Sometimes you are asked “who would you like to have dinner with?” Churchill comes to mind, but he was very temperamental and brutish, plus I can’t stand the smell of cigars, on the other hand, there would be a lot of champagne. Next comes Henry Kissinger, I think a brilliant mind. Then after being a guest at the famous and exclusive Muthaiga Country Club in Nairobi, it would have to be Beryl Markham. In walking the halls and rooms with all of their photos of years gone by, you could feel and imagine the life of all the famous and infamous who had graced this place, and she was definitely one.
Beryl’s father, Charles Clutterbuck, a former military man who sought his fortune in East Africa, bought a thousand acres in Ngoro. In 1906, he moved his wife and two small children there from the English Midlands. Beryl Markham’s mother lasted hardly a year on the remote farm in Njoro, a hundred miles north of Nairobi. When she abandoned her daughter at four, she returned to England with their son Richard.
Thus, Beryl was raised by her horse trainer father and the native staff on a farm in the bush. She spent her days with the local Kipsigis tribe, Beryl grew up learning all the skills of a native warrior: how to hunt, throw a spear, and jump high in the air, like the Kipsigis boys. She learned from Nandi, Kipsigis, Luo, Kikuyu, and Masai tribes and she acquired all of their languages, with Swahili becoming her first African tongue. Beryl hunted barefoot through the Mau Forest, kept a pet lion cub and relied on a stable of horses for transport. The sweeping plains of Africa was this tomboy’s playground and school, as she put it, “in a world without walls.” This obviously served her well for her future exploits.
At 13 Beryl was sent to boarding school in Nairobi but, that lasted 2 1/2 years. It came to an abrupt end when she was expelled for having tried to start a revolt. There was still wild in this child. She returned to the farm to train horses like her father. And by the age of eighteen, Beryl became the first woman to become a licensed horse trainer by English Jockey Club Rules; a feat because women could still not be licensed to train in England. Her reputation grew as her horses won more races, including the prestigious Kenya St. Leger.
Now a grown to almost 6 foot tall, the lanky blonde beauty socialized at the Muthaiga Country Club where society of East Africa gathered. Blessed with abundant charm and for a life as a tomboy, she could be incredibly feminine. Though a short-lived marriage arrangement didn’t work out, mainly because she couldn’t be boxed in. Beryl struggled to keep hold of her independent spirit. When she met Denys Finch Hatton, who, like her, preferred animals and the African plains to champagne soaked celebrations at the Muthaiga Club. Their intense and secret love affair rivals that of Denys and Karen Blixen, plunged the younger Beryl into one of Colonial Africa’s most well-known love triangles. Finch Hatton introduced her to flying over the Tsavo wilderness and she accompanied him on his shooting safaris for his aristocratic clients. He introduced her to music and literature, like her father had done. Neither wanted to lead a conventional life.
In 1928 Finch Hatton took the Prince of Wales and his younger brother Prince Henry on Safari and part of the inner circle was Beryl (now Markham). It turns out that she had an affair with Prince Henry out in the bush. Months later when the Prince of Wales was summoned back to London, his brother remained behind on safari with the company of a free spirited blonde. Henry was instantly besotted. Their affair in Kenya continued when she followed him back to England. They were not discreet and camped out at a suite at the Grosvenor House. When it finally came to the attention of King George V, the scandalous affair was tamped down. The Duke of Gloucester was sent abroad on missions for the Crown.
Beryl gave birth to a son February 25, 1929. Gervase Markham was born with some physical complications and was taken to her mother-in-law to attend and be properly raised as a true Englishman. Shortly after the birth, she renewed her affair with Prince Henry. It is said that Mansfield Markham discovered love letters from the Prince and threatened to sue for divorce naming him correspondent. The Duke of Gloucester set up a trust fund for Beryl of 15,000 pounds as an annuity for the rest of her life. The marriage quietly ended 7 months later. Many tongues wagged about the timing of the child’s arrival.
At just 27, Beryl’s career changed course when she returned to Africa and she decided to pursue her pilot’s license. It was then the rage; Denys Finch Hatton, Prince Henry, and the Prince of Wales had all learned to fly or owned their own airplanes. As with racehorse training, Markham would quickly become established and successful at another occupation dominated by men. Markham turned her attention to another friend, the debonair Captain Tom Campbell Black, a Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Force veteran then working as the managing director and chief pilot of the Nairobi-based Wilson Airways to teach her. In 1931, she received her A license and passed the test for her B license in 1933, making her the first woman in Kenya to become a commercial pilot. Another first to her fast-paced life. Markham was possibly the best pilot to fly out of Kenya it as said, and certainly the boldest.
Perhaps it was the death of Denys Finch Hatton in a place crash that she was supposed to be on – that she recommitted herself to being the best. In April 1932, with only 127 hours of flying time in her logbook, she set off alone in a single-engine Avro Avian two-seater biplane, soon to be repainted in her blue-and-silver horse-racing colors for England. She flew the tiny airplane 6,000 miles by stages. Months later she flew back to Kenya, completing an astonishing feat of airmanship and navigation for someone so relatively inexperienced.
She challenged herself again and again going far beyond being a bush pilot. On September 4, 1936, as the sun's light drained from the sky, she took off alone to cross the Atlantic from England to New York on a dare. All alone in the inky dark of the night she flew 22 hours until she ran out of fuel; after going off course, she was able to land by gliding the plane to a field just past the water’s edge in Nova Scotia. With a bump on her head and its nose in a bog she was still feted as the first woman to fly the Atlantic Ocean East to West. She was treated as a heroine in New York City and all the newspapers. But 18 days later, her dear Tom Campbell Black was killed on an airfield and she never got to celebrate her victory with him.
She wrote her own story West with the Night. It was such a compelling read I was so drawn in as how her brush strokes of descriptive words depicted her Kenya. She had to have been so totally homesick because she wrote such a vivid picture of her memories. The Kenya that I knew and had experienced; I was reliving it all over again from the pages. It is so true once you experience the African bush. it gets under your skin, and you are drawn back again and again. Her highest praise was from Ernest Hemingway himself. And that became fortuitous for her and her financial situation at the time. I would still be happy to buy the dinner because the conversations would have been amazing. Dining with the vivacious and scandalous Mrs. Markham would have been so tantalizing. Three times married and divorced, with a series of lovers, though she never mentions them in her book, I am sure an antidote would slip sooner or later.
Commentaires