Looking For Enid in Malory Towers

[Green Hedges]

Just thinking about the connection between Godstowe, the school in Cornwall that Gillian and Imogen Darrell Waters attended, and Malory Towers, the school in Cornwall that Darrell Rivers went to.

Imogen's book, A Childhood at Green Hedges is a source of raw data about this. On page 98 she talks about her 11th birthday (which would have been October 1946). She then says: 'My behaviour at school at that time was reflected in my reports. I discovered these after my mother's death, and they were so bad, particularly in regard to my behaviour, that guiltily I burned them all.'

I'll pause there to say that this is a shame. These report cards would have made compelling reading to any student of the Malory Towers series. I've got this image of adult Imogen burning her report cards and Kenneth Darrell Waters burning Enid's own diaries (and goodness knows what else) just to stop future readers trying to work out the links between Enid's life and her fiction. (I know that wasn't their motive for destroying the information, but dear me!)

Anyway, Imogen makes up for her destructive action by going on to write in her book (page 99) that on one occasion she was almost expelled: 'The threatened expulsion was apparently for rescuing someone else's tennis ball from halfway up a fir tree. But really it was the last straw in a series of events that included being rude, uncooperative and thoroughly sour. When the expulsion was decided upon, my mother came into her own. She descended upon the school and told our housemistress that she had never heard anything so ridiculous as expelling a girl for such minor misdemeanours, and that she simply would not accept it.'

Not only did super-Enid get Imogen unexpelled from Godstowe, she wove the theme of threatened (but not actual) expulsion into her next Malory Towers book. The dates seem to stack up, anyway. Second Form at Malory Towers was published in June 1947. Imogen's 11th birthday was 27 October 1946. We don't know for sure what the delay between writing and publishing this particular book was. But we do know from one of Enid's letters to Peter McKellar that she wrote The River of Adventure at the end of January 1955 and it was published by Macmillan in August of that year, a gap of 6 or 7 months. So that's consistent with Enid sitting down to write the book towards the end of 1946. Actually, Imogen isn't precise about when the expulsion incident took place, but I'm reckoning it would be before rather than after Second Form at Malory Towers was written.

Of course, Enid's creative process was complex and should not be oversimplified. She was drawing on her own childhood experience of attending St Christopher's School for Girls in south London. Neither Daphne nor Ellen from Second Form is Imogen. But perhaps part of the reason that a girl like Gwen never gets her troubles sorted out throughout all her years at Malory Towers is that Enid was conscious that, for Imogen, life at Godstowe was never plain sailing.

I'm left with the impression that both in her actions (storming down to Cornwall and confronting the housemistress) and in her imagination (writing the MT series of books, where the girls never stop trying to sort themselves out), Enid is doing what she can on different levels for her beloved daughter.

I should say daughters, because Gillian was at Godtowe as well. Indeed, Darrell and Felicity echo Gillian and Imogen, though again there is no simple relationship between the real and the fictional characters

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere. If it is, can someone supply a reference so that I can follow up the topic. Thanks.

Duncan

[Anita Bensoussane]

Just thinking about the connection between Godstowe, the school in Cornwall that Gillian and Imogen Darrell Waters attended, and Malory Towers, the school in Cornwall that Darrell Rivers went to.

I think Godstowe was (still is) a preparatory school in Buckinghamshire. The secondary school Gillian and Imogen attended was Benenden, which was still in its wartime refuge in Newquay, Cornwall, for Gillian's first term in 1945 but then returned to its usual location in Kent.

[Green Hedges]

Thanks Anita. And woops! - Enid didn't storm off all the way down to Cornwall to get Imogen unexpelled, but just the six miles to Godstowe.

So let me try that post again...

In autumn of 1942 11-year-old Gillian went to Godstowe, a boarding school in Buckinghamshire six miles from Green Hedges.

By then the Naughtiest Girl series and the St Clare's series (possibly drawing from Enid's own experience as a pupil at St Christopher's School for Girls) were underway.

In Autumn of 1944 Imogen joined Gillian at Godstowe.

In Autumn of 1945 Gillian went on to Benenden school, then in Cornwall. The first Malory Towers book, set in Cornwall, with the Darrel Rivers name, would probably have been written within a month or two of that event as it was published in July 1946.

In Autumn of 1946, Imogen was still at Godstowe, and she implies in A Childhood at Green Hedges that she was nearly expelled for a history of minor misdemenaours. Enid intervenes on her behalf at Godstowe. The second Malory Towers book would have been written about then, as it was published in June 1947, retaining the Cornwall setting from the first book and using the expulsion theme that she'd just tapped into at Godstowe.

It's not until The Upper Fourth at Malory Towers that Darrel River's younger sister Felicity is introduced. That was published in May 1949. It was in 1948 (again in the autumn, I assume) that Imogen moved to Benenden, so again Enid was quite obviously - as well as whatever else she was doing - allowing events in her life, and her children's lives, to feed into her writing.

I think that's what I'm trying to say!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Makes more sense to me now!

[Enikyoga]

Duncan,

i cannot but help to see how the Enid Blyton-Imogen Smallwood saga is replayed out in the Malory Towers series with those expulsions and near-expulsions in these books. It is a complex relationship that is discussed in A Childhood At Green Hedges, we are told of this complex relationship. By Enid's standards, imogen appeared to be a spoilt brat who didn't do well at school academically (although I would have wanted to know how Gillian was doing at school at this time, at least for comparative purposes). Thus, this is the controversy borne out of that autobiography. Like most professional teachers (in addition to being a professional writer as well), from experience, often expect their children to do very well at school, lest they "put them to shame." On the other hand, probably, Imogen as she writes in her autobiography, demonstrates how she was a difficult child (that was almost expelled from school), which may explain the friction between herself and her mother. On the other hand, Enid Blyton may have seen the rebelliousness in her own daughter, Imogen, a reflection of her own rebelliousness against her own mother, albeit for different reasons and in different circumstances.
Stephen I.

[Moonraker]

Now this will make for fascinating reading. An Enikyoga-Green Hedges debate. If anyone was in any doubt as to the wonderful nature of these forums, he has no need to wonder any further. It could be a Wimbledon final!

[Julie2owlsdene]

Now this will make for fascinating reading. An Enikyoga-Green Hedges debate. If anyone was in any doubt as to the wonderful nature of these forums, he has no need to wonder any further. It could be a Wimbledon final!

Watch this space!!!

[Moonraker]

Now this will make for fascinating reading. An Enikyoga-Green Hedges debate. If anyone was in any doubt as to the wonderful nature of these forums, he has no need to wonder any further. It could be a Wimbledon final!

Watch this space!!!

Looking for Anecdotes?

[Green Hedges]

Looking For Anecdotage is not bad! But right now I'm Looking For Analysis...

I see that all the school stories (Naughtiest Girl, St Clare's and Malory Towers) were published between 1940 and 1951. That's two years before Gillian started her boarding school education until two years after she finished at school. In other words Gillian being at school (and the prospect/aftermath of her being there) provided inspiration for Enid to write about the school experience in general.

Gillian left Benenden in the summer 1949. This means that the two books that her final year could have fed into would be In the Fifth at Malory Towers, published September 1950 and perhaps written 6 months earlier. And Last Term at Malory Towers, published Sep 1951, but written earlier that year.

In The Fifth doesn't seem to focus on Gillian's final year. Instead it concentrates on a school play, written by Darrell, who in this book can be closely associated with Enid herself. Here is a quote from near the end:

"Author! Author! AUTHOR!"
Someone gave Darrell a push. "Go on silly. They're calling for you. You're the author! You wrote it all!"

The book ends on what seems like a heartfelt personal note:

And then it was really all over. One last long clap, one last long shout - it was over.
'I wish I could hold this moment for ever and ever,' thought Darrell, peeping through the curtains once again. 'My first play - my first success! I don't want this moment to go!'
Hold it then, Darrell, while we slip away. It's your own great moment. There'll never be another quite like it.

Enid talking about - and then directly talking to - her young self. Interesting to speculate as to whether Enid was remembering some literary success at St Christopher's. The headmistress did say to the assembled girls at St Christopher's that there was a girl currently at the school who would set the Thames on fire one day.

I suppose it's possible that Gillian wrote a school play in her last year or so. Has she written anything about her time at Benenden? Did she ever give her own opinion as to how closely her own experience at school was absorbed and then retold by her mother?

The next MT book would be the last school book Enid would write. (Last of the three series, anyway.) Perhaps she had to get the school play stuff from her own life out of her system in the penultimate book before leaving the stage clear for her own daughter's final year at school.

What follows is from the last page of Last Term at Malory Towers. It involves the four Rivers. I can't help thinking of them as the four Waters. That is, Gillian, Imogen, Enid and Kenneth. Only this time Gillian is Darrell and Enid confines herself to the lesser roll of Mrs Rivers:

'"Darrell! Felicity!" suddenly called Mrs River's voice. "Here we are! Where on earth have you been? We've been here for ages."
"Oh that was Daddy's horn we heard hooting," said Felicity. "I might have guessed. Come on Darrell. Got your case?"
...
"Goodbye Darrell! Don't forget to write!" yelled Alicia. "See you in October at St Andrews."
...
And goodbye to you, Darrell - and good luck. We've loved knowing you. Good-bye!

Gillian did go to St Andrews when she left Benenden. Imogen was still at school when the Malory Towers series finished (as was Felicity, of course). But that doesn't seem to have been enough to inspire Enid to regain the heights of Malory Towers.

Poor Imo, let down yet again by her mother. The uncaring mother who saved her from being expelled from school. The cold and uncaring mother who wrote book after book about schoolgirls facing up to their fears and fancies and the bricks that life throws at you

Actually, that reminds me of Kenneth Grahame who wrote the wonderful Wind in the Willows for his temperamental son, Alastair, whom he called Mouse. Grahame rather hoped that by portraying Toad in the way he did, that his son, Mouse, would learn to be less egotistical, less up himself, less up and down. Alas, Alastair's own story ended when, as a student at Oxford, he got to the point of thinking that the only way forward for the son of a celebrated author was to put his own ordinary little head on the railway line...

Thankfully no such disaster happened to Enid and her family. Though the way Enid has been portrayed one might jump to the conclusion that the Blyton/Pollock/Darrell Waters family was a complete disaster area.

[Tony Summerfield]

Gillian left Benenden in the summer 1949. This means that the two books that her final year could have fed into would be In the Fifth at Malory Towers, published September 1950 and perhaps written 6 months earlier.

I'm going to have to correct you here, Duncan, as In the Fifth at Malory Towers was serialised in Sunny Stories and that started in November 1949. It is therefore likely that Enid wrote it sometime before that, so your 6 months earlier is more likely to have been a year +. In case anybody was wondering, she finished a whole book before serialisation even started and then of course it was sent off to the illustrator.

[Green Hedges]

Ah, yes, Sunny Stories. I should have known they'd rise up to bite me!

From the look of them, I'd say Stanley Lloyd took his illustrations for MT pretty seriously. In other words he may have needed Enid's text for a few months before publication of his signed drawings with the chapters of MT in Sunny Stories. That might even push the date of composition of In the Fifth at Malory Towers to before the end of Gillian's last term. Which would more straightforwardly explain why Enid didn't deal with Gillian's leaving of school until the sixth book, Last Term at Malory Towers. I suspect the records at Blyton's end don't tell us when exactly she wrote the book. I wonder if Stanley Lloyd kept a log of his work. Is he still alive? Probably not! Perhaps he's left his drawings and diaries to a relative? Do you know, Tony?

[dsr]

I can certainly see that EB MIGHT have used incidents from her daughters' lives in the books, but there's no reason why she MUST. She managed 21 Famous Five books which presumably had no plot inputs from her daughters' holidays. I hope.

[Belly]

Just to add as an aside that I spoke to Gillian about her experiences at Godstowe, I was considering it as a possible school for my daughters at the time. She warned me against it (adding that she assumed the ethos had changed since her day) and said if you do send them 'I hope they are a great deal happier than I was.'

The school has a maximum class size of 18 and comparatively formal teaching/classroom layout (children sit in a horse shoe formation in some cases). A new head started a few years ago and it now seems a wonderful school with quite a changed atmosphere (in my opinion).