… about which of us was master. Hugh wouldn’t give way an inch and I loved him for it. I think I do want him to be master …
Her busy life of teaching and writing continued throughout this time, so it is not surprising that she was soon to record in her diary that she was ‘feeling dreadfully tired’ and would have to ‘put the brake on’. This lassitude, unusual for the energetic Enid, worried Hugh, and on a Saturday in early March, during a ‘heavenly all-day walk to Cudham, with a picnic on “Magic Hill”, he fed her at intervals with spoonfuls of Brand’s Essence from a jar, and left her with a tonic to take. Enid described this outing in her Window of 20 March:
I think never before do I remember a day like that Saturday. Coming as it did after a spell of cold, grey weather, it was all the more perfect, for everything was in its most rejoicing mood.
She described how she and her ‘companion’ had set off ‘laughing with the joy of spring, leaving behind us work, worry and everybody else in the world.’ The column finished:
… The hills were soft with blue haze, and the birds were singing of the wonderful, wonderful day. A blackbird took up the tale, and, like a born poet, he wove the sunshine and the spring, the budding trees and the starry celandines into a silvery enchantment of song – a song that came, oh surely not from a bird but from the lightsome, lilting, dancing heart of the sweet Springtime.
The growing sentimentality of From my Window had not escaped the notice of the staff at Teachers’ World. One member of the editorial department commented at this time that the column was becoming ‘altogether too whimsical’.
The day after the walk, Hugh met her at Beckenham where, according to Enid’s diary – ‘He told me what he was in tending to tell me at Easter but it’s nothing much, bless him’ – and this brief note was the sum total of her reference to a revelation which, to Hugh at any rate, was evidently momentous. No further mention was made of the incident, and meetings continued as before.
During the following weeks they saw each other frequently. They met for dinner or for visits to the newly-opened Wembley Exhibition, the cinema or the theatre – and at times quarrelled vehemently. Hugh was obviously exceedingly jealous and on one occasion the mention of a casual acquaintance of Enid’s was enough to set the pair off on an argument which lasted for days, though he made it up eventually with a small present.
At the beginning of April, Hugh telephoned Enid to tell her that the signet rings they had decided to give each other were ready. Two hours later he rang again to say that Grandpa Attenborough had been making inquiries about him and had found out – ‘what we had been keeping secret for a while and sent Uncle Ralph to see him’. Although they met later in London for dinner and to exchange their rings, she made no further reference in her diary to Hugh’s urgent telephone call until the following day:
Met Hugh at 10 and we went to see Uncle Ralph and things are quite straight.
‘Uncle Ralph’ Thompson was a solicitor and an Attenborough brother-in-law so, without doubt, this episode related to the family’s concern that Hugh was already married or about to be divorced – though Enid made no specific mention of this in her diary. Her entry for 7 April, two days after the visit to ‘Uncle Ralph’, is rather more explicit:
Hugh phoned and told me that he’d heard definitely that the case would be heard at Easter and so he’d be free in June. I am so glad.
At no time did she refer to any actual proposal of marriage by Hugh – though the rings were clearly an indication of their intentions.
It is puzzling that the Enid, who could write at length over other things – and even record such trivia as ‘washed my hair’ or ‘messed about until bed’ – could still leave so much unwritten that was obviously so important to her. Perhaps the memory of her mother’s intrusion into her secret world all those years before had left its mark. Or was it just that there were some episodes of her life she did not want to remember? An example of this was the brief mention made to the ending of her four happy years with the family at Southernhay. At the beginning of April she wrote, after a weekend at home with the Attenboroughs:
To Surbiton for last time … Went to buy books for children and vase for A.G. [Aunt Gertrude].
Three days later came the end of the school term:
We broke up this morning for the last time – the kids were very sweet. A.G. and U.H. [Uncle Horace] gave me a lovely copper jug and the boys gave me a pewter vase.
These few lines were all she was to write about her leave-taking and the closing of her small ‘school’, for there had previously been no other hint in her diary that this was impending.
David and Brian were already away at boarding school by this time and neither they nor the twins were told exactly why Enid should have left them before the usual school year was completed but assumed that her leave-taking was due to her impending marriage. She may have found, with her increased writing commitments, that the teaching was becoming too much for her and certainly her literary commissions were providing her with a more than adequate living. But whatever the reasons for her departure, it is surprising that she could dismiss so lightly, if her diary entries are any criteria, her parting from the children she had grown to love and the closure of the school she had built up. Little mention is made from then on of her former pupils, though she did write to them from time to time and occasional visits were exchanged – but even these came to an end in the early ’thirties. After that she was never to refer to the Thompson family by name, nor her years as a nursery governess, though she sometimes spoke of the children she once taught in her ‘experimental school’ – her own description of Southernhay in a 1938 edition of Who’s Who. Yet an unexpected letter from Brian Thompson in October 1962 evoked some of the memories she had apparently buried in the intervening years, for she replied:
Your letter recalled the dear old days at Southernhay, where I was so happy with your family and loved you children so much! I think it was the foundation of all my success, for I ‘practised’ on you, you know … Give my love to the other boys – David, Peter and John – if you see them soon – and tell them I have never forgotten them! I loved you all – and Mollie Sayer too … it was one of the happiest times of my life when I had that little ‘school’.
Although her teaching days were over, her writing kept her busier than ever before. Even with Hugh as a distraction during those first four months of 1924, she had earned well over £90 from her work for the periodicals alone, and this was in addition to the quarterly payments of royalties on her various books.
The success of her writings for Teachers’ World and the other educational journals resulted in her now getting a large postbag from schools both in the British Isles and overseas. Teachers thanked her for the stories, plays and songs, which they used for their lessons and complimented her on From my Window, which many of them now read out weekly to their pupils. The children commented frankly. ‘I like your “days of the week” poems,’ wrote one small girl, early in 1924, ‘but “Thursday” is quite wrong. Couldn’t you write another for Thursday?’ ‘I should think,’ was the rather prophetic comment of another, ‘that if you go on writing nice poems you will be quite famous one day.’ A boy wanted to know all about fairies because, ’ … when I asked the School Inspector what he knew about them, he didn’t really seem to know much more than I did.’ She answered most of these letters herself, either direct to the child or through the school concerned. The fact that her name was now becoming well known to hundreds of readers of these journals helped towards the sale of her books and this did not go unnoticed in other publishing circles, which again resulted in further commissions.
The Easter of 1924 was spent with Mabel and Hugh at Seaford on the Sussex coast – ‘the loveliest Easter that ever was.’ The happiness of the weekend was marred, however, by ‘a beastly letter from Grandpa’ – again the contents were not divulged, even in her diary, but on her return home:
Mabel had a talk with him about being so absurdly stup
id to me and he has promised to behave better! He has climbed down and I can have a latchkey.
Evidently Grandpa Attenborough, a religious man of high moral principles, approved neither of Enid’s association with Hugh, nor of the late hours she was now keeping. Like many others of his generation and background, he frowned upon the newly-found freedom of the young women of that time and even rebuked Enid on one occasion for holding hands with Hugh ‘in public’. Twenty-six years of age she might be, but while she was still under his roof, he no doubt felt a certain responsibility towards her.
Hugh’s divorce case was evidently heard at Easter as planned, for in May the pair started looking for a flat and Enid began gathering a trousseau together. From 17 May to 4 June, she made no entries in her diary, but she recommenced on the 5th with:
Hugh phoned at 6.15 to say he was coming down to see me and bringing two rings for me to choose from. He came and we looked at them in the summer house. They were lovely but the one I’ve chosen is adorable! [a three-tiered diamond and emerald, set in gold] Hugh was such a dear and I do love him so … It will be lovely to be really engaged.
The following day her pencil appeared to have been almost out of control as she ecstatically wrote:
I was very excited all day because I was going to meet Hugh and go to a dance with him and have the ring. He fetched me at 7 at Charing Cross and we taxied about in the Park and he gave me my ring. It’s a lovely one. Then we went to Prince’s to dinner and a dance … I loved dancing with Hugh … It’s been a heavenly evening and it’s so simply lovely to be engaged to my darling, darling Hugh and have his ring on my finger.
The following Wednesday, Teachers’ World announced the engagement. Mr Allen wrote in his ‘News and Views of the Week’:
I am sure my readers will be delighted to hear that Miss Enid Blyton is engaged to be married. While I am not at liberty to disclose the name of the happy man, I may say that the marriage will probably take place in August. And Miss Blyton will continue to write for the Teachers’ World I hope, because, with her, marriage does not mean the end of her career as a writer but merely the beginning of a new phase of it. On behalf of all Teachers’ World readers I tender good wishes and congratulations. I may add that when the artist drew the cartoon on another page he was ignorant of this piece of news. Otherwise I am sure he would have provided Miss Blyton with assistance in carrying her window.
The cartoon referred to was one showing how some of the regular contributors to the magazine spent their holidays; Enid is depicted carrying a small suitcase in one hand and a large window in the other over the caption ‘Miss Enid Blyton took her window with her.’
On 16 June, Hugh decided to lodge at a small private hotel in Oakwood Avenue until the wedding and from then on the couple saw each other every day. Meanwhile, Enid was writing more than ever. Her first series of Readers, commissioned by Thomas Nelson and Sons earlier in the year, had been accepted without alteration and she had been asked to write a second – as well as a poetry book. She had prepared a book of fairy stories and poems which had been accepted by Newnes at the beginning of June and finished The Zoo Book, commissioned by Hugh for Newnes, on 3 July. In celebration of the occasion she joined Mabel on a seaside holiday at Felpham in Sussex. Hugh stayed over the weekend and, according to her diary ‘spoilt things by being upset because a man is coming to our boarding house next week …’ Hugh’s jealousy understandably annoyed Enid and the quarrel continued the next day, until ‘we began to laugh … and then Hugh was sweet to me’. But despite their quarrels, they were obviously very much in love.
Enid records having found ‘a ripping flat at Chelsea’ and of how they both went to look at it on her return from holiday. She made no further entries in her diary for 1924, but her account book shows that she had been busy preparing several columns and regular features in advance, so as to leave the following weeks free for a most important event in her life – though even this went unrecorded in her diary – her wedding on 28 August at Bromley Register Office.
It was a very quiet ceremony, no member of either Enid’s or Hugh’s family being present. Hanly had had a similarly quiet wedding two months before, but although he, his wife Floss and his mother were still living in Beckenham, they were not invited – nor was Phyllis Chase, that friend of many years standing. Only Mabel and her parents – ‘Grandpa’ and ‘Grandma’ Attenborough – were at the register office and there was no announcement of the marriage in any of the local or national newspapers.
Enid later explained to her friends that this was because ‘Hugh didn’t want the people at Newnes to know at the beginning that we were married because of the work he has commissioned me to do. They might not have liked it.’
Her honeymoon appears to have been spent in Jersey, for shortly afterwards she wrote two articles for Teachers’ World – ‘La Corbière’ and ‘Dawn at Sea’ – which described incidents on holiday, though she made no mention of having recently married. Regular readers no doubt spotted after a while that there had been some changes in the domestic life of their columnist, for her Window of 8 October mentioned ‘my husband’ and placed her home as now being near the River Thames and Battersea Bridge – though these facts were only referred to obliquely in an article about ‘Fire Engines’. The engines had thundered one by one over the bridge until Enid’s curiosity had made her persuade her ‘reluctant husband’ to join her in chasing after them. Despite the fifteen or more engines involved, it proved to be a false alarm and she was about to question one of the drivers about his job and ‘whether he was disappointed to see no fire’ when a detaining hand pulled her back. ‘Alas! Before I could find out what I longed to know, my scandalised husband was hurrying me home.’ The diary for 1925 is missing and no further mention of Hugh is made in her columns to help in assessing how the new Mrs Pollock settled down to her first year of marriage, but that she was happy there is no doubt. She devoted two complete columns at the beginning of the year to ‘Happiness’. After writing on 28 January that she thought happy people were the best in the world because they inspired others to be likewise, she received a shoal of correspondence from both children and adults who found ‘happiness always tantalisingly round the corner’. Her reply to them on 18 February was:
I’ve been looking for it straight ahead all my life and I’ve always found it. I don’t mean content – though that is a very lovely thing – but real, proper, exultant happiness that makes you want to sing, and gives that lift of the heart which is so well-known in childhood at the thought of some delight-ful treat! … Happiness is simply an interest in and a keen appreciation of everything in life. A sense of humour doubles the ability to appreciate it.
In a further article on ‘Humour’, a few weeks later, she wrote that she thought Punch’s advice on those about to marry – ‘don’t’ – was ‘very silly’, which certainly indicates that she found the state satisfactory.
The Pollocks’ first home together was a small, furnished top-floor apartment at 32 Beaufort Mansions, Chelsea – a red-brick block of Victorian mansion flats, between the Embankment and the King’s Road. Enid described her flat to a friend as being ‘in a quiet residential area, which contains a good class of people who keep themselves to themselves.’ If she had not been busy with her writing, with Hugh away all day, she would doubtless have felt lonely but, as it was, she had more than enough work to occupy her.
As royalties began to come in on her major books, her income increased yearly. Both the Enid Blyton Book of Fairies and The Zoo Book, published together in October 1924 by Newnes, sold well – as did another set of six small story books for Birn Brothers, which came out about the same time. She earned over £500 from her writing in that year but by the end of 1925 had increased this to £1,200 for twelve months’ work – £500 of that amount being an advance sum for her editorial work on the first volumes of a Teachers’ Treasury, published eventually by Newnes in 1926.
Her marriage made no difference to her prolific writing output for
in 1925, according to her account book, she wrote thirty-five poems (mostly about fairies and animals) for The Morning Post; a song – ‘The Singer in the Night’ – published by Novello; other poems and stories for Child Education, Punch, My Magazine, Woman’s Life and, of course, her regular features for Teachers’ World. These now included, from 15 April, a twice-monthly full-page Nature Notes, illustrated with fine pen and ink drawings by Enid herself. This was later to be brought out in book form by Evans Brothers and was selected five years later as one of the four hundred best books for children in a list prepared for the National Book Council. In addition to those shorter items, she produced four more Readers and a seventy-one page book of poems, Silver and Gold for Thomas Nelson (see Appendix 1), and an Enid Blyton Book of Bunnies was published by Newnes. Enid must have enjoyed writing about ‘the amusing adventures of Binkle and Flip, the Bad Bunnies’ for she had always liked rabbits and brought them into many of her stories and poems. She once described them as:
the quaintest, most adorable animals to be found in all the countryside. Their big eyes and long ears make them look appealing and somehow childlike and I could watch them for hours.
Her weekly column was proving as popular as ever, as evidenced by the increasing amount of mail she was receiving daily. She continued to reply conscientiously to every letter and turn out her usual average of four or five thousand words of writing a day – in longhand, for she had no typewriter at that time.
She went for walks in the early morning, by the river or through one or another of the London parks, but always she longed for the country and the early spring days made her feel restless, cooped up in a city flat, writing. From my Window of 1 April 1925 told of how the sun had made her throw down her pencil, pull on her coat and hat and catch the first train she could out of London. Arriving in the country, she had walked in the lanes and woods, revelling in the bursting buds and the freshness of the spring colours around her. Seated beneath an oak tree, with daisies round her feet, she had listened to a blackbird ‘talking to himself in a hazel bush’. She had returned, refreshed, to her work but not entirely happy to be back in the city.
Enid Blyton Page 6
