So to cheer me up a bit, I decided to grab Elizabeth von Arnim’s semi-autobiographical novel off my shelf. The trees are bare, and brown seems to be the reigning color. My lilac bushes will likely not bloom when they should. The tulips that during a decent year I am barely accomplished at keeping alive are struggling to show their faces. As I write, the wind continues to howl outside my bedroom window. Second – this damnable weather! We’re already past the midway point in April, yet snow has decided to make an uninvited appearance nearly every day for the last several days. First, my thumb is not the least bit green. There are a few obstacles to doing this right now, however. I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, either in plants or women.”Ī beautiful, verdant garden would be a welcome place to sit with a book right now, while our normal lives are on hold for an indeterminate length of time. Give me a garden full of strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally giving in and dying. “… I don’t love things that will only bear the garden for three or four months in the year and require coaxing and petting for the rest of it. When World War II broke out she permanently took up residence in the United States, where she died in 1941, aged 74. She was a cousin of Katherine Mansfield (whose full name was Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp).Įlizabeth von Arnim spent her old age in London, Switzerland, and on the French Riviera. The marriage ended in disaster, with Elizabeth escaping to the United States and the couple finally agreeing, in 1919, to get a divorce. Von Arnim wrote another 20 books, which were all published 'By the author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden'.Ĭount von Arnim died in 1910, and in 1916 Elizabeth married John Francis Stanley Russell, 2nd Earl Russell, Bertrand Russell's elder brother. In 1898 she started her literary career by publishing Elizabeth and Her German Garden, a semi-autobiographical novel about a rural idyll published anonymously and, as it turned out to be highly successful, reprinted 21 times within the first year. The children's tutors at Nassenheide included E. The couple had five children, four daughters and a son. They married in London but lived in Berlin and eventually moved to the countryside where, in Nassenheide, Pomerania, the von Arnims had their family estate.

She had met von Arnim during an Italian tour with her father. Elizabeth, Countess Russell, was a British novelist and, through marriage, a member of the German nobility, known as Mary Annette Gräfin von Arnim.īorn Mary Annette Beauchamp in Sydney, Australia, she was raised in England and in 1891 married Count Henning August von Arnim, a Prussian aristocrat, and the great-great-great-grandson of King Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia.

Elizabeth and her german garden