I finished two summery books in a row at what was the coldest time of the year. First Tove Jansson's very charming The Summer Book at the end of January, and then just a few days later I finished the very delightful Elizabeth von Arnim's The Solitary Summer. Unfortunately I've let several weeks pass without writing about it properly, though I did mention what a pleasure it was reading the book. You'll have to forgive me if my post is somewhat brief now, since it seems my mind goes very fuzzy on the details far too quickly after I finish a book (must learn to take better notes). Suffice it to say, however, I loved the book and it is truly a keeper--one to revisit when I need a little intelligent escapism. And no cold weather necessary, as this is a book that wears well in all seasons.
Three of her novels under my belt and I've decided (had decided this before already, really) that I love her work and am adding her to my "must read all her books" list. To that end I've made a few purchases, which I'll share with you soon. All those Virago posts last month left me wanting more, and I seem to be in good company: here, here, and here! It's funny, last year I read only one or two Viragos, but this year I can't seem to get enough of them. One has led to another and I've got yet another lined up for later. And it's thanks to Virago that someone like Elizabeth von Arnim is still in print and readily available for all to enjoy.
The Solitary Summer is a sequel to her hugely successful Elizabeth in Her German Garden, which ran into twenty-one reprints in the first twelve months after it was published in 1898. It was then regularly reprinted until 1914. And those first books were written anonymously and to critical acclaim. It's no wonder she set out so quickly to write a second book after her first did so well. Although The Solitary Summer was written "patchily", she became a compulsive writer writing one right after another.
"She turned her life into fiction as she went along, both simplifying and exaggerating the things that happened to her. Wherever she lived (and she was to live in many different houses and several different countries) there was always a little garden house where she worked, usually with a forbidding inscription over the door."
Written very loosely in diary format, The Solitary Summer, covers the months of May to October. There is no plot to speak of here. What she writes is a series of meanderings wending her way from one subject to the next, and many times unrelated to each other, but she does it so seamlessly that the reader doesn't even realize it. She may wax poetical about the beauty of her roses or how her favorites (next to roses, as no one can deny the supremacy of the rose) are sweet peas, and only a few pages later she's discussing the habits of country doctors, or a graveyard in the middle of a pine forest. Although Elizabeth wishes nothing more than to spend her summer quietly in her garden with no visitors, much of the book is not actually spent there.
This is a woman who desires solitude but spends so much of her day surrounded by people. And sometimes it's a lot of people--swarms of soldiers as a matter of fact. At the end of the summer she must "quarter" officers who are on "manoeuvres". They fill her farm--men and horses--in temporary sheds, the stables and officers billeted in the house.
"Eighty pfennings a day is added for the soldier's food, and for this he has to receive two pounds of bread, half a pound of meat, a quarter pound of bacon, and either a quarter of a pound of rice or barley or three pounds of potatoes. Officers are paid for at the rate of two marks fifty a day without wine; we are not obliged to give them wine, and if we do they are regarded as guests and behave accordingly."
To Elizabeth this means they should leave the house early and return late, which of course they do not do, or at least not all at the same time! Imagine.
Although I've marked lots of passages, I have two that I'd like to share. Elizabeth had a great love of literature and read widely, which shows in her work.
"Thoreau has been my companion for some days past, it having struck me as more appropriate to bring him out to a pond than to read him, as was hitherto my habit, on Sunday mornings in the garden. He 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."
It's been ages since I've read Thoreau, and even then it was only excerpts (another hole in my reading), but when I do, I'll try and read him by a pond like Elizabeth. And I think I agree with her that every book has its time and place and even best place to be read,
"Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them. If, for instance, I cannot read Thoreau in a drawing-room, how much less would I ever dream of reading Boswell in the grass by a pond! Imagine carrying him off in company with his great friend to a lonely dell in a rye-field, and expecting them to be entertaining. 'Nay, my dear lady,' the great man would say in mighty tones of rebuke, 'this will never do. Lie in a rye-field? What folly is that? And who would converse in a damp hollow that can help it?' So I read and laugh over Boswell in the library when the lamps are lit, buried in cushions and surrounded by every sign of civilisation, with the drawn curtains shutting out the garden and the country solitude so much disliked by both sage and disciple."
There is so much to like about this book. I've really only touched on a few things, and I've left much for you to explore. Do take a look at it if it's caught your fancy. It definitely caught mine.