Enid Blyton

by Barbara Stoney

  I have only met one person so far who owned to me that he loves pretending, and does it shamelessly. Are there many others, I wonder, who pretend too, and hide it all away carefully? I would love to know. There ought to be a Society for Pretenders, to give us more self-confidence!

  Of course, pretending has its drawbacks. One of the characteristics of real pretending is that it is practically impossible to become yourself again at short notice. If you do happen to go dreaming down the Strand, imagining yourself to be a sailor home from Mandalay after ten years’ absence, it is almost impossible to avoid saying, ‘Avast there, mate!’ when anyone bumps into you.

  But a worse thing than that happened last Friday. I had spent the afternoon with someone who had told me about a thrilling journey in an armoured train to Baghdad. I was living it over again, and felt the heat of the East over me, and I was wondering if Arabs would hold up the train, and wishing we could quickly arrive at Baghdad. Suddenly the person opposite me leaned over and said, ‘Can you tell me if this train stops at Herne Hill?’

  I stared at her scornfully. ‘First stop Baghdad!’ I answered promptly and decisively, and then was covered with the direst confusion. My companion gave one straight look at me, and fled from the carriage at the next stop.

  Yes, I certainly think Pretenders should wear some sort of badge. It is not nice to be thought mad, when you yourself know you are perfectly sane. But I’m going to be VERY careful in the future!

  January 6th, 1926

  LETTERS FROM TEACHERS

  I want to write about something which has been growing in my mind for a long time, and that is, what I read in letters from teachers. I have written once or twice about the charm of children’s letters, and I could quite easily write a whole book about them, especially just after Christmas. I can’t say a big enough thank you to those teachers who allow their children to write naturally to me. The gems I get in practically every letter are without price, and I long to see every child-writer, as I read his or her letter. ‘I am a very norty boy,’ says one frank letter, ‘so I don’t egspeck you would like me, but I like you allrite.’ And I should love you, little norty boy, if only I could see you! I could quote a hundred other gems of literature, but I won’t just now. It is the teachers I am thinking of.

  The one big outstanding fact that strikes me always in the letters I get from teachers is their real love for, and understanding of the children. It may not be, and seldom is, written down in so many words, but it is there, unmistakable and distinct between the lines, and hidden in many naïve sentences. If parents could know the very real understanding that the great majority of teachers have of the children that pass yearly through their hands, they would marvel and admire. Naughty children, good children, clever children, dull children, and all the many degrees between, teachers know them all, and see into the minds of them all with sympathy, and wonder, and some times with pity and puzzlement. Many a teacher must, by her real understanding, have passed up into the world scores of children who, unknowingly, are indebted to her (or to him) for a straight outlook on life, a sense of humour, or perhaps an appreciation of beauty. Unless they are unusual children, they will never know, never realise, and never acknowledge their debt. That, to my mind, is the saddest part of a teacher’s profession. Those teachers who really love their children feel an interest in them for always, but it is not in the average child’s nature to remember – he changes and grows every year, and strips from him the years that are gone, with an insouciance and lightheartedness impossible to us of more mature years. It is part of the charm of childhood.

  Most of the letters I receive have a delightful sense of humour, and an absolutely charming way of taking it for granted that I will be interested – as I always am – in the writer’s children. ‘You would love my children’ is the commonest sentence to be found in the hundreds of letters I have in my possession. Another gift that teachers always seem to have is the most fascinating one of drawing a child for me in a few sentences. Listen to this: ‘You would love Alfred Stevens. His front teeth project, and the dentist says it is because he whistles, and always has whistled far too much.’ There is Alfred, large as life in front of me, character and all outlined in those few words!

  There are two things I badly want to do someday when my ship comes home. One is to go on a grand tour round the kingdom, and see all these fascinating children for myself, and the other is to enlighten the British public on the subject of teachers. The things I could tell would make a hundred thousand people sit up and say, ‘Good gracious! We must revise our views on teachers at once! Their profession is the greatest in the kingdom!’

  So it is. To deal with living, growing material is ticklish work, dangerous work, hazardous work. To form the minds and characters of countless eager, restless children is a task the dimensions of which no outsider can judge – a task demanding illimitable patience, unending sympathy, and a love that can never be broken.

  February 24th, 1926

  THINGS I DON’T LIKE

  Somebody wrote to me the other day and said: ‘You always write of the things you love – are there any things you don’t love or like? It would be entertaining if you told us a few.’ I don’t know about entertaining, but I’m quite willing to relate a few of the things I don’t like, for it would be nice to find a few fellow-sufferers.

  Well, to begin with, of course, I hate going to the dentist. I dream about it for nights beforehand. In vain I say to myself, ‘Don’t be silly. The dentist is a very nice man. Think of how nice and bright and shining all his dear little instruments are. Think how nice it is to sit in a chair that goes up and down and backwards and forwards at any moment.’ There always comes a moment when Myself answers back and says. ‘Uugh! Don’t talk such rubbish. I HATE going to the dentist!’

  Then another thing I really dislike is walking in a crowd. I always have disliked it from a child, because it makes me feel I am in a dream, and not properly myself. It was only the other day I discovered why I got the dream illusion. When you walk in a crowd you can’t hear your own footsteps – and you don’t hear them in a dream either. Time after time in dreams have I gone down the street like a wraith, hearing never a footfall. Think of your own dreams – you never hear your feet walking, do you? And that I think, is why I get the queer dream-feeling in crowds, and dislike it so much.

  I don’t like doing anything that makes people stare at me. I have a remarkable habit of getting into a bus which is going in the wrong direction. When I give the conductor my penny and say, ‘Charing Cross, please,’ and he says, ‘Aw, you’re going the wrong way,’ and rings the bell with a jerk, I go as red as a penny stamp, and feel dreadful inside. Even when I get out of the ‘bus, I feel as if everyone in the street must be saying, ‘Look! Look! There’s the girl who got in the wrong ‘bus!’ And I determine fiercely never to do it again. But I did it yesterday, alas! – and I shall quite probably do it to-morrow.

  The next thing I’m going to say is a very silly thing – but I don’t like thinking about eternity. You think about time, and the end of time, and then you think what’s beyond the end of time, and it gives you a sort of gasping-for-breath feeling. Lots of people never think these sorts of things at all, for I’ve asked them but I do sometimes, and I don’t like it, it’s too big and overwhelming.

  I don’t like hearing sad stories if I can’t help to put things right, I can’t bear to hear stories of the war. I once heard a Scotsman tell of a mortally wounded Turk whom he found two days after a battle, and to whom he gave some water. He couldn’t get a doctor to him, but managed to visit him again after a further two days. He was still alive. The next time, the poor wretch was asleep. The Scotsman shot him out of pity. That story haunted me for weeks, and still does – and other stories too. The feeling of impotence that comes when a story of suffering is related, is one of the hardest things to bear, that I know. If you could go straight off and put things right, it wouldn’t matter – but you can’t in ninety-nine cases out of a hu
ndred.

  Oh, there are lots and lots of things I dislike a little or dislike a lot. But the reason I write so much more about the things I love is because love or liking is positive, and dislike is negative, and I give my vote to the positive things of life.

  APPENDIX 4

  A Country Letter from Enid Blyton

  (The Nature Lover, September 1935)

  The old country folk are fond of quoting proverbs and rhymes, in which country lore is enshrined, picturesque and wise. Each month has its own store of sayings, September as much as any other. One of the quaintest and shrewdest is well known to us country-dwellers: ‘St. Matthew bids goodbye to summer, and St. Maurice shuts the door after him.’

  St. Matthew’s Day falls on the 21st of the month and St. Maurice’s is the day after – and, sure enough, we feel the first chills of autumn then and begin to talk of the days drawing in. We light our first fires and turn our backs on the golden summer months.

  But we have many days of September before we need light our fires! September is a lovely month, quiet, peaceful and golden. The earth still contains great heat, and, after the first chills of the morning, the sun feels as hot as in the days of mid-July. The dews are very heavy, both in the morning and evening – each morning when my curtains are drawn and I look straight out on to my lawns (for my bedroom is on the ground level) I see a shining expanse of heavy silver – the dew on the grass. Where the sun catches the dew here and there it splits the silver light up into the seven colours of the rainbow, and miniature jewels sparkle brilliantly. But as the sun gains in power the dew dries, and the grass shows green again, losing its silvery lustre.

  A Medley of Bright Colours

  It is still very lovely in the garden, especially in one of my favourite places, an old teak seat set in the curve of a big rockery, facing due west. Behind me blaze the orange marigolds and the scarlet snapdragons, which have now taken pride of place on the rockery, and in front of me is a round bed of gorgeous zinnias, a medley of bright colours, from deepest magenta to purest orange – a crude mixture, one might say, but most gay and delightful, nevertheless! I am always surprised that more people do not grow these tall, brilliant flowers, so splendid for cutting and so useful in the beds. I grow mine each year from seed, and they are truly bonny flowers.

  In this favourite corner of mine hum many bees, and often the great gleaming dragonflies come darting here and there in the sunshine. There are two that I know well this month, for I see them every day, and I know they are the same ones. One is a yellow-bronze colour, and the other is a kingfisher blue. Both are enormous, at least five inches long, very different from the slender, bodkin-like dragonflies that hatch out much earlier in the year, and which infest the rushes by the long lily pond. I think these big ones come from the marshes behind Old Thatch, where there are many quiet backwaters, undisturbed year after year. They are magnificent creatures, and cause much excitement among the eager sparrows when they fly by. It is most amusing to watch the clumsy little brown birds dart heavily after the zigzagging dragonflies, only to give up the chase in disgust after a minute or two.

  A Bird-like Moth

  The vanilla fragrance of my big standard cherry-pie plants still draws many kinds of moths and butterflies. Once again the quaint, hovering hummingbird hawk moth has come to visit them. It stands in the air on its quickly vibrating wings savouring the scent of the heliotrope flowers, and then is off again in wide circles, a strange bird-like moth, not often seen.

  The fruit harvest is a tragedy this year – not only at Old Thatch, but in all the district round, and in many other counties too. The great frost in May did its work only too thoroughly, alas! My fruit trees, of all kinds, number nearly a hundred, and few of them have any fruit at all. There will be no apple picking, and but few pears. Even our marvellous baking-apple tree, which has never failed us before, and has to be shored up year after year at fruit time, has no more than a handful of apples on its green boughs! Usually our apples last us from one harvest time almost to the next – this year they will barely last a week! We, however, do not depend for our livelihood on our fruit, as do many fruit-growers and market gardeners, and some of these folk are filled with despair at their bleak harvest.

  But other things are good, as is always the way. The outdoor tomatoes are loaded down with great trusses of ripening fruit, and the cucumbers grown in a small glass frame with the sun’s rays for heat, have ripened in dozens. They are easy to grow, and should find a place in every garden, set in some warm corner. A salad made of home-grown tomatoes, brought in warm from the September sun, a green cucumber cool to the hand, and a fresh curly-hearted lettuce cut from the lettuce row, is a salad fit for a king, especially if you pick all of them yourself!

  Mushroom Ketchup

  Then there are mushrooms, growing by the hundred in the fields around, big white ones, small button ones, all to be picked in the heavy dew of the sunrise. Have you made mushroom ketchup from mushrooms picked by yourself? I can assure you it tastes far better than any you can buy in the shops! It is well worth paddling about in dew-hung grass, getting your skirts soaked through.

  There are swarms of different insects about now, all eager to enjoy the last few days of summer. The wasps forsake their nests and come to gorge on the new-made jam or the fallen pear. Daddy-long-legs, clumsy and ineffectual, drift over the fields, their legs hanging down in a bunch. The stable fly, unpleasant creature, comes into the house, and stabs our legs and arms. It is so like the ordinary house fly that we say in surprise and anger, ‘How strange! The flies are beginning to bite now!’ But it is not the house-fly that is attacking us, it is its cousin the stable-fly.

  Her Children are Precious

  Running among the grasses in the lane I have seen two or three wolf-spiders. Each was carrying her precious egg-ball. If you have quick eyes, you may see her, too, in your garden or by the wayside. Soon the eggs in the ball will hatch out and the tiny spiders may be seen clinging to their mother’s back, like small brown warts. It seems strange that such maternal care should be shown by this fierce spider. If she is forced to leave her egg-ball, she will hide and return to it time after time, to try and retrieve it. She will eat her husband – but her children are precious to her.

  I am always amused with the woolly bear caterpillars in the month of September. There seems to be so many of them on the lane and on the high road, hurrying along fast as if they were late for an appointment. You cannot fail to see them if you look. Most of them are the larvae of the garden tiger moth. Perhaps their food plant is dying or has been eaten up, and they are seeking fresh quarters. Whatever the reason they are always in a hurry, crossing the road like tiny furry snakes!

  September’s glory this year is her roses. The June roses were a failure – poor, frosted buds that showed none of the brilliance of summer. But the autumn roses are lovely. It is as if the bushes were determined to make up for the poor summer display. Now – glowing, prolific, brilliant – the roses, perfect in shape and colour, are rounding off the summer with a mass of gorgeous bloom. They may continue right into November if the weather is kind. There is some thing enchanting about a bowl of roses in the firelight of an autumn evening!

  APPENDIX 5

  Enid Blyton Magazine

  (Last issue, September 9th, 1959)

  This is the last issue of our much-loved magazine. There are two reasons. First, all kinds of interesting work keeps coming along which no one but myself can do – making films for you – T.V. programmes – making new records, overseas radio programmes – Noddy in Toyland panto, now to be put on in other big towns as well as London – and new books of course! And going all the time is my magazine of which, as you know, I write practically every word myself (except the adverts). The second reason is to do with my husband, who, now that he has decided to retire, naturally wants me to go about with him a good deal, and share the things he loves so much – his farm in Dorset, golf and travelling, here and there about the world. Well, I must be wit
h him, and so with much sadness, I have decided to give up the thing that ties me down most – our magazine the work I love best … I am saddest of all because of our four great Clubs which thousands of you help me with so generously. These Clubs helped the Blind Children, the Spastic Children and have helped my little Children’s Home here in Beaconsfield. My animal-loving readers have helped numberless sick and injured animals, through my Busy Bees Club, for many years. Thousands of pounds have been raised for all these fine causes, and every week your well-earned, generous gifts have been coming in. It has been a great delight to me to know I have about 500,000 children working week in and week out to help me. Hundreds of parents and teachers have helped too …

  APPENDIX 6

  Children’s Reading Taste

  (The Library Association Record, September 1949)

  We thank MR. S. C. DEDMAN for permission to print below a letter received by him from Miss ENID BLYTON regarding his paper on ‘Children’s Reading Taste’ given at the Eastbourne Conference.

  ‘It is nice to know that there is at least one librarian who knows what there is in the children’s books on his shelves, and who can pick out the essentials in a good book for boys and girls. You librarians do a fine work with children and you hold a very responsible job – it should actually be almost in the nature of a vocation, I think.

  ‘You are quite right when you say that children’s books should be morally sound. This is the most important thing in any book for children. One should also be a born storyteller – then style and language come beautifully and naturally, making the book easy and delightful to read. Many authors have this style, from Homer onwards – it is a sign of the good storyteller. For children it is doubly important – however fine a story one has thought of, it is no use unless one has a natural ‘story-telling style’, which carries the children along without being obtrusive.