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

  Looked at in absolute terms Elinor’s achievement with My Lady Caprice was modest. But from her own point of view the play marked a turning-point. Above all it had shown her that she really was capable, if she tried, of completing something longer than a short story — something full-scale. Moreover she now had a purpose to sustain her. Hazel always enjoyed her stories. She would write a book specially for Hazel. And this one would not be left unfinished.

  CHAPTER XI

  MY OWN DARLING LITTLE SISTER

  THAT Elinor should turn now to the girls’ school story was natural enough. In the early twenties the genre was high fashion; shoals of the stories were being published each year; and with the demand increasing steadily any number of writers were kept busy.

  Probably the best known today, apart from Angela Brazil the all-time Head Girl of the School Story, are Elsie J. Oxenham and Dorita Fairlie Bruce. Elinor much admired these two; but it can be inferred from her writings that she did not care for Angela Brazil. More of this later. Other writers whose tales of school life enjoyed considerable popularity during this pre-war period included Christine Chaundler, Dorothea Moore, May Wynne, Brenda Girvin, Josephine Elder, Winifred Darch, Evelyn Smith, Katherine Oldmeadow, Ethel Talbot and, of course, May Baldwin — she, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, had been hard at work since Elinor’s own childhood.

  For the most part, the successful and prolific ladies named above wrote about boarding-schools. Elinor however, and wisely in view of the fact that she had no personal experience of residential schools, chose to begin with a day-school story. And it would seem just possible that St Peter’s High School, the setting of this first book Gerry Goes to School and of its sequel, was based on Dame Allan’s Girls School in Newcastle. After all, even if she herself did not ever attend this school, Elinor could well have known girls who did; and she might have visited the school on speech days, or for concerts or plays.

  Be that as it may, St Peter’s appears to be quite an authentic establishment. On the other hand no one could pretend that Gerry Goes to School is a very good book. Even Elinor, who was not greatly given to self-criticism, wrote to a fan in the 1960s that ‘Gerry was a very long time ago; I doubt if anyone would be interested in her now’.

  In fact Gerry does still have a certain interest today, simply because it marks Elinor’s starting-point, thus providing a useful yardstick. And certainly a comparison of Gerry with the first Chalet School book, written only three years later, makes clear what a remarkable rate of progress Elinor, once launched, was to achieve.

  Gerry also shows the early emergence of many themes that would recur throughout Elinor’s books. Jealousy and rivalry, for instance; the iniquities of old-fashioned teaching methods — as discussed in Chapter III; the attractions of a large closely knit family; illnesses, and especially those following as a direct result of disobedient or imprudent behaviour.

  Music, too, is given great importance in this first book of Elinor’s. The Trevennor family, with whom Gerry comes to live, are all musical in various degrees, and Gerry herself outshines them all: she is even able to take over the piano part in Schumann’s E flat major quintet, which certainly argues unusual ability in a child of twelve.

  Of course Gerry Goes to School was written expressly for ten-year-old Hazel Bainbridge, and the heroine has a good deal in common with Hazel. Gerry also is an only child (in her case, an orphan) with precocious talent, and she too has lived most of her early years among adults. There, however, any resemblance ends for there is no suggestion that Elinor used Hazel as a model for Gerry. Undoubtedly her affection for Hazel was a powerful influence in Elinor’s writing, but interestingly this is discernible less in the specially written Gerry Goes to School than in the early Chalet School books. Here, the affectionate comradeship between Madge and Joey Bettany, who are sisters but separated by an age difference of twelve years, must surely have been coloured by Elinor’s feelings towards Hazel. And this accurately observed relationship between the Bettany sisters contributes to making Madge Bettany of the early Chalet books into quite a convincing adult, one of the few to appear in any school stories of the period.

  Then again, in creating the character of Cecilia Marya Humphries, known as the Robin, who first comes on the scene in Jo of the Chalet School (1926), Elinor clearly owed much to Hazel. Not that the Robin is based directly on Hazel any more than Gerry was. But there is no room for doubt that the special affection, which grows between Joey Bettany and the six-years-younger Robin, sprang from the real-life equally warm affection between Elinor and Hazel.

  One thing in particular underlines this parallel: the Robin, very shortly after her arrival at the Chalet School, becomes Joey’s ‘little adopted sister’, and is often referred to thus throughout the series. And the handwritten dedication in Hazel’s original copy of Gerry Goes to School reads: ‘To my own little sister, Hazel Mary Bainbridge’. Altogether it seems indicated that a connection did exist in Elinor’s mind between Robin Humphries and Hazel. Whether this was conscious or not is less certain. But either way the results were beneficial, for the Robin was destined to become one of Elinor’s most successful and best-loved characters.

  It is difficult though to pin down the reasons for this. And equally hard to quote, out of context, anything which really conveys the Robin’s personality. The key to her charm does not lie in the directly descriptive passages, for in these Elinor is apt to use such phrases as ‘an almost angelic loveliness’ which fall uncomfortably on a present-day ear. On the other hand the child’s appearance, so well recaptured in some of Nina K.Brisley’s charming illustrations, is undoubtedly part of her spell; and from time to time Elinor does succeed admirably in conveying this to the reader. Here, for instance, from a chapter in Jo of the Chalet School about Christmas in Innsbruck — incidentally one of the most effective sequences in the whole series — is the Robin pictured on Christmas morning:

  The Robin’s frock . . . was [made of] a warm crimson [silk], and had holly leaves embroidered round the hems of skirt, sleeves, and neck in very dark green. Madge had tied up her hair with a big dark-green bow, and with her rosy face and velvety eyes she looked like a Christmas fairy.

  But more important than her looks is her attractive disposition. ‘The whole of the . . . day [after her arrival] was devoted by the children to the Robin, with whom they all fell in love at once. She was a dear little girl, very happy and sunshiny . . . and not at all shy.’

  Perhaps Elinor does cheat a little in making the child’s situation so intrinsically romantic: when first introduced to the Chalet School the Robin, a tiny six-year-old, has just lost her Polish mother (who died from Elinor’s pet bogy, tuberculosis), and her father has gone to take up some post in Russia (further than the back of beyond to a 1926 child reader). The devices to evoke sympathy are a little obvious; but there is genuine feeling shown in a scene like the following from Jo of the Chalet School: here an end-of-term concert is under discussion, and the Robin volunteers to sing ‘The Red Sarafan’ in Russian.

  The Robin danced forward, curls dancing, cheeks crimson with excitement . . . and promptly lifted up a sweet baby voice in the well-known Russian folk-song.

  They all clapped her, laughing at the pretty picture she made. She nodded her head at them joyously. Then suddenly the little voice quivered and broke, and she buried her face in her dimpled hands in a perfect storm of tears. ‘Maman! Maman!’ she sobbed . . . ‘Viens, je te prie! Maman!’

  [Joey dashed from the room] nearly in tears herself — for there was something so desolate in the baby’s little wail [and fetched her sister, who] . . . bore her off to be cuddled back to serenity, while the girls finished their Kaffee rather more soberly.

  ‘She is so happy always,’ said Gisela [the head girl], ‘that one forgets how short a time it is since the little mother left her.’

  ‘I suppose she used to sing that song,’ added Juliet [another of the older girls]. ‘Poor baby!’

  Nowadays, of course, someone wo
uld point out to Elinor that the words ‘danced’ and ‘dancing’ (in line one) follow each other too closely; and might suggest that another phrase be substituted for ‘lifted up a sweet baby voice’. But provided that the whole passage is read in context, and with an eye to the period and genre, it certainly makes its point.

  To return from the days of Robin Humphries and the Chalet School to the time when Elinor was still struggling with her first book: the untidy heap of manuscript which contained the draft of Gerry Goes to School had grown to an impressive size by the time that Hazel arrived home in South Shields for Christmas 1921. And, all through those holidays, whenever she visited 5 Belgrave Terrace, she and Len would retire to that attic bed-sitter where Len would read aloud the latest instalment of Gerry’s adventures.

  These, when set beside the happenings in many school stories of the period, were unusually sober. Indeed it might seem that Gerry Challoner had a less exciting life than did Hazel herself. Gerry though had some experiences that Hazel had never shared, including that of coming to live with a big family (there are ten Trevennors), and Hazel found this fascinating. To her, Gerry and all her friends and enemies were real people. And to Elinor too, it seems: ‘She would talk about the different characters in the story, and describe what they were doing at that moment — just exactly as if they were really there’. Something Elinor continued to do all her life.

  Of course Hazel was much aware that to have a book specially written, and a heroine specially created, just for her, was the most enormous compliment. And she found it easy to identify with Gerry in her various predicaments, major and minor, although apparently none of these were borrowed from real life.

  On the other hand, a small adventure that happened to Hazel around this time was almost certainly stored in Elinor’s memory for future use. Certainly it is hard not to think of the Chalet School when Hazel describes the incident:

  I think my parents must have been away that night because I was there in the flat above the theatre with just a friend looking after me — baby-sitting as we’d call it. It was quite late, and pitch dark outside of course, and our friend-cum-housekeeper who’d been out somewhere arrived back and rang the bell. I was sent downstairs to let her in. I wasn’t awfully fond of having to go down in the dark, and there was no light on the stairs of any kind. So I made my way very slowly down the stairs, carrying a lighted candle.

  When I got to the first landing I thought I’d take a look through the window there that overlooked the front door; just to make sure it really was our friend ringing. Well, there she was below, and she was gesticulating and throwing her hands around and making a tremendous carry-on. I can remember thinking ‘All right! All right! — I’m coming as fast as I can’. And while I was standing there at the window my candle must have been gradually leaning over; and the next moment the muslin curtains had caught fire and were blazing up beside me.

  Well, that was real life — and fortunately Hazel was unhurt. Here are two rather similar incidents from the Chalet School series. The first takes place during the presentation of a tableau showing the 1812 siege of Moscow:

  Crimson and yellow lighting added to the effectiveness of the scene . . . There came a sudden creaking followed by a sharp cry as the tower suddenly swayed and from it poured a stream of crimson smoke, accompanied by a flame that was all too real . . . Janet . . . in [her] muslin dress . . . tried to spring off the stage. The inflammable muslin had caught and was already flaming around her.

  (Adrienne and the Chalet School, 1965)

  In the second, two girls are helping Miss Cochrane (Grizel of the early stories, now a member of staff) to tidy up after a sale of work. They are still wearing fancy dress.

  [As they worked Grizel] took a cigarette . . . struck a match and lit up . . . [Absent-mindedly] she tossed the match in the direction of the fireplace. She threw short, and it fell, still burning, into the reed basket Len was holding. The tinder stuff caught fire at once and flared up. The flame caught the flimsy material of Len’s Chinese dress and in an instant the sleeve was a mass of flames.(Carola Storms the Chalet School, 1951)

  It would of course be foolish to assume that all the fires in Elinor’s books were ignited by that episode of Hazel and the candle. Fires, like spilled ink and floods, were considered an obligatory ingredient of the school story. Elinor supplied her readers lavishly, beginning in her second book, A Head Girl’s Difficulties (1923); here the blaze causes much devastation in the drawing-room of the heroine’s home. Then in The Maids of La Rochelle (1924) there is a cliff-fire: ‘A lurid glow lit up the skies and the dark, tranquil water of the bay’. (A sentence that seems more Brazil than Brent-Dyer in style.)

  The School at the Chalet (1925) also contains its fire, this one following a train crash; and in The Princess of the Chalet School (1927) a thunderbolt sets fire to the playing-fields which are tinder-dry after the long hot summer.

  All the above are rather routine affairs, but in The Head Girl of the Chalet School (1928) there is quite a hair-raising description of four girls descending the fire-escape from the top floor of a blazing hotel in Salzburg. Elinor may never have produced a fire sequence as powerful as that in Angela Brazil’s A Fourth Form Friendship, but here she does manage to create a genuine atmosphere of excitment and suspense as a panic-stricken woman flings herself down the high narrow stairway, all but pushing the children off it. ‘Those railings [on the stairs] were as open as anything,’ one of the girls remarks afterwards.

  Altogether Elinor’s first dozen books seem more often than not to contain a conflagration of some kind. To us it all seems rather ridiculous; but Elinor was of course only giving her readers what they wanted. Or, at least, what she and a great many other writers thought they wanted. Apparently there was another side to the matter even at that time, for in November 1926 The Times Literary Supplement reviewer mentions a ‘schoolgirl critic’ who longed to read of ‘just one school . . . that did not often [sic] catch fire’.

  At least Gerry Goes to School could have passed muster on that score. So perhaps that youthful critic had never come across it; although by the autumn of 1926 it had been on sale for exactly four years, and had enjoyed a modest success.

  The story had eventually been finished at some time during February 1922, and it is not difficult to imagine Elinor’s triumphant rejoicings. Something of her feelings can be gathered from the chapter in Jo Returns to the Chalet School (written fourteen years later) where Jo has almost completed ‘her first book:

  ‘And I’ve done it myself,’ she murmured as she turned over the closely written sheets. ‘Goodness knows I’ve begun piles in my time; but this is the first I’ve ever finished.’ . . .

  She glanced through it. It was not a really long book. Joey religiously counted the number of words on every sheet [Elinor, too, used to do this], and she knew that it would finish somewhere in the neighbourhood of forty thousand words. But it would be a book, even if it never found a publisher, and if she could write one, she could write another. Already her brain was teeming with ideas.

  On the question of publishers Elinor seems to have decided straight away on trying her luck with W. & R. Chambers, who were then of course one of the leading publishers of school stories. There followed the inevitable period of suspense after the book had been parcelled up and posted. But it does not look as though Elinor can have waited very long to hear the firm’s favourable verdict, since by the autumn of that same year (1922), Gerry Goes to School had been published, complete with four illustrations and a coloured dust wrapper, and was actually appearing in the book shops. Plainly things in the publishing world were able to move faster then than they sometimes do nowadays.

  CHAPTER XII

  NEW FRIENDS AND OLD

  Two partings from South Shields

  THE month of January 1922 must have been a crowded one for Elinor. Not only was she busy with Gerry Goes to School, she was at work on another play for the Bainbridges’ Stock Theatre Company.

  This se
cond play of hers received quite a lot of publicity. ‘Polly Danvers — Heiress. Special Production of a New Play by Miss Eleanor Dyer, a resident of South Shields’ announced the local daily paper; adding that Miss Dyer, besides her residential qualification, was the ‘Authoress of My Lady Caprice’, and that it would be well to ‘Book your seats early’.

  Hazel on this occasion was not in the cast, having the previous week made ‘her last appearance before returning to school’; ‘in The Stepmother the role of Danny the son [was] ably sustained by Miss Hazel Bainbridge’.

  But she did see the play in rehearsal and can remember that it was ‘a comedy about a North Country working girl who unexpectedly inherits a fortune’. And this scrap of information makes it likely that Polly Danvers had one feature that was unusual for its author. It is not that Elinor’s books lack a fair quota of broad-spoken folk — from Yorkshire and Scotland, for instance; but these are always subsidiary characters, and most often cast in such roles as faithful domestic servant, or understanding shopkeeper. Even where a leading character — Jacynth Hardy in Gay from China at the Chalet School (1944) — is allowed to have lived ‘all her life in a little coal-mining town in the industrial north’, she is no working-class girl but comes from a background of impoverished gentility. So Polly Danvers would appear to have been unique among Elinor’s heroines.