Enid Blyton

by Barbara Stoney

  He gave Enid her first piano lesson when she was six years old and, as with everything else, she was quick to learn. He nevertheless insisted that she practise daily, and this she did religiously. She and Hanly had by then started school – a small nursery class run by two spinster sisters at a house called ‘Tresco’, on the corner of Clockhouse and Cedar Roads, almost opposite the Blyton home. The Misses Read found Enid a bright and alert pupil, who appeared to enjoy every minute of her schooling. Although she found even the simplest of sums difficult, she wrote, read and sang well and, due no doubt to Thomas’s influence, was one of the best pupils at art and nature study.

  From the moment she learned to read, it was rare to see her without a book and her father’s bookcase in the small sitting room was her treasure trove. She read all Arthur Mee’s encyclopaedias, memorising some of the more curious facts she found there. She always enjoyed books by this writer and his influence on her thought as she became older is apparent from the many pencilled observations and underlinings, made in her teens, throughout a copy of his Letters to Girls. Her reading tastes in those early years were fairly general. She loved mythology and fantasy, but not of the horrific kind – Grimms’ Fairy Tales she found particularly cruel and frightening. The Princess and the Goblin by George Macdonald was her favourite book for a long while and she relished the humour of Alice in Wonderland and the excitement of The Coral Island. Although she found it sad, she also enjoyed Black Beauty and Little Women she read many times over because she felt it was about ‘real children’ whom she could understand. It was not long before she was reading many of her father’s adult books and he was quite annoyed one day to find her engrossed in a volume he felt to be far too advanced for a ten-year-old child. Later, however, when he realised that his young daughter’s interest in literature was as keen as his own, she was allowed to choose freely from his shelves.

  Her visual memory, like her father’s, was exceptional. At the age of nine, she could scan a page once, shut her eyes and then repeat the whole of it almost word for word. Years later she was able to describe ‘Tresco’ and remember clearly ‘the room, the garden, the pictures on the wall, the little chairs, the dog there, and the lovely smells that used to creep out from the kitchen into our classroom when we sat doing dictation.’

  In 1907 Enid became a pupil at St Christopher’s School for Girls in Beckenham and around this time the family moved yet again to a larger house a few doors away in Clockhouse Road. It was at this new home that she was to experience some of the unhappiest days of her life.

  Tension had been growing between Thomas and his wife, Theresa, for some years. The dark good looks which had first attracted him to her were not now of themselves sufficient for this mercurial man. Apart from the children, they had little in common, for Theresa had never shared her husband’s interests – indeed most of them she barely tolerated. The family, house and kitchen had always constituted her entire world. Tall and upright in bearing, she ruled her children with a rigidity not easy for the strong-willed Enid to accept, whereas Hanly, always of a gentler nature, and her ‘baby Carey’ she found easier to understand. To her mind, Thomas spoilt Enid and she had little time for their music, poetry, painting and ‘other nonsense’. She felt that, as her only daughter, the girl should help about the house and spend more time learning to cook and sew, instead of ‘sitting around reading books’ or going off with her father on some excursion or other. Apart from training the young Enid for what she considered to be the only proper future for a girl – marriage, home and children – Theresa felt that her daughter should give more help with the domestic tasks. Very house-proud, she coped with all the cooking and most of the chores not dealt with by the young general maid, and as she had no time nor need for any other activity, it exasperated her that Enid had no similar inclinations. Thomas aggravated the situation by supporting his daughter’s resistance to Theresa’s disciplining and this, in turn, only added to the already growing discontent of their life together.

  As time went on the wranglings between them became more frequent, for a new aspect had now crept into the relationship. Enid and Hanly, tiptoeing one night out of their bedrooms to listen at the top of the stairs, wide-eyed and frightened, to the heated argument taking place below, heard mention for the first time of another woman’s name. Enid could not bring herself to believe what she had heard: that her mother and father could behave to each other in this way was bad enough, but that her beloved father could ever consider bestowing his love on anyone outside the family – let alone another woman – was something she found impossible to accept. When she and Hanly eventually returned to their beds that night, she tried to put the thought from her and to take comfort from the little stories that she had for some time been able to conjure up out of what she called her ‘mind’s eye’.

  These semi-conscious ‘thoughts’ would come to her most evenings just before she fell asleep. They were made up of many things, gleaned from stories she had read or heard and often concerned people she had met or places she had seen, but always they sorted themselves into definite patterns which had beginnings, middles and ends. These fantasies increasingly became her escape from the harsh reality of the violent scenes enacted downstairs, for in the happy, carefree stories she wove, there was no room for the angry voices or the slam of the front door which invariably seemed to terminate the quarrels.

  Inevitably there came a time, not long before her thirteenth birthday when, after another of the all too familiar clashes, Thomas left the house and did not return and Theresa was forced to tell the children that their father had gone away. He had also left Uncle Fisher’s firm and was branching out on his own, starting a new life altogether.

  Although this marked the end of the troubled atmosphere within the household, the shock to the highly-strung girl of what she felt to be her father’s rejection of her for someone else was incalculable. With her chief ally and confidant no longer there under the same roof to encourage her with her music, painting and first exploratory efforts at writing down the stories and verses which came to her so easily, life seemed suddenly empty. Hanly was a good companion when it came to swimming together in the local baths or taking occasional cycle rides, but beyond these more sporting activities they had little in common and she considered Carey, closer to her in temperament, too young to understand her needs. If she could have shed a few tears it might have helped her to face up to and eventually accept the situation but she could not bring herself to tell anyone of her real thoughts and feelings. Perhaps if Theresa had not been so preoccupied with her own troubles and had possessed some true understanding of her eldest child, Enid’s future might have been very different. As it was, she was the one who unwittingly made it easier for her daughter to resort to the only means she knew of counteracting the hurt – ignore its very existence.

  ‘Keeping up appearances’ was a very real factor in 1910 suburban Beckenham, or so Theresa thought. She had seen the treatment meted out to a divorced woman living in the same road and upon whom ‘nobody, of course, would think of calling’ and had no intention of letting this happen to her. Divorce, she decided, was out of the question for the Blytons and no one in Clockhouse Road must be aware of the true situation. The children were instructed to tell everyone that their father was ‘away on a visit’ and in this subterfuge Enid was a more than willing participant.

  The neighbours were given little time to speculate, for Thomas had agreed to Theresa and the family moving once again – this time to a large, detached, three-storey Victorian house with a pleasant garden in tree-lined Elm Road, then considered to be one of the ‘better’ residential areas of Beckenham. Here the residents appeared to be more concerned with their own affairs than were their counterparts in the slightly more confined semi-detached houses of Clockhouse Road and Theresa, her children and Annie, the young general maid, prepared to settle down to their new life.

  From the beginning, Enid knew the room she wanted. It overlooked the garden on the first fl
oor and was large enough to take her desk, books and other treasures. Spiritually isolated from the rest of her family, as she now felt herself to be, this room was to become the only place where she could be alone to continue the creative activities her father had tried to foster. As time went by, she fixed a knocker on the door, turned the key on the inside and within this snug cocoon lived for a time in the happier world she created for herself, in the poems and stories she now found so easy to write and which she hoped would one day be published.

  Thomas meanwhile had established himself in an office in the City of London and had set up what proved to be a successful wholesale clothing business of his own. From here he arranged for money to be sent regularly to support his family and also made it his business to see that his children’s education continued in the way he wished, by paying the fees for Enid and Carey at the private schools they were attending and arranging for Hanly to be sent away to boarding school at the age of thirteen. Theresa was also made to agree that she would ensure Enid kept up her hour of piano practice each day, for Thomas was convinced that his daughter was destined for a musical career as notable as that of his sister May –if not more so.

  Away from home, Enid put up a front quite remarkable for a girl of her age. No one, not even her best friend at school – Mary Attenborough – ever guessed that her father lived away from the family. After a while the deception was easier to keep up for Thomas started visiting from time to time, usually to take Enid on outings to the theatre or to the country. She would look forward to these but, although the scar was beginning to heal, the fact that he was now living with someone else created a small barrier between them which prevented a complete renewal of the rapport they once had. The expensive presents he brought her were no compensation, she felt, for what she had lost.

  Some forty years later in Six Bad Boys, which, according to reviewers at the time, was an unusual attempt for Enid at social realism, she described a similar family situation in which the three ‘Berkeley’ children (two girls and a boy) were deserted by their father after numerous, violent quarrels between their parents. The effect his departure had on the children and the subsequent behaviour of the mother – even to the pledging of the family to secrecy over his disappearance – was an echo of this desperately unhappy period of Enid’s life, yet such was her reticence about her early years no one guessed at the time that she was writing from personal experience.

  The Berkeley children’s comments on ‘being glad of dear old school – even French and Maths’ to take their minds off their troubles, must have been Enid’s own feelings about St Christopher’s, for at no time did her work there appear to have deteriorated. She was popular with pupils and staff alike and really appeared to enjoy her school life, throwing herself into all the activities with enthusiasm and many of the characters and happenings she was later to describe in her school stories were based on the people she met and incidents that took place during those years.

  Her fellow pupils remember her as a vivacious, intelligent girl with a sallow complexion, large nose, dark hair and eyes – and a penchant for playing practical jokes, which carried over well into adult life. She would plague the mistresses and her classmates with an assortment of rubber- and tin-pointed pencils, artificial blots and other ‘tricks’ bought from a local shop and, although her friends found them fun at first, her exuberance invariably carried on the joke just a trifle too long. She is remembered for her ‘great daring’ in being the first girl in the school to have her long plait cut off and to wear her hair at shoulder length, tied back with a bow on a large slide. This earned her the nickname – among the girls who were boarding at the school – of ‘the hairless day girl’.

  Although she had once played the title role in Tresco’s production of Alice in Wonderland, she was not, apparently, considered to be a good enough actress to perform in St Christopher’s School plays. This rather vexed Enid, whose love of theatricals stretched back to her early childhood, when Thomas would take her and Hanly to musicals or plays at the nearby Crystal Palace Theatre. Undeterred, however, she set about organising her own concert party and, dressed in mauve with white ruffles and black pom-poms, the subsequent ‘Mauve Merriments’ troupe of eight senior girls eventually became a popular end-of-term entertainment for the whole school. Her friend Mary Attenborough usually took the lead in these small shows, which comprised several short sketches, dancing and the singing of popular songs, accompanied by Enid on the piano.

  Her agility and enthusiasm for games led to her becoming both tennis champion and captain of the lacrosse team and her ability to put the same effort into everything she undertook undoubtedly accounted for the number of prizes she was awarded for various subjects and for her being made head girl during her final two years.

  Out of school Enid was also the instigator of a small magazine – Dab – named after the surnames of its three contributors: Mirabel Davis, Mary Attenborough and herself. This usually consisted of a few short stories written by Enid, poems by Mirabel and illustrations by Mary. When the three were away on holiday they would correspond by coded postcards in order, as Enid would tell them, ‘to mystify the postman’. She even sent one of these from France during the summer of 1913 when Mlle. Louise Bertraine, who taught French at St Christopher’s, took Enid for a memorable holiday to her home in Annecy. It was the sixteen-year-old’s first trip out of England and the excitement of the journey, the beauty of the lakes and mountains of the Haute Savoie and the happiness of her stay with the family were remembered always. The First World War broke out the following year and there were no further holidays with Louise, but their friendship continued for many years.

  The war did not appear to affect Enid very greatly at the beginning. She had no close relatives involved in the fighting and, understandably perhaps at that age, was far more concerned with the trials and pleasures of her very busy home and school life – a life in which her close friend, Mary Attenborough, played a considerable part. They had first met in kindergarten days and, although Mary was her junior by some three years and consequently nicknamed ‘Kid’ by Enid, in the senior classes at St Christopher’s the pair were inseparable. Both were alert, intelligent and invariably at the top of their forms, due in no small part to the competition between them. Mary always excelled at art and Enid at music, but otherwise their school work followed pretty much the same pattern. Out of school they would play long games of tennis at the home of Mary’s grandfather in Oakwood Avenue, on the outskirts of Beckenham, and on Sundays would go to services at the Elm Road Baptist Church. Enid had been baptised here at the age of thirteen and had for some years, with her brothers, attended the Sunday School of which Mary’s father was superintendent. His sister, Mabel, ran the girls’ classes and from her first meeting with Enid took a great interest in her niece’s school friend.

  Mabel was unmarried, some twenty years older than the girls, and lived at home with her parents, so visits from the two lively friends were always greatly enjoyed. This tall, rather gaunt woman with the quiet, gentle manner and kindly eyes, seemed to sense, under Enid’s usually bright façade, her great need for affection and sympathetic understanding – though even she was never to guess at the cause. The fact that her father was living away from home was something Enid could never bring herself to reveal – even to Mabel, good friend and confidante though the older woman later became. But in other matters it was to Mabel that she soon began to turn for advice and sympathy, particularly with regard to her writing.

  A year or so after her father left the family, Enid had entered a children’s poetry competition run by Arthur Mee in one of his magazines and was thrilled to get a letter from the writer himself, telling her that he intended to print her verses and would like to see more of her work. This encouraged her to branch out further with her writing and to send a selection of stories, articles and poems to other periodicals. Apart, however, from the unexpected acceptance of a poem by Nash’s Magazine (unfortunately it has proved impossible to trace
either of these first poems and one can only assume that in the case of the second, at least, she used a pseudonym) some few years later, everything came back – much to the annoyance of Theresa, who soon realised the significance of the long envelopes that dropped with such regularity through the letter box at Elm Road, and considered the whole process a ‘waste of time and money’. This was not so with Mabel Attenborough, who continued to encourage the young writer, for she recognised in those early, very naïve efforts a potential that she felt should be fostered.

  Enid later admitted that several hundred of her literary offerings were returned to her during this period, but with her usual persistence – and Mabel’s encouragement – she continued to send them out and to enter for literary competitions whenever the opportunity arose. She also avidly read any books she could find about writers and their techniques and for many years kept a diary in which she recorded her feelings and activities in and out of school but, after her mother discovered and read some of the jottings, Enid destroyed this evidence of what she considered to be her ‘very innermost thoughts’. Hanly remembers how his sister’s fierce temper had flared over this intrusion into her privacy and how she had locked herself away into her first-floor room, tearfully announcing that in future her diaries would include little more than outlines of her day-to-day activities.