The Solitary Summer | Elizabeth von Armin #CCspin

_{May 2nd.}

_{Last night after dinner, when we were in the garden, I said, “I want to be alone for a whole summer, and get to the very dregs of life. I want to be as idle as I can, so that my soul may have time to grow. Nobody shall be invited to stay with me, and if any one calls they will be told that I am out, or away, or sick. I shall spend the months in the garden, and on the plain, and in the forests. I shall watch the things that happen in my garden, and see where I have made mistakes.}

Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1898) was such a popular, runaway success story that Countess Elizabeth von Armin quickly followed up with The Solitary Summer, its companion volume a year later. At this stage she was still being published as ‘Anonymous’ or just ‘Elizabeth’, fueling a huge public debate about who the author might be.

I know how a viral tweet or meme works, spreading misinformation and gossip in the blink of an eye, but I wonder how this kind of world-wide intrigue manifested itself back in 1899? Was it opinion pieces and comments in newspapers and periodicals that took months to reach everybody? Was it people sitting around in drawing rooms debating who she was before writing letters that spread the debate across the world to family and friends?

I dug out my copy of The Countess From Kirribilli to see what Joyce Morgan had to say on the matter. Apparently, just before the publication of The Solitary Summer in May, The Athenaeum (an English literary journal) revealed her identity saying, “The author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden, who promises a new volume shortly, is said to be Miss May Beauchamp, now Countess von Armin.” Apparently Elizabeth was deeply upset, especially since May was a family nickname for her real name Mary, suggesting that someone in her family had leaked her identity.

She arranged for her publishers to issue a denial that was published in the next volume of The Athenaeum. It seemed to do the trick. According to Morgan, her identity continued to be speculated about in “literary pages or smart literary journals” but also in the “popular press” for another couple of years. In fact, ‘Elizabeth von Arnim’ was a name that only appeared on her books after her death.

The mysterious Elizabeth soon had another bestseller on her hands – The Solitary Summer reprinted seven times in four months.

The second story was even more of a homage to Nature than the first. The Man of Wrath and the three babies April, May & June were still to be considered and amused and appeased in turn, but mostly, as the title suggest, The Solitary Summer was all about Elizabeth and her search for purpose, fulfillment and identity via her garden. Written as diary entries, Elizabeth shared her thoughts and feelings about nature, being a woman and reading (please note the date of her first dairy entry with today’s date).

It would be very easy to fill this post with quotes and photos about flowers! But I will refrain…well, maybe just a couple. I would love to see a deluxe illustrated edition of both books though.

_{How very much more charming different-coloured tulips are together than tulips in one colour by itself!} 

After declaring her intention to spend the entire summer alone, with no visitors, she filled each page with glorious descriptions of her garden beds, the various walks, ponds and forests that make up the estate. The Man of Wrath doubted her ability to go the whole summer without company, which only made Elizabeth even more determined to do so.

Her battles continued with various gardeners who wouldn’t do what she wanted and her frustration at not being allowed do it herself because she was a woman obviously irked.

_{My hands were tied because of the unfortunate circumstance of sex, or I would gladly have changed places with him and requested him to do the talking while I did the planting….I sometimes literally ache with envy as I watch the men going about their pleasant work in the sunshine, turning up the luscious damp earth, raking, weeding, watering, planting, cutting the grass, pruning the trees….A great many things will have to happen, however, before such a state of popular large-mindedness as will allow of my digging without creating a sensation is reached….Yet I should love to weed.}

_{“They are to be in troops on the grass,” I said.}

The Man of Wrath and the three babies do not feature as much as they did in the first book. However her love of books and reading featured again. A particularly lovely section of her diary talked about the books she read and reread and where she liked to read them best.

She read her books in much the same way I do now – certain books and authors for certain times of the day, locations & moods. For Elizabeth it’s Thoreau in the mornings by the pond, of course. Boswell in the library after lunch. Goethe in the afternoons on one special seat out of the wind. In the evenings by the roses, nothing but Whitman will do. A drive into the forest requires Keats while a visit to the Baltic sea is time with Edmund Spenser.

_{He [Thoreau] is a person who loves the open air, and will refuse to give you much pleasure if you try to read him amid the pomp and circumstance of upholstery; but out in the sun, and especially by this pond, he is delightful, and we spend the happiest hours together, he making statements, and I either agreeing heartily, or just laughing and reserving my opinion till I shall have more ripely considered the thing.}

Her bookcases are also thoughtfully arranged. Those nearest to hand are dedicated to her very best favourites (i.e. Jane Austen). Those in the nearby bookcase are also favourites to be reread at some point. Books in the other room are banished – no longer of interest or maybe waiting for a different age or mood to be relevant again.

There are times when Elizabeth tries to convince us that she is German, but her style and tone is so English it’s hard to take these passages seriously.

_{September 9th—I have been looking in the dictionary for the English word for Einquartierung, because that is what is happening to us just now, but I can find nothing satisfactory. My dictionary merely says (1) the quartering, (2) soldiers quartered, and then relapses into irrelevancy; so that it is obvious English people do without the word for the delightful reason that they have not got the thing. We have it here very badly; an epidemic raging at the end of nearly every summer, when cottages and farms swarm with soldiers and horses, when all the female part of the population gets engaged to be married and will not work, when all the male part is jealous and wants to fight, and when my house is crowded with individuals so brilliant and decorative in their dazzling uniforms that I wish sometimes I might keep a bunch of the tallest and slenderest for ever in a big china vase in a corner of the drawing-room.}

The mocking humour evident in the first story is still here, but more tempered. This Elizabeth seems more at peace and relaxed than the earlier Elizabeth. I think she also realised that two books about her garden were enough. Although this was a lovely treat to while away a rainy day or two in autumnal Sydney, it started to wear thing by the end.

• For more images of Elizabeth’s garden & the village of Rzedziny see Elzbieta Bruska’s photos on the Elizabeth von Armin Society page.
• Read for The Classics Club latest CC Spin

Title: The Solitary Summer
Author: Elizabeth von Armin
Imprint: Project Gutenberg
Published: 1st June 1 2004 (originally published May 1899)
Format: ePub
Dates Read: 6 April 2023 - 29 April 2023
Origin: Online

This post was written on the traditional land of the Wangal clan, one of the 29 clans of the Eora Nation within the Sydney basin. This Reading Life acknowledges that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are our first storytellers.