Warning: strpos(): Empty needle in /homepages/5/d845057890/htdocs/clickandbuilds/LionessatLarge/wp-content/plugins/regenerate-thumbnails-advanced/classes/Environment.php on line 47
Elizabeth von Arnim: The Solitary Summer – Reading Progress Update: 55 of 190 Pages – Lioness at Large

Elizabeth von Arnim: The Solitary Summer – Reading Progress Update: 55 of 190 Pages

The Solitary Summer - Elizabeth von Arnim

“A century ago a man lived here who loved his garden.  He loved, however, in his younger years, travelling as wll, but in his travels did not forget this little corner of the earth belonging to him, and brought back the seeds of many strange trees such as had never been seen in these parts before, and tried experiments with them in the uncongenial soil, and though many perished a few took hold, and grew, and flourished and shade me now at tea-time.  What flowers he had, and how he arranged his beds, no one knows, except that the eleven beds round the sun-dial were put there by him; and of one thing he seems to have been inordinately fond, and that was lilac.  We have to thank him for the surprising beauty of the garden in May and early June, for he it was who planted the great groups of it, and the banks of it, and massed it between the pines and firs.  Wherever a lilac bush could go a lilac bush went; and not common sorts, but a variety of good sorts, white, and purple, and pink, and mauve, and he must have planted it with special care and discrimination, for it grows here as nothing else will and keeps his memory, in my heart at least, for ever gratefully green.  On the wall behind our pew in church there is his monument, he having died here full of years, in the peace that attends the last hours of a good man who has loved his garden; and to the long Latin praises of his virtues and eminence I add, as I pass beneath it on Sundays, a heartiest Amen.  Who would not join in the praises of the man to whom you owe your lilacs, and your Spanish chestnuts, and your tulip trees, and your pyramid oaks?  “He was a good man, for he loved his garden” — that is the epitaph I wolld have put on his monument, because it gives one a far clearer sense of his goodness and explains it better than any amount of sonorous Latinities.  How cold he be anything but good since he loved a garden — that divine filter that filters all the grossness out of us, and leaves each time we have been in it, clearer, and purer, and more harmless?”

What a fitting and lovely epitaph that would have been indeed.

And now I’m wondering if Alexander von Humboldt ever visited Nassenheide …

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Summary post HERE.
Further reading progress updates:


Original post:
ThemisAthena.booklikes.com/post/1783616/reading-progress-update-i-ve-read-55-out-of-190-pages

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Literature Reviews

Adventures in Arda

Note: This was my summer 2022 project — but while I posted the associated project pages here at the time (Middle-earth and its sub-project pages concerning the people and peoples, timeline, geography, etc. of Arda and Middle-earth, see enumeration under the Boromir meme, below), I never got around to also copying this introductory post from […]

Read More
Literature Reviews

Michael J. Sullivan: Riyria

The Riyria Revelations are the fantasy series that brought Michael J. Sullivan instant recognition back in the late 2000s.  Originally published as a series of six installments, they are now available as a set of three books, with each of the three books comprising two volumes of the original format.  As he did with almost […]

Read More
Literature Reviews

Michael J. Sullivan: Legends of the First Empire

Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria books have been on my TBR for a while, but until I’d read two short stories from the cycle — The Jester and Professional Integrity — I hadn’t been sure whether his writing would be for me.  Then I found out that (much like Tolkien’s Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History […]

Read More