Love by Elizabeth von Arnim (1925)

Love was the second novel I’d read by Elizabeth von Arnim, and along with Edith Wharton, she shot up on my reading radar. Both authors have gotten under my skin with their beautiful literary writing and their sensitive treatment of women’s issues and sometimes difficult themes. In the context of the times in which they lived, they explored subjects that tended to be either avoided or were taboo.

Wharton and von Arnim’s lives overlapped; both were born in the 1860’s and died at age 75 years in 1937 and 1941 respectively. Both belonged to wealthy, upper-class families and spent a good portion of their lives in Europe.

Where Edith Wharton wrote with a good dose of realism, Elizabeth Von Arnim’s writing has a gentler, more subtle tone, almost whimsical at times, and in The Enchanted April and Love, she leaves the reader to imagine the long-term outcomes of her characters’ lives. I didn’t mind this with the first book but it left the ending of Love uncertain and therefore a little unsatisfying. However, it is a memorable story and has lingered with me.

I keep wondering how everything is working out for these fictional characters!

Publisher’s Summary

‘A gentle romance begins innocently enough in the stalls of a London theatre where Catherine is enjoying her ninth and Christopher his thirty-sixth visit to the same play. He is a magnificent young man with flame-coloured hair. She is the sweetest little thing in a hat. There is just one complication: Christopher is 25, while Catherine is just a little bit older. Flattered by the passionate attentions of youth, Catherine, with marriage and motherhood behind her, is at first circumspect, but finally succumbs to her lover’s charms.’

©1925 Elizabeth von Arnim (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Catherine Cumfrit had been married to a much older man and was a widow for twelve years after his death before she met Christopher. She had a 19-year-old daughter, Virginia, who married a man a little older than Catherine herself. He had been waiting for Virginia to come of age for years and snapped her up as soon as she did. They were quite happy together and Virginia was expecting their first child.

Von Arnim contrasts the societal attitudes to both couples and does so with perception and humour, highlighting the obvious hypocrisy where a man could marry a much younger woman and nobody thought twice about it whereas that wasn’t the case if the situation were reversed.

Virginia’s mother-in-law, who was in her 70’s, treated Catherine as if she were the same age as herself, forgetting the fact that Catherine was actually younger than her own middle-aged son.

Beginnings were not suitable, she felt, after a certain age, especially not for women. Mothers of the married, such as herself and Mrs. Cumfrit, should be concerned rather with endings than beginnings.

I enjoyed the ‘omniscient narrator’ aspect of this story where the reader is privy to each character’s thoughts and motives. This worked extremely well, especially in Christopher’s case, and added some very witty and humorous elements.

'The woman has a beak,’ he thought, standing red and tongue-tied before her. ‘She’s a bird of prey. She has got her talons into my Catherine.’

Love explores attitudes to marriage, ageing, and the complexity of family dynamics.

It is poignant in places, especially where Catherine begins to be anxious about looking older than her husband and being taken for his mother. Later in the story when she takes steps to try to regain her youth, I wondered how on earth Elizabeth Arnim would manage to bring the narrative to a conclusion. A novel twist did it.

The book is out of print but is available secondhand. I highly recommend the Audible version narrated flawlessly by Eleanor Bron if you don’t have a copy of the book.

Laughter – one of the most precious of God’s gifts; the very salt, the very light, the very fresh air of life; the divine disinfectant, the heavenly purge. Could one ever be real friends with somebody one didn’t laugh with? Of course one couldn’t.

Read Along: For the Children's Sake by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay

I'll be hosting a read along of Susan Schaeffer Macaulay's book, For the Children's Sake on Substack. My first post will be in early June and will cover the Introduction and Chapter 1.

Whether you are a parent, home educator, a teacher, a grandparent, an aunty or uncle, or you have a heart for children, this book will show you how to extend learning to every facet of life. Good and true ideas may be found in many different contexts and this balanced and practical view of education and life will be beneficial whatever your background or beliefs.

For more details see here.

Crooked House (1949) by Agatha Christie

Crooked House is one of Agatha Christie’s special favourites – she said that writing it was pure pleasure and she considered this book one of her best.

I saved it up for years, thinking about it, working it out, saying to myself: ‘one day, when I’ve plenty of time, and want to really enjoy myself- I’ll begin it!’

There is no Poirot or Miss Marple, but there is Charles Hayward, a young man who comes back to England after five years' war service to ask Sophia Leonides, the woman he loves, to marry him. But a problem arises. Sophia’s rich grandfather, Aristides, dies suddenly and his doctor suspects poison. With the whole household under a cloud, she will not accept Charles’ offer of marriage until the situation is resolved. If it ever can be.

Charles’ father is none other than Assistant Commissioner for Scotland Yard. The Leonides case, being under his jurisdiction, he suggests that Charles get information from the ‘inside’ – with Sophia’s full knowledge, of course. And so Charles is introduced to the family and ends up doing some detecting on the side.

I’d always taken a certain amount of interest in my father’s police work, but nothing had prepared me for the moment when I should come to take a direct and personal interest in it.

Crooked House is a clever story with a very surprising and unsettling end! Agatha Christie displays some psychological leanings in this book – the influence of hereditary being one:

Most people can deal with one weakness – but they mightn’t be able to deal with two weaknesses of a different kind.

Charles asks his father if there is a ‘common denominator’ of murderers and he replies,

‘Yes, I’ve never met a murderer who wasn’t vain…It’s their vanity that leads to their undoing, nine times out of ten.’

Josephine Tey’s Inspector Grant made the same observation about the vanity of murderers in The Singing Sands and The Franchise Affair.

A Daughter of the Land by Gene Stratton Porter

 A Daughter of the Land was published in 1918. It’s a little different – you might say darker – than some of her other novels and doesn’t seem to be as well-loved as some of her other books. It is less sentimental than Freckles or Girl of the Limberlost, and its protagonist, Kate Bates, isn’t as romanticised as some of Porter’s other female characters. She blunders through life and makes some unwise decisions. Kate learned the hard way. She was impulsive and headstrong; her upbringing had left her unprepared to navigate life outside of her own family. Despite her flawed character, I liked the realism of the story with its sharper view of life and how Kate’s character developed during the course of the story. 

‘I don’t know what life has been doing to you, Katie, but Lord! it has made a fine woman of you.’

Kate was the youngest child in a large family. She wanted to teach as her older sisters had done, but her mother wanted her to stay at home and help her with the farm work. Her father had always driven himself and his family like slaves and her mother went along with what he wanted. He was the richest farmer in the county, land was his one and only God. But he refused to hire help, keeping his sons as ever-ready help by promising them two hundred acres of land each with a house and some stock while keeping the deeds to their land under lock and key. His sons were under his authority and in his power. The women of the family were,

‘…to work and to bear children…Put them at the first job when they are born, and at the second at eighteen, and keep them hard at it.‘

Kate is the only one who rebelled against this and left home, taking ‘the wings of the morning,’ – Opportunity.

‘Home hasn’t been so overly pleasant. It has been a small, dark, cramped house, dingy and hot, when it might have been big, airy, and comfortable, well furnished and pretty as Father’s means would allow, and as all the neighbours always criticise him for not having it; it’s meant hard work…’

Gene Stratton Porter, besides being an author, was an amateur naturalist and this shows in her writing. Kate was drawn to the land and was tireless and hardworking. In many ways she was selfless and took the hard road,

‘…when one turns mental surgeon and operates on the ugly spots in one’s disposition, there is no anaesthetic, nor is the work done with skilful hands, so the wounds are numerous and leave ugly scars; but Kate was ruthless.’

In other ways she was thoughtless and willful and had to live with the consequences of decisions she made in ignorance or impetuosity. But she did learn and observed that,

‘It really seems as if failure and hardship make more of a human being of folks than success.’

This is a book I’ve had for a while, so I’m pleased that my book club chose it this month and pushed me to read it. I haven’t read anything by Gene Stratton Porter for some time and I liked this one, partly because it was a little different from some of her others, but mostly because it explored how adversity made a woman out of an ignorant and headstrong girl. A redemptive and realistic story.

I’ve linked to where you can get my copy of the book, which is published by Norilana Books. I have a few of their publications and I like the print and the covers, but there are the occasional typos. They are also more expensive than when I bought mine years ago. Porter’s books are free online.

Linking to TBR 24 in ’24 at Rose City Reader.

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