Previous letters pages can be found here.

Letters page from Volume 3, issue 11.
May 25th – June 7th, 1955.

OUR

LETTER PAGE

A letter from Dorothea Hill, Nr. Sleaford, Lincs.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I am one of your magazine club members. At school we had a little sale of our own. We made pots and did lots of sewing. We sold everything in fifteen minutes, and we are sending you one pound, twelve shillings and threepence. There were lots of customers. Altogether we made about a hundred things. We made out our own bills, and we put all the tickets on the things to be sold. The smallest children helped too. They wrapped up everything in paper for the ladies. Give our love to all the little children in your Home. With lots of love to you from
Dorothea Hill.

(You gave me a lovely surprise, Dorothea, and sent me a most interesting letter. Thank you !)

A letter from Deborah Martin, Wycombe, Bucks.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I have a garden hut. The outside is boarded, and the inside is lined with 3-ply wood. Between the two lots of wood is a cavity. In the outer wood there is a hole, where a knot has fallen out. A little blue-tit keeps going in and out, and we think he is building his nest there.
Yours truly,
Deborah Martin.

(You must tell me if the blue-tit laid eggs and brought off some young birds, Deborah. If so, you are very lucky!)

A letter from Margaret Wallace, Nr. Dorking, Surrey.
Dear Enid Blyton,
I have bought you a present that you will never see, and yet I am sure that you will always treasure, because it is for such a good cause. I will explain to you what it is. It is to do with the building of Guildford Cathedral. Anyone can buy a brick and have their name put on it by paying half a crown, then it is sent to Guildford Cathedral, and put in place. So I thought you wouldn’t mind if I bought you one for a present, for writing us children such an enjoyable magazine.
Lots of love from
Margaret Wallace.

(What a lovely present, Margaret! Yes, it certainly is one I shall always treasure !)

The traditional fund-raising letter in first place again this week. I never ran a sale of my own but I always used to like helping at the school fetes, pricing the items and arranging them then taking the money from buyers.

Deborah has written one of the kind of letters I like. They may seem pretty inconsequential, the kind of thing that’s interesting to the person, perhaps their family, but to the child it was important enough to write a letter, put a stamp on it and post it off. I don’t know if that was a particular effect that Blyton had on children, that they particularly wanted to share these interesting snippets with, or were children writing these sorts of things into other magazines? Of course we are left wondering if Deborah ever wrote back in, and what the answer was!

Lastly, a very interesting gift idea from Margaret. I’ve seen lots of charity gifts where people sponsor the building of a well or the care of goats etc abroad, in the giftee’s name, but not a brick in a cathedral!