Facing It Out!: A Story for Girls

by Rita Coatts

A wealthy schoolgirl and a destitute runaway switch places in this adventure/school-story, finding that their plan creates as many troubles as it solves.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1937

About the author

Born in 1883 in Chipstead, Marguerite Harcourt Burrage was the daughter of journalist and prolific boys' author Edwin Harcourt Burrage, and his wife Alice Louisa Reynolds. The only surviving daughter of the marriage, she had seven brothers, one of whom - Athol Harcourt Burrage - became an author of boys' stories like their father. Another brother, Douglas Burrage, became a circus performer, eventually publishing two books about his experiences. Her cousin, A.M. Burrage (not to be confused with her brother, who published as A.H. Burrage), was also an author.

Burrage, known as 'Rita' to her family, was educated at Gore House, Redhill, and at an Ursuline convent in Brussels. She married insurance agent William Bentley Coatts in 1907, moving with him briefly to Canada, before returning to England, where they separated, and eventually divorced. They had one son, born in 1909. Coatts settled in Greatstone, on the Kentish coast, after the separation, turning to writing to supplement her income, authoring approximately thirty girls' school stories, and children's thrillers.

Reviews

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rebellious Suzanne Holt, outraged that her guardian and aunt had broken faith with her dead parents, who always promised that she would never be sent to boarding school, is looking for a way to escape from what she perceives to be her impending imprisonment at Woodlands School. Desperate Jasmine Miller, on the run from her cruel and abusive step-mother, who has turned her into a drudge since the death of her father, is looking for a place where she can hide. When the two girls meet on the train, after Jasmine jumps into Suzanne's car at the Junction, the irrepressible Miss Holt has an idea: they will switch places. Jasmine will impersonate Suzanne at school, thereby gaining a safe place to disappear, while Suzanne will make her way to her old Nannie's home in Clacton, gaining her independence and thumbing her nose at her aunt. The best laid plans have a tendency to go awry, of course, and although Jasmine succeeds in becoming "Sue," a new girl at Woodlands, Suzanne finds herself entangled with a traveling gypsy family, and no closer to reaching the safety of her old nurse's home as the months go by. As "Sue" comes to love school more and more, finding a group of loyal friends in 'The Irrepressibles,' Suzanne is tricked by gypsy couple Rob and Min into thinking she has lost all of her money (stolen by Rob, of course), and must stay with them in their caravan, earning her keep by dancing at various fairs around the country. But when "Sue" is told the startling news that Suzanne's parents, believed drowned in a tragic shipping accident off China, have been discovered alive, on a desert island, and that she (believed to be Suzanne Holt) is shortly to be removed from school by her Aunt Bridge, the terrified girl runs away from Woodlands, making for Nannie's home in Clacton herself. But where is the real Suzanne? And can this hopeless muddle ever be set right...?

Although Facing It Out is only my second book from Rita Coatts - the first being the marvelously titled Book Worm: The Mystery Solver - I get the sense that her school stories must all feature these kind of (extremely) unlikely adventure plots. After all, in Book Worm the eponymous heroine solves a decades-old mystery case, clearing the name of an innocent man, and reuniting him with his lady love after many years. Why shouldn't this book feature schoolgirl impersonators, runaways, and adventures off with the gypsies? Although ostensibly the story of both girls, the bulk of the narrative is given over to "Sue's" experiences at Woodlands, for which I was grateful. Although the depiction of the romany here isn't as bad as it could have been - Rob and Min are deceitful, but they are also clean, and not terribly unkind; while another member of the community helps Suzanne to escape - it still made me cringe with its stereotypes. The school story aspects themselves weren't all that unlikely, with many of the standard "new girl must find her place" plot elements. I thought that it was fascinating that the 'Irrepressibles,' the group of four girls - Olive Brown, Peggy Seymour, Phyllis Knight, Bee Poulton - who eventually make "Sue" one of the own, imagine that there could be a racial component to the obvious secret that their new friend is keeping. When discussing it amongst themselves, Phyllis wonders if perhaps "Sue's" mother wasn't "all white," if perhaps she has "a touch of the tar brush" in her. It seems an odd thing for British schoolgirls at an exclusive boarding school in the 1930s to be wondering about, but then Peggy's response - "what is a touch of color?" - seems atypically accepting as well. Despite the absurdity of the plot, and the inclusion of some outdated (or, in the case of the Romany, perhaps not so outdated) ideas, I found that I enjoyed Facing It Out, whose titles refers, not just to each girl's effort to win through a set of trying circumstances, but their eventual decision to return to Woodlands together, and face out the resultant scandal. Recommended to fans of the girls' school story, particularly those who enjoy a bit of the surreal in the mix.