Vera (1921). By

Vera by Elizabeth von Arnim is a black comedy based on her disastrous second marriage to Earl Russell: a mordant analysis of the romantic delusions through which wives acquiesce in husbands' tyrannies. In outline the story of this utterly unromantic novel anticipates DuMaurier's Rebecca. Naive Lucy Entwhistle is swept into marriage by widower, Everard Wemyss. His mansion "The Willows" is pervaded by the spectre of his dead wife Vera, with whom Lucy becomes obsessed. ... Here the servants are partisan for both wives, and lose no opportunity to disrupt Everard's unctuous, oppressive household routines. An extraordinarily black vision of marriage, also continuously funny, the novel's power lies in the wit and economy of the usually prolix Von Arnim. Elizabeth von Arnim (31 August 1866 - 9 February 1941), born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an Australian-born British novelist. By marriage she became Gräfin (Countess) von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and by a second marriage, Countess Russell. Although known in her early life as Mary, after the publication of her first book, she was known to her readers, eventually to her friends, and finally even to her family as Elizabeth and she is now invariably referred to as Elizabeth von Arnim. She also wrote under the pen name Alice Cholmondeley. She was born at her family's holiday home in Kirribilli Point, Australia. When she was three years old, the family returned to England where she was raised. Her parents were Henry Herron Beauchamp (1825-1907), merchant, and Elizabeth (Louey) Weiss Lassetter (1836-1919). Arnim had four brothers, a sister, and a cousin from New Zealand, Kathleen Beauchamp, who later married John Middleton Murry and wrote under the pen name, Katherine Mansfield. In 1891, Elizabeth married Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a Prussian aristocrat, whom she had met during an Italian tour with her father. They lived in Berlin and eventually moved to the countryside where, in Nassenheide, Pomerania, the Arnims had their family estate. The couple had five children, four daughters and a son. The children's tutors at Nassenheide included E. M. Forster and Hugh Walpole. In 1908, Arnim left Nassenheide to return to London. Count von Arnim died in 1910, and later that year she moved to Randogne, Switzerland, where she built the Chalet Soleil and entertained literary and society friends. From 1910 until 1913, she was a mistress of the novelist H. G. Wells. In 1916, she married John Francis Stanley Russell, 2nd Earl Russell, elder brother of Bertrand Russell. The marriage ended in acrimony, with Elizabeth fleeing to the United States and the couple separating in 1919, although they never divorced. In 1920, she embarked on an affair with Alexander Stuart Frere Reeves (1892-1984), a British publisher nearly 30 years her junior; he later married and named his only daughter Elizabeth in her honour. After leaving Germany, she lived, variously, in London, France and Switzerland. In 1939, on the outbreak of the Second World War, she returned to the United States, where she died of influenza at the Riverside Infirmary, Charleston, South Carolina, on 9 February 1941, aged 74. She was cremated at Fort Lincoln cemetery, Maryland and in 1947 her ashes were mingled with her brother Sydney's in the churchyard of St Margaret's, Tylers Green, Penn, Buckinghamshire. The Latin inscription on her tombstone reads, parva sed apta (small but apt), alluding to her short stature.