Elizabeth And Her German Garden, By E. Von Arnim, Chapter 4

Listen to the latest chapter of Elizabeth von Arnim's beautifully written memoir about (as the title suggests!) her garden in Germany. In tonight's chapter, she is besieged by visitors and berates herself for finding their conversation so tedious. The April baby finds kittens in the woodshed and asks her mother some awkward questions about God's angels.

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

Transcript

Hello, It's Mandy here. Thanks for joining me tonight and welcome back to Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim. As mentioned before the novel Elizabeth and her German Garden became an instant bestseller and made von Arnim a fortune. But over the years she developed her literary career and went on to complete 20 further highly successful novels. As Elizabeth she established an international literary reputation. Her works were usually published with the phrase by the author of Elizabeth and her German Garden as the only guide to their authorship. Her best-loved novel today which I've also serialized on Insight Timer is perhaps The Enchanted April which she wrote in 1922 and which has twice been made into a film. Anyway we've reached chapter four and before I go ahead please feel free to make yourself really comfortable. Settle down into your chair or your bed, Relax your hands, Drop your shoulders and soften your jaw. That's wonderful. So if you're ready then I shall begin. June the 4th. Sometimes callers from a distance invade my solitude and it is on these occasions that I realize how absolutely alone each individual is and how far away from his neighbor. And while they talk generally about babies, Past, Present and to come, I fall to wondering at the vast and impassable distance that separates one's own soul from the soul of the person sitting in the next chair. I am speaking of comparative strangers, People who are forced to stay a certain time by the eccentricities of trains and in whose presence you grope about after common interests and shrink back into your shell on finding that you have none. Then a frost slowly settles down on me and I grow each minute more benumbed and speechless and the babies feel the frost in the air and look vacant and the callers go through the usual form of wondering who they most take after, Generally settling the question by saying that the May baby, Who is the beauty, Is like her father and that the two more or less playing ones are the image of me and this decision, Though I know it of old and I'm sure it is coming, Never fails to depress me as much as if I was hearing it for the first time. The babies are very little and inoffensive and good and it is hard that they should be used as a means of filling up gaps in conversation and their features pulled to pieces one by one and all their weak points noted and criticised while they stand smiling shyly in the operator's face, Their very smile drawing forth comments on the shape of their mouths but after all it doesn't occur very often and they are one of those few interests everyone has in common as everybody seems to have babies. A garden I have discovered is by no means a fruitful topic and it is amazing how few persons really love theirs. They all pretend they do but you can hear by the very tone of their voice what a lukewarm affection it is. About June their interest is at its warmest, Nourished by agreeable supplies of strawberries and roses but on reflection I don't know a single person within 20 miles who really cares for his garden or has discovered the treasures of happiness that are buried in it and are to be found if sought for diligently and if needs be with tears. It is after these rare calls that I experience the only moments of depression from which I ever suffer and then I'm angry at myself, A well-nourished person for allowing even a single precious hour of life to be spoiled by anything so indifferent. That is the worst of being fed enough and clothed enough and warmed enough and of having everything you can reasonably desire. On the least provocation you are made uncomfortable and unhappy by such abstract discomforts as being shut out from a nearer approach to your neighbor's soul which is on the face of it foolish, The probability being that he hasn't got one. The rockets are all out. The gardener in a fit of inspiration put them right along the very front of two borders and I don't know what his feelings can be now that they're all flowering and the plants behind are completely hidden but I've learned another lesson and no future gardener shall be allowed to run riot among my rockets in quite so reckless a fashion. They are charming things as delicate in color as in scent and a bowl of them on my writing table fills the room with fragrance. Single rows however are a mistake. I had masses of them planted in the grass and these show how lovely they can be. A border full of rockets, Mauve and white and nothing else must be beautiful but I don't know how long they last nor what they look like when they have done flowering. This I shall find out in a week or two I suppose. Was ever a would-be gardener left so entirely to his own blunderings? No doubt it would be a gain of years to the garden if I were not forced to learn solely by my failures and if I had some kind creature to tell me when to do things. At present the only flowers in the garden are the rockets, The pansies in the rose beds and two groups of azaleas, Mollusks and pontica. The azaleas have been and still are gorgeous. I only planted them this spring and they almost at once began to flower and the sheltered corner therein looks as though it were filled with every delicate shade. What they will be next year and in succeeding years when the bushes are bigger I can imagine from the way they have begun life. On grey dull days the effect is absolutely startling. Next autumn I shall make a great bank of them in front of a belt of fir trees in rather a gloomy nook. My tea roses are covered with buds which will not open for at least another week so I conclude this is not the sort of climate where they will flower from the very beginning of June to November as they are said to do. July the 11th. There has been no rain since the day before Whitsun Sunday five weeks ago which partly but not entirely accounts for the disappointment my beds have been. The dejected gardener went mad soon after Whitsun tied and had to be sent to an asylum. He took to going about with a spade in one hand and a revolver in the other explaining that he felt safer that way and we bore it quite patiently as becomes civilized beings who respect each other's prejudices until one day when I mildly asked him to tie up a fallen creeper and after he bought the revolver my tones in addressing him were of the mildest and I quite left off reading to him aloud. He turned round looked me straight in the face for the first time since he's been here and said do I look like Graf X a great local celebrity or like a monkey after which there was nothing for it but to get him into an asylum as expeditiously as possible. There was no gardener to be had in his place and I've only just succeeded in getting one so that what with the drought and the neglect and the gardeners madness and my blunders the garden is in a sad condition but even in a sad condition it is the dearest place in all the world and all my mistakes only make me more determined to persevere. The long borders where the Rockets were are looking dreadful the Rockets have done flowering and after the manner of Rockets in other walks of life have degenerated into sticks and nothing else in those borders intends to bloom this summer. The giant poppies I had planted out in them in April have either died off or remained quite small and so have the columbines. Here and there a delphinium droops unwillingly and that is all. I suppose poppies cannot stand being moved and perhaps they were not watered enough at the time of transplanting. Anyhow those borders are going to be sown tomorrow with more poppies for next year. For poppies I will have whether they like it or not and they shall not be touched only thinned out. Well it is no use being grieved and after all directly I come out and sit under the trees and look at the dappled sky and see the sunshine on the cornfields away on the plain. All the disappointment smooths itself out and it seems impossible to be sad and discontented when everything about me is so radiant and kind. Today is Sunday and the garden is so quiet that sitting here in this shady corner watching the lazy shadows stretching themselves across the grass and listening to the rooks quarrelling in the treetops I almost expect to hear English church bells ringing for the afternoon service. But the church is three miles off, Has no bells and no afternoon service. Once a fortnight we go to morning prayer at eleven and sit up in a sort of private box with the room behind, Whither we can retire unobserved when the sermon is too long or our flesh too weak and hear ourselves being prayed for by the black robed parson. In winter the church is bitterly cold, It is not heated and we sit muffled up in more furs than ever we wear out of doors. But it would of course be very wicked for the parson to wear furs, However cold he may be, So he puts on a great many extra coats under his gown and as the winter progresses swells to a prodigious size. We know when spring is coming by the reduction in his figure. The congregation sit at ease while the parson does the praying for them and while they are droning the long drawn out chorales he retires into a little wooden box just big enough to hold him. He does not come out until he thinks we have sung enough, Nor do we stop until his appearance gives us the signal. I have often thought how dreadful it would be if he fell ill in his box and left us to go on singing. I am sure we would never dare to stop, Unauthorised by the church. I asked him once what he did in there, He looked very shocked at such a profane question and made an evasive reply. If it were not for the garden a German Sunday would be a terrible day, But in the garden on that day there is a sigh of relief and more profound peace, Nobody raking or sweeping or fidgeting, Only the little flowers themselves and the whispering trees. I have been much afflicted again lately by visitors, Not stray callers to be got rid of after a due administration of tea and things you were sorry afterwards that you said, But people staying in the house and not to be got rid of at all. All June was lost to me in this way and it was from first to last a radiant month of heat and beauty, But a garden where you meet the people you saw at breakfast and will see again at lunch and dinner is not a place to be happy in. Besides they had a knack of finding out my favourite seats and lounging in them just when I longed to lounge myself and they took books out of the library with them and left them face downwards on the seats all night to get well drenched with dew, Though they might have known that what is meat for roses is poison for books and they gave me to understand that if they had had the arranging of the garden it would have been finished long ago, Whereas I don't believe a garden is ever finished. They have all gone now, Thank heaven, Except one, So I have a little breathing space before others begin to arrive. It seems that the place interests people and that there is a sort of novelty in staying in such a deserted corner of the world, For they were in a perpetual state of mild amusement at being here at all. Irae is the only one left. She is a young woman with a beautiful refined face and her eyes and straight fine eyebrows are particularly lovable. At meals she dips her bread into the salt cellar, Bites a bit off and repeats the process, Though Providence, Taking my shape, Has caused salt spoons to be placed at convenient intervals down the table. She lunched today on beer, Schweinekoteletten and cabbage salad with caraway seeds in it and now I hear her through the open window extemporising touching melodies in her charming cooing voice. She is thin, Frail, Intelligent and lovable, All on the above diet. What better proof can be needed to establish the superiority of the Teuton than the fact that after such meals she can produce such music? Cabbage salad is a horrid invention, But I don't doubt its utility as a means of encouraging thoughtfulness, Nor will I quarrel with it since it results so poetically, Any more than I quarrel with the manure that results in roses and I give it to Irae every day to make her sing. She is the sweetest singer I've ever heard and has a charming trick of making up songs as she goes along. When she begins I go and lean out of the window and look at my little friends out there in the borders while listening to her music and feel full of pleasant sadness and regret. It is so sweet to be sad when one has nothing to be sad about. The April baby came panting up just as I had written that, The others hurrying along behind and with flaming cheeks displayed for my admiration three brand new kittens, Lean and blind, That she was carrying in her pinafore and that had just been found motherless in the woodshed. Look, She cried breathlessly, Such a much. I was glad it was only kittens this time, But she had been months before this afternoon on purpose as she informed me, Sitting herself down on the grass at my feet, To ask about the Lieber Gott, It being Sunday, And her pious little nurse's conversation having run, As it seems, On heaven and angels. Her questions about the dear God are better left unrecorded and I was relieved when she began about the angels. What do they wear for clothes? She asked in her German English. Why, You've seen them in pictures, I answered, In beautiful long dresses and with big white wings. Feathers, She asked, I suppose so, And long dresses, All white and beautiful. Are they girlies? Girls, Yes. Don't boys go into the heaven? Yes, Of course, If they're good. And then what do they wear? Why, The same as all the other angels, I suppose. Dresses? She began to laugh, Looking at me sideways as though she suspected me of making jokes. What a funny mummy, She said, Evidently much amused. She has a fat little laugh that is very infectious. I think, Said I, Gravely, That you had better go and play with the other babies. She didn't answer and sat still a moment watching the clouds. I began writing again. Mummy, She said presently, Well, Where do the angels get their dresses? I hesitated. From dear God, I said. Are there shops in the heaven? Shops? No. But then where does dear God buy their dresses? Now run away like a good baby, I'm busy. But you said yesterday, When I asked about dear God, That you would tell about him on Sunday, And it is Sunday. Tell me a story about him. There was nothing for it but resignation, So I put down my pencil with a sigh. Call the others then. She ran away, And presently they all three emerged from the bushes, One after the other, And tried all together to scramble onto my knee. The April baby got the knee, As she always seems to get everything, And the other two had to sit on the grass. I began about Adam and Eve with an eye to future parsonic probings. The April baby's eyes opened wider and wider, And her face grew redder and redder. I was surprised at the breathless interest she took in the story. The other two were tearing up tufts of grass and hardly listening. I had scarcely got to the angels with the flaming swords, And announced that that was all when she burst out, Now I'll tell about it. Once upon a time there was Adam and Eva, And they had plenty of clothes, And there was no snake, And dear God wasn't angry with them, And they could eat as many apples as they liked, And they were happy forever and ever. There now, She began to jump up and down defiantly on my knee. But that's not the story, I said rather helplessly. Yes, Yes, It's a much nicer one, Now another. But these stories are true, I said severely, And it's no use my telling them if you make them up your own way afterwards. Another, Another, She shrieked, Jumping up and down with redoubled energy, All her silvery curls flying. So I began about Noah and the flood. Did it rain so badly, She asked, With a face of the deepest concern and interest? Yes, All day long, And all night long, For weeks and weeks, And was everybody so wet? Yes, But why didn't they open their umbrellas? Just then I saw the nurse coming out with the tea tray. I'll tell you the rest another time, I said, Putting her off my knee, Greatly relieved. You must all go to Anna now, And have tea. I don't like Anna, Remarked the dune baby, Not having hitherto opened her lips. She is a stupid girl. The other two stood transfixed with horror at this statement, For besides being naturally extremely polite, And at all times anxious not to hurt anyone's feelings, They have been brought up to love and respect their kind little nurse. The April baby recovered her speech first, And lifting her finger, Pointed it at the criminal in just indignation. Such a child will never go into the heaven, She said, With great emphasis, And the heir of one who delivers judgment. To be continued.

Reviews

Bless her! She survived a month of overnight guest and finally gets some peace in her garden! Thank you Mandy!! What will happen next?! ((Adding after finally hearing the end of the chapter: Interesting that she comes across as a very reluctant mother, preferring to be in her magical garden all alone, expecting her babies to be tended to by others.))

Throughout her writings, Elizabeth Von Arnim seems to craft so much detail and emotion into just a few words. She is a brilliant writer and Mandy’s soft and perceptive readings bring the stories to life just as brilliantly. I am so much enjoying settling into the Garden! 🙏 ❤️