The Caravaners by 'Elizabeth' (1909)

'Elizabeth''s career has always to some extent existed behind the veil of her name, to the point where her capabilities have been shadowed a little by it I think. She could be Elizabeth Beauchamp, or von Arnim (which she has turned out to be at present), or Russell, or Frere, depending on whether one chooses her own name or those of her three partners through life. "The author of Elizabeth and her German Garden" or simply that first name is how she was known in her lifetime. All of which obscures the fact that she is one of the great comic writers of the twentieth century. The Caravaners, in terms of the skill and depth with which it is written and its ultimate resulting success, can quite legitimately take its place beside the greats. This veiled picture of a typical Prussian Junker baron, our narrator, with his fatuous prejudices, snobberies, chauvinism and unchallenged self-opinion, is carried through with subtlety and true mastery. A character like that, put on an English caravaning holiday in the Edwardian era, with a growingly rebellious wife and an assortment of (for him) quite challenging travelling companions, from a wiry Socialist to raffish sons of nobility, from elegant free-spirited German ladies to glaring astonished English schoolgirls, with no idea at all of how he comes across and how desperate they all are to get away from him, completely convinced of his own correctness and charm, is devastatingly and almost cruelly funny. The awkward fact which one suspects if a little of her biography is known is that the baron is probably at least a partial picture of her then husband, Henning von Arnim, if not a more substantial one! And this provides perhaps the book's only down-point: every now and then the comedy is too obvious and mocking - the actuation of intense dislike is too palpably clear. The veil is lifted just a little too much, and bitterness shows through. A brilliant example, nevertheless, of the comic art.