Teachers World Letters 1943

[Boodi 2]

Alas that is quite true and most frustrating!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting that seaside holidays were taken in wartime (what about the posters "Is your journey really necessary?"), I thought the coast would be all barbed wire and Home Guard patrols, but perhaps by this stage of the war the threat of invasion had lessened and for the privileged few a seaside holiday was possible. Do we know where Enid went, Dorset perhaps?

I think Enid was going to Swanage by this time - with Kenneth too, even though they didn't marry until the October of 1943. Was bathing restricted to a certain area of the beach, perhaps?

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid shares some fascinating snippets of news as always - and the wartime news under 'Fighting Dominions' (nothing to do with Enid) is interesting too.

Are there still mongooses living in the wild anywhere in the UK, I wonder?

It's somewhat shocking to hear of Enid asking her readers to destroy cabbage white butterflies and caterpillars, but they obviously had the potential to devour many of the crops that were so vital during wartime.


https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... perid=1970

[Courtenay]

It's somewhat shocking to hear of Enid asking her readers to destroy cabbage white butterflies and caterpillars, but they obviously had the potential to devour many of the crops that were so vital during wartime.

Not quite so shocking to an Aussie — they're an introduced pest where I come from! Enid writes of them coming over "from the Continent", which is interesting — I didn't realise they were migratory.

Fascinating letters, as you say, and I was surprised to hear about the mongooses! I've looked online, but there don't appear to be any populations of them in the UK now, except in zoos, of course. I did manage to find out (from Wikipedia) that mongooses have a natural immunity to snake venom — ah, so no wonder they have a reputation for fighting snakes! Sort of spoils the story, though — I've recently been re-reading The Jungle Book — to know that Rikki-tikki-tavi had a bigger advantage than just his "quickness of eye and quickness of foot" and he wasn't in any real danger from the two cobras after all...

[Wolfgang]

I wonder if they're immune to any snakes' venom... as far as I know the venoms of different species work differently.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid Blyton's seaside holiday (in Swanage, I think) is almost at an end. Wartime restrictions are hinted at when she says, "The children have done all they wanted to do except that they have not been able to go out in a boat. That is not allowed here. Both Gillian and Imogen want to learn to row, but they will have to wait for that."

Bobs' shock at the newly-hatched dove having no feathers is most amusing!

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... perid=1971

[Anita Bensoussane]

Gillian and Imogen's "shop" selling windfall apples and pears sounds like fun.

Enid Blyton doesn't keep her young readers in the dark concerning the slaughter of her hens: "The old brownies, alas, will have to be killed, because they no longer lay eggs for us." No doubt many children would have seen their own parents or guardians taking the same attitude.

I was interested to read that "My old gardener, the one I had at my last house, is coming to clean out the hen-house and put the new hens in for me this afternoon" - almost certainly a reference to Dick Hughes.

Bobs is a scream as always!

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... perid=1972

[Splodj]

I wonder if the first FFO book (Burnt Cottage) published in December. was written about this time.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid Blyton tells us about a man she's been talking to, "whose hobby it is to photograph and study birds." She has even been into the hide that he's constructed in his garden. I wonder whether this man influenced the character of Jack in the Adventure series?

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... perid=1973

[Courtenay]

I wonder whether this man influenced the character of Jack in the Adventure series?

Going by her description of him and how interested she was, and the fact that this was 1943 and the first Adventure series book was published in 1944, I would say it's quite likely! Was she already at least vaguely toying with the idea of a story about a different group of children from "the Five" who go on somewhat more dangerous adventures — something aimed at slightly older readers — and with some kind of animal companion other than a dog, for a change... and what if there was a boy who, like this chap she'd met, was fascinated by birds, and what if he had a parrot as clever as her auntie's African Grey...? Or did it all just sink into her "under-mind" and come out unexpectedly the next year? I know Enid famously claimed that she never planned out any of her stories in advance, just sat down with her typewriter and the story would unfold itself to her in her head as if she were watching it on a cinema screen, with her having no idea what was going to happen next until it did, but I find it hard to believe that she wrote absolutely every story that way and never consciously pondered any possible ideas for future plots at all.

I wonder which four lucky children lived close enough and were quick enough at writing in to get a real kitten from Enid? There must have been so many left disappointed.

I was tempted to say "Poor Bobs!", especially reading about the wasp stings, but I very quickly remembered that the real Bobs had in fact been dead for (I think) about 8 years by this time, so no dogs were harmed in the picking of those pears in reality!! Unless at least some of those escapades happened to one of Enid's then-current dogs and she transferred them to Bobs — or were they all just invented? (I'm sure at least some of Bobs' adventures in his letters were purely imaginary or at least heavily exaggerated for effect, even during his lifetime. But they're always a delight to read.)

[Anita Bensoussane]

Was she already at least vaguely toying with the idea of a story about a different group of children from "the Five" who go on somewhat more dangerous adventures — something aimed at slightly older readers...?

Enid had very recently returned from the Swanage holiday where she'd met the man upon whom Bill Smugs was to be based, so the idea of writing a book (or series of books) involving a member of the Secret Service had been planted in her mind (even though she may not have been sure whether she would actually take up the suggestion). The man told Enid he would like to have adventures: "I'd like to have been in the Secret Service, or something like that. Couldn't you possibly put me into a book and make me a Secret Service man? I really could have adventures then... Put me in as I am, with no hair on top, and anything else you like. And call me — let me see — yes — call me Bill Smugs, will you? That is what I used to call myself as a boy."

Enid Blyton comments in The Story of My Life: "Well, when I wrote the first Adventure book, The Island of Adventure, lo and behold, up popped Bill Smugs into the story. I was rather astonished. There he was, bald head and all — and in the Secret Service too!"

There were other factors behind the creation of the Adventure series though. In Enid Blyton - A Literary Life, Andrew Maunder says that Macmillan initially wanted Enid to write them an adventure novel "based on a plot of their own design. This featured two teenagers, an older girl and a younger boy, returning from the United States to do war work in Britain via the Atlantic (a perilous crossing, given the threat of being torpedoed by German submarines). Once in London, the girl would get a job at the Admiralty, during which time she would meet an American pilot (on leave after being wounded on a bombing raid over Germany). He would take the girl and her brother under his wing." [These details were outlined in a memorandum dated 16th July 1943]. Macmillan felt that such a story would cement the bond between the USA and Britain, and establish Enid Blyton in America.

However, Enid wasn't keen on writing war-based fiction by that stage. She pointed out that war books would soon become dated, and felt that many parents preferred to buy books that would take their children's minds away from the war. She was open to the idea of working on a "special book for here and America" though, and wrote to Macmillan on 19th July 1943, "You must not worry about the book being too English or having references to our own flora and fauna. I am used to writing adventure, circus and ordinary stories that have no local atmosphere at all, because most of my publishers do a big trade with my books in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and so on, and I have learnt to depend, in those books, on character and incident and not at all on references to nature..."

It was two months later, on 21st September 1943, that Enid Blyton delivered the manuscript of The Island of Adventure to Macmillan. The man from Swanage certainly found his way into the book, but whether the bird-lover influenced her portrayal of Jack Trent is less clear because it isn't certain when the meeting took place (though Enid's Teachers World letters were probably written a couple of weeks in advance of publication and we know she could write an Adventure book in about a week).

[Anita Bensoussane]

Enid Blyton talks of how the swallows will soon be flying off to warmer climes. Funnily enough, on my way home from work today I watched swallows swooping over the meadows and thought about the long flight that lies ahead of them. I've also seen a lot of bats flitting over the rivers in the evenings, no doubt feasting on insects in preparation for going into hibernation.

We learn that Enid is having great trouble finding "indoor shoes" in Gillian and Imogen's sizes - another reminder of how the war affected people's lives.

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... perid=1974

[Boodi 2]

I wonder if Bobs killed the rat or just scared it away? I enjoyed the quiz about stamps!

[Courtenay]

Considering Bobs by this stage had been dead for 8 years, it was either one of Enid's other dogs who caught the rat, or the episode was made up for effect! If it did happen, "that was the end of the rat" sounds very much like it was killed.

I enjoyed the quizzes about stamps and famous people too! And swallows flying each year from Britain to Africa is another thing I first learned from Pip the Pixie. We have swallows in Australia too — very similar to the northern hemisphere ones, with reddish faces and blue-black backs, except ours don't have a dark stripe under their chins — but they don't migrate as far, as our climate is warmer. We see them in the south-east (where I come from) during spring and summer, and then they only need to fly as far as northern Australia in the winter. I've just looked them up and in some of the warmer parts of Australia, they simply live where they are year-round!

[Anita Bensoussane]

The children have returned to school and Enid Blyton is busy with her garden and her pets. I was interested that she felt she needed to explain the meaning of "kaleidoscope" (I hadn't heard its alternative name before, "mirror-scope", so she taught me something!) My sister and I used to have a kaleidoscope in the early-mid 1970s. I saw the same make and design of kaleidoscope when I was in an antiques shop with my dad and my daughter a couple of weeks ago, but as it was priced at £12 I wasn't tempted to buy it for reasons of nostalgia!

https://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/bly ... perid=1975