Elizabeth And Her German Garden - Part 1

May you enjoy this reading of the beloved 1898 novel, "Elizabeth and Her German Garden"! This was the debut novel of Marie Annette Beauchamp, better known as Elizabeth Von Armin.

It is a charming, sweet, satirical story of a wife and mother attempting to nurture a flower garden on her husband's old family estate in Germany.

The book is semi-autobiographical in nature...and was in fact published anonymously at first, as the author feared that her husband - a German count - wouldn't approve of the content! The book however proved to be extremely popular, with 20 re-printings in the first year alone and eventually the book was attributed to the author herself!

Transcript

Hello there.

Thank you so much for joining me for this reading of Elizabeth and her German Garden,

Which is a novel from 1898.

It was actually the first book written by Marie-Annette Beauchamp,

Who is better known as Elizabeth von Armen.

It's a satirical story of an English wife and mother who is attempting to nurture a garden on her husband's family estate in Germany.

It's a semi-autobiographical book,

Which was actually published anonymously at first,

Because the author feared that her husband,

A German count,

Would not approve.

However,

It went on to become a huge success,

And she did end up using her name for the work.

So,

Before we begin the story here,

Let's just take a moment to have a nice,

Deep exhale,

Letting go of the day,

Letting go of whichever baggage we might be bringing along with us into this moment.

For right now,

There's nowhere else that we have to be,

And nothing else that we have to be doing.

So we can just relax,

Get ourselves comfortable,

And enjoy the charming story of Elizabeth and her German Garden.

May the 7th.

I love my garden.

I am writing in it now,

In the late afternoon loveliness,

Much interrupted by the mosquitoes and the temptation to look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago in a cold shower.

Two owls are perched near me and are carrying on a long conversation that I enjoy as much as any warbling of nightingales.

The gentleman owl says,

And she answers from her tree a little way off,

Beautifully assenting to and completing her lord's remark,

As becomes a properly constructed German she-owl.

They say the same thing over and over again so emphatically that I think it must be something nasty about me.

But I shall not let myself be frightened away by the sarcasm of owls.

This is less a garden than a wilderness.

No one has lived in the house,

Much less in the garden,

For 25 years,

And it is such a pretty old place that the people who might have lived here and did not,

Deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town,

Must have belonged to that vast number of eyeless and earless persons of whom the world seems chiefly composed.

Noseless too,

Though it does not sound pretty.

But the greater part of my spring happiness is due to the scent of the wet earth and young leaves.

I am always happy out of doors,

Be it understood for indoors there are servants and furniture,

But in quite different ways.

And my spring happiness bears no resemblance to my summer or autumn happiness,

Though it is not more intense.

And there were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy out in my frostbound garden,

In spite of my years and children,

But I did it behind a bush,

Having a due regard for the decencies.

There are so many bird cherries round me,

Great trees with branches sweeping the grass,

And they are so wreathed just now,

With white blossoms and tenderest green,

That the garden looks like a wedding.

I never saw such masses of them,

They seemed to fill the place.

Even across a little stream that bounds the garden on the east,

And right in the middle of the cornfield beyond,

There is an immense one,

A picture of grace and glory,

Against the cold blue of the spring sky.

My garden is surrounded by cornfields and meadows,

And beyond are great stretches of sandy heath and pine forests,

And where the forests leave off,

The bare heath begins again,

But the forests are beautiful in their lofty,

Pink-stemmed vastness.

Far overhead,

The crowns of softest grey-green,

And underfoot,

A bright green wattleberry carpet,

And everywhere,

The breathless silence.

And the bare heaths are beautiful too,

For one can see across them into eternity,

Almost,

And to go out onto them with one's face towards the setting sun,

Is like going into the very presence of God.

In the middle of this plain is the oasis of bird cherries and greenery,

Where I spend my happy days,

And in the middle of the oasis is the grey stone house with many gables,

Where I pass my reluctant nights.

The house is very old,

And has been added to at various times.

It was a convent before the Thirty Years' War,

And the vaulted chapel,

With its brick floor worn by pious peasant knees,

Is now used as a hall.

Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes passed through more than once,

As is duly recorded in archives still preserved,

For we are on what was then the high road between Sweden and Brandenburg,

The unfortunate.

The Lion of the North was no doubt an estimable person,

And acted wholly up to his convictions,

But he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns,

Who were not without convictions of their own,

Sending them out onto the wide,

Empty plain,

To piteously seek some life,

To replace the life of silence here.

From nearly all the windows of the house,

I can look out across the plain,

With no obstacle in the shape of a hill,

Right away to a blue line of distant forest.

And on the west side,

Uninterruptedly to the setting sun,

Nothing but a green,

Rolling plain,

With a sharp edge against the sunset.

I love those west windows better than any others,

And have chosen my bedroom on that side of the house,

So that even times of hair brushing may not be entirely lost.

And the young woman who attends to such matters,

Has been taught to fulfil her duties,

About a mistress recumbent in an easy chair,

Before an open window,

And not to profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time.

This girl is grieved at my habit of living almost in the garden,

And all her ideas as to the sort of life a respectable German lady should lead,

Have got into a sad muddle since she came to me.

The people round about are persuaded that I am,

To put it as kindly as possible,

Exceedingly eccentric.

For the news has travelled that I spend the day out of doors with a book,

Out of doors with a book,

And that no mortal eye has ever yet seen me sew or cook.

But why cook when you can get someone to cook for you?

And as for sewing,

The maids will hem the sheets better and quicker than I could,

And all forms of needlework of the fancy order are inventions of the evil one,

For keeping the foolish from applying their heart to wisdom.

We had been married five years before it struck us that we might as well make use of this place by coming down and living in it.

Those five years were spent in a flat in a town,

And during their whole interminable length I was perfectly miserable,

And perfectly healthy,

Which disposes of the ugly notion that has at times disturbed me that my happiness here is less due to the garden than to a good digestion.

And while we were wasting our lives there,

Here was this dear place,

With dandelions up to the very door,

All the paths grass-grown and completely effaced,

In winter so lonely,

With nobody but the north wind taking the least notice of it,

And in May,

In all those five lovely Mays,

No one to look at the wonderful bird cherries,

And still more wonderful masses of lilacs,

Everything glowing and blowing,

The Virginia creeper madder every year,

Until at last,

In October,

The very roof was wreathed with blood-red tresses,

The owls and the squirrels and all the blessed little birds reigning supreme,

And not a living creature ever entering the empty house.

Except the snakes,

Which got into the habit during those silent years of wriggling up the south wall into the rooms on that side,

Whenever the old housekeeper opened the windows.

All that was here,

Peace and happiness and a reasonable life,

And yet it never struck me to come and live in it.

Looking back,

I am astonished,

And can in no way account for the tardiness of my discovery that here,

In this far-away corner,

Was my kingdom of heaven.

Indeed,

So little did it enter my head to even use the place in summer,

That I submitted to weeks of seaside life with all its horrors every year,

Until at last,

In the early spring of last year,

Having come down for the opening of the village school and wandering out afterwards into the bare and desolate garden,

I don't know what smell of wet earth or rotting leaves brought back my childhood with a rush and all the happy days I had spent in a garden.

Shall I ever forget that day?

It was the beginning of my real life.

My coming of age,

As it were,

And entering into my kingdom.

Early March,

Grey,

Quiet skies and brown,

Quiet earth,

Leafless and sad and lonely enough out there in the damp and silence,

Yet there I stood,

Feeling the same rapture of pure delight in the first breath of spring that I used to as a child,

And the five wasted years fell from me like a cloak and the world was full of hope,

And I vowed myself,

Then and there,

To nature,

And have been happy ever since.

My other half,

Being indulgent,

And with some faint thought perhaps that it might be as well to look after the place,

Consented to live in it,

At any rate,

For a time,

Any rate,

For a time,

Whereupon followed six specially blissful weeks,

From the end of April into June,

During which I was here alone.

Supposed to be superintending the painting and papering,

But,

As a matter of fact,

Only going into the house when the workman had gone out of it.

How happy I was.

I don't remember any time quite so perfect since the days when I was too little to do lessons and was turned out with sugar on my eleven o'clock bread and butter onto a lawn closely strewn with dandelions and daisies.

The sugar on the bread and butter has lost its charm,

But I loved the dandelions and daisies even more passionately now than then,

And never would endure to see them all moan away if I were not certain that in a day or two they would be pushing up their little faces again as jauntily as ever.

During those six weeks I lived in a world of dandelions and delights.

The dandelions carpeted the three lawns.

They used to be lawns,

But have long since blossomed out into meadows filled with every sort of pretty weed,

And under and among the groups of leafless oaks and beeches were blue hepaticas,

White anemones,

Violets and selendynes in sheets.

The selendynes in particular delighted me with their clean,

Happy brightness,

So beautifully trim and newly varnished as though they too had had the painters at work on them.

Then,

When the anemones went,

Came a few stray periwinkles and Solomon's seal,

And all the bird cherries blossomed in a burst.

And then,

Before I had a little got used to the joy of their flowers against the sky,

Came the lilacs.

Masses and masses of them,

In clumps on the grass,

With other shrubs and trees by the side of walks,

And one great continuous bank of them,

Half a mile long,

Right past the west front of the house,

A way down as far as one could see,

Shining glorious against a background of firs.

When that time came,

And when,

Before it was over,

The acacias all blossomed too,

And four great clumps of pale silvery-pink peonies flowered under the south windows,

I felt so absolutely happy and blessed and thankful and grateful that I really cannot describe it.

My days seemed to melt away in a dream of pink and purple peace.

There were only the old housekeeper and her handmaiden in the house,

So that on the plea of not giving too much trouble,

I could indulge what my other half calls my fantaisie déréglée as regards meals,

That is to say,

Meals so simple that they could be brought out to the lilacs on a tray.

And I lived,

I remember,

On salad and bread and tea the whole time.

Sometimes a very tiny pigeon appearing at lunch to save me,

As the old lady thought,

From starvation.

Who but a woman could have stood salad for six weeks,

Even salad sanctified by by the presence and scent of the most gorgeous lilac masses?

I did,

And grew in grace every day,

Though I have never liked it since.

How often now,

Oppressed by the necessity of assisting at three dining room meals daily,

Two of which are conducted by the functionaries held indispensable to a proper maintenance of the family dignity,

And all of which are pervaded by joints of meat,

How often do I think of my salad days,

Forty in number,

And of the blessedness of being alone,

As I was then alone.

And then,

The evenings,

When the workmen had all gone,

And the house was left to emptiness and echoes,

And the old housekeeper had gathered up her rheumatic limbs into her bed,

And my little room in quite another part of the house had been set ready,

How reluctantly I used to leave the friendly frogs and owls,

And with my heart somewhere down in my shoes,

Lock the door to the garden behind me,

And pass through the long series of echoing south rooms full of shadows and ladders and ghostly pails of painter's mess,

And humming a tune to make myself believe I liked it,

Go rather slowly across the brick floored hall,

Up the creaking stairs,

Down the long whitewashed passage,

And with a final rush of panic,

Whisk into my room,

And double lock and bolt the door.

There were no bells in the house,

And I used to take a great dinner bell to bed with me,

So that at least I might be able to make a noise if frightened in the night,

Though what good it would have been,

I don't know,

As there was no one to hear.

The housemaid slept in another little cell opening out of mine,

And we two were the only living creatures in the great empty west wing.

She evidently did not believe in ghosts,

For I could hear how she fell asleep immediately after getting into bed,

Nor do I believe in them,

Mais je les redoute,

As a French lady said,

Who from her books appears to have been strong-minded.

The dinner bell was a great solace.

It was never rung,

But it comforted me to see it on the chair beside my bed,

As my nights were anything but placid.

It was all so strange,

And there were such queer creakings and other noises.

I used to lie awake for hours,

Startled out of light sleep by the cracking of some board,

And listen to the indifferent snores of the girl in the next room.

In the morning,

Of course,

I was as brave as a lion,

And much amused at the cold perspirations of the night before,

But even the nights seem to me now to have been delightful,

And myself,

Like those historic boys who heard a voice in every wind and snatched a fearful joy,

I would gladly shiver through them all over again for the sake of the beautiful purity of the house,

Empty of servants and upholstery.

How pretty the bedrooms looked,

With nothing in them but their cheerful new papers.

Sometimes,

I would go into those that were finished,

And build all sorts of castles in the air about their future and their past,

With the nuns who had lived in them know their little whitewashed cells again,

All gay with delicate flower papers and clean white paint,

And how astonished they would be to see cell number 14 turned into a bathroom,

With a bath big enough to ensure a cleanliness of body equal to their purity of soul.

They would look upon it as a snare of the tempter,

And I know that in my own case I only began to be shocked at the blackness of my nails the day that I began to lose the first whiteness of my soul by falling in love at 15 with the parish organist,

Or rather with the glimpse of surplus and Roman nose and fiery moustache,

Which was all I ever saw of him,

And which I loved to distraction for at least six months,

At the end of which time,

Going out with my governess one day,

I passed him in the street and discovered that his unofficial garb was a frock coat,

Combined with a turndown collar and a bowler hat,

And never loved him anymore.

The first part of that time of blessedness was the most perfect,

For I had not a thought of anything but the peace and beauty all round me.

Then he appeared suddenly,

Who has a right to appear when and how he will,

And rebuked me for never having written,

And when I told him that I had been literally too happy to think of writing,

He seemed to take it as a reflection on himself that I could be happy alone.

I took him round the garden,

Along the new paths I had had made,

And showed him the acacia and lilac glories,

And he said that it was the purest selfishness to enjoy myself when neither he nor the offspring were with me,

And that the lilacs wanted thoroughly pruning.

I tried to appease him by offering him the whole of my salad and toast supper,

Which stood ready at the foot of the little veranda steps when we came back,

But but nothing appeased that man of wrath,

And he said he would go straight back to the neglected family.

So he went,

And the remainder of the precious time was disturbed by twinges of conscience,

To which I am much subject whenever I found myself wanting to jump for joy.

I went to look at the painters every time my feet were for taking me to look at the garden.

I trotted diligently up and down the passages I criticised and suggested and commanded more in one day than I had done in all the rest of the time.

I wrote regularly and sent my love,

Sent my love,

But I could not manage to fret and yearn.

What are you to do if your conscience is clear and your liver in order and the sun is shining?

May the 10th.

I knew nothing whatever last year about gardening,

And this year know very little more,

But I have dawnings of what may be done,

And have at least made one great stride.

From Ipermia to tea roses.

The garden was an absolute wilderness.

It is all round the house,

But the principal part is on the south side and has evidently always been so.

The south front is one storied,

A long series of rooms opening one into the other,

And the walls are covered with Virginia creeper.

There is a little veranda in the middle,

Leading by a flight of rickety wooden steps down into what seems to have been the only spot in the whole place that was ever cared for.

This is a semi-circle cut into the lawn and edged with privet,

And in this semi-circle are 11 beds of different sizes,

Bordered with box and arranged around a sundial,

And the sundial is very venerable and moss-grown and greatly beloved by me.

These beds were the only sign of any attempt at gardening to be seen,

Except a solitary crocus that came up all by itself each spring in the grass,

Not because it wanted to,

But because it could not help it,

And these I had sown with Ipermia,

The whole 11.

Having found a German gardening book,

According to which Ipermia,

In vast quantities,

Was the one thing needful to turn the most hideous desert into a paradise.

Nothing else in that book was recommended with anything like the same warmth,

And being entirely ignorant of the quantity of seed necessary,

I bought 10 pounds of it and had it sown not only in the 11 beds,

But round nearly every tree,

And then waited in great agitation for the promised paradise to appear.

It did not,

And I learned my first lesson.

Luckily,

I had sown two great patches of sweet peas,

Which made me very happy all the summer,

And then there were some sunflowers and a few hollyhocks under the south windows,

With Madonna lilies in between,

But the lilies,

After being transplanted,

Disappeared,

To my great dismay,

For how was I to know it was the way of lilies,

And the hollyhocks turned out to be rather ugly colours,

So that my first summer was decorated and beautified solely by sweet peas.

At present,

We are only just beginning to breathe after the bustle of getting new beds and borders and paths made in time for this summer.

The 11 beds round the sundial are filled with roses,

But I see already that I have made mistakes with some.

As I have not a living soul with whom to hold communion on this,

Or indeed on any matter,

My only way of learning is by making mistakes.

All 11 were to have been carpeted with purple pansies,

But finding that I had not enough and that nobody had any to sell me,

Only six have got their pansies,

The others being sown with with dwarf mignonette.

Two of the 11 are filled with Marie Vanhooter roses,

Two with Viscountess Folkestone,

Two with Lorette Messimy,

One with Souvenir de la Malmaison,

One with Adam and Devoniensis,

Two with Persian yellow and bicolour,

And one big bed behind the sundial with three sorts of red roses,

72 in all,

Duke of Tech,

Chesent Scarlet,

And Prefet de Limbourg.

This bed is,

I am sure,

A mistake,

And several of the others are,

I think,

But of course I must wait and see,

Being such an ignorant person.

Then I have had two long beds made in the grass on either side of the semicircle,

Each sown with mignonette and one filled with Marie Vanhooter and the other with Jules Finger and the Bride,

And in a warm corner under the drawing room windows is a bed of Madame Lambard,

Madame de Wattville,

And Comtesse Risa du Parc.

While farther down the garden,

Sheltered on the north and west by a group of beeches and lilacs,

Is another large bed containing Rubens,

Madame Joseph-Schwarz,

And the Honourable Edith Gifford.

All these roses are dwarf.

I have only two standards in the whole garden,

Two Madame Georges Brouin,

And they look like broomsticks.

How I long for the day when the tea roses open their buds!

Never did I look forward so intensely to anything,

And every day I go the rounds admiring what the dear little things have achieved in the 24 hours in the way of new leaf or increase of lovely red shoot.

The hollyhocks and lilies,

Now flourishing,

Are still under the south windows in a narrow border on the top of a grass slope,

At the foot of which I have sown two long borders of sweet peas facing the rose beds,

So that my roses may have something almost as sweet as themselves to look at until the autumn when everything is to make place for more tea roses.

The path leading away from this semicircle down the garden is bordered with china roses,

White and pink,

With here and there a Persian yellow.

I wish now I had put tea roses there,

And I have misgivings as to the effect of the Persian yellows among the chinas,

For the chinas are such wee little baby things,

And the Persian yellows look as though they intended to be big bushes.

There is not a creature in all this part of the world who could in the least understand with what heart beatings I am looking forward to the flowering of these roses,

And not a German gardening book that does not relegate all tea roses to hothouses,

Imprisoning them for life and depriving them forever of the breath of God.

It was no doubt because I was so ignorant that I rushed in where Teutonic angels fear to tread and made my tea roses face a northern winter,

But they did face it under fir branches and leaves and and not one has suffered,

And they are looking today as happy and as determined to enjoy themselves as any roses I am sure in Europe.

Reviews

This was....such a beautiful reading of EVM that I can scarcely find the words to thank you, much as she felt at the sight of her wild and naturalized estate....I felt the wonder of her words with your expressive voice. Thank you !

I love garden prose… and I loved enchanted April, so I’m very excited about this book, thank you!❤️🙏🏼