Russell: The Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies

Elizabeth von Arnim's readers are in a unique position: they can now choose from no less than five biographies in English (and one in German) to learn more about their favourite author. The first, written by von Arnim's daughter under the pseudonym Leslie De Charms (1958), was a collage of excerpts from diaries and letters with brief comments for context. The second, by Karen Usborne (1986), offered the first comprehensive account of von Arnim's [End Page 91] life although not all its claims hold up to closer scrutiny. The third biography, by Jennifer Walker (2013), is based on scrupulous research and is currently the go-to biography for scholars. In 2020 Gabrielle Carey used von Arnim's life as a springboard for autobiographical meditations on von Arnim's and her own quest for happiness. Now, only one year later, Joyce Morgan has added yet another biography—what, the reader wonders, could there possibly be left to tell?

As it turns out a fair bit. The Countess from Kirribilli offers a fresh and eminently readable account of von Arnim's colourful life. Morgan, an experienced Australian author, biographer and journalist, traces the stations of von Arnim's biography with a deft hand: born in 1866 in Kirribilli (Sydney) into an English-Australian merchant family as Mary Annette Beauchamp, von Arnim spent only the first years of her life in Australia before her father relocated the family back to Europe. The Beauchamps were a mobile lot, and von Arnim inherited her father's travel gene. On a trip to Italy at the age of 23, she met and then married Count Henning von Arnim-Schlagenthin and settled with him first in Berlin, then on a large property near the Baltic Sea, where the young Countess wrote her first book, Elizabeth and Her German Garden (1896). Published anonymously, it became a literary sensation overnight. It established "Elizabeth" as a household name and forever identified von Arnim with her literary alter ego, Elizabeth. Von Arnim wrote several sequels and quickly established herself as an author of witty novels of women's doubtful quest for personal fulfilment in marriage and an astute political satirist of German nationalism.

Although she remained faithful to her themes, von Arnim's range in tone and her skilful play with genre remain impressive: The Caravaners (1909) is a bitingly comical self-portrait of a pompous Prussian officer. Vera (1921) uses the Gothic to create a devastating study of domestic abuse, which John Middleton Murry compared with Wuthering Heights—written by Jane Austen. By contrast, The Enchanted April (1922) is a light-hearted tale about the restorative effects of a holiday in Italy, which reminded Katherine Mansfield of Mozart. Today, we can appreciate von Arnim, who wrote over twenty best-selling novels, as a great—if academically still undervalued—satirist of the early twentieth century. Her contemporaries certainly recognized her as such, and von Arnim's friends included Bertrand Russell, Katherine Mansfield, her lover H. G. Wells, Hugh Walpole, Frank Swinnerton, Ethel Smyth and many others. Several of her novels were made into films; Patrick White thought The Caravaners was the funniest book he had ever read, and Virginia Woolf compared von Arnim's sense of comedy with Dickens. After living in England and Switzerland for many years, von Arnim settled at the French Riviera, before fleeing from the Nazis to the u.s. where several of her children lived. She died in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1941. [End Page 92]

Morgan's biography makes important contributions to von Arnim scholarship. She offers an impressively detailed account of the slow discovery of von Arnim's identity by the press. Throughout her life von Arnim's books were signed "By the Author of Elizabeth and Her German Garden", and for the first years of her career, von Arnim, who was notoriously private, managed to avoid any connection between the august von Arnim family name and her novels. Although the complicated story of von Arnim's several names ("Elizabeth von Arnim" was created by Virago Press and was never used by the author) has already attracted considerable scholarly attention, Morgan's meticulous research adds new depth and precision to when and how the author's identity was revealed.

Morgan's second great achievement is the sensitive and generous portraits of several of von Arnim's most important relationships: her complex friendship with her younger cousin Katherine Mansfield, the depth of which is easily obscured by Mansfield's occasional cattiness in diaries and letters; as well as von Arnim's drawn-out affair and later friendship with A. S. Fere, a journalist who went on to become a publisher and later chairman of Heinemann and was more than 20 years younger than his mentor and lover. Finally, Morgan offers a nuanced and comprehensive account of von Arnim's traumatic second marriage to John Francis ("Frank") Russell, the second Earl Russell, which ended in a very public separation trial and led von Arnim to write Vera.¹ Russell considered suing for defamation.

Morgan astutely describes the early stages of their courtship in 1914 shortly after von Arnim's painful break with H. G. Wells when she was susceptible to a romantic "antidote" (p. 107). Morgan shows Russell as an attractive, if somewhat domineering, suitor: charming, intelligent, confident and tragically misunderstood by his previous wives and the public. Flattered by Russell's passionate courtship and alarmed by his certainty of their impending marriage, von Arnim found herself drawn into an increasingly toxic relationship where manifestations of coercion and domestic abuse alternated with phases of unclouded harmony and marital bliss—as long as von Arnim remained obedient. Just how the independent, strong-minded, even intimidating von Arnim, who was well used to holding court among her friends, managed to end up in the position of being "practically in prison" (von Arnim, quoted p. 147), has been troubling von Arnim's biographers, who struggle to reconcile von Arnim's own autocratic tendencies with her sudden desire to serve and obey—a desire von Arnim herself found mysterious.

Morgan offers a nuanced and convincing account of the psychological dynamics of the ill-matched couple: "Her need for Frank was like an addiction. [End Page 93] Its passion brought great highs and lows.… At his best, Frank could be entertaining, engaging and charming. But his shifting moods could leave her emotionally drained, beset by depression, loneliness and tiredness" (p. 126). This ambivalence, Morgan notes, is characteristic of von Arnim: "She was a divided soul, deeply conflicted about her involvement with Frank. Her competing inner tensions were not confined to her relationship. These were evident in every aspect of her life" (ibid.). Oscillating between desire for company and solitude, forever building, buying or renting houses, von Arnim had the financial means to indulge her restlessness, "But nowhere are Elizabeth's psychic divisions more apparent and more torturous than in her relationship with Frank" (p. 127). To round out the picture, Morgan draws on contemporary assessments of the unlikely union from George Santayana and Bertrand Russell, both of whom grew to like von Arnim and remained lifelong friends. Bertrand Russell even shared a house briefly with his brother and sister-in-law during World War I. Although she did not share his political views on the war at all, von Arnim was a regular visitor and correspondent while Bertrand served a jail sentence for his anti-war activities in 1918. Sadly, their joint writing project of an epistolary novel stalled when Elizabeth lost confidence at the prospect of actually sharing her creative process with Bertrand's powerful mind.

Not all of Morgan's biography is as closely reflected as the chapters on her relationships and the archival work into von Arnim's pseudonym. Morgan only touches on the novels, keeping the focus firmly on the biographic circumstance surrounding their creation and reception. This is, of course, a legitimate approach, but leaves some of the insights into the connection between life and work undeveloped. At times, the narrative becomes episodic. However, these criticisms do not take away from the overall reading pleasure of The Countess from Kirribilli and its valuable contributions to scholarship on a writer who continues to attract non-academic interest but defies straightforward literary classification, whether as a middlebrow author, a modern, or a humorist. [End Page 94]