Enid Blyton Read Online Free Page A

Enid would tell them, ‘to mystify the postman’. She even sent one of these from France during the summer of 1913 when Mlle. Louise Bertraine, who taught French at St Christopher’s, took Enid for a memorable holiday to her home in Annecy. It was the sixteen-year-old’s first trip out of England and the excitement of the journey, the beauty of the lakes and mountains of the Haute Savoie and the happiness of her stay with the family were remembered always. The First World War broke out the following year and there were no further holidays with Louise, but their friendship continued for many years.
    The war did not appear to affect Enid very greatly at the beginning. She had no close relatives involved in the fighting and, understandably perhaps at that age, was far more concerned with the trials and pleasures of her very busy home and school life – a life in which her close friend, Mary Attenborough, played a considerable part. They had first met in kindergarten days and, although Mary was her junior by some three years and consequently nicknamed ‘Kid’ by Enid, in the senior classes at St Christopher’s the pair were inseparable. Both were alert, intelligent and invariably at the top of their forms, due in no small part to the competition between them. Mary always excelled at art and Enid at music, but otherwise their school work followed pretty much the same pattern. Out of school they would play long games of tennis at the home of Mary’s grandfather in Oakwood Avenue, on the outskirts of Beckenham, and on Sundays would go to services at the Elm Road Baptist Church. Enid had been baptised here at the age of thirteen and had for some years, with her brothers, attended the Sunday School of which Mary’s father was superintendent. His sister, Mabel, ran the girls’ classes and from her first meeting with Enid took a great interest in her niece’s school friend.
    Mabel was unmarried, some twenty years older than the girls, and lived at home with her parents, so visits from the two lively friends were always greatly enjoyed. This tall, rather gaunt woman with the quiet, gentle manner and kindly eyes, seemed to sense, under Enid’s usually bright façade, her great need for affection and sympathetic understanding – though even she was never to guess at the cause. The fact that her father was living away from home was something Enid could never bring herself to reveal – even to Mabel, good friend and confidante though the older woman later became. But in other matters it was to Mabel that she soon began to turn for advice and sympathy, particularly with regard to her writing.
    A year or so after her father left the family, Enid had entered a children’s poetry competition run by Arthur Mee in one of his magazines and was thrilled to get a letter from the writer himself, telling her that he intended to print her verses and would like to see more of her work. This encouraged her to branch out further with her writing and to send a selection of stories, articles and poems to other periodicals. Apart, however, from the unexpected acceptance of a poem by Nash’s Magazine (unfortunately it has proved impossible to trace either of these first poems and one can only assume that in the case of the second, at least, she used a pseudonym) some few years later, everything came back – much to the annoyance of Theresa, who soon realised the significance of the long envelopes that dropped with such regularity through the letter box at Elm Road, and considered the whole process a ‘waste of time and money’. This was not so with Mabel Attenborough, who continued to encourage the young writer, for she recognised in those early, very naïve efforts a potential that she felt should be fostered.
    Enid later admitted that several hundred of her literary offerings were returned to her during this period, but with her usual persistence – and Mabel’s encouragement – she continued to send them out and to enter for literary