Great promise, great tedium

Elizabeth and Her German Garden

by Elizabeth von Arnim

Copyright 1898 and supposedly very popular and frequently reprinted in the early 20th century. It aged well, especially the gardening parts. I enjoyed the occasional mention of "the babies" (her three children) and the Man Of Wrath (her husband, a mild-tempered sort who indulges her little hobbies graciously.) But halfway through she writes.

    I have two visitors staying with me, though I have done nothing to provoke such an infliction, and had been looking forward to a happy little Christmas alone with the Man of Wrath and the babies. Fate decreed otherwise. Quite regularly, if I look forward to anything, Fate steps in and decrees otherwise; I don't know why it should, but it does. I had not even invited these good ladies -- like greatness on the modest, they were thrust upon me.

And so on. If you love her writing style, you may enjoy the second half, but I found it tedious. She entertains her unwelcome guests kindly and becomes pretty fond of one of them, but one hundred pages of petty jealousies, behind-the-back snips and weary criticism became...well, wearisome. I kept hoping she'd get back to gardening, but no.

It's funny contrasting the gardening efforts of a turn of the century gentlewoman with mine. She supervises her gardener and laments when he plants the rockets in rows rather than masses of color--

...no future gardener shall be allowed to run riot among my rockets in quite so reckless a fashion.

I supervise myself and lament when I find my own Man of Wrath has planted daffodils directly adjacent to a walkway or 5-foot tall flowers in front of a 3-foot tall bird bath. I can guess when the birds are bathing--but only because I see splashes in the air over the tops of the flowers. Sadly, when I discover that such a disaster has occurred, it's up to me to put it to rights. I don't get to delegate to the gardener. Shovel, trowel, wheelbarrow and my own dirty fingernails get the job done--or it doesn't get done.

My advice: if you love gardening, read the first half. If you love her writing, carry on with the second. But don't expect rockets.