Hello, and welcome to Tophole, the podcast about Elinor M Brent-Dyer, the Chalet School, and anything vaguely connected. I’m Deborah Lofas, and I’m a fan.
The usual provisos apply, with respect to pronunciation, spoilers, and bonkersness – please see episode zero.
As we settle into the second half of the summer term, my thoughts turn inevitably to the summer holidays. And so today, I’m taking a look at the only Chalet School book to be set in Yorkshire – the holiday story Jo to the Rescue.
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EBD wrote several holiday adventure stories, and a handful of them are part of – rather than connected to – her Chalet School series. So these books count as Chalet School books, even though they are all set outside school. In the Tirol, we regularly spend time with the Bettanys in the holidays, and we get a full-length story in The Chalet Girls in Camp. Later, we travel with Joey and her family across Europe to Switzerland, in Joey Goes to the Oberland, and back to the Tirol in The Coming of Age of the Chalet School, Joey and Co in Tirol and A Future Chalet School Girl.
But in the middle of the series, there was a war on. So the only holiday-time Chalet book set in the UK is Jo to the Rescue. It was published in 1945, with a Nina K Brisley cover showing Joey and the 3-year-old triplets arriving in Phoebe’s garden. Joey is carrying what looks like a basket of bread rolls, but on closer inspection it is in fact a basket in which baby Stephen’s knees and feet are visible.
The 1955 edition had a new cover illustration, which shows a dressing-gowned Joey, with her hair still pinned up in its trademark earphones even though it’s the middle of the night. Rufus is just behind her, and Joey is brandishing a frying pan at two rather respectable-looking burglars, one in a trilby and one in a flat cap.
Armada finally got round to publishing Jo to the Rescue in paperback in 1994, having been persuaded that yes, people would buy it, even though it wasn’t a school story. I have written on Good Reads about an imagined meeting at which Armada agreed the briefing for the artist – who was of course Gwyn Jones – because although the picture is great, it does give the strong impression that the action is taking place in an alpine location rather than the north of England.
This general location is clear from the local accent EBD attempts to transcribe, and the hardback blurb refers to the north-country moors. We can pinpoint this a bit, because in a later book Peggy Bettany refers to the family having a holiday home in Yorkshire. But Yorkshire is a big area, and EBD gives us few clues as to the exact location of the village of Garnham. It’s about 14 miles from the market town of Garnley, which has a railway station with a really quite superb connection back to Armiford, on the Welsh borders. Garnham is on a hill, with open moorland within a short walk, and plenty of fresh, health-giving breezes. It’s big enough to have a butcher and a policeman, and it has a parish church, although the nearest Roman Catholic church is in Garnley. But this isn’t enough to identify a real-life location. EBD being EBD, I’m fairly sure that she had a real location in mind; and, as she grew up in what could be termed ‘the north country’, it’s entirely possible she was drawing on childhood memories here.
In real life, in 1945, Elinor was living in Hereford, and running her own school. She was still producing roughly one book a year at this point – heaven only knows how – with Jo the Rescue being preceded by Gay from China at the Chalet School in 1944, and followed by The Lost Staircase in 1946. Gay from China is, I think, widely regarded as one of the very best Chalet School books, with Chalet School norms upended by the new (but thankfully temporary) head teacher Miss Bubb, and possibly the most emotional chapter in the entire Chalet canon. The Lost Staircase is a mouthwatering description of how the other half live – it gives the impression of a book EBD very much enjoyed losing herself in, while she was writing it. And I think writing Jo to the Rescue was also an escape for EBD. It’s a book not about the school environment in which EBD herself was trapped, but about female friendships, and it’s set in a peaceful, empty place which probably sounded like bliss to a harassed headmistress.
In the Chaletverse, Jo is certainly in need of a holiday at this point, to recover from the events of Gay from China. These included not only the shock of learning that the Chalet School’s four senior mistresses had all been involved in a serious bus accident, and the subsequent reign of Miss Bubb, but also the significant injury to Jo’s niece Josette, which was caused by Sybil’s disobedience, and which almost resulted in Josette’s death. The war is still in progress, and although this book can be placed in 1943, because of the age of the triplets, there is a sense of optimism, and discussion about what will happen after the war, which suggests EBD was reflecting the mood while she was writing – that is, after D-day in 1944 – rather than the mood in 1943.
I can’t help wondering what readers in 1945 were expecting, when they first picked up Jo to the Rescue. The title calls to mind many of Joey’s rescuing escapades while she was a child, an approximate list of which runs, in chronological order:
Rescuing Grizel from the Tiernjoch mountain
Rescuing Robin and Rufus, separately, from drowning
Rescuing Princess Elisaveta from her insane cousin Cosimo
Rescuing Cornelia from the caves
Rescuing Maureen Donovan from the frozen Tiernsee
Rescuing Anne Seymour from a mountain edge
As Jo grew up, though, her rescues tended towards the less dramatically active, being based more on words and negotiations. She rescued Biddy O’Ryan from an uncertain future, Juliet from heartbreak, Mrs Linton from the brink of death, and Polly Heriot from – well, it’s hard to say what she rescued Polly from, but Polly’s life was certainly changed forever by Jo’s interference in her purchase of postcards. Most recently, Jo has rescued Jacynth Hardy. So Jo has moved towards emotional rescues, through providing helpful advice and understanding. And that’s exactly the rescue she effects here. There are no burning buildings, no extremes of weather, no near-death experiences. The rescue is, in fact, a simple, gradual one. At the start of the story, a young woman is desperately lonely; and by the end of it, she isn’t. Or, as the hardback blurb put it:
There are, as usual, escapades and adventures, but the main story is concerned with Phoebe Wychcote, a delicate girl whose life is transformed by Jo’s friendship.
The description of Phoebe as a ‘delicate girl’ is an interesting one. She is presented within the book as a girl invalided by rheumatic fever as a child. This affects her day-to-day mobility – on a good day she can move about using crutches, but generally she uses a wheelchair, which requires another person to push it. And during a flare-up, she can often do nothing at all, suffering immense pain. I don’t think ‘delicate’ quite does Phoebe justice; there are indications of significant fortitude, in her attempts to fulfil embroidery orders despite severe pain in her hands, for example.
On the other hand, the Armada blurb fails to mention Phoebe’s health at all, only that something is troubling her; but on the cover, if you look closely, she appears to be sitting in a wheelchair, with a walking stick tucked down the side of it. And those details are commendable, because Phoebe’s health is central to the story. It’s the reason she’s living in Garnham, with its healthy air; her fear of becoming a selfish invalid is what makes the issue of the cello such a dilemma to her; and it’s the possibility of new treatment, under the care of Dr Peters, which takes her to the San and brings her permanently into the circle of old girls and family.
Right, well, I’ve mentioned the cello now, so I’d better deal with it. Phoebe is the daughter of a famous cello player, Nicholas Wychcote – who is famous enough that Joey attended five of his concerts, although not so famous that anybody mentioned him during all the discussions of cello-playing at the Chalet School last term. At his concert in Cardiff, Joey’s friend Vanna di Ricci was singing soprano solo. I don’t remember Vanna singing anything, ever, while she was at school – not in the nativity plays, not in the end of term shows – and I don’t remember her going off to a conservatoire to be trained, either. And we never hear of her singing again, after this book. All in all, it would have made a lot more sense for Margia Stevens to have been the old girl who introduced Joey to a famous cello player; but it was, apparently, Vanna.
Anyway, Nicholas Wychcote died six months after setting up home in Garnham, which is 18 months before this story opens, and he left to Phoebe his cello, a valuable Lott – ‘valuable’ in this context could mean around £30,000 in today’s money. Phoebe herself can no longer play the cello, because of the issues with her joints caused by the rheumatic fever she had as a child. But she loves this instrument because it was her father’s; as Joey puts it, ‘the instrument a musician uses and loves, must hold part of his soul.’
But Phoebe has been offered £100 to sell the cello. Phoebe doesn’t want to sell it, because she loves it; and she also realises that its monetary value is likely to be considerably more than £100, although she has no idea what it is actually worth. But Debby, who looks after her, takes the view that £100 is £100, which could make a significant difference to their household income. One of the rescues which Jo effects in this book is the emotional one of recognising and acknowledging that the non-monetary benefit of the cello does provide grounds for Phoebe to keep it.
Phoebe is, however, under pressure. I do feel that only in an EBD book would there be this level of harassment – and, ultimately, law-breaking – in an attempt to obtain a musical instrument. A young lady called Zephyr Burthill is not making as much progress in her cello playing as she would like, and has convinced herself that if only she had Nicholas Wychcote’s instrument, she would be able to play like an angel. Her indulgent father wants to make this happen. He writes to Phoebe – twice – in terms which Joey labels persecution; Zephyr herself then writes to Phoebe. Joey replies to Zephyr’s letter on Phoebe’s behalf, and Zephyr then visits Jo in person, not realising that Phoebe, and the cello, live just over the road. However, Mr Burthill clearly finds this out, because he arranges for the cello to be stolen. Joey foils this plan, twice: the first time by finding the drugged meat left outside for Rufus, and the second time by throwing a heavy frying-pan of uncooked bacon at the intruders. Dr Jem then takes the cello with him to the San, because it’s most unlikely anyone will attempt to find and steal it there.
EBD was not, at this point in her writing career, really into her bonkersness stride, but there are very definite hints of the full-on bonkersness to come, in the entire cello subplot of this story.
There is a large cast of characters in Jo to the Rescue. Staying at The Witchens for August and September are:
- Joey, with Len, Con and Margot, five-month-old baby Stephen, and her ten-year-old niece Sybil, who is on this holiday to make things easier for Madge, who has a baby due at the end of September.
- Simone, with 18-month-old Tessa
- Marie, with Wolferl, aged 7, and Josefa, aged 5
- Frieda, with Louis, who is nearly 3, and Gerard, who is six weeks old
Throughout the book, we see a lot of conversation between the four women, and it’s a really lovely portrait of four good friends on holiday together. They share the cooking, housework, and childcare, and they look after each other, making sure that Frieda gets the rest she needs after the journey to Garnham, and that Joey gets the rest she needs when Stephen is teething. All four are clearly missing their husbands – all of them except Jack, who was invalided out of the services, are fighting in the war, in India, the Belgian Congo, and Italy. But the book gives the impression that a holiday with their best friends is a reasonable consolation, and the shared housekeeping and childcare arrangements mean that they all get opportunities for time alone, and time to relax.
The women are joined for a week by Jack Maynard, and for two nights by Jem Russell, who sleeps over the road at the house called Many Bushes. This is Phoebe’s home, and she lives there alone with an elderly housekeeper called Debby, although by the time of Jem’s visit Phoebe has gone to the San and Debby is staying at the Witchens.
Debby is an old-fashioned, devoted servant. She was Phoebe’s grandmother’s old cook, and came to housekeep for Phoebe’s father when Phoebe’s mother died, when Phoebe was a baby. Debby is described as a ‘loving tyrant’ – she is very definitely in charge, in the relationship between them, for all that Phoebe is her mistress. Debby is big and strong, able to lift milk cans and even Phoebe herself; she is honest and hardworking; but she lacks imagination – she cannot understand Phoebe’s emotional attachment to the cello. She is a proper, lower class character of exactly the right sort, from the same stable as Susan in the Anne books and Nana in Ballet Shoes.
Further down the village lives a 13 year old lad called Reg Entwistle, who is friends with Phoebe. The book opens with Reg announcing to Phoebe that the people renting The Witchens are here, and he wheels Phoebe into the garden so she can peep through the hedge to see them all. He is kind and thoughtful, if a little huffy at times, and there is a nice little Reg subplot in this story. Reg is likely to leave school at 14 because his aunt doesn’t believe in education, so Jack, recognising Reg’s ambition to become a doctor, undertakes to pay for his education: Jack to the rescue, as it were. Reg’s aunt accepts this offer but insists that Reg should continue to live with her in the holidays, which may be why, after Jo to the Rescue, we don’t hear anything more about Reg until, many years later, he turns up as a doctor at the San in Switzerland.
The only other village characters we meet are the village constable, Bert Trinder, who attends the aftermath of the burglary wearing his pyjamas; the vicar’s wife (or vicaress, as EBD weirdly terms it), Mrs Hart, also known as ‘That Sodger’; and Mr Foster, churchwarden and butcher, who has a sentence telling That Sodger about the church-going habits of the occupants of the Witchens.
‘Sodger’ is not a word I have come across outside this book, so I turned to Google, and found that it is a dialect variant of the word soldier, or an individual in a colony of ants that has powerful jaws adapted for defending the colony. I find it hard to believe that Debby would have had the finer points of entomology in mind when she coined the nickname, so perhaps it is based on Mrs Hart’s habit of marching in where she’s not wanted. EBD describes her as a large, bustling woman with a loud voice and very decided views on every subject, and devotes an entire chapter to her visit to The Witchens. Mrs Hart has made this visit to find out why the occupants of The Witchens don’t come to church, and also to tell them not to be friends with Phoebe. Mrs Hart herself fell out with Phoebe’s father shortly after they moved to the village, and she is firmly in the ‘sell the cello’ camp. She also doesn’t like babies or Rufus, and after she has gone, a furious Joey refers to her as a ‘nasty, insinuating, narrow-minded old hunk!’ so this isn’t really a subtle portrait of a character we aren’t meant to like.
Zephyr Burthill, however, is more nuanced. She is the spoilt young cello player who believes that her proficiency would be vastly improved by owning the late Nicholas Wychcote’s cello. We meet her by letter first of all – and Joey’s scathing comment that ‘She writes like a baby of ten!’ is entirely justified. Zephyr is in fact 19, but her letter is crammed full of ‘I want’ and exclamation marks, as she begs Phoebe to sell her the cello, and calls her selfish for wanting to keep it. When Zephyr finally arrives in person, in a magnificent, chauffeur-driven car, she is described as a Vision: a tiny hat perched on stiff curls, frock and coat of the latest fashion, and a face wearing so much make-up that she had – and I love this from EBD – about as much expression as an Easter egg.
It’s not a promising start, and Zephyr immediately betrays the faults of her upbringing by failing to think of her chauffeur’s comfort. And so here we are, back in familiar EBD territory – what’s wrong with Zephyr, her name, her attitudes, her expectations, her behaviour, all stem from poor parenting. She’s the indulged only child of two relatively old parents, who have given her everything she has ever asked for, and failed to educate her in any meaningful way.
Zephyr’s initial visit to The Witchens is to ask Joey for Phoebe’s address. It’s clear that Zephyr is determined to have the cello; her final words are that if Phoebe doesn’t agree to sell it to her, she’ll get it some other way. Joey correctly interprets this as meaning there will be an attempt at burglary, and the fact that Zephyr’s father is prepared to hire people to drug a dog, and burgle a house full of women and children, shows us what sort of man he is – it’s no wonder Zephyr is the way she is.
Zephyr’s second visit to The Witchens involves her prostrating herself before Simone as she describes how much she needs Phoebe’s cello. Luckily Jo then turns up and takes over. She gives Zephyr short shrift, and when Zephyr says she will die if she doesn’t have the cello, Jo thinks of Robin, who is genuinely frail and has had to do without many things she would have liked, but has not actually managed to die yet. Jo is inspired to invite Robin for a few days, so the two girls can meet, and makes the necessary arrangements for this while Zephyr is still there. Zephyr is intrigued; after all, as EBD tells us, she had had a lonely life with no real friends – a statement which could, of course, also apply to Phoebe; but Phoebe had a good father, rather than a father who consorts with criminals to get his own way.
Robin duly comes, and stays at the same hotel as Zephyr in Garnley, with visits to and from the folk at The Witchens over the course of the week. And Zephyr’s lack of education and culture really comes home to her:
Zephyr felt herself very much on the outer edge of their interests. They talked of books of which she had heard, but which she had not attempted to read. They discussed music and she was amazed at the technical knowledge even Marie displayed. The talk turned to travel, and she heard descriptions of their beloved Tyrol, with its lakes and mountains and rushing streams. When the other two came out with the teapot, it was the same. They never left her out of the talk, but so much of what they said was so nearly Greek to her, that she felt as if they were using an unknown language.
After a week in Robin’s company, Zephyr has switched from wanting to own the cello, to wanting to be Robin’s friend, so Jo has effectively rescued Zephyr from herself; and at the end of the book, Zephyr arrives at the San, visiting Phoebe while Jo is there. Zephyr has come to ask forgiveness from Phoebe, for harassing her, and from Joey, for the attempt to drug Rufus and the subsequent burglary. Zephyr remains Robin’s friend – there’s a reference in a later book to a holiday they take together in Switzerland – but she isn’t adopted into the main friendship group in the way Phoebe is. But even so, her character – so awful at the beginning – has developed in a way that ‘That Sodger’s’ character hasn’t.
During Jem’s brief visit, Marie asks if the San will return to Austria when ‘things are quiet again’ – that is, after the war. Jem thinks it will, but he also intends to keep the San running in England – which would mean two branches of the Chalet School, because, so far as Jem is concerned, the San and the School go together. Jem reminds the girls that Ernest Howell will probably want Plas Howell back, so this may well involve finding new premises. And then Joey drops a small bombshell: if the San and the School do return to Austria, it may be without Joey and Jack, because Jack’s brother has died, which means Jack has inherited the family estate of Pretty Maids in the New Forest. At the moment, Jack’s sister-in-law, Lydia, will continue to live there, while an agent manages the estate; but if Lydia decides to move to London, Jack will have to move down there, abandoning his medical career in favour of land management. This makes no sense whatsoever – either the agent is capable of managing the estate or he isn’t, and I can’t see Lydia being of much practical use in this respect. But of course, in the event, it doesn’t happen; and neither does the return to Austria.
Back in Armishire, Madge has given birth to a third daughter, Aline Elizabeth, who becomes known as Ailie and is a leading light in the school’s later Swiss years. Madge has not yet met Phoebe, but they have been writing to each other twice a week since Phoebe has been in the San, and through this they have become friends. Phoebe herself becomes so accepted into the friendship group that later, in Switzerland, she is considered almost an old girl of the Chalet School; and her daughter Lucy becomes best friends with Felicity Maynard.
Unusually for an EBD main character Phoebe’s disability is not miraculously cured. She still has a chronic health condition, but it is managed better once she is at the San. While this improves her mobility, so that by the end of this book she can walk with a stick and has less need to use a wheelchair, it can’t effect a complete physical transformation.
But emotionally, the transformation is complete by the end of the book. Phoebe has friends who love and support her, and she is engaged to marry Dr Frank Peters. The lonely young woman who relied on the kindness of a 13 year old boy is now able to look forward to a future she could not have imagined just a few weeks previously. It’s a really satisfying ending to a thoroughly enjoyable book.
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You have been listening to Tophole, written and presented by Deborah Lofas.
Music and production by Kit Lofas.
We’ll be back in a fortnight to talk about an important anniversary in Chalet School history, but in the meantime you can find us on Facebook or email us on topholepodcast.gmail.com.
Tophole is a Lofas Towers production.
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