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West With The Night
Beryl Markham remarkable life in Africa, her love of flying and her epic solo journey from England to the U.S.
I found Beryl Markham's book West with the Night incredible reading for a number of reasons. The book is a memoir of willful, freethinking woman in an age where women were not permitted to be either. How she was able to do both is one element of this narrative. Another compelling element of this work is the description of colonial Africa as seen through the eyes of a colonizer, who has come to identify more with the natives than with the ruling conquerors of which she is one. Finally, this is a book about flying and of an adventurous attempt to be the first to fly solo from England to the U.S.
West with the Night begins with Beryl Markham flying a canister of oxygen to a remote mining town to help a sick miner. On the way back she looks for and finds a downed flyer. After being rescued the downed flyer asks the author "why do we fly? We could do other things. We could work in offices or have farms, or get into the civil service…" When Markham rejoins by asking him why he doesn’t give up flying, "you might be a very happy man, so why don’t you?" To this he replies, "I couldn’t bear it. It would be so dull." So it is for Markham, an escape from dullness.
Beryl Markham grew up in Africa, having arrived on the continent in what is now Kenya in the early 1900s, only a few years old at the time. Her indulgent father, Captain Charles Chatterbuck, owned the first sawmill in what was then called British East Africa. The sawmill and his farm prospered until just before the 1920s when a drought in the region devastated him financially. The young Beryl, then 17 years old was on her own, Chatterbuck having decided to leave Africa for a new start in Peru.
In the early years of her life, Markham describes an inquisitive, tomboy of a young girl who took delight in joining Arab Maina and other Masai Murani hunters as they hunted warthogs. An eager student she learned the ways of Masai and developed an abiding respect for them. Ironically, Markham, a young girl, was permitted to become one of the hunting party, when the Masai women were denied this privilege. "We were as young as each other, Jebbta (a young Masai Murani girl of Markham’s age), but she was a Nandi (a Masai), and if the men of the Nandi were like unto stone, their women were like unto leaves of grass," Markham writes. "They were shy and they were feminine and they did the things that women are meant to do, and they never hunted."
Arab Maina is one of many mentors that shaped Beryl Markham’s life and form a good part of her memoir. Others included Baron von Blixen, Isak Dinesen’s husband, and Tom Black, the man who taught her to fly. "The dooryard of Nairobi falls into the Athi Plains," Markham writes of Tom Black flying back from London . "One night I stood there and watched an aeroplane invade the stronghold of the stars. It flew high; it blotted some of them out; it trembled their flames like a hand swept over a company of candles." After a night of conversation with Tom Black, Beryl Markham had determined she would fly.
Besides her mentors, Markham mentions other characters that were well known to Europeans and Americans of the 1930s. Deny Finch-Hatton, Isak Dinesen’s lover provides an insight into the mysticism shared by Europeans and Africans alike. "Tom was not given to mystic revelation, and Ruta (Markham’s servant)—child of Africa or not—was no apostle of black magic, but each was nevertheless sensitive and had an awareness of things to come whenever those things were to affect them closely," Markham writes.
She then proceeds to tell of being asked by Finch-Hatton to accompany him on a flight in which he hoped to prove it was possible to scout elephants from the air for big game hunters. She tells Tom Black who asks her not to go on the flight. The following day Ruta comes to her and asks if she has heard from Finch-Hatton. "Is there something to hear," she asks Ruta. He replies "I have heard nothing, Memsahib. It may be that there is nothing. It occurred to me to ask you—but, of course Bwana Black would know." Of course Finch-Hatton’s plane had crashed and he was killed. Of the warning from Tom Black and the question from Ruta, Markham writes, "Tom had kept me from a trip and Arab Ruta had asked a question. They had known, and I had wondered how they knew, and I had found an answer for myself."
What Markham concluded was the following. "Denys was a keystone in an arch whose other stones were other lives. If a keystone trembles, the arch will carry the warning along its entire curve, then, if the keystone is crushed, the arch will fall, leaving its lesser stones heaped close together, though for a while without design."
Markham other mentor is "Blix—Blickie—Baron von Blixen. He is, and was known variously by any of these names, and by several others—none of them harsh. He is six feet of amiable Swede and, to my knowledge, the toughest, most durable White Hunter ever to snicker at the fanfare of safari or to shoot a charging buffalo between the eyes while debating whether his sundown drink will be gin or whisky." Markham and Blixen have teamed up to provide European hunters with game to hunt, most bull elephants. In describing the preparation for the arrival of one hunter, the two are confronted and almost killed by a bull that abruptly quits the attack. When the two return to camp, she asks, "why in the hell didn’t you shoot?" He replies "Don’t be silly. You know as well I as I do why I didn’t shoot. Those elephants are for Winston (their client)."
She describes a trip she undertakes to visit England, in which von Blixen accompanies her. In the city of Benghazi where they are forced to spend the night, she describes von Blixen extracting the life story of the woman who owns the brothel the two are forced to take shelter in for the night. Stolen from her parents as a young child and ferreted off to Africa, she has little memory of her early life. Over time she comes to understand her plight, realizing that she has become sold into slavery as a prostitute at 16. Now, she wants to return to Holland, where she thinks she was born. After the tale concludes, Markham asks von Blixen "well it’s very sad, but you can’t do anything about it." He replies, "I can do a little. I’m going to give her some money."
The epic journey for which the book is named is described in the concluding chapter of the work. The East Africa of Markham’s time is peopled with a cast of characters that have been described in James Fox’s book White Mischief. The book chronicles the decadent lives of ex-patriot Europeans in East Africa. One such character is John Carberry, a man with a sadistic sense of humor. He finances the flight. Asked if she would chance the venture? "Yes," she replies, then adds "I could remember saying that better than I could remember anything—except J. C.’s (John Carberry’s) ghoulish grin, and his remark that sealed the agreement: ‘It’s a deal, Burl. I’ll furnish the plane and you fly the Atlantic—but, gee, I wouldn’t tackle it for a million. Think of all that black water! Think how cold it is!’"
This book is filled with beautiful writing and worth reading if only for this reason. For those more accustomed to the politically correct view of the world today, this book may not live up to your expectations. One friend I referred the book to—I even bought her a copy—made this very point to me as a criticism of the work. But bear in mind this is a story told by a woman of an earlier time and with an earlier view of the world. In her world, humans had not killed off as much of the wildlife in the world as they have today. In her world, there was a hierarchy of classes among the Europeans and they viewed the Africans as any colonizing nation views the population of its colonies.
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