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Elizabeth von Arnim (1866 -1941)
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Described as "one of the three finest wits of her day", and greatly admired as
a literary figure in Europe, Mary Annette Beauchamp was born in Sydney,
Australia, but raised in England. The family called her "May". She met her
first husband, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, while traveling
with her father in Italy in 1889. They married in London the following year
and lived in Berlin at first.
After five years, the von Arnims removed to a family estate in Pomerania 90 miles north of Berlin, Nassenheide. This schloss and derelict garden is the basis for her first novel, Elizabeth and Her German Garden published anonymously in 1898. Twenty-one books followed and were signed "By the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden" and later simply "By Elizabeth".
Elizabeth gave birth to four daughters and a son, with the Count. The children's tutors at Nassenheide included such notables as E.M. Forster and Hugh Walpole. Unfortunately, in 1908 debt forced the von Arnims to sell their idyllic estate. They moved to England where Count von Arnim died in 1910.
Buying a site in Switzerland, Elizabeth built the Chateau Soleil where she worked on her books and entertained friends. These included H.G.Wells (a lover) and Katherine Mansfield (a cousin). At the outbreak of the first World War she escaped to England, but one of her daughters died in Germany.
In 1916 Elizabeth married again, Francis the second Earl Russell, brother of Bertrand Russell. It was a disastrous marriage - in the first year she ran away to the United States, and by 1919 the couple agreed to separate.
The later years were spent in Switzerland, London, and on the French Riviera. Elizabeth published her autobiography All the Dogs of My Life in 1936. As the Second World War began, Elizabeth moved to the U.S. where she died at the age of seventy-five.
Her works fell into relative obscurity until recently, when her novel The Enchanted April (1922) inspired a delightful movie by Miramax Films in 1992.
Some of her titles in print (Virago and Pocket Books):
Vera
Fraulein Schmidt and Mr. Anstruther
Elizabeth and Her German Garden
The Enchanted April
The Pastor's Wife
Love
The Caravaners
The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen
The Solitary Summer
Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898) was a great success, reprinted 21 times within the first year. Most of the press was favorable, but one reviewer, Quiller-Counch of the Spectator was not amused by the whimsical style. He found the author "inhumanly" selfish with a "smart self-satisfaction" and "dominated by self". (Apparently the idea of a woman pleasing herself and not concentrating solely on husband and children was offensive.) This must have been a minority opinion, since the book did so well, and today it is still charming, capturing the reader in a pleasant reverie, a humorous romance of nature and summer idylls. It also reveals some of the style of living of the time including upper class attitudes.
"This has been quite an eventful afternoon. My eldest baby, born in April, is five years old, and the youngest, born in June, is three; so that the discerning will at once be able to guess the age of the remaining middle or May baby. While I was stooping over a group of hollyhocks planted on the top of the only thing in the shape of a hill the garden possesses, the April baby, who had been sitting pensively on a tree stump close by, got up suddenly and began to run aimlessly about, shrieking and wringing her hands with every symptom of terror. I stared, wondering what had come to her; and then I saw that a whole army of young cows pasturing in a field next to the garden, had got through the hedge and were grazing perilously near my tea-roses and most precious belongings. The nurse and I managed to chase them away, but not before they had trampled down a border of pinks and lilies in the cruellest way, and made great holes in a bed of China roses, and even begun to nibble at a Jackmanni clematis that I am trying to persuade to climb up a tree trunk. The gloomy gardener happened to be ill in bed, and the assistant was at vespers - as Lutheran Germany calls afternoon tea or its equivalent - so the nurse fills up the holes as well as she could with mould, burying the crushed and mangles roses, cheated for ever of their hopes of summer glory, and I stood by looking on dejectedly. The June baby, who is two feet square and valiant beyond her size and years, seized a stick much bigger than herself and went after the cows, the cowherd being nowhere to be seen. She planted herself in front of them brandishing her stick, and they stood in a row and stared at her in great astonishment ... "
The Solitary Summer (1899) followed, and in response to the criticism of "selfishness", one entry in this book talks about the poor and Elizabeth's unsuccessful efforts at philanthropy.
"Philanthropy is intermittent with me as with most people, only they do not say so, and seizes me like a cold in the head whenever the weather is chilly."
Although she feels chided for being too happy, this passage is just a ripple in another wonderful and charming book.
"Yesterday morning I got up at three o'clock and stole through the echoing passages and strange dark rooms, undid with trembling hands the bolts of the door to the verandah, and passed out into a wonderful, unknown world. I stood for a few moments motionless on the steps, almost frightened by the awful purity of nature when all the sin and ugliness is shut up an asleep, and there is nothing but beauty left. It was quite light, yet a moon hing in the cloudless grey-blue sky; the flowers were all awake, saturating the air with scent; and a nightingale sat on a hornbeam quite close to me, in loud raptures at the coming of the sun. There in front on me was the sun-dial, there were the rose bushes, there was the bunch of pansies I had dropped the night before still lying on the path, but how strange and unfamiliar it all looked, and how holy - as though God must be walking there in the cool of the day. I went down the path leading to the stream on the east side of the garden, brushing aside the rockets that were bending across it dowsy with dew, the larkspurs on either side of me rearing their spikes of heavenly blue against the steely blue of the sky, and the huge poppies like splashes of blood amongst the greys and blues and faint pearly whites of the innocent, new-born day. ... turnng my head to watch a stealthy cat, my face brushed against a wet truss of blossom and got its first morning washing. It was wonderfully quiet, and the nightingale on the hornbeam had everything to itself as I sat motionless watching the glow in the east turning redder ..."
The Enchanted April (1922) was based on an actual visit the the castle of San Salvatore in Italy. After much difficulty with her second marriage, Elizabeth wanted to write a happy book. She produced this light and vivacious novel of love and flowers.
"When Mrs. Wilkins woke next morning she lay in bed a few minutes before getting up and opening the shutters. What would she see out of her winow? A shining world, or a world of rain? But it would be beautiful; whatever it was would be beautiful.
She was in a little bedroom with bare white walls and a stone floor and sparse old furniture. The beds - there were two - were made of iron, enamelled black and painted with bunches of gay flowers. She lay putting off the great moment of going to the window as one puts off opening a precious letter, gloating over it. She had no idea what time it was; she had forgotten to wind up her watch ever since, centuries ago, she last went to bed in Hampstead. No sounds were to be heard in the house, so she supposed it was very early, yet she felt as if she had slept a long while - so completely rested, so perfectly content. She lay with her arms clasped round her head thinking how happy she was, her lips curved upwards in a delighted smile. In bed by herself: adorable condition. She had not been in bed without Mellersh once now for five whole years; and the cool roominess of it, the freedom of one's movements, the sense of recklessness, of audacity, in giving the blankets a pull if one wanted to, or twitching the pillows more comfortable! It was like the discovery of an entirely new joy."