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Mr. Skeffington – Elizabeth von Arnim

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A couple of times I have had the pleasure of staying with bloggers, who have kindly put me up (and put up with me) when I’ve needed a bed to crash in while in London.  One of those times I stayed chez Rachel/Book Snob, which was lovely – and even lovelier was that she sent me away with Mr. Skeffington (1940) by Elizabeth von Arnim as a present.  (I did give her a book to say thank you for having me, I should perhaps add, if I ever want bloggers to let me stay with them again.)

Elizabeth von Arnim is one of the most varied writers I’ve read, and there is little to link (say) the fairytale niceness of The Enchanted April with the deliciously biting satire of The Caravaners.  And then there is my current favourite, Christopher and Columbus, which has elements of both.  Where would Mr. Skeffington fit into the von Arnim spectrum?  Well, it turns out I’ve now read one of her more sombre, reflective novels… and, indeed, her last.

The novel is called Mr. Skeffington, but the central character is his ex-wife Lady Skeffington (Fanny to her friends) who divorced him over his affairs when she was still in her twenties, and is now approaching the grand old age of fifty.  In order to get on board with the novel, we have to accept the premise that fifty is terrifyingly old (although, since von Arnim was in her mid-seventies when she wrote the novel, she ought to have known better.)  But for Fanny it is a dreaded landmark, principally because – having been a renowned beauty all her life – a recent illness has taken her beauty from her, and quite a lot of her hair, and a tactless doctor tells her that she may soon be an eyesore.

An eyesore?  Was he suggesting that she was an eyesore?  She, Fanny Skeffington, for years almost the most beautiful person everywhere, and for about five glorious years quite the most beautiful person anywhere?  She?  When the faces of the very strangers she passed in the street lit up when they saw her coming?  She, Noble, lovely little Fanny, as poor Jim Conderley used to say, gazing at her fondly – quoting, she supposed; and nobody quoted things like that to eyesores.
I’ve got to say, reading Mr. Skeffington made me quite grateful that I have never been handsome – it must be very difficult to lose something like that, but especially so for Fanny, who doesn’t have many other character traits to offer – or, at least, hasn’t had to rely on them.

But that isn’t all.  The reason she consults the doctor in the first place is because she keeps having hallucinations of Job Skeffington, her estranged husband.  She can’t think why, since she has barely thought of him for years and years… but he won’t stop appearing before her eyes.

And then the novel takes us back through the men who have courted her since her divorce.  The novel is oh-so-chaste, so none of them have done more than fling themselves adoringly at her feet, and she has done little than laugh politely and ignore them – but she determines to go and find them, to make herself feel young and beautiful again, and reassure herself that she isn’t an eyesore.

So, in succession we see Fanny visit… New College, Oxford, to see an undergraduate who was recently (and somewhat inappropriately) besotted with her – only to see him busy with a much younger woman.  Then off to an older man who once loved her deeply, and still cherishes the letter she writes to him, but is shocked by her appearance after a decade or two (while she, in turn, is shocked by his) – and he, after all, is married to a young woman by now.  And then off to a vicar, living with his sister, who loved her when he was but a promising young curate, and now lives abstemiously on starvation rations.  And possibly more.

It’s an interesting conceit for a novel, but it does end up making everything feel rather disjointed, somehow.  Somehow the different meetings don’t hold together, so Mr. Skeffington is more like a series of similar short stories than a single narrative – and, although there are some interesting or delightful characters (I particularly enjoyed the vicar’s sister, who remained certain that Fanny was a prostitute, but steadfastly determined to look after her charitably, when Fanny is mega-rich) they aren’t given the opportunity to grow or impact the novel much.

And the end… well, I shan’t give it away, but it is so emphatically a tribute to a famous Victorian novel that, if it isn’t deliberate, it’s plagiarism.

This is Elizabeth von Arnim, so of course the novel is good – she is always an excellent writer – but I think it might be a novel I’d be better off reading in about fifty years’ time.  Perhaps then it would feel like a paean to youth and a empathetic mixture of nostalgia and regret… but, though I enjoyed it, and appreciated von Arnim’s writing, I missed the raucous humour of her satires.  I’ve now encountered another facet of von Arnim’s myriad writing talents… and I’m not sure I’m quite ready for it.

Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim

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37. Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim

I am very grateful to Erica Brown for giving a paper on Elizabeth von Arnim’s excellent novel Christopher and Columbus (1919) at the conference I attended recently, as it was the incentive I needed to read it.  Not that I needed a lot of incentive – I loved both The Enchanted April and The Caravaners, as clicking on those titles will attest.  The former was very sweet, almost sentimental, in its depiction of the changing powers of a beautiful place; the latter was a bitingly ironic first-person account of an unpleasant, war-mongering German on a caravanning trip in England.  It would be difficult to think of two more different novels coming from the same author, and I wondered where my third von Arnim experience could possibly take me.  As it turned out, right in between the two – Christopher and Columbus is often very cynical, in an incredibly funny way, and yet also very endearing.  And it has twins in it.  So obviously it goes straight onto my 50 Books You Must Read But May Not Have Heard About.  (We’re getting quite close to the end now, aren’t we?)  Prepare yourself for a fairly long review, since I got carried away… 

Christopher and Columbus are, in fact, nineteen year-old twins Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas von Twinkler.  I’ll have to forgive their mother for giving her twins essentially the same name, because she is dead – as the novel begins, these half-German, half-English girls are living with their abhorrant Uncle Arthur and long-suffering Aunt Alice, and war breaks out.  Uncle Arthur can’t stand opening his house up to enemy aliens (even if they are his wife’s relations) and so packs them off on a boat to America, neutral in 1916 when this is set.  They don’t really see themselves as German, as they explain to Mr. Twist, an adorable young man they meet on the boat – and the rich inventor of Twist’s Non-Trickling Teapot.

Anna-Rose watched his face. “It [our surname] isn’t only Twinkler,” she said, speaking very distinctly.  “It’s von Twinkler.”

That’s German,” said Mr. Twist; but his face remained serene.

“Yes. And so are we. That is, we would be if it didn’t happen that we weren’t.”

“I don’t think I quite follow,” said Mr. Twist.

“It is very difficult,” agreed Anna-Rose. “You see, we used to have a German father.”

“But only because our mother married him,” explained Anna-Felicitas. “Else we wouldn’t have.”

“And though she only did it once,” said Anna-Rose, “ages ago, it has dogged our footsteps ever since.”

The most delicious thing about this novel (and it is a very delicious novel) is undoubtedly the twins’ dialogue.  It’s such a delight to read.  I don’t quite know how to describe it – maybe as though it had been translated into German and back again?  But not just that, they both have such a captivatingly unusual outlook on life.  Their logic swirls in circles which dizzy the listener; their conversations would feel at home at the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party – and yet they are lovely, kind, fundamentally good people – and without being remotely irritating.

Those of you who’ve been reading Stuck-in-a-Book for a while will know I like twin novels – but I also like to judge ’em.  The cardinal sins of putting twins in a book are (a) making them exactly like each other, (b) making them exact opposites of each other, and (c) having them ever be surprised at the fact that they are twins.  You’d be surprised yourself at how often the third of these happens – as though being a twin weren’t something completely ingrained in the characters, and they happened to forget that they looked like their sibling etc.  Personally, I find the idea of not being a twin incredibly weird.  Your sibling doesn’t share your birthday?  Didn’t start school when you did, or have the same bedtime and pocket money?  Very strange. (!)

Sorry, sidetracked.  As I was saying, Elizabeth von Arnim was being put the test – and passed with flying colours.  Well, nearly.  I got irritated by them dressing the same as each other at the age of nineteen (THIS WOULD NOT HAPPEN), but we’ll let that slide.  They are very believable as twins – wrapped up in each other’s worlds, but with their own personalities.  While Mr. Twist may think of them ‘as one person called, generally, Twinklers’, this is not how they see themselves.  Anna-Rose is a little more sensible and also more sensitive; Anna-Felicitas is dreamy and other-worldly and yet often the most tenacious when it comes to arguing a point.  They make such a wonderful duo, and carry the heart of Christopher and Columbus – even if the rest of the novel had been drab and dull (which it is not) they alone would make it a worthwhile vibrant read.

For the majority of the novel they are being hurried from pillar to post.  The ocean voyage takes up a lot of the narrative, as they meet their fellow-passengers pleasant and unpleasant, and most significantly Mr. Twist, who (by the end of the journey) considers them akin to sisters.  Whether or not the good people of 1916 America will share this outlook is more open to debate – he has a particularly tricky time in Clark, at the home of his self-delusional, tyrannical mother and put-upon sister.  Elizabeth von Arnim’s portrait of small-town life hasn’t dated much in a hundred years (although I still love small towns and villages):

It was the habit of Clark to believe the worst.  Clark was very small, and therefore also very virtuous.  Each inhabitant was the careful guardian of his neighbour’s conduct.  Nobody there ever did anything that was wrong; there wasn’t a chance.  But as Nature insists on a balance, the minds of Clark dwelt curiously on evil.  They were minds active in suspicion.  They leapt with an instantaneous agility at the worst conclusions.  Nothing was ever said in Clark, but everything was thought.

But before they arrive in Clark they travel all over America, bad luck meeting them at every turn.  While von Arnim relies heavily on coincidence for the events of this section of the novel (including a very amusing section where a taxi-driver thinks the Annas are dressed for a funeral, when they have no knowledge that their host is dead) it’s all done so endearingly that it doesn’t matter.

Part of the amusement comes from the girls’ unfamiliarity with the brave new not-really-so-neutral world they have entered.  They are not accustomed to the American practice of tipping, nor the absence of afternoon tea, as is evinced after they have been instructed in the art of the former by an insolent hotel employee:

“He might have said thank you,” she said indignantly to Anna-Felicitas, giving a final desperate brushing to the sulphur.

“I expect he’ll come to a bad end,” said Anna-Felicitas soothingly.

They had tea in the restaurant and were the only people doing such a thing, a solitary cluster in a wilderness of empty tables laid for dinner. It wasn’t the custom much in America, explained Mr. Twist, to have tea, and no preparations were made for it in hotels of that sort. The very waiters, feeling it was a meal to be discouraged, were showing their detachment from it by sitting in a corner oof the room playing dominoes.

It is, in fact, the lack of afternoon tea which spurs them on to their next project.  And, frankly, I can think of no better reason for doing anything.  They decide to set up a tea room called The Open Arms, specialising in expensive afternoon teas.  I shan’t tell you any more of the plot, because there is plenty in the 500 pages to discover for yourself (including an ending which I felt did let down the tone a little), but I did want to mention The Open Arms as a means of introducing you to Mrs. Bilton.  She is the cook hired, ostensibly to cook, but mostly to lend an air of respectability to the endeavour.  Mrs. Bilton is a hilarious creation.  She does nothing but talk.  No interruptions – save screaming in her face – have the least effect on her.  Mrs. Bilton is every talkative older lady you have ever known, multiplied by a thousand.  Mostly she talks about herself, her thoughts, and the varying state of her psyche.

The twins were profoundly bored by her psyche, chiefly because they didn’t know what part of her it was, and it was no use asking for she didn’t answer; but they listened with real interest to her concrete experiences, and especially to the experiences connected with Mr. Bilton.  They particularly wished to ask questions about Mr. Bilton, and find out what he had thought of things.  Mrs. Bilton was lavish in her details of what she had thought herself, but Mr. Bilton’s thoughts remained impenetrable.  It seemed to the twins that he must have thought a lot, and have come to the conclusion that there was much to be said for death.

Oh, how I love E von A’s turn of phrase, which slips so quickly from the merely ironic to the ever so slightly biting.  It is this stream of cynicism which prevents the general ebullience of the twins from ever becoming wearing, and which makes the novel so wonderful.  She really is a brilliant writer, and has been underappreciated – she seems to be remembered (if she as remembered at all) chiefly as a whimsical, fey writer.  But like Austen, her tongue can be as sharp as it is charming.

I’m taking a bit of a risk, putting Christopher and Columbus on my 50 Books list when there are so many other E von A titles I’ve yet to encounter.  Perhaps I will end up preferring one of her others, but I will still believe that this particular novel has been unjustly neglected and want to do my best to create fanfare for it.  I promise you’ll be enchanted by Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas, and probably repeat fragments of their dialogue aloud to anyone who will listen.

And now I turn over to you – which E von A ought I to read next?

Things to get Stuck into:

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimbrough (1942) – I haven’t blogged about this, because I borrowed it and had to return it, but it’s absolutely wonderful as an accompaniment – serendipitously, I read it immediately after the E von A novel.  It’s non-fiction, about a 1920s trip around Europe by two excited, somewhat green American girls.  The transcontinental trip is thus the other way round, but their experiences are equally amusing and eye-opening.  This book is an absolute scream, and would also be loved by fans of the Provincial Lady.

“The open road, the dusty highway, the heath, the common, the hedgerows, the rolling downs!”

StuckinaBook All , 25 Comments

Rachel (Book Snob), Claire (Paperback Reader), and I were discussing – in the wake of Virago Reading Week, which gave so many ideas to so many of us – the fact that we hadn’t read nearly enough Elizabeth von Arnim. I think the most any of us had read was one – although all of us were pretty good at buying her novels. And so we hatched a plan to read The Caravaners (1909) together. I forget exactly how we chose that title in particular, but I’m glad we did. Rachel has already posted an exceptionally good review; Claire has stalled, I believe. I’m going for the better-late-than-never approach (since I’d foolishly agreed to post in the middle of My Life in Books week) and here are my thoughts about The Caravaners. Which, to get ahead of myself, I loved.


I’d only read The Enchanted April before (my thoughts here) which is light, bright, and sparkling and shouldn’t have worked, but did. It is all about the power of a holiday in a beautiful place to change people for the better. The Caravaners is not… or, at least, that happens quietly in the background, to a secondary character. Our narrator, chronicling his trip, is Baron Otto von Ottringe. He’s not, shall we say, a charmer. He has forthright views on the subordinate position of women, the need for the German army to quash England (I misread ‘1909’ as ‘1919’ at first, on the title page, and was rather shocked – this novel would not have been published a decade later), and basically every opinion that differs from his own being nigh-on heretical. And, naturally, it is a duty and a joy to instruct others about their errors – Otto anticipates that such instruction will be gratefully received each time.

All in all, Otto isn’t the ideal holiday companion – but the lure of the company of a pretty woman convinces him to leave Germany and go on a month’s caravaning holiday in England. It is to help celebrate his 25th wedding anniversary – his current wife Edelgard, true, has only been his betrothed for a handful of years, but when you add that to the duration of his previous marriage to Marie-Luise…
I fail to see why I should be deprived of every benefit of such a celebration, for have I not, with an interruption of twelve months forced upon me, been actually married twenty-five years? […] Edelgard seemed at first unable to understand, but she was very teachable, and gradually found my logic irresistible. Indeed, once she grasped the point she was even more strongly of the opinion than I was that something ought to be done to mark the occasion, and quite saw that if Marie-Luise failed me it was not my fault, and that I at least had done my part and gone on steadily being married ever since.You begin to see the sort of man with whom we are dealing. A lot of novelists in the early-20th century (and still today) incorporate a ridiculous character into their work. Someone whose opinions and manner are absurd but possible, and who is there to have his views held up for ridicule, or fond laughter, depending on the situation. It takes a brave author to make this kind of self-delusional character the narrator. The novel inevitably becomes two-layered: the character’s voice on top, and the reality that the author wants you to see, behind that. Perhaps the most famous example is Diary of a Nobody; my favourite is Joyce Dennys’ Economy Must Be Our Watchword. At first I thought Otto was a Pooter-esque character, but it soon become clear that he wasn’t. Pooter is absurd, but we can’t help loving him. Otto is reprehensible and obnoxious – even the most charitable reader is unlikely to develop a fondness for him. And that’s what makes The Caravaners so delicious to read – he is constantly lampooned by his own words. I know at least one reader who tossed the book aside because of Otto’s character – but I think the more you disagree with his misogynistic, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, arrogant, selfish, militaristic standpoint, the more you will love watching Otto being mocked by von Arnim and naively unaware of his unpopularity. He is SO unself-aware, and yet it is somehow believable that he would be! I loved this sort of thing:
It is the knowledge that I am really so good-humoured that principally upsets me when Edelgard or other circumstances force me into a condition of vexation unnatural to me. I do not wish to be vexed. I do not wish ever to be disagreeable. And it is, I thin, downright wrong of people to force a human being who does not wish it to be so.
I haven’t even introduced you to the other members of the caravaning holiday. Frau von Eckthum is the beautiful woman whose company persuaded Otto to consider the holiday:
I know she is different from the type of woman prevailing in our town, the plan, flat-haired, tightly buttoned up, God-fearing wife and mother, who looks up to her husband and after her children, and is extremely intelligent in the kitchen and not at all intelligent out of it. I know that this is the type that has made our great nation what it is, hoisting it up on ample shoulders to the first place in the world, and I know that we would have to request heaven to help us if we ever changed it. But – she is an attractive lady.It is conversations between Otto and Frau von E which most enjoyably reveal his self-delusion. He acknowledges that his lengthy expositions on all matters political and social meet only with the iterated reply “Oh?” – but into that syllable Otto reads approval, admiration, docility, and agreement. The reader, needless to say, does not.

Other members of the party include Lord Sidge, who is entering the church (Otto is the most unashamed snob, and treats Sidge rather differently when he learns about the Lord part) and Jellaby, a Socialist. It was in his interactions with Jellaby that I had my moments of sympathy with Otto. Not on a political standpoint, I must add, but because whenever Jellaby encounters Otto in inactivity, he says “Enjoying yourself, Baron?” How infuriating that must be! I think we are supposed to love Jellaby. I could not.

I’m rabbiting on, so I’ll ignore the other characters – none of whom are as important as Edelgard, whom I’ve barely touched on. Otto’s wife starts the novel being everything that he envisages a wife should be. As the holiday continues – this is where there are shades of The Enchanted April – she becomes aware that she should be treated better. It starts with hints like this:
She had put my clothes out, but had brought me no hot water because she said the two sisters had told her it was too precious what there was being wanted for washing up. I inquired with some displeasure whether I, then, were less important than forks, and to my surprised Edelgard replied that it depended on whether they were silver; which was, of course, perilously near repartee.Ooo, perilous. During The Caravaners you constantly hope that Edelgard will escape Otto’s clutches, or at least change him for the better… I shan’t spoil for you whether or not she accomplishes that.

For those who might feel a little uncomfortable at the ridiculing of a German on English soil, perhaps I should add that von Arnim (as her name suggests) was married to a German herself – and not happily. She later referred to her husband as the ‘Man of Wrath’, and he was even sent to prison for fraud. I suspect Otto is in part a portrait of Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, rather than an attack against the German people more generally.

The Caravaners is so, so different from The Enchanted April that I don’t now know quite how to think of Elizabeth von Arnim. An author whose writing I considered gentle and beautiful has now added satirical, witty, and biting to her arsenal. What I do know is that she is quite brilliant, and I unreservedly recommend either of those novels – and am keen to discover what’s next. Elizabeth von Arnim admirers – which should follow?

Thanks Rachel and Claire for getting me finally to read my second E von A – I had great fun! Oh, and – the title to this blog post is not from The Caravaners. Can anyone tell me where I found it?

Enchanting

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A while ago I asked about books which just fitted the environment in which they were read, and wanted something which would fit a meadow in spring. Danielle, Susan D. and IslandSparrow all suggested Elizabeth von Arnim’s The Enchanted April, and since I was at home in lovely rural Somerset in April, it seemed the perfect book to try.

E von A is mentioned a lot in an online book group I’m in, especially a few years ago, and in fact I’d bought The Enchanted April in 2004 or 2005, but not got around to reading it. No real reason for its being on the backburned – though perhaps the 1980s TV shot chosen by Virago for my edition didn’t do it any favours. Well, now I’ve read it, and the novel is possibly my favourite read of 2009 so far.

For those who don’t know the premise – shy, awkward and quirky Lottie Wilkins wishes to escape a lacklustre husband who thinks she is unintelligent; she meets Rose Arbuthnot who is best summed-up by this reaction to the idea of a holiday in Italy:
No doubt a trip to Italy would be extraordinarily delightful, but there were many delightful things one would like to do, and what was strength given to one for except to help one not to do them?

Nevertheless, she too has a situation she wishes to escape, and is intrigued by the idea of a castle for hire in Italy. Upon investigating, Lottie and Rose realise they’ll need another couple people to share the rent. Step forward Mrs. Fisher, an older lady whose life is spent remembering the wise words of Victorian writers whom she probably met in her youth – and Lady Caroline Dester, a stunning beauty who is tired of everyone ‘grabbing’ onto her, and wants to get away from being the centre of society. They all head off to Italy, including an amusing journey in which Lottie and Rose become convinced that they’ve been kidnapped, as all their Italian is ‘San Salvatore’, the name of the castle – which they repeat at intervals, to be met with empassioned nodding and agreement from the Italians travelling with them.

The castle is described beautifully, and especially the garden – attention drawn often to the wistaria, which happens to be my favourite plant. Everywhere is brightly sunny, airy, thick with the scent of flowers and bursting with nature. It could have been horribly overdone, but E von A strikes just the right note – and thank you to those who recommended it, reading the novel with equally beautiful (but rather different) countryside around me was perfect. Though it might work also as a distraction to city life where trammelled nature does anything but burst.

All four holiday-makers arrive unhappy, and all have some faults – especially the very selfish Mrs. Fisher and Lady Caroline. From the start, though, Lottie is certain that the castle will have a positive, almost magical, effect upon anyone staying there. And she is, of course, right. I don’t want to spoil all the events of the novel, but suffice to say each character is altered by the surroundings, friendships develop and faults evaporate. What prevents The Enchanted April from being too fairy talesque or saccharine is a wittiness and honesty which somehow make the changes in everyone seem not only realistic but inevitable, and still thoroughly heart-warming.

How the cousin of Katherine Mansfield and sister-in-law of Bertrand Russell wrote such a happy, warm novel is anybody’s guess – but I do encourage you to seek out The Enchanted April is you haven’t yet done so. It’s a beautiful novel which is also extremely well written – the style flows by, perspicacious but unassuming, and the four central characters are incredibly well drawn. Not at all stereotypes, yet definitely distinct and memorable, they seem real, with real traits and feelings and failings, and must have been very difficult to create. Simply brilliant.

And soon I’ll be writing about the next novel I read, also about four women living together in a house. It’s written by one of the authors in my 50 Books list, and was published in 1989. A prize to anyone who can guess the book…