Readathon - Secret Mountain and Secret of Killimooin

[Anita Bensoussane]

I'm not too keen on Secret Mountain. It feels a bit contrived. I think it reminds me of Missie Lee by Arthur Ransome which made a lot more sense to me when I was told that the children made up the adventure during a wet holiday (although I love Peter Duck, which also is made up). So I think whereas the others feel possible, it just feels that step too far to believe it happened.

It may seem strange, but when reading The Secret Mountain I become so thoroughly wrapped up in the emotion and excitement that I barely notice the contrivances. It can't be denied that there are some massive coincidences/conveniences, e.g. Paul suddenly having access to an aeroplane, and the timing of the eclipse. Having said that, plenty of incidents in Enid Blyton's other adventure books also rely heavily on contrivance, such as the suitcases falling from the tree at a crucial moment in The Valley of Adventure, and the old wreck being tossed up in a storm just when George's cousins happen to be visiting Kirrin Island for the first time in Five on a Treasure Island. Such coincidences and improbable happenings are typical of adventure books in general - not only by Enid Blyton but by Malcolm Saville, H. Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson and others. And of course, all fiction is contrived to some extent. After all, the author is guiding the narrative so the story leads somewhere, heading for a conclusion which makes some kind of sense of all that has gone before and leaves the reader feeling satisfied. There's often a fair amount of foreshadowing and far less randomness and redundancy than there would be in real life, meaning that things fit together in a way that would be unthinkable in reality.

What strikes me about The Secret Mountain is how much I feel part of the adventure. I'm right there with the main characters, experiencing what they're experiencing every step of the way. The Arnolds have come to Africa on a serious mission - to look for their pilot parents who have been missing for weeks. Enid Blyton doesn't linger too long on either pathos or dread but there is a touch of both - just enough to remind the reader of the solemn purpose of this journey into the unknown. There's an unspoken fear behind all that the characters do, because Peggy and the others know that each stage of their journey takes them closer to finding out what happened to their father and mother. It's possible that the Arnold children will have to face the worst – and they've already been through a great deal concerning their parents, as readers of The Secret Island are all too aware. It's telling that in The Secret Island and The Secret of Spiggy Holes Jack was nominated "captain" and put in charge of proceedings, but in The Secret Mountain Pilescu, a burly man armed with a gun, is "captain", saying to Paul, "I am in command now. You are my lord, but I am your captain in this adventure. Do as I say." Despite his presence, Paul and the Arnolds still face terrifying trials and often take matters into their own hands.

Everything around the children is unfamiliar and filled with potential danger. There are no accustomed sights and sounds to reassure them and make them feel at ease. As Mike remarks, "Everything looks very strange, doesn't it? Look at those funny red-brown daisies over there. And even the grass is different!" They can expect nothing except the unexpected, and the reader picks up on that. Reading the book as a child, I felt that absolutely anything might happen! It was an electrifying experience and made a huge impression on me.

[Irene Malory Towers]

Wow - that was a great summary Anita. I am impressed. Yes going back to LIam's point - there is a real scariness about both Secret Mountain and Secret of killimooin (but more the former) as they are really in unknown territory. For some reason I was more nervous in the Killimooin one though,the robbers seemed so frightening and bizarre. And there were fewer adults. Still they are both very exciting stories even if very unreal and abounding with lots of coincidences.

[timv]

I didn't notice the contrived elements of The Secret Mountain storyline when I first read it, and had no idea of the debts the scenario owed to earlier writers like Rider Haggard who Enid would have read as a girl - and who were best-sellers in the Edwardian period (and were kept in the public eye by early film adaptations in the 1920s-40s). (My great-grandmother's cousin was the village schoolmaster on Rider Haggard's estate in Southern Norfolk in the 1900s so he presumably knew him, and I'd have loved to know more about this.) I read the SM when I was eight, and just enjoyed the story and was thoroughly wrapped up in it - especially as I'd just seen the film of 'Born Free' which was set in Kenya so I had a good visual idea of what East Africa looked like. Little details like the sudden onset of darkness nearer the Equator gave a vivid picture of how alien this world was to Europe, and the journey to a mysterious mountain and a tribe that were alien to and feared by the locals gave a background sense of menace and the possibility that it could all go horribly wrong that was much more 'adult' than the earlier Secret books. It's probably the most 'dangerous threat to our heroes' Secret book, closer to the Adventure series; the Killimooin bandits didn't seem so threatening somehow, just thugs and not 'exotic'.

The later revelations of the 'Lost Tribe's behaviour and murderous cult and the threat of human sacrifice added to this, though re-reading it later with much more background literary knowledge enabled me to see which bits of the story had been borrowed or adapted from Haggard and other Victorian adventure thrillers - and probably 1930s-1940s films too as there were a lot of 'Lost Tribe' dramas in the Johnny Weissmuller 'Tarzan' film series produced then. I certainly never thought of or worried about any 'racist' elements to it, even as a student; the usual modern reactions are a world away from what was seen as 'normal' in the 1970s and it's a pity that it inhibits enjoying such books (or their availability) while keeping in mind that they are 'cultural historical pieces' of their time. Apart from the plot cliches and the (realistic enough for its time and background) theme of local boy Mafumu looking up to 'sophisticated European' Jack, I found Mountain to be quite an 'adult ' book and well-crafted. I have an idea that Enid was aiming the Secret series as a group of adapted 'genre' adventures for youngish children using different themes one by one - 'runaway rural hiding out with no adults' in Island, 'smuggler and kidnap adventure' with Spiggy Holes (the kidnapped royal hidden in the UK possibly coming from John Buchan's 'Huntingtower'), African adventure in Mountain , and Eastern European 'Ruritania' with a modern touch plus 'Lost Bandit Tribe' in Killimooin. The odd one out, so to speak, is Moon Castle, though it is partly 'Gothic castle thriller' .

The East African 'Lost Tribe who don't look local' theme is a genuine one, argued over by anthropologists in the C19th and early C20th - who had ideas that there were migratory descendants of non-local Ancient Egyptians (also sun-worshippers) mixed up in local peoples, eg as the origin of the Zulus. Nowadays this is seen as a 'superior' racist assumption that locals were too 'backward' to produce great ruins like the ancient city of Zimbabwe.

[Anita Bensoussane]

I agree with what you say about Enid Blyton designing the Secret series as a group of adapted 'genre' adventures, Tim.

Like you, I had no idea as a child of the debts The Secret Mountain owed to earlier literature, though I had come across the 'Lost Tribe' theme in films and TV programmes (I certainly watched some of the Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan films and also a cartoon series - Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle). As far as the eclipse is concerned, Enid Blyton was no doubt aware of classic stories in which characters make use of an eclipse for a similar purpose, e.g. King Solomon's Mines (1885) by H. Rider Haggard (in later editions the solar eclipse was changed to a lunar eclipse because a solar eclipse could not have occurred in the way that Haggard described) and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) by Mark Twain. Incidentally, the device was also to play a part in one of the Tintin comic-books by Hergé, Prisoners of the Sun (1949). Turning to history rather than fiction, it's claimed that explorer Christopher Columbus took advantage of a lunar eclipse in 1504 to convince the indigenous people of Jamaica that their god was angry at their treatment of Columbus and his men.

In the 1970s my sister and I subscribed to the girls' weekly paper Jinty, published by Fleetway. By coincidence (coincidences aren't confined to fiction, after all!) it was soon after I read The Secret Mountain that Jinty serialised a picture-strip story called 'Alice in a Strange Land' (illustrated by Terry Aspin), about a group of schoolgirls who survived a plane crash in South America and wandered into a lost city of sun-worshippers. One girl was nominated sun goddess and was to be sacrificed to the sun by a high priestess. There was no eclipse but there was a convenient earthquake. The story ran from February to June 1979 and had the same air of disquiet that pervades The Secret Mountain, as well as a number of the same elements – an aeroplane, a forest, a temple, underground passages with a river, a raft, robes and head-dresses, and ceremonies related to sun-worship which involved chanting and human sacrifice. It was one of my favourite Jinty serials.

[Moonraker]

It may seem strange, but when reading The Secret Mountain I become so thoroughly wrapped up in the emotion and excitement that I barely notice the contrivances.

Me neither. This is probably (currently!) my favourite Secret book, with Moon Castle a close second.

[Lucky Star]

Mountain and Kilimooin are two of my favourite Blyton books too. They are so terrifically exciting and so fast paced that I too ignore the contrivances (and in any case nearly every fictional thriller relies on plot contrivances and coincidences to move the plot along). It's such a shame that they are currently out of print. Any child, anytime, with an interest in adventure stories would love them both I'm sure.

[Irene Malory Towers]

I didn't realise they were out of print. Are they deemed to be racist then ? I am sure series like Just William are still in print and they must be some rather un PC references there

[Anita Bensoussane]

This is the Hachette UK website page about the Secret series:

https://www.enidblyton.co.uk/landing-pa ... t-stories/


It says:

Reviewing and editing the text of Enid Blyton’s books has been an ongoing process, beginning in her own lifetime and continuing now and, we anticipate, into the future. At Enid Blyton Entertainment (owners of the Enid Blyton estate and copyright, and part of Hachette UK), our intention is to keep Enid Blyton’s books and stories at the heart of every childhood, as they have been for generations. To do so, we work to ensure that there are no offensive terms in the books, while retaining the original language as far as is possible. This enables a very wide international audience of children to enjoy the books, while also understanding that they were written and set in the past.

Enid Blyton originally wrote five books about Jack and his friends Mike, Peggy and Nora. The first book The Secret Island, published in 1938, is a remarkable survival story and was her first full-length children’s novel. The subsequent books, published in the 1940s and 1950s, introduce the children to a new friend Prince Paul of Baronia and are quite different in style, being more like her other adventure stories. The latter four books are no longer in print in the UK (or most other territories) as they would have needed extensive editing to align them with the standards above.

Actually, The Secret Island wasn't Enid Blyton's first full-length children's novel - though it was her first full-length adventure novel.


Hachette UK also have a page about Enid Blyton:

https://www.enidblyton.co.uk/landing-pa ... he-author/


Among other things, it says:

Enid Blyton was born in the Victorian era and wrote most of her work in the middle of the twentieth century. She expressed attitudes towards race that cannot be condoned and for this reason, some of her work is no longer in print and other books have been edited to ensure they cannot cause hurt or offense to readers.

Reviewing and editing the text of her books has been an ongoing process, beginning in Enid Blyton’s own lifetime and continuing now and, we anticipate, into the future. At Enid Blyton Entertainment (owners of the Enid Blyton estate and copyright, and part of Hachette UK), our intention is to keep Enid Blyton’s books and stories at the heart of every childhood, as they have been for generations. To do so, we work to ensure that there are no offensive terms in the books, while retaining the original language as far as is possible. This enables a very wide international audience of children to enjoy the books, while also understanding that they were written and set in the past. For further information on the editorial history of each series, please refer to the relevant page in the books section of this website.

Editing does indeed seem to be done on a regular basis. The page about the Find-Outers books (which are now known as the Mystery books because the Barney series is no longer published) contains the following information:

In 2016 a change was made to the text of the books to remove most of the references to the character Fatty’s weight and size, making his nickname refer instead only to his initials, for Frederick Algernon Trotteville. Some other text amendments have been made since 2018 for sensitivity reasons.

If the books have to be reviewed and amended as frequently as that, no wonder it's impossible to keep all the titles in print. It would be a mammoth job to keep reading through them and changing them!

Personally, I'd prefer to see the original texts retained - with the exception of just one or two words which are now considered very offensive. As a child, I read books by older authors like Robert Louis Stevenson, Frances Hodgson Burnett, Mark Twain, Laura Ingalls Wilder, L. M. Montgomery, Louisa May Alcott, Dodie Smith and E. Nesbit. They transported me to worlds which were unlike my own in certain respects, where attitudes were different and some of the things I took for granted in my own life would have been frowned upon. Mary and Laura Ingalls would have disapproved strongly of the shorts and swimsuits I wore in the summer, many of E. Nesbit's characters would have considered my family poor not to have a maid or cook, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn would have scoffed at the fact that I wasn't allowed to go off into the countryside by myself (or very far from home at all), etc. Yet I still became caught up in the characters' stories and enjoyed them, and didn't sit around thinking how indecent, poverty-stricken or confined (or whatever) I would seem to them! Being swept up into other existences widened my horizons and taught me a lot of history while making me feel I was being entertained rather than educated. Young readers should not be denied that experience. The fact that the policy of constant updating has led to numerous Enid Blyton books going out of print is shocking.

[Bertie]

I'm sure Enid Blyton is getting edited / pointedly unpublished more than most writers from her era and earlier. It feels like she's almost the 'shorthand' - the example most used - for authors who have become seen as anachronisms in the 21st century. And I think, in this dumbed down era, a lot of that is as much to do with reverse class snobbery as it is to do with genuine race issues. As I hear just as much, if not more, mocking comments about her 'posh characters' and the way they speak and act as I do complaints about racial language.

The need to remove references to Fatty being fat is a perfect example of how Enid is being treated differently. As two of the many example I could use: Two hugely popular TV shows - that kids of different ages love - are Peppa Pig and The Simpsons. Both have father figures that are fat, and much is made of that and of their being cumbersome, daft, etc. Those shows haven't suffered for that. They certainly haven't changed those characters being seen by kids worldwide. I'm sure both shows get called out for some things in this day and age when everything is - I know Simpsons has had to change some characters / actors based on race. But they're just two of so many shows that have fat male characters without being edited for 'body shaming' - which is a term almost always saved for negative portrayal of overweight women rather than men. But, as usual, poor Enid is treated differently, and 'Fatty' has to be edited.

[pete9012S]

A sad situation regarding the editing of Enid's work.
For me, as a collector it's always been the original editions and the 1960's & '70's editions I grew up with that I will only have in my library.






Regarding the Find Outers, these are the editions I have full sets of:





1970 Methuen, hardback illustrations by Treyer Evans, cover by Mary Gernat

The hardbacked 1970's Methuen's are quite hard to track down and I still have quite a few to find - still, at least it provides the thrill of the hunt and all that....

[Hannah]

This is the Hachette UK website page about the Secret series:

https://www.enidblyton.co.uk/landing-pa ... t-stories/


It says:

Enid Blyton originally wrote five books about Jack and his friends Mike, Peggy and Nora. The first book The Secret Island, published in 1938, is a remarkable survival story and was her first full-length children’s novel. The subsequent books, published in the 1940s and 1950s, introduce the children to a new friend Prince Paul of Baronia and are quite different in style, being more like her other adventure stories. The latter four books are no longer in print in the UK (or most other territories) as they would have needed extensive editing to align them with the standards above.

I can't see the many things that would have needed changing in Spiggy Holes and Moon Castle .

[timv]

The only 'major' change that I can think of for the original text of Spiggy Holes is the overall story 'arc' in the episodes where the Arnolds are trying to get into the Old House and talk to the prisoner of Jack, rather than the younger Mike or one of the girls, doing all the more risky 'action' . He is the on who gets into the house and up to the tower, and then has to hide in the underground tunnels after he accidentally makes a noise in the kitchen (?) and the kidnappers start looking for an intruder - with the exit from the tunnel to the cove blocked by high tide. (This was one of my favourite 'gripping' bits of the storyline when I first read it, aged eight; I'd explored similar-looking cave tunnels from a cove on holiday in South Devon shortly before that.)
It's in fact realistic and logical as Jack is more 'mature' from looking after himself as a farm boy neglected by his grandfather when the others first met him and also he is good at handling animals so he could calm down the crooks' dogs if they sniffed and chased him - but nowadays I suspect a panicking (and non-expert on social norms in the late 1930s) editor might well think the girls are being 'left out' of the action so it's 'sexist' and a 'Bad Example' to modern young readers. (They probably wouldn't bother checking that Nora and Peggy aren't meant in the previous book to be the sort of Nancy Blackett-style tomboy who could do what Jack does.) It's also the boys who swim across the lake to the Secret Island at the end of the book to take Mr Diaz's boat and maroon him - though that's logical as he may have a gun, and they are stronger swimmers. I can't think of any other changes that a 'modernising' editor would worry about, though, and again it strikes me as over-reacting to think that all modern readers 'must' want books where the characters display 2000s forms of behaviour. Children are perfectly capable of understanding that in earlier times girls didn't normally do such types of 'dangerous' activity as Jack does here - and nobody's suggested (yet) censoring Find Outers stories where Fatty only takes Larry and Pip on dangerous ventures or changing Sea of Adventure so the girls as well as Jack and Philip rescue Bill. .