Elizabeth and Her German Garden | Elizabeth Von Armin #NovinNov

It would be very easy to read this lovely novella about a woman called Elizabeth and her love of gardens, as an autobiography in disguise. At least, it was very easy for me to be led down this particular garden path for quite some time. 

At every turn, Elizabeth and Her German Garden felt biographical. From the diary entry dates, to the very personal, confessional tone.

Eventually, though, I had to confront the facts, that the lovely, audacious Elizabeth, had written a very modern story that combined facts and fiction, in a very fast and loose fashion. Just when you thought you had hold of a certain fact, she would skip away down a different path, throwing your certainty back in your face, with what sometimes felt like unseemly joy!

At first I felt a little cheated.

The facts known about the real Mary Annette (May) von Armin née Beauchamp are pretty basic and it can be very, very tempting to read more of her into her stories that actually exists. For a little while, I believed I had made discoveries about the real May that no previous biographer had ever discovered!

That was when I knew I had completely fallen for the charms and wiles of one Elizabeth von Armin.

Elizabeth, the writer, protected the identity and private life of May, yet happily trawled her feelings and
memories for scenes and vignettes that could be woven into her stories. She wrote about what she knew, and happily made up the rest.

For the second half of the book, I sat back and let myself be thoroughly entertained. I gave up all pretence at trying to tease out the fact from the fiction, the bio from the make believe, and I let the magic of Elizabeth's garden wash over me.

Nassenheide, Pomerania c. 1860

The specific garden she wrote about was the von Armin estate, Nassenheide in Pomerania, where Elizabeth lived and wrote from 1896 until 1908 (they had to sell the estate in 1910 to alleviate the Count's financial problems). In 1911, a recently widowed Elizabeth, moved to Switzerland and the newly built, Chalet Soleil. In 1930 she resettled to Mougins in the south of France, in a house she renamed Mas des Roses. At the beginning of WWII in 1939, she moved to the US, to be closer to her daughter, Liebet. She died in 1941 in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Elizabeth obviously loved her garden and the freedom she felt there. There was a wistful, wishful air to many of the passages and a search for belonging.

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 round me at every step-- it is there that I am 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.

A nostalgia for a more innocent, carefree childhood appeared at times. Was she remembering her childhood years in Sydney, Australia?

Why should I not go and see the place where I was born, and where I lived so long; the place where I was so magnificently happy, so exquisitely wretched, so close to heaven, so near to hell, always either up on a cloud of glory, or down in the depths with the waters of despair closing over my head? Cousins live in it now, distant cousins, loved with the exact measure of love usually bestowed on cousins who reign in one's stead; cousins of practical views, who have dug up the flower-beds and planted cabbages where roses grew; and though through all the years since my father's death I have held my head so high that it hurt, and loftily refused to listen to their repeated suggestions that I should revisit my old home, something in the sad listlessness of the November days sent my spirit back to old times with a persistency that would not be set aside, and I woke from my musings surprised to find myself sick with longing.

I went from entranced, to cheated, to utterly delighted in less than a hundred pages. I wanted the story to be completely true, a proper biography. I wanted to think of Elizabeth rambling around her garden, chasing after her April, May and June babies, and rolling her eyes at the Man of Wrath and his conservative ways.

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

As one would expect from a novella, Elizabeth and Her German Garden is a story with one simple central theme and very little character development. There is no crisis to be resolved or problem to be solved. It's simply a diary of one woman and her love of nature.

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. Give me a garden full of strong, healthy creatures, able to stand roughness and cold without dismally giving in and dying. I never could see that delicacy of constitution is pretty, either in plants or women.

Elizabeth was also very funny, at times sarcastic and a feminist in the making. She obviously baulked at the Prussian way of doing things and found the strict gender roles expected in Germany to be restrictive. (These references in her book may be why she chose not to have the book translated into German!) Yet, it's her lively, playful character that makes this story so captivating, even more so than her descriptions of the garden.

What nonsense it is to talk about the equality of the sexes when the women have the babies!  

"Quite so, my dear," replied the Man of Wrath, smiling condescendingly. 

"You have got to the very root of the matter. Nature, while imposing this agreeable duty on the woman, weakens her and disables her for any serious competition with man. How can a person who is constantly losing a year of the best part of her life compete with a young man who never loses any time at all? He has the brute force, and his last word on any subject could always be his fist."

Elizabeth Jane Howard, in her introduction to the 1985 edition of the book, wrote that while the novella, 'appears to be an ode to nature; within that ode is a determined rebellion.' EvA wanted to do physical work in the garden, she wanted to control the money her writing produced and she wanted to be free from society's desire (as well as her husband's) to produce an heir to the estate.

I wish with all my heart I were a man, for of course the first thing I should do would be to buy a spade and go and garden, and then I should have the delight of doing everything for my flowers with my own hands and need not waste time explaining what I want done to somebody else.

 

I can imagine nothing more uncomfortable than a son-in-law, and besides, I don't think a husband is at all a good thing for a girl to have.

I loved every minute with Elizabeth in her garden.

Three early childhood years does not necessarily make you an Australian (whatever that means) with Australian sensibilities (whatever that means). But Elizabeth and her older siblings were all born in Sydney. As siblings do, they would have constantly retold and shared stories about their Sydney childhood years. The older ones would have talked about their Australian memories over family dinners and in front of their Swiss fire. 

As Gabrielle Carey said in her memoir, Only Happiness Here,

I am not certain that Elizabeth remembered her Australian beginnings but neither am I convinced that she had forgotten them altogether. 

The comments that evolved from that post had a number of bloggers wondering if we could really claim EvA as an Australian and did she even want to be remembered as being Australian. To my mind, she is as Australian, as say, Germaine Greer, Madeleine St John, and Clive James. Their particular feelings about their childhood in Australia are complex and complicated, as are their reasons for leaving, although 'cultural backwater' is a phrase that springs to mind. Elizabeth is also as Australian as J. M. Coetzee, who we now claim as Aussie, since he moved here from South Africa in 2002 (becoming an Australian citizen in 2006). They are all part of the 'Australian, maybe?' team.

Keeping secrets and protecting her privacy was something EvA was well-known for. It would seem that one of her very first secrets was about her place of birth. Perhaps it was this need to keep quiet about her early years in Australia that turned EvA into such a private adult?

Whenever I've travelled overseas (remember when we used to do that?), plaques stating that so-and-so was born here, lived here, died here were everywhere, celebrating their local writers and artists. Australia is not so good at doing this. Even the Sydney Writers Walk around Circular Quay has some rather dubious Sydney connections with the likes of James A Michiner, Charles Darwin and Anthony Trollope, simply because they visited once or wrote a passage in a book about Australia, but no Elizabeth. Why not?

I'm drawing some long bows, when all I really had to do was follow the wikipedia line, that Elizabeth von Armin was an Australian born, British novelist who married a Prussian Count.

My edition of Elizabeth and Her Garden was produced as a Project Gutenberg Australia anniversary edition in 1998.

Biblio File:

• Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898)
• The Solitary Summer (1899)
• April Baby’s Book of Tunes (1900)
• The Benefactress (1901)
• The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen (1904)
• Princess Priscilla’s Fortnight (1905)
• Fräulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther (1907)
• The Caravaners (1909)
• The Pastor’s Wife (1914)
• Christine (1917) (published as Alice Cholmondeley)
• Christopher and Columbus (1919)
• In the Mountains (1920)
• Vera (1921)
• The Enchanted April (1922)
• Love (1925)
• Introduction to Sally (1926)
• Expiation (1929)
• Father (1931)
• The Jasmine Farm (1934)
• All the Dogs of My Life (1936)
• Mr. Skeffington (1940)

#AusReadingMonth2020

#NovellasinNovember

Native: Art & Design With Australian Plants

Native: Art and Design With Australian Plants by Kate Herd and Jela Ivankovic-Waters is one of those gorgeous coffee table books that deserves to be thumbed over and referenced on a regular basis.

Actually it's much more than a mere coffee table book. It's full of delicious, inspiring Australian landscapes and gardens that left me drooling with possibility and anticipation. It has practical advice, plant tips and loads of creative design. It's also a love letter to the Australian environment as Kate and Jela,

'realised the possibilities for using Australian plants has moved beyond the traditional 'bush garden' aesthetic so often associated with natives.'

They believe that the best solution is to use plants indigenous to your local area, but they are not always easy to source or readily available to the average gardener. The next best option then is to focus on Australian natives in general. They require little water and fertiliser, they attract native birds & animals and are often more resilient. Using non-indigenous species to your area may have the added advantage of ensuring a species survival if conditions change in their own native region.

We have presented the information so as to encourage an adventurous approach to our native flora, and celebrate the versatility and creative potential of Australian plants.

They consider design, shape, foliage, shade, colour and texture. They explore different varieties and provide lots of beautiful images of individual plants as well as much larger gardens.

The benefits of pruning are discussed (yippee! I love pruning, but many people believe you shouldn't prune natives).

Sculptor, Tracey Deep is featured as are some of her stunning floral & plant sculptures. One day I hope to have enough time to explore this more creative side of native gardening even more.

With a new native garden of my very own to design and plant out, this book has been a timely and useful inspiration. I definitely want to get more banksias, dianellas. grevilleas, grass trees, granite claw flowers, woolly bush (I have a thing for silvery leaves), kangaroo grass and waratahs into my garden. I love a splash of colour in amongst all that lovely green.

Watch this space!

Native was the winner of the 2018 Indie Book Illustrated Non-Fiction Award.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Before Thomas Thwaites dreamed up the idea of being a GoatMan and before Peter Wohlleben communed with the trees in Germany, Frances Hodgson Burnett gave us the original back to nature, talk with the animals, boy child, Dickon.

Dickon is a kindred spirit to all the creatures that live on the moors. He mothers orphaned lambs and squirrels, talks to the robins and is followed around by a fox cub. He grows the best herbs and vegetables to feed his large family and he has the sunniest, most positive disposition of any human I've ever known!

He is too good to be true.

Mary and Colin are not.

Two more self-indulged, self-involved, selfish children you will not find anywhere.

The Magic of the garden and Dickon's influence changes all that though.

And there you have The Secret Garden in a nutshell.

My lovely Penguin Threads edition was designed by Jillian Tamaki. It's hand-stitched, then sculpt-embossed - front and back - to create a gorgeous tactile, aesthetically pleasing cover. I confess, the cover, ultimately, had more lasting appeal than the story.

The Secret Garden is one of those books I was sure that I had read as a child, but as the years went by I felt less and less certain about this. I knew what the book was about in general, but it didn't feel familiar or known.

Now that I have really and truly read it, I'm pretty sure that this was my first time.

The Indian section at the start and the finding of the garden were vaguely familiar, but I suspect I gave up on the book as a kid at this point. As an adult I loved the descriptions of the moors and the garden coming to life after winter, but as a kid I would have got bogged down by the exuberant and somewhat excessive garden love.

The preachy part of Burnett's voice, I could push into the background as an adult, but as a child, her obvious attempts to tell me how to be a good child got up my nose!

My thoughts and feelings about this book are more ambiguous now.

As an adult I could appreciate Burnett's use of perspective and how this led to her character's developing self-awareness and personal growth.

I thoroughly enjoyed the early sections that read like a homesick homage to English weather and seasons. I loved how she explored the healing nature of nature. I loved learning about 'wuthering' and the Yorkshire moors (a lovely nod to the Bronte's, I thought). The smells and textures and sounds of the moors were described beautifully - she made me want to go a wandering across the heather on the misty morn.

I was pleased to see an unlovely, unlikable, spoilt child as protagonist.

I felt uncomfortable with the racist attitudes towards the Indians, but could accept them as being of their times, reflecting the attitudes and assumptions of Victorian England. I felt a little weird about the miraculous cure of Colin, but of course, the only real malady he suffered from was hypochondria.

Mrs Sowerby, Dickon's mother, was a lovely, warm, generous character, but she also felt too good to be true most of the time. A mother of 12, living on the edge of the Yorkshire moors in grinding poverty being so cheerful and helpful and wholesome? Really?

I very definitely felt that the heavy handed 'magical' parable that the ending morphed into was evangelical and prissy. The only 'magic' involved in this story though, is the magic of mother nature doing her thing in the garden and some children discovering that keeping busy and active is better for you than sitting around bemoaning your aches and pains and only thinking about yourself. I'm not sure how this book has ended up with a magical realism tag in wikipedia.

I have since found out that Burnett embraced the tenets of Christian Science which believes that illness is an illusion that can only be cured by prayers. She also dabbled in the occult after the death of her son, Lionel. We can read The Secret Garden as being a tribute to Lionel and as a way for her to work through her depression and grief.

This explains the strong element of 'healing' via nature and 'beautiful thought', as Burnett called it, throughout the book.

I'm the first to acknowledge that being in nature and thinking positive thoughts are beneficial to one's health and well-being. A lovely story could have been crafted with this idea in mind. Colin's smug Magic lectures at the end could have happily been left out.

How did you find The Secret Garden when you reread as an adult?

Philosophy in the Garden by Damon Young

I first stumbled upon Philosophy in the Garden at the Sydney Writers Festival when Damon Young was part of the panel discussing the merits of Jane Austen.

His book undertakes to highlight "eleven great authors, and the ideas they discovered in parks, yards and pots."

Naturally, one of these great authors is Jane Austen.

Young begins by telling us that JA "looked to her cottage garden for the comforts of perfection." And that her last three books (Mansfield Park, Emma and Persuasion) were written at a small twelve-sided walnut table near the front door of Chawton Cottage. Any time she needed a break from writing, to clear her head or to escape the confines of domestic life, Jane would walk out into the garden to be refreshed.

In fact, Young argues, Jane needed the garden to write. The family move to Bath basically stopped JA from writing for a decade. The shock of the move plus the lack of garden made her lose her voice.

As I've been rereading Mansfield Park, I've been on the look out for garden references to see how they stack up to this idea of the garden as consolation and comfort.

Early on at a dinner with the Grants and Crawford's, Fanny seeks peace and quiet at the window. She is joined by Edmund

"where all that was solemn and soothing, and lovely, appeared in the brilliancy of an unclouded night, and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods. Fanny spoke her feelings. 'Here's harmony!' said she, 'Here's repose! Here's what may leave all painting and all music behind, and what poetry only can attempt to describe. Here's what may tranquilize every care, and lift the heart to rapture! When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene."

After Crawford proposes to Fanny, her uncle advises her to

"go out, the air will do you good; go out for an hour on the gravel, you will have the shrubbery to yourself, and will be better for the air and the exercise."

The visit to Sotherton and the walk around the grounds revealed all the main characters and their key personality traits. Mother Nature brought out their true natures!

Fanny's preference for strolling in the shrubbery to seek solace and comfort also flies in the face of Mrs Norris' need for speed and control. She berates Fanny for going out for a "private walk" without telling her, as she would have asked her to "go as far as my house with some orders for Nanny...which I have since, to my very great inconvenience, been obliged to go and carry myself....It would have made no difference to you, I suppose, whether you had walked in the shrubbery, or gone to my house."

I'm also reminded of how often JA used the great outdoors for some of the major scenes in her earlier work. Elizabeth's muddy walk to visit the ill Jane, the walks around the Collins' place where Mr Darcy proposes to Elizabeth, her visit to Pemeberly with her aunt and uncle, the angry scene with Catherine de Burgh....

Marianne's meeting of Willoughby on a rainy hillside....

I'm sure you can all think of plenty more!