EB books and illness/convalescing/quarantine periods?

[Belly]

Who can name a book where the children are convalescing from an illness at the beginning/start of the plot?

Just struck me that in a great many it seems the chidren are in a quarantine period and so go off on a fab holiday for 3 weeks (if only)!

From memory the twins at St Clares play tennis with a girl who comes down with something nasty? This means they go back to school late?

One or two of the Adventure books have very bored, fed up children trying to convince Aunt Allie that they are fully recovered from some illness or other. Bill believes them and takes them off somewhere exotic just in case?

Illness I know features in the Naughtiest Girl books with Julian's (?) mother being dangerously ill?

I also remember reading as a child in the Blyton Phenomenon I think, that Imogen (Enid's younger daughter) was operated on by Kenneth Darrell Waters on the kitchen table (emergency appendix op)? Isn't this reflected somewhere too in the books?

Anything else? All from my very foggy memory, so apologies if I am wildly off track. Be good to hear back from someone with better knowledge who will probably trigger my memory.

[Lulie]

One of the "Barney Mysteries" has the children recovering from flu or something, but I can't remember which one it is!

Also some FF books the children are recovering from cold or flu - Five get into a Fix is one, I think, but I can't remember the rest.

I'm not doing very well today, am I? My excuse? Er...none, except I've been sewing all day and my head is squished in consequence

[Anita Bensoussane]

[Belly:]"I also remember reading as a child in the Blyton Phenomenon I think, that Imogen (Enid's younger daughter) was operated on by Kenneth Darrell Waters on the kitchen table (emergency appendix op)? Isn't this reflected somewhere too in the books?"

If I remember correctly, Darrell's father comes to the school and performs an emergency appendix operation on Sally Hope in the first Malory Towers book.

The "Barney Mystery" that has the children recovering from 'flu is The Ring O' Bells Mystery - I love Gilbert Dunlop's illustrations (first page of my paperback edition) of the children wrapped in dressing-gowns and sneezing into handkerchiefs.

And who can forget the description of Barney's illness in The Rubadub Mystery, when he lay in a barn and was nursed by his monkey, Miranda? That really tugs at the heart strings.

The children of the Adventure, Barney and Famous Five books may be sent away on holiday to recuperate after an illness, but the Find-Outers have to make do with lying in bed, reading detective books and sucking bull's eyes (beginning of The Mystery of the Strange Bundle.) I don't recall much illness in the Secret Seven books (as I've said elsewhere, I don't remember that series particularly well), but I expect the Secret Seven would simply be dosed with blackcurrant tea!

Anita

[Lenoir]

One or two of the Adventure books have very bored, fed up children trying to convince Aunt Allie that they are fully recovered from some illness or other. Bill believes them and takes them off somewhere exotic just in case?

I had to check to make sure, but managed to pick the right one at first attempt!
It's The River of Adventure ('four miserable invalids').
Kiki has to imitate their coughs of course!
Then they have to go off for convalescence (doctor's orders) and another adventure is born.
I don't think doctors prescribe that anymore in this day and age, or do they?

[Belly]

One or two of the Adventure books have very bored, fed up children trying to convince Aunt Allie that they are fully recovered from some illness or other. Bill believes them and takes them off somewhere exotic just in case?

I had to check to make sure, but managed to pick the right one at first attempt!
It's The River of Adventure ('four miserable invalids').
Kiki has to imitate their coughs of course!
Then they have to go off for convalescence (doctor's orders) and another adventure is born.
I don't think doctors prescribe that anymore in this day and age, or do they?

Oh, how I wish they did! Do you think they'd let me have some R&R on some exotic isle as respite from 2 under 2?? Bill Smugs could come too if he wanted!

Did doctors ever really prescribe this sort of thing in the 1940s/50s out of interest?

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

Did doctors ever really prescribe this sort of thing in the 1940s/50s out of interest?[/quote]

If Doctors didn't we would never have had the Famous Five!

At Easter 1941 Gillian wasn't well, and was sent away for a holiday. Her mother took her to Swanage, they caught the train to Corfe Castle for a day out, and the rest, as they say, is history!

Best wishes

Viv

[Tony Summerfield]

I think you might be overdoing the poetic licence a bit here Viv! Do you really think that Corfe Castle was the inspiration for the Famous Five? I suspect that she fitted it into the story, rather than building a story around it.

We know of course that Enid's first encounter with Corfe was ten years earlier, two months before Gillian was born, so I don't suppose as a heavily pregnant mum-to-be she did too much clambering around there! It was also ten years ago in our very first Journal, that Norman Wright first brought Corfe Castle to everyone's attention when we published Enid's Letter from Teachers World. We also knew as you have recently reminded us elsewhere that Kirrin Island was based on a small island off the Channel Islands that Enid saw on her honeymoon - I suspect that all these things were simmering in her 'undermind' and this story about four children and a dog was the ideal place to 'let it all come out'.

Of course we will never know the answer unless someone organises a seance, but it is fun to speculate.

Best wishes
Tony

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

What we know is that her visit to Corfe was just a few months before she sat down to write Treasure Island. It was not the first visit - she was already familiar with the location.

I think it a stroke of genius to take inspiration of two known locations to come up with Kirrin Island & Castle. In that first book there is nothing else to suggest Dorset, but the more time Blyton spent in Dorset the more places seemed to come into the stories. So 20 years on, book 20 is highly Topiographical (a word of my own devising and is to landscape what a biography is to a person...)

So yes - I do believe that Corfe Castle was an inspiration, but that later books are firmly rooted in the county.

IncidentlyWhich magazine has reported on the best seaside towns in the UK, and Swanage has come 4th. No wonder Enid loved it!

Best wishes

Viv

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

[Tony Summerfield"]I think you might be overdoing the poetic licence a bit here Viv! ]

So if me overstating Dorset is "poetic licence", what is the term for those who would take Blyton away from Dorset all together, replace ginger beer with lemonade, and re-brand Pop Cakes into Pop Biscuits?

Please remember that some children do read this site!

best wishes

Viv

[Lenoir]

It's hardly to do with illness, but a doctor is involved, so I'll post this here.
I was at the dentist yesterday and there were 2 E.B. books amongst the reading material in the waiting room. (There were lots of old magazines as well of course.)

The magic treacle jug.
Wanted - a hot water bottle

So, the legacy goes on.
I didn't read them!

[Tony Summerfield]

I fully agree Viv, that Enid was no doubt influenced by the two counties that she clearly loved, Buckinghamshire and Dorset, but I feel that the source of inspiration was more often than not her fertile imagination.

I do think there are occasions when people get too carried away in sourcing locations for all of Enid's books. To give just two examples, I had a letter from someone, who after seeing the endpapers to the Malory Towers books was quite convinced it was about her own school in Cheshire. She and others tend to forget that this was the illustrator, Stanley Lloyd's vision of how Malory Towers looked and not necessarily Enid's at all. For my second example, I read in a recently published book, that Five Go to Smuggler's Top was probably based on St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall. I was astonished to read this as all opinion has always been that it was based on Rye in East Sussex. In truth it was probably taken from Enid's imagination, but Eileen Soper may well have been picturing Rye.

As I have said before, it is all guesswork to some extent and we will never really know the true answers, but I don't deny that it is fun to speculate!

Best wishes
Tony

[Belly]

I fully agree Viv, that Enid was no doubt influenced by the two counties that she clearly loved, Buckinghamshire and Dorset, but I feel that the source of inspiration was more often than not her fertile imagination.

I do think there are occasions when people get too carried away in sourcing locations for all of Enid's books. To give just two examples, I had a letter from someone, who after seeing the endpapers to the Malory Towers books was quite convinced it was about her own school in Cheshire. She and others tend to forget that this was the illustrator, Stanley Lloyd's vision of how Malory Towers looked and not necessarily Enid's at all. For my second example, I read in a recently published book, that Five Go to Smuggler's Top was probably based on St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall. I was astonished to read this as all opinion has always been that it was based on Rye in East Sussex. In truth it was probably taken from Enid's imagination, but Eileen Soper may well have been picturing Rye.

As I have said before, it is all guesswork to some extent and we will never really know the true answers, but I don't deny that it is fun to speculate!

Best wishes
Tony

On this theme I have often wondered about Lucas from 'Five Have a Mystery to Solve'. My feeling in the book was that he was in his 60s or thereabouts..'nut brown' and with some wisdom 'telling stories of the animals and birds he loved so much'.

I wrote to Gillian to ask in 1981 and she didn't know but couldn't 'deny me any surmises'.

I was then surprised to see he had more recently been identified as Johnny James who must have been no more than a boy when he met Enid as I don't think he is very old now? How can we know for sure he was the sole inspiration for Lucas? Did he know lots about he local fauna and flora?

I must buy Viv's book to get the details.

[Viv of Ginger Pop]

I too was suprised that Lucas was an 18 year old. In Soper's illustration he is much older. This "fact" was "established" at the centenary event at Bournemouth Uni, which I didn't attend. Was anyone there who can give more details?

I think that once again there is "inspiration" here for a fertile imagination.

"Onions" as Johnny is known locally, is still the proud owner of a set of clubs given to him by Enid.

Best wishes

Viv

[Moonraker]

I do think there are occasions when people get too carried away in sourcing locations for all of Enid's books.

Yes, I do agree. I really think that it is a waste of time trying to find exact locations (unless Enid has confirmed this). She had a fantastic mind that invented all these place, of course, she was influenced by places that she had visited. It is absurd to imagine Corfe Castle as Kirrin Castle, but logical to think that this ruin was in her mind when she wrote the FF books.

That's my opinion, anyway!

[Icecream342]

In Mallory Towers book 2, Ellen is in the san and in Malory Towers book 3, Sally is in quarntine and Betty has whooping cough and is also in quarntine!