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Elizabeth of the German Garden: A Literary Journey
Jennifer Walker’s recent biography of the author Elizabeth von Arnim (1866 – 1941) provides a fascinating and comprehensive introduction to this writer and her entertaining novels. Her first best-selling work of fiction, Elizabeth and her German Garden (1898), launched a long and distinguished writing career. Writing as ‘Elizabeth’, she immediately became a literary celebrity and went on to publish twenty more eagerly anticipated novels. With their unique humour and brand of rebellious feminism, these won high critical praise and gained a wide readership across the world. Known today as Elizabeth von Arnim, this author’s most famous novel now is probably The Enchanted April (1922), but modern readers will appreciate the lively approach and relevance of all her work. This biography delves into the character of the remarkable woman whose life story provided much of the material and inspiration for her fiction. Born Mary Annette Beauchamp in Sydney, Australia, she was brought up in London. A talented musician, she married the much older Prussian Count Henning von Arnim and whilst living an isolated married life in Pomerania, began writing novels with professional determination and ability, astounding critics and engaging with her many readers across the world. Her novels address many issues of female life and also encourage readers to join their skilful author in her search for joy in nature and happiness. In this meticulously researched biography, we read of her many close friends and admirers, which include H G Wells and other well-known authors of the day as well as a much younger lover. Her deep friendship with her younger cousin Katherine Mansfield is highlighted, and her escape from a disastrous second marriage to Lord Francis Russell (older brother of Bertrand) described. We find how Elizabeth, always acutely aware of Anglo-German tensions, was twice forced to abandon her home before advancing German armies in Europe. This biography offers the modern reader a fresh perspective on the life and work of this author who despite personal difficulties and tragedy, became one of the most fascinating personalities of the early twentieth century’s literary history.
- GenresBiography
482 pages, Hardcover
First published September 27, 2013
About the author
Jennifer Walker
72 books9 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 31, 2013
I was struck, reading this biography, by the number of parallels between ‘Elizabeth’ von Arnim and her cousin Katherine Mansfield. Both were writers, both lived in permanent exile, and both struggled with questions of identity and belonging. ‘Elizabeth’ was born in Australia to an English father and an Australian mother, christened Mary Beachamp, and brought to England at the age of three, but her father had a habit of wandering around Europe, so she saw quite a bit of Italy, France and Switzerland during her childhood. Like Katherine Mansfield, Mary Beauchamp was a musical prodigy, she played the piano and the organ to high professional standards. She studied at the Royal College of Music and, on a visit to Italy, played for Liszt’s daughter Cosima Wagner.
It was here that she met the German Graf (Count) Henning von Arnim who made love to her on top of the Duomo in Florence. She married him without realising what her life as a member of the ‘Junker’ nobility in Germany would entail, and the level of rigid formality did not suit her temperament. With her husband’s encouragement Mary left Berlin for their country estate, where she began to create a garden and a book, as well as another persona for herself. ‘Elizabeth’ was initially a fiction, but eventually she signed her letters with that name - even to her family.
The book, Elizabeth and her German Garden was an unexpected runaway success to the extent that all her subsequent books had the author-line ‘by Elizabeth of the German Garden’. Henning von Arnim features in the book as the ‘Man of Wrath’ - which gives us a glimpse of the state of their marriage. Before the days of contraception, many relationships were ruined by a woman’s fear of pregnancy and childbirth. The ‘April, May and June’ babies feature in Elizabeth’s books, but Mary had five children altogether, a boy and four girls. Two of them were born without the comfort of chloroform, because the Germans didn’t believe in alleviating the suffering of birth. After her first two, difficult, confinements, Mary insisted on having her children in England, but each birth was accompanied by dread, anxiety and depression. She told H.G. Wells later that she only had to think about sex to become pregnant and had had to insist that she and her husband were not in the same house to avoid conceiving again.
Between babies, Mary wrote compulsively. This biography is excellent on the novels that ‘Elizabeth’ produced in regular succession. Henning von Arnim had debts and money troubles (he was arrested at one point) and soon his wife was the major earner of the family - not easy for a German Junker to accept. It put a strain on Mary too. She became a workaholic who sometimes neglected her children. One of her daughters, the inaptly named Felicitas, felt uncared for - packed off to boarding school and denied the opportunity to study music as a punishment for bad behaviour. She died at the age of 16, leaving Mary with a legacy of guilt.
Mary was so committed to her writing that she even took employment as a governess for six months - ‘feeling perhaps that her life lacked the immediate experience of lowly status and poverty’. For another novel, The Caravaners, she went caravanning - a hilarious progression through the west country with members of her family and friends, begging beds in people’s houses whenever possible.
E.M. Forster and Hugh Walpole came to tutor her children. Mary, swapping lives between England and Germany, made friends with many members of the English literary scene, including H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell. When her husband died, she became embroiled in a love affair with Wells, who was married and also involved with another woman at the time. It was all very complicated.
Mary subsequently married Bertrand Russell’s brother, the Earl Russell, giving herself yet another identity. She was now Mary Beauchamp, Elizabeth of the German Garden, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Countess Russell. Author and mother, wife and lover, she had almost as many identities as her cousin Katherine. Their relationship and the links between them, both personal and literary, are very well portrayed in this biography. It also fills many of the gaps left by Karen Usborne’s previous biography.
I sometimes got lost in the discourses on ‘Elizabeth’s’ unfamiliar novels, but they are fully justified in their aim to re-establish Elizabeth’s reputation as an important writer in the first part of the 20th century. Most people know Enchanted April (inspired by a holiday in Portofino) and Elizabeth and her German Garden, but other novels were more controversial contributions to the literature of the period and have long been over-looked.
Mary’s marriage to Francis, Lord Russell, was catastrophic. She knew, even before she married him, that he was controlling and a bully, but she seemed unable to avoid her fate. He locked her in the house, refused to give her a key to the gate and treated her to violent displays of temper. Mary had hoped for a soul-mate, someone who would look after her, but found only a tyrant who wreaked havoc in her life and prevented her from writing. As they both depended on her income (Earl Russell was addicted to Bridge and cocaine) it was essential for her to carry on earning.
It seems incredible now that a strong, independent woman should allow herself to be dominated and bullied in that way. The marriage lasted only a few months before Mary went to New York to visit her daughter Liebet and began the gradual process of detaching herself. Earl Russell sued the removal firm who took away her possessions while he was in London, but Mary had carefully kept all the receipts and an inventory of the items she had brought from her first marriage. There was a hilarious cross-examination about the origins of a hammock. But it could be established in court that everything belonged to her. Despite all this, Mary never sued for divorce and remained ‘Countess Russell’ until the end of her life. Her experiences resulted in a dark novel called Vera, reviewed favourably by Katherine Mansfield.
Mary owned a chalet at Montana in Switzerland, the Chalet Soleil, where she spent many happy months writing and entertaining friends. Katherine Mansfield became her neighbour towards the end of Katherine’s life and the two women were able to build a relationship which, though fraught with misunderstanding, was underpinned by real affection and respect. It was one of Katherine’s regrets that the cousins had ‘missed each other’ earlier in their lives.
Mary was having a love affair with a much younger man, Alexander Freres Reeves, the illegitimate son of one of her friends and the co-editor of Granta. She employed him at first to catalogue her library in order to finance his university studies, but the relationship soon deepened. It was scandalous at the time for a woman to have a much younger lover and ‘Elizabeth’ made it the subject of a controversial novel, Love.
Eventually Mary moved to the south of France, where she created another garden, and her love affair with Freres Reeves gradually burnt itself out as Mary aged. She was by now over sixty and struggling to come to terms with her changing physical appearance. She had a face-lift and wore a curly red wig to conceal her thinning hair. Like Katherine, she tried X-ray treatment, not for tuberculosis, but to reverse the signs of aging. The result was a small tumour beside one eye.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Mary, worrying about the fate of one of her daughters in Germany, went to America to live near another daughter, Liebet. Mary died there in 1941, shortly after publishing her last book - Mr Skeffington - which controversially dealt with anti-semitism and was a big hit in America, where it was made into a film.
This is an excellent biography, giving much-needed consideration to ‘Elizabeth of the German Garden’s’ literary status and shedding light on aspects of Katherine Mansfield’s life too. The wider Beauchamp family formed the context in which Katherine spent her early years. Their views and their prejudices were important influences on the trajectory of her life as well as Elizabeth’s. Also important is the extent to which Katherine may have been influenced by Elizabeth’s achievements. I personally believe that The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen might have been the book that paved the way for the Katherine’s In a German Pension stories. Jennifer Walker’s book is a very welcome addition to the field of Mansfield studies, as well as an absorbing read about a fascinating woman.
[The publisher's sent me a free copy of this book in return for an honest review]
It was here that she met the German Graf (Count) Henning von Arnim who made love to her on top of the Duomo in Florence. She married him without realising what her life as a member of the ‘Junker’ nobility in Germany would entail, and the level of rigid formality did not suit her temperament. With her husband’s encouragement Mary left Berlin for their country estate, where she began to create a garden and a book, as well as another persona for herself. ‘Elizabeth’ was initially a fiction, but eventually she signed her letters with that name - even to her family.
The book, Elizabeth and her German Garden was an unexpected runaway success to the extent that all her subsequent books had the author-line ‘by Elizabeth of the German Garden’. Henning von Arnim features in the book as the ‘Man of Wrath’ - which gives us a glimpse of the state of their marriage. Before the days of contraception, many relationships were ruined by a woman’s fear of pregnancy and childbirth. The ‘April, May and June’ babies feature in Elizabeth’s books, but Mary had five children altogether, a boy and four girls. Two of them were born without the comfort of chloroform, because the Germans didn’t believe in alleviating the suffering of birth. After her first two, difficult, confinements, Mary insisted on having her children in England, but each birth was accompanied by dread, anxiety and depression. She told H.G. Wells later that she only had to think about sex to become pregnant and had had to insist that she and her husband were not in the same house to avoid conceiving again.
Between babies, Mary wrote compulsively. This biography is excellent on the novels that ‘Elizabeth’ produced in regular succession. Henning von Arnim had debts and money troubles (he was arrested at one point) and soon his wife was the major earner of the family - not easy for a German Junker to accept. It put a strain on Mary too. She became a workaholic who sometimes neglected her children. One of her daughters, the inaptly named Felicitas, felt uncared for - packed off to boarding school and denied the opportunity to study music as a punishment for bad behaviour. She died at the age of 16, leaving Mary with a legacy of guilt.
Mary was so committed to her writing that she even took employment as a governess for six months - ‘feeling perhaps that her life lacked the immediate experience of lowly status and poverty’. For another novel, The Caravaners, she went caravanning - a hilarious progression through the west country with members of her family and friends, begging beds in people’s houses whenever possible.
E.M. Forster and Hugh Walpole came to tutor her children. Mary, swapping lives between England and Germany, made friends with many members of the English literary scene, including H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell. When her husband died, she became embroiled in a love affair with Wells, who was married and also involved with another woman at the time. It was all very complicated.
Mary subsequently married Bertrand Russell’s brother, the Earl Russell, giving herself yet another identity. She was now Mary Beauchamp, Elizabeth of the German Garden, Elizabeth von Arnim, and Countess Russell. Author and mother, wife and lover, she had almost as many identities as her cousin Katherine. Their relationship and the links between them, both personal and literary, are very well portrayed in this biography. It also fills many of the gaps left by Karen Usborne’s previous biography.
I sometimes got lost in the discourses on ‘Elizabeth’s’ unfamiliar novels, but they are fully justified in their aim to re-establish Elizabeth’s reputation as an important writer in the first part of the 20th century. Most people know Enchanted April (inspired by a holiday in Portofino) and Elizabeth and her German Garden, but other novels were more controversial contributions to the literature of the period and have long been over-looked.
Mary’s marriage to Francis, Lord Russell, was catastrophic. She knew, even before she married him, that he was controlling and a bully, but she seemed unable to avoid her fate. He locked her in the house, refused to give her a key to the gate and treated her to violent displays of temper. Mary had hoped for a soul-mate, someone who would look after her, but found only a tyrant who wreaked havoc in her life and prevented her from writing. As they both depended on her income (Earl Russell was addicted to Bridge and cocaine) it was essential for her to carry on earning.
It seems incredible now that a strong, independent woman should allow herself to be dominated and bullied in that way. The marriage lasted only a few months before Mary went to New York to visit her daughter Liebet and began the gradual process of detaching herself. Earl Russell sued the removal firm who took away her possessions while he was in London, but Mary had carefully kept all the receipts and an inventory of the items she had brought from her first marriage. There was a hilarious cross-examination about the origins of a hammock. But it could be established in court that everything belonged to her. Despite all this, Mary never sued for divorce and remained ‘Countess Russell’ until the end of her life. Her experiences resulted in a dark novel called Vera, reviewed favourably by Katherine Mansfield.
Mary owned a chalet at Montana in Switzerland, the Chalet Soleil, where she spent many happy months writing and entertaining friends. Katherine Mansfield became her neighbour towards the end of Katherine’s life and the two women were able to build a relationship which, though fraught with misunderstanding, was underpinned by real affection and respect. It was one of Katherine’s regrets that the cousins had ‘missed each other’ earlier in their lives.
Mary was having a love affair with a much younger man, Alexander Freres Reeves, the illegitimate son of one of her friends and the co-editor of Granta. She employed him at first to catalogue her library in order to finance his university studies, but the relationship soon deepened. It was scandalous at the time for a woman to have a much younger lover and ‘Elizabeth’ made it the subject of a controversial novel, Love.
Eventually Mary moved to the south of France, where she created another garden, and her love affair with Freres Reeves gradually burnt itself out as Mary aged. She was by now over sixty and struggling to come to terms with her changing physical appearance. She had a face-lift and wore a curly red wig to conceal her thinning hair. Like Katherine, she tried X-ray treatment, not for tuberculosis, but to reverse the signs of aging. The result was a small tumour beside one eye.
At the outbreak of war in 1939, Mary, worrying about the fate of one of her daughters in Germany, went to America to live near another daughter, Liebet. Mary died there in 1941, shortly after publishing her last book - Mr Skeffington - which controversially dealt with anti-semitism and was a big hit in America, where it was made into a film.
This is an excellent biography, giving much-needed consideration to ‘Elizabeth of the German Garden’s’ literary status and shedding light on aspects of Katherine Mansfield’s life too. The wider Beauchamp family formed the context in which Katherine spent her early years. Their views and their prejudices were important influences on the trajectory of her life as well as Elizabeth’s. Also important is the extent to which Katherine may have been influenced by Elizabeth’s achievements. I personally believe that The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rügen might have been the book that paved the way for the Katherine’s In a German Pension stories. Jennifer Walker’s book is a very welcome addition to the field of Mansfield studies, as well as an absorbing read about a fascinating woman.
[The publisher's sent me a free copy of this book in return for an honest review]
Shelved as 'wishlist-b'
November 19, 2020********************************
*Only Happiness Here: In Search of Elizabeth von Arnim TBR by Gabrielle Carey
*Elizabeth of the German Garden: A Literary Journey TBR by Jennifer Walker
*Only Happiness Here: In Search of Elizabeth von Arnim TBR by Gabrielle Carey
*Elizabeth of the German Garden: A Literary Journey TBR by Jennifer Walker
October 5, 2017
Walker's biography is lovely and thorough. I adore Elizabeth and Her German Garden and have for years included it in my talks on garden-friendly fiction. Elizabeth has a wry sense of humor which makes her fiction spectacularly entertaining. Her tongue in cheek reflections flow effortlessly through her stories. This well-documented biography sheds light on the woman behind the tales. It's compelling to read and filled with personal anecdotes from the voluminous collection of letters left behind. Walker has definitely made the case that Elizabeth deserves more literary attention. Her life and her work touch on all the issues of the twentieth century - women's, political, relationship and belonging. In fact, her long life chronicles the changes in how these issues are viewed. She was in some ways a woman of her time and station but also a woman ahead of her time.
August 11, 2024
I was hesitant to read this biography because it is very long. But it read easily and now I am mourning Elizabeth at the end. Or rather, mourning Mary because Elizabeth was the author but Mary was the woman behind the author. Her life was tragic in many ways with two marriages and lovers that did not make her happy. According to Walker, her joy was in nature and her dogs--and her daughters. There is a theme of conflict between being English and living in Germany. And worry about family in Germany.
There was more about her novels than I cared to read--just I don't think I want to read any of them except to reread Enchanted April. The others seem to have heavier themes of relationships between men and women.
A new edition of Enchanted April is coming out in May 2025.
There was more about her novels than I cared to read--just I don't think I want to read any of them except to reread Enchanted April. The others seem to have heavier themes of relationships between men and women.
A new edition of Enchanted April is coming out in May 2025.
March 23, 2024
A fascinating read about a fascinating woman
This biography enchanted me. Beautifully written and deeply researched. Elizabeth is one of my favourite authors and I am so pleased to know her story. It will enhance the pleasure of reading her books a good deal.
This biography enchanted me. Beautifully written and deeply researched. Elizabeth is one of my favourite authors and I am so pleased to know her story. It will enhance the pleasure of reading her books a good deal.
September 29, 2016
Elizabeth of the German Garden is ‘really the story of Mary Beauchamp, the woman behind the mask, who would spend the rest of her life struggling to forge her own identity and follow an independent path… a woman who enjoyed the company of E.M. Forster, Hugh Walpole, H.G. Wells, her cousin Katherine Mansfield and Bertrand Russell’. In it, Walker has attempted to shed ‘new light on this much loved but until recently somewhat forgotten literary force’. As well as outlining the major events in Mary Beauchamp’s life, she has also referred to a wealth of letters and diary entries by those who range from Mary’s closest family members to her dearest friends. In her Author’s Note, Walker states that in the following text, she ‘will show that Mary assumed an identity parallel with, but not identical to, her own when she wrote. Elizabeth was not a pen-name but another creation: one who existed in the imagination of Mary’.
Elizabeth of the German Garden is split into eight separate sections, ranging from ‘Perspectives on Europe’ and ‘Morality Tales’ to ‘The Paradise Garden’ and ‘An Established Author’. She begins her work on Mary’s life with the Beauchamp family’s emigration from Australia to England, her father’s home country, in 1870, when she was just three years old. As well as placing focus upon Mary herself, Walker thoughtfully considers her wider family and home life. She writes about Mary’s four brothers and one sister, all older than her, and the lives which they made for themselves. She also includes many details about every considerable aspect of Mary’s life – her schooling, her love of horticulture, her ‘spiritual life’, the Victorian prejudices which rallied against her, her time at the Royal College of Music where she played the organ, her travels around Europe, her mother’s troubles, and her loathing of anti-Semitism, amongst many others. The book follows the span of her entire life, encompassing her life as a German Countess and as a mother and grandmother, as well as a companion and lover.
The only negative with this book is that not enough care has been given to the checking of spellings. In several instances, mistakes marr its pages �� Cicely Fairfield, the real name of author Rebecca West, is written as ‘Cicily’, and Rose Macaulay is ‘Macaulay’ at first, and then ‘Macauley’.
Walker’s definite strength is in the parallels she expertly draws between the life of Mary and the characters and storylines which she created. The literary criticism which the author has included strikes a perfect balance between Mary’s life and work. The extracts from Mary’s books serve to further reinforce Walker’s opinions and insights. The entirety of the book is written in such a lovely manner. It is both rich in detail and easy to read. In Elizabeth of the German Garden, Walker has presented a fascinating account of a fascinating woman, who certainly deserves to be admired and cherished by a wider audience. An awful lot of research, work and consideration has clearly gone into this book, and it is sure to delight everyone who has enjoyed one of ‘Elizabeth von Arnim”s novels.
Elizabeth of the German Garden is split into eight separate sections, ranging from ‘Perspectives on Europe’ and ‘Morality Tales’ to ‘The Paradise Garden’ and ‘An Established Author’. She begins her work on Mary’s life with the Beauchamp family’s emigration from Australia to England, her father’s home country, in 1870, when she was just three years old. As well as placing focus upon Mary herself, Walker thoughtfully considers her wider family and home life. She writes about Mary’s four brothers and one sister, all older than her, and the lives which they made for themselves. She also includes many details about every considerable aspect of Mary’s life – her schooling, her love of horticulture, her ‘spiritual life’, the Victorian prejudices which rallied against her, her time at the Royal College of Music where she played the organ, her travels around Europe, her mother’s troubles, and her loathing of anti-Semitism, amongst many others. The book follows the span of her entire life, encompassing her life as a German Countess and as a mother and grandmother, as well as a companion and lover.
The only negative with this book is that not enough care has been given to the checking of spellings. In several instances, mistakes marr its pages �� Cicely Fairfield, the real name of author Rebecca West, is written as ‘Cicily’, and Rose Macaulay is ‘Macaulay’ at first, and then ‘Macauley’.
Walker’s definite strength is in the parallels she expertly draws between the life of Mary and the characters and storylines which she created. The literary criticism which the author has included strikes a perfect balance between Mary’s life and work. The extracts from Mary’s books serve to further reinforce Walker’s opinions and insights. The entirety of the book is written in such a lovely manner. It is both rich in detail and easy to read. In Elizabeth of the German Garden, Walker has presented a fascinating account of a fascinating woman, who certainly deserves to be admired and cherished by a wider audience. An awful lot of research, work and consideration has clearly gone into this book, and it is sure to delight everyone who has enjoyed one of ‘Elizabeth von Arnim”s novels.
October 29, 2013
Jennifer Walker's thorough and meticulous biography brings to life the woman usually known as Elizabeth von Arnim. She was born Mary Annette Beauchamp and, although she married a Prussian nobleman at a young age and lived a life very similar to that of her fictional alter ego Elizabeth, Walker argues that Mary should be appreciated as more than a writer of 'charming' books. Always interested by controversial topics about women's emancipation, or the politics of love and marriage, Mary wrote novels which reflected her own struggles in life. A brilliant evocation of its period, the biography features cameos by many famous figures - from H.G. Wells to E.M. Forster - and makes a compelling case for Mary to be recognised more widely as the creative and challenging writer that she was. It's a passionate book and Walker's enthusiasm for her subject is infectious. Highly recommended for anyone who's enjoyed The Enchanted April, Elizabeth and her German Garden, or any other of 'Elizabeth von Arnim's' books.
To see my full review, please visit my blog:
http://theidlewoman.blogspot.co.uk/20...
To see my full review, please visit my blog:
http://theidlewoman.blogspot.co.uk/20...
May 29, 2019
An excellent biography of Elizabeth!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews