Pagan Portals--Nature Mystics by Rebecca Beattie

Author:Rebecca Beattie [Beattie, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-78279-798-2
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2015-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Von Arnim’s Life: Putting Her Work in Context

Von Arnim was a deeply involved member of the literati of the early twentieth century, but despite this there is a scarcity of information available about her. (If anyone has a spare year or two, there is definitely a gap in the market for a biographical study of her). Born in Kirribilli Point, Australia, as Mary Annette Beauchamp in 1866, von Arnim was the daughter of a merchant. The family owned a holiday home at Kirribilli Point, but returned to England when von Arnim was three, where she spent the rest of her happy childhood. As the youngest of four brothers, a sister and an adopted cousin, she is reported to have been quite solitary and ‘bookish’. Superficially, this family life might seem fairly mundane, but her cousin was Kathleen Beauchamp, who later married John Middleton Murray and wrote novels and short stories under the nom de plume of Katherine Mansfield.

Whilst on a tour of Italy with her father, Elizabeth met Prussian aristocrat Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and they were married in 1891. Their married life began in Berlin, then moved to the family estate at Nassenheide in the Pomeranian countryside. Despite its rural setting, von Arnim still moved in literary circles: among her children’s tutors were E.M. Forster and Hugh Walpole. Although they had four daughters and a son, the marriage was not a particularly happy one, and it was the troubles in her marriage that spurred von Arnim into writing. Her husband (who she referred to as the ‘Man of Wrath’ in her novels) had financial problems, and was even sent to prison for fraud. Forced to generate an income, she launched her writing career, and her first novel was published in 1898. Elizabeth and Her German Garden was a huge success, being reprinted twenty times within the first year of its publication. To retain some anonymity (presumably to protect her husband and his family, as the satirical novel poked fun at them), von Arnim published her first few books under the name of ‘the author of Elizabeth’s German Garden’, or simply ‘by Elizabeth’. But in 1908 she left the ‘Man of Wrath’ and returned to England; in 1910, he died. From 1910 to 1913, von Arnim became one of H.G. Wells’ lovers, making her unpopular with Rebecca West (another of Wells’ mistresses). In 1916, von Arnim married John Russell, the second Earl Russell and older brother of Bertrand; sadly, again the marriage was unhappy and the couple separated in 1919, although they never divorced. Von Arnim continued to have various relationships, but never again remarried.

In 1939, von Arnim travelled to the United States where she died in 1941 from influenza, at the age of seventy four. She was cremated, and her ashes were mingled with those of her brother in a churchyard in Tyler’s Green, Buckinghamshire.

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