St Clare's reread

[Yak]

I'm always annoyed at the punishment of the first form for the broken window. It might have been common to punish a whole form if you can't find the culprit (luckily it's been outlawed in German schools) but why assume that it must have been someone from the first form?

Yeah I was annoyed by that too (and the same thing in Fourth Year when it was just assumed that it was a Fourth Former stealing from matron because their common room was the nearest to her room (okay as a matter of fact it WAS a fourth former but that was not a given). And there is just no reason at all that it was not someone from a different form who broke the First Form window.

[Wolfgang]

I suppose the reasoning is to make the ones, who had been punished unjustly, punish the ones who are responsible for it. I suppose Hannah will remember the incident in the 6th Tina and Tini book (Das Geheimnis des Gärtners - "The secret of the gardener") in which two pupils also played a silly practical joke and two forms were punished for it. It was described what the culprits would have to do to be forgiven by the other ones.

[Hannah]

Yes, I remember that incident, Wolfgang. I wonder if Miss Roberts believed that the girls knew the culprit? In the Tina-and-Tini-book the two boys were known to the other students but nobody knew who broke the window at St. Clare's.

There are two things I noticed when the four girls come back from the circus:
1. Mam'zelle's room is right above their dormitory. Certainly Mam'zelle would have noticed the midnight feast in that case, at the latest in the moment of the crash - but only Miss Kennedy came.
2. Hilary calls out "Pat" from the dormitory window. I don't think she would have been able to tell Pat and Isabel apart from a distance in the dark .

Then I have a question regarding language: Janet says

Haven’t you learnt by now that decent people don’t say ‘Didn’t ought to!’

Was (is?) it usual for people of Sheila's background (before they became rich) to use such wording?

[Yak]

Didn't ought to is bad grammar but I dunno if it is specifically used by people who used to be rich or just by people who .. are not good at grammar . I think it was snobby of Janet to point it out.

I was thinking the other day that there are loads of times when the twins are referred to by their correct names even when they are apparently so identical that Belinda could not tell that Isabel was not Pat ..

[Hannah]

I think it is a difference if we look at the first few weeks and/or girls who (don't) see the twins often. Probably the girls in the first form could tell them apart after a while, I just doubt that ability in the darkness from a window above.

[Wolfgang]

Yes, I remember that incident, Wolfgang. I wonder if Miss Roberts believed that the girls knew the culprit? In the Tina-and-Tini-book the two boys were known to the other students but nobody knew who broke the window at St. Clare's.

I suppose teachers couldn't care less. They gave the culprit a chance to own up, and if it doesn't, a demonstration of power has to take place as some means of deterrent. If the pupils knew the culprit, it's up to them to make sure it won't happen again, and if they don't, maybe the culprit will think twice before doing something of that kind again.

[Hannah]

You're probably right, Wolfgang.

I've got another question for those who are from the UK: The twins and Kathleen eat "buttered buns" at the tea shop. What kind of buns could that have been? I can't imagine going out for tea and "only" eating buns with butter so I guess they are something special?

I've been wondering about the rules about going out. In the second and third book the younger girls can't go out on their own but in the first book Janet goes to town twice alone.

I also think it's strange that a girl who can't write because of broken arm gets home (the same motive is used by Pamela Cox in Kitty at St. Clare's - and Pat would have loved to come back with the others). After all you can learn a lot just from being there.

[Yak]

I honestly don't know what kind of buns it would have been - in my mind I imagined something like scones but then, they are obviously not the same as 'buns.' 'Bun' is a term for more than one type of bread product here; some are sweet and some are savoury. I can't imagine that they were putting butter on sweet buns (which are an entirely different thing, more like cupcakes) but I do not know what type of savoury bun was implied.

[Yak]

Re Vera being sent home, I presume it was just to get Sheila into the play.

[Wolfgang]

Is it far-fetched to think that butter war rationed as well during and after World War II? So children of that era might have considered it to be a treat?

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've got another question for those who are from the UK: The twins and Kathleen eat "buttered buns" at the tea shop. What kind of buns could that have been? I can't imagine going out for tea and "only" eating buns with butter so I guess they are something special?

I've always imagined them to be currant buns. They're usually eaten warm, spread with butter, though I've also taken them cold on picnics (with butter between the two halves, like a sandwich).

https://www.thespruceeats.com/peter-rab ... ns-4140348

[Barnard]

Without doubt they are currant buns.

[Yak]

I am still on Summer Term as have been reading a few other things the last few days . I love the introduction of Carlotta and I like Bobby and Pam too. Prudence, obviously, was awful but was an interesting character and a good example of how someone can be 'well brought up' and still have an absolutely terrible character. I wonder what happened to her?

[Hannah]

Thanks for the explanations regarding buns. I can well imagine eating raisin buns with butter though I usually add a bit of honey too. It's still not what my cake-loving me would order at a café or tea shop .

I've now finished the first book.

There's something I stumbled upon the evening of the day that the girls found the dog:

When she heard the telephone bell ringing that evening she was quite sure that it was the police ringing up the Head Mistress. But it wasn’t.

I've always imagined the phone to be in Miss Theobald's office but would that bell be heard by the girls? Or was the/another phone in the hall?

Something else:

Matron proved unexpectedly good at providing a real meal in one of the plays, instead of the pretend-one that Hilary had arranged for.

The book was published in 1941. There are never any hints of food scarcity in the book (quite the opposite) but this sounds a bit like it.

Regarding the chapter "A shock for Isabel": That chapter is missing in the German translations. I think it was in the Japanese series that was broadcast in Germany but back then I didn't know that it was in the original book - after all adaptations on the TV often stray from the books. So I only knew that it was what Blyton wrote when I read the English book as an adult.
The girls must have been very trustworthy if the exam papers are in the (not locked) rooms the evening before. It doesn't really make sense to me though except that it was needed for the story. Miss Roberts could have just brought the papers with her the next day.
Interestingly at Malory Towers the exam papers in the second book are locked in (though not with success as the key to the lock was right there ).

[Anita Bensoussane]

I have a question regarding language: Janet says

Haven’t you learnt by now that decent people don’t say ‘Didn’t ought to!’

Was (is?) it usual for people of Sheila's background (before they became rich) to use such wording?

Sorry to have gone back a few posts. I meant to comment on this last week, but I had to go out and I didn't get back to it.

Winifred discusses Sheila's background with Pat, saying, "Her mother was the daughter of our gardener. Her father kept a kind of village stores." As time passed, Sheila's father made a fortune and her family "rose tremendously in the world" but Sheila has retained something of "the manners and speech she learnt when she was very small."

"Didn't ought to" is a non-standard construction used in some working-class dialects, so it marks Sheila out as having come from a working-class background. Even if she's altered her accent, perhaps with the help of elocution lessons, certain expressions will be ingrained and will take longer to lose. It's similar to the situation in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady, where Eliza Doolittle learns to speak with an upper-class accent but still (at first) uses Cockney vocabulary and non-standard grammar, and talks in upper-class company about subjects that most people around her would consider "indelicate", e.g. when she says, "My aunt died of influenza, or so they said. But it's my belief they done the old woman in...Yes, Lord love you. Why should she die of influenza, when she come through diphtheria right enough the year before? Fairly blue with it she was. They all thought she was dead. But my father, he kept ladling gin down her throat. Then she come to so sudden she bit the bowl right off the spoon."