The Rose Patrol in the Alps by Josephine M Bettany

Mourning Dove: Grateful thanks to Vasilia Romanenko - found on Instagram 

Title: The Rose Patrol in the Alps

Author: Josephine M Bettany 

Publisher: not known

Source book: The New Chalet School by Elinor M Brent Dyer (Chalet School #13)

According to the beginning of The New Chalet School, The Rose Patrol in the Alps is Jo Bettany’s current book. She has been writing it since April. New is set in the middle of the summer term and the book is not yet finished. Jo gives her sister Madge the first few chapters to read.

Rose Patrol is obviously a Guide story (oh, how I hated it when my boarding school insisted I had to be a Guide for at least a year! Perhaps I still am a Guide. I disliked the whole experience so much I never actually resigned, just stopped going as soon as I could). 

This book is presumably set in the Austrian alps because that’s where Jo has been living since she was 12 years old. We learn that it’s about a 14 year old girl (and, we suppose, the Rose patrol) and is written in Jo’s familiar racy style. It’s good to know that she has already developed a style of her own.

Jo receives her first copies of Cecily Holds the Fort. It will be sold for 3/6 and has four illustrations and a coloured frontispiece. Her newly arrived parcel of books are nearly burned to a crisp when the school hall is accidentally set on fire.

However, in the next Chalet School book, The Chalet School in Exile (#14)we discover that Jo has two books in print: Cecily Holds the Fort and Tessa in Tyrol, the adventures of an English schoolgirl in the Austrian Tyrol. She is busy writing a third book.

So… what happened to The Rose Patrol in the Alps then? And when did she write Tessa?

Well, if you ask me, or indeed anyone else who has been reading Chalet School books since they were about 8 years old, we will all tell you that EBD was useless at keeping a record of which of her characters did what and when. EBD castigates Jo, her own creation, for not keeping a proper record of her characters when she is writing Cecily Holds the Fort. In fact Jo has to rewrite a chapter because she has confused her characters, and we see that she goes back over what she has written and makes a proper list of which girls are in what form. 

But over and over again we see EBD confuse her characters; get their names wrong; change how many children her characters have, and their names; change their birthdays; change their ages by 3 years or more so they end up in quite the wrong form; and basically get everything wrong that she possibly could because she obviously didn’t bother to keep a record. So why should we be surprised that she gets the fictional books written by her favourite character Josephine M Bettany muddled up?

Except this is so early in Jo’s writing career. Don’t you think EBD might remember her second book?

Also featured in The New Chalet School is a play by Elizabeth Arnett, an extremely naughty Middle, called The Duchess’s Tragedy. The beautiful young heiress Duchess Mariquita has to choose between her unscrupulous guardian, Don Juan and a noble youth, Don Antonio. Of course the play is intended to be performed after lights out and for an audience exclusively of Middles. (At my school we never aspired to anything grander than a midnight feast, but of course these are frowned of at the Chalet School).

Jo talks about writing a life of Mozart. I don’t think this project is ever mentioned again, but what with one thing and another, Jo has plenty to keep her busy without researching Mozart.

Weirdly, having apparently forgotten all about The Rose Patrol for years, EBD suddenly resurrected it in Carola Storms the Chalet School (#23). We learn that Carola has read it, along with Tessa in Tyrol. Perhaps EBD made a list of Josephine M Bettany’s books after all.

Also see Cecily Holds the Fort

Thanks to Vasilia Romanenko - found on Instagram 



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