The Lost Staircase
Key Facts : links with the Chalet School
In LAVENDER LAUGHS IN THE CHALET SCHOOL (h/b) or LAVENDER LEIGH AT THE CHALET SCHOOL (p/b), Jesanne and Lois appear and are the main focus of Chapter VII, "The New Seniors". They enter the Sixth Form following the death of Sir Ambrose, and it is stated that they were last at school (separately) "before the war". The two girls tell their story to Jo Maynard, who promises to make it into a book when she has time (this is not long before the birth of her first son).
No mention is made in THE LOST STAIRCASE of any characters or locations mentioned in Chalet stories of the period around World War Two, but apart from the name "Wyesford" for (presumably) Armiford/Hereford, nothing in the story is incompatible with the details given later in LAVENDER LAUGHS / LAVENDER LEIGH.
Jesanne is fourteen when she arrives in England; this must be before the outbreak of World War Two, as she is able to travel from New Zealand, and there is no hint of wartime conditions in the big house, well-staffed with servants, or of rationing.
When Jesanne and Lois join the Chalet School, they are seventeen, and we read that Lois' uncle has ploughed up all available land for crops at the start of the war. This puts the action of this book very close to the outbreak of World War Two, although there is no hint anywhere in the narrative of any such threat, or indeed of outside events.
The Dragon House is situated in the Welsh Marches, in the plain eastward of the Welsh hills. It looks "eastwards to the Malvern Hills; north to the Black Mountains; west and south to Gloucestershire and the Cotswolds". The river Ddwyvyll flows round three sides of the estate, joining a lesser tributary of the Wye.
The house is fourteen miles' drive from the railway station at Wyesford, which puts it conveniently within reach of the Chalet School, certainly for boarding. In LAVENDER LAUGHS / LAVENDER LEIGH, we are told that the Dragon House is not far from the school as the crow flies, but that the route between them consists of "cross-country lanes".
contributed by Angela Woodgates, England __ working from a hardback edition