Elizabeth And Her German Garden, By E. Von Arnim, Chapter 3

If you enjoyed The Enchanted April, now's the chance to listen to Elizabeth Von Arnim's famous and beautifully written memoir about her garden in Germany. In tonight's chapter, we learn that some of the locals see Elizabeth as so lonely and pitiable for being 'buried' up at the isolated house all winter on her own, that she may at any moment run off with someone unsuitable. Elizabeth of course sees things very differently!

Please also find The Enchanted April narrated by me on Free Tracks.

Transcript

Hello this is mandy here thanks for joining me tonight and welcome back to elizabeth and her german garden by elizabeth von arnim after elizabeth got married she began her life as a member of the prussian aristocracy in berlin three daughters were born in quick succession however her future was changed forever during a visit to the count von arnim's country estate at nassenheide in the spring of 1896 she decided immediately that she would live there with her growing family she had arrived in her german garden and as elizabeth she wrote her first novel it was published by macmillan in 1898 and became an instant bestseller making her a fortune so we've reached chapter three and before i go ahead please feel free to make yourself really comfortable settling down into your chair or your bed relaxing your hands softening your shoulders and loosening your jaw that's great so if you're ready then i shall begin may the 16th the garden is the place i go to for refuge and shelter not the house in the house are duties and annoyances servants to exhort and admonish furniture and meals but out there blessings crowd around me at every step it is there that i'm sorry for the unkindness in me for those selfish thoughts that are so much worse than they feel 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 when i have been vexed i run out to them for comfort and when i have been angry without just cause it is there that i find absolution did ever a woman have so many friends and always the same always ready to welcome me and fill me with cheerful thoughts happy children of a common father why should i their own sister be less content and joyous than they even in a thunderstorm when other people are running into the house i run out of it i do not like thunderstorms they frighten me for hours before they come because i always feel them on the way but it is odd that i should go for shelter to the garden but i feel better there more taken care of more petted when it thunders the april baby says there's dear god scolding the angels again and once when there was a storm in the night she complained loudly and wanted to know why dear god didn't do the scolding in the daytime as she had been so tight asleep they all three speak a wonderful mixture of german and english adulterating the purity of their native tongue by putting in english words in the middle of a german sentence it always reminds me of justice tempered by mercy we have been cow slipping today in a little wood dignified by the name of hirschwald because it is the happy hunting ground of innumerable deer who fights there in the autumn evenings calling each other out to combat with bayings that ring through the silence and send agreeable shivers through the lonely listener i often walk there in september late in the evening and sitting on a fallen tree listen fascinated to their angry cries we made cowslip balls sitting on the grass the babes had never seen such things nor had imagined anything half so sweet the hirschwald is a little open wood of silver birches and springy turf starred with flowers and there is a tiny stream meandering amiably about it and decking itself in june with yellow flags i have dreams of having a little cottage built there with the daisies up to the door and no path of any sort just big enough to hold myself and one baby inside and a purple clematis outside two rooms a bedroom and a kitchen how scared we would be at night and how completely happy by day i know the exact spot where it should stand facing southeast so that we should get all the cheerfulness of the morning and close to the stream so that we might wash our plates among the flags sometimes when in the mood for society we would invite the remaining babies to tea and entertain them with wild strawberries on plates of horse chestnut leaves but no one less innocent and easily pleased than a baby would be permitted to darken the effulgence of our sunny cottage indeed i don't suppose that anybody wiser would care to come wise people want so many things before they can even begin to enjoy themselves and i feel perpetually apologetic when with them for only being able to offer them that which i love best myself apologetic and ashamed of being so easily contented the other day at a dinner party in the nearest town it took us the whole afternoon to get there the women after dinner were curious to know how i had endured the winter cut off from everybody and snowed up sometimes for weeks ah these husbands sighed an ample lady lugubriously shaking her head they shut up their wives because it suits them and don't care what their sufferings are then the others sighed and shook their heads too for the ample lady was a great local potentate and one began to tell how another dreadful husband had brought his young wife into the country and had kept her there concealing her beauty and accomplishments from the public in a most cruel manner and how after spending a certain number of years alternately weeping and producing progeny she had quite lately run away with somebody unspeakable i think it was the footman or the baker or someone of that sort but i am quite happy i began as soon as i could put in a word ah a good little wife making the best of it the female potentate patted my hand but continued to gloomily shake her head you cannot possibly be happy in the winter entirely alone asserted another lady the wife of a high military authority and not accustomed to being contradicted but i am but how can you possibly be at your age no it is not possible but i am your husband ought to bring you to town in the winter but i don't want to be brought to town and not let you waste your best years buried but i like being buried such solitude is not right but i'm not solitary and can come to no good she was getting quite angry there was a chorus of no indeed at her last remark and renewed shaking of heads i enjoyed the winter immensely i persisted when they were a little quieter i slayed and skated and then there were the children and shelves and shelves full of i was going to say books but stopped reading is an occupation for men for women it is a reprehensible waste of time and how could i talk to them of the happiness i felt when the sun shone on the snow or the deep delight of hoarfrost days it is entirely my doing that we have come down here i proceeded and my husband only did it to please me such a good little wife repeated the patronizing potentate again patting my hand with an hour of understanding all about it really an excellent little wife but you must not let your husband have his own way too much my dear and take my advice and insist on his bringing you to town next winter and then they fell to talking about their cooks having settled to their entire satisfaction that my fate was probably lying in wait for me too lurking perhaps at that very moment behind the apparently harmless brass buttons of the man in the hall with my cloak i laughed on the way home and i laughed again for sheer satisfaction when we reached the garden and drove between the quiet trees to the pretty old house and when i went into the library with its four windows open to the moonlight and the scent and looked around at the familiar bookshelves and could hear no sounds but sounds of peace and knew that here i might read or dream or idle exactly as i chose with never a creature to disturb me how grateful i felt to the kindly fate that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my own blessedness and rescued me from a life like that i had just seen a life spent with the odors of other people's dinners in one's nostrils and the noise of their wrangling servants in one's ears and parties and tattle for all amusement but i must confess to having felt sometimes quite crushed when some grand person examining the details of my home through her eyeglass and coolly dissecting all that i so much prize from the convenient distance of the open window has finished up by expressing sympathy with my loneliness and on my protesting that i like it has murmured very modest then i have felt ashamed of the fewness of my wants but only for a moment and only under the withering influence of the eyeglass but after all the owner's spirit is the same spirit as that which dwells in my servants girls whose one idea of happiness is to live in a town where there are others of their own sort with whom to drink beer and dance on sunday afternoons the passion for being forever with one's fellows and the fear of being left for a few hours alone is to me wholly incomprehensible i can entertain myself quite well for weeks together hardly aware except for the pervading peace that i've been alone at all not but what i like to have people staying with me for a few days or even for a few weeks should they be as modest as i am myself and content with simple joys only anyone who comes here and would be happy must have something in him if he be a mere blank creature empty of head and heart he will very probably find it dull i should like my house to be often full if i could find people capable of enjoying themselves they would be welcomed and sped with equal heartiness for truth compels me to confess that although it pleases me to see them come it pleases me just as much to see them go on some very specially divine days like today i have actually longed for someone else to be here to enjoy the beauty with me there has been rain in the night and the whole garden seems to be singing not the untiring birds only but the vigorous plants the happy grass and trees the lilac bushes oh those lilac bushes they are all out today and the garden is drenched with the scent i have brought in armfuls the picking is such a delight and every pot and bowl and tub in the house is filled with purple glory and the servants think there's going to be a party and are extra nimble and i go from room to room gazing at the sweetness and the windows are all flung open so as to join the scent within to the scent without and the servants gradually discover that there is no party and wonder why the house should be filled with flowers for one woman by herself and i long more and more for a kindred spirit it seems so greedy to have so much loveliness to oneself but kindred spirits are so very very rare i might almost as well cry for the moon it is true that my garden is full of friends only they are dumb june the third this is such an out-of-the-way corner of the world that it requires quite unusual energy to get here at all and i am thus delivered from casual callers while on the other hand people i love or people who love me which is much the same thing are not likely to be deterred from coming by the roundabout train journey and the long drive at the end not the least of my many blessings is that we have only one neighbor if you have to have neighbors 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 besides there is always a certainty that either you or the dropper in will say something that would have been better left unsaid and i have a holy horror of gossip and mischief making a woman's tongue is a deadly weapon and the most difficult thing in the world to keep in order and things slip off it with a facility nothing short of appalling at the very moment when it ought to be the most quiet in such cases the only safe course is to talk steadily about cooks and children and to pray that the visit may not be too prolonged for if it is you are lost cooks i have found to be the best of all subjects the most phlegmatic flush into life at the mere word and the joys and sufferings connected with them are experiences common to us all luckily our neighbor and his wife are both busy and charming with a whole troop of flaxen hair little children to keep them occupied besides the business of their large estate our connection is arranged on lines of the most beautiful simplicity i call on her once a year and she returns a call a fortnight later they ask us to dinner in the summer and we ask them to dinner in the winter by strictly keeping to this we avoid all danger of that closer friendship which is only another name for frequent quarrels she is a pattern of what a german country lady should be and is not only a pretty woman but an energetic and practical one and the combination is to say the least effective she is up at daylight superintending the feeding of the stock the butter making the sending off of the milk for sale a thousand things get done while most people are fast asleep and before lazy folk are well at breakfast she is off in her pony carriage to the other farms on the place to rape the mam's elves as the head women are called to poke into every corner lift the lids off the saucepans count the new laid eggs and box if necessary any careless dairy maids ears we are allowed by law to administer slight corporal punishment to our servants it being left entirely to individual taste to decide what slight shall mean and my neighbor really seems to enjoy using this privilege judging from the way she talks about it i would give much to be able to peep through a keyhole and see the dauntless little lady terrible in her wrath and dignity standing on tiptoe to box the ears of some great strapping girl big enough to eat her the making of cheese and butter and sausages excellently well is a work which requires brains and is to my thinking a very admirable form of activity and entirely worthy of the attention of the intelligent that my neighbor is intelligent is at once made evident by the bright alertness of her eyes eyes that nothing escapes and that only gain in prettiness by being used to some good purpose she is a recognized authority for miles around on the mysteries of sausage making the care of calves and the slaughtering of swine and with all her manifold duties and daily prolonged absences from home her children are patterns of health and neatness and of what dear little german children with white pigtails and fearless eyes and thick legs should be who shall say that such a life is sordid and dull and unworthy of a high order of intelligence i protest that to me it is a beautiful life full of wholesome outdoor work and with no room for those listless moments of depression and boredom and of wondering what you will do next that leave wrinkles around a pretty woman's eyes and are not unknown even to the most brilliant but while admiring my neighbor i don't think i shall ever try to follow in her steps my talents not being of the energetic and organizing variety but rather of that order which makes their owner almost lamentably prone to take up a volume of poetry and wander out to where the king cups grow and sitting on a willow trunk beside a little stream forget the very existence of everything but green pastures and still waters and the glad blowing of the wind across the joyous fields and it would make me perfectly wretched to be confronted by ears so refractory as to require boxing to be continued

Reviews

Took multiple listens to make to the end of this chapter! That Elizabeth is a gal after my own heart! I’m quite content to go about many of my days alone, not entirely, but for instance, over 90% of my walks or hikes are solo. Thank you Mandy for bringing us this delightful story!!