that.

  As an ending to this chapter, mention should be made of another event that took place in the year 1930, since undoubtedly it was important to Elinor and might conceivably have influenced her decision to join the Catholic Church. This was the world-famous Passion Play at Oberammergau.

  A visit by the Chalet School to Oberammergau forms a central part of The Chalet School and Jo, which was published in 1931. And in this seventh Chalet School story Elinor gives detailed descriptions of Oberammergau and its surroundings, and devotes a whole chapter to an account of the Passion Play.

  So the question naturally arises as to whether she herself had been to Oberammergau. The descriptive passages in The Chalet School and Jo do suggest that the author had some personal experience, both of the place and of the Passion Play itself. And certainly it would have been possible for Elinor to have made the visit. Performances at Oberammergau normally take place in only one year out of ten, but 1930, when she was engaged in writing The Chalet School and Jo, was in fact a year when the play was given.

  At this time, too, Elinor could have afforded the expedition quite easily. Living at home as she was, her day-to-day expenses were presumably minimal. And bearing in mind that a rail trip to Oberammergau, as advertised in a 1930 Shields Gazette, was available for a mere £4, the copyright payment on just one of her books (£40 at this stage for the Chalet School stories) could have paid the necessary travelling and other expenses several times over. The advertisement even mentioned special arrangements for travel direct from South Shields, and it would be hard to imagine that Elinor did not see this advertisement, since at this time she was writing regularly for the Shields Gazette.

  Another piece of circumstantial evidence that Elinor had seen the Passion Play was provided by two of her younger acquaintances in South Shields, Olga Hargreaves and her sister, who recalled visiting her towards the end of 1930 and seeing her room filled with souvenirs of Oberammergau and the Passion Play. Both were convinced that Elinor had been there. However, in the end it has to be said that no definite proof exists — one way or the other. And the verdict, as so often with Elinor, must remain ‘Not Proven’.

  CHAPTER XVII

  ‘MY NEW HOME IN THE WEST COUNTRY’

  ACCORDING to the British Library’s catalogue, The Chalet School and Jo was the only book by Elinor to be published in 1931. But a school story entitled The Feud in the Fifth Remove did almost certainly appear that year; and this otherwise unremarkable book thus has the distinction of being one of the few that have ever escaped the British Library’s net.

  In the following year there were additions to both the La Rochelle and Chalet series (Janie of La Rochelle; The Chalet Girls in Camp); and also a children’s historical novel, The Little Marie-José.

  The latter represented a new departure for Elinor. For although My Lady Caprice, the first of the two plays she wrote for the Bainbridges, had been a costume drama, and she had also written at least one short story with a period setting (The Yellow Gown published in a 1925 children’s annual), The Little Marie-José falls into quite a different category from any of these earlier efforts.

  By the standards of the day it was not a long book — only 170 pages, whereas five of the Chalet series to date had contained over 300. But it was of sufficient size and also sufficiently well researched and serious in approach to merit consideration as an historical novel, if a slight one, not just as a children’s story in costume setting. And yet Elinor herself (in a letter written in the 1960s to one of her editors at William Collins) described The Little Marie-José only as ‘an historical tale’, bracketing it with The Little Missus (1942), which, though quite charming in its way, is a much lesser book in both size and content. On the other hand, she did apply the term ‘historical novel’ to her Elizabeth the Gallant, published by Thornton Butterworth in 1935.

  Today it is not easy to see why Elinor thought this romantic adventure story, set in the times of Cavaliers and Roundheads, a more significant work than The Little Marie-José. Still less easy to understand why both Elinor and the publishers apparently considered Elizabeth the Gallant to be an adult book. True the story does take its heroine right past the altar to her wedding-night, and beyond . . . even though in a heavily discreet and inexplicit way (‘Lionel led his bride to the great room . . . Suddenly he caught her in his arms. “My beloved!” he whispered. She lay against him like a nested bird, and there was silence, deep and sweet, in the bridal chamber.’). So perhaps that was enough in the 1930s to render Elizabeth the Gallant unsuitable for children. Certainly, when the story was later adapted for publication in a schoolgirls’ annual, all passages like the above were expunged.

  By the time that Elizabeth the Gallant was published in 1935 a major change had taken place in Elinor’s circumstances, which is indicated in the book’s dedication. But, before coming to this, another matter should first be mentioned in order to keep Elinor’s story more or less in chronological order.

  It appears that during the year 1931 Elinor fell violently and hopelessly in love. Or perhaps it would be more exact, if less kind, to describe her state as infatuation, since there is no evidence that any close relationship existed between her and the man in question. But at least there is no doubt in this case (unlike that of ‘Hugh’ in the First World War) that Donald Edwards really did exist: he was an actor and belonged to a repertory company that was resident at the time in South Shields.

  This apart, little enough is known about the episode, for apparently the only friend in whom Elinor confided anything was Hazel Bainbridge. And even she was not told very much.

  Hazel, by 1931, h
ad left school to become a full-time actress. And that summer a production in which she was playing the lead went on an extensive provincial tour. One of the places they visited was Newcastle upon Tyne; and, this being within easy reach of South Shields, Hazel accepted an invitation to stay with Elinor and the Ainsleys at 5 Belgrave Terrace.

  On a superficial level Hazel remembers two things about that visit: one, the quite remarkable amount of tea that was drunk in the household, with cups of tea not only accompanying every meal but appearing at frequent intervals in between times; the other, that even more cats seemed to be around than there had been during her childhood.

  But her main and important memory is of the way that, at intervals throughout the week, ‘Len would pour forth about this man, this actor of hers that she was so taken up with’. Whenever Hazel and Elinor were alone together the subject would come up, sooner or later. And yet, despite all the outpourings, Hazel never managed to gather if Elinor and this man really knew each other well. Donald Edwards was clearly some years younger than Elinor, who was then thirty-seven; and judging from the signed photograph that was kept in Len’s bed-sitter, he was extremely good-looking. Moreover, the fact that he was already happily married was apparently known, though possibly not to Elinor. One way and another, Hazel, even at the time, got an impression that ‘the whole thing was probably far more on Len’s side’.