This was the first Elizabeth von Arnim title I read. Quite a while back now, in fact probably twenty years. Time flies. I had been browsing in Waterstones and spotted the Virago edition, (yes those ones with the green covers), and pulled it down, took it home read it in two hours and was back in the shop later on that day to purchase the others that were in stock (if I remember rightly Mr Skeffington) The story of four dissatisfied women who rent a castle for a month never fails to uplift and the first morning when Mrs Wilkins opens her eyes, sees the sun streaming across her bed and pulls the shutters wide and looks out, oh my goodness what a magical moment.
“She jumped up, pulled on her slippers, for there was nothing on the stone floor but one small rug, ran to the window and threw open the shutters. “Oh!” cried Mrs Wilkins.
All the radiance of April in Italy lay gathered together at her feet. The sun poured in on her. The sea lay asleep in it, hardly stirring. Across the bay the lovely mountains, exquisitely different in colour, were asleep too in the light; and underneath her window, at the bottom of the flower starred grass slope from which the wall of the castle rose up, was a great cypress, cutting through the delicate blues and violets and rose colours of the mountains and the sea like a great black sword.
See what I mean?
I was “enchanted”. No other word.
Mrs Wilkins, or Lotty as we shall now call her had invited Mrs Arbuthnot, Rose, to share the castle with her and, as it was rather expensive, advertised for two other ladies to join them. Mrs Fisher, an elderly lady who seemed to live in the past when she mixed with Thomas Carlyle, Tennyson and other luminaries. The reader will recognise straight away that she is unhappy though she does not know it.
The other is Lady Caroline, a society beauty, in fact so beautiful that she is constantly “grabbed” as she sees it. Surrounded by over adoring admirers she realises that her life is empty and pointless and needs to get away.
Rose is married to a writer of historical biographies, all of which are lurid stories about mistresses through history. She hates them and gradually she and Frederick, her husband, drift apart and she seeks consolation in good works.
Lotty is just Lotty. A housewife, doing the best the can, married to a solicitor and aware that life could be better. It is she who spots the advertisement for the castle letting and persuades Rose to join her in this adventure.
“Colour, fragrance, light, sea; instead of Shaftesbury Avenue, and the wet omnibuses, and the fish department at Shoolbread’s and the Tube to Hampstead, and dinner, and tomorrow the same and the day after the same and always the same………..”
Over the period of the month the four women gradually face up to the emptiness in their lives as the magic of San Salvatore and its magical surroundings brings about change.
The word enchanted in the title is the key – it is enchanting and one of my favourite books. After reading this one I then set about reading all by this author. Not many were in print at this time but I gradually managed to track them all down in second hand bookshops and internet searches. Though it is easier now twenty years ago it wasn’t and I had to persevere but I now have all her books on my shelves.
Now they are all available and it is wonderful. A mention by a character in an episode of Downton Abbey also kicked off a host of enquiries. I was quite indignant thinking well I knew about this years ago and feeling that I should be acknowledged for this discovery. Silly I know.
There is also a film and the cast is wonderful: Joan Plowright, Miranda Richardson, Josie Lawrence, Polly Walker and the male roles are taken well by Alfred Molina, Jim Broadbent and the simply unbeatable Michael Kitchen. The story line has been altered, but very slightly only and does no harm, merely pairing off a female character with a male protagonist and it works. My earlier Virago edition had Josie Lawrence on the cover and delightful thought she is, I really dislike film tie in editions and kept an eye out for the original Virago edition of 1986 and eventually after a few years of keeping aforementioned eye out managed to get hold of one and here it is. This cover is ‘Promenade on the Banks of the Amsted’ so not exactly Italianate but I just love it, so elegant, so typical of these wonderful Green covers.
If you have not read this book I really do urge you to do so. I love it and it is simply “enchanting”…..
Leave a Reply