Quote of the Day

As Susan, shaking in every limb, her torch shielded by her hand, crept into the passage leading to the museum, she paused. Oh, horrors! she thought, sniffing, I can smell those foul tumshies! They looked pretty when we popped back the wee lids, but jings, how they smell! At least, she added to herself a little nervously, at least I hope it's the tumshies and not some of our priceless exhibits in the museum!

From SUSAN'S TRYING TERM, Chapter 9, Jack-o'-Lanterns.

Quote of the Day

Gabrielle was so taken aback that for a second she just stood there while Susan rained blows on her head; she then recovered, seized the first thing that came to her hand - which happened to be a jugsaw puzzle with which one of the Removes proposed to amuse herself after supper - and hit Susan over the head with that. As the pieces fell round Susan like a miniature snow-storm, she reeled a bit, then went into the attack again and kept on banging Gabrielle over the head with Gail's book, which made the most satisfactory and resounding thuds. Gabrielle, retreating, put up her arms to cover her head, but Susan was still getting in some shrewd blows, amid yells of encouragement from the Removes who hadn't seen such a fight since they had left the kindergarten - when suddenly the door was flung open and a prefect called Avril Barrett strode into the room.

From SUSAN'S TRYING TERM, Chapter 6, More Trouble.

Susan's Trying Term Spines

When Seagull Library editions of the Susan stories were issued, they used the original Collins cover artwork but changed the spines. Here we can see the two spines for Susan's Trying Term.

Quote of the Day

Shirley looked at her coldly. "I think that you can leave Gabrielle in my hands now, Susan, don't you? I'll see that she does all the proper things."

Susan meekly said, "Yes, Shirley, of course," and thought with envy of a cosy tea by a study fire with, probably, luscious cakes - a first-day privilege for prefects - and dismally of common-room tea of cocoa, and buns known as Brother Where Art Thou, on account of their shortage of currants.

From SUSAN'S TRYING TERM, Chapter 1, New Girl.  

Jane Shaw Encyclopedia: The Splinter of Glass

The Splinter of Glass is a play written by Miss Maxwell-Perry, the new English teacher at St. Ronan’s, in Susan’s Trying Term. It is based on Hans Andersen’s Snow Queen. The leading role of Kay is given to Gabrielle Gascoigne and the part of Gerda goes to Susan’s friend Elizabeth Rogers. The play is described as poetical in some parts and "screamingly funny" in others. On the night it is performed, The Splinter of Glass is attended by influential friends of Selina Gascoigne’s: Lady Harrington, Julian Barwith and Tony Cassel, the latter two being producers. Mr. Barwith is so impressed by the play that he decides to produce it for a television broadcast. He wants to transport the play to London but is convinced by Miss Phillimore, the head mistress at St. Ronan’s, to film the play at the school. The play is broadcast live on the last day of term. 

Quote of the Day

Tessa seemed to be taking this criticism very calmly - mainly because she had not heard it. She sat and fiddled with the potato peeler which she was supposed to be using to gouge out the inside of the turnip. "What I can't understand," she said, "is why Susan wakened me up to tell me that there was a fire in the museum when all the time there wasn't. I've been puzzling about it ever since..."

From SUSAN'S TRYING TERM, Chapter 10, Hallowe'en.

The Attack

From Susan's Trying Term. Susan attacks Gabrielle because of one of her dirty tricks. Like many of the illustrations in the Susan stories, there is a goof in this one. On the front cover, when Gabrielle arrives at St. Ronan's, she has very short hair, but after only a few weeks her ponytail has grown back!

Susan's Trying Term

This is a huge scan of the cover of Susan's Trying Term (1961). The spine shows the unlikely scene of Susan wiping a painting with a turpentine-soaked rag and discovering a long lost masterpiece underneath, while the front cover shows a rare comment on the changing fashions of the day. Susan and her friends retain their "sensible" girlish 1950s hairdos, but Gabrielle has lost her much maligned ponytail and cut her hair short, which meets with the disapproval of the other characters. In her previous stories, Jane Shaw had, through her characters, complained a great deal about girls and women wearing trousers, especially Selina and Gabrielle Gascoigne, and (for reasons best known to herself) girls with ponytails. In 1962 she relented on this latter point when one of her best-loved characters, Ricky from Crooks Tour, was given a ponytail. All this may seem a bit strange today, but when I was a child it was strictly forbidden for girls to wear trousers at school. I remember in the late 1970s a girl in my class coming to school in trousers and her mother insisting that it was too cold for her to wear a skirt. The teacher finally agreed to the trousers as long as she wore a skirt on top of them! Even into the 1980s this ban continued. I recall how a girl at a school near mine incurred the wrath of a traditional female examiner when she turned up for her Higher English test in jeans and was "banned for life" from Scottish Certificate of Education exams as a result. However, I'm sure such a ban could never be enforced. But that was what it was like back then.

Recurring Themes in Jane Shaw: Hidden Paintings

From the late 1950s to the end of her career, art featured heavily in Jane Shaw's work. Looking After Thomas was about a daring art robbery at the Louvre. A painting by or thought to be by the French artist Maurice Utrillo was part of the plot of Crooks' Tour, The Picture and A Job for Susan. In the latter book, the Lyles' landlady is the grand-daughter of a respected artist and his work also features in the story. In other books, the characters  visit galleries in Paris and Venice. Charlotte Carmichael is a gifted artist and ends up going to Perugia to study art professionally. So, paintings are definitely a major plot device in the works of Jane Shaw. She also wrote about an aspect of art that has been included in many children's books over the years: hidden paintings.

Many masterpieces have been found hidden under other paintings by impoverished artists wishing to economize on materials. For example, experts estimate that around one third of Van Gogh’s early paintings have hidden treasures underneath. More recently, lost masterpieces by N. C. Wyeth and Rembrandt have also been found. The hidden masterpiece, perhaps inevitably, due to her penchant for long-lost treasure, worked its way into two Jane Shaw stories: Susan and the Home-made Bomb and Susan’s Trying Term.

In Susan’s Trying Term, when Susan, Midge and Tessa are cleaning out and reorganizing the school museum, they come across an old painting of a hunting scene. Midge thinks the painting is horrible because the horses’ legs are too long. But Susan thinks that if the picture is cleaned up, it will look better. Therefore, she decides to "restore" it by wiping it with a handkerchief soaked in turpentine. Lo and behold, the top layer of paint is removed and another painting is partially revealed underneath. Midge and Tessa are afraid that they might get into trouble for ruining the painting and suggest that it should be dumped back into the cupboard where it was found so that it might remain forgotten by the school authorities. But Susan, with her characteristic  honesty, insists that they have to own up, and the girls take the painting to Miss Phillimore. The headmistress suspects that it is a masterpiece by the 17th century Dutch artist Peter de Hooch. The painting is given to Lady St. Ronan, who invites the girls to tea to thank them and announces that the painting is worth twenty thousand pounds.

In Susan and the Home-made Bomb, hard-up Jennifer Harding needs money to support herself while she studies at the Sloane School of Art. Gabrielle Gascoigne says she can introduce Jennifer to the director of the school and accompanies Susan and the Carmichaels to tea at the Harding house. Peregrine goes along with them and plants his home-made bomb in the drawing room. The bomb explodes and the explosion causes the lustres to shatter. A shard of glass streaks across a painting on the wall. Jennifer thinks she sees another picture underneath. It turns out to be a Fra Angelico, worth a small fortune. Jennifer can go to the Sloane and all the Hardings’ problems are solved

The comic nature of these finds is obvious. Uncovering hidden paintings is an intricate and painstaking process that can only be done by experts. That a masterpiece could be found by wiping a painting with a turpentine-soaked rag is unbelievable. That a shard of flying glass could simply rip off the first coat of paint and unveil the one underneath without damaging either it or the canvas is even more incredible. These are further examples of the author's subtle sense of humour.

Susan's Trying Term frontispiece

Like the frontispiece of Susan at School, that of Susan's Trying Term is also an indoor scene. Susan has just wiped the paint of a picture only to find another one underneath, using the dubious method of rubbing it with a turpentine-soaked rag! Of course, the painting turns out to be a long-lost masterpiece (a de Hooch, as a matter of fact) and will restore the fallen fortunes of the St. Ronan's. This illustration is very nice but poor Midge has had her hair change colour yet again, this time making her a redhead. This was necessary for readers to be able to tell the difference between her and Tessa. 

Fiffigt, Fifi!

The Swedish cover of Susan's Trying Term, showing the dramatic scene from Chapter 4, So Long at the Fair, when Susan catches a small boy who is thrown off a roundabout.

Quote of the Day

The boxes of dim and rather dreary pictures in heavy, dark and discoloured old frames, certainly did not seem very inviting. "Where d'you imagine these came from?" asked Tessa.

"Got left over when the St. Ronan's sold up the house, I should think," said Midge.

"So they can't possibly be worth a docken," said Susan. "Still, we've got to give the kids something and we've chucked out everything else-"

The pictures in the first box were mainly of a lot of dead animals, stags and the like, against a background of mountains and heather. Susan was aghast. "We can't give these to the kids," she said, "they'll have nightmares. Let's try the other box."

From SUSAN'S TRYING TERM, Chapter 12, Junk.

Susan's Trying Term (illustration)

Pea-green's Old Trick

Peregrine pulls his old stunt of frightening Susan by dressing up as a hairy monster in Susan's Trying Term, when the girls take a break from school in Wichwood Village.

Susan's Trying Term (illustration)

A scene from Chapter 8 of Susan's Trying Term, Surprises. Dotty has called Susan to her study, but when Susan arrives there, she finds the eccentric Latin mistress on the floor looking for a "score".

Tessa's Trying Tackle

When Gabrielle Gascoigne moves to St. Ronan's she decides that, among her numerous other skills, her hockey could be a boon to the school. Boasting that at her last school they had assured her she could play for Surrey, the ghastly girl annoys even members of her own team with her showing off. However, for all its merits, one player she would never encounter at Surrey would be the hopeless Tessa. Terrified by Gabrielle's onslought, the dreamy girl literally buries her face in the sand, or the field in this case, sending Gabrielle sprawling, resulting in a sprained ankle. That gets rid of her for a couple of days, but much to Susan's fury, her nemesis is inevitably promoted to Saturday's B game. This is the first illustration by, R. A. Branton, from Susan's Trying Term

Susan Makes the Team

Susan's Trying Term is the seventh book in the series and sees ghastly Gabrielle Gascoigne moving to St. Ronan's School, much to the despair of Susan, Tessa and Midge. With Gabrielle around, there are many harrowing moments, but there are some pleasant scenes for Miss Lyle too, the happiest being when she discovers that she has made the hockey team. In this illustration, her friends congratulate her on this amazing feat.