The Chalet School Revisited

by Sheila Ray

  Eventually it can become an obsession. I know of a few collectors who have become obsessive about their collections. They ring dealers almost weekly, phone for books from catalogues at 7 a.m. (how do they get their post so early?) and plague the life out of dealers at book fairs by telling them of all their new acquisitions and asking why the dealer hasn’t found them a new title recently. I must admit that I tend to hide when I see them coming! I should also add that I don’t know any Brent-Dyer collectors who have reached this stage of obsession (yet).

  These extremists are also obsessive about the condition of the books. I think that possibly they are treating their books as objects. They tell anyone who will listen about the value of the books and how little money they have had to spend. Mind you, their idea of little money and mine are not the same. They are willing to pay any price to get the books they want and have been known to offer a dealer more money when they are told that a book from a catalogue has been sold. These people are not good for book collecting. They push up the prices for other collectors and the only hope is that when they have completed their collections they will be happy and stop spoiling the fun of collecting for others.

  Societies

  In 1994, the centenary of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s birth, reading and collecting her books have never been more popular. In one of my recent catalogues, all the Brent-Dyers sold almost immediately — a total of 34. Several of the titles, none of which was rare, attracted 10 or more people. Prices for the rarer titles are probably at their peak for a while, as the collectors prepared to pay the very high prices of recent years have completed their collections, but there is a very large demand for the cheaper, commoner titles. In future years, the prices will almost certainly rise still further once these new collectors have found all the easy titles.

  Whilst a tatty reprint of The School at the Chalet will probably fetch no more than £2 or £3, a copy of The Chalet School Reunion in its dust jacket could well set you back £100 or more. I saw a copy of The Chalet School in Exile (1940) in its almost impossible to find withdrawn dust jacket a couple of years ago for about £150. Moving briefly from the Chalet School series, I have never seen Brent-Dyer’s two rarest books — The School by the River (1930) and The Little Marie-José (1932) — in a catalogue, so if a copy did turn up, the price can only be imagined.

  In recent times, several popular children’s authors have had societies and magazines devoted to them. Some had regular meetings, and it was felt by Brent-Dyer collectors that something similar should happen for their favourite author, as nothing had been done since the demise of the original Chalet Club. After all, many of the others, such as Elsie Oxenham and Violet Needham, had been out of print for years, whereas the Chalet School stories were still being published in paperback and bought. However, no one was willing to take it on. It fell to Ann Mackie-Hunter in Australia to do what we had seemed unable to do in the UK.

  Ann was a member of the Abbey Girls of Australia, but was also a keen Brent-Dyer collector. One cold, wet Sunday afternoon in 1989 she had some time on her hands and decided to practise her typing and, rather than straight and boring copy-typing, she decided to create a mock Chalet newsletter. That evening, a friend of hers (the founder of the Abbey Girls of Australia, Val Shelley) rang, and, when Ann told her what she’d been doing, Val said she should start a new club. Ann was somewhat dubious about the idea, but, before she could say a definite no, Val collected subscriptions from some Brisbane Abbey Club members who were also Brent-Dyer readers at their meeting the next morning. Faced with a fait accompli that evening, Ann ran off some copies the next day and posted them. Australian Friends of the Chalet School was born.

  Two of the Oxenham newsletters, the Abbey Guardian and the Abbey Chronicle, advertised FOCS and the membership grew, mainly from Australia but a handful from the UK, New Zealand and Canada. An advertisement in the Australian Women’s Weekly and the Bookseller and Publisher in Australia brought in more new members. I joined, somewhat belatedly, at the end of 1989, as it was so expensive to get cheques in foreign currency, and I suggested that it might be easier if someone in the UK could collect subscriptions to save everyone having to purchase the cheques individually. Just like Ann, I really could not have imagined what this little suggestion would lead to. At the same time the society dropped its Australian prefix and became just Friends of the Chalet School as we wanted to stress that the society was international — just like the Chalet School.

  In the middle of 1991, Ann had another of her bright ideas. As so many new members were joining from the UK, wouldn’t it be nice to have a UK corner in each newsletter? I agreed prematurely, realising too late that what Ann really meant was that it would be nice if I wrote a UK corner. As I couldn’t think of any convincing reason why I shouldn’t do it, the UK corner first appeared in Newsletter 12.

  Membership all over the world has grown and is now over 800, with members living in Austria, Australia, Canada, the Channel Islands, Eire, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Zimbabwe, the USA and the UK, predominantly female, but with twenty-plus male members. Ages range from seven to over eighty. The general feeling from new members is that they are delighted to find that there is such a society, and relieved that they are not the only adults addicted to school stories! In mid-1993, Ann decided that producing four newsletters a year virtually single-handed was getting too much, and thought that it would be better to have an editorial committee of four, each producing one newsletter a year. Once again I agreed that it was a good idea, and immediately found myself on the committee together with Clarissa Cridland and Polly Goerres, two UK members who had already become involved by volunteering to organise events for Brent-Dyer’s centenary in 1994. The first result of this was Newsletter 21, edited by all four of us.

  To give you an idea of how on earth we can fill four newsletters a year, this issue contained comments from members on previous articles including paperbacks, matters medical, music and what happened next; whatever happened to . . . ? (a regular feature picking out characters who seemed just to disappear); potted autobiographies of members; a report on arrangements for the centenary events; reports on meetings in Scotland, Nottingham and Somerset; a report on the lending library (we are trying to collect copies of all her books which are lent to members for a small fee); a résumé of Joey and Co in Tirol (1960); and ten articles on various subjects such as how one member started collecting, Elinor and Miss Le Poidevin (her friend from Guernsey), memories of Herefordshire and the historical background to The Chalet School in Exile. There were also items for sale and wanted and a couple of puzzles.

  Meanwhile, in mid-1991, Daphne Paintin (now Barfoot) from Bideford in Devon thought that there ought to be a newsletter produced in the UK and so wrote to various people that she thought might be interested. Thus was born The Chaletian, a similar newsletter, with many of the same subscribers. Once the Friends of the Chalet School Newsletter started being produced in Britain, and owing to changes in her personal circumstances, Daphne decided to close The Chaletian in July 1994, after nine issues had appeared.

  The aim of Friends of the Chalet School is to bring together people from all over the world who enjoy Elinor Brent-Dyer’s books. We do that through the newsletters, which are written by the members, and also through local meetings, where devotees can get together to talk about their passion (and all kinds of other things as well!). We are called Friends of the Chalet School because, despite the large membership, we like to consider ourselves as friends, bound in friendship by a common love of Elinor Brent-Dyer’s books.

  Why people collect the Chalet School books

  There is a basic human instinct to hoard or collect things — usually things that interest us — and books are a very popular form of collecting. Books are not holy relics, but should be looked after, especially in our field, in that there are a limited number of them about, and if all the copies were destroyed (as nearly happened to Elinor Brent-Dyer’s two rarest books,
The School by the River and The Little Marie-José), then they are lost for ever. In the majority of cases, collectors do not revere their books, but they do appreciate them and understand their rarity.

  We do pay high prices for particular volumes when cheap paperback editions are available, but is there a good reason for this? Collecting hardbacks rather than paperbacks is logical as they are more durable, especially when read many times, and often contain the full text which has been abridged and edited in the paperbacks. As for collecting first editions, this is more problematic. I have never been able to pin down a good reason for wanting a first rather than an early reprint when the text (and often the binding) are identical. I myself am afflicted with this collecting malady as well, and it is, to my rational mind, illogical; but who said book collectors have to be logical? Maybe a very few collectors regard books as objects, but surely the majority collect only books that they are interested in and wish to read.

  However, I need to be more specific. Why collect girls’ school stories and why, in particular, collect Elinor Brent-Dyer? Apart from the very few modern writers who still write school stories, the majority, and almost all of the best ones, were written before the Second World War. In those days it was possible to open a small private school with almost no qualifications, as is described in Gillian Avery’s The Best Type of Girl (Andre Deutsch, 1991), an excellent history of girls’ independent schools. All that was needed was a large house and a few wealthy families, so many impoverished spinster ladies opened such schools with the idea of improving their financial position. There were also many expatriate children, especially from India, were sent back “home” for their education and upbringing, who were in the sole charge of these schools. Of course, many of the schools did not survive the death of the principal; others closed as a result of the Second World War. Finally, the Education Act of 1944 sounded the death knell for most of the remainder, since the small private schools could not compete with the publicly funded sector.

  The 1920s and 1930s were the heyday of these schools, and many of the school stories of the time were written about them, rather than the large public schools. They were read by the pupils themselves and by the many children at council schools who could only dream about attending such places. This is, of course, not restricted to those years. My own daughter, who attends a state village school, plays a very long and complicated boarding-school game based on her reading of the Malory Towers and St Clare’s books by Enid Blyton.

  Some of these stories, such as those by Josephine Elder, Evelyn Smith and, to a lesser extent, Winifred Darch (most of whose stories were about high schools), were realistic and showed the schools as they really were; while some, such as those by Dorothea Moore, were wildly exaggerated in order (presumably) to produce a more exciting story. In most cases it was the adventures and activities of the girls out of lesson time that predominated. I can only assume that this was because they were read by schoolgirls at the time. It was felt that they would not want to read about the mundane day-to-day things that took place in their own school lives and about relationships between characters, but needed a little excitement and adventure to spice up the story.

  But why do people today still read and enjoy these books? Part of the answer lies in the fact that many girls’ stories on whatever subject were set within a school background, so if you read girls’ stories of any sort from that time it is almost inevitable that they will be school stories. The other major reason is nostalgia. Some of today’s collectors went to school then, and those who didn’t probably know enough about the 1920s and 1930s from television and films to be able to imagine what it was like. The books give a rose-tinted view of the times; the majority are about upper middle-class children at upper middle-class boarding schools.

  After the Second World War, things changed. The small schools no longer existed and people could not take things for granted any more. Their homes and families had been violated by Nazi bombs and the feelings of comfort and safety were no longer there. Girls and women were far more emancipated, and stories no longer needed to be set in the cosy pre-war school world.

  In addition to the more unlikely tales, there was a small nucleus of writers who brought in real events. May Baldwin was one of the first, setting school stories in France during the German occupation of Alsace (The Follies of Fifi, W. & R. Chambers, 1907), and during the separation of Church and State (Peg’s Adventures in Paris, W. & R. Chambers, 1906), amongst many other current events. She even covered such subjects as child abuse and racism in books published in the first 30 years of this century, such as The School in the Wilds (W. & R. Chambers, 1925) and Hilda’s Experiences (W. & R. Chambers, 1913). Others followed, including, notably, Olive Dougan, who wrote The Schoolgirl Refugee (Blackie) in 1940 about a half-German girl who had to come to England as her friends were Jewish and her brother was in hiding from the Nazis.

  This subject leads us on to Elinor Brent-Dyer and what I consider to be her finest book: The Chalet School in Exile. Like Olive Dougan, Brent-Dyer was ahead of her time in depicting what was really happening in Germany, so much so that the original dust jacket was withdrawn shortly after publication as the picture of a Nazi officer was considered either too frightening for children or not conducive to high sales.

  I think this realism is one of the things that draws collectors to the Chalet School series. Although the later books in the series degenerated into standard formula school stories, often repeating earlier plots, the first ones showed clearly what life was like in Austria, Guernsey and England. They did not gloss over unpleasant detail; readers feel that the Chalet School was a real place full of real people who had their faults as well as their good qualities.

  I found this whilst rereading the series yet again recently. There is the feeling of comfort, that I know these people and that they are real to me. I found myself really looking forward to the times when I could sit down and read about them. Often I remember the major events of the book and think to myself “Not Eustacia’s accident again” or “Not the rivalry with the Saints”; but although these are important happenings, it is the normal things that stand out now. Despite the floods and snowstorms,not to mention a Ruritanian princess — probably necessary to sell the books at the time — there is what seems to be a real school set in a real time and place.

  Once the earlier stories have been read, the lure of the series beckons. The characters grow older and develop, and we need to know what happens to them next. When I pick up a Chalet School book, I know that although I may not remember the plot I will remember the characters. We all have our favourites and there are those we loathe, but we know that it will all come out all right in the end. The books are both addictive and satisfying. .

  Brent-Dyer fans collect the books because they enjoy the contents — whether contained in a tatty paperback or a fine first edition in dust jacket. Most collectors like nice copies, but only because they enjoy the books. There is no point in having beautiful copies of books that remain unread. I am proud of my Brent-Dyer collection. They do look nice on the shelves, but if I did not read and enjoy them there would be no reason to have them, and I’m sure that the vast majority of collectors feel exactly the same.

  IX. IMAGES OF THE CHALET SCHOOL: DUSTWRAPPERS, COVERS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

  CLARISSA CRIDLAND

  THIS chapter looks at the dustwrappers, covers and illustrations used for the Chalet School series, published by W. & R. Chambers and HarperCollins Armada in the UK, Dymocks in Australia and Latina in Portugal. I first wrote about this subject in Friends of the Chalet School Newsletter 14, published in February 1992. Looking back, I realise how little I knew then, and how much more I still have to discover. At the time, I did not even own a full set of books (the article dealt only with the Chambers and Dymocks titles) and relied on other Friends to provide me with the missing information. As well as writing the article, I produced a chart which briefly described the fronts, backs, spines and flaps of the dust wrappers of every edition
of the books and which also listed the various inside illustrations: not possessing all the books myself this was inevitably full of inaccuracies.

  However, the obsession which gripped me when preparing the article has not abated, and I am now collecting every edition of every book Elinor M. Brent-Dyer ever wrote. I am also planning to publish a book which will cover the illustrations from all her books, and which will, where possible, give biographical information about the artists concerned. Tracking down the various artists is proving extremely difficult, even though I have been working in publishing for 18 years and have numerous contacts: publishers do not always keep records. I am at the time of writing (mid-October 1994) about a quarter of the way through the process and hope to be able to publish the book towards the end of 1995. What is it, though, that has fuelled my obsession this far?

  Chambers published 58 titles in the main Chalet School series and five extras — the three Chalet Books for Girls, The Chalet School and Rosalie and The Chalet School Cook Book. There were five named artists for the series as published by Chambers — Nina K. Brisley, Mackay, W. Spence, D. Brook and Balmer. In addition, there were various unnamed artists, some of whom illustrated just one dust wrapper and a couple who did several. Into this last category has to come the artist who did the illustrations for the three Chalet Books for Girls and the first dustwrapper for Three Go To The Chalet School, whose signature appears only on The Third Chalet Book for Girls where it is almost illegible — the closest I and other Friends have been able to get is “Terre Tomilton”.