Thread by @HistoryKE

#HistoryKeThread Strong In the Wind: The Life Of Beryl Markham

In the early 1900s, authorities in Great Britain and estate agents went overboard in their promotion to British citizenry of the prospects of settling and taking up vast fertile farmlands in one of their latest British Empire trophies: British East Africa.

Some of those who were caught by the settler bug were well-off members of the bourgeoisie. Others, finding life to be a bit hard in Britain, decided to chance onto the opportunity in the hope that they would make it big in “the dark continent”.

Beryl (née Clutterbuck) Markham was only a little over two years old when she and her older brother, Richard Alexander “Dickie” Clutterbuck, 4, sailed to Mombasa in the company of their cash-strapped parents, Capt. Charles Baldwin Clutterbuck...

...and his wife, Clara Agnes (née Alexander) Clutterbuck.

This was in 1904.

An accomplished horse trainer, Charles eventually landed a job as a Dairy Manager for pioneer settler Lord Delamere at Njoro in present-day Nakuru. The family woke up each morning in a thatched mud hut, which was hardly a far cry from the rural but more solid abode...

...they were used to back in the county of Rutland, in the English East Midlands.

Charles’s wife, Clara, found the living conditions at Njoro and the general hardships of rural life in Africa unbearable. She wanted the family to return to England. On his part, Charles was determined to stay on.

Indeed, he brokered a few land deals and made himself a bit of money. In under a year, he had managed to buy himself a piece of land – Ndimu Farm, he called it. Charles’s English neighbours simply called him “Clutt”. Natives called him “Cluttabaki”.

Clara was still sulky about life in Africa. In 1906, she secretly fell in love with Major Henry Fearnley Kirkpatrick.

According to author Errol Trzebinski, Henry was “extremely handsome and, above all, he was going home to England”. Clara had found perfect ground, and heart, on which to return to England.

Before long, a number of things happened. Firstly, Clara returned to England taking her first born son, Dickie, with her and leaving her daughter, Beryl, behind. Secondly, after his wife left, Charles was joined by a housekeeper, Emma Orchardson, who quickly became his mistress.

Emma brought along her son, Arthur Orchardson. And as it would turn out, Arthur was more of a brother to Beryl than Dickie ever was.

At the time when this new-ish family was blending in, Beryl had already become family to the natives. Really, she already was a Kipsigis “kijana”, her female gender notwithstanding.

Besides having mustered some Kiswahili and Kipsigis words, she wrestled with native boys and, bare footed, went on hunting expeditions in nearby woods with them. Those close to her also noticed that like typical African natives, she had learnt not to show much emotion.

She particularly grew close to a Kipsigis boy, Kibii Ruto (some accounts refer to his surname as Ruta).

At eight years old, Beryl learnt - with shock, no doubt - that her dad’s mistress, Emma, was not her real mother. She was emotionally pained by the news.

I do not know the circumstances under which Beryl discovered that Emma was not her mum. But in Lady Delamere’s empathetic and caring arms, she found solace for many a day (many years later she told a journalist that her mum had abandoned her).

Beryl thereafter preferred to live in a mud hut and later on her own house on the farm, rather than live under the same roof as Ms. Orchardson. But she was fond of her stepbrother, Arthur, who became a playmate and later on a favourite jockey.

After Lady Delamere died not long afterwards, Beryl took to occasionally sneaking out at night to spend time with her boyhood friend, Kibii. Years later, in her 1942 memoir, West With The Night, Beryl cryptically wrote:

“Kibii and I did what children do when there are things abroad too big to understand; we stayed close to each other and played games that made no noise….”

Beryl was enrolled at Ms. Sercombe’s boarding school sometime around 1915. Overall, she had had only a few years of formal education but her dad made her read extensively on her own.

Later, she was taught literature and music by famous hunter and Oxford-educated aristocrat, Denys Finch Hatton (pictured).

In 1919, just eleven days shy of her 17th birthday, the almost six-foot tall, blue eyed blonde girl with the figure of a super model got married to Jock Purves, an ex-soldier turned farmer who was almost double her age. The marriage, however, hardly lasted beyond the honeymoon.

It was then that Beryl took after her dad, immersing herself into the training of horses.

Indeed, in 1920, while aged 18, Beryl became the first woman in Africa- and the youngest, to receive a racehorse-trainer’s license. This was the same year she formally met Finch Hatton, a man whose good looks and gentlemanly manners invariably endeared him to ladies.

Indeed, Beryl was as fascinated by his looks as she was by his flying exploits.

As Finch Hatton was known to be in a relationship with Karen Blixen (pictured), Beryl was a bit guarded in her associations with him. The two however had a fling in late 1923 that, according to Errol Trzebinski, was “a good deal less to Finch Hatton than it was to Beryl”.

In early 1924, Beryl got pregnant. She raised some money to fly to London because, well, that was where Denys was. This fueled suspicions that the pregnancy was Denys’s.

She did not succeed in meeting up with Denys, who appeared keen to avoid her. And so after securing some money from a rich friend of hers in the UK, one Frank Greswolde, she procured an abortion and returned to Kenya.

Back home, she got back into her passion of training of horses.

In 1927, the same year her brother Dickie died aged only 27, Beryl met and got married to Mansfield Markham. She took her childhood friend Kibii along on her (second) honeymoon.

According to Errol, the two “laughed at European manners, derided their absurdities, by comparison with African culture and beliefs, just as they had when they were totos…”

In October of 1928, Beryl Markham met Edward, the Prince of Wales and his brother, the Duke of Gloucester. Within a few days she was already involved in an affair – first with the Prince and, next, with his brother. Her affair with the latter lasted till his marriage in 1935.

When the extra marital affairs became known to the Markhams family, they threatened to file for divorce and protested to the royal family through the head of their family, Sir Charles Markham. Sir Charles and his younger brother, Beryl’s husband, Mansfield, were...

...subsequently summoned by Queen Mary (wife of King George V) and were on the receiving end of nothing short of a royal reprimand.

In the end, the Markhams on the one hand felt that the ill-treatment they received at the palace was an affront to their family.

On the other, the royal family accepted to take over Beryl’s support. It is said that for the rest of her life, Beryl received an annuity of 500 pounds provided by the Crown.

If author Errol Trzebinski is correct in her hunch, Beryl’s flings with members of the royal family were intended to somewhat catch the attention of Denys Finch Hatton.

And whether this hypothesis is correct or not, Beryl may have just managed to edge Karen out of Denys’s life. But only just, because it was not long before Denys Finch Hatton got killed after the plane he was piloting crashed in a fireball somewhere in the Tsavo wild in 1931.

By that time, Beryl had started to learn to fly, thanks to trainer Campbell Black. However, there was little doubt that it was Finch Hatton’s aviator life that had rubbed off on her.

She was the first pilot to offer aerial game-scouting on a commercial basis, specializing in the tracking of elephants, although she was also prepared to search for any other game. She hated game hunting and preferred taking photographs of wildlife instead.

She also worked for safaris led by her professional hunter friend, the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, ex-husband of Karen Blixen, who was herself – using the pen name Isak Dinesen, author of the book Out of Africa that was decades later made into a movie.

During low tourism season, Beryl Markham used her Avian plane as an aerial taxi for upcountry settlers. Later, to increase her operating capacity, she acquired a three-seater high-wing cabin monoplane.

In October of 1934, Beryl received news that Campbell Black and Charles Scott had won the prestigious Mildenhall-to-Melbourne MacRobertson Air Race, flying the DH.88 Comet Grosvenor House.

Beryl had hoped to enter the race with Campbell Black, who first taught her to fly. Not long after she learned that he had married actress Florence Desmond. This distressed her.

Nevertheless, Beryl was determined to demonstrate that her piloting skills were as good as those of Campbell Black. Some say that she was desperate to impress him.

She began to yearn for a flying record of some sort, and contemplated a marathon London to Capetown roundtrip, or some sort of transatlantic feat.

And although Campbell Black was kindly to offer to connect her with flying jobs in England, Beryl Markham was more interested in setting some record.

She was desperate to be in the limelight as having registered a flying record of global proportions. It was then that she started to look for someone to finance a solo record attempt.

Ironically, the wealthy financer she found was none other than an old Kenyan settler friend, one John Carberry.

Carberry was in England awaiting delivery of a Percival Vega Gull that he was going to enter in the 1936 Portsmouth to Johannesburg Schlesinger African Air Race.

As Beryl had already set her sights on a record transatlantic attempt, she convinced John to lend her the plane. The deal was struck, but on condition that Beryl returned the plane in time for the African Air Race.

Dubbed The Messenger, the Vega Gull was an elegant low-wing, fabric-covered, four-seater monoplane. For Beryl Markham’s transatlantic flight, several extra fuel tanks were to be added.

The plane had no radio and Beryl would later joke that she left behind her pilot jacket in order to reduce the plane’s weight.

Days before her solo attempt, Markham gave up smoking and drinking, and began exercising in order to build her stamina.

On Friday, 4th September 1936, against rough winds (she actually waited for a few days for the weather to clear), she took off solo from Abingdon airport in southern England for the Floyd Bennet field in New York.

21 hours later, weary and desperate to land as she was running out of fuel, Beryl Markham set her monoplane down to land at what she thought was solid surface.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be the soggy wetland of Baleine in Nova Scotia, Canada. The plane nosed over, crashed and save for a gash wound on her forehead, Beryl was otherwise okay.

Albeit with some difficulty, the tall blonde managed to wriggle herself out of the cockpit. It did not matter much that she did not land in New York. Hers was the first transatlantic flight by a solo woman flight.

The 34-year-old had successfully crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 21 hours and 25 minutes (crossing 1,800 miles), only to suffer a fuel malfunction a mere 25 miles off-course from her New York destination.

Beryl was later picked up by a Capt. George Lewis and taken to the Lewis household where she was examined by a Dr. Freeman O'Neil. The following day, she left in a U.S Coast Guard plane for New York, where she received a welcome worthy of a global celebrity.

Markham returned to England thereafter, perhaps to mourn the death of Campbell Black, who had died in a freak accident. She later relocated in 1939 to California, USA. Here, she worked briefly as an “Africa consultant” for Hollywood filmmakers, big game hunters and aviators.

Whilst in the United States, she met and married her third husband, the writer Raoul Schumacher. She also published a memoir, West With The Night, which chronicled to a large extent her African childhood.

In the 1950s, she returned to the place she considered her real home – Kenya. Years to her death in 1986, aged 83, she led a quiet, somewhat impoverished life until her book was re-released and proceeds from the sales boosted her welfare.

It is not known what became of Kibii, although it is said that he continued working for her until sometime in the early 1950s.

Beryl Markham’s scandalous life has fascinated many. But her solo transatlantic flight will remain as her crowning moment in life. Still, this was a woman who showed much grit and determination in whatever he set her mind to.

Smarting from his love overtures being spurned by Beryl Markham, celebrated author Ernest Hemingway marveled at her writing, but took a contemptuous aim at her character. He wrote:

“Did you read Beryl Markham’s book, West With The Night? …She has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them...

.... together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade [expletive], can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers … it really is a bloody wonderful book.”

In the 1985 movie Out of Africa, Beryl Markham’s role was acted by Suzanna Hamilton.