Tom Tackles the Chalet School

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View books by Elinor Brent-Dyer.

Not one of her best - Rated
'Tom' is a smashing (forbidden slang) and engaging character. The only child of a parson and his wife who had wanted a son, young Tom (and no, it's not her real name) has been brought up to a be a 'gentleman', but a visiting aunt takes fright at her manliness, and insists she be sent to a girls' school to learn how to become a lady. But Tom resists the school's good influence, at least at first. Girls, to the gentlemanly Tom, are silly, dishonourable creatures who sneak and don't play the game. Even Daisy Venables, whom Tom had admired greatly, seems to be a sneak.

But Tom learns through immersion in the Chalet School culture, that not all girls are like the sneaks in the girls' school stories, that Josephine M. Bettany is a really good egg and a cracking authoress, and the Chalet School is a dashed decent school. Daisy is back in her good books, too. She also makes the first of her many dolls' houses for the annual Sale of Work, the unimaginatively titled 'Tomadit'.

However, this is not one of Elinor's best books, possibly because it was cobbled together from short stories in the 'annuals', the Chalet Books for Girls, and published and shoved into the canon later, during the Swiss years and not during the Armishire period in which it is set. It seems to sit awkwardly amid vintage stuff like 'Gay from China' and 'Jo to the Rescue'. See what you think. Oh, and as always, thank you to Girls Gone By for reissuing Tom to a wider audience.