Enid Blyton and her Brothers

[zaidi]

I think all of us know what consequences Enid had to face with her mother , I think when she was young she did have a good time with her brothers. So what about when she was a writer and got famous did her brothers ever came to meet her or make a link with Enid? While did they have families and are they any great grand children a live of their's?

[Redrachel76]

It is written in Barbara Stoney's biography that Enid severed all contact with her brothers until she became old and had Alzheimers disease. Then one day contacted her brother who came to visit her and found that she had forgotton that she had contacted him.

I often wondered if her brothers had grandchildren or great grandchildren. If they did those grandchildren would have had no contact with her.

When I was a child in Sheffield in the early / mid 1980's a friend of my parents told me that she had met one of Enid Blyton's brothers and he was living in Sheffield.
He would have been a very old man by then. I tried to get more information out of her but she shushed me. I was probably just an over enthusiastic kid to her.
I then went home and then looked up all the telephone numbers of all the Blytons in Sheffield in the phone book. I remember there were a lot of Blytons.
I did not have the courage to phone up all the Blytons and find Enid's brother like I wanted to because I was scared of my parents being angry about the phone bill and me phoning up strange people (I was very young). Local telephone calls were quite expensive in the 1980's.
After reading about her relationship with her brother, I am glad I did not do it now.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Interesting that you went as far as looking up the phone numbers of Blytons, Redrachel. I don't think adults always realise how passionately children sometimes feel about things, or how seriously children will consider possibilities that most adults would just dismiss.

Barbara Stoney tells us that, by 1928, Enid's brother Hanly was married to Floss and they had a baby daughter called Yvonne. Enid was trying to become pregnant herself at that time, unsuccessfully, and "She tried to satisfy her maternal yearnings by seeing as much as she could of her young niece, Yvonne..." So it seems that Enid and Hanly were in touch at that time. Later, Hanly and his wife had another child.

It was Hanly who begged Enid repeatedly to visit their mother Theresa before her death in 1950, but Enid had long been estranged from her and she refused. Gillian and Imogen knew nothing of their grandmother until after her death.

As far as Carey is concerned, Barbara Stoney doesn't say much about him but it's possible that he had intermittent contact with Enid. He was in the Royal Air Force for at least seven years in the 1920s, and later lived abroad: "With Carey overseas, it had been left to Hanly to bear the brunt of caring for an ailing and difficult mother throughout his married life and - for the past twenty years - for his two children and a sick and almost bed-ridden wife. There had been little enough contact between brother and sister before their mother's death and now there was even less, and Enid must have been aware that Hanly felt she could have given more help of a practical nature at a time when he already had more than enough to cope with at home."

After that, Hanly and Enid had no contact for about seventeen years until, in 1967, Enid phoned her brother when she herself was ill. He then visited her from time to time until her death in November 1968.

[Katharine]

In Issue Four of The Journal there is a two page article by Enid's nephew Carey.

It tells of a collaboration between him and Enid of songs for schools. From just skimming through it, I think he only met her a couple of times in the process of producing it.

It mentions his sister Yvonne, so presumably he was the son of Hanly.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Ah yes - I'd forgotten that Hanly's other child was Carey. In her book A Childhood at Green Hedges, Imogen Smallwood writes of the time she contracted polio in 1947: "While I was ill in Great Ormond Street, my cousin Carey Blyton lay in a hospital in Kent, dangerously ill with the same disease. My mother knew of this, just as Carey's parents knew of my illness, but she never visited him. His care was less good than mine and his illness more severe and it left him disabled." So it looks as though Enid and Hanly exchanged news, perhaps by letter or telephone, but didn't involve themselves much in each other's lives.

Edit: One of Carey's sons (i.e. the son of Enid Blyton's nephew) posted on the forums a few months ago. His name is Daniel Blyton. I've just found the thread:

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/foru ... sus#p54910" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Katharine]

I mentioned in another thread recently about how I thought Hanly Blyton must have been a very decent person because of the way he came and visited Enid in her final need despite having had no contact with her for 17 years. I'm even more impressed now. If memory serves me right, Carey was ill before the NHS came into being. Presumably that's why Imogen's care was superior to his, ie, her mother could afford better care. If that is in fact the case, what a remarkable man Hanly must have been not to bear her any ill feeling that she didn't (presumably) offer to pay for her nephew to receive the same care her own daughter received.

[Enikyoga]

In her book A Childhood at Green Hedges, Imogen Smallwood writes of the time she contracted polio in 1947: "While I was ill in Great Ormond Street, my cousin Carey Blyton lay in a hospital in Kent, dangerously ill with the same disease. My mother knew of this, just as Carey's parents knew of my illness, but she never visited him. His care was less good than mine and his illness more severe and it left him disabled."

Anita, that Imogen contracted polio as a child is news to me. Oftentimes, people that contract polio are indentified by that infirmity with a limp or something of that nature. Does she exhibit that infirmity?
Stephen I.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Imogen was fortunate enough to make a full recovery as far as I know, but her cousin Carey was left with mobility problems.

[Katharine]

I've a feeling there was another article by either Enid's brother or nephew in another journal. All I remember is that it was offering some music for sale and that the seller lived in Woodbridge. I was thrilled as it's not that far from where I live. Then I did some research and found that the person concerned had died a number of years previously, so if it was a journal it must have been one of the earlier ones. I've had a quick thumb through, but couldn't spot it. Does it ring any bells with anyone else?



I've just had a look in The Cave (why didn't I think of that earlier?) There's another article in Journal Five by Carey Blyton, I'll try and dig my copy out and see if there's any relevant info in there.

[Fatty]

Surely Stephen isn't thinking Blyton was 'satirizing' the condition when she created characters such as Lame Luke and assorted movement-impaired baddies?

After the dementia discussion on the Anecdotage thread I wouldn't be surprised.

[Anita Bensoussane]

In 1955 Enid Blyton wrote a story called 'Let's Have a Club of Our Own!' which features a boy named Eric who can't walk very well because he has "a crippled leg" after having had polio. He is a member of a club called the Sturdy Six, and he is made Treasurer. I wonder whether Enid was thinking of her nephew Carey when she wrote about Eric?

[Katharine]

That's interesting Anita, I can only think of one other Enid Blyton story which features a child who wasn't healthy. I think it was in one of the Holiday books and was about a child involved in a road accident. Although the child recovered they walked with a limp for the rest of their life. I was surprised as normally everyone seems to make a miraculous recovery. I'm thinking particuarly of Clarissa who wore braces and glasses but eventually didn't need either and turned out to be beautiful.

[Fatty]

In 1955 Enid Blyton wrote a story called 'Let's Have a Club of Our Own!' which features a boy named Eric who can't walk very well because he has "a crippled leg" after having had polio. He is a member of a club called the Sturdy Six, and he is made Treasurer. I wonder whether Enid was thinking of her nephew Carey when she wrote about Eric?

Interesting speculation, Anita, and worthy of mention in the Anec... on second thoughts, scratch that! Funnily, I seem to have read this story fairly recently. Was it included in a large hardbound annual of some sort published in the 1970s?

[Anita Bensoussane]

You're not thinking of the 1961 The Big Enid Blyton Book, are you? (I'm not sure whether the abridged 1976 printing included that particular story):

http://www.enidblytonsociety.co.uk/book ... lyton+Book" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Katharine]

I've got the updated version on my bookshelf. I've just looked at all the titles listed, and either my memory is getting worse than I realised, or it's one of those still waiting to be read, as I don't recognise any of them.