The Best Letter I Never Received: Linda Burgess

This letter was commissioned by Verb for Verb Festival’s showcase event on Friday 6 November 2020 at National Library of New Zealand.

Letters from Enid

Dear Linda

How super to hear from you, living so far away across the seas! I am so happy that you love my Sunny Stories! How sad that you can’t come to my story parties at Green Hedges! I would love to see you, and so would Imogen and Gillian.  We have such scrumptious cakes! Perhaps one day mother and daddy could bring you to England. In a big ship!

Like you, I love to sit at my desk and gaze at my garden and think up lovely happy stories for children just like you. My pen just flies along the paper, I sometimes feel my ideas for stories come straight from heaven! When I have some time in my very busy day I’ll read the stories that you sent me!

Best wishes

Enid Blyton.

Dear Linda

Today I’ve had a picnic with Imogen and Gillian! I don’t know why, but the meals we have on picnics always taste so much better than the ones we have indoors!

I’ve finished reading your stories. My goodness, you do have some astonishing ideas – a tree with fairies and pixies living on it! A slide down the middle! How clever of you to think of such a funny place. Do you think children would believe such a quaint idea?

I suppose they do believe in Noddy and in Toyland, so perhaps they will believe in this, too. I love your idea of the lands coming to the top of the tree. You have made me put on my thinking cap! 

Yours sincerely

Enid Blyton

PS Have you told anyone else about your silly, funny idea?

Dear Linda

I’m so sorry that you find my stories about Secret Seven boring. Most children find them bold and charming! I’m not sure though if one about older children having proper adventures would work, especially if one of the gang was a dog. How silly! What would the police think if children were more successful detectives than they are? Who would believe something like that? You are clever to make up that island though, with a ruined tower on it. I suppose children would like that idea. And owned by a girl! That is very modern! Well done you! 

Keep writing! And let me know if you have other clever ideas!

Yours sincerely,

Enid Blyton.

Dear Linda

Hmmm. Books set in a boarding school. Of course the children in my books, being from good families, are inclined to go to boarding school, but they always have their adventures in the hols. I suppose though I could write books about a certain school. I don’t think I would set mine in an old mental hospital though. Perhaps it could be a grand manor with towers? 

My thinking cap is on my funny old head! I’m already imagining midnight feasts! A French teacher called Mamselle! 

Yours sincerely

Enid

Dear Linda

My goodness your ideas are getting quirkier and quirkier! Children whose mother asks them to hide in their grandmother’s attic so she can claim their fortune? I think this is too far-fetched. Only an American could write such a thing. 

Yours in haste,

EB

Dear Linda

I know I’m famous for saying that one should fill one’s mind with all kinds of interesting things, because the more you put in it, the more will come out of it, but sometimes I wonder what you’re putting in your mind.

Because my goodness your last letter contains a very scary idea! You know I like penning stories about children having adventures on islands, but quite frankly Linda I think you’ve let that imagination of yours run away with itself this time. I don’t think I’d ever write a story in which children kill other children! I have passed your idea on, though, to my good friend William Golding who’s also been pondering a story idea set on an island – more like Treasure Island than Kirren Island I suspect! I’m not sure he’d like your title though – what does Lord of the Flies actually mean? We all know the only lord is Jesus! 

I hope not to hurt your feelings, as I know the young are sensitive flowers, and it’s my understanding of the young which has led to my success as a story writer, but both Mr Golding and I feel you should start writing about what you know, and the country in which you actually live. Surely you could write of totem poles and picaninnies? Brave explorers who brought civilization to your country? Your tree idea was a good one, and yes quite by coincidence very like the story about the Faraway Tree that I had just finished writing when I read yours. But do you actually have fairies and pixies in New Zealand? Or gypsies and pirates?  Do you have boarding schools? Tuck boxes? Castles? Thatched cottages and daffodils, orchards, meadows and roses? The expression isn’t in common use yet, Linda, but we both feel you are guilty of cultural appropriation. On behalf of England, and its literature, we ask you to cease and desist.

Enid Mary Blyton