Here the sentence ‘Apart from that I don’t think there is much likeness’ may contain a clue, for it indicates that Elinor was concerned only with obvious superficial differences and resemblances. And there is no denying that her own circumstances were quite unlike Joey’s. For one thing, there was the wide gap between their ages and this continued to increase, for although in real life it took forty-five years to write the Chalet series, Joey, who began at twelve, has still not quite reached forty in the last book. Joey, then, was younger by far. And, as Elinor might also have pointed out, she was married with a large family of children. She had been educated mainly at boarding-school. She had spent much of her early life abroad; and as an adult was able to travel extensively not just in Europe, but as far afield as Canada. She had black hair, cut with a fringe, ‘eyes like pools of ink’ and a delicately pointed face. She was tall and slim — originally even thin. In short, she looked nothing like Elinor.
And that, no doubt, was that — at least in Elinor’s mind. So perhaps she was genuinely unaware of the extent to which she had been absorbed into her creature. Apart from anything else it had happened so gradually, for there are clear indications in the early books that Elinor then identified with the grown-up Madge Bettany, and not with her younger sister who was still only a child.
In any case, it would be over-simplifying things just to state that Elinor identified with Joey and leave it at that. There is no doubt that she also lived moments of wishfulfilment in other characters, most of all in Miss Annersley, that very model of a successful and popular headmistress. And bearing in mind the difficulties Elinor had in her own school, her feelings about Miss Annersley can be understood. On the other hand, her attitude to another of her long-standing Chalet School characters, Grizel Cochrane, is less easy to fathom. Grizel is important in all the early Chalet books; but there are signs that she is not Elinor’s darling, for she is seldom allowed to appear in a wholly favourable light. Then, all of a sudden, in the fourth book, Grizel is given a star role as The Head Girl of the Chalet School, and is apparently admitted to high favour.
The change of angle is not altogether convincing. It also represents something quite unusual in the Chalet series; for although Elinor can be monstrously careless over details, she usually manages to keep her characters behaving with remarkable consistency. But plainly Elinor’s heart was not really in that transformation of Grizel, who only a few books later is showing once more the ‘certain hardness in her character’ that had been spotlighted in all the early stories. Moreover Grizel was to be among the unfavoured few on whom Elinor did not lavish an early marriage and flocks of children — which must be significant, in view of the fact that Elinor, like many other writers in the genre, clearly considered marriage a kind of good conduct prize.
In the end, even Grizel does make it to the altar, and at least one baby, but not until the fiftieth book of the series, where at rising forty she is at last allowed to find happiness with a doctor. And perhaps it was, at least in part, because the coveted matrimonial prize had never come Elinor’s own way that she so conspicuously grudged it to her unfavourite Grizel. For there seems little doubt that Elinor herself was never fully resigned to remaining unmarried. Her books do make it almost painfully clear that she thought of spinsterhood as second-best. It would be hard, for instance, not to hear a personal note beneath the following comment in The Chalet School Goes to It.
‘ “So the last of our old quartette is married” . . . [Frieda] said softly. “I am so glad. Simone is too dear and sweet to spend all her life teaching.” ’
And Simone, it must be pointed out, cannot be more than twenty-three at this time. Elinor, when she wrote the lines, was forty-seven and had been teaching on and off for nearly thirty years.
Nor was it only in fiction that Elinor revealed herself. One friend who, perhaps unexpectedly, got married when already into her forties, recalls the vehemence with which Elinor exclaimed: ‘Oh, you are so lucky’. Another, Mrs Vivien Pass, who knew Elinor well for many years, is certain that ‘she longed to marry . . . [but that] men in general found her exuberance embarrassing’. This friend pointed out, too, that ‘the Great War left so many unfulfilled people’; adding, a little sadly, ‘If she could have married, maybe there might not have been so many Chalet books, but there would have been a contented Elinor’.
That, however, seems an over-simplification. It is at least questionable whether Elinor would have been contented in marriage either. For one thing her books suggest that she had impossibly rosy and unrealistic views on the subject. And her true feelings towards the opposite sex remain obscure (as already discussed in Chapter IX). The idea has also been put forward — and inevitably — that Elinor might have had a latent tendency to lesbianism. Mrs Phyllis Matthewman once said she ‘would not be surprised’. Nevertheless, it is plain that nothing definite has been alleged at any time, from any quarter. Moreover that it was particularly noted during Elinor’s college days that her most extravagant gestures of affection were (as described) ‘perfectly harmless’. And it is virtually certain that, if any such latent tendency did exist, Elinor herself was not consciously aware of it.
One other point on her attitude to marriage: since Elinor had undoubtedly convinced herself that she would have preferred to be married, it hardly matters whether she was right or wrong in supposing so.
It seems probable, too, that any resentment she may have felt at being condemned to spinsterhood must to some extent have coloured her relationship with her mother. Eleanor Ainsley — or Dyer, or Rutherford — is something of an enigma. Reactions to her vary from great affection to frank dislike. But there can be no doubt that she did in some ways outshine her daughter, at least in the social sphere. She was generally considered to possess both good looks and feminine charm — the first of which Elinor could never have claimed, although she could in her own way show a certain kind of charm. And reading between the lines it appears that Nelly could always contrive to get her own way and to ‘rule the roost’ without stepping outside the character of gentle old lady.
Quite possibly Mrs Ainsley was less clever than her daughter, and certainly she was less well educated: her handwriting alone would confirm that. But for Elinor there was no escaping the fact that her mother had achieved two marriages (no matter that the first was unsuccessful), whereas she herself had not been so much as engaged; and that did carry some weight in those days, when the wedding ring was still widely regarded as a woman’s most desirable status symbol. One way and another it is not surprising to find that some friction existed between Nelly and Elinor. Theirs indeed appears to have been the classic love-hate relationship: ‘Miss Brent-Dyer was always having terrible arguments with her mother,’ according to one ex-pupil of the Margaret Roper School; whereas another acquaintance from this same period remembers ‘how extremely and openly affectionate Miss Brent-Dyer always was with her mother . . . she would often throw her arms round her and embrace her.’
That, of course, might just have been Elinor’s theatrical manner. But in fact no one seems to question that she and Mrs Ainsley really were devoted to each other; nor that Elinor looked after her mother most faithfully during the last period of her life. Nelly must have had a tough constitution, for she was to live for seven years after that illness in 1950 (described in the letter to Hazel Bainbridge’s daughter); and, despite other heart attacks, to reach eventually the age of eighty-eight.
In the mean time Elinor continued to pour out book after book, although she was almost as tied during the 1950s as she had been in the days of the Margaret Roper School. There was not only her mother to be cared for: ‘Aunt Elizabeth’ apparently lived for many years, and she also became very frail towards the end. It seems, too, that there may also have been other elderly residents in the household. All of which makes the production of those thirty-eight books within a single decade the more remarkable.
Nelly Ainsley’s death, when it came on 22 August 1957, was possibly a release both for her and
for her daughter. And yet Elinor would almost certainly have been stricken at the time. At sixty-three years old she was left without any close relatives. She was herself coming within sight of old age. It was unlikely now that new doors would open.
CHAPTER XX
LIVING IN CHALET LANDS
IN theory it might have been possible at this point for Elinor to build herself a new life. And perhaps another person in her situation would have done so, even at sixty-three years old. For that matter, there are women who, even at eighty-three, would have dropped everything, chucked the Chalet School out of the window and gone off to do some of the things that had been impossible during earlier life.
Elinor could for instance have considered taking another continental holiday — something that for many years had been ruled out for her, first by World War II, and later by the demands made on her as a ‘carer’ for Nelly Ainsley and others. Clearly her thoughts had already been turning towards Europe in the early part of the 1950s; for it was at this point that Elinor decided to send her Chalet School off to Switzerland, which then becomes the setting for the twenty-sixth book, The Chalet School in the Oberland (1952) and for most of the remaining books in the series from No. 29, Joey Goes to the Oberland (1954) and onwards.
For this part of the Chalet School saga Elinor devised a fictional location, the ‘Görnetz Platz’. This, though imaginary, is recognisably placed in the real-world landscape of the Lauterbrunnen valley (Elinor changes the name to ‘Lauterbach’) and is descrbed as being near the well-known resort of Interlaken. The ‘Görnetz Platz’ also appears to have considerable affinities with the two real-life villages of Wengen and Mürren — its situation resembling that of Wengen, while its size and general layout are more akin to Mürren. And the question naturally arises as to how much Elinor’s personal experience went into the drawing of the scenic background. Descriptions abound in the Swiss books, and many real places are mentioned, for the Chalet School girls make the customary regular expeditions, both in the vicinity of the Görnetz Platz and further afield. But the local colour in this part of the series lacks that personal touch that lends so much charm to the early books — including some of those set in ‘Armishire’/Herefordshire.
The matter of whether Elinor herself had ever visited Switzerland has been much discussed by Chalet fans. And here, as so often in Elinor’s life story, the question can have no definite answer. But one thing at least is certain. Any visit she made to Switzerland must have happened no later than 3 July 1932, for it was on that date that Elinor’s one and only passport expired. It had been issued on 4 July 1922, and the Passport Office has confirmed that she never either renewed it or applied for another. Hence any visit to Switzerland could only have taken place during the decade between July 1922 and July 1932. Thus, in the midst of much uncertainty it can be stated with authority that, whatever moves towards independence Elinor may have made following her mother’s death in 1957, a holiday abroad was not among them.
In any case, it seems plain that Elinor did not set great value on independence — as already noted on several occasions. What she in fact did at this point was to remain at Lichfield House, to continue pouring out books, and moreover to write them on exactly the same lines as before. Even the new location of the Chalet School brought no discernible changes to the character of the stories.
To some extent Elinor had now become the prisoner of her own success. Her Chalet books were being read not only throughout Britain but also in most parts of the English-speaking world, and in some European countries. Some were to be translated into Portugese; others, it seems, were adapted in cartoon form by a French publisher. Her fans were continually writing to demand yet more Chalet stories, and the earlier books were constantly being reprinted. By 1959 there were forty-two Chalet books, and many of them were selling well. Naturally her publishers were urging her on. And of course she did need the money. One way and another it would have been difficult for Elinor to have turned from the Chalet School to new paths.
Whether she ever wanted to do so is questionable. For one thing, it does seem that she lacked self-criticism. And there is little doubt that after her mother’s death Elinor (in the words of her old friend Mrs Vivien Pass) ‘began to live more and more in Chalet lands’. Possibly she found less and less to demand her attention in the real world. Besides, she had always shown a tendency to withdraw into fantasy. One of her closest friends in the Hereford days, the late Miss Rose Farr Smith, would have endorsed that. Miss Farr Smith (who at ninety was still active in the world of Girl Guides) wrote warmly that ‘Elinor had a remarkable personality
. . . She and I were good friends for many years. We understood each other’. But she noted, too, that Elinor was ‘capable of being with you and giving you all her attention, then suddenly becoming completely aloof, wrapped up in a world of her own’.
Oddly enough, Elinor quite often describes this kind of thing happening to other people. At one point in The Chalet School in Exile (1940) Joey is ‘far too busy with her new book to give more than a third of her mind’ to anything she is being told. On another occasion (in A Problem for the Chalet School, 1956) it is Con Maynard (Joey’s daughter, and a writer in the making) who is simply ‘no use to man or beast when she’s writing a story’; yet another time, Con is ‘too busy with her imaginary people to worry much about outside affairs’ (Excitements at the Chalet School, 1957). And yet it is quite unlikely that Elinor was aware how often she herself became abstracted in just this way.
Viven Pass, who fully agrees about the extent to which Elinor lived in a fantasy world, also commented — and quite without rancour — that ‘Elinor really preferred all cats and dogs to any of her friends’. And although that may be an exaggeration, no one would deny that Elinor had a great love of animals. She was for many years an active supporter of the RSPCA, and throughout her life was seldom without at least one beloved dog or cat.
At Lichfield House there were always plenty of cats — even after that rumoured upset with the health authorities. Apart from Mrs Ainsley’s tribe, Elinor had her own special ‘amber-coloured’ cat, her ‘precious Bobby’ — full name ‘Bobby Shaftoe’ — who first came to her in about 1941 as a six-week-old kitten, and was to be her constant companion until his death nearly twenty-one years later.
Then there was Bryn, an Alsatian bitch that Elinor owned during the latter part of her time in South Shields, and to which she was much devoted. Bryn is remembered by several friends as an extremely handsome animal, if rather fierce in appearance (Hazel Bainbridge confessed to having been frankly terrified of her). Bryn’s ultimate fate is unknown; no one seems to recall how long she survived. Nor can anyone give the dates when Elinor owned the ‘dear cocker bitch called Sarah’, which is mentioned in the Chalet Club News Letter for September 1966. But the last of Elinor’s pets, described by her in a letter as ‘a most intriguing dog called Simon’, is still remembered by many people (including the author of this book), for he was to survive her and to become the much beloved and faithful companion of Mrs Phyllis Matthewman.
And quite apart from the testimony of her friends, Elinor’s books provide ample evidence about her love of animals. Dogs in particular are important in many of her stories. There are Joey’s two St Bernards in the Chalet series: Rufus first — his rescue as a tiny puppy is most effectively presented in Jo of the Chalet School; then Bruno; both these are described with unmistakable affection and understanding. Then there is Sanchia, Jesanne’s Alsatian puppy in The Lost Staircase. And of course dogs are naturally the central theme in Kennelmaid Nan and They Both Liked Dogs.
Whether Elinor really preferred animals to people is unproven. But most certainly she did not lack friends during the thirty-odd years she spent in Hereford. Perhaps few of them were close to her, for beneath that flamboyant manner she was ‘very reserved until you got to know her’. Possibly, even when you did. But at least two people managed to get past the reserve: Miss Mary Middleton (who died some years before research for t
he original edition of this book began) and Miss Rose Farr Smith (mentioned above). With these two Elinor made real and lasting friendships.
And there was a wide circle of others in whom she took a friendly if somewhat erratic interest. She would write to them occasionally, or perhaps to their children, as with Hazel Bainbridge’s daughter. She would present them, either in person or by post, with copies of her books. She would chat to them in the street — if she happened to see them — or the library or the bank; and would hold forth on any subject that had lately caught her interest; at one time it was flying saucers. She would lend them books and invite them to lunch or tea or, in the case of those who lived far afield, to come and stay in Hereford.
Both she and her mother were hospitably inclined, and it seems that Lichfield House was often filled with visitors, especially during the war years. Some of the guests, according to Elinor’s autograph book, were professional musicians who were giving concerts around Herefordshire. But naturally most of them were personal friends. They included at various times Hazel Bainbridge and Vivien Pass. And in 1944 a very old connection was resumed, when Phyllis Matthewman and her husband Sydney, whose home was in Surrey, came to find a temporary refuge from the flying bombs, which were then raining down on the south-east of Britain.
Phyllis and Elinor had of course known each other as children, almost forty years earlier. But on growing up the two had gone their separate ways and there had not been many meetings nor even much contact between them. And although Elinor’s attitude to their early relationship is not known, Mrs Matthewman was clear about hers and ready to state with perfect frankness: ‘As a child, I didn’t like Elinor at all.’ Moreover, despite Phyllis’s anxiety in later life to stress that when they met again she had ‘liked Elinor much better’, it became fairly plain in talking to her that ‘much better’ did not really imply a great degree of liking. Into the bargain Mrs Matthewman’s reactions were perhaps coloured also by some professional jealousy, unconscious no doubt but perceptibly underlying many of her comments.
Behind the Chalet School: A biography of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer Page 23