The Seductive Countess From Kirribilli

Elizabeth von Arnim was the free-spirited literary sensation born in Sydney who went on to live a mysterious, scandalous and glamorous life amid Europe’s aristocracy. This is her story.

- Joyce Morgan

The young bride stepped out of a London church on a frigid February day in 1891. She shivered in her ivory gown of satin and old lace as she paused on the cold stone steps. The damp end of winter was not a romantic time to wed.

She had little time to linger. Within hours, she was on a train with her middle-aged husband to his Berlin home. Miss Beauchamp, a merchant’s daughter, was now the Countess von Arnim.

The 24-year-old had already travelled far from her Australian birthplace. She would travel much further. She would beguile high-society and become an international literary sensation known today as Elizabeth von Arnim.

Although barely 1.5 metres tall – at first glance she was often mistaken for a child – Elizabeth had a formidable presence with blue eyes as penetrating as her wit.

“When one meets her, inevitably she suggests Dresden China, with her tiny voice, tiny hands, tiny manners. And then suddenly, with a shock, you realise that the Dresden China is hollow, and is filled with gunpowder,” author Beverley Nichols wrote of her. Elizabeth created around her the atmosphere of a court at which her friends were either in favour or disgrace. She could be kind and cruel. She was a mix of dove and serpent, her father once noted.

Elizabeth would draw into her orbit aristocrats and artists, among them writer H.G. Wells, with whom it was rumoured she had a tempestuous affair. But she would know deep despair and flee for her life in the face of domestic cruelty and political tyranny.