Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) has been one of this year's discoveries (see my previous posts on The Enchanted April and Love).

This one, published in 1898, was her first novel. Again, I went the audio route (it was beautifully read by Nadia May). Again, it was delightful.

You can also download a free copy, and my "illustrated edition" (published in 1900) came complete with "twelve photogravure illustrations from photographs".



We need to revisit the author's biography at this point, because it feeds directly into the book.

The young woman who was born Mary Annette Beauchamp in Sydney married Prussian widower Graf Henning von Arnim-Schlagenthin in 1891, and duly became Mary, Graefin von Arnim. Three daughters arrived in quick succession (the April baby, the May baby, and the June baby, as she calls them in the novel), and their mother decided that the place where she really wanted to spend her days was the Count's country estate at Nassenheide, about 110 km from Berlin. This was indeed her "German Garden"...

So, the book describes, in diary form, the experiences of a young woman settling into German horticulture and society (in that order). It was hugely successful. According to Gabrielle Carey, the book was reprinted 11 times in three months, and brought in GBP 10,000 for its author, a sum that equates to GBP 0.5 million today...

Her later works were for a long time ascribed to "the author of Elizabeth and her German Garden". So "Elizabeth" became the name her readers, her friends, and even most of her family came to use. (My downloaded copy, for example, has no indication of the author's name.)


Prudence and her Manx Garden



Although it clearly contains autobiographical elements, Carey warns: "How truly autobiographical the book is remains debatable. Throughout her 2013 biography of von Arnim Jennifer Walker refers to the writer by her christened name of Mary and 'Elizabeth' only in inverted commas. She believes the persona of Elizabeth is pure illusion and warns readers that we cannot take her literally. 'The mask of Elizabeth is carefully and skilfully constructed. But Elizabeth is not Mary and only occasionally does Mary peep out from behind the mask, laughing.'"

Starting from her passion for the garden she is determined to bring under control ("I love my garden... less a garden than a wilderness"), the author moves on out to family dynamics (prominent in which is "the Man of Wrath", aka her husband), visitors, and German society. It's a short but fascinating account.

I'm not a gardener, but it's impossible not to be moved by Elizabeth's enthusiasm: "The garden is the place I go to for refuge and shelter, not the house... It is there that all my sins and silliness are forgiven, there that I feel protected and at home, and every flower and weed is a friend and every tree a lover." Others don't understand how happy she is in her country retreat, "with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them". She is very self-sufficient, and although we have a long and funny section about two visitors, Irais and Minora, she doesn't really look forward to entertaining house guests: "A garden where you meet the people you saw at breakfast, and will see again at lunch and dinner, is not a place to be happy in."



Strewn among the domestic scenes are interesting little socioeconomic vignettes. The estate, for example, uses Russian and Polish labour. The overseer is equipped with a loaded revolver and a savage dog to prevent the labourers running off to work for the peasants, who pay them more. Nothing, however, will make them work on Saints' days... Elizabeth has all the prejudices of her class and era: "I suppose it was my own superfluous amount of civilisation that made me pity these people when first I came to live among them. They herd together like animals and do the work of animals; but in spite of the armed overseer, the dirt and the rags, the meals of potatoes washed down by weak vinegar and water, I am beginning to believe that they would strongly object to soap, I am sure they would not wear new clothes, and I hear them coming home from their work at dusk singing. They are like little children or animals in their utter inability to grasp the idea of a future."

On the other hand, she is very conscious of the hard hand dealt to women of all classes. She cannot bring herself to believe that the women labourers are happy: "They have to work as hard as the men and get less for it; they have to produce offspring, quite regardless of times and seasons and the general fitness of things; they have to do this as expeditiously as possible, so that they may not unduly interrupt the work in hand; nobody helps them, notices them, or cares about them, least of all the husband. It is quite a usual thing to see them working in the fields in the morning, and working again in the afternoon, having in the interval produced a baby... What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women have the babies!" To this the Man of Wrath replies, in his habitually smug and irritating way: "Quite so, my dear... Nature, while imposing this agreeable duty on the woman, weakens her and disables her for any serious competition with man."



Women of other classes do not escape this prejudice either. Minora asks Elizabeth's husband whether it's true that German law classes women with children and idiots. "Certainly," he replies, "and a very proper classification, too." He sees the three young women under his roof as "children -- nice little agreeable children". We learn, too, from a section that is present in some editions and not others, that the reason cousins now live in Elizabeth's former home is that she is ineligible to inherit. It is "the home of my fathers, the home that would have been mine if I had been a boy".

No-one is immune. Elizabeth is not even permitted to dig her own garden... But women of the labouring classes are also more vulnerable to violence. The Man of Wrath says blithely: "It is a universal custom... amongst these Russians, and I believe amongst the lower classes everywhere, and certainly commendable on the score of simplicity, to silence a woman's objections and aspirations by knocking her down."



In general, though, violence is disconcertingly near the surface. "We are allowed by law," says Elizabeth, "to administer 'slight corporal punishment' to our servants, it being left entirely to individual taste to decide what 'slight' shall be." She doesn't make use of this prerogative, but she has neighbours who do. Indicative, too, is that episode in which Elizabeth secretly returns to her former family home. She recounts an incident where, with childish insistence, she demands to be taken to the church service. When she grows uncomfortable, and starts to act up, her father admonishes her with "a good hard unmistakable pinch", and warns her that a worse one will follow if she makes a fuss.



Gabrielle Carey muses on the characteristics that made the book such a best-seller: "There is no plot, no conflict, no character development (unless the garden is considered a character), no revelations, no sex, no crime and no twist at the end. It begins with: ‘I love my garden,’ and ends with something like a prayer." At the end of the day, she concludes, it's Elizabeth's personality that proves so engaging: "[She is] a person able to see beauty, joy and comedy in what many writers might consider unpromising material. In the introduction to Virago’s edition of Elizabeth and her German Garden, Elizabeth Jane Howard writes that the book has 'a freshness, a freakish charm, an irrepressible energy that springs straight from the very source of her personality.'"

I have to agree. This is a period piece, but its appeal endures because it's funny, atmospheric, and thought-provoking -- and those qualities are timeless.