The School at the Chalet (by Elinor M Brent-Dyer)

(Amazon UK link)

Having read - and very much enjoyed - the La Rochelle series by Elinor M Brent-Dyer over the past seven months or so, I decided it was time to reread, yet again, her better known (and much longer) Chalet School series.

I have just finished the first book, ‘The School at the Chalet’, which I last read ten years ago. It was first published in 1925, so is almost a hundred years old now, yet the characters seem timeless. The story is primarily about Madge Bettany, a teacher in her mid-twenties.

Madge and her twin brother Dick are the sole guardians of their much younger sister Joey, who is quite frail healthwise. Dick works in India, and the climate is not considered suitable for children; however England is no good for Joey either, as she suffers continual colds and other infections. So Madge comes up with the idea of starting a boarding school for girls in the Austrian alps.

I don’t think it previously occurred to me that this was an extraordinarily radical idea for a single woman in the 1920s. There wasn’t the bureaucracy of today, but travelling and communication were a great deal more complicated. However, it was apparently considerably less expensive to live in Austria than in the UK at the time, and Madge is a determined, assertive and positive person.

We meet the unhappy teenage Grizel Cochrane in the early part of the book, too. Her mother died when she was young, and her grandmother brought her up for a few years. Then her father remarried, but Grizel and her stepmother dislike each other heartily. A boarding school in Austria is an ideal solution to many problems, and there’s a very moving scene when Grizel says goodbye to the one person who cares about her, the family cook.

Madge, Joey and Grizel have an interesting (if a tad too overtly educational) trip as they travel across Europe by train. They visit places of interest, try ‘foreign’ foods and comment on the customs and cultures they encounter. There’s a bit of stereotyping, but given the era it’s remarkably free of negativity; indeed the entire Chalet School series helped me, as a teenager, develop a positive attitude towards Europeans and those of other nationalities, most of whom are presented in a good light, albeit with quirks that the very English Grizel finds strange.

The latter part of the book is about the development of the school, which starts with nine pupils and has almost twenty by the end of the term. Some are day pupils who live nearby, but there are boarders too, including the lachrymose French Simone Lecoutier, who wants to be Joey’s exclusive best friend, and some Austrian teenagers whose parents are delighted at the opportunity for them to belong to an English language school.

There’s not a great deal about lesson time; instead we go on walks with the girls from the school, and meet local folk, and learn about some of the dangers of mountainous regions. Although intended for young teenage girls, there’s a great deal in this (and other books) about the adults, particularly the teachers, who are seen as important characters with their own individual personalities. That’s quite unusual in books intended for children and perhaps helps to explain why this series is still so popular with adults; probably more so, nowadays, than with teenagers.

Overall it is an excellent introduction to the series, and an interesting book which stands alone. Inevitably it’s somewhat dated, but less so, in my view, than many other books written later in the 20th century.

My edition of ‘The School at the Chalet’ is a hardback one acquired by my mother many years ago; it was reprinted several times and can sometimes be found second-hand. In the 1970s the series was re-published in Armada Paperback form, which helped it become popular. It’s quite easy to find Armada editions of this book, but unfortunately many of the series, including this one, were quite severely abridged. Girls Gone By publications reprint the original text of books like these in paperback form, but the print runs are not enormous and they don’t stay constantly in print.

Definitely recommended, particularly if you can find a Chambers hardback or Girls Gone By paperback edition at a reasonable price.

Review copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews