The Enchanted April

1922, 1993 Pocket Books edition
Elizabeth Von Arnim (AKA Mary Annette Beauchamp)
The Enchanted April
Bought new for $5.99
Worn and torn paperback
B

I saw the movie first, about 20 years ago, and it remains one of my favorite escapist movies, so full of lush scenery-- the flowers and the sea.  I'd probably give the movie a B+ because some things work better on screen, not that the flowers and the sea aren't in the novel.  Also, I think that the Caroline/Briggs romance is handled better, since instead of being one of dozens of men who've fallen for Caroline, Briggs almost literally falls, into the sea, till she, who hates to be grabbed, grabs him and saves his life.  In the movie, he's near-sighted, so he can't be overwhelmed by her beauty, which is a new and healthily humbling experience for her.  The irony is that Polly Walker isn't the prettiest woman in the movie.  She's striking but Miranda Richardson, as Rose Arbuthnot, is lovelier, and Josie Lawrence (whom I already adored from Whose Line Is It Anyway?), as Lotty Wilkins, has seldom looked better.

None of the characters look like they're described in the book-- Mellersh isn't handsome for instance-- but I do think that, Briggs aside, the personalities are captured.  However, what we do lose is that this is a very introspective book.  Indeed, the main reason that roughly a third of the book is set all on one day (April Fools' Day as it happens) is that we learn the initial thoughts of the four women, and some of the servants, at the castle.  We can't see the magical changes if we don't know where they're starting from.

In the movie, this isn't too much of a problem, since the women can each be shown sitting or lying around with a voiceover.  It is a problem with the two Englishmen who aren't Briggs.  Both husbands come across worse in the movie.  Mr. Wilkins seems to just value his wife because she's bringing him business prospects, while in the book that's how it begins but he does come to care for her as a person, for the first time since their courtship.  The case of Mr. Arbuthnot is more worrisome, since I know intelligent people who've seen the movie and think that Frederick, in his guise as author Ferdinand Arundel, has been having an affair with Lady Caroline, rather than his just being one of the many infatuated, as the book makes clear.  He does want to have an affair I suppose, but Caroline sees him as fat and middle-aged, i.e. safe.  (Considering her worldliness, that's an odd conclusion to draw about a stout 40-year-old.)

The movie drops the "The," so that it's a more generalised April, while here the implication is that this is the one April that was enchanted.  There's a feeling in the book that they're not coming back, while the movie implies that it becomes an annual visit.  Also, the movie takes a throw-away line about a walking stick and turns it into Mrs. Fisher not only no longer needing her cane but it actually blooming, as all these English people have.

I haven't said much about Mrs. Fisher, but I think in both book and movie her character is very well done, a Victorian who glories in her Victorian-ness and regrets living in a lesser world, until she realises that all her old friends, including "Meredith, the novelist" (I can't think of him without thinking of Joan Plowright's delivery), are dead and will never do anything new.  So she lets herself love living, youngish people.

I've probably made the novel sound much more serious than it is.  As the Afterword by Terence de Vere White says, "The novel is the lightest of omelettes, in the making of which the least number possible of eggs get broken."  It's not a particularly profound novel, even if it does address changes that the Great War has brought.  The fact that Lady Caroline Dester's nickname is "Scrap" (not to be confused with Scraps the Patchwork Girl) shows that this is not a heavy, brooding novel.  It's a fantasy, more of a fairytale for grown-ups than Once on a Time.  If only you and a few strangers could scrape together some money, you could run off to a sunshine-and-flowers-covered Italian castle, and you'd find love, friendship, and laughter to warm you even back in your grey, rainy home.

It is a nice way to end my second shelf, which currently starts with Anna Karenina running away from her husband and going mad.