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    Elizabeth and Her German Garden
    Elizabeth and Her German Garden
    Elizabeth and Her German Garden
    Ebook160 pages3 hours

    Elizabeth and Her German Garden

    By Elizabeth Von Arnim

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    This semi-autobiographical book is about the life of a young English woman who marries an ageing German aristocrat and in the marriage she focuses on her garden and children, at the same time running a country house.
    She also writes down her observations of the stuffy German aristocratic set using her razor sharp wit.
    Von Arnim was a successful author in her time and deserves to be re-discovered, this novel is a gem. In the first year of publication this book was re-printed twenty times. Von Arnim wrote another 20 books that were all published.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAUK Classics
    Release dateJun 15, 2012
    ISBN9781781665206
    Author

    Elizabeth Von Arnim

    Elizabeth von Arnim was born in Australia in 1866 and her family moved to England when she was young. Katherine Mansfield was her cousin and they exchanged letters and reviewed each other’s work. Von Arnim married twice and lived in Berlin, Poland, America, France and Switzerland, where she built a chalet to entertain her circle of literary friends, which included her lover, H. G. Wells. Von Arnim’s first novel, Elizabeth in Her German Garden, was semiautobiographical and a huge success on publication in 1898. The Enchanted April, published in 1922, is her most widely read novel and has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen. She died of influenza in 1941.

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    • 4/5
      "This is less a garden than a wilderness"By sally tarbox on 20 October 2017Format: Audible Audio EditionAn autobiographical account of the author - a rather disconsolate wife of a German aristocrat - the "Man of Wrath" and mother of three small daughters, whose life takes on new meaning when she starts to remodel the overgrown garden of her husband's estate in Pomerania.There are descriptions of her flowers and the joy of being outdoors; amusing accounts of her -often unwelcome- guests and of family life.The author is nonetheless rather irritating. Despite a readiness to speak up and say what she thinks, she complains about her inability to actually do the gardening and that she can merely give orders to the gardeners (why? Surely in 1898 women could plant flowers?!) Despite her readiness to make sarcastic comments about the guests, she (I assume) sacks a governess whom she overhears speaking out of turn.But it's a feel-good book with some lovely descriptions and thoughts on life.
    • 4/5
      Joy in Nature and in a Rebellious SpiritReview of the Vintage Classics reprint edition (2017) of the 1898 original.Elizabeth and her German Garden is a delightful fictionalized story of Elizabeth von Arnim's life in Germany when she was living her first husband, who is portrayed as the "Man of Wrath" in the book. The book isn't just about the gardening either (although Elizabeth manages to drive off 3 gardeners during the course of the book, one of whom apparently goes insane). The 2nd half is dominated with house guests and the somewhat wily and sometimes not-so-serious debates she has with them and her husband. There is a even a picnic in the middle of winter (with the convenience of a sleigh and horses). All in all it is a fascinating portrait of a rebellious spirit in the midst of upper-class life in Europe at the end of the 19th century.I read Elizabeth and her German Garden as part of my subscription to the inaugural "2020 Shakespeare and Company Lost Treasures" selection.
    • 4/5
      This was a lovely seasonal journal to be reading in my fragrant shady lawn on a warm late summer afternoon. Witty, insightful, beautifully descriptive.August 30, 2010
    • 4/5
      A few interesting quotes from the book

      resolutions. —only those who break them make them;

      how grateful I felt to the kindly Fate that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my own blessedness,

      I do sincerely trust that the benediction that is always awaiting me in my garden may by degrees be more deserved, and that I may grow in grace, and patience, and cheerfulness, just like the happy
      flowers I so much love.
    • 1/5
      Short review: What a crock of über-privileged shit!Slightly longer review: I went into this knowing that "Lives of the rich and privileged" is not the genre for me, and after struggling for 30 pages, had this preference resoundingly confirmed. Had there been an element of authorial knowingness about the main character's disdain for her servants, that would have been some kind of redeeming quality, but the reason given for Elizabeth's (both the character and, presumably, the author) dislike of "boxing the maids ears" is not because it is abusive and manifestly wrong in principle, but because she herself would feel "wretched" to have her tranquility disturbed by the necessity of chastising intransigent staff.It's a pity, as behind the aristocratic elitism there seems to be a good story being told about an introverted, socially anxious, bookish woman who prefers the company of nature and children to bourgeois society and men. She's just stuck too far up her own arse for me to keep that in sight.
    • 5/5
      Ein preu?ischer Ehemann, nur der Grimmige genannt, eine beste Freundin, deren wochenlanger Aufenthalt die Freundesbande strapaziert, und eine naseweise Besucherin aus dem zivilisierten England. Sie alle bev?lkern Elizabeths Garten, ihren liebsten Ort, ihre Oase der Ruhe. Meisterhaft erz?hlt Elizabeth von Arnim davon, wie sie den verwilderten Garten ihres preu?ischen Landguts in ein Paradies verwandelt und wie sie trotz unerw?nschter Eindringlinge und st?render Nebendarsteller dem wundersamen Zauber, den der Geruch feuchter Erde und die bl?hende Stille um sie herum verbreiten, immer wieder erliegt.
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed Enchanted April so I thought this book would be good. It wasn't near as good. The plot and dialogue drug on and on with descriptions of flowers and rather boring conversations.
    • 4/5
      Elizabeth And Her German Garden by Elizabeth von Arnim was such a delight. It was my company before bedtime for a few weeks and it was such a gentle, lovely read to send me to sleep. Von Arnim talks quite a bit about her gorgeous garden and her seemingly idyllic, pastoral life in her country house in Germany, of playing with her charming young daughters, bantering with her husband ‘Man of Wrath’, entertaining a not-so-welcome house guest over the holidays. This book was such a gem of a read!
    • 4/5
      I’ve been wanting to read von Arnim for some time and decided to start with this title, her 1898 debut, because it is the one that Crawley House’s Mr. Molesley gave to Anna Smith when he tried to court her during Mr. Bates’ first absence in early season 2 of Downton Abbey.Von Arnim was a young English woman who married an older German Count, and Elizabeth and her German Garden is considered semi-autobiographical. In it, a young wife and mother flees her hated social life in the city to live at one of her husband’s country estates and tend the garden.It’s sensual, witty, and sweet all at once. 4 starsRead this if: you love gardens; or, like me, you just want the thrill of that Downton connection!
    • 4/5
      Gardens. Mine is a work in progress and I spend way too much time looking at seedlings and measuring daily growth and progress. I wonder about my neighbors who have professional firms come in to clip, blow, and mulch all the sameness into perfection. So I could certainly relate to Elizabeth and her escape into her own garden.

      However the big difference is that I can choose when and how much time I will spend in my garden, with my children and on my career. Elizabeth is much more constrained and escapes to the country as to not have to deal with social norms and her husband 'The Man of Wrath'.

      The book is full of her observations and short quips. My favorite: “When I got to the library I came to a standstill, - ah, the dear room, what happy times I have spent in it rummaging amongst the books, making plans for my garden, building castles in the air, writing, dreaming, doing nothing.”

      I can relate.
    • 4/5
      This is a book for book lovers. Whether or not gardening is your thing, if you're even a little bit introverted, you'll identify with Elizabeth's longing for the peaceful solitude of her garden. It's a perfect spot for reading (although leaving your books there overnight is a no-no).My favorite part of the book tells about Elizabeth's uninvited holiday guests. Her friend Irais is the most congenial of Elizabeth's friends and neighbors, and together they entertain themselves at the expense of the unwelcome Minora. (No, this isn't how a hostess should treat her guests, but Minora is so obnoxious that it's hard to see how Elizabeth could have done otherwise!)This book belongs on every book lover's TBR list. It's fairly short and, thanks to Project Gutenberg, is freely available to anyone with Internet access. It's well worth the time and expense.
    • 5/5
      Where I got the book: purchased on Kindle."I do sincerely trust that the benediction that is always awaiting me in my garden may by degrees be more deserved, and that I may grow in grace, and patience, and cheerfulness, just like the happy flowers I so much love."This little gem of a book, the first novel by Elizabeth Von Arnim I had read, both delighted and intrigued me. It is about a woman called Elizabeth who has moved, with her husband and children, to their country estate in a remote part of Germany. Elizabeth dislikes the indoors with its responsibilities, servants and other interruptions, and spends most of the time reading in her garden. She does not actually garden, being a lady; she says on several occasions that she wishes she could just get a spade and dig instead of having to give instructions. I got a very sharp impression of the restrictions on a lady's life in the late 1800s.In describing her garden, Elizabeth gives the reader glimpses of her own past and present, and of her husband (dubbed "the Man of Wrath") and her "babies," her three young daughters. It occurred to me at some point that if Elizabeth Von Arnim had been alive today, this would not have been a novel but a blog, because that's exactly what it resembles. As a novel it really doesn't have a whole lot of structure, but its charm comes precisely from the juxtaposition of the freedom and beauty of the natural world with that of a wealthy aristocrat who cannot escape all of her duties.Elizabeth Von Arnim was evidently a very cosmopolitan woman, and that shows in the novel. In fact, from reading the novel I would have thought her an aristocratic German raised, as many were, by English and French governesses. We tend to forget that the Gilded Age society was extremely well traveled and spoke several languages. But I read in her biographical note that the novel is "semi-autobiographical" and maybe this is one way in which the author distances herself from the text. That's what intrigued me, and if I can find a biography of Von Arnim that untangles truth from fiction, I'll definitely read it.After the initial chapters which are more about the garden than anything else, there is a wonderful November chapter in which Elizabeth returns to her father's house, a train ride away, and deciding not to call upon the cousins who inherited the property (which was entailed, meaning that she lost her father and her home at the same time) wanders around the garden in the damp fog. The episode ends splendidly when she thinks she has encountered her own ghost.Then follows a winter episode where Elizabeth has to entertain two guests, a close friend and a woman foisted upon her. Here we see the more acid, worldly side of Elizabeth, and learn more about the Man of Wrath who has evidently earned his nickname. Even though it could reasonably be claimed that Elizabeth acted very bitchily toward her unwanted guest, I did find myself sympathizing with her. This edition did have a few errors, especially in the rendering of the German words with which Von Arnim liberally sprinkles her prose. Readers who do not know German might want to look for a footnoted edition with translations, or have an electronic translator handy.
    • 5/5
      From what I gather, this book, published in 1898, was a sort of fictionalized memoir or memoir-like novel. Told in diary form from May to April, Elizabeth writes of her garden in the country, her husband (the Man of Wrath), her children (the April, May, and June babies), making sometimes acute and witty observations of both people and circumstances.I was first introduced to Elizabeth von Arnim when I read The Enchanted April in 2009. I found the tale warm and the characters endearing, and determined to read more of her works. I've been following through on that determination ever-so-slowly, but Elizabeth and Her German Garden has rejuvenated that resolution. Every one of her books that I have read (Vera is the other) have been very different from each other, though in both The Enchanted April and Elizabeth and Her German Garden, I most enjoyed her wit and humor. Elizabeth clearly lives as a well-to-do woman, with gardeners to do most of the work for her, and much leisure time, but she also discusses the political state of women in her time. I read a bit slower than usual because I had a hard time with the language of the day - long sentences with multiple semicolons make for slow going. But then a sentence or phrase would stand out for how beautifully she captures a description or sentiment. Though The Enchanted April is still my favorite of her works to date, this book stands as a close second.
    • 4/5
      You know how particular books give you phrases for life? For example, Winnie the Pooh - "elevenses", "horrible heffalumps" or Animal Farm - "All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" and so on. Well, this book has given me "The Man of Wrath". I shall be using this frequently from now on!This was my second gift from my Virago Secret Santa - the lovely Juliette07. What a wise choice. I was a bit nervous about reading this book as I am the world's worst gardener. I have a black thumb - possibly two. Cactus struggle to survive in my garden. Weeds flourish. The sad thing is that I really do love a beautiful garden. I am just bone lazy and would prefer to knit or read. So, I thought, reading about gardening could be a challenge.I was intrigued from the outset that the author, Elizabeth von Arnim, was Australian by birth and born in the very same city of my birth - Sydney - in 1866. She was, however, brought up in England and moved to Pomerania in 1894 with her first husband, Count von Arnim aka the Man of Wrath. This book is the account of her forays into gardening - delighting in experimenting with planting and designing a large estate.This is a slim volume - just over 200 pages - and this particular edition has reasonable size print. All of which is very encouraging for those readers whose eyes are just beginning to require glasses at every turn and who lead hectic lives and read in short bursts on buses or in snatches, before the Man of Wrath discovers them somewhere and delivers yet another lecture with glass of wine in one hand.The book is framed within a year - commencing in May and concluding in April. There are detailed accounts to be sure of the sowing et al and at times I felt the book would benefit either from illustrations or my having a Yates Garden guide beside me, being vastly ignorant of many of the species under discussion. I persevered however and really, in the end, Elizabeth is probably a much more acute observer of the human species, particularly in the second half of the book.This is an account for sure of a woman who leads a privileged life. There are numerous servants and seedlings are ordered in the hundreds. But Elizabeth's observations are always told with tongue firmly in cheek or with a sense that, to many. her life and interests may seem rather odd and unconventional. There are many passages where, despite this being written over 100 years ago, one smiles in recognition, that some things never change. Just substitute your favourite vice (e.g. Librarything) for flower catalogues in the following quote and you will understand what I mean...."I am very busy preparing for Christmas, but have often locked myself up in a room alone, shutting out my unfinished duties, to study the flower catalogues and make my list of seeds and shrubs and trees for the spring. It is a fascinating occupation, and acquires an additional charm when you know you ought to be doing something else, that Christmas is at the door, that children and servants and farm hands depend on you for their pleasure, and that, if you don't see to the decoration of the trees and house and the buying of the presents, nobody else will. The hours fly by shut up with those catalogues and with Duty snarling on the other side of the door." p. 94Elizabeth is a woman who craves and enjoys solitude. At times I felt sorry for a visitor thrust upon her goodwill - the aspirant writer, Minora - whose efforts Elizabeth and her friend Irais, delight in mocking at every turn. But in the end I am forced to admire Elizabeth's own acute observation of her self....a woman not entirely without faults - but ones we all share.....
    • 4/5
      A semi-fictional memoir of a young noble woman, renovating one of her husband's country houses and luxuriating in the gardens surrounding the home. The story is said to be a novel, but it's clear that the diary entries reflect the true thoughts and emotions of the author, Countess Elizabeth von Arnim, if not recording the actual events that happened to her. My feel is that this was an actual memoir written by the precocious Elizabeth, with just tidbits fictionalized to remove any personal stings. Much of the memoir is about Elizabeth's attempts to revive and organize the massive gardens surrounding her home, although there are some passages of domestic life. As she expresses multiple times, Elizabeth feels most at home in nature, and stifled in her house, where the mundane tasks of overseeing house servants, choosing dinner, and running a household make her feel trapped. Generally I wouldn't be too excited about recollections about gardens, but the author brings life to her gardening voyages with witty remarks and self-deprecating humor. Because she cared how her roses would turn out, I cared. I enjoyed watching her garden evolve.What impressed me most about this memoir, though, was Elizabeth herself. She is an independent and forward-thinking woman. She begrudges the fact that she can't work in the garden all by herself (she has to hire a gardener to do the work that she can only plan out), she deplores not being able to get her hands dirty, and she wants to just sit and read without feeling the censure of other women for being too intellectual. She was a modern woman living in not-modern times. So many things we take for granted these days were challenges, if not downright impossible, for women in her time. Yet she resists these limitations, to the fullest extent of her resources, and I loved her for it. With Elizabeth as narrator this was a charming and easy read.
    • 4/5
      Bought 1988?The Virago Group in LibraryThing were having an All Virago, All August challenge and, while I knew I couldn't fit many in, with a heavy proof-reading schedule and a large TBR, I thought I could manage one or two. There was some talk about this one, and I knew I'd liked it when I first read it, so I picked it up to read.I must have bought this soon after its 1988 publication, as it dates from my short - but passionate - phase of covering paperbacks with that sticky-backed, clear film (the one that comes with a square-printed backing sheet). No date of acquisition written in, but I stopped doing this when I went to University in 1989.So, to the book. It was different from how I remembered. Not worse, just different. Elizabeth very clearly and emphatically does NOT do the gardening herself; she's not a man, so she can't wield a spade (honestly, it says that). And the print is quite large and the margins quite large too, so it doesn't last very long in the reading. And some of the sentiments - particularly about how the working class woman is calmed with a good beating, while the middle-to-upper-class woman just gets in a state - while I assume tongue in cheek, were a bit shocking (especially in a Virago book!) But the descriptions of friendship and - of course - gardening are just as lovely as they were the first time I read this, and I have a bit more experience gardening myself, now, which helps.
    • 4/5
      Finished 'Elizabeth and her German garden' recently and found it delightful. It appears, from reading the introduction, to be autobiographical as it is the musings and thoughts of Elizabeth von Arnim about her garden over a year, with the odd bits of life interspersed! It is very witty and some of the descriptions are just lovely but there are also some insightful comments on the frustrations of being a woman at that place and time. The way Elizabeth stops herself from telling the society ladies about spending her time reading books made me laugh but it was also quite sad that it was not seen as the 'done thing'!
    • 4/5
      I'd always heard of this book but never read it. I finally found a copy and really enjoyed it. Elizabeth's description of her life as the wife of a German aristocrat is fascinating. It's a great look into a world long gone.
    • 4/5
      Elizabeth von Armin's autobiographical novel, Elizabeth and her German Garden is a light and breezy account of one year at a rural German estate. Elizabeth has convinced her husband, known only as The Man of Wrath, to move to a remote former nunnery with a neglected garden. Elizabeth feels most at piece in the garden, and will spend entire days (summer or winter) reading, eating and daydreaming outside. This little novel has a very slight story - after what I would consider a long introduction, a friend, Irais, comes to visit for Christmas. At the same time, the English daughter of a friend of a friend - Minora - also comes to stay for the holidays. Minora is rather unwelcome, and becomes even more so as her personality emerges. About half the book is about the 2 month period in which Elizabeth and Irais (along with a cameo by The Man of Wrath) rather make fun of Minora and her pretensions.Other than the Christmas activities, the book is mainly a recording of Elizabeth's mostly tongue-in-cheek observations about marriage, other women, rural and city life and servants. Von Armin seems to only be serious when she is writing about her beloved garden. As a gardener myself, and as someone who knows a bit about garden history, I know that what Elizabeth envisions and designs for her German garden - a naturalistic riot of plants and colors in borders - is ahead of its time (and even a bit ahead of Gertrude Jekyll). There are a few points in the book where Elizabeth notes the division between her vision for the garden and her acquaintance's expectations for formal bedding plots. I won't go into too many of the details for the non-gardener's sake, but this echoes Elizabeth's differing point of view about the role of women in this rural German society as well.One of the main things that bothered me was von Armin's view of servants. Because so much of the books was seemingly satiric, it was difficult to know if she was making a subtle point or if she really felt that way. I think this also highlights one way in which this is a very old-fashioned text. Von Armin seems to be using a tactic common to proto-feminist writers of the late 19th century - show the female characters as rather satiric, agreeing with the common views of the day but undercutting them at the same time. As a reader in the early 21st century, while I understand why women wrote in this way at that time, I also find the style to be extremely dated and sometimes hard to "read around." It's interesting how quickly so many early feminist texts (if one can call this that) become historical documents rather than living texts. I'm not sure Elizabeth and her German Garden completely crosses over into the historical, mainly because she so obviously and non-ironically loves her garden and the natural world. These passages, for me, were the most refreshing and alive portions of the book.
    • 5/5
      "I see a time coming when the passion for my garden will have taken such a hold on me that I shall not only entirely cease buying more clothes, but begin to sell those that I already have." (p. 154)This is a delightful autobiographical novel set at a German country house. Elizabeth, the mother of three young girls, convinced her German husband to live in this house instead of in the city, and set about developing the garden. Her joy and humor illuminate every page. Her husband, who early on chastises her for not writing to him while he is away, is called simply "the Man of Wrath," and her children are called "April baby," "May baby," and "June baby" according to the month they were born (three years in a row, I might add!) While Elizabeth's joy in gardening is evident, so is her frustration at being a woman at the beginning of the 20th century. She pokes fun at her husband's superior attitude, but there is also a lengthy scene in which he discusses women's place and at this point, her anger is evident. The novel takes place over a year's time, in which she discusses both gardening and family life. At Christmastime, Elizabeth has two visitors: one, a dear friend and the other, a student she was asked to take in over the holidays. The interactions among the three women, and the ways in which houseguests can grow tiresome, are all brilliantly portrayed.As was common for women of that time, Elizabeth von Arnim published this book anonymously. Subsequent books were published "by the author of Elizabeth and her German Garden," and also "by Elizabeth." This book is a perfect example of why Virago Press publishes the Virago Modern Classics: to bring to life the excellent work of women who were overlooked during their day.
    • 5/5
      I love this book, but i've only given it 4 and a half stars because I'm not sure it would have universal appeal. It's very gentle and thoughtful. I would love to have written this book.

    Book preview

    Elizabeth and Her German Garden - Elizabeth Von Arnim

    purchaser.

    May 7th.

    I love my garden. I am writing in it now in the late afternoon loveliness, much interrupted by the mosquitoes and the temptation to look at all the glories of the new green leaves washed half an hour ago in a cold shower. Two owls are perched near me, and are carrying on a long conversation that I enjoy as much as any warbling of nightingales. The gentleman owl says [[musical notes occur here in the printed text]], and she answers from her tree a little way off, [[musical notes]], beautifully assenting to and completing her lord's remark, as becomes a properly constructed German she-owl. They say the same thing over and over again so emphatically that I think it must be something nasty about me; but I shall not let myself be frightened away by the sarcasm of owls.

    This is less a garden than a wilderness. No one has lived in the house, much less in the garden, for twenty-five years, and it is such a pretty old place that the people who might have lived here and did not, deliberately preferring the horrors of a flat in a town, must have belonged to that vast number of eyeless and earless persons of whom the world seems chiefly composed. Noseless too, though it does not sound pretty; but the greater part of my spring happiness is due to the scent of the wet earth and young leaves.

    I am always happy (out of doors be it understood, for indoors there are servants and furniture) but in quite different ways, and my spring happiness bears no resemblance to my summer or autumn happiness, though it is not more intense, and there were days last winter when I danced for sheer joy out in my frost-bound garden, in spite of my years and children. But I did it behind a bush, having a due regard for the decencies.

    There are so many bird-cherries round me, great trees with branches sweeping the grass, and they are so wreathed just now with white blossoms and tenderest green that the garden looks like a wedding. I never saw such masses of them; they seemed to fill the place. Even across a little stream that bounds the garden on the east, and right in the middle of the cornfield beyond, there is an immense one, a picture of grace and glory against the cold blue of the spring sky.

    My garden is surrounded by cornfields and meadows, and beyond are great stretches of sandy heath and pine forests, and where the forests leave off the bare heath begins again; but the forests are beautiful in their lofty, pink-stemmed vastness, far overhead the crowns of softest gray-green, and underfoot a bright green wortleberry carpet, and everywhere the breathless silence; and the bare heaths are beautiful too, for one can see across them into eternity almost, and to go out on to them with one's face towards the setting sun is like going into the very presence of God.

    In the middle of this plain is the oasis of birdcherries and greenery where I spend my happy days, and in the middle of the oasis is the gray stone house with many gables where I pass my reluctant nights. The house is very old, and has been added to at various times. It was a convent before the Thirty Years' War, and the vaulted chapel, with its brick floor worn by pious peasant knees, is now used as a hall. Gustavus Adolphus and his Swedes passed through more than once, as is duly recorded in archives still preserved, for we are on what was then the high-road between Sweden and Brandenburg the unfortunate. The Lion of the North was no doubt an estimable person and acted wholly up to his convictions, but he must have sadly upset the peaceful nuns, who were not without convictions of their own, sending them out on to the wide, empty plain to piteously seek some life to replace the life of silence here.

    From nearly all the windows of the house I can look out across the plain, with no obstacle in the shape of a hill, right away to a blue line of distant forest, and on the west side uninterruptedly to the setting sun - nothing but a green, rolling plain, with a sharp edge against the sunset. I love those west windows better than any others, and have chosen my bedroom on that side of the house so that even times of hair-brushing may not be entirely lost, and the young woman who attends to such matters has been taught to fulfil her duties about a mistress recumbent in an easychair before an open window, and not to profane with chatter that sweet and solemn time. This girl is grieved at my habit of living almost in the garden, and all her ideas as to the sort of life a respectable German lady should lead have got into a sad muddle since she came to me. 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. But why cook when you can get some one to cook for you? And as for sewing, the maids will hem the sheets better and quicker than I could, and all forms of needlework of the fancy order are inventions of the evil one for keeping the foolish from applying their heart to wisdom.

    We had been married five years before it struck us that we might as well make use of this place by coming down and living in it. Those five years were spent in a flat in a town, and during their whole interminable length I was perfectly miserable and perfectly healthy, which disposes of the ugly notion that has at times disturbed me that my happiness here is less due to the garden than to a good digestion. And while we were wasting our lives there, here was this dear place with dandelions up to the very door, all the paths grass-grown and completely effaced, in winter so lonely, with nobody but the north wind taking the least notice of it, and in May - in all those five lovely Mays - no one to look at the wonderful bird-cherries and still more wonderful masses of lilacs, everything glowing and blowing, the virginia creeper madder every year, until at last, in October, the very roof was wreathed with blood-red tresses, the owls and the squirrels and all the blessed little birds reigning supreme, and not a living creature ever entering the empty house except the snakes, which got into the habit during those silent years of wriggling up the south wall into the rooms on that side whenever the old housekeeper opened the windows. All that was here, - peace, and happiness, and a reasonable life, - and yet it never struck me to come and live in it. Looking back I am astonished, and can in no way account for the tardiness of my discovery that here, in this far-away corner, was my kingdom of heaven. Indeed, so little did it enter my head to even use the place in summer, that I submitted to weeks of seaside life with all its horrors every year; until at last, in the early spring of last year, having come down for the opening of the village school, and wandering out afterwards into the bare and desolate garden, I don't know what smell of wet earth or rotting leaves brought back my childhood with a rush and all the happy days I had spent in a garden. Shall I ever forget that day? It was the beginning of my real life, my coming of age as it were, and entering into my kingdom. Early March, gray, quiet skies, and brown, quiet earth; leafless and sad and lonely enough out there in the damp and silence, yet there I stood feeling the same rapture of pure delight in the first breath of spring that I used to as a child, and the five wasted years fell from me like a cloak, and the world was full of hope, and I vowed myself then and there to nature, and have been happy ever since.

    My other half being indulgent, and with some faint thought perhaps that it might be as well to look after the place, consented to live in it at any rate for a time; whereupon followed six specially blissful weeks from the end of April into June, during which I was here alone, supposed to be superintending the painting and papering, but as a matter of fact only going into the house when the workmen had gone out of it.

    How happy I was! I don't remember any time quite so perfect since the days when I was too little to do lessons and was turned out with sugar on my eleven o'clock bread and butter on to a lawn closely strewn with dandelions and daisies. The sugar on the bread and butter has lost its charm, but I love the dandelions and daisies even more passionately now than then, and never would endure to see them all mown away if I were not certain that in a day or two they would be pushing up their little faces again as jauntily as ever. During those six weeks I lived in a world of dandelions and delights. The dandelions carpeted the three lawns, - they used to be lawns, but have long since blossomed out into meadows filled with every sort of pretty weed, - and under and among the groups of leafless oaks and beeches were blue hepaticas, white anemones, violets, and celandines in sheets. The celandines in particular delighted me with their clean, happy brightness, so beautifully trim and newly varnished, as though they too had had the painters at work on them. Then, when the anemones went, came a few stray periwinkles and Solomon's Seal, and all the birdcherries blossomed in a burst. And then, before I had a little got used to the joy of their flowers against the sky, came the lilacs - masses and masses of them, in clumps on the grass, with other shrubs and trees by the side of walks, and one great continuous bank of them half a mile long right past the west front of the house, away down as far as one could see, shining glorious against a background of firs. When that time came, and when, before it was over, the acacias all blossomed too, and four great clumps of pale, silvery-pink peonies flowered under the south windows, I felt so absolutely happy, and blest, and thankful, and grateful, that I really cannot describe it. My days seemed to melt away in a dream of pink and purple peace.

    There were only the old housekeeper and her handmaiden in the house, so that on the plea of not giving too much trouble I could indulge what my other half calls my fantaisie dereglee as regards meals - that is to say, meals so simple that they could be brought out to the lilacs on a tray; and I lived, I remember, on salad and bread and tea the whole time, sometimes a very tiny pigeon appearing at lunch to save me, as the old lady thought, from starvation. Who but a woman could have stood salad for six weeks, even salad sanctified by the presence and scent of the most gorgeous lilac masses? I did, and grew in grace every day, though I have never liked it since. How often now, oppressed by the necessity of assisting at three dining-room meals daily, two of which are conducted by the functionaries held indispensable to a proper maintenance of the family dignity, and all of which are pervaded by joints of meat, how often do I think of my salad days, forty in number, and of the blessedness of being alone as I was then alone!

    And then the evenings, when the workmen had all gone and the house was left to emptiness and echoes, and the old housekeeper had gathered up her rheumatic limbs into her bed, and my little room in quite another part of the house had been set ready, how reluctantly I used to leave the friendly frogs and owls, and with my heart somewhere down in my shoes lock the door to the garden behind me, and pass through the long series of echoing south rooms full of shadows and ladders and ghostly pails of painters' mess, and humming a tune to make myself believe I liked it, go rather slowly across the brick-floored hall, up the creaking stairs, down the long whitewashed passage, and with a final rush of panic whisk into my room and double lock and bolt the door!

    There were no bells in the house, and I used to take a great dinner-bell to bed with me so that at least I might be able to make a noise if frightened in the night, though what good it would have been I don't know, as there was no one to hear. The housemaid slept in another little cell opening out of mine, and we two were the only living creatures in the great empty west wing. She evidently did not believe in ghosts, for I could hear how she fell asleep immediately after getting into bed; nor do I believe in them, mais je les redoute, as a French lady said, who from her books appears to have been strongminded.

    The dinner-bell was a great solace; it was never rung, but it comforted me to see it on the chair beside my bed, as my nights were anything but placid, it was all so strange, and there were such queer creakings and other noises. I used to lie awake for hours, startled out of a light sleep by the cracking of some board, and listen to the indifferent snores of the girl in the next room. In the morning, of course, I was as brave as a lion and much amused at the cold perspirations of the night before; but even the nights seem to me now to have been delightful, and myself like those historic boys who heard a voice in every wind and snatched a fearful

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