Don't marry a German

I have just finished reading Christopher and Columbus by Elizabeth von Arnim. It has been sitting on my shelf for months, waiting patiently to be read because although, as a reader, I would (and do) effusively state my undying affection for E von A's books, as a would-be writer and a woman she makes me feel inadequate, ill-educated, charmless and dull.

I suspect she had that effect on a lot of people when she was alive too.

However, I was desperate for something to escape into, so I took down C&C and found myself in England, New York and then California just as the States were poised to tumble into war and anti-German feeling was high. It is a lovely book and the heroines (who feel English but sound and look German) are adorable. E von A writes very wonderful, loveable women and usually dessicates them or stamps on them or wears them to a ravel through their relationships with men. Fortunately, in this book she has a German axe rather than a Man axe to grind and so we get a rare happy ending.

The publisher's blurb:

As the Second World War looms, Anna-Rose and Anna-Felicitas, seventeen-year-old twins, are thrust upon relatives. But Uncle Arthur, a blustering patriot, is a reluctant guardian: the twins are half-German and, who knows, could be spying from the nursery window... Packed off to America, they meet Mr Twist, a wealthy engineer with a tendency to motherliness, who befriends them on the voyage. However, he has failed to consider the pitfalls of taking such young and beautiful women under his wing, especially two who will continue to require his protection long after the ship has docked, and who are incapable of behaving with tact. Many adventures ensue (and befall them) in this sparklingly witty, romantic novel in which Elizabeth von Arnim explores the suspicions cast upon the two Annas and Mr Twist in a country poised for war.

The first problem with this blurb is that it has the wrong war. Elizabeth died in 1941, before America joined the war and C&C was first published in 1919, so I have a sneaking suspicion that she was writing about WW1.

The second is that the novel doesn't so much explore the suspicions as the suspecting. The suspicions themselves are never really voiced. When Mr Twist turns up with his lovely entourage (a word used to great effect in the book), no one thinks anything of it until it becomes clear that he is neither their relative nor their guardian. Then something must be morally amiss. Of course, we are never told what is morally amiss. We are never told that any of the suspectors (is that a word?) think anything morally amiss is happening, as such, only that the situation is, in itself, amiss and therefore immoral.

No one, ever, for example, seems to actually think that the Annas are sleeping with Mr Twist, which is the conclusion a modern reader would jump to. But things not being exactly what they 'ought' to be is in itself an immoral condition. Which is very interesting from an historical anthropological point of view, but not, I think, what E von A was trying to write about and not what a modern reader is programmed to expect. It makes the catalyst for most of the action perplexing or frustrating. Or rather, it could for some readers. Personally I lapped it up. I love books where characters have a moral code that is alien to my own and where you have to really shoehorn yourself into their shoes to see why they act like they do.

The other odd thing about C&C is that it is almost entirely free of period detail. There is so little description of clothes, food, vehicles, entertainment, government, make-up or indeed anything, that it really isn't suprising that the publishers put the wrong war in the blurb. The characters are like actors in front of a backdrop that is prettily coloured but even squinting you can't quite make out what it is.

I think the reason for this is that E von A really wasn't very interested in things. She liked people, found them fascinating and frustrating. I also have an impression of her, as a well-born Edwardian lady, rather floating through life without having to dwell on the details of anything in particular. And then there's the fact that she started writing to earn money because her German husband (known in her autobiographical books tellingly as The Man of Wrath) was imprisoned for fraud. Her books, though lovely, do have a dashed-off feel, written quickly for immediate consumption, like good sponge cake. It adds to their charm. I imagine she wrote them with a very short shelf-life in mind. She expected a contemporary audience to supply the contemporary background themselves and would have been amused to know that 90 years later, anyone would still be reading her.

Anyway, some people write books with a message. Many have some kind of moral. Sometimes it's a pretty odd one like 'the sins of the fathers will be visited upon their children' in The Castle of Otranto. But the moral of this one was clearly deeply felt by the author: Never, ever marry a German.

If this was a novel by pretty much anyone else, the Annas would have suffered horribly for their half-German ancestry, and everyone's gossipy imaginations, which would have been a shame, because they are really very nice girls indeed. It's a lovely, light comedy and here are a few light and lovely reasons why I liked it:

• The names. It's a small thing but the fact the pretty, tactless twins are called the 'Twinklers' makes me smile. I wish my name was Anna von Twinkler too. Also the euphony of Twinkler and Twist is gorgeous. I want to work at that law firm, don't you? Also (again) they are both called Anna. I LOVE that.
  
• The Twinkler's solemn love of long words and complete lack of understanding.
  
• The Mothers. This is very much a book about the importance of mothers. They Loom Large. The best mother is a man, and the worst mother blights her children's lives with selflessness.
• On the whole her characters are two-dimensional: utterly charming or ridiculous but types rather than real people. But who cares when she describes them like this:

"She was a lady whose figure seemed to be all meals. The old gentleman had married her in her youth, when she hadn't had time to have had so many. He and she were then the same age, and unfortunately hadn't gone on being the same age since. It had wrecked his life, this inability of his wife to stay as young and new as himself. He wanted a young wife, and the older he got in years - his heart very awkwardly retained its early freshness - the younger he wanted her; and, instead, the older he got the older his wife got too. Also the less new. The old gentleman felt the whole thing was a dreadful mistake. Why should he have to be married to an old lady? Never in his life had he wanted to marry old ladies; and he thought it very hard that at an age when he most appreciated bright youth he should be forced to spend his precious years, his crowning years when his mind had attained wisdom while his heart retained freshness, stranded with an old lady of costly habits and inordinate bulk just because years ago he had fallen in love with a chance pretty girl."

Get a copy of Christopher and Columbus for your very own.

Other brilliant E von A books:

Fraulein Schmidt and Mr Anstruther
This is a collection of Fraulein Schmidt's letters to the young English man (a former lodger with her family) with whom she has become clandestinely engaged.

The Pastor's Wife
This has the funniest proposal ever and
the most soul-destroyingly trivial ending.
(Again, it's a Don't Marry a German story.)

The Caravaners
Here, the German husband himself gets a turn at narrating the story - but the moral still ends up being Don't Marry a German. Very funny. Wife gets dessicated though, be warned.