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

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As a teenager, I read all the Chalet School books by Elinor M Brent-Dyer at least once. I reread many of them again over the decades; I acquired some myself, and my mother managed to get the entire set, though some were abridged Armada paperbacks. I would dip into some of them whenever I visited, but inevitably some were read more often than others.

It’s nearly ten years since I last read ‘The feud in the Chalet School’, and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the ones I didn’t read very often. I had not recalled the story at all, or any of the new characters. I did vaguely remember one rather dramatic and dangerous escapade, but would not have known it was in this particular book.

The basic story involves another school, St Hilda’s, that starts in Geneva by a Miss Holroyd. She takes on three staff, including a matron, and begins with just thirty or so girls. They discover that the summer heat is too much, so for her second year she acquires the lease of a chalet in the mountains. Forty-seven girls are due to arrive when disaster happens. Miss Holroyd is taken to hospital, and the girls are taken on, temporarily, by the much larger Chalet School.  

Even though the Chalet School has just had some significant building work done, it was hard to see how they could have slotted in that many extras unexpectedly. Even trickier to see how the school managed to rearrange timetables, and allocate girls to dining rooms, bathing schedules and more. They even managed to provide suitable clothing for skiing and sledging when the weather turns bad…

But that’s my common sense kicking in, and one has to allow for this kind of thing with the Chalet School. Although the author was a headmistress herself, she sometimes rather glosses over administrative details. And these books were intended for teenagers rather than nostalgic adults like myself who enjoyed them in our own teenage years. 

The ‘feud’ happens in part because the St Hilda’s girls don’t, at first, want to follow the Chalet School rules (such as having entire days when they speak nothing but French or German). One of their staff finds it very difficult to be a minor teacher, when she often played the role of deputy head in St Hilda’s. And some of the inevitable spats turn into rather more serious antagonism for a while. It’s quite believable, really, and isn’t at all the same as the feud in one of the much earlier books, ‘Rivals of the Chalet School’, which I reread six years ago and which features a separate school. 

The one incident I remembered involved a school cat getting out on the roof in very cold weather, prompting two impetuous girls to attempt a rescue themselves rather than asking for help. I had not, however, remembered the scenes where the school acquires the second cat.  Neither had I recalled the somewhat amusing scenes where girls from both schools decide to give the school handyman Gaudenz some help. 

There’s a poignant scene involving the supposedly elderly Herr Laubach, although to my chagrin he’s only in his late sixties - but he's not in the greatest of health, even at the start of the book. And there’s the inevitable detailed outline of the Christmas pageant that takes up most of the last chapter.

My edition of this is an original hardback, which I expect was one of my mother’s as I mainly bought paperbacks. Apparently there are ‘very major cuts’ in the Armada paperback; I don’t know what is missing, but doubt if they cut the final pageant chapter. I don’t know why cuts were necessary as it’s not a particularly long book. 

There's nothing to make this book stand out in my mind, which is perhaps why I hadn't remembered any of the storylines. I rather missed the input of Jo Maynard who only makes brief appearances. But it's a pleasant enough book, and at least slightly different from some of the other later ones.

Unfortunately the hardbacks are very expensive, and the ‘Girls gone by’ full edition is long out of print. Abridged Armada paperbacks can still sometimes be found fairly inexpensively, however. And even a shortened version is better than nothing to those, like me, who like reading the whole series through every decade or so.

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