The School at the Chalet by Elinor Brent-Dyer, for the 1925 Club

Madge Bettany, just 24, and her twin, Dick, have been responsible for their younger sister, Joey, since their parents died. Dick is home on furlough but works in Forestry in India, so Madge has come up with a scheme that will support her and Joey – she tells her brother she wants to establish a school in the Austrian Tyrol, where they once spent a summer, about an hour from Innsbruck:

“There was a big chalet there which would be topping. It was not too far from the lake; fairly near the steamer, and yet it was away from the paths. I shouldn’t want a large number, not at first at any rate – about twelve at most, and counting Joey. I should want girls from twelve to fourteen or fifteen. I would teach English subjects; Mademoiselle La Pattre would come with us, and she would take the French and German – and the sewing. Music we would get in Innsbruck.”

Dick doesn’t like the idea of this venture when he will be too far away to help, but Madge has made her plans and is primarily consulting him out of courtesy. They realize their inheritance, which yields about L120, will go farther in Austria than in Britain. Also, Joey is delicate so her siblings also think the bracing mountain air would be good for her. And Madge has already secured her first student, Grizel Cochrane, whose stepmother wants to get rid of her.

In the early 1920s, Elinor and a friend, Lilian, visited the Austrian Tyrol which she clearly fell in love with and would use vividly as the first location in the Chalet School series. Madge moves forward with her plans – no one asks if she has any teaching credentials – and in just a few weeks, the school is ready to open with nine students, two British, one French, and six local girls. As the term proceeds, new students keep appearing, some as boarders and some as day students. Soon Madge is wondering if she will need to build onto the chalet.

Madge and Joey are the most important characters in this series – Madge, as the young but respected headmistress of the school, and Joey, who is in the middle of the student body in terms of age but is very outgoing and has a strong sense of fairness. At times, she operates as a check on the impulsive behavior of others, yet is ready to play the tricks that are a hallmark of school stories. Madge has some grave issues to deal with: the most serious of which is a girl whose parents pay for one semester and abandon her at the school. Madge handles it better than Miss Minchin, and rebellious Juliet becomes a changed person when she realizes Madge has her interests more at heart than her own parents did.

Brent-Dyer makes the Tyrol a breathtaking backdrop and the students enjoy the outdoors, taking walks, going on picnics, and meeting the locals. The first 16 Chalet School books are set in a fictional village based on a real place, Pertisau. Readers love her descriptions of the natural world and the girls’ enjoyment of it and pilgrimage to the Tyrol to see it, including my friend Sam who went there for her honeymoon, wearing a handmade tee shirt her fiancé made for her.

It is not all smooth sailing for Madge and her school, especially when she has to administer discipline. After Grizel is insolent, she is restricted to her room until she apologizes. Unrepentant, Grizel employs a trick I remember either from this book or another:

When she had got into bed, she had banged her head on her pillow four times, saying solemnly ‘Four o’clock!’ as she did so. This is the best recipe I know for early waking, and Grizel knew it too. She woke up just as the old grandfather clock below chimed four times.

She is angry at having been punished and escapes from her bedroom window to climb a mountain she has been warned about. Joey goes after her, and both nearly die on the mountain – but it’s book 1 in a series so, of course, they are rescued in time.

I read The School at the Chalet for the #1925Club, hosted by StuckinaBook and Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, in which bloggers are invited to read and review books that were published in a chosen year. I first came across this well-known series when my family was visiting Bermuda. My mother took us to a wonderful bookstore in Hamilton and we bought Over Sea, Under Stone (which I read for the #1965Club), Saturday and the Irish Aunt, and four Chalet School books, including this one (although I could not find it this week). Because they weren’t available in the US, I never became a serious fan, but I was interested enough to go see Brent-Dyer’s home in Hereford (where she lived in the 1930s and ran a girls' school) when I was there in 1997 on my way to Hay-on-Wye. That was the day Diana, Princess of Wales died, so very memorable.

Title: The School at the Chalet
Author: Elinor Brent-Dyer
Publication: W.&R. Chambers, hardcover, originally published in 1925
Genre: School story/series
Source: FadedPage.com