They had four daughters and a son, born between December 1891 and October 1901. At first they lived in Berlin, then in 1896 moved to what was then Nassenheide, Pomerania (now Rzędziny in Poland), where the Arnim family had a landed estate. He was the eldest son of the late Count Harry von Arnim, the former German Ambassador to France. On 21 February 1891, Elizabeth married the widowed German aristocrat Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin (1851–1910) in London, whom she had met on a tour of Italy with her father two years earlier. The von Arnim-Schlagenthin family manor in Nassenheide, Pomerania, (now Rzędziny), c. Īrnim studied at the Royal College of Music, principally learning the organ. Mansfield satirized Arnim as the character Rosemary in a short story, ' A Cup of Tea', which she wrote while in Switzerland. They got on well, although Mansfield considered the much wealthier Arnim to be patronizing. Arnim visited her cousin's niece often during this period. The house was only a '1/2 an hour's scramble away' from Arnim's Chalet Soleil at Randogne. Mansfield, ill with tuberculosis, lived in the Montana region of Switzerland (now Crans-Montana) from May 1921 until January 1922, renting the Chalet des Sapins with her husband John Middleton Murry from June 1921. Although Elizabeth was older by 22 years, she and Mansfield later corresponded, reviewed each other's works, and became close friends. Īrnim was the first cousin of Mansfield's father, Harold Beauchamp, making her the first cousin once removed of Mansfield.

When she was three years old, the family moved to England, where they lived in London but also spent several years in Switzerland. One of her cousins was the New Zealand-born Kathleen Beauchamp, who wrote under the pen name Katherine Mansfield. She was born at her family's home on Kirribilli Point in Sydney, Australia, to Henry Herron Beauchamp (1825–1907), a wealthy shipping merchant, and Elizabeth (nicknamed Louey) Weiss Lassetter (1836–1919). She used the pseudonym Alice Cholmondeley for only one novel, Christine, published in 1917. Her writings are ascribed to Elizabeth von Arnim. Though known in early life as May, her first book introduced her to readers as Elizabeth, which she eventually became friends and finally to family. She was a cousin of the New Zealand-born writer Katherine Mansfield. Wells, then later married Frank Russell, elder brother of the Nobel prize-winner and philosopher Bertrand Russell. After her first husband's death, she had a three-year affair with the writer H. Her first marriage made her Countess von Arnim-Schlagenthin and her second Elizabeth Russell, Countess Russell. Born in Australia, she married a German aristocrat, and her earliest works are set in Germany. Elizabeth von Arnim (31 August 1866 – 9 February 1941), born Mary Annette Beauchamp, was an English novelist.

Elizabeth and her german garden