Two strong willed women — one of them an international horse trainer –put the former British Colony of Kenya more on the world map than many of the Colony’s big named men of history.
These two feminine headline-makers were Beryl Markham, Kenya’s first woman trainer on the horse racing circuit and the world’s first pilot to fly the Atlantic Ocean alone, and Baroness Karen von Blixen, the writer of the famed ‘Out of Africa’ book who sponsored and introduced the original aerial audits of the continent’s animal life and the first flying tours of Kenya’s flora and fauna.
The extraordinary story of Beryl Markham as a horse trainer goes back to when she was only 17 years of age and succeeded her horse training father Charles Clutterbuck as a prominent horse owner and trainer; soon exceeding his record of wins in East Africa and England.
When Beryl was a child, Charles had built and owned the well-known Clutterbuck horse training stud and racetrack near Kenya’s Great Rift Valley but handed over his training centre responsibilities to Beryl on her 17th birthday when he took his training expertise to the Americas. From that day on, Beryl created a name for herself as a horse trainer of distinction.
Some years later, she went on to make her name as a daredevil pilot. This was just a handful of years after the Wright Brothers had finally proved that human beings could fly any distance by mechanical means.
By September of 1936, Beryl had become an accomplished aviator in much the same way as she made her name in horse racing circles. She had also become known as Africa’s first bush pilot who later won the esteemed mantle of being the first person to fly solo and non-stop across the tempestuous storm-ridden Atlantic Ocean from Britain to North America.
At the end of her miraculous 20-hour flight, Beryl’s simple wood and aluminium aircraft had unexpectedly run out of fuel as she crossed the North American coastline, and she was immediately forced to clench her teeth and crash land on friendly soil without any personal mishap.
I first met Beryl in 1952 at a house she heroically rented on the steep slopes of a semi-active volcano in Kenya’s mighty Rift Valley, still living a courageous life beneath a potential stream of lava that could arrive at any time around her back door. Although now in her latter years, Beryl was still highly involved and interested in training racehorses and in the rapid development of aviation throughout the world.
During this first of several meetings with Beryl, I learned far more of her life as a determined woman prepared to courageously take on the world in literally any sphere she chose, be it horse training or flying to unknown places in East Africa.
Not only was she one of Kenya’s most accomplished pilots who, in the early years of flying, flew flimsy bush pilot aircraft carrying post and medicines to far-flung settlements throughout the East African bush but had also made her name in the annals of international racehorse training.
As I had a prior inkling as to her, then largely hidden, private life, I eventually managed to persuade her to ‘spill the beans’ to me on the period she spent as close companion to British Royalty.
I learned that eight years while training horses before her world-shattering flight, Beryl had enjoyed a secret love affair with King George V’s son, the Duke of Gloucester, who met her on a tour of Kenya.
When this royal liaison eventually faded, Beryl was invited by the Duke’s brother, Edward the then Prince of Wales, to be his constant companion. This was prior to Edward later meeting up with the divorced American, Mrs Wallis Simpson for whose love he later abdicated as the newly crowned King Edward V111 and the late Queen Elizabeth’s uncle.
The year of 1936 was, however, Beryl Markham’s greatest period of news notoriety. As a world-renowned pilot in what was strictly a man’s occupation, she decided that she should prove to all concerned that it was possible for a woman to fly solo for nearly a day and a night across the Atlantic without a fuel stop. Her big wish was also to prove that it was possible to set up a low-cost trans-Atlantic postal service by air.
Whenever I met up all those years ago with Beryl as Kenya’s well established No 1 woman adventurer, I found her to still have an electric spring in her steps in spite of her age and a bright glint in her eyes for yet another one of life’s challenges. Her excited thirst for new experiences was beyond comparison.
Beryl Markham’s closest woman friend in Kenya was Baroness von Blixen who was the benefactor to a young English big game hunter and pilot, Denys Finch Hatton, whose family name is well known in Queensland in the Finch Hatton district near Mackay, named after Harold Henenge Finch Hatton, a grazier and imperial federationist in Britain at the turn of the 19th Century. Harold also has the distinction of authoring Australia’s now famous national slogan of ‘Advance Australia’ which was the title of a book. he wrote.
I never knew the Baroness as she had retired to her native Denmark, leaving behind in Kenya her history, including her all-important financial support for Denys to follow in her friend Beryl’s footsteps as an aviator of note and the inventor of big game flying safaris and the first government aerial surveys of big game numbers.
Karen von Blixen is better known today for her best-selling novel ‘Out of Africa’ which, although penned in 1936, took the world by storm more recently and inspired a number of films and TV shows centred on Kenya.
As Beryl confided to me during one of our meetings, her one-time friend, Edward, had always claimed as Prince of Wales that he detested the pomp and ceremony of royalty and only really wanted to be an ordinary husband and father instead of being a monarch at the head of an empire. Between them, they both had a love of horse racing.