'From My Window' in Teachers World

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid Blyton comments on shop assistants this week, though personally I don't like a lot of attention from shop assistants until I've had time to have a good look round by myself:

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... &perid=209

[Boodi 2]

I agree Anita, but it was probably different when Enid Blyton made those comments, as I think the opportunity for self service/selection was fairly limited until the early 1960s, thus in those far-off days customers had to rely on shop assistants to show them the various items in stock.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm sure you're right, Boodi, and I'd just have to have put up with it back then!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid is feeling decidedly Keats-like about autumn in her column for Teachers World. "Pageantry" is a wonderful word to describe the season.

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... &perid=210

[Kate Mary]

That's a beautiful essay. I haven't seen a spider's web hung with dew-drops for ages they used to be a common sight in Autumn and nobody has bonfires nowadays but I remember my Dad having them. I loved to watch and smell the smoke.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid Blyton is house-hunting and her musings on the "personalities" of various houses are a delight to read:

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... &perid=212


Just as enjoyable is her humorous poem 'The Solemn Cow'. Above it is 'The Christmas Song-Game for Children' (about going to the pantomime in Drury Lane), but the instructions for the actions were apparently printed on another page:

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... &perid=211

[Anita Bensoussane]

Oooh - Enid is in one of our favourite places this time! It's interesting to read her thoughts, though I'm surprised she feels that secondhand books "have been someone else's friends, and can never really be mine." I actually like the sense of history that a secondhand book imparts, especially when inscriptions or bookplates or notes in the margin or forgotten bookmarks give us a glimpse of previous owners. Secondhand books feel more friendly to me than stiff, shiny new ones - though the latter are soon broken in and become firm friends fast enough if their contents stir the heart and mind.

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... &perid=214

[Kate Mary]

I can walk past any bookshop that sells new books they are mostly filled with the latest bestsellers, but what treasures might lurk in a secondhand bookshop? So I can't agree with Enid but it is a wonderful From My Window column. I like the phrase 'a friendly sort of shabbiness' that is just the sort of bookshop I like.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid covers an incredible variety of topics in her columns and in her latest 'From My Window' article she discusses what it means to be a gentleman (or lady). She recalls a conversation with a little boy who had a gentle Newfoundland dog, and who said that his dog was a gentleman because "It's gentleness that makes a gentleman, isn't it?" It's lovely to hear about people Enid knew, and her subsequent musings on gentlemen make me think of Joe Gargery from Charles Dickens' Great Expectations and Barney the circus boy from her own Barney mystery series.

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... &perid=215

[Courtenay]

Oh, that's lovely, Anita! Funny, I was just thinking earlier today (for some reason I can't now recall) about how important (and beautiful) gentleness is and how I want to express more of it in my own life. And Enid's and young Billy's comments on what a gentleman is reminded me very much of The Greatest Thing in the World by the 19th-century Scottish minister Henry Drummond — his musings on the famous passage about love from 1 Corinthians 13 in the Bible. Here's the quote from him that I'm remembering. I'm guessing Enid may have been familiar with it too and was possibly thinking of it, consciously or unconsciously, when she wrote that article:

Politeness has been defined as love in trifles. Courtesy is said to be love in little things. And the one secret of politeness is to love.

Love cannot behave itself unseemly. You can put the most untutored persons into the highest society, and if they have a reservoir of Love in their heart they will not behave themselves unseemly. They simply cannot do it. Carlisle said of Robert Burns that there was no truer gentleman in Europe than the ploughman-poet. It was because he loved everything—the mouse, and the daisy, and all the things, great and small, that God had made. So with this simple passport he could mingle with any society, and enter courts and palaces from his little cottage on the banks of the Ayr.

You know the meaning of the word "gentleman." It means a gentle man—a man who does things gently, with love. That is the whole art and mystery of it. The gentle man cannot in the nature of things do an ungentle, an ungentlemanly thing. The ungentle soul, the inconsiderate, unsympathetic nature, cannot do anything else. "Love doth not behave itself unseemly."

[Anita Bensoussane]

That's interesting, Courtenay. Like you, I wonder whether Enid Blyton was familiar with the comments by Henry Drummond.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I've read Enid's 'From My Window' about the finding of Elfin Cottage (or Elfin House as she refers to it at this stage) before, but it's always worth a re-read. A house that is cheerful and homely with a touch of elfishness sounds most appealing. I've seen Elfin Cottage from the outside and it's nicely-proportioned but the area is built-up now.

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... &perid=217

[Katharine]

A lovely little article. I think I might have read it before, and probably commented that I find it rather funny/strange that Enid describes Elfin Cottage as little. It's the kind of large house I've always dreamed of living in.

A couple of other points particularly struck me, the first was the comment about seeing a grey squirrel - the article was written almost 100 years ago, when probably most other parts of the country still had red squirrels. The second point was the idea that anyone wanting to view the property simply had to ask the neighbours for the keys - how quaint.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I was surprised at the casual-sounding arrangement concerning the keys too.

[Anita Bensoussane]

It's interesting to read this week's 'From My Window' article about Christmas shopping along with a later 'From My Window' article on the same theme ('A Delightful Bother', Teachers World, December 15th 1926). The latter was used in Journal 76. Enid Blyton's enthusiasm comes through strongly in both:

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... &perid=218