Free Enid Blyton by Barbara Stoney Page B

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