REVIEW: The Head Girl's Deputy
The Head Girl’s Deputy: Brenda Page. 1930, Cassell
This book features a lot of the elements you’d expect or hope to find in a girls boarding school story, even a new girl whose ideas of school life have been influenced by reading school stories, although that isn’t a strong strand. Up to the end, there are what would become hoary old classics - to my chagrin, I didn’t see a couple of late reveals coming although I should have. Although some thought had been given to school structure and ethos, what struck me overall was that the connective tissue doesn’t quite work. One character’s nature is a bit warped for a plot point, the author hasn’t quire paid enough attention to whether a junior would have the exalted vocabulary she shows off and most odd of all is how strangely a central relationship between two sisters feels. I couldn’t help but make unflattering comparisons with Dorita Fairlie Bruce and Elinor M. Brent-Dyer.
Haddenhurst College is, like all girls own boarding schools, prospering. Having recently acquired the nearby Manor House, the Principal is going to create a new house, transferring some girls there, but it will mainly be filled by new girls. Berenice Meredith, or queen Berenice, as the girls call her, will be the head prefect charged with getting the new, untried house into shape, supported by three fifth formers who will become sixth formers and house prefects in the new term.
One of them is the relatively new girl Maxine Romilly. Having been brought up ‘out East’, with a travelling civil engineer father and an Irish (and therefore impetuous, of course*) mother, her unusual upbringing has made her far from a joiner in school matters, although she is very good natured. Berenice exerts a promise of assistance even from Max, but the girl warns her that one of the new girls will be her younger sister Quin (short for Quentine). For her health, Quin was never brought to live with her parents after infancy, staying in England with an aunt who spoiled her. She arrives at schools a heedless imp who has nicknamed a girl with the unfortunate middle name of Meggots Maggots on her first afternoon, and is soon Manor House’s most troublesome girl, if not the school’s.
Berenice’s task is not helped by the housemistress being entirely new and fond of neatness and order, while some sort of ‘poltergeist’ or certainly a mischievous agent is taking stuff and returning them in the oddest places. The fire alarm going off on the night that Berenice and Max have set themselves as watchmen, and someone cutting the strings of a violin just before a house concert are even more worrying. It’s not the time for Berenice to have to leave the school for health reasons.
But Max has started taking her promise to Berenice seriously, and, in her own way - which is much too unconventional for the other prefects! - sets about tackling the fourth formers, led by Quin, and imbuing them with a sense of fair play. Of course, it’s not as straightforward as all that, but all comes right by Speech Day at the end of term.
As you will have seen, it features some outlandish names - the excuse being that Max and Quin were named after rich uncles who went and left their fortunes to charity anyway - but there is also a pair of twins named Cherub and Seraph, who are second only to Quin in mischief. It’s also not the kind of establishment you’d want to send your offspring as the girls only know what to do when the fire alarm sounds in the middle of the night ‘in theory’. They clearly haven’t drilled, and if there were a real fire…well. Furthermore, the hockey is quite rough, with several thwacks to ankles and one concussion.
It’s good that the almost too perfect Berenice is only a supporting character, and the more humorous Maxine is the heroine, who comes to learn school spirit and develop her relationship with her sister - although, as I said, it’s odd that Quin isn’t jealous of her sister’s more exciting life or better relationship with their parents.
*There are other examples of period-typical racism, most of all towards Gypsies.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/167156.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.
This book features a lot of the elements you’d expect or hope to find in a girls boarding school story, even a new girl whose ideas of school life have been influenced by reading school stories, although that isn’t a strong strand. Up to the end, there are what would become hoary old classics - to my chagrin, I didn’t see a couple of late reveals coming although I should have. Although some thought had been given to school structure and ethos, what struck me overall was that the connective tissue doesn’t quite work. One character’s nature is a bit warped for a plot point, the author hasn’t quire paid enough attention to whether a junior would have the exalted vocabulary she shows off and most odd of all is how strangely a central relationship between two sisters feels. I couldn’t help but make unflattering comparisons with Dorita Fairlie Bruce and Elinor M. Brent-Dyer.
Haddenhurst College is, like all girls own boarding schools, prospering. Having recently acquired the nearby Manor House, the Principal is going to create a new house, transferring some girls there, but it will mainly be filled by new girls. Berenice Meredith, or queen Berenice, as the girls call her, will be the head prefect charged with getting the new, untried house into shape, supported by three fifth formers who will become sixth formers and house prefects in the new term.
One of them is the relatively new girl Maxine Romilly. Having been brought up ‘out East’, with a travelling civil engineer father and an Irish (and therefore impetuous, of course*) mother, her unusual upbringing has made her far from a joiner in school matters, although she is very good natured. Berenice exerts a promise of assistance even from Max, but the girl warns her that one of the new girls will be her younger sister Quin (short for Quentine). For her health, Quin was never brought to live with her parents after infancy, staying in England with an aunt who spoiled her. She arrives at schools a heedless imp who has nicknamed a girl with the unfortunate middle name of Meggots Maggots on her first afternoon, and is soon Manor House’s most troublesome girl, if not the school’s.
Berenice’s task is not helped by the housemistress being entirely new and fond of neatness and order, while some sort of ‘poltergeist’ or certainly a mischievous agent is taking stuff and returning them in the oddest places. The fire alarm going off on the night that Berenice and Max have set themselves as watchmen, and someone cutting the strings of a violin just before a house concert are even more worrying. It’s not the time for Berenice to have to leave the school for health reasons.
But Max has started taking her promise to Berenice seriously, and, in her own way - which is much too unconventional for the other prefects! - sets about tackling the fourth formers, led by Quin, and imbuing them with a sense of fair play. Of course, it’s not as straightforward as all that, but all comes right by Speech Day at the end of term.
As you will have seen, it features some outlandish names - the excuse being that Max and Quin were named after rich uncles who went and left their fortunes to charity anyway - but there is also a pair of twins named Cherub and Seraph, who are second only to Quin in mischief. It’s also not the kind of establishment you’d want to send your offspring as the girls only know what to do when the fire alarm sounds in the middle of the night ‘in theory’. They clearly haven’t drilled, and if there were a real fire…well. Furthermore, the hockey is quite rough, with several thwacks to ankles and one concussion.
It’s good that the almost too perfect Berenice is only a supporting character, and the more humorous Maxine is the heroine, who comes to learn school spirit and develop her relationship with her sister - although, as I said, it’s odd that Quin isn’t jealous of her sister’s more exciting life or better relationship with their parents.
*There are other examples of period-typical racism, most of all towards Gypsies.
This entry was originally posted at https://feather-ghyll.dreamwidth.org/167156.html. Please comment wherever you prefer to.