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a problem with writing St Trinian's
Oct. 27th, 2020 03:04 amI've just obtained a copy of The Terror of St Trinian's - it's stated as by Timothy Shy and Ronald Searle, and while Searle certainly produced the numerous illustrations, I don't know how much of the text was his work and how much was Shy's.
(Ah - googling/wikipedia reveals that "Timothy Shy" was a pen name for DB Wyndham Lewis, who apparently wrote a great deal in a wide variety of areas, even if I don't recognise any of the titles.)
It's great fun. It brings back all my fond memories of reading it as a teenager and improves them. (Plus with greater experience of the genre, I can now recognise quite a few deliberate homages to "classical" girl's school fiction.) However, it does present a problem in adapting the setting to a longer-scale story (such as I might be daydreaming about doing), and shows why the films always... well, toned it down.
Sample passages:
The Head of the St Trinian's School for Girls sighed gently and gazed out of the window across the sodden playing-fields. Against a Stygian background of low leaden sky and greyish mud the blue-and-red faces of healthy English girlhood at play struck a note of crude but agreeable colour. Amid ceaseless uproar and recrimination, scourged by the icy blasts of a late March afternoon, the First and Reserve hockey elevens were settling down to a practice match. As Miss Umbrage contemplated the scamper of twenty pairs of massive legs a piercing howl rose above the clash of sticks and the bellowings, and a stout girlish figure fell prone and lay writhing.
Fair enough so far.
Down the corridor thundered a crowd of English Roses of every size, fresh from prep. and ripe for devilry, laughing, fighting, howling, and playing a thousand merry pranks. Hapless little Miss Bosomley (Maths) was caught in the onrush, like Opal Mildew, and went down like a skittle, to be rolled over and trampled by a score of enormous feet. Pursued as by the avenging Fates, Miss Beagle, the Bursar, turned and fled for dear life to the Common Room, trumpeting like a glandered elephant in a forest fire.
(okay, we'll just pause to admire that simile, which is splendid)
A well-flung lacrosse stick caught Matron on the ear as she scurried frantically from her sanctum round the corner and doubled downstairs to the Infirmary. Far away down the main staircase a distant crash of crockery and a choking scream announced that one of the maids had had it, as often happened. (The game was to charge them head down in the stomach as they staggered with piles of plates into the Upper School dining hall, the lowest scorer standing a dormitory-gorge: in her first term, Angela, not yet a deadly performer in games of skill, had broken even St Trinian's record for nocturnal orgies by roasting an ox in the boiler-room, but now she disdained such easy popularity.) A tall Gothic window of rich stained glass, depicting Virtue introducing Prudence to Civic Consciousness, burst with a loud crack as stocky Mercy Fetherleighampton of the Second XV, fumbling her pass, tripped and hurtled backwards through it, followed by the small, plump junior whom several rugger enthusiasts of the Fifth were tossing from hand to hand; the corridor fortunately was on the first floor.
Difficult to really depict that as a regular occurrence in a full-length semi-plausible novel; it works in a novella which is a deliberate homage, but on a larger scale . . .
Even the Infirmary, filled at this time of year with cricket and lawn-tennis casualties, maimed Girl Guides, and the usual ruck of routine victims of laboratory and handicrafts, of work and play-time, caught something of the bustle and gaiety inseparable from the season.
One really can't go injuring that many girls that seriously in a modern school story. Nor can one burn down the school every term. (Well, one could, but then one lacks that certain patina of age.)
(Ah - googling/wikipedia reveals that "Timothy Shy" was a pen name for DB Wyndham Lewis, who apparently wrote a great deal in a wide variety of areas, even if I don't recognise any of the titles.)
It's great fun. It brings back all my fond memories of reading it as a teenager and improves them. (Plus with greater experience of the genre, I can now recognise quite a few deliberate homages to "classical" girl's school fiction.) However, it does present a problem in adapting the setting to a longer-scale story (such as I might be daydreaming about doing), and shows why the films always... well, toned it down.
Sample passages:
The Head of the St Trinian's School for Girls sighed gently and gazed out of the window across the sodden playing-fields. Against a Stygian background of low leaden sky and greyish mud the blue-and-red faces of healthy English girlhood at play struck a note of crude but agreeable colour. Amid ceaseless uproar and recrimination, scourged by the icy blasts of a late March afternoon, the First and Reserve hockey elevens were settling down to a practice match. As Miss Umbrage contemplated the scamper of twenty pairs of massive legs a piercing howl rose above the clash of sticks and the bellowings, and a stout girlish figure fell prone and lay writhing.
Fair enough so far.
Down the corridor thundered a crowd of English Roses of every size, fresh from prep. and ripe for devilry, laughing, fighting, howling, and playing a thousand merry pranks. Hapless little Miss Bosomley (Maths) was caught in the onrush, like Opal Mildew, and went down like a skittle, to be rolled over and trampled by a score of enormous feet. Pursued as by the avenging Fates, Miss Beagle, the Bursar, turned and fled for dear life to the Common Room, trumpeting like a glandered elephant in a forest fire.
(okay, we'll just pause to admire that simile, which is splendid)
A well-flung lacrosse stick caught Matron on the ear as she scurried frantically from her sanctum round the corner and doubled downstairs to the Infirmary. Far away down the main staircase a distant crash of crockery and a choking scream announced that one of the maids had had it, as often happened. (The game was to charge them head down in the stomach as they staggered with piles of plates into the Upper School dining hall, the lowest scorer standing a dormitory-gorge: in her first term, Angela, not yet a deadly performer in games of skill, had broken even St Trinian's record for nocturnal orgies by roasting an ox in the boiler-room, but now she disdained such easy popularity.) A tall Gothic window of rich stained glass, depicting Virtue introducing Prudence to Civic Consciousness, burst with a loud crack as stocky Mercy Fetherleighampton of the Second XV, fumbling her pass, tripped and hurtled backwards through it, followed by the small, plump junior whom several rugger enthusiasts of the Fifth were tossing from hand to hand; the corridor fortunately was on the first floor.
Difficult to really depict that as a regular occurrence in a full-length semi-plausible novel; it works in a novella which is a deliberate homage, but on a larger scale . . .
Even the Infirmary, filled at this time of year with cricket and lawn-tennis casualties, maimed Girl Guides, and the usual ruck of routine victims of laboratory and handicrafts, of work and play-time, caught something of the bustle and gaiety inseparable from the season.
One really can't go injuring that many girls that seriously in a modern school story. Nor can one burn down the school every term. (Well, one could, but then one lacks that certain patina of age.)
