The Husband
Mollie and Dick settle down happily in India, and early in The Princess of the Chalet School Dick is writing to announce “The biggest joke in creation!…We’ve got twins! It’s true! Boy and girl, and they beat the howling monkeys into fits. Imagine us with twins! We can’t believe it ourselves, and it’s the joke of the season.” At this point Dick is still very much the light-hearted boy, not yet the responsible paterfamilias.
We next hear about the Bettanys in a letter from Mollie (in Head Girl). By this time, a third child has arrived. “(Babs) is like Dick – the image of him, I think! He, of course, says he doesn’t know where I see it. The first time I told him he had the cheek to go off to the nearest mirror and examine himself carefully, murmuring all the time, ‘I may be plain, but I’m not as bad as all that!’ As I told him, he doesn’t deserve a daughter at all!”
Soon afterwards, the family visits Austria. They are still staying at the Tiernsee in Rivals when Dick suggests going for a walk with Jem Russell, thus displaying another typical male attitude – “ ‘I suppose you two’ – he turned to his wife and sister – ‘will want to stay with the kids, but Joey might come.’ ” Dick’s teasing sense of humour surfaces when they have an encounter with the humourless Miss Browne of St Scholastika’s “…Dick burst into a roar of laughter. ‘Keep your hair on, my child,’ he said, as soon as he was calm again. ‘Don’t start any blood-feuds or guerrilla warfare, I implore you, or we may have that old stick walking off with you to imprison you in her deepest dungeon – I’m sure she looks quite capable of it!’ ”
We see a much more serious side of Dick in Rivals when Jo falls through the ice on the lake rescuing Maureen Donovan and is at death’s door. Dick is summoned.
His fair boyish face looked suddenly old, and there was little spring in his step as he moved…[Miss Anderson] knew who he must be… His blue eyes questioned her imploringly as she opened the door for him. “She is very ill,” she said at once, “but all hope is not lost”
but Jem Russell tells him:
“She is as ill as she can be,” he said. “She is so ill that, candidly, Dick, I doubt if she will see the afternoon.”
Dick groaned. “The chicken. Oh, Jem, old chap! It hits hard!”…[He] sat staring into the fire, misery in his face…
It is Dick who persuades Jem to try letting the Robin sing to Joey.
“Oh, let the kid (Robin) try, Jem,” he said. “If Joey is as ill as all that, it can’t make much difference.”
As the crisis passes, Madge collapses with relief and for the first time Dick is the stronger of the twins, although only just…
When [Madge] came to herself again, she was lying on Matron’s bed and Dick was with her. He was mopping his eyes with a handkerchief of flaring orange, and his lips were quivering as he turned to her. “All serene, old lady! Jem’s just gone back to her and he’ll be in again in a minute.”
Dick and Mollie do not appear in Eustacia, and Jo, Camp, Exploits or Lintons, having returned to India with Baby Biddy (later Bride), but there are several mentions of Peggy and Rix, the twins they have left with Auntie Madge in Austria.
In The New House at the Chalet School Jo announces to Margot Venables, “My brother and his wife are coming home this summer, and bringing their other two with them – Bride and Noel.” So by this time Biddy has become Bride and Noel (Jackie) has been born, although I can’t find an actual mention of his birth.
Dick and Mollie duly arrive and are mentioned in Jo Returns to the Chalet School, as “[they] would then have returned from Ireland, where they had been spending a month of his furlough with some of his wife’s people.” Unfortunately, Rix brings measles to the Sonnalpe, and Madge explains that “Rix had taken cold on the journey, they thought…I thought it was natural tiredness, especially when Dick calmly informed me that they’d come straight through from Paris – and with all those youngsters, if you please!” The measles keep Jo away from the Sonnalpe, so she does not see much more of Dick and Mollie until they pay her a goodbye visit. Dick, more serious than usual, explains why they are leaving early.
“The bother is that, as you know, we want to take the overland route to Port Said, for the Mediterranean seems to be suffering from the jimjams, if all one hears is true, and Mollie still remains the world’s worst sailor. All this wretched rain and the gales we are having seem to be putting the railway out of action temporarily, so we feel we’d better get off and not risk missing the boat…”
Mollie explains tearfully that they are leaving not just their eldest three but also the baby, Jack (no longer Noel!), with Madge. Dick sees the tears brimming up and “as he was not anxious for his wife to break down, he hurriedly changed the subject. ‘Now then, Moll! Where’ve you put that little case?’ ” Jo joyfully unpacks the typewriter they h ave given her, and “ ‘Neat, but not gaudy,’ said her brother, with a grin. ‘Also a delicate hint that a few more letters would be acceptable, and this gives you no excuse for not writing…’ ” But he is anxious to hurry away: “He cut the farewells short. He knew his wife too well to risk a storm of tears, and it seemed to Jo that they had barely come before they had gone…”
Kate Dixon, England
Note: This article is reproduced with permission from the author and the Editor of the New Chalet Club Journals and originally appeared in Journal 15