West with the night

  West with the night by Beryl Markham                    Circling the Sun by Paula Mclain

                                 

Straight on till Morning  by Mary S.Lovell 

WEST with the NIGHT

By BERYL MARKHAM 

First published in 1942, reproduced from the North Point Press edition of 1983

by Virago Press Ltd, reprinted in 2001.

This is the memoir of Beryl Markham, (1902 -1986) best known as the first woman to fly solo from England to America in 1936.

 She has written 'WEST WITH THE NIGHT' in 1942 when she lived in the Bahamas and in the U.S.A. Her book has been republished in 1983 and became a major success!

Twenty-four stories, written in lyric prose recount the most significant episodes in her life. Her descriptions of past experiences and extraordinary achievements are brilliantly rendered.  Most of them are set in British East Africa, ( Kenya ) where she grew up on a horse farm. Beryl has always loved Africa and she writes with a touch of nostalgia about the bush near the Rift Valley where she had her first home. She also made a colourful picture of her long journey on horseback to Molo through stern and cold mountains after she had left her farm to become an apprentice horse trainer. The picturesque flamingo lake at Nakuru, where she trained horses also figures in her  stories.

 As a child of nature raised by her father, after her mother had deserted them, she grew up with the local tribes, Nandis and Kikuyus, played barefoot with the children, spoke Swahili and was even allowed to go hunting with the tribesmen. She led a very free and adventurous life in which physical challenge and risk were always present. 

Those features would always stay with her.

Her love for animals led her to create literary gems when she talks about the animals she was surrounded by. She depicted lions, leopards and other jungle animals and devoted moving passages to her beloved dog Buller and to their parrot Bombafu.

From her father, a horse breeder, she had inherited a strong affinity for horses. In her stories, she has expressed her passion for them e.g. when she depicts her colts, their birth, their training, and their races.

 'A lovely horse always is…an emotional experience…horses… have been as much a part of my life as past birthdays. There is no phase of my childhood I cannot recall by remembering a horse I owned then …'

 Thanks to her legendary skill she became the first licensed female racehorse trainer in Africa and probably in the world, at the young age of eighteen.

 She would go on training horses until her death near the race course in Nairobi ,

despite having become a world famous aviator in the meantime.

It was after having met Tom Campbell Black, a retired RAF pilot and close friend, that Beryl took up a new challenge!

 She wrote:

  'A life has to move or it stagnates…every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday'…,

Thanks to her aviation lessons with Tom, she became an experienced bush pilot and would run the first taxi and messenger service in the region. She also pioneered the practice of spotting big game from the air for safari hunters, with only compass and map for navigation. She really enjoyed the total freedom of flying and narrates her  adventures in a very personal style. In those passages even a map would get animated and an aircraft compared to a horse:

                                                                                                           

'A map says to you read me carefully …I am the earth in the palm of your hand…'…

or

' the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead…She toys with freedom and hints at liberation…'

She wrote a thrilling account of her major exploit, her night flight when she crossed the Atlantic solo, in the most extreme circumstances, against all headwinds.

Her stories end with her crash landing in Nova Scotia and her arrival the next day in New York , where a crowd of people were still waiting for her.

 Beryl's stories show her talents, her strong will, her total independence and her fearlessness. Her upbringing had, of course, played an important role in shaping her personality. Having been a fearless child in the bush, she would love to ride dangerous stallions later on.  She was very bold during her frequent night flights in Kenya and even more during her pioneer flight to New York , when the motor fell out.

Her love for Africa is shown in several passages. She considered it her own country.

Having always lived in Africa , away from European society and free of its constraints on women may have helped her to be totally free and able to disregard the social norms of her time. She would become one of the first women to move into areas that were traditionally reserved for men.

Furthermore, her relationship with the locals was excellent, as an example, her Kenyan childhood friend, a boy called Kibii or Arap Ruta, remained a close friend for ever and became a highly valuable associate in her work as a horse trainer. He surfaced again in several stories.

The other main actors in her memoir are her father, whom she worshipped,   

Lord and Lady Delamere, the first English settlers in the area whom she knew during her childhood and who would support her when she started working as horse trainer.

Besides, Lady Delamere occasionally acted as a replacement mother during Beryl's childhood.

There have been important tragedies in Beryl's life, first her mother's desertion when she was only a toddler and her dislike for the stepmother, her father had imposed. Another tragedy happened with her father's departure following a severe drought in the area, in which he lost all his crops and money and was unable to pay his debts. Beryl, by then a sixteen year old teenager had no other choice but to marry Jock Purves, a farmer who would buy part of her father's farm. The marriage was doomed to fail. Years later she would lose two of her best friends, Denys and later Tom, in aviation accidents. 

.

Having been an attractive and tall blonde, blessed with a lot of charm, Beryl has had a tempestuous private life with a number of lovers and three marriages.

Among her close male friends or lovers Tom Campbell Black, pilot, teacher and adviser played a major role. Denys Finch Hatton, a well known aristocratic philanderer was also in the picture. So was the famous Bror Blixen, safari hunter and husband of Karen Blixen, the author of 'Out of Africa'.

All three had introduced Beryl to literature and she had become a keen reader of their library books. Beryl has also had a sensational affair with Prince Henry, who came to Kenya with his brother Edward for a safari.  

There are fewer women present in the narrative apart from Karen Blixen whom Beryl mentions with regards to Denys F.Hatton, Karen's and supposedly Beryl's occasional lover.

 However, it seems that the greatest loves of her life may have been her father and the horses. 

In addition to her above mentioned talents, she was an accomplished writer.

How was this possible for someone without any formal schooling? 

Her talent has unfortunately led to speculation by the gossip press as we will find out in her biography.

However her biographers have tried to clarify this question as will be seen in Mary Lovell's biography. 

Our reading group's reactions to the book:

All members enjoyed her great literary style and almost unanimously admired Beryl for her strength and for being far ahead of her time. 

Why had she been so tight lipped about her private life?

While career and achievements had given Beryl international fame, her image, acquired at the cost of much hard work, deserved to be protected against potential gossip and judgment.

 Besides, reserve and discretion used to be important qualities in English society.

In many respects, Beryl has remained a mystery. Her twenty-four stories offer only brushstrokes and impressions of her personality, her surroundings and her environment and provoke a lot of questions. 

In order to answer them, we chose to read 

Mary S. Lovell's biography of Beryl Markham.