Glorious Prague by Charles Stevens
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| Both images of Prague by Yuri Shevchuk |
Author: Charles Stevens
Publisher: Not known
Source book: The Rivals of the Chalet School by Elinor M Brent-Dyer (Chalet School #5)
Margia and Amy Stevens are quite important characters in the Chalet School series. Margia is a highly talented pianist right from the start, and has a different talent; for mischief. Little sister Amy is the youngest pupil until the Robin arrives. We first meet them in Tyrol and follow their progress through the school, even keeping up with their lives to some extent after they have left and grown up. Amy even becomes one of the many characters to name a daughter after her charismatic headmistress, Madge Bettany (we don’t know if Amy was allowed to marry a doctor, which is of course the highest possible accolade awarded to Chalet School characters).
We also, to a lesser extent, follow Margia and Amy’s father. He’s a foreign correspondent for a London newspaper on his way to Bergen when we first meet him, and later he is posted to Cairo during WWII. Somewhere along the way he must have been in Czechoslovakia, and that’s how he came to write his masterpiece Glorious Prague.
We are never given any details about the book. Is it a history or is it a travel guide? We don’t know. I have always imagined it to be in the same vein as James/Jan Morris’s wonderful Venice. And if you haven’t read that, I really do recommend it. And if you have never visited Venice, well I recommend that too.
We learn about Glorious Prague in an unusual way. When the girls from the Chalet School, and some from St Scholastika’s, have to undertake an unexpectedly long walk because of a sudden crevasse, Jo and Cornelia tell Elaine, Head Girl of St Scholastika’s, that Princess Elisaveta of Belsornia is an old girl of the Chalet School. They also tell her that Marie von Eschenau’s father is a count, and that Margia’s father is the author of Glorious Prague. You know how this sort of thing comes up in conversation. I’m sure we can all dig up something fancy like this. In my case: one of my best friends is a bestselling novelist, my first cousin once removed was a Law Lord, and one of my ancestors signed King Charles I’s Death Warrant. Of course none of this caused anyone to set up a feud against my old school. And to be honest I wouldn’t be that fussed if they did.
But here’s the thing, the way Glorious Prague is mentioned, it’s obviously meant to be a very well known book. Perhaps a best seller, although I’m not sure best seller lists were a thing in the 1920s. And it comes up again at the very beginning of The Chalet School and the Lintons (#10), so I think we can believe it is very celebrated.
Another journalist who writes a book in Chalet School land, is the really annoying Mr Winterton (he doesn’t merit a first name), who features in the background of Peggy of the Chalet School (#22). A foreign correspondent posted to the Far East by his unnamed newspaper, he moves his wife and two young daughters, Polly and Lalla (sometimes Lala), to rural Yorkshire and then leaves the country for (apparently) 10 years. He comes home, doesn’t like the look of his neglected family who have ‘run wild’, moves them to Devon at a moment’s notice and settles down to write a book which we imagine will be about the Far East but as we don’t even get a sniff of a title, who knows? If you are interested, the eponymous Peggy grows up to marry Mr Winterton’s son by his first wife. I think his name is Giles.
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