Colour seemed flung down anyhow, anywhere every sort of colour piled up in heaps, pouring along in rivers. And beneath these trees were groups of blue and purple irises, and bushes of lavender, and grey, sharp cactuses, and the grass was thick with dandelions and daisies, and right down at the bottom was the sea. The cherry-trees and peach-trees were in blossom-lovely showers of white and deep rose-colour among the trembling delicacy of the olives the fig-leaves were just big enough to smell of figs, the vine-buds were only beginning to show. The ground behind these flaming things dropped away in terraces to the sea, each terrace a little orchard, where among the olives grew vines on trellises, and fig-trees, and peach-trees, and cherry-trees. This is her sanctuary from a host of unreasonable demands, whether from the Man of Wrath (husband), babies, servants or (worst of all horrors) house guests. The wistaria was tumbling over itself in its excess of life, its prodigality of flowering and where the pergola ended the sun blazed on scarlet geraniums, bushes of them, and nasturtiums in great heaps, and marigolds so brilliant that they seemed to be burning, and red and pink snapdragons, all outdoing each other in bright, fierce colour. Meet Elizabeth and discover there is no greater happiness to be found than when lost in a wilderness of a garden, with bird cherries, lilacs, hollyhocks and lilies crowding the vision. Elizabeth von Arnim, born Mary Annette Beauchamp in Australia, continued to publish simply as Elizabeth following the success of this, her debut novel. “All down the stone steps on either side were periwinkles in full flower, and she could now see what it was that had caught at her the night before and brushed, wet and scented, across her face. Napoleon/Ludwig von Beethoven/The Eleanor Roosevelt Story/Black Boy/Elizabeth and Her German Garden (Readers Digest Family Treasury of Great Biographies. Elizabeth and Her German Garden was published anonymously in 1898.
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