Enid Blyton (15 page)

After the Isle of Wight holiday together, Enid continued to meet and write to Dorothy as frequently as before but religion was no longer the main subject for discussion between them. This was particularly so by the latter half of 1936, for by that time Enid’s thoughts were directed more towards a new project which Newnes were planning to launch early the following year.

She had been discussing for some months with Herbert Tingay, the company’s managing director, the possibility of bringing out
Sunny Stories
weekly, under a new format, and on 15 January 1937 the first of this series was launched with an introductory ‘Letter from Old Thatch’:

Apart from a page devoted to poems or puzzles sent in by the children, Enid was responsible for the entire contents of every issue.

The first of her long serial stories for the magazine,
The Adventures of the Wishing Chair,
was brought out in book form by Newnes at the end of the year, after (according to Enid’s weekly letter) her readers had written asking her to put all the adventures ‘into a proper big book’, because they had enjoyed the serial so much. Correspondence of this kind proved invaluable to Enid in assessing the popularity or otherwise of her stories. She invited the children’s comments on everything she wrote – and received replies by the hundred. She had no difficulty in gauging the appeal of her second full-length serial story for, from the first, it proved a sound favourite with most age groups and was the forerunner of many other ‘family adventure’ books.
The Secret Island,
eventually published by Basil Blackwell in 1938, told the story of four children who ran away together to a secret island and the adventures that befell them. In reviewing the book,
Teachers’ World
commented:

She was to have the same kind of success with the serial that followed –
Mr. Galliano’s Circus
– again destined to be the first of another well-loved series of books, which this time she based on life in a circus. Popular, too, were the short stories and poems for the magazine, which Enid later used – with slight variations – in many of her annuals and ‘Bedtime’ books.

Among the tales particularly enjoyed by Gillian were those written around her own rag doll – ‘Naughty Amelia Jane’. This large, dark-haired doll had been given to Gillian on her third birthday and had been a favourite ever since the day Enid had ‘brought her to life’, a year or so after Amelia Jane had arrived in the nursery. Dorothy had been staying at Old Thatch at the time and she and Enid had joined Gillian and her nanny for tea. Enid had been in a playful, happy mood and had grasped the floppy, ringlet-haired doll under its red-spotted dress, and made her perform like a puppet. Much to Gillian’s delight, and the others’ amusement, Amelia Jane was made to pick up sandwiches and lumps of sugar and hurl them on to the floor ‘talking’ all the while in a squeaky voice, while Enid admonished her in stern tones. Her mother’s superb clowning was such a success that Gillian would constantly demand repeat performances. When
Sunny Stories
appeared, other children were able to read of Amelia Jane’s misdeeds and eventually these popular tales also found their way into a book.

As with her
Teachers’ World
page, the
Sunny Stories
‘letter’ was a way of introducing several worthwhile ideas to her readers. In one case she suggested that lonely children might like to write in to ‘The Pillar Box’ section, telling of their hobbies and pets, and whether they came from town or country, so that they might be put in touch with one another. She reported in a later issue that this suggestion had been followed up and dozens of new ‘pen-friends’ were now corresponding regularly.

Bobs, that lovable black and white terrier who had died some two years before, but was still kept very much alive through his weekly
Teachers’ World
‘letter’ – appeared yet again in the new
Sunny Stories
magazine. This time he figured in an illustrated strip piece,
Bobs and his Friends,
which also incorporated the ‘schoolgirl’ Gillian, ‘baby’ Imogen and other members of the Old Thatch household.

With so much of her writing in both magazines now based on her home and family, it is not surprising that this cosy domestic world – free from the more unpleasant and irksome aspects of the daily round – should occasionally become more real for her than the reality. As often as she could, she took Imogen in the pram to meet Gillian from the small private school she now attended and usually played with them for an hour or so after tea, but found that her increased writing and social commitments prevented her from seeing as much of them as her columns suggested that she did. Even her relationship with Hugh was not as happy as it had once been – before Dorothy came into their lives.

It had not escaped Hugh’s notice that Enid had become less dependent upon him and more on her friend and he resented what he considered to be Dorothy’s intrusion into his marriage. Now that Enid appeared to be gaining more confidence in herself and her abilities, with the acquisition of a certain amount of fame and fortune of her own, he was also beginning to feel that their roles in the household were being reversed and that he was fast becoming superfluous to her affairs. It was unfortunate that he should suffer additional stress at this time because of other broader issues at stake – outside the narrow confines of Old Thatch – which he was convinced would soon involve them all.

The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and other inflammatory situations in Europe during the late ’thirties confirmed Hugh’s belief in Winston Churchill’s warnings that the world was on the brink of another war. The more depressed he became over the possibility of such a catastrophe, the easier he found it to fall back on his old means of consolation. But fearing that Enid would suspect his motives and despise him the more if he drank openly, he took his bottles into a small cellar under the stairs, only accessible through the maid’s bathroom, and out of sight from the rest of the house. Only Dick Hughes knew what his employer was about, for periodically he was entrusted with the key to the cellar so that he might clear away the empty bottles. It was, therefore, not until Hugh became seriously ill in the early summer of 1938, and some of the undisposed-of bottles were discovered, that the rest of the household became aware of what had been going on.

Despite a heavy cold that had troubled him for some weeks, Hugh had stubbornly refused to take to his bed, but one evening he returned to Old Thatch on the point of collapse and Enid called in the doctor. His diagnosis, that Hugh was seriously ill with pneumonia and would have to be moved without delay into the local cottage hospital, came as a considerable shock to Enid. She had always had a fear of illness – and hospitals in particular – and had never known Hugh to be physically ill before. When he was put to bed in the ward, it was almost more than she could bear to see him lying pale, helpless and breathing with difficulty in such alien surroundings and she felt herself totally inadequate to cope with such a situation. Dorothy was away on a case and for the first time in her life Enid could find no release from unpleasant reality through her writing. Her stream of creative thought, normally so active, appeared to be stemmed and she found it impossible to get down to work.

Hugh’s condition worsened and his brother was summoned from Scotland. For a few days, while the fever was approaching its crisis, no one was sure of the outcome. Dick Hughes, meeting Enid on the doorstep one morning and asking for news, was disturbed to see the normally bright and imperturbable Mrs Pollock bury her head in her hands and, between sobs, admit that she was frightened and did not ‘want anything to happen to Hugh’. But by the next morning the crisis had passed and Hugh began to recover.

Although this period of deep anxiety was short-lived, the experience seemed to bring back to Enid the happiness of her early years with Hugh, and the realisation of what she might have lost if he were no longer there to share her life. She looked again at the attractive setting in which they played out their joint lives and, in her own way, showed that she recognised her good fortune. Her
Teachers’ World
letter for 22 June, written shortly after that crucial day – and probably the first piece of work since his illness – described how she had woken up early, pulled back the curtains of her room and looked outside:

She went on to tell of how she had listened to her doves cooing to each other, her dogs, cats and other pets waking and, as breakfast time approached, the ‘two little voices’ that meant Gillian and Imogen were also awake. ‘It’s lovely,’ she wrote, ‘to see the world looking so fresh and new.’ She made no mention of Hugh’s illness at that time but the following week she wrote:

When Hugh came out of hospital, after almost a month’s illness, he was still very weak but happy to be with his wife and two small daughters again and he looked forward to a holiday at the seaside to convalesce. Even the arrival of Dorothy, who had been engaged by Enid to act as his nurse, did not dim his happiness, for he had come back to a seemingly loving and attentive wife and their marriage appeared to be all set for a new, brighter phase.

She informed her young readers, as usual, that she would be going away: ‘Gillian and Imogen have already gone with their nurse, but I am waiting till their Daddy is well enough to go too …’ – but it was not until a week later that she gave them the surprising news that, this time, the family would not be returning to Old Thatch.

T
he Pollocks had for some time been looking for a larger house for their growing family and staff, but both had been reluctant to leave Old Thatch and its delightful setting. Although they had extended it once, they felt that further additions would only spoil the character of the cottage and make it, in Enid’s words, ‘neither old nor new – just a hotchpotch’. But the house that eventually replaced their old home and was to be associated with Enid for the rest of her life was not of Hugh’s choosing. Dorothy and Enid had decided upon it together, weeks before Hugh’s illness – a fact which had further aggravated the situation existing at that time between husband and wife and possibly accounted for Hugh’s dislike of the proposed new home from the start.

The house was some thirty years old and was built of red brick with black and white half-timbered gables. It had eight bedrooms, several large reception rooms and stood in two-and-a-half acres of grounds in a pleasant, tree-lined road in Beaconsfield, a small Buckinghamshire town about twenty-five miles from London. Much to Hugh’s dismay, for he was a countryman at heart, it was situated in less rural surroundings than Old Thatch and, in his view, the house itself had little character. But it was close to the station and shops and with Gillian now at school and Imogen soon to follow, Enid felt it would be altogether more suitable for the family. There were bitter arguments at first over her choice, but she was adamant that it was the house she wanted and Hugh, as always, eventually let her have her way and plans for the move were already well advanced when Hugh became ill.

But despite her determination to make the change, as the time approached for leaving the house that had been her home for close on ten years, Enid began to realise just what a wrench it would be. Several of her
Teachers’ World
columns beforehand extolled the beauties of the cottage and garden and she wistfully wrote in her letter of 27 July:

There was no going back on her decision by that time, however, and she set about convincing her readers that her new house would be as appealing to them as the old:

It was, she wrote, a very ‘happy-looking’ house with its roof of deep red-brown tiles, many casement windows and tall chimneys. Gillian was to have a small bedroom to herself and on her recent birthday had been given presents towards its furnishing. There was, as yet, no pond, but the new garden had two rockeries, an orchard and a large vegetable garden ‘that seems to grow prize vegetables’. Gillian and Imogen were to have ‘one of the little hidden lawns’ for themselves – ‘their own secret place’ for their gardens, swing and sandpit.

Enid’s request for names for this new home met with an enthusiastic response. Hundreds of children wrote to her in the weeks that followed and she quoted their suggestions in her columns. Eventually she revealed to them that although she thought Sunny Corners, Red Roofs, Tall Chimneys, Cherry Trees and many others, were all ‘charming’, one name in particular – Green Hedges – had appeared more frequently than any other. It had been first choice for close on three-quarters of her readers and she had decided to use this for her new home. From then on her page in
Teachers’ World
and her letter in
Sunny Stories
always carried ‘Green Hedges’ at its head – a house-name which was to become synonymous with Enid for several decades. But she did not entirely dismiss the other names that had been suggested for many subsequently appeared in her stories and books.