The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

 

The Enchanted April, published in 1922, was written by the Australian-born British novelist, Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941). She left Sydney as a young child, moved to London and then to Europe, and never returned to Australia.

The delicate and delicious fragrance of the freesias came in through the door and floated round Mrs. Wilkins's enraptured nostrils. Freesias in London were quite beyond her. Occasionally she went into a shop and asked what they cost, so as just to have an excuse for lifting up a bunch and smelling them, well knowing that it was something awful like a shilling for about three flowers. Here they were everywhere— bursting out of every corner and carpeting the rose beds. Imagine it— having freesias to pick in armfuls if you wanted to, and with glorious sunshine flooding the room, and in your summer frock, and its being only the first of April!

The Enchanted April begins in London where Lottie Wilkins, a young married woman neglected and belittled by her husband, begins a conversation with Rose Arbuthnot, a woman she only knew by sight in their women's club. Rose was also in an unhappy marriage, not that she ever complained. Both women see a small Italian castle advertised in The Times and Lottie screws up her courage to approach Rose to suggest they take it for a month.

Neither of them being big spenders, they decide to find two other ladies to come as well, but when all four of them arrive at their destination, personalities clash and the holiday has all the makings of a great disappointment.

However, the magic of the place works itself into the lives and hearts of all four and by the end of the four weeks of April major changes have taken place. 'Beauty made you love, and love made you beautiful...'

I'd describe this story as a sort of modern fairytale. At first I thought the story was going to involve marriage break-ups and everyone would go off and give up on their marriage partners, but von Arnim crafted a lovely turn around in each woman's life. The author's descriptive writing is beautiful, especially when describing flowers and she made Italy very enticing, especially for an April holiday! This is the first book I've read by this author but it doesn't surprise me that her first book was titled, Elizabeth and Her German Garden and that in real life she created a wonderful garden at her home in France.

How passionately she longed to be important to somebody again...not important as an asset in an organization, but privately important - just to one other person, quite privately, nobody else to know or notice. It didn't seem much to ask in a world so crowded with people, just to have one of them, only one out of all the millions, to oneself. Somebody who needed one, who thought of one, who was eager to come to one - oh, oh how dreadfully one wanted to be precious!

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.