The Chalet School and the Second World War

The Chalet School in Exile by Elinor M Brent-Dyer

published 1940

The Chalet School Goes to It by Elinor M Brent-Dyer

published 1941

 

 

I’ve been renewing my fascination with the Chalet School book series – a key part of my own early years, and those of many of my friends, mostly women, of all ages.

You can read more about this in a post here, which also links to a podcast I did with Caroline Crampton (yes, Shedunnit Caroline). That in turn arose from Caroline’s marvellous new book on hypochondria, A Body Made of Glass. Caroline invited me to discuss the Chalet School books with her, in relation to health issues, though of course we looked at other aspects.

Megaphone

A BA Body Made of Glass

Conversations about hypochondria, health anxiety, wellness, medicine, scientific history and more. Hosted by Caroline Crampton

-this link takes you to a list of podcasts inspired by the book, including the one I was a guest on.

I haven’t really recovered from doing this: I’m still living in a world of the san, and Matey, and Joey and the triplets, and avalanches and milky coffee and rolls. A uniform of gentian blue with crimson touches, and different languages on different days.

Many many people turned out to share our fascination, and couldn’t wait to tell us so. I imagine there will be quite a bit more about the Chalet School coming, and I am starting with this – an unusual and important entry in the series, which we also discussed in some detail in the podcast.

The Chalet School in Exile is extraordinarily interesting, not least because of its publication date: it appeared in 1940, so it was finished less than a year after the UK entered WW2.

Elinor M Brent-Dyer had no idea what the future held.

The Chalet School series ran from 1925 to 1969, when the author died. Book after book deals with the everyday life of the school: lessons and homework and meals and naughty girls. There are illnesses and accidents and an obsession with health. The first tranche of the books are set in Austria – so there are walks in the mountains and the occasional avalanche. There is a sanatorium next door with many links with the school: TB is the 'white plague', the health scourge of those years.

So here they are in 1938: in the Austrian Tirol at the time of the Anschluss, when Germany took over. The British families who run the school and sanatorium know there are dangers, and realize they will probably have to leave – but then events move faster than expected.

A group of 8 girls and a teacher visiting the local town/village, Spartz, go to the defence of a Jewish shopkeeper who is being attacked by a Nazi mob. The  crowd turn on them, and the local priest helps them escape via the church and an underground tunnel. Miss Wilson’s hair turns white overnight….

They have to leave without ever returning home – camping in caves and walking over the mountains (prefiguring the end of The Sound of Music), accompanied by two doctors who are also in danger of being arrested.

This is not a comforting book: the girls find out that the shopkeeper they tried to help died, his wife is dying, and the mob also shot the priest. ‘He knows he is dying. But if he lived it would mean prison for helping you escape. He prefers death to a Nazi gaol.’ Other friends are being rounded up and the girls know about concentration camps.

‘There is no news from Friedel for nearly nine months. We can only hope that he is dead. One hears such dreadful stories about concentration camps.’

Once they escape, as many people from the school as possible regroup and re-open for business – though this is in the Channel Islands, which the reader knows will be captured by the Germans just as the book ends.

There is also the question of the German spy – a ‘new girl’ who fairly obviously to everyone is going to report back to the Nazis: it is faintly hilarious how blatant this is.

But in between times the schoolgirls have lessons and play pranks. There are very strange changes in tone. An outbreak of German measles. A couple of girls save the life of a German pilot who crashes nearby.

However it is a very affecting and moving book. EMBD insists that her sensible girls distinguish between Germans and Nazis, and they put themselves at risk by forming a Chalet School Peace League, which says that what these pupils, at their multi-national school, have in common is more important than what divides them. It is in one sense absurd – they sign a document, and hiding it leads them almost into the first level of trouble, and for some of them signing it could be disastrous – but I defy anyone to read this without being affected.

In a matter of fact way, the author tells us that German girls so recently at school (doing lines and worrying about uniform infringements and order marks) are now in a Women’s Labour Corps, ‘the Nazis having given orders that all girls between the ages of 17 and 25 who were unmarried were to join.’

It is worth noting that in earlier books, the author deals with the question of gypsies in a very sweet and friendly way – very much of its time, very much ‘othering’ them and treating them as fascinating entertainment – but she insists that they live their own life, and should be given respect.

I doubt there were many books (for adults, for children, literary fiction or genre) with so clear a view of what was happening and what was to come in Europe.

And it is such a kind peace-loving view, such excitement and danger - but also a determination to fight for what is right, and to look for the best in people. You could not doubt the good heart of the author. The book made a huge impression on me when I read it as a child, and I wasn’t sure how it would stand up: but I am even more surprised and impressed by it now. Very few authors (and who can blame them?) who wrote about current events at the time could look back later without wincing. But she could have stood by every word.

An abridged version was produced years later, omitting a couple of chapters with a  description of life in the Third Reich: Jews attacked, neighbours denounced. 'No-one is safe.' (and also giving the plot some unexplained jumps)

The next book in the series is The Chalet School goes to It (1941) aka The Chalet School at War, which similarly tries to deal with the war, though less dramatically. There are air raids, and the possibility of spies (lights shining at night), all mixed in with worrying about your homework and playing tricks on each other. The girls are growing vegetables, and allowed to wear corduroy breeches for gardening, but there is a scandal where some of them wear trousers not while gardening, put on lipstick and headscarves, to make the school seem more go-ahead apparently. But the grown-ups are clear: this is not ladylike.  The Chalet School is very much back in business. It will eventually return to the Alps, but to Switzerland rather than Austria.

Undated b/w photo shows a corner of the Alps/Tirol: from Flickr. 

B/w picture of Austrian soldiers in the Tirol, Library of Congress.