by Paul Spicer
It was true that since their arrival in Kenya, Alice’s health had improved enormously. For the first time in years, she was happy—her heavy moods had almost completely lifted. As the African trip began to draw to a close, Alice realized she was dreading her return to Paris and her life there. It was at this juncture that she made up her mind to buy a permanent home in the highlands. Frédéric’s need to appease Alice was such that he agreed to help her purchase land in the Wanjohi Valley. The de Janzés arranged for a meeting with the Leslie-Melvilles and Geoffrey Buxton to talk about purchasing Wanjohi Farm, adjacent to Geoffrey’s property. The acreage was small, only six hundred acres, but could be easily managed and was ideal for growing pyrethrum. Frédéric and Alice would be able to employ the local Kikuyu farmers, who had smallholdings dotted about the area, to plant and harvest the crops. The de Janzés learned that the land was owned by Sir John Frecheville Ramsden, a local builder of settler houses, who was known as “Chops.” Before long, Frédéric was putting wheels in motion to buy Wanjohi Farm from Chops, driving to Nairobi to see Mr. Barratt at the firm of Shapley, Schwarze and Barratt (the Hays’ legal advisers). By the end of 1925, a deal had been struck and Alice began making plans to build a new house on the site. The de Janzés’ future home would be situated about seventy-five yards from the Wanjohi River, facing a bend where a deep pool formed. There was a small manager’s house on the land (still there to this day), which would provide the de Janzés with temporary accommodation while they supervised construction. Although Alice was anxious to start the building work, she would have to wait until the title for the land had been transferred and legal arrangements processed by the lawyers. This would not be completed until June of the following year.
The de Janzés stayed on with the Hays through Christmas and New Year’s, experiencing the customary revelry of Nairobi’s race week. By January 1926, Idina had given birth to a daughter, called “Dinan,” in Nairobi. It was at this point that Alice and Frédéric decided to go back to France, at least temporarily, to see their children. Alice refused to be parted from her pet monkey, Roderigo, and so she took him with her on the liner to France, successfully disembarking with him at Marseilles. On their arrival in Paris, the de Janzés were reunited with their children, who must have been delighted at the sight of their mother with an African monkey perched on her shoulder. Nolwen and Paola, now ages three and a half and twenty months, respectively, were staying with Aunt Tattie at her rather grand apartment on the rue de la Pompe. Their parents had been away for five months, an interminably long time for young children. Although Nolwen would have recognized her parents immediately, little Paola would already have grown completely accustomed to life with Aunt Tattie.
Meanwhile, Aunt Tattie was not at all happy about the arrival of Roderigo in her elegant home. Terrified that the monkey would ruin her furniture, she suggested that they all go and stay at the de Janzés’ rue Spontini apartment. That January, Alice, Frédéric, their children, a French nanny, the monkey, and a grand piano took up residence in the rue Spontini. Not surprisingly, Roderigo wreaked havoc. The children loved him, but the nanny was up in arms—every day the monkey would knock over another vase or ornament as he leapt from sofa to sofa. (We can only imagine what an African monkey made of being transplanted to the confines of a sophisticated Paris apartment.) For Alice, Roderigo was a living connection to Africa, to the Wanjohi Valley, and to her friends there, Joss in particular. Throughout her life, Alice would continue to show a greater attachment to her pets than she did to her two daughters. Although she was doubtless pleased to see Nolwen and Paola, she was also determined to leave them again as soon as possible to return to Africa.
After only a few weeks in Paris, the de Janzés received a cable from their lawyer, Barratt, to say that completion of the Wanjohi Farm acquisition could take place in Nairobi as soon as they returned to Kenya. By mid-February, after only a few weeks in France, they were ready to leave again. Both Alice and Frédéric feared that Alice’s moods would return if she stayed in Paris a moment longer. Frédéric had kitted himself out with powerful rifles and a shotgun in preparation for going on safari—he was looking forward to hunting game on his return. Alice, meanwhile, packed up crates of linen, silver, books, and other household essentials for their new African home. Based on her experience of living with the Hays, she knew exactly what was needed to make the place comfortable and personal. Her linen was exceptionally beautiful, with the de Janzé coat of arms embroidered on every sheet, pillowcase, hand towel, and table napkin. Pictures, lamps, and carpets were also included in the de Janzés’ luggage, as well as a few pieces of antique French furniture to lend refinement to their drawing room. With four vast crates in the hold and some new Paris clothes in a cabin trunk, they said good-bye to their daughters once more.
For half the year, Nolwen and Paola would be installed at Château de Parfondeval in Normandy with Moya, their devoted grandmother. For the rest of the year, they would be in Paris with Alice’s aunt Tattie. This second trip to Africa marked the beginning of what was to become for Alice a total separation from her children. Perhaps it was Alice’s instinct—and in this respect, she may have judged correctly—that Moya and Aunt Tattie would simply be better mothers to the girls. Evidently, Alice lacked the maternal instincts that her aunt and Moya so naturally bestowed upon Nolwen and Paola. Alice had been severely shaken by both her daughters’ births, enduring postnatal depression, which had only recently been relieved by her escape to Africa. Like many women of her generation and class, Alice would have found it not at all unusual to be living at a distance from them. Wealthy families of the period were often divided in this way—with parents posted overseas while their offspring stayed at home to be looked after by relatives or sent to boarding school. (Idina and Joss would also arrange for their daughter, Dinan, to be brought up by a relative—in this case, Idina’s sister in England—while they remained in Africa.) Later in life, both Nolwen and Paola always maintained that they adored their mother and did not resent her desertion. Perhaps they understood why Alice had to live away from them, and were pleased to see her happy. Nonetheless, they must have missed her deeply at times, anticipating and longing for her letters and return.
After the long journey from Europe, Alice and Frédéric arrived in Nairobi again. The de Janzés signed the documents for Wanjohi Farm in March 1926. The certificate of title reads as follows:
Title I. R. 1494
Frédéric le Comte de Janzé and Alice la Comtesse de Janzé, both of Gilgil in the colony of Kenya, pursuant to the transfer dated the 9th day of March 1926 registered at the Registry of Titles at Nairobi as I.R. 1052, are now the proprietors as owners of the fees subject to such encumbrances as are notified by memorandum written hereon to the conditions contained in the said transfer etc.—etc.
Alice lost no time persuading Chops to build her a house on the site she had marked out. She also needed him to fix up the small manager’s house at the rear of the property so that she and Frédéric could move in there immediately. With the help of Idina, Alice drew plans for Chops to follow. The lines of the house would be similar to those of so many of the settlers’ houses in the area. It was to be built on a single level in the shape of a fat H, with stone foundations that were visible to a height of three feet. There would be cedar half logs cladding the sides, a cedar roof, and a square veranda. The house would overlook the Wanjohi River at its rear and the long silvery waterfalls of the Satima Peak in the Aberdare Mountains at the front. Inside, walls would be plastered and some basic wiring would be installed, with a generator housed in the servants’ quarters. Two wings would be devoted to bedrooms, with Alice’s bedroom on the left as you faced the veranda and more bedrooms and bathrooms on the right. In the center of the house, there was going to be a long drawing room with a central stone fireplace. A central chimney would also serve the dining room, with its large pantry off to one side. As was traditional, the kitchen would be separate from the house—food would be cooked there
and, when it was ready to serve, taken to the pantry in the main house. After the title for the land was transferred to the de Janzés on June 2, 1926, construction finally began.
On her return to Africa, Alice went about adding to her menagerie. To protect her dogs from nighttime marauders, she had an open wire kennel constructed near her temporary living quarters. Here she also kept her baboon, Valentino. Joss lent the de Janzés two Somali ponies, which were housed at Geoffrey Buxton’s stables across the river. Every morning, Alice continued to ride out before breakfast through the morning mists with Frédéric, her new greyhound, Fairyfeet, running alongside. Frédéric recorded stories from these morning rides in his book of pen portraits about Africa, Tarred with the Same Brush (1929). The book—which is dedicated to one of its characters, “Delecia,” a pseudonym for Alice—describes one ride in particular, which helps to paint a picture of Alice’s close relationships with her animals. One morning, Delecia/Alice goes out riding alone with her greyhound for company. Her pony bolts, leaving her winded but uninjured beneath a cluster of trees. The greyhound panics and tears off in the opposite direction. A few minutes later, the dog returns to his mistress, deeply scarred and bleeding after catching a paw blow to its side and front legs from a lion. The dog has saved her life. Greatly shaken, she walks home, leading her pony and hound. Back at the farm, she bathes the poor dog and bandages his wounds, nursing him all day and into the night.
Looking at the photographs of Alice during this time, it is possible to see the degree to which she was evidently invigorated by her surroundings. In her Paris photos, Alice often looks pale and has a haunted expression. In the Kenyan photos, she radiates ease. The eyes look out to the horizon, her face tanned across her broad cheekbones. Alice told friends that she had never felt happier in her life. Her dreaded depressions had lifted; she felt cured, as though she had taken a miracle draft of smelling salts. In fact, there is a scientific explanation for this new stabilization of her moods. Kenya is on the equator, blessed with intensely bright light year-round. Studies have shown that sufferers of cyclothymia often demonstrate a marked improvement in mood after being exposed to bright-light therapy. It is thought that sunshine stimulates the pituitary and pineal glands, effecting the release of mood-altering hormones. Doctors all the way back to Hippocrates have recommended natural light as a cure for unhappiness; for her part, Florence Nightingale found patients recovered more rapidly when kept in sunny wards. Adding to the beneficial effect of so much sunshine, the Wanjohi Valley is six thousand feet above sea level, and at such a height, alterations in psychology, behavior, and cognitive functioning are common.
Then there was the sheer uplifting beauty of the place. Evelyn Waugh, who visited Kenya in 1931, described well the effect that the highlands have on those who visit. “There is a quality about it which I have found nowhere else but in Ireland, of warm loveliness and breadth and generosity,” he wrote. “It was not a matter of mere liking, as one likes any place where people are amusing and friendly and the climate is agreeable, but a feeling of personal tenderness. I think almost everyone in the highlands of Kenya has very much this feeling, more or less articulately.” He went on to evoke the particular quality of the light: “Brilliant sunshine quite unobscured, uninterrupted in its incidence; sunlight clearer than daylight; there is something of the moon about it, the coolness seems so unsuitable. Amber sunlight in Europe; diamond sunlight in Africa. The air fresh as an advertisement for toothpaste.” In Kenya, those combined effects of sunshine, altitude, and landscape continued to affect Alice’s mental chemistry positively.
In other words, it was easy to be happy in Happy Valley. The de Janzés would drive over to Slains every day in their new 1925 straight-six Buick with its drop head and spare tires. They variously entertained their neighbors, the Leslie-Melvilles and Geoffrey Buxton. Alice had her new house to plan and her animals. There was the thrill of her occasional liaisons with Joss to add to her pleasures. Her life in Paris was fading to a distant memory. She no longer felt trapped by her role as countess and by her marriage. Certainly she missed her daughters, but they were to be visited on a regular basis, and Alice decided that as soon as her house was built and furnished, she would return to see them. She wrote long, descriptive letters for Aunt Tattie to read out loud to her girls, always starting “My Darlings,” giving news of her house and her new servants, and including little stories about Roderigo and the other animals.
Perhaps for the first time since her early childhood, Alice was actually at peace. Then, as so often happens when a person finally achieves a degree of contentment in life, Alice was about to fall in love.
Four
Raymund and the Coup de Foudre
A MONTH AFTER THE DE JANZÉS’ RETURN TO Kenya, a new face appeared on the Happy Valley scene. It was that of Raymund de Trafford, a twenty-six-year-old English aristocrat. Darkly handsome, slender, and the youngest son of Sir Humphrey de Trafford, third baronet, Raymund could trace his ancestors back to the eleventh century and the time of King Canute. By all accounts, Raymund could also be described as something of a cad, a man who had already left a trail of broken hearts stretching from Mayfair to Buenos Aires and back again. Some years later, Evelyn Waugh, who visited Raymund at his farm in Kenya, described him as a “bachelor farmer,” adding “though perhaps he is more typically bachelor than farmer.”
Raymund had been brought up in the rather starchy environment of a Catholic English country home at the turn of the century before being sent away to boarding school, as was customary. He was educated at St. Anthony’s, a Catholic school in Eastbourne, and at the Oratory at Edgbaston (often described as the “Catholic Eton”). At the age of eighteen, he entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and was gazetted as an ensign in the Coldstream Guards (First Battalion) on December 20, 1918, thereby narrowly avoiding probable slaughter in the trenches of France. He left the army on February 27, 1924, after serving in the British army of occupation in Constantinople. In his final year of army service he developed asthma and was told by his doctors to go abroad for his health. He embarked on a tour of South America beginning in 1925, spending time in both Uruguay and Argentina, where the dry climate proved beneficial to his weak lungs. In South America, he learned to cut cattle on ranches, went boar shooting in Uruguay with one Aaron Ancharenas la Barras, and was entertained by a family of wealthy polo-playing ranchers named Basualdos in Argentina. On his return to London early in 1926, Raymund decided to travel on to Kenya, a place with another dry climate and a popular destination for so many Englishmen of his age and class. As the youngest de Trafford son, he was a victim of primogeniture, meaning that his eldest brother would inherit the family estate. Although Raymund received regular payments from the family coffers, the expectation was that he would begin to make his own money at some point, especially now that his health had improved.
Raymund decided to try his hand at farming and business in East Africa. The prospect of big-game hunting was also a considerable lure, but other factors played a part in his decision. He had heard much about the Kenya highlands from his fellow members at the London club White’s, to which he was elected in 1922. Apparently, there were a group of English aristocrats living in decadent fashion in a place called the Wanjohi Valley. Raymund would have heard tales of drunken parties, wife swapping, and general debauchery. The joke would have gone around at White’s: “Are you married, or do you live in Kenya?” Given Raymund’s appetite for alcohol and women, Wanjohi would have sounded like absolute heaven. Soon after his return to London from South American, he started to make preparations for his departure. Raymund could have begun his journey to Kenya from Southampton, but this would have taken him through the Bay of Biscay to Gibraltar, a route that could be rough, sick-making, and even dangerous. Instead, like many English passengers bound for Africa, he chose to leave from Marseilles, after which the route to Mombasa was comparatively smooth sailing. Raymund took the train to Marseilles in early April 1926, boarding the SS General Duch
ayne, bound for Kenya on the fifteenth. He arrived in Nairobi via the Lunatic Line about four weeks later and was seen soon after his arrival on the veranda of the Mombasa Club with a pretty fellow passenger, who probably had succumbed to his charms on board the ship.
Next, Raymund set about finding himself a home in the highlands. Although not an Etonian, which so many of the upper-class settlers in Kenya of the time were, he brought with him an impressive list of introductions from his father and friends in England. First, he called on Lord Delamere and Sir Francis Scott, the two most prominent expatriate farmers in the region. He went to see Geoffrey Buxton, a former Coldstream Guards officer. Soon after his arrival, Raymund settled on buying a maize farm near Njoro called Kishobo. Here he employed a manager to run the farm, purchased a lorry, and rented a Buick car. There was already a house on Raymund’s newly purchased land, albeit a fairly basic one, but he improved it, furnishing it for the most part with his extensive collection of books, which he had brought out in crates. Photos of Raymund from this period show an immaculately dressed young man, slim-framed and athletic, with dark hair and a winning smile, his hat often set at a rakish angle. Needless to say, he soon established a reputation as something of a lothario among the small community of settlers—doubtless relishing his own notoriety. Raymund’s primary interest, however, was hunting of another variety. Big-game safaris in Africa had been fashionable among aristocratic Europeans since the turn of the century, and by the time Raymund arrived in Kenya, Denys Finch Hatton, the most famous of the white hunters in Kenya, had just begun his new business venture, escorting wealthy clients into the wilderness on safari. Raymund was keen to join in.
By June 1926, Raymund had heard of Joss and Idina and their friends the de Janzés, but he had yet to meet them. When he called on Geoffrey Buxton early in June, he asked him to engineer a meeting with Frédéric in particular. Raymund was anxious to undertake his first safari and had heard that Frédéric was also keen. What’s more, Raymund was intrigued to meet the count for another reason. Although mostly self-educated, Raymund considered himself well read, and he had heard that Frédéric was a writer. Geoffrey arranged for Raymund to meet the de Janzés, along with Joss and Idina, at Satima Farm that June. Some years later, Raymund related to Margaret Spicer the details of his first meetings with Alice. He remembered Alice standing by the fireplace in Geoffrey’s drawing room, looking up over a glass of champagne, her gray eyes vivid and lit by the fire. He also recalled the next time he saw her, which was the following day. After staying the night with Geoffrey, Raymund decided to drive over to Slains to discuss a hunting safari with Frédéric. At Idina’s insistence, Raymund stayed for lunch, which gave him the opportunity to study Alice in daylight. Raymund recalled in particular Alice’s hair, which was beautifully arranged around her face, and her tight sweater, emphasizing her breasts. She had made up her eyes to kill. He also noticed that she drank spirits easily and was unaffected by them.