How interesting, and depressingly unsurprising, that this gorgeous novel has been labelled 'middle-brow'... but then the same happened to those other wonderful Elizabeths, Taylor and Jane Howard, so it's in good company... I knew very little about E von Arnim's life so thank you Ann! Fascinating as always.
Thanks Laura for your kind words. Isobel Maddison is very good on the snobbishness around high/middle/lowbrow literature on the interwar era, so I'm going to focus on that aspect soon. I love the fact that the three Elizabeths are finally getting critical respect - it's almost as if because people (women) loved them, therefore they weren't as good. But they have stood the test of time (as has Agatha) and I'm enjoying finding out more about von Arnim's life and times myself.
You have solved a mystery for me - 'named in honour of Caspar Wistar'! I say wisteria as using the scientific name is easier for work purposes, but I love this explanation - thank you.
For me, wisteria and Venice are tangled up with each other. This year, a friend and I spent four days on the hunt of every wisteria we could find in the city, their scent announcing the presence of the plant before you actually stumble upon the plant itself. Like Bisto kids, we'd follow the fragrance which hangs low in alleys and courtyard, pursuing it until we thought we'd come to yet another dead-end. And then, all of a sudden, there it was - dangling above us, tempting us...
I'm so excited about this book - it's one of my favourites.
While we're on the subject (gosh, I could go on for days about this), many people ask me about their non-flowering 'wisterias' which they bought perhaps a decade ago, and yet there's still no sign of a bloom. The trick is that when you're buying it, wait until flowering season and make sure the plant you buy actually is blooming and has a raceme (cluster) of flowers on it. That way you know you're pretty much guaranteed flowers the following year 🌱
This is fascinating, Jo, would you mind if I shared it? I got side-tracked into a digression about the spelling of wisteria simply because it's such a delicious sense of life intertwining with art, the fact that the Times has stalwartly stuck to a (let's face it) outdated spelling of the word, perhaps because of its famous literary association with von Arnim. (Though that's probably in my fond imagining.) Now I really want to go to Venice for a wisteria-hunting expedition!
And the secret is then in the pruning apparently. We’ve heard advice various, mainly 2/6 ie cut it back in February and June. Ours gets a hard chop back in December and if the frost doesn’t catch it we are usually blessed with a glorious display.
How to choose a garden… having visited many in the UK one that stands out is at Godalming, visited in May 2018, the display of Azaleas was stunning, nothing else there but trees, but well worth the visit. I have been extremely slack with not having got very far into Enchanted April, but I do enjoy the book recommendations and all the background conversation.
I am glad to hear about Godalming, Sally, and will add to my list of UK gardens to visit. You must be seeing some nice Italian gardens too, I imagine! Pleased to hear you're enjoying the book conversations.
Our Italy trip was 19 years ago, and the only gardens visited were in Verona and Florence, neither being full of flowers, far more structured, but still beautiful. England on the other hand a totally different kettle of fish. Stowe, Sissinghurst, Wisley, Hidcote, Rosemoor, Eden Project, Kew to name a few. Next year when we come over in Spring I have Great Dixter House and Gardens plus The Onion Garden in London on my list.
Oh I see! Yes I think the garden that von Arnim fell in love with was in the 'English Romantic' style, so it makes sense that there are more of those here in the UK. I hadn't heard of Great Dixter before, but it looks wonderful. Cambridge University Botanic Gardens are wonderful too, as is Madingley Hall's garden hear here.
Great Dixter is stunning and even better…the paving slabs underfoot apparently once paved the streets of central London and were ‘rescued’ and laid there (by Christopher Lloyd?). As we walked around I suddenly thought ‘Virginia Woolf could have walked on these’ and my steps took on a whole new meaning.
I have watched the movie Enchanted April many times. I have never been disaapointed by the charm of their first sight of their landscape and the sunshine after such a rainy and unpleasant arrival. All I know about wisteria/wistaria is that it is very hardy and can thrive for decades.
Thanks for your comment and good point about wisteria, Jeri! We have some thriving in our garden despite getting little attention. I must have seen the BBC adaptation years ago, and look forward to seeing it again. But I am enjoying listening to the novel via audiobook.
I find Elizabeth von Arnim fascinating and wish there was more biographical material on her. I understand that the "Man of Wrath" in Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a lightly fictionalized depiction of her husband, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin.
Yes, it would be good if Hermione Lee considered it! Isobel Maddison's work on the texts is excellent (love everything she says about so-called 'middlebrow' writing) and Jennifer Walker's biog is well researched, though some of her conclusions are questionable (eg she claims that Elizabeth von Arnim never called herself by that name, but she did until her second marriage). And I agree about the fictionalised versions of husband and friends.
For much of my childhood, I lived in a house with two side porches, both completely smothered in wisteria. The west porch was an open porch with a hanging swing in the middle. On hot summer evenings, we would sit there watching fireflies on the front lawn, or the odd wisteria tendril feeling its way across the gap to the chain holding up the swing--in search of something solid to twist itself around. The east porch had been turned into a sun room. At night, when I practiced the piano, I could look up into the beady eyes of an opossum stretched out across the older branches of wisteria, enjoying the concert. After my last parent died, the house was sold. The new owners immediately tore down 70-year-old vines.
A fascinating read, Ann, thank you. I have read Elizabeth and her German Garden. but that's all of her writing I've read. Of course, I've heard of The Enchanted April but have never read it, and for some reason never realised it was written by her. I will correct that immediately, and Vera also sounds interesting...
I say wistEria, but sometimes I revert to wistAria in writing...
Many thanks, June, and I'm glad you have made the connection between those books. I hadn't realized that 'Elizabeth' was so famous - and that the idyllic German garden she writes about was her fictional escape from a less delightful reality.
In a way, the categorization high brow to low brow is as irrelevant as the spelling of the flower (though to give credit where it's due, if it originated from Wistar, that is obvious). For a flower, like a novel, is a flower by any other name...
That's a great analogy Maria, thank you for your lovely comment. I do get the sense that the Times readers who prefer 'wistaria' might also express a preference for highbrow literature! But as you say a flower (or twining leguminous plant) by any other name, etc.
I read An Enchanted April straight after the author's chilling Vera. It's such a psychological contrast - she had great range. And naturally men were keen to label her writing middlebrow. They do like to keep the ladies in their places.
I have to admit I've steered clear of Vera for that reason, Anna - just reading about von Arnim's marriage to the controlling bully, Lord Russell, is bad enough! It's interesting isn't it, how she so deftly turned the genuinely dark material of her personal life into comedy, just a year or so later. Even Virginia Woolf loved her writing but didn't want to admit it, for fear of seeming middlebrow herself in the eyes of those male writers/ publishers/critics.
My mother was called Vera and some well-meaning friends gave her a beautiful hardback copy of the book for her sixteenth birthday in 1942. I don’t think my mum ever read it (I hope not) so there it sat on my bookshelf as a teenager in the 1960s and we’d wonder exactly who the author was as it was only titled ‘By the author of Elizabeth & Her German Garden.’ I did eventually read it some years ago and I think it still haunts me.
The Enchanted April on the other hand has quite the opposite effect. Read many times and loved more each time.
Thanks for your wonderful comment Grace. I know that Vera is a complex, ambitious novel and considered as one of von Arnim’s best. But sometimes we as readers need more uplifting material!
So pleased you enjoyed it, Paddie! I think there is so much in it to discuss and enjoy. The film can't do all the themes justice, or the wit of von Arnim... I feel amazed at how modern it feels.
Another lovely essay, Ann. I come here to learn and never go away disappointed!
One of my favourite fictional gardens is The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani. I read it as a teenager and it's stayed in my mind. The 1970 film based on the novel by Vittorio De Sica is also beautiful.
I also love the garden scenes in Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin and the many beautiful gardens described in The Tales of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu.
I did. Unusually for me, I listened to the audiobook and I think that made it more memorable. I’m such a fast reader of print that I don’t always concentrate as much as when I have to listen to every word.
(When you mentioned she was a Beauchamp from Sydney, I immediately wondered whether there was a connection with the Beauchamps across the ditch in Wellington NZ. Wikipedia says yes!)
Yes indeed - I think KM was a daughter of EvA's first cousin, and they only met and became close friends in later life. More about their connection soon... and do you happen to know if Beauchamp is pronounced differently in NZ?
Regarding the spelling - a or e- there is a book by a man called Peter Osborne about the garden he created at his home in Hampshire and he was very vociferous and strenuous in his insistence on the A spelling. I enjoyed reading his book. He and his wife enjoyed creating their garden. They would both be passed on now. He was in military intelligence in WW2 and a colleague of Ian Fleming who he says,keeping on the safe side of the Official Secrets Act,came up with lots of flamboyantly outrageous ideas and did put a lot of his wartime observations into Bond. Mr Osborne was some sort of minor baronet and a bit posh but his writing spoke how he was a hands on gardener and totally on a level garden wise with any of us and I don't think he went in for instant makeover style at all.
How interesting! If that was the spelling you had first learned (especially if you knew it was based on Caspar Wistar) it must have been frustrating to see it misspelt. Peter Osborne sounds like a fascinating person who possibly influenced Ian Fleming as well as other gardeners!
That's a beautiful story,much better than the film version that I tried to watch but gave up on. In 2019 I went to Paris,France on my own and with no French language. I was 64 and had very little chance to travel most of my life. It did change my life,my mindset and my life priorities but in subtle ways.
So impressed to hear about your travels, Jane, and I'm pleased that you are also a keen gardener! I am postponing watching the film as I don't want to spoil my impression of the book, which I'm enjoying the audio version of.
Don't watch the film!! Well do,but it's miscast,crass,not true to the book storyline heavily pushing the 'girl power ' schtick and thats just the first 15 minutes after which I packed it in. Just me though probably. It lacked CHARM.
How interesting, and depressingly unsurprising, that this gorgeous novel has been labelled 'middle-brow'... but then the same happened to those other wonderful Elizabeths, Taylor and Jane Howard, so it's in good company... I knew very little about E von Arnim's life so thank you Ann! Fascinating as always.
Thanks Laura for your kind words. Isobel Maddison is very good on the snobbishness around high/middle/lowbrow literature on the interwar era, so I'm going to focus on that aspect soon. I love the fact that the three Elizabeths are finally getting critical respect - it's almost as if because people (women) loved them, therefore they weren't as good. But they have stood the test of time (as has Agatha) and I'm enjoying finding out more about von Arnim's life and times myself.
Might I add Elizabeth Bowen into Team Elizabeth?
You have solved a mystery for me - 'named in honour of Caspar Wistar'! I say wisteria as using the scientific name is easier for work purposes, but I love this explanation - thank you.
For me, wisteria and Venice are tangled up with each other. This year, a friend and I spent four days on the hunt of every wisteria we could find in the city, their scent announcing the presence of the plant before you actually stumble upon the plant itself. Like Bisto kids, we'd follow the fragrance which hangs low in alleys and courtyard, pursuing it until we thought we'd come to yet another dead-end. And then, all of a sudden, there it was - dangling above us, tempting us...
I'm so excited about this book - it's one of my favourites.
While we're on the subject (gosh, I could go on for days about this), many people ask me about their non-flowering 'wisterias' which they bought perhaps a decade ago, and yet there's still no sign of a bloom. The trick is that when you're buying it, wait until flowering season and make sure the plant you buy actually is blooming and has a raceme (cluster) of flowers on it. That way you know you're pretty much guaranteed flowers the following year 🌱
This is fascinating, Jo, would you mind if I shared it? I got side-tracked into a digression about the spelling of wisteria simply because it's such a delicious sense of life intertwining with art, the fact that the Times has stalwartly stuck to a (let's face it) outdated spelling of the word, perhaps because of its famous literary association with von Arnim. (Though that's probably in my fond imagining.) Now I really want to go to Venice for a wisteria-hunting expedition!
of course! And I adore any wisteria rabbit hole…..
And the secret is then in the pruning apparently. We’ve heard advice various, mainly 2/6 ie cut it back in February and June. Ours gets a hard chop back in December and if the frost doesn’t catch it we are usually blessed with a glorious display.
That is a good tip, Grace. Ours is usually a bit underwhelming so I will try that!
How to choose a garden… having visited many in the UK one that stands out is at Godalming, visited in May 2018, the display of Azaleas was stunning, nothing else there but trees, but well worth the visit. I have been extremely slack with not having got very far into Enchanted April, but I do enjoy the book recommendations and all the background conversation.
I am glad to hear about Godalming, Sally, and will add to my list of UK gardens to visit. You must be seeing some nice Italian gardens too, I imagine! Pleased to hear you're enjoying the book conversations.
Our Italy trip was 19 years ago, and the only gardens visited were in Verona and Florence, neither being full of flowers, far more structured, but still beautiful. England on the other hand a totally different kettle of fish. Stowe, Sissinghurst, Wisley, Hidcote, Rosemoor, Eden Project, Kew to name a few. Next year when we come over in Spring I have Great Dixter House and Gardens plus The Onion Garden in London on my list.
Oh I see! Yes I think the garden that von Arnim fell in love with was in the 'English Romantic' style, so it makes sense that there are more of those here in the UK. I hadn't heard of Great Dixter before, but it looks wonderful. Cambridge University Botanic Gardens are wonderful too, as is Madingley Hall's garden hear here.
Great Dixter is stunning and even better…the paving slabs underfoot apparently once paved the streets of central London and were ‘rescued’ and laid there (by Christopher Lloyd?). As we walked around I suddenly thought ‘Virginia Woolf could have walked on these’ and my steps took on a whole new meaning.
I have watched the movie Enchanted April many times. I have never been disaapointed by the charm of their first sight of their landscape and the sunshine after such a rainy and unpleasant arrival. All I know about wisteria/wistaria is that it is very hardy and can thrive for decades.
Thanks for your comment and good point about wisteria, Jeri! We have some thriving in our garden despite getting little attention. I must have seen the BBC adaptation years ago, and look forward to seeing it again. But I am enjoying listening to the novel via audiobook.
I find Elizabeth von Arnim fascinating and wish there was more biographical material on her. I understand that the "Man of Wrath" in Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a lightly fictionalized depiction of her husband, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin.
Yes, it would be good if Hermione Lee considered it! Isobel Maddison's work on the texts is excellent (love everything she says about so-called 'middlebrow' writing) and Jennifer Walker's biog is well researched, though some of her conclusions are questionable (eg she claims that Elizabeth von Arnim never called herself by that name, but she did until her second marriage). And I agree about the fictionalised versions of husband and friends.
For much of my childhood, I lived in a house with two side porches, both completely smothered in wisteria. The west porch was an open porch with a hanging swing in the middle. On hot summer evenings, we would sit there watching fireflies on the front lawn, or the odd wisteria tendril feeling its way across the gap to the chain holding up the swing--in search of something solid to twist itself around. The east porch had been turned into a sun room. At night, when I practiced the piano, I could look up into the beady eyes of an opossum stretched out across the older branches of wisteria, enjoying the concert. After my last parent died, the house was sold. The new owners immediately tore down 70-year-old vines.
That is a beautiful account, Brooks, and I love the curious opossum enjoying the music and the wisteria. What a shame the owners tore it down!
A fascinating read, Ann, thank you. I have read Elizabeth and her German Garden. but that's all of her writing I've read. Of course, I've heard of The Enchanted April but have never read it, and for some reason never realised it was written by her. I will correct that immediately, and Vera also sounds interesting...
I say wistEria, but sometimes I revert to wistAria in writing...
Many thanks, June, and I'm glad you have made the connection between those books. I hadn't realized that 'Elizabeth' was so famous - and that the idyllic German garden she writes about was her fictional escape from a less delightful reality.
I have often thought how lovely it would be to plant up a replica Elizabeth’s German Garden. I’m sure someone somewhere must have done it.
In a way, the categorization high brow to low brow is as irrelevant as the spelling of the flower (though to give credit where it's due, if it originated from Wistar, that is obvious). For a flower, like a novel, is a flower by any other name...
Thank you for a lovely piece!
That's a great analogy Maria, thank you for your lovely comment. I do get the sense that the Times readers who prefer 'wistaria' might also express a preference for highbrow literature! But as you say a flower (or twining leguminous plant) by any other name, etc.
Yes, I can imagine that! I have a soft spot for them!
I read An Enchanted April straight after the author's chilling Vera. It's such a psychological contrast - she had great range. And naturally men were keen to label her writing middlebrow. They do like to keep the ladies in their places.
I have to admit I've steered clear of Vera for that reason, Anna - just reading about von Arnim's marriage to the controlling bully, Lord Russell, is bad enough! It's interesting isn't it, how she so deftly turned the genuinely dark material of her personal life into comedy, just a year or so later. Even Virginia Woolf loved her writing but didn't want to admit it, for fear of seeming middlebrow herself in the eyes of those male writers/ publishers/critics.
My mother was called Vera and some well-meaning friends gave her a beautiful hardback copy of the book for her sixteenth birthday in 1942. I don’t think my mum ever read it (I hope not) so there it sat on my bookshelf as a teenager in the 1960s and we’d wonder exactly who the author was as it was only titled ‘By the author of Elizabeth & Her German Garden.’ I did eventually read it some years ago and I think it still haunts me.
The Enchanted April on the other hand has quite the opposite effect. Read many times and loved more each time.
Thanks for your wonderful comment Grace. I know that Vera is a complex, ambitious novel and considered as one of von Arnim’s best. But sometimes we as readers need more uplifting material!
(SO glad to hear you’re a fan of re-reading The Enchanted April! Me too.)
Listening to the audiobook now, and I’ve been wondering about Elizabeth von Arnim, so thank you for this!
So glad you're listening to the audiobook too, Sarah! The Audible version I have is wonderful. Perfect for rainy walks with my dog.
Loved this, including especially all the Wistaria/Wisteria lexicology. Hope to join the discussion.
Thanks Maria, hope to see you there - I always appreciate your thoughtful input.
I just loved this book ! Read on e-reader but I shall get a print copy if I can and will be recommending to my book club “ladies”
So pleased you enjoyed it, Paddie! I think there is so much in it to discuss and enjoy. The film can't do all the themes justice, or the wit of von Arnim... I feel amazed at how modern it feels.
Another lovely essay, Ann. I come here to learn and never go away disappointed!
One of my favourite fictional gardens is The Garden of the Finzi-Continis by Giorgio Bassani. I read it as a teenager and it's stayed in my mind. The 1970 film based on the novel by Vittorio De Sica is also beautiful.
I also love the garden scenes in Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin and the many beautiful gardens described in The Tales of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu.
Many thanks for such kind words Jeffrey, and also for those wonderful recommendations. Your breadth of reading is very impressive.
I really like the Garden of the Finzi Continis too. And what about the Garden of Evening Mists for another memorable Japanese garden?
Oh, another good suggestion Alison! Did you enjoy that novel?
I did. Unusually for me, I listened to the audiobook and I think that made it more memorable. I’m such a fast reader of print that I don’t always concentrate as much as when I have to listen to every word.
She was Katherine Mansfield's cousin!
(When you mentioned she was a Beauchamp from Sydney, I immediately wondered whether there was a connection with the Beauchamps across the ditch in Wellington NZ. Wikipedia says yes!)
Yes indeed - I think KM was a daughter of EvA's first cousin, and they only met and became close friends in later life. More about their connection soon... and do you happen to know if Beauchamp is pronounced differently in NZ?
Oh right - how interesting! Look forward to hearing more.
In Australia we also say 'Beecham' so I assume it's the same for NZ.
Regarding the spelling - a or e- there is a book by a man called Peter Osborne about the garden he created at his home in Hampshire and he was very vociferous and strenuous in his insistence on the A spelling. I enjoyed reading his book. He and his wife enjoyed creating their garden. They would both be passed on now. He was in military intelligence in WW2 and a colleague of Ian Fleming who he says,keeping on the safe side of the Official Secrets Act,came up with lots of flamboyantly outrageous ideas and did put a lot of his wartime observations into Bond. Mr Osborne was some sort of minor baronet and a bit posh but his writing spoke how he was a hands on gardener and totally on a level garden wise with any of us and I don't think he went in for instant makeover style at all.
How interesting! If that was the spelling you had first learned (especially if you knew it was based on Caspar Wistar) it must have been frustrating to see it misspelt. Peter Osborne sounds like a fascinating person who possibly influenced Ian Fleming as well as other gardeners!
That's a beautiful story,much better than the film version that I tried to watch but gave up on. In 2019 I went to Paris,France on my own and with no French language. I was 64 and had very little chance to travel most of my life. It did change my life,my mindset and my life priorities but in subtle ways.
So impressed to hear about your travels, Jane, and I'm pleased that you are also a keen gardener! I am postponing watching the film as I don't want to spoil my impression of the book, which I'm enjoying the audio version of.
Don't watch the film!! Well do,but it's miscast,crass,not true to the book storyline heavily pushing the 'girl power ' schtick and thats just the first 15 minutes after which I packed it in. Just me though probably. It lacked CHARM.