He in turn seems to tolerate with some bemusement his wife’s eccentricities which include spending most of her pin money on things for her adored garden. Elizabeth’s husband the hilariously named Man of Wrath is portrayed with a degree of satirical affection, I get the feeling her teasing of him though irreverent is tongue in cheek. Elizabeth’s friends and acquaintances regard what they see as her burial in the country as a reason for pity, Elizabeth is amused by their attitude. Soon her husband arrives, wondering why it is she hasn’t written to him – Elizabeth informs her husband (here after he is called The Man of Wrath) she was far too happy to do so. “I did one warm Sunday in last year’s April during the servants’ dinner hour, doubly secure from the gardener by the day and the dinner, slink out with a spade and a rake and feverishly dig a little piece of ground and break it up and sow surreptitious ipomoea and run back very hot and guilty into the house and get into a chair and behind a book and look languid just in time to save my reputation.” Wishing sometimes that convention didn’t preclude her from getting her own hands dirty. Elizabeth revels in the beauty of her peonies, roses and lilacs.
At night she keeps an old dinner bell by her bedside which helps to quell the night time fear of being alone. Her days are spent almost entirely in the garden here her meals of salad and bread are served to her on a tray. Her gardener and his assistant are sometimes bemused by her instructions – but bit by bit her garden begins to take shape. Her simple joy in her garden is adorably infectious, she has a lot to learn about gardens – she orders a mass of seeds and is deflated when the promised paradise doesn’t materialise. Here in the garden of her home, Elizabeth is able to escape the traditional routine of German wife and mother. It is immediately very personal as it recounts the first couple of blissful months that the Elizabeth of the title spends alone supervising the redecorating work at her German home. Written in the form of a diary, it was Elizabeth von Arnim’s first novel, originally published anonymously. If you have to have neighbours at all, it is at least a mercy that there should be only one for with people dropping in at all hours and wanting to talk to you, how are you to get on with your life, I should like to know, and read your books, and dream your dreams to your satisfaction?”ĭescribed as a novel, Elizabeth and her German Garden has the feel of a memoir. “Not the least of my many blessings is that we have only one neighbour. I must remedy this, there is something so appealing in her voice, that I feel, not only that I like her books very much, but also that I would have really liked the woman behind them. Reading Elizabeth and her German Garden reminded me how few Elizabeth von Arnim books I have read really.
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