Enid Blyton (22 page)
I worked a good bit with the Musical Director (Philip Green) and although I did not tell him – I was afraid he would think me unduly conceited – in many cases the melodies were much the same, the rhythm always the same, and in some cases the key was the same – notably in one instance where I heard the song in E minor – rather unusual – and the composer actually set it in the same key! … In one day we had more or less worked out all the music – and this for a play lasting two-and-a-half hours! I was, of course, very lucky in my composer, scenic designer and so on, which helped to make the play the success it achieved in four weeks – the audience’s response and participation was extraordinary – the children took over the play at times and even held up the action …
The play, which was produced by Bertie Meyer and directed by André van Gyseghem, broke all attendance records during its first season at the Stoll Theatre in London and in a later letter Enid was able to inform the psychologist that the pantomime was ‘now to be an annual, like Peter Pan’. In the meantime she had written a second play for older children –
The Famous Five
– which would also be produced in London the following Christmas:
The second play did not take me as long as the first one – and except for some ridiculous rhymes which one of the characters suddenly recited, there is no verse – and no lyrics. It is a straight play of adventure and mystery. One interesting thing about this is that the man who designed the scenery (quite a genius, Richard Lake, who did the Noddy scenery too) managed to produce designs that exactly fitted my own visualised conceptions, in particular some dungeon scenes – which I had not even explained to him in detail … I was amazed when I saw them and could not keep from exclaiming … It was almost as if he had seen into my mind and drawn what was there …
Now that she had established the format for playwriting, she felt confident to produce other scripts. None, however, was to achieve the success of Noddy in Toyland, which continued to play to packed houses in London, the provinces and overseas during the nine years that followed its first performance. A later film of the pantomime proved equally popular wherever it was shown.
Noddy’s impact generally – whether in book, film, play or television puppet form – was phenomenal. He became the subject of music hall jokes and sketches, pet rabbits were named after his pixie friend ‘Big Ears’ and many a British policeman was referred to – a shade derogatorily – as ‘Mr. Plod’. Before the decade was over ‘Enid Blyton’ and ‘Noddy’ had become household names and to many the two were synonymous, despite the continued popularity of her other series. But troubled undercurrents were already beginning to cause ripples on the surface of Enid’s seemingly happy, successful life.
E
nid always found it difficult to understand those who criticised her work. She sincerely believed that she was providing her young readers with enjoyable, exciting – but never frightening – stories, that at the same time laid down certain moral codes of behaviour. Librarians and educationalists did not always agree. They questioned her involvement in the actions of some of her main characters who, they felt, too often displayed petty, spiteful, vindictive – even cruel – behaviour towards their adversaries, who were usually of a different nationality or social background to her predominantly middle-class English heroes or heroines. They disliked her style with its limited vocabulary ‘drained of all difficulty until it achieved a kind of aesthetic anaemia’ as one critic put it. Others considered her work ‘too mediocre’ even to give it mention and ignored her very existence.
Her reply to them all was that she took no note of critics over twelve years of age and that no one could deny her immense, universal appeal among the children themselves. Half the attacks made on her work she claimed came from jealousy and the other half ‘from stupid people who don’t know what they’re talking about because they’ve never read any of my books …’ Her stories were read ‘in palaces as well as in working-class homes’ and ‘whatever the child’s mental capacity’ were equally well enjoyed. Reluctant readers found her books easy to read and this gave them an incentive to experiment further, while other children, who required more mental stimulus, ‘took hold’ of her stories and set their own imaginations to work over the characters and the settings.
But the main target for the anti-Blytons throughout the ’fifties and early ’sixties was undoubtedly Noddy – ‘the most egocentric, joyless, snivelling and pious anti-hero in the history of British fiction’, according to one critic of the time. Cohn Welch, in a five-page feature in the January 1958 edition of
Encounter,
went further: ‘If Noddy is “like the children themselves” [Enid’s own description] it is the most unpleasant child that he most resembles.’ He always had to have somebody to run to, to whine and wail at, and ‘the machinery of benevolent authority (Big Ears) or the state (Mr Plod) could always be invoked to redress the balance between cowardice, weakness and inanity on the one hand, and vigour, strength and resource on the other.’ In some respects, the writer commented, the Noddy books left the impression of being ‘an unintentional yet not wholly inaccurate satire on – or parody of – the welfare state and its attendant attitudes of mind.’
Mr Welch’s article, ‘Dear Little Noddy – A Parent’s Lament’, was well received and widely quoted, particularly by those who wished to impose sanctions on Enid’s works. Several librarians had already removed her books from the shelves completely, giving a variety of reasons for so doing. The main complaint against her stories appeared to be that with such a prolific output (still increasing at the rate of a dozen or more each year) it was quite possible for children to be introduced to one or another of Enid’s books at the age of two or three and read no other author until they progressed ‘if ever, on such a spoon-fed diet’ to adult literature. Stories of greater depth and characterisation, of which there was now a wide range, were thus being ignored.
The anti-Blyton – and, more particularly, anti-Noddy – campaign gathered momentum and by the end of the ’fifties scarcely a day passed without one newspaper or another giving publicity to the banning of Enid’s books by librarians – not only in Britain, but in New Zealand, Australia and elsewhere. ‘Murky undertones’ were claimed to have been found in some of Noddy’s adventures: his relationship with Big Ears was ‘suspect’ and Enid’s ‘racial discrimination’ was shown by her use of black golliwogs as the villains in one of the Toyland tales. She countered the latter by saying that she had written far more good golliwogs into her stories than bad and gave, as an example,
The Three Golliwogs
in which they appeared as the ‘heroes’ throughout:
Golliwogs are merely lovable black toys, not Negroes. Teddy bears are also toys, but if there happens to be a naughty one in my books for younger children, this does not mean that I hate bears!
So wild did some of the accusations become that it was inevitable that the balance should eventually be redressed by such articles as that written by Roy Nash in the
Daily Mail
of 7 February 1964. Entitled ‘As Big Ears Said to Noddy Yesterday’, the piece was written in the style of a typical Noddy story and followed the banning of his books by yet another library:
One day Noddy came home quite tired out. He really had had a very busy day. He had gone all the way to Nottingham in his little car. And when he got there a nasty man called Librarian had kicked the poor little car very hard. He had also told Noddy that he would never be allowed back there again because he was just not grown up enough for all the boys and girls in Nottingham.
‘Oh I am so sorry, poor little car,’ said Noddy, stroking the steering wheel.
‘Parp-parp,’ said the little car, painfully.
‘Hallo, Noddy,’ called a voice over the fence. It was Tubby Bear.
‘What’s a vocabulary, Noddy? That grumpy Librarian at Nottingham says you have got a very limited one. And he thinks you’re awful bad for the little boys and girls.’
Noddy was so worried that he hurried off to see Big Ears.
He had never seen his old friend looking so cross.
‘We’d better face it,’ said Big Ears, sternly. ‘You and I and all the rest – and that goes for Mr. Plod, the policeman, too – are like Librarian says, caricatures. And what is more, we are members of the intellectually underprivileged class.’
Noddy could not believe his ears.
‘B-b-beg pardon,’ he stuttered. Big Ears sounded just like the fierce Librarian.
‘We’re redundant in Toyland,’ said Big Ears, angrily. ‘Do you really think that children want us and our stories any more? We’ve got to do what the man says. All these little what-nots are going to be specialists by the time they’re nine. You’ve got to catch up on Thermo-dynamics and the Economic Position … Children want literature now. Literature with a capital “L”.’
Big Ears began to be quite worked up and so frightened Noddy that a little tear ran down his cheek. He rushed away and ran all the way home. As he went through the gate he fell right over the poor little car and BUMP! With a big start Noddy woke up. It had all been a nasty dream, after all. And everything in Toyland was all right and always would be until Blyton knows when. And what is more, the kiddies went on loving Noddy and they didn’t give a parp-parp for Librarian and all those big words.
Enid had long since discovered the truth of Roy Nash’s final comment. Whatever the action of the librarians, Noddy’s popularity continued and his stories, along with her other books, were taken up and read as fast as they appeared on the market. Far from reducing the numbers of her young readers, the disappearance of her books from library shelves resulted in increased sales, particularly when the first of her cheap, paperback editions were brought out in the early ’sixties. Children could not afford to buy the books for themselves and a certain one-upmanship developed, in some quarters, over the collection of complete ‘sets’ of her series.
Although she had been distressed at first by the withdrawal of her books from the libraries, Enid was far more perturbed by other persistent rumours, which had begun circulating in the middle ’fifties, that she was not responsible for the writing of all her stories. In June 1955, she wrote to her solicitor, Mr Arnold Thirlby:
I announced in my magazine last Wednesday that it had been reported to me from South Africa that I did not write my own books but merely put my signature to them and asked any child to tell me at once if they heard such a rumour so that I could immediately put it right. I put in this announcement because I have had several extremely rude letters from South Africa, from children, pouring scorn on me for being such a fraud! (I don’t wonder the children felt like that, really – to believe in a person and then to find she has apparently deceived them for years is a blow to a worshipping child!)
She went on to explain how she had heard only that day from the mother of one of her readers, who had attended a parents’ meeting at her daughter’s school at which the speaker, a young librarian, had implied that all the books bearing the name ‘Enid Blyton’ were not necessarily written by the author herself.
This is very damaging, not only to my books, but to me. I am such a public figure now, and well trusted, as you know, and run many clubs and societies which bring in money, that I absolutely
must
have these rumours cleared up – for who is going to believe I am honest if I don’t even write my own books! … In the last month or two we have had rumours from Australia that I am dead and someone else is writing my books. Rumours from S. Africa that I am dead and no longer write my books and rumours, also from S. Africa, that I am alive, but do not write my books and now here is a librarian with the same slander …
The solicitor pursued the matter and proceedings were taken against the librarian, which resulted eventually in an apology to Enid in open court in the spring of the following year. For a time, the reports of this affair helped to scotch some of the rumours, but stories that Enid ran a ‘company’ of ghost writers still circulated, for the cynics refused to believe that one woman could produce such quantities on her own.
They could, perhaps, be forgiven for their incredulity for, in 1956 alone, she had turned out her usual quota of books and articles; continued to write for her
Enid Blyton Magazine
(overseeing the four clubs involved – and making occasional visits to their respective charities); recorded some of her Noddy stories for HMV; supervised a second Noddy puppet series for ITV and Australian television and the casting and staging of another season of
Noddy in Toyland
and
The Famous Five.
She was still answering a vast correspondence without any secretarial help and making her usual public appearances at bookshops and exhibitions.
Her regular rounds of golf with Kenneth continued, either at the local club or on their own course at Swanage and, during that same year, she also embarked on a new venture with him – the purchase of a farm at Stourton Caundle, near Sturminster Newton in Dorset. She was greatly interested in this project and eagerly took part in all the subsequent discussions over its renovation and eventual occupation by a manager. Yet in the midst of all this activity, she still managed to complete, in May, her first attempt at a full-length play for the adult theatre, which she hoped might help to disprove the criticism of those who thought her only capable of writing for children.
All the preliminary negotiations over the play, she instructed those acting for her, were to be conducted with the utmost secrecy, for her fame in other directions must not be allowed to influence any decisions about the possibility of its production – and to ensure this, she used the nom-deplume of Justin Geste. The play –
The Summer Storm
– was duly sent to several theatrical managers for consideration but it was apparent, even to those to whom the identity of the author was revealed, that as it stood it was totally unsuitable for staging. The over-dramatised theme was one of marital intrigue and mistaken parentage, set in an upper-middle-class background. It had ten characters (see Appendix 7), required five different stage settings, and owed more to those playwrights of the ‘twenties, who indulged in a world of sophisticated artificiality, than to the Angry Young Men of the ’fifties, whose stark dramas were beginning to fill the theatres at that time. But perhaps this was not surprising, as Enid had rarely visited the theatre since her marriage to Kenneth, for his deafness spoilt his enjoyment of any straight play. To produce
The Summer Storm
for the London stage, which had been Enid’s goal, would have involved drastic rewriting, great ingenuity over the changing of the sets and weighty production costs which, it appeared, no one was prepared to risk. Greatly disappointed, Enid put it aside and, characteristically, turned her thoughts to other activities. But those close to her noticed that she was showing increasing signs of strain, particularly by the spring of 1957, following the Christmas productions of her two children’s plays which, highly successful as they were, involved frequent visits to London and additional public appearances.