shewhomust | Elinor Brent-Dyer: Chalet School Fête (Reply)

I don't usually buy Chalet School books in paperback, and certainly not when it's as tatty a paperback as this one. But this was very cheap, I was piqued by not recognising the title, and besides, just look at that cover - which, by the way, turns out to be a quite faithful rendition of the fête in question.

There's a reason why I didn't recognise the title: it's been invented by the publisher for the second volume of A Genius at the Chalet School, which they have published in two halves. That title did ring a bell. I don't know whether it says more about me or about the Chalet School, but I had always rather assumed that genius would be displayed in some academic field: science, perhaps, or maths (I don't know why those particularly, except that they are fields where brilliant work is done young, and can be objectively identified). Silly of me, of course: she's a musician.

Any Chalet School book offers two indications as to where in the sequence it belongs: where is the school located, and how many children has Jo? Here we are in Switzerland (there is an excursion to Geneva), and Cecily Maynard has just been born. There's an intriguing discussion about her name: she is to be Cecilia after her godmother, and Mary because all of the girls are (except Felicity, who is Felicity Josephine), but the family are not keen on Cecilia for everyday use - the suggestion that they shorten it to Cecily is received as an inspiration.

And. to anticipate a little, that was what they did in .the end. The baby was baptized Cecilia Mary - the two names of her godmother - and known as "Cecily" thereafter.
"Thank goodness," Joey said when they laid her new little Christian in her arms two days later, "she hasn't got a name that'll date herl I'm always so sorry for the various Joans and Pamelas and Susans and Annes. People will always be able to guess their ages from their names. I call it most unfair!"

Intellectually I know that the names which wre fashionable when I was born are no more classical and timeless than those which are fashionable now; to every age its own favourites, and its own sense of what is on the one hand faddishly new-fangled and on the other laughably old-fashioned. 'Susan' is of my era, and I have to make a conscious effort to remember that; I can easily believe that Pamela is of the same age. Joan and Anne I still regard as constant (two good medieval names, after all...). It would certainly never have occurred to me that Anne is more datable by her age than Cecilia Mary.

Princess Elizaveta of Belsornia is a figure of legend throughout the series, but I don't think I had actually read any book in which she appears until she turns up to open the eponymous fête. There's something unexpected going on in Elizaveta's own story, with the information that "now that Belsornia had been annexed to the Soviet Union, she was anxious to drop her title, but so far the government in exile had refused to agree", but she retains some regal certainties. The highlight of the fundraising fête is the competition to win a doll's house, made by former Chalet School girl Tom Gay, and much is made of the extraordinary details of its construction and furnishing, and how much effort Tom must have put into it alongside her university studies. When the winner of the house has been announced, Elizaveta declares - in Tom's absence but in the presence of the entire school - that she will match the sum it has raised if Tom will make another like it for her daughters. This is not, apparently, a gross imposition and appalling piece of emotional blackmail, but a generous charitable gesture.

Well, that's the Chalet School for you.