Enid Blyton (28 page)

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.

‘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.’

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.

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…