A look at the
La Rochelle Books

As a child, borrowing Chalet books from the library, I noticed the fascinating words at the front of some of the books: 'also by Elinor Brent Dyer; the La Rochelle Series'. What, I used to wonder, was 'the La Rochelle Series'. Another 50 odd stories? A school called La Rochelle? Extraordinarily enough, I cannot remember when I first found out. I was somewhat disappointed by the knowledge that there were only seven titles, but I was certainly not disappointed when I read them.

The seven La Rochelle titles are:

Gerry Goes to School (1922)
A Head Girl's Difficulties (1923)
The Maids of La Rochelle (1924)
Seven Scamps (1927)
Heather Leaves School (1929)
Janie of La Rochelle (1932)
Janie Steps In (1953)

The dates in brackets are their original publication dates. They were only ever published in hardback, although there were various different printings and editions which I shall be describing later. All the books were published by Chambers, the same publishers who published the Chalet books.

The series was not actually known as the La Rochelle series until the 1950s reprints, when Chambers put a note (either a red and white box or a yellow and red circle) on the spines of the dustwrappers. The name 'La Rochelle' comes from the cottage in which the three Temple sisters lived in Maids. Mo Everett, who lives in Guernsey, has done some considerable research on locations, and reckons it is the cottage pictured here. This cottage, considered 'a tiny cottage' in Maids where 'people like ourselves do not live' and even when extended in Janie of La Rochelle, not that large, recently sold for around £5,000,000!

Although the books are linked to each other they did not really become a series until Janie of La Rochelle as hitherto each book was about a new set of characters with the previous set(s) appearing later in the book. Gerry is only linked to the second title, A Head Girl's Difficulties but since that links to the next and so on, it can be considered part of the series. The series is also linked to the Chalet books in that many of the characters (or their children) appear from Exile onwards.

Gerry Goes to School was EBD's first book and the heroine is one Gerry Challoner whom we later meet in the Chalet books as a friend of Grizel Cochrane's. (They meet when Grizel is studying music in Florence, and Gerry and Grizel appear at the school during Rivals when the school has measles.) Having been brought up by aunts who dressed her as though she lived in the 1850s, Gerry comes to stay, and eventually to live with the Trevennor family (10 children + parents). Having had a book to herself, played a fairly large part in A Head Girl's Difficulties, a mention in Seven Scamps and made a brief appearance in the Chalet series, Gerry then disappears.

However, on her first day at St Peter's High, Gerry meets the Atherton girls who are to play a much larger part. Rosamund Atherton is head girl of St Peter's High in A Head Girl's Difficulties. She goes on to become the mother of Blossom and Judy Willoughby. At the end of the book, we learn that the Athertons are going to Guernsey for a holiday. In the third book, Maids of La Rochelle, which is set entirely on Guernsey, the three 'maids' are the Temple sisters, Anne, Elizabeth and their younger half sister Janie. Chalet readers will know them as Anne Chester, mother of Beth, Nancy, Barbara and Janice; Elizabeth Ozanne, mother of Vanna and Nella and Janie Lucy, mother of Julie, Betsy Vi and Kitten.

Seven Scamps tells the story of the Willoughby family. It is their uncle Nigel who marries Rosamund Atherton and on whose boat Joey and Co escape from Guernsey in The Chalet School Goes To It. The Scamps meet the Temple sisters and the Athertons when they go to Guernsey for a holiday, and Mrs Atherton's much younger stepsister, Cesca, gets engaged to the curate from the Willoughby's village and they become the parents of Nita and Edmund Eltringham.

In Heather Leaves School, Heather Raphael becomes a good friend of Janie Lucy when she meets her on the boat to St Peter Port in Guernsey. It is during this book that Janie Temple becomes engaged to Julian Lucy, a friend whom she meets in Guernsey (Maids of La Rochelle) and who features in Seven Scamps as well.

Janie of La Rochelle describes the first year of Janie and Julian's marriage when they are living in La Rochelle, the Guernsey cottage first lived in by the Temple girls in Maids. Janie Steps In is set just before The Chalet School in Exile and one concern is the problems of Beth Chester who at that stage is an unhappy girl of around 12. At the end of the book, we learn that she is finally able to attend a good school, as one is about to start on the Island, having recently evacuated there from Austria.

Janie Steps In was not published until 1953, but must, I feel, have been written at some stage between Exile and Highland Twins since we are also properly introduced to Nan Blakney whom, in Highland Twins, we learn becomes engaged to David Willoughby. (Nan is of course mentioned as 'little Nan, my cousin' in A Head Girl's Difficulties and she appears very briefly in Janie of La Rochelle but she only has one line to herself.)

When Janie tells Joey of her engagement, Nan is obviously a character whom we are supposed to know well: perhaps EBD had forgotten that the book in which she featured had not yet been published. As a series which links to the Chalets, the La Rochelle books are of importance, but even more they are a delight to read in themselves. The thing I have most enjoyed about writing this article, is re-reading all the La Rochelle books, something I haven't done for three years. I was sorry to finish them.

Clarissa Cridland