The Chalet School And Barbara
Key Facts (Possible Spoilers) :
School Facts:
Miss Annersley is the headmistress of the main School, which is now at the Gornetz Platz in the Bernese Oberland
Miss Wilson the headmistress at Welsen, the finishing branch a few miles down the valley.
Location:
This is the first term in Switzerland for the main branch of the Chalet School, although the Welsen branch has been open for a year.
Series Characters Whereabouts:
Jo Maynard is settling into her new home, Freudesheim, next door to the School.
Robin Humphries has entered the convent at La Sagesse, Toronto, as a postulant.
Peggy Bettany has been granted another year at Welsen, now that her mother is making such a good recovery from her throat operation.
Bride Bettany is at the finishing branch of the School at Welsen.
Biddy O'Ryan is the History mistress at the newly opened Swiss branch of the School.
Len Maynard begins the term with German measles
Con Maynard is a fellow German measles sufferer
Margot Maynard also gets German measles
Beth Chester has been engaged by the Maynards as a nursery governess to the Maynard youngsters and mother's help to Joey.
Julie Lucy is head girl of the Chalet School in Switzerland
Mary-Lou Trelawney is a leading light of Upper IV.
Emerence Hope is in Lower IV A
Barbara is delighted to learn that she can start as a boarder from the first day of term; she has been yearning to stand on her own two feet at last. Her cousin, Vi Lucy, dutifully looks after her at first and soon finds this becomes a pleasure as real friendship grows between the cousins for the first time.
Another girl in their form, who harbours a secret liking for Vi, is jealous of their closeness, and contrives to get Barbara into trouble by taking a book from the lockers and leaving it on the Splashery floor, making it appear that it is Barbara who has removed the book. This is Barbara's only real brush with the nastier side of school life in her first term and it is soon sorted out after Vi refuses to believe her cousin would do anything so underhand.
As Miss Slater, the long-standing maths mistress, has elected not to come out to Switzerland, a new maths mistress has been appointed. It is Nancy Wilmot, old girl of the school from Tirol days. Nancy gets a shock when she meets the grown-up Peggy Bettany, when she takes a party down to Welsen. She remembers Peggy as a "leggy infant" at the Tiernsee!
A trip out to Unterhofen, a village further up the mountain from the Gornetz Platz, turns into an adventure when the girls get caught in a blizzard: both Barbara and Verity-Anne Carey are so tired from walking in the storm that they have to be carried back to school by two sturdy mountaineers.
Mary-Lou misses the trip to Berne and much of the fun from the winter sports by falling downstairs and twisting her ankle. She is able only to take a limited part in the games evening which the staff devise for the school, which includes such ingenious events as 'fishing' with magnets and key-rings, and a 'boat race' with mats and broomsticks.
Frieda von Ahlen is living with her family of four in Basle, where husband Bruno works for a bank.
Hilary Burn now Hilary Graves, and resident with her doctor husband at the Platz, gives birth to a daughter, Marjorie Edith, midway through the term.
Daisy Venables is newly married: her wedding to fellow doctor Laurie Rosomon took place during the summer.
contributed by Christina Erskine, England __ working from a paperback edition