Enid Blyton

by Barbara Stoney

  ‘It always amazes me when people deride books for being what they call ‘escapist’. Any intelligent person must surely know, if he thinks about it, that a large part of our finest literature is escapist – take Treasure Island for instance. Escapist literature should only be scorned when it is badly written or conceived, not because it is ‘escapist’. This has become the kind of cliché used by the less intelligent reviewers, critics or librarians.

  ‘All adventure stories are ‘escapist’ – mine among them. I cannot think why some people use this adjective in a derogative sense – such stories fulfil a very real need – and one of the finest, Eric Williams’ The Wooden Horse is better than any fiction.

  ‘But only about thirty of my books are ‘escapist’. I write Nature books, ‘home stories’ of family life, religious books, readers of all kinds for schools – I think few of the general public know that my educational and religious books number almost as many as my story-books – and are also best-sellers. In the educational world I wear the label of ‘Educational writer’, in the religious world I am solidly backed by ministers of all creeds, and labelled ‘writer on religious subjects’. In the librarian and bookshop world I am labelled ‘story teller for children’. I consider all the three equally important, and it is because of my religious convictions, my educational training (I am a trained Froebel Kindergarten Teacher) and my gift for story-telling that I think my books are successful. They give children a feeling of security as well as pleasure – they know that they will never find anything wrong, hideous, horrible, murderous or vulgar in my books, although there is plenty of excitement, mystery and fun – and the children are always real live characters, exactly like the readers. After all, I have children of my own, and hear them talk and quarrel and plan – if I didn’t know how to present them, I would be a very poor mother!

  ‘I’m not out only to tell stories, much as I love this – I am out to inculcate decent thinking, loyalty, honesty, kindliness, and all the things that children should be taught. I was speaking to Mr. Basil Henriques the other day (the Juvenile Delinquents’ Magistrate) and we both agreed that if only we could raise up just one generation of first-rate children, we needn’t worry about the future! But oh, the difficulties of getting even one generation.’

  APPENDIX 7

  The Summer Storm (Play) (May 1956)

  The Characters

  Sally Hanly: Daughter of Robert Hanly, well-known writer of light comedies. Not yet 21. Small, slight, very pretty. Has had two years at the University and is hoping to take her degree the next year. Is very popular, a merry, affectionate girl, whose life has gone easily, so that no demands have been made on her character. It is therefore surprising to her family when she shows such a strong reaction to events and goes with great determination to follow her own way with a sense of duty; compassion – and unhappiness.

  Jane Hanly: Also a daughter of the Hanlys, the same age as Sally. Plain, plump always the second-string when Sally is with her. She is at the University too, but does not attract the opposite sex as does Sally. A loyal and good-natured girl, always struggling against the jealousy she feels forSally, but not admitting to it. Only when she falls in love does she blossom out into a kind of beauty.

  Robert Hanly: Their father, a celebrated writer of comedies, a simple pleasant man, rather weak, devoted to his family, whom he considers that he knows inside-out. A good-looking, likeable fellow, unobtrusively managed by his wife, oddly youthful in his ways owing to a streak of immaturity in his character.

  Mary Hanly: A quiet, sweet-faced woman, loving her family deeply, faults and all. Calm and pleasant on the surface, but capable of strong reactions, which can be sensed despite her apparently calm and cheerful dealings with her household. She has a real sense of humour. Andrew Hanly: The son. About nineteen and down from his first year at Balliol. A typical undergrad, restless, amusing, talkative, omniscient but quite a wise and responsible young fellow when trouble breaks. Loves his family, and regards them with humour.

  Mervyn Villiers: A well-known actor of about 35 or so, who has played the chief parts in Robert Hanly’s plays for many years. He has a great opinion of himself, is rather mannered, a little meretricious, like the parts he is used to playing – and hopes to marry the pretty little Sally.

  John Preston: A young law student, about 27, genuinely attracted by Jane, and superficially by Sally. He is tall and rather awkward, with none of Mervyn’s assured walk and movements, or sophisticated manner. He has an ordinary, very pleasant face, and good manners, is rather shy, not used to girls, but good at his law work. Meets everything, good or bad, unshaken, and in spite of his awkwardness, has a real attraction … the attraction of a big, well-mannered, rather clumsy but devoted dog.

  PeterJohnson: Over 50, but old for his age, due to his time in prison. Silver-haired and handsome, slow in his movements, and a little strange in his speech and ways – haunted by the happenings of twenty years ago, lonely and friendless, yet capable of a difficult and unselfish decision when suddenly faced with a living memory of the woman he once loved.

  Malcolm McDougal: Male servant to Peter Johnson – a typical Scot of about 55.

  Mrs McDougal: His wife – a typical kindly outspoken Scotswoman, buxom and pleasant-faced, grey-haired and competent.

  APPENDIX 8

  Correspondence with Peter McKellar

  Professor Peter McKellar, late Professor of Psychology at Otago University, New Zealand, first wrote to Enid Blyton in early February 1953, requesting information on the writer’s imagery processes for a psychological study hewas then pursuing at Aberdeen University. Enid Blyton wrote nine letters to the psychologist during the five years following and material from these was subsequently referred to by Peter McKellar in his book Imagination and Thinking (London: Cohen and West; New York: Basic Books, 1957). The book is referred to from time to time in these extracts from the correspondence.

  Enid Blyton to Peter McKellar, February 15th, 1953

  Thank you for your interesting letter. Of course I’ll help you if I can.

  I don’t really understand myself how my imagination works. It is a thing completely beyond my control, as I imagine it is with most imaginative writers. ‘Where I am lucky is that I have such easy access to my imagination – i.e. I do not have to ‘wait for inspiration’ as so many do. I have merely to ‘open the sluice gates’ and out it all pours with no effort or labour of my own. This is why I can write so much and so quickly – it’s all I can do to keep up with it, even typing at top speed on my typewriter.

  In my case the imagery began as a young child. In bed I used to shut my eyes and ‘let my mind go free’. And into it would come what I used to call my ‘night stories’ – which were, in effect, all kinds of imaginings in story form – sometimes I was the ‘I’ in the story, some times I wasn’t. I thought all children had the same ‘night stories’ and was amazed when one day I found they hadn’t.

  Because of this imagining I wanted to write – to put down what I had seen and felt and heard in my imagination. I had a gift for words, so it was easy. (That has been in my family for some time.)

  I am a very well-balanced person, quick in the uptake, not in the least temperamental. I never wanted to write for anyone but children (which was odd, in a child, I think).

  Now I will tell you as clear and simply as I can, how I write my stories, and use my imagination.

  First of all, you must realise that when I begin a completely new book with new characters, I have no idea at all what the characters will be, where the story will happen, or what adventures or events will occur. All I know is that the book is to be say, an ‘Adventure’ tale, or a ‘Mystery’ or a ‘fairy-tale’ and so on, or that it must be a certain length – say 40,000 words.

  I shut my eyes for a few minutes, with my portable typewriter on my knee – I make my mind a blank and wait – and then, as clearly as I would see real children, my characters stand before me in my mind’s eye. I see them in detail – hair, eyes,
feet, clothes, expression – and I always know their Christian names but never their surname. (I get these out of a telephone directory afterwards!) More than that, I know their characters – good, bad, mean, generous, brave, loyal, hot-tempered and so on. I don’t know how I know that – it’s as instinctive as sizing up a person in real life, at which I am quite good. As I look at them, the characters take on movement and life – they talk and laugh (I hear them) and perhaps I see that one of them has a dog, or a parrot, and I think – ‘Ah – that’s good. That will liven up the story.’ Then behind the characters appears the setting, in colour, of course, of an old house – a ruined castle – an island – a row of houses.

  That’s enough for me. My hands go down on my typewriter keys and I begin. The first sentence comes straight into my mind, I don’t have to think of it – I don’t have to think of anything.

  The story is enacted in my mind’s eye almost as if I had a private cinema screen there. The characters come on and off, talk, laugh, sing – have their adventures – quarrel – and so on. I watch and hear everything, writing it down with my typewriter – reporting the dialogue (which is always completely natural) the expressions on the faces, the feelings of delight, fear and so on. I don’t know what anyone is going to say or do. I don’t know what is going to happen. I am in the happy position of being able to write a story and read it for the first time, at one and the same moment. The odd thing is that if a character comes in singing a song or reciting a poem, I hear it and take it down immediately, rhyme and all – though if I were actually writing a poem about something myself, I would, like most poets, have to think hard about metre and correct rhyming. But this imaginative creative work is something quite different from thinking work - with me, at any rate. If I am writing ‘real’ poetry, as distinct from ordinary verse, I have to work hard over it – and welcome the sudden gift of a complete line or two, or the happy word – these come from the ‘under-mind’ or whatever you call it – the hard thinking comes from my upper conscious mind. I use my ‘under-mind’ a tremendous lot. I send things down to it and let them simmer there, forgotten. The answer comes up complete when I want it. I believe mathematicians do this.

  Another odd thing is that my ‘under-mind’ seems to be able to receive such directions as ‘the story must be 40,000 words long’. Because, sure enough, no matter what length I have to write to (it varies tremendously) the book ends almost to the word – the right length. This seems to me peculiar. Another odd thing is that some times something crops up in the story which I am sure is wrong, or somehow out of place. Not a bit of it! It rights itself, falls into place – and now I dare not alter a thing l think is wrong. I have never yet found my ‘under-mind’ to make a mistake, though l make plenty myself in ordinary life. It’s much cleverer than I am! I once tried to write a book in the usual way – sitting down, writing out a plot – inventing a list of characters – making a list of chapters and so on. I couldn’t write a page, not a single page: it was labour – it was dull – it was, in a word, completely uninspired! When children write to me (and hundreds write every week) they say so often ‘I love your books because they are so real I feel I am having the adventure too.’ If I invented the adventures they wouldn’t feel like that: I am indeed lucky. When I am writing a book, in touch with my under-mind, I am very happy, excited, full of vitality. I could go on till the book is finished but my arms get tired of being held over the typewriter. When I go to bed, to sleep, I see the characters again in my dreams, but the adventures they have then are fantastic, not credible and balanced as they are when I am awake. They get mixed up with my dreams, I suppose. When I have finished a book, the characters fade away at once – as if my under-mind has said ‘There – that’s done – I’m empty and waiting for my next call.’

  I don’t pretend to understand all this. To write book after book without knowing what is going to be said or done sounds silly – and yet it happens. Sometimes a character makes a joke, a really funny one, that makes me laugh as I type it on my paper – and I think, ‘Well, I couldn’t have thought of that myself in a hundred years’! And then I think, ‘Well, who did think of it then?’

  … it is only when I write imaginative stuff that I write in the ways I have described. I think that such prolific writers as Dickens were probably the same – and Homer’s intensely real flashes of thought in his poems seem to me the same. They are so exactly right when they really are the products of one’s under-mind, super-mind, other-mind, whatever you like to call it: one learns to recognise it in other writings – Shakespeare is full of it – superb! Christopher Fry has it. All these writers are different but I am sure they are the same in one way – they draw from their under-mind easily and surely…

  I lead an ordinary life, with husband and girls, and I don’t think any stranger meeting me would know I was a writer or anything else. I don’t feel any different from other people except that I sometimes think my mind works more quickly, which sounds very conceited …

  It might also interest you to know that my books are translated into dozens of different languages – Malay, French, Fijian, Japanese, Indian, Finnish, Icelandic, Greek, all kinds – and yet, although my characters are typically British children, with the British ideals of fair play, loyalty, generosity and so on, all these nations love my books, and clamour for them. The one that clamours most, oddly enough, is Germany. Even the adults read them there – I’d love to be told why and how this should be – perhaps you can enlighten me!

  I should perhaps say that I recognise many things that are thrown up from my under-mind, transmuted and changed – a castle seen long ago – a dog – a small child – woods long forgotten, in a new setting …

  Peter McKellar to Enid Blyton, February 23rd, 1953

  You have given a most lucid and invaluable account of your imagery, and I am specially interested in the fact that it all began with hypnagogic imagery – the ‘night stories’ to which you refer. One of the interesting things about human imagining, it strikes me, is the very small part of human imaginings that has been recorded, an in finitely small part of what has been experienced by people. It is most interesting to discover a writer who has made a systematic account to record such a large part of her imaging in the way you have. Very little seems to be known about ‘night stories’, though vivid imaging has been itself pretty fully studied. The pioneer work of E. R. Jaensch: Eidetic Imagery (Kegan Paul, 1930), you will probably know. I note with interest your feeling as a child that everybody must have such imagery, and such night stories. The usual incidence of eidetic imagery, in ordinary waking life, with adults is in the vicinity of about 7 per cent. (It is very much greater with children.) My own study of the largely-uninvestigated night stories or hypnagogic images indicates that they occur with about 40 per cent of adults, though as I haven’t got very far with the investigation these figures would be very approximate. They refer, of course, only to the having of them and not to any very marked development of the faculty concerned. They are usually of a brief, and fleeting kind. Some of those I have accounts of are amusing, some a little terrifying, some visual, others auditory, but I have a few cases of similarly vivid imagery before sleep, for touch, temperature and even smell experiences. Your detailed account of your own, your development of this usually neglected tendency, and your putting it all to such a useful purpose, is of extreme interest to this study …

  You did kindly offer to answer any additional questions. There are just one or two that arise. The first relates to your postscript about your recognising some, but I take it not all, of the things imaged as things previously seen and heard. If there is anything you feel you would like to add to this it would be of great interest. I find with the hypnagogic images that some people are totally unable to recognise the imagery as involving anything they remember ever having previously seen. Others, however, find the before sleep imagery closely related usually to the experiences of the previous day. The difference between the two may prove to be important. Again
, you mention that your ‘private cinema screen’ began with the before sleeping imagery. I take it, however, that the major part of your writing is done with similar imagery in the ordinary waking state. Do, however, the ‘night stories’ themselves still go on (as opposed to the actual dreams to which you refer), and do you find that these night stories also yield story material? Anything you could add about the relation between the before sleep and the ordinary day-time imagery would be of great interest. My only other question is the obvious one of whether you have tried out other methods of recording the stories than typing. If you have, as you probably will have, did you find it less satisfactory? (in short, is the total situation, complete with the movements of typing, the best for recording these stories?)

  Enid Blyton to Peter McKellar, February 26th, 1953

  Thank you for your very interesting letter. I’m very glad mine was of use to you. To tell you the truth I’d be very pleased if I could find an explanation of the goings-on of my sub-conscious!! It startles me sometimes.

  Before I forget – I’ve told the publisher of the Little Noddy books (my most popular series for the youngest age-group) to send your small daughter the first three of these books (there are 6 or 7) because I think she may like them. If you read them yourself to her you will see how her imagination gets hold of Little Noddy, and makes him come alive to her! One of the great reasons for reading imaginative books to very young children is to stir their imaginations and their thinking – to set their minds ticking – and it’s interesting to see how even a 2½ year old will sometimes take enormous strides forward as soon as he is read to – but the books or stories must, of course, be absolutely suited to his understanding.

  I think hundreds upon hundreds of writers have just the same power of imagination as I have – but I have noticed that only a very small percentage have the easy access to it that I have. Some ‘wait for inspiration’, some labour and wrestle with their imagination (and the labour shows in their work!), the lucky few have their imagination at their command, and then the whole thing is effortless – a sheer delight. That is where I am so lucky – the gates are so easy to open and also, I think, the fact that I am so close to my imagination prevents my being badly-balanced, temperamental or moody as so many creative people are.