Beryl Markham

Beryl Markham Click to enlarge

(born Oct. 26, 1902, Leicester, Leicestershire, Eng.died Aug. 3, 1986, Nairobi, Kenya) British pilot, adventurer, and writer. Raised in British East Africa, she became a horse trainer and breeder, training several Kenya Derby winners. Turning to aviation, she carried goods, people, and mail to far corners of Africa, and in 1936 she made a historic east-to-west solo flight across the North Atlantic from England to Cape Breton Island. In 1942 she published her celebrated memoir, West with the Night.

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Beryl Markham (1902-1986), raised by her pioneer father in Africa, trained race horses, worked as a bush pilot, and was the first to fly solo across the Atlantic, from east to west.

Beryl Markham was born in Ashwell, Leicestershire County, England on October 26, 1902. Her parents, Charles and Clara Clutterbuck, were English gentry who kept horses and won prizes locally for their skill in the sport of fox hunting. Her father moved the family to Njoro, Kenya (then British East Africa) to establish a farm. Beryl was three when the family moved into a traditional African mud hut. Her mother attempted pioneer life for a year before returning to England with Beryl's brother, who was old enough to require formal education. Beryl stayed in Africa with her father.

Neighboring tribesmen provided care for Beryl while her father worked the farm. As a result, she spoke Swahili like a native. She became friendly with Kibii, a boy of the tribe. Beryl's father trained them both to ride horses like cavalry cadets, while Kiibi's father trained them to hunt and track. Because of her unique status in the tribe, Beryl was allowed to train as an equal in games of skill with the boys. One of these games was to jump as high as one's own height. When Beryl reached her full height, she was nearly six feet tall.

Errol Trzebinski, in The Lives of Beryl Markham, wrote "All Beryl cared about was competing with Kibii. She could hurl a spear just as well as Kibii, with deadly accuracy. She had learned to straighten her arm in a backward arabesque, as if to hurl a javelin, sending out a thrust to impale. The grace, the strength of her backward stretched arm manifested all the simplicity and ease of a cave painting. Africa is many things to many people of many races, but a child nurtured on its red inhospitable soil carries those lessons forever."

In a few years, when the farm was settled and a western-style house had been built, Beryl's father brought in tutors for her formal education. During World War I, she was sent away to a proper English school in Nairobi, but she felt out of place there. After three years she was expelled from school and she returned to her father's farm at Njoro. When she was 16, Beryl married Jock Purves. The marriage was not successful and ended in divorce three years later.

Trained Racehorses

The British who settled in Kenya brought their customs with them, and horse racing was a popular sport. In addition to farming, her father imported and trained thoroughbred English racehorses. He kept over 100 horses in his stables. From early on Beryl had worked in the stables and exercised the horses. Her skill at handling them became legendary. After the war, her father lost the farm and moved to Peru to train horses.

At the age of 19, Beryl began her career as a professional racehorse trainer. She was the first woman ever to be granted a trainer's license in Kenya. She started with some horses given to her by her father, then hired a jockey, and rented a stable. After her horses won a few of the smaller races, owners began to send their horses to her to train. A friend loaned her a string of stables and a hut to live in. She produced winners and by the age of 24. In 1926, her horse, Wise Child, won the prestigious St. Leger.

In 1927, Beryl married a wealthy young aristocrat, Mansfield Markham, who had come to Kenya for a safari. Two years later, the young couple had a son, Gervase, named after an ancestor of Beryl who also trained horses. They divorced that year, and Gervase stayed with his father's family in England.

A Passion for Flying

In Straight On Till Morning Mary S. Lovell quoted Markham in a discussion about her early aviation experience: "Distances are long and life is rather lonely in East Africa. The advent of airplanes seemed to open up a new life for us. The urge was strong in me to become part of that life, to make it my life. So I went down to the airport. How zealously did I enter up my hours in my logbook. That book is more precious to me than any diary."

Markham began flying lessons with Tom Campbell Black. In a few months she bought her own airplane, an Avion IV, with a plan to operate an air charter service. On April 24, 1931 she flew from Kenya - crossing the desert and the sea, navigating by sight, stopping along the way for engine repairs - to England. Her unexpected arrival at Heston Aerodrome on May 17 made news.

Upon returning to Kenya, Markham prepared for the commercial pilot exam, which involved stripping an engine, cleaning jets and filters, changing plugs and points, and a written test on the theory and practice of air law and navigation. Markham became the first Kenyan-trained pilot to obtain a commercial pilots license.

In her small plane Markham flew vast distances over unpopulated territory, solo, with only a compass and maps for navigation. She was contracted to deliver mail and supplies to camps of a thousand gold miners living in tents at locations so remote that a forced landing along the way could mean death from thirst. Markham provided a taxi service to distant farms and a messenger service for safari parties and took hunters from bush camps in search of game. She delivered medical supplies and doctors to emergency cases. Markham was called upon to fly accident victims and critically ill patients to the hospital in Nairobi. She also worked as a relief pilot for East African Airways.

Crossed the Atlantic

When Markham expressed interest in entering the air race at Johannesburg, a fellow pilot offered to provide her with a new plane, on one condition: she must successfully cross the Atlantic - east to west, against the headwinds. The flight had been attempted, but not yet accomplished. Markham accepted the challenge. In a letter to London's Daily Express Markham wrote, "Two weeks from now I am going to set out to fly the Atlantic to New York. Not as a society girl. Not as a woman even. And certainly not as a stunt aviator. But as a pilot-graduate of one of the hardest schools of flying known, with 2000 flying hours to my credit. The only thing that really counts is whether one can fly." Her flight was postponed for three days to wait for weather to clear for take off. In an interview with a Daily Express correspondent Markham said, "If I get across, it will have been worth it because I believe in the future of an Atlantic air service. I planned this flight because I wanted to be in that air service. If I get across I think I shall have earned my place."

On September 4, 1936, Markham took off despite bad weather. Her flight lasted 21 hours in constant fog, rain, and sleet. Markham's plane, The Messenger, crash landed in a peat bog on the coast of Nova Scotia. Her only injury was a gash on her forehead when the plane skidded into a boulder and went nose up. Markham's historic flight made newspapers headlines. The next day in New York, she was greeted by thousands of cheering fans. However tragedy struck two weeks later. Tom Campbell Black, her instructor and friend, who prepared her for the Atlantic flight, died in an airfield accident.

Markham declined the routine flying jobs she was offered in England and instead found backers and entered flying races. She struck a deal with one backer to fly around the world and went to America in search of an engine that would go 200 miles per hour. Markham was in California when Amelia Earhart made her second, and final, attempt to fly around the world at the equator. In Hollywood, Columbia Pictures approached Markham about making a movie of her Atlantic crossing. Markham was interested, but the movie was never made. She did work on the set of a movie about Africa as a technical advisor on the Swahili language. At the start of World War II, Markham joined the Civil Air Patrol and flew lookout along the California coast.

West With the Night

In Hollywood, Markham met Antoine de Saint-Exupery. A Frenchman, who had flown mail routes from France to Africa, Saint-Exupery had written books about his flying adventures. He encouraged Markham to write about her life. In 1941, she took an outline of her memoir to a publisher in New York, then traveled to the Bahamas to write it. Markham produced a collection of stories, and sent them off in batches to her publisher, Houghton Mifflin. The publisher was delighted with the work of this new writer. In 1942, West With the Night was published.

Markham had met Ernest Hemingway on safari in Kenya years earlier. When Hemingway discovered her book, he wrote to his editor, Maxwell Perkins about it: "Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West With the Night? I knew her fairly well in Africa and never would have suspected that she could put pen to paper except to write in her flyer's log book. As it is, she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. [She] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves writers. I wish you would get it and read it because it really is a bloody wonderful book."

That year, Markham married Raoul Schumacher. They lived in a rented ranch in the foothills of California's Santa Ynez Mountains. Markham wrote short stories about her African adventures, which were published in American magazines. In 1947, the couple separated and their divorce became final in 1960. Controversy surrounded the couple when Schumacher claimed he wrote Markham's book.

Markham returned to Kenya to reestablish her career as a racehorse trainer. From 1958 to 1979, the horses she trained won dozens of classics and six times won the East African Derby, Kenya's top race.

In 1980, American restaurateur, George Gutekunst, read Hemingway's selected letters and was intrigued by the praise for Markham's book. Gutekunst found a copy of her book through a library system. With novelist Evan Connell, he instigated its re-publication by North Point Press. In 1983, critics called her book a lost masterpiece. It sold over a million copies. Gutekunst flew to Kenya to produce the television documentary World Without Walls, about Markham's life.

In 1984, Mary Lovell visited Markham to interview her for a biography, Straight On Till Morning. With the maps and log books in Markham's trunk, Lovell found manuscripts for the stories Markham had sold to magazines. She arranged for them to be published by North Point Press as a collection, The Splendid Outcast.

On August 3, 1986, Markham died in Nairobi, Kenya. Her ashes were scattered near the racetrack. In London, on September 4, 1986, the fiftieth anniversary of her Atlantic crossing, a memorial service was held in her honor.

Further Reading

Lovell, Mary S., Straight On Till Morning St. Martin's Press, 1987.

Markham, Beryl, The Splendid Outcast, North Point Press, 1987.

Markham, Beryl, West With the Night North Point Press, 1983.

Trzebinski, Errol, The Lives of Beryl Markham, W.W. Norton and Company, 1993.

Quotes:

"You can live a lifetime and at the end, know more about other people than you know about yourself."

Beryl Markham
Beryl Markham in 1936
Born	26 October 1902 Ashwell, Rutland, United Kingdom
Died	3 September 1986(1986-09-03) (aged 83) Nairobi, Kenya, Africa
Occupation	Writer, pilot, horse trainer
Notable work(s)	West with the Night
Influences Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Beryl Markham (26 October 1902 – 3 August 1986) was a British-born Kenyan aviatrix, adventurer, and racehorse trainer. During the pioneer days of aviation, she became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from east to west. She is now primarily remembered as the author of the memoir West with the Night.

Contents 1 Early years 2 Record flight 3 Rediscovery 4 Authorship controversy 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

Early years

Markham was born Beryl Clutterbuck in the village of Ashwell, in the county of Rutland, England, the daughter of Charles Baldwin Clutterbuck and Clara Agnes (Alexander) Clutterbuck (1878–1952).^[1] She had an older brother, Richard Alexander Clutterbuck (1900–1942). When she was four years old, her father moved the family to Kenya, which was then British East Africa, purchasing a farm in Njoro near the Great Rift Valley. Although her mother disliked the isolation and promptly returned to England, Beryl stayed in Kenya with her father, where she spent an adventurous childhood learning, playing and hunting with the natives. On her family's farm, she developed a knowledge of, and love for horses. As a young adult, she became the first licensed female horse trainer in Kenya.

Impetuous, single-minded and beautiful, Markham was a noted non-conformist, even in a colony known for its colourful eccentrics. She was married three times. She also had an unconcealed 1929 affair with the Duke of Gloucester, the son of George V. The Windsors promptly cut the romance short; Hubert Broad had an affair with Beryl and he was named as the accomplice in the divorce by Mansfield Markham.^[2] After her Atlantic crossing, she returned to be with Broad. He was also a great influence in her flying career.

She befriended the Danish writer Karen Blixen during the years that Blixen was managing her family's coffee farm in the Ngong hills outside Nairobi. (In the film rendering of Blixen's memoir, Out of Africa, Markham is represented by an outspoken, horse-riding tomboy named Felicity.) When Blixen's romantic connection with the hunter and pilot Denys Finch Hatton was winding down, Markham started an affair with him herself. He invited her to tour game lands on what turned out to be his fatal flight, but Markham declined because of a premonition from her flight instructor, Tom Campbell Black.^[3] Sara Wheeler, in her biography of Finch Hatton, notes that she believes stories that Markham was pregnant by him at the time of his crash.

Largely inspired by the British pilot Tom Campbell Black, with whom she had a long-term affair, she took up flying. She worked for some time as a bush pilot, spotting game animals from the air and signaling their locations to safaris on the ground. She also mingled with the notorious Happy Valley set.

Record flight

Markham is often described as "the first person" to fly the Atlantic east to west in a solo non-stop flight, but that record belongs to Scottish pilot Jim Mollison, who attempted to fly from Dublin, Ireland to New York City in 1932. Low visibility forced Mollison down in New Brunswick, Canada, but he was still able to claim the Atlantic east-to-west record (a westbound flight requires more endurance, fuel and time than the eastward journey because the craft must travel against the prevailing Atlantic winds).^[4]

When Markham decided to take on the Atlantic crossing, no pilot had yet flown non-stop from Europe to New York, and no woman had made the westward flight solo, though several had died trying. Markham hoped to claim both records. On September 4, 1936, she took off from Abingdon, England. After a 20-hour flight, her Vega Gull, The Messenger, suffered fuel starvation due to icing of the fuel tank vents, and she crash-landed at Baleine Cove on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, Canada (her flight was, in all likelihood, almost identical in length to Mollison's). In spite of falling short of her goal, Markham had become the first woman to cross the Atlantic east-to-west solo, and the first person to make it from England to North America non-stop. She was celebrated as an aviation pioneer.^[5]

Markham chronicled her many adventures in her memoir, West with the Night, published in 1942. Despite strong reviews in the press, the book sold modestly, and then quickly went out of print.^[6] After living for many years in the United States, Markham moved back to Kenya in 1952, becoming for a time the most successful horse trainer in the country.

Rediscovery

Markham's memoir lingered in obscurity until 1982, when California restaurateur George Gutekunst read a collection of Ernest Hemingway's letters, including one in which Hemingway lavishly praised Markham's writing (and attacked her character):

“

"Did you read Beryl Markham's book, West With The Night? ...She has written so well, and marvellously 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 bitch, can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book."

”

Intrigued, Gutekunst read West with the Night and became so enamored of Markham's prose that he helped persuade a California publisher, North Point Press, to re-issue the book in 1983. The re-release of the book launched a remarkable final chapter in the life of the eighty-year-old Markham, who was lauded for her three final years as a great author as well as flyer. When found in Kenya by AP East Africa correspondent Barry Shlachter, Markham was living in poverty, and had been badly beaten in a burglary at her house near the Nairobi racetrack, where she still trained thoroughbreds.^[7] The re-publishing of West with the Night provided enough income for her to finish her life in relative comfort. Earlier, she had been supported by a circle of friends and owners of race horses she trained into her 80s. The book became a surprising bestseller, spurred by the 1986 broadcast of a public television documentary about Markham's life, World Without Walls: Beryl Markham's African Memoir, produced by Gutekunst, Shlachter, Joan Saffa, Stephen Talbot and Judy Flannery in collaboration with KQED-TV in San Francisco. Gutekunst and Shlachter had approached the station to cooperate on the documentary, directed by Andrew Maxwell-Hyslop. British actress Diana Quick was the voice of Markham in readings from her memoir, Shlachter conducted the interviews, which CNN Africa correspondent Gary Streiker filmed for the well-reviewed, award-winning PBS program.^[8]

Markham died in Nairobi in 1986. Her short stories were posthumously collected in The Splendid Outcast, with an introduction by Mary S. Lovell. A tale from West With The Night was excerpted and illustrated by Don Brown as a children's book, The Good Lion. In 1988, CBS aired the biographical miniseries Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun, with Stefanie Powers in the title role.

Authorship controversy

Questions were raised over time as to whether Markham was the real, or sole, author of West with the Night, not least because Markham never repeated her accomplishment with a second book of similar length, scope or beauty. The writing style has been linked with various writings by a contemporary writer of the time, Thomas Baker, who was also rumored to be her lover. Her publishing accomplishments for the rest of her life were limited to a handful of short stories.

According to the 1993 biography, The Lives of Beryl Markham, by Errol Trzebinski, the book's real author was her third husband, the ghost writer and journalist Raoul Schumacher. Trzebinski also claimed that Beryl Markham had an advance from Houghton Mifflin to do a book on the famous international jockey Tod Sloan, which Raoul Schumacher was supposed to write. Apparently Schumacher never did, and she was forced to go it alone, resulting in a manuscript submission that the publisher rejected as worthless, and not from the same person who had written West with the Night.^[9] Trzebinski had earlier taken the opposite view when interviewed by Shlachter for the PBS documentary, insisting on camera that only a woman could have written the memoir.

In her biography of Markham, Straight On Till Morning, author Mary S. Lovell, who visited Markham in Nairobi and interviewed her extensively shortly before Markham's death, disputes the claim that Schumacher made substantive contributions to West with the Night. From her research, Lovell concluded that Markham was the sole author, although Schumacher did edit the manuscript; instead, Lovell credits Antoine de Saint Exupéry, another of Markham's lovers, with being the inspiration behind Markham's clear, elegant language and storytelling style.^[10]

The International Astronomical Union has named the impact crater Markham on the planet Venus after her.

Notes

1. ^ Lovell, Mary S., Straight On Till Morning, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987, p. 3
2. ^ http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/catalogue/displaycataloguedetails.asp?CATID=-3176667&CATLN=7&Highlight=%2CMARKHAM%2CBERYL%2CMARKHAM&accessmethod=0
3. ^ Markham, Beryl, West with the Night, North Point Press, 1983, p. 194
4. ^ Lovell, Mary S., Straight On Till Morning, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987, pp. 162–163
5. ^ Lovell, Mary S., Straight On Till Morning, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987, p. 175
6. ^ Lovell, Mary S., Straight On Till Morning, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987, p. 236
7. ^ Shlachter, Barry, "A Life of Adventure Rediscovered: Beryl Markham's 1942 Book, Lauded by Hemingway, Reprinted," The Associated Press, printed in Paris, "International Herald Tribune," June 16, 1983.
8. ^ Mitgang, Herbert [1]"The New York Times", October 8, 1986, and Nov. 5, 1986 CORRECTION."'World Without Walls,' About Beryl Markham".
9. ^ Trzebinski, Errol.The Lives of Beryl Markham. New York: W.W. Norton. 1993, pp. 258–9. This claim about the Sloan biography and Houghton Mifflin's response was made by Scott O'Dell, Schumacher's close friend, in an interview with Trzebinski in 1986.
10. ^ Lovell, Mary S., Straight On Till Morning, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987, p. 218–220

References

• Markham, Beryl. West with the Night. San Francisco: North Point Press, 1983 [1942]. ISBN 0-86547-118-5.
• Lovell, Mary S. Straight on Till Morning: The Biography of Beryl Markham New York: St Martins Press, 1987. ISBN 0-312-01096-6
• Shlachter, Barry, "A Life of Adventure Rediscovered: Beryl Markham's 1942 Book, Lauded by Hemingway, Reprinted," The Associated Press, carried by "International Herald Tribune," Paris, June 16, 1983.
• Trzebinski, Errol.The Lives of Beryl Markham. New York: W.W. Norton. 1993. ISBN 0-393-03556-5.
• Wheeler, Sara. Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton. New York: Random House. 2006. ISBN 978-1-4000-6069-6.

External links

• Beryl Markham page at www.karenblixen.com.
• New York Times review of World Without Walls: Beryl Markham's African Memoir
• New York Times review of Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun
• Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun at the Internet Movie Database
• Biographer Mary S. Lovell's page for The Splendid Outcast

Persondata
Name	Markham, Beryl
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	26 October 1902
Place of birth	Ashwell, Rutland, United Kingdom
Date of death	3 September 1986
Place of death	Nairobi, Kenya, Africa

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