Elizabeth and Her German Garden

"To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine. Small Mediaeval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be Let Furnished for the Month of April. Necessary Servants remain. Z, Box 1000, The Times."

For those of you who are of a literary bent (you know who you are), April is “the cruelest month.” For those, however, to whom April is the month of tender shoots bursting through the soil, trees hazy with the first green traces of foliage, and perfumed air trembling with the promise of spring, the more appropriate adjective would be “enchanted.” This distinction brings me to a novel which always seems to infiltrate my senses at this time of year: The Enchanted April, by Elizabeth von Arnim.

The excellent 1992 BBC film version (which, incidentally, will be released on DVD next month) introduced me to this small miracle of a story, but the novel on which it was based contains an even more effortless combination of charm, wit, and sensual feeling for the natural world. The plot is hung on the slenderest of threads. February in London in the 1920s is about as cold, damp, and dreary as this past winter in New York has been. Lotty Wilkins and Rose Arbuthnot--childless women burdened with stifling duties and distant husbands--catch each other reading the above personal notice one miserable afternoon and are seized with the idea of leaving everything behind, including their boorish husbands, for one magical month in Italy. The husbands are not the worst of their species (men fare less well in some of Elizabeth von Arnim’s other fiction), but they are cold and rather remote. Mellersh Wilkins is a man who “produced the impression of keeping copies of everything he said.” Frederick Arbuthnot writes risqué historical novels which are a great embarrassment to his wife, who firmly believes that “No one should write a book God wouldn’t like to read.”  read more »