"The Enchanted April" by Elizabeth von Arnim

Four English ladies rent a castle in Italy (complete with servants) for a month. When they arrive, the beauty of the place works magic. All the problems of their lives at home are solved by love. It's a fairy-tale. Inevitably, the castle is separated from mainland Italy by a long causeway. 

The four women are: 

• Mrs Wilkins, wife of a solicitor, who lives in Hampstead and spends her days at her "economical" club on Shaftesbury Avenue. Her married life has lost its magic. She's the first to be enchanted by the castle. Even before they arrive she 'sees' things and makes mystic pronouncements.
• Mrs Arbuthnot, wife of a successful author, who has replaced marital love with going to church and doing good works in the community.
• Mrs Fisher, a selfish and egocentric old lady whose talk is of the heroes of her youth: Gladstone and Thomas Carlyle and Robert Browning, all of whom she knew.
• Lady Caroline Dester who is fed up with being the target of others, especially wannabe husbands, who want to 'grab' her. She is cursed by being so beautiful and having such a melodious voice that even when she tries to be nasty, no-one notices.

Notice that they are all posh. They are all ladies of leisure, even before the holiday. Meanwhile the servants are stereotypical comedy material (the lower-classes often are, if they are not perceived as threats).

Sadly, given that the theme of the book is that this enchanted place is transforming sad people into happy people and cross people into nice people, I preferred the characters who were sad and cross; they were so much more interesting. But none of them are real people; they are representatives of types. This is in keeping with the magical atmosphere of the setting; the reader isn't expected to take these people seriously. It is all in keeping with the flavour of fairy tale and myth about this book. I was strongly reminded of the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night's Dream but most of his comedies are set in unreal places with unrealistic characters. This is the essence of comedy.

And it was funny. There were some delightful lines:

• “When she chiefly flourished, husbands were taken seriously, as the only real obstacles to sin.” (Ch 7)
• “It is true she liked him most when he wasn't there, but then she usually liked everybody most when they weren't there.” (Ch 16)
• “He certainly looked exactly like a husband, not at all like one of those people who go out abroad pretending they are husbands when they are not.” (Ch 21)

I found the ending a little contrived.

There are moments of excessive description. The walk up to the castle was narrated for what seemed to be every step of the way. This was, I suppose, a way of emphasising the journey from reality to fairyland and certainly underlined the separation of the two, but it was boring. There was a lot of description, mostly eulogising pretty flowers, very unoriginal. 

But the overall impression was of a delightful book with some very thoughtful moments.

Selected quotes:

• “Chatsworth on the gate-posts of a villa emphasises the villa.” (Ch 1)
• “Such beauty; and she alive to feel it.” (Ch 6)
• “Now she had taken off all her goodness and left it behind her like a heap of rain-sodden clothes, and she only felt joy. She was naked of goodness, and was rejoicing in being naked.” (Ch 6)
• “Up to now she had had to take what beauty she could as she went along, snatching at little bits of it when she came across it, - a patch of days on a fine day in a Hampstead field, a flash of sunset between two chimney pots.” (Ch 6)
• “She was having a violent reaction against beautiful clothes and the slavery they impose on one, her experience being that the instant one had got them they took one in hand and gave one no peace till they had been everywhere and been seen by everybody. You didn't take your clothes to parties; they took you.” (Ch 6)
• “The trivial and barren young people who still, in spite of the war, seemed to litter the world in such numbers.” (Ch 9)
• “Mr Fisher ... had during their married life behaved very much like macaroni. He had slipped, he had wriggled, he had made her feel undignified, and win at last she had got him safe, as she thought, there had invariably been little bits of him that still, as it were, hung out.” (Ch 9)
• “Beauty! All over before you can turn around. An affair you might say of minutes.” (Ch 10)
• “Imagine being old for as long as two or three times as being young.” (Ch 10)
• “As though justice mattered. as though justice can really be distinguished from vengeance.” (Ch 11)
• “I hate authors. I wouldn't mind them so much if they didn't write books.” (Ch 12)
• “How and where husbands slipped should be known only to their wives. Sometimes it was not known to them, and then the marriage had less happy moments; but these moments were not talked about either; the decencies continued to be preserved.” (Ch 12)
• “Often she had met wives who didn't want their husbands either, but that made them nonetheless indignant if they thought somebody else did.” (Ch 13)
• “Reading was very important; the proper exercise and development of one’s mind was a paramount duty.” (Ch 13)
• “Old friends ... compare one constantly with what one used to be ... They are surprised at development. They hark back; they expect motionlessness after, say, fifty, to the end of one's days.” (Ch 16)
• “Inheritance was more respectable than acquisition.” (Ch 18)
• “All the loneliness of age flashing upon her, the loneliness of having outstayed one's welcome in the world.” (Ch 22)

October 2025; 361 pages

First published in 1922

My Virago paperback was issued in 1989

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God