Pressure of work had eased a little for Hugh as the year progressed and once again the family took a house on the Isle of Wight for a month’s holiday in the summer. This time there was added excitement as it coincided with the Jubilee Review of the Fleet at Spithead, which gave her yet another topic for her page.
The family returned to Bourne End in good time for Enid to complete her preparations for the baby’s birth in the autumn and she looked forward confidently to its arrival. But she was to have a longer wait than she had anticipated. The estimated date came and went without any sign of the child making its appearance and as time went on she became progressively more frustrated and difficult. It was never easy for her to accept that however carefully she might plan and organise other aspects of her life, over events such as this she had no control. As each new method prescribed for the hastening of the birth failed she took out her frustration and disappointment on her husband and staff. Midwives were engaged and given notice, or left of their own accord within a few days of each other, and the house was in a turmoil. It was a relief to all concerned when Imogen Mary finally arrived on 27 October: ‘8lb 6oz, a sweet little baby’, Enid recorded in her diary. Teachers’ World readers learned some weeks later that another ‘new pet’ had arrived: ‘… a tiny sister for Gillian … so now there are three Marys at Old Thatch – Enid Mary, Gillian Mary and Imogen Mary.’ But someone else had joined the household at the same time who was also to make a deep impression on Enid’s life from then on.
Dorothy Gertrude Richards was the last of the nurses engaged by Enid for Imogen’s birth. Unmarried and one of a large, closely-knit family, she had trained at St Thomas’s Hospital in London and was a skilled and efficient nurse, well-balanced and outwardly calm in any critical situation. She also possessed a charm of manner that enabled her to handle even the most awkward of patients and this, with her other qualities, meant that she was usually in great demand. As chance would have it, she was between cases when a friend rang her from a nursing agency and begged for her help over ‘a very difficult case’ at Bourne End, who had been making repeated demands for an ‘efficient’ midwife. A trifle reluctantly, Dorothy agreed to take the case on, if only temporarily. On her arrival, however, she found that the baby had already been born the previous day and was agreeably surprised to discover that her new patient was not only amenable, but appeared also to have an intriguing and interesting personality. Enid for her part took an instant liking to this slim, dark-haired person of her own age, whose quiet efficiency gave her a deep feeling of security. ‘The new nurse is sweet,’ she wrote in her diary on the first day of their meeting and, later in the week, ‘the new nurse is awfully nice and I like her very much.’ The pair discovered they had many interests in common and by the end of November, when Dorothy left to take on another case, they were on Christian name terms and their friendship had become firmly established. Enid telephoned and wrote frequently and Dorothy soon became a regular visitor to Old Thatch.
One of the qualities which drew Enid to her from the start was the air of serenity which her friend seemed to transmit to all with whom she came into contact, and Enid was curious about the source of this seeming inner strength. She liked to appear self-sufficient, but she knew in her heart that she was not. Childlike in so many respects, demanding the attention of all around her, she still needed to cling to the guiding hand of someone she could trust. For a time it seemed that Hugh had provided her with the security she needed, but the events of the last two years had brought about a subtle change in their relationship. No longer did she turn to him for guidance over all her affairs, or feel she could fully rely on him to act as a buffer against the cruelties of life. He had proved himself to be as vulnerable as she – and Enid despised what she considered to be his weakness. But the physical side of their partnership remained happy and satisfying and this, with Hugh’s deep love for her, held their marriage together.
In the course of one of their many long talks together, while she was tending Enid at Old Thatch, Dorothy had revealed that she was a convert to Roman Catholicism. This so intrigued Enid that she questioned her friend closely on how she had come to make such a decision and continued the probing later in a series of lengthy letters. The first, written early in December, began:
I feel I want to discuss this spiritual business with you at great length. I can’t tolerate you thinking that I am materialistic. I am not as materialistic as I may appear – the things I think about, the deeper side of life I have not very much discussed with anyone, because I have met very few people who either bother to think for themselves or, alternatively, can only think in the terms of the Church in which they have been brought up. Now you must be different – because you actually chose your religion when adult, and you are serious about it – though you don’t try to force it on anyone. I do believe in God, though perhaps not your idea of God. I do trust him in that I believe that there is a real purpose and love behind everything and I do want to serve and love the highest – whatever and whoever that may be.
I would like a personal God like yours, but I find it difficult to believe in one that you can talk to as you do … I am not entirely without belief as you see. I do truly want to be as decent as I can and would like help to be, if it’s possible … it is because you get it, I do want to know and I don’t mind learning from you.
There then followed what, for Enid, was a rare and honest piece of self-analysis, which gives an insight into her character which would, perhaps, have surprised many of her regular readers at that time:
Deep down in me I have an arrogant spirit that makes me a bit scornful of other people, if I think they are stupid or led by the nose, or at the mercy of their upbringing and environment – unable to think for themselves. I keep it under because I want to be charitable, but I have at times been horrid and contemptuous – really I have. I am usually the one who puts forth my opinion in most company I meet with and I am listened to, which is very bad for me. You said I was bossy – well I am – more than you think. In my mind I like to dominate even though I don’t appear to be doing so! I want to hear all you have to say even if I argue at first and go all round things … I don’t want to belong to a definite church – not yet, anyhow, but you might tell me a few things … I don’t know exactly what I am looking for – something a little more than I seem to have found in religion up to now – I may be chasing a will-o-the-wisp, for all I know …
Dorothy was evidently not convinced of the seriousness of Enid’s search for spiritual guidance, for Enid’s next letter, early in January 1936, tried to reassure her:
You can say anything to me. I want you to. I will be willing to be taught by you because I respect you and believe in you in a way I have never felt for anyone else. I never thought for one moment that I could come to you for help like this a few months ago … I would like to know, love and serve God all the days of my life. But the God I thought of wasn’t exactly the same as yours – not a personal one … my idea of loving, knowing and serving him was empty to me as a desert … I suppose that was really serving him blindly not loving and knowing him. It was mainly your example that has got it back – your somehow so certain knowledge and your beliefs and your prayers.
Enid’s diary at this time makes no mention of this intimate correspondence or of any change in the normal pattern of her life. She wrote only of domestic and social matters – a change of maids, bridge parties, commencement of dancing classes for Gillian, Imogen’s progress and an almost daily note that she had ‘worked till tea’. Although she recorded having ‘talked all morning and afternoon with Dorothy’ during her friend’s frequent visits, she never referred to the subjects of their talks – but presumably they must have been on similar lines to the letters.
In April, Dorothy returned to Old Thatch to take charge of the two children while the nanny went on holiday. While Dorothy was with them, Enid – who normally only spent an hour or so a day with her children – now extended this to most of the day and only wo
rked at her writing in the mornings. In the evenings she again devoted so much time to her friend that Hugh, always inclined to be possessive, became – in her words – ‘very grumpy’. But once Dorothy had left, Enid soon returned to her usual daily routine and went back to work with such vigour that, within a week, she was writing between five and six thousand words in a day.
But the correspondence with Dorothy continued and in June Enid wrote:
I have always wanted to be good and do good as much as lay in my power, and I did think that so long as anyone thought that and practised it that was all that mattered. I had dipped into this and that, read things here and there … Hugh has often said that if your religion has helped to make you what you are, it should be worth going into … I felt I would have to find out about you and your beliefs, not condescendingly, but humbly … I did think that I had gone into things enough and had a lot of knowledge of these things and had come to conclusions far in advance of any likely to be held by you (please don’t think I am being too horrid) – I told you in one of my letters that intellectual pride was the sin that really did hold me back – I thought so much of myself and my opinions and now I know I was wrong. I shall never be so high and mighty again … I was baptised when I was 13 but had no real idea why, except that I became a member of the church. I did meddle with other beliefs out of interest more than sheer urgency – and I read a lot, and out of it all I came with some very poor ideas and no knowledge at all of the meanings of any of the things you know so well.
These letters appear to be sincere, but it is difficult to gauge the exact depth of Enid’s spiritual thought and search. There is no evidence of any change in her choice of reading matter at this time and nothing fresh in her writings to suggest that she was undergoing a period of spiritual rethinking. Her short stories had always put forward a certain code of behaviour for her young readers and although she did eventually write many books of a religious nature, the first of these, The Land of Far Beyond, based on The Pilgrim’s Progress, was not embarked upon until almost six years later. Nor did she regularly attend any form of church service, either during or after this time, and despite her alleged wish to learn more of her friend’s religion, only twice did she accompany her to Mass. The first occasion was during that same summer when Dorothy joined the family for their annual holiday in the Isle of Wight: ‘We all went to the Roman Catholic Church, Gillian too …’ Enid recorded and then dismissed the event with – ‘then we went home and bathed and went for a picnic to Alum Bay’. Dorothy stayed for a further three weeks, but the experience of church was evidently not repeated and when Enid returned home, Sunday continued to be what it had always been for her up to then – a day for making up accounts and dealing with correspondence.
In later years she told Gillian that she had decided against Roman Catholicism because she had felt it was ‘too constricting’ and that she could not bear a tight rein over anything without chafing and fretting’. She also confided to Imogen that her ‘spiritual arrogance’ had always held her back from forming any strong attachments to a particular church. The God of her childhood had been one of vengeance and she wished he had not been, for she badly needed to be sure that he was all-loving. She had, she told her daughters, always tried to live her life according to Christian ethics and although she rarely attended church services with them she saw to it that both were baptised into the Anglican faith, taught to say their prayers and attend the local Sunday School.
After the Isle of Wight holiday together, Enid continued to meet and write to Dorothy as frequently as before but religion was no longer the main subject for discussion between them. This was particularly so by the latter half of 1936, for by that time Enid’s thoughts were directed more towards a new project which Newnes were planning to launch early the following year.
She had been discussing for some months with Herbert Tingay, the company’s managing director, the possibility of bringing out Sunny Stories weekly, under a new format, and on 15 January 1937 the first of this series was launched with an introductory ‘Letter from Old Thatch’:
I hope you will be pleased when you know that these little stories are going to come out every week now! There will be a new one for you each Friday. I am going to write your stories for you just as I have always done, and you shall have all sorts of extra things too – funny pictures – puzzles – competitions – prizes! What fun we shall have …
Apart from a page devoted to poems or puzzles sent in by the children, Enid was responsible for the entire contents of every issue.
The first of her long serial stories for the magazine, The Adventures of the Wishing Chair, was brought out in book form by Newnes at the end of the year, after (according to Enid’s weekly letter) her readers had written asking her to put all the adventures ‘into a proper big book’, because they had enjoyed the serial so much. Correspondence of this kind proved invaluable to Enid in assessing the popularity or otherwise of her stories. She invited the children’s comments on everything she wrote – and received replies by the hundred. She had no difficulty in gauging the appeal of her second full-length serial story for, from the first, it proved a sound favourite with most age groups and was the forerunner of many other ‘family adventure’ books. The Secret Island, eventually published by Basil Blackwell in 1938, told the story of four children who ran away together to a secret island and the adventures that befell them. In reviewing the book, Teachers’ World commented:
Another example not only of Enid Blyton’s ingenuity as a story writer, but her incomparable gift of knowing just how young children like a story to be.
She was to have the same kind of success with the serial that followed – Mr. Galliano’s Circus – again destined to be the first of another well-loved series of books, which this time she based on life in a circus. Popular, too, were the short stories and poems for the magazine, which Enid later used – with slight variations – in many of her annuals and ‘Bedtime’ books.
Among the tales particularly enjoyed by Gillian were those written around her own rag doll – ‘Naughty Amelia Jane’. This large, dark-haired doll had been given to Gillian on her third birthday and had been a favourite ever since the day Enid had ‘brought her to life’, a year or so after Amelia Jane had arrived in the nursery. Dorothy had been staying at Old Thatch at the time and she and Enid had joined Gillian and her nanny for tea. Enid had been in a playful, happy mood and had grasped the floppy, ringlet-haired doll under its red-spotted dress, and made her perform like a puppet. Much to Gillian’s delight, and the others’ amusement, Amelia Jane was made to pick up sandwiches and lumps of sugar and hurl them on to the floor ‘talking’ all the while in a squeaky voice, while Enid admonished her in stern tones. Her mother’s superb clowning was such a success that Gillian would constantly demand repeat performances. When Sunny Stories appeared, other children were able to read of Amelia Jane’s misdeeds and eventually these popular tales also found their way into a book.
As with her Teachers’ World page, the Sunny Stories ‘letter’ was a way of introducing several worthwhile ideas to her readers. In one case she suggested that lonely children might like to write in to ‘The Pillar Box’ section, telling of their hobbies and pets, and whether they came from town or country, so that they might be put in touch with one another. She reported in a later issue that this suggestion had been followed up and dozens of new ‘pen-friends’ were now corresponding regularly.
Bobs, that lovable black and white terrier who had died some two years before, but was still kept very much alive through his weekly Teachers’ World ‘letter’ – appeared yet again in the new Sunny Stories magazine. This time he figured in an illustrated strip piece, Bobs and his Friends, which also incorporated the ‘schoolgirl’ Gillian, ‘baby’ Imogen and other members of the Old Thatch household.
With so much of her writing in both magazines now based on her home and family, it is not surprising that this cosy domestic world – free from the more unpleasant and irksome aspects of
the daily round – should occasionally become more real for her than the reality. As often as she could, she took Imogen in the pram to meet Gillian from the small private school she now attended and usually played with them for an hour or so after tea, but found that her increased writing and social commitments prevented her from seeing as much of them as her columns suggested that she did. Even her relationship with Hugh was not as happy as it had once been – before Dorothy came into their lives.
It had not escaped Hugh’s notice that Enid had become less dependent upon him and more on her friend and he resented what he considered to be Dorothy’s intrusion into his marriage. Now that Enid appeared to be gaining more confidence in herself and her abilities, with the acquisition of a certain amount of fame and fortune of her own, he was also beginning to feel that their roles in the household were being reversed and that he was fast becoming superfluous to her affairs. It was unfortunate that he should suffer additional stress at this time because of other broader issues at stake – outside the narrow confines of Old Thatch – which he was convinced would soon involve them all.
The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and other inflammatory situations in Europe during the late ’thirties confirmed Hugh’s belief in Winston Churchill’s warnings that the world was on the brink of another war. The more depressed he became over the possibility of such a catastrophe, the easier he found it to fall back on his old means of consolation. But fearing that Enid would suspect his motives and despise him the more if he drank openly, he took his bottles into a small cellar under the stairs, only accessible through the maid’s bathroom, and out of sight from the rest of the house. Only Dick Hughes knew what his employer was about, for periodically he was entrusted with the key to the cellar so that he might clear away the empty bottles. It was, therefore, not until Hugh became seriously ill in the early summer of 1938, and some of the undisposed-of bottles were discovered, that the rest of the household became aware of what had been going on.
Enid Blyton Page 11
