Buttercups and Daisies by Josephine M Bettany

Both photographs of daisies taken by me

Title: Buttercups and Daisies 

Author: Josephine M Bettany 

Publisher: not known 

Source book: The Chalet School Does It Again by Elinor M Brent Dyer (Chalet School #32)

According to The Chalet School Does It Again, Buttercups and Daisies is Josephine M Bettany’s latest book. New girl, Prunella Davidson, tells us she was given a copy for Christmas, and she “liked it very well”. What she means is she loved the book. Prunella is getting back at her parents who think she uses far too much slang, so she is trying extremely hard to avoid any slang at all… and tries hard to talk like her great granny… which seriously bemuses her classmates.

We know nothing about Buttercups and Daisies except that it is another of Jo’s books about Guides. I imagine there are two Patrols, one called Buttercups and one Daisies. Maybe they are feuding over something. Who knows?

It is interesting that EBD shows her fictional author, Josephine M Bettany, still writing books about Girl Guides, even though she herself has abandoned Guides for her Chalet School girls. Does it Again is quite an early book after the Chalet School has moved to the Bernese Oberland, when the girls are still hoping that the school will start up the Guide companies again. But the school never does begin Guides again. I wonder why not?

In the early days of the Chalet School the girls are almost all extremely keen on being Guides, and EBD writes about the movement as though she knows what she’s talking about. In Tyrol the school has Guides, Brownies, Rangers and Cadets, and continues its enthusiasm from Austria (remember the camping?), to St Briavel’s in South Wales (more camping). But when the school moves to the Görnetz Platz in the Bernese Oberland in Switzerland, Guiding is left behind.

In the first Swiss books, the girls discuss why they haven’t started Guides in their new location, and look forward to starting again. But gradually the whole thing is forgotten. It’s very odd. It’s extra odd when you consider that the international Girl Guide organisation has a centre in Adelboden which, guess what, is in the Bernese Oberland and very close indeed to where the fictional Görnetz Platz is located. And what is more, it has been open since 1932, so one can’t help feeling that EBD must have known about it.

We know that Jo loved being a Guide, and that she has already written several stories about Guides: The Robins Make Good, Patrol-Leader Nancy and of course The Rose Patrol in the Alps which was either Jo’s second book, or not. Evidently Jo hasn’t yet noticed that EBD has abandoned Guides. It really is quite odd. 

And, I have suddenly realised, the girls, the characters in the Chalet School books, want to begin Guides again in Switzerland, and EBD writes about this. In other books she has told us that characters will take over the story and you have to follow what they want. And still she abandons Guides as part of her storylines.

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