The wedding photograph pictures Beryl with her brown hair worn close-cut in a shingle. Her wedding outfit is the height of 1920s fashion, and she is surrounded by a host of friends including her mother and two small half-brothers, and leading members of Kenya high society, among whom were Lord Delamere and Tania – Baroness von Blixen.
Beryl is seated next to her groom, but on her face there is none of the radiance one might expect in the bride of one of the richest young aristocrats in the colony.
CHAPTER FOUR
l927–1930
Mansfield Markham was the wealthy son of the late Sir Arthur Markham, Member of Parliament for Mansfield in Nottinghamshire and the first holder of the baronetcy created in 1911. Sir Arthur died in 1916 leaving three sons, the eldest of whom, Charles (father of the present Sir Charles), was only seventeen when he inherited. The two younger sons, Mansfield and Arthur, also inherited a great deal of money at a very early age. Too early, in the opinion of the present Sir Charles, for the two elder brothers had both run through their entire fortunes within two decades.1 After leaving Radley, Mansfield spent the best part of a year in a Swiss sanatorium undergoing treatment for tuberculosis which involved painful liver injections. At the age of twenty he was appointed honorary attaché to HM Embassy in Paris. He went to Kenya in early 1927 aged twenty-two, intending to go on safari and explore East Africa.2
Safaris had become a fashionable pursuit in the early part of the century. A new field of sport had been opened up to the wealthy, and stories filtered back to England and America of a ‘paradise on earth’ where unlimited game, exciting sport and a marvellous climate combined to provide the best of everything. After the much-publicized Roosevelt safari3 there was ‘a virtual flood of wealthy young sportsmen from the aristocratic and officer classes’.
Bunny Allen, a youthful big-game hunter in the twenties, remembered that: ‘Life was pretty wild, very colourful, and it took a long time to get anywhere. Every time you went out in a car you got stuck in the mud, so most of the safaris were done on horses, mules and donkeys, that’s why they took so long.’ Bunny’s first safari car was a Rugby ‘with wooden wheels that squeaked and squawked, a radiator which spurted water the whole time, always ready to make a cup of tea, in fact I used to put cornmeal in the radiator to seal it up at times!’ The famous hunter Philip Percival would send out his staff and all the supplies days before the hunters were expected to arrive. The journey to camp could take up to a week and often the safaris lasted months ‘but it didn’t matter in those days because people not only had money to burn, but time to burn too’.4
Bror Blixen introduced Mansfield to Beryl in Nairobi after the Markham party had returned from their safari.5 Mansfield fell for the striking young woman immediately, despite the fact that she was engaged to someone else. Sonny Bumpus said of Mansfield: ‘He was a nice enough young man, a bit quiet, but there was nothing extraordinary about him.’ Several friends commented ‘I don’t know why she married him,’ which of course could equally be said of Mansfield. Beryl told friends that she ‘wasn’t in love with Mansfield, but she rather liked him’.6 Perhaps it was this which occasioned Tania Blixen’s remark that Beryl’s marriage was ‘more of a lottery than usual’. Mansfield was slim, rather slight, not much above medium height, fair-haired, good-looking and a man of considerable, quiet charm and cultured intelligence.
After the wedding the pair spent some time at Tania’s farm. She wrote, ‘I have had such pleasure lending my house to my newlyweds – but the climate out here makes everything like that easier.’7 They repaid their hostess by presenting her with an unusual gift. ‘This morning a lorry came out with the bed the Markhams have given me – it’s as big as a car in itself!’ their hostess wrote after they had left her farm.
‘They had ordered it to be made 7 ft wide, but I managed to get that altered, but it is 58 69 and could not be made any less by the time I had a hand in it. In a way it is wonderful to have such a wide bed but my sheets are not wide enough – and I have had to buy two blankets and sew them together as I have no bedspread either, or can’t use the beautiful coverlet Aunt Lidda gave me as a wedding present, which is a shame, but I have made one out of a curtain which will do quite well. I didn’t think I could refuse it as it really was nice of them to have ordered it for me – and they paid £45 for it you will hardly believe, to extortioners in Nairobi. I have had it put with its back to the window and you can lie in it and see the Ngong Hills through the door out to your veranda…’8
The newlyweds sailed for Europe to continue their honeymoon and en route to London stopped over in Paris where Mansfield introduced Beryl to a lifestyle hitherto unknown to her. The constant round of diplomatic parties and social engagements demanded a wardrobe she did not possess. Mansfield took her to Chanel, and bought her a wonderful trousseau including evening dresses and furs.9 No expense was spared, and probably Mansfield got as much pleasure out of this as Beryl did, for there was undoubtedly an element of satisfaction to him in engineering the transformation of the handsome country girl into a chic, bejewelled international beauty.
If Beryl had been a success in the small, albeit smart circles in Kenya she was doubly so in Paris and London. With her tall, slender figure, so perfect for the 1920s fashions, draped in beautifully designed and cut clothes, she was seen and admired everywhere. Despite her unconventional upbringing her clear light voice had the cultured accents of the English upper class, and there was a charisma about her, a luminosity which attracted men to her side without fail. Soignée is a word often used to describe the young Mrs Mansfield Markham,10 but there was also a quiet presence and an appealing combination of radiance and childlike insecurity to which men could not fail to respond.
In England that winter the couple hunted with some of the smarter foxhound packs known years earlier to Beryl’s parents – The Belvoir, Cottesmore and Quorn. Beryl had never ridden sidesaddle and after inspecting the stiffly fenced country, sensibly opted to ride astride. This was still unusual enough to cause raised eyebrows at meets in high Leicestershire, but her bold cross-country riding quickly put paid to any disapproval.11 Furthermore a beautiful woman, well turned out and with a good seat on a horse, is difficult to resist. It was whilst hunting in Leicestershire that Beryl first met Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, who was a regular visitor to the Melton country and a keen rider of hounds.12
During that season Beryl was presented to the king and queen, presumably sponsored by her mother-in-law as convention dictated. The formal portrait of this event shows a serious, dark-haired young woman, dressed in a richly embroidered satin gown with a train, and the requisite plume of three Prince of Wales feathers atop a twenty-seven-inch white veil adorning a bejewelled contemporary headdress. The normal rules were circumvented to allow Beryl to make her curtsey to their majesties, for in 1928 divorced women were not presented at court.
However the Markhams’ marriage ran into difficulties almost from the start. Beryl’s remarks that she was not in love with Mansfield imply a less-than-ideal relationship. Mansfield was not a highly-sexed man,13 while throughout her life Beryl was regarded as having a warm sexual appetite. He may well have been jealous of her popularity with other men.
Mansfield’s nephew, the present Sir Charles Markham, also felt that the couple ‘were poles apart. Mansfield had come from an entirely different background, had attended public school and though not an intellectual he had been very well educated and had been brought up in a very rich background with a large number of well-trained servants. He was sophisticated and not very keen on living in the middle of the wilds surrounded only by horses. In contrast, Beryl had received a scanty formal education, had virtually no conversation but horses, and was very much an outdoor girl.’14
Doreen Bathurst-Norman, a close friend of Beryl’s, stated that Mansfield was ‘simply not up to weight’. On Mansfield’s side, after initial infatuation and pride at having captured the colony’s golden girl, he found her lack of sophistication irritating.
Moreover her openly casual morals were not at all to his taste, and though he was not himself averse to ‘a bit of slap and tickle in the back of a car’, it was not the sort of behaviour he expected his wife to adopt.15 Beryl’s code of morals had been forged in a country where relationships outside marriage could hardly be disguised, and where few people bothered to hide participation in illicit love affairs – wasn’t it all part of the fun? Mansfield’s upbringing in England had taught him that love affairs were necessarily handled with the utmost secrecy and discretion.
In March 1928 the couple returned to Kenya and immediately called upon Tania Blixen, asking her to look after their two dogs (a borzoi or Russian wolfhound, and a red setter) for a fortnight, while they went to look at a farm property near Njoro where Beryl could take up her role as trainer again. ‘Lady Markham told me the marriage was a complete fiasco,’ Tania wrote to her mother, ‘but I thought they seemed very pleased with each other. Beryl looked well and lovely and I had the impression that she is very keen on behaving properly and making a success of it.’16
Before leaving England the couple had been to the sales at Newmarket to buy some bloodstock to take back to Kenya. A horse called Messenger Boy, which had the reputation of being totally savage and unmanageable, was put up for sale. It had killed its groom, put the famous English trainer Fred Darling in hospital, and was considered by many to be unrideable. This did not influence Beryl in the slightest, she was after its breeding line and she picked up the horse at a knock-down price. Mansfield was a little doubtful but Beryl was confident that she could handle him. She wrote a story about this horse many years later, as usual in her writing subtly moulding the incident to her dramatic purpose and renaming him Rigel:
Rigel had a pedigree that looked backwards and beyond the pedigrees of many Englishmen – and Rigel had a brilliant record. By all odds he should have brought ten thousand guineas at the sale, but I knew he wouldn’t for he had just killed a man.
He had killed a man – not fallen upon him, nor thrown him in a playful moment from the saddle, but killed him dead with his hoofs and with his teeth in a stable. And that was not all, though it was the greatest thing. Rigel had crippled other men, and, so the story went, would cripple or kill still more, so long as he lived. He was savage, people said, and while he could not be hanged for his crimes, like a man he could be shunned as criminals are. He could be offered for sale. And yet, under the implacable rules of racing, he had been warned off the turf for life – so who would buy?
Well I for one…I know this horse, he is by Hurry On17 out of Bounty – the sire unbeaten, the dam a great steeplechaser and there is no better blood than that. Killer or not, Rigel has won races and won them clean. God and Barclays Bank stay with me, he will return to Africa when I do.
And there at last he stands. In the broad entrance to the ring, two powerful men appear with the stallion between them. The men are not grooms of ordinary size; they have been picked for strength, and in between the clenched fist of each is the end of a chain. Between the chain and the bit there is on the near side a short rod of steel, close to the stallion’s mouth – a rod of steel, easy to grasp, easy to use. Clenched around the great girth of the horse, and fitted with metal rings, there is a strap of thick leather that brings to mind the restraining harness of a madman. Together the two men edge the stallion forward. Tall as they are, they move like midgets besides his massive shoulders. He is the biggest thoroughbred I have ever seen. He is the most beautiful. His coat is chestnut, flecked with white, and his mane and tail are close to gold…he looks upon the men who hold his chains as a captured king may look upon his captors. He is not tamed. Nothing about him promises that he will be tamed. Stiffly on reluctant hoofs he enters the ring and flares his crimson nostrils at the crowd, and the crowd is still…upon this rebel the crowds stare, and the rebel stares back.
His eyes are lit with anger, or with hate. His head is held disdainfully and high, his neck an arc of arrogance. He prances now…and the chains jerk tight. The long stallion reins are tightly held – apprehensively held – and the men who hold them glance at the auctioneer, an urgent question in their eyes.18
Within weeks of Messenger Boy arriving in Kenya, Beryl was riding him out every day. The present Sir Charles Markham said, ‘Mansfield told me she had absolutely no fear of anything. One could only have the greatest respect for her courage.’19 Doreen Norman was told the story of Messenger Boy by Beryl. ‘I asked her how she had managed to subdue and ride him. She told me in an off-handed way that she had just turned the horse out in the field for a few weeks and then got on and ridden him. However, much later she admitted to me that he had been a bit of a handful at first.’20
The couple must have left England in the latter half of February in order to be back in Nairobi by mid March when they called on Tania, for they returned by steamboat and ‘one had to allow a good three weeks for the journey’. They had brought a gift for Tania ‘…the sweetest, loveliest deerhound you can imagine – Beryl asked if I would keep her two for another fortnight so my whole life at present is in the Sign of the Dogs – I now have six of all sizes and shapes from Beryl’s big borzoi to my or Denys’s little Sirius…’21
The Markhams were up country looking at farms for two weeks and then were occupied with settling in, but they called towards the end of the month for tea and to collect the dogs. Poor Tania had had a wretched and worrying time for the borzoi ran away and Tania and Denys had to go out searching for it on horseback – only to find it ‘standing as large as life in front of the house’ on their return.22
On 2 June a major social event was reported by the East African Standard. It was the marriage during the preceding week of Gwladys, the former Lady Markham, to Lord Delamere at St Andrew’s Church, Nairobi. The list of ‘principal guests’ at the wedding included Mr and Mrs Mansfield Markham and Baroness von Blixen. Gwladys had divorced Mansfield’s brother Sir Charles in the previous year, but Mansfield and she remained friends. Beryl was there in the role of adopted niece of the groom, as well as being ‘family’ of the bride.
Beryl and Mansfield settled on a farm called Melela at Elburgon near Njoro, where Beryl arranged the provision of gallops. Now she could afford to buy top-class horses, and she did so. Almost immediately after their arrival Beryl’s name appeared in the racing columns: ‘Winner owned and trained by Mrs Markham.’ ‘Owner Mr Mansfield Markham, Trainer Mrs Beryl Markham.’ It is hardly surprising to see that some of these horses had formerly been Clutterbuck’s; indeed most were progeny of horses from his old stud at Njoro six years earlier. And now, to Beryl’s delight and reportedly at Mansfield’s expense, her father returned from Peru and took up residence in a cottage on the farm. Her relationship with Emma Orchardson was no better than before – a mutual tolerance was the best that could be hoped for, but at least she had Daddy back. Mansfield could have given her nothing in the world more calculated to please.
There are various reports of Beryl and Mansfield in the social columns of the period, and they are pictured receiving the Rift Valley Plate after the horse Clemency (owned by Mansfield and trained by Beryl) had won the race in great style in late June. The couple were seen together often during this period and, at least on the surface, seemed happy together. This is important, for some time around May Beryl conceived, and the parentage of this child was to cause rumour and conjecture for decades. It is not possible to say for certain who was the father of her child, but it is possible to say, with conviction, who could not have been.
The present Sir Charles Markham told me that Mansfield was already unhappy about Beryl’s behaviour before they left England. ‘She liked to go out a lot, and she loved parties. She must have been a very striking woman with her blonde hair and lovely skin, and would have stood out in a crowd. I think Beryl had already met Prince Henry in England before she and my uncle returned to Kenya.’ Mansfield was suspicious of Beryl’s relationship with the prince from the start.
When in the summer of 1928 Beryl
discovered she was pregnant she was furious and immediately talked about an abortion.23 ‘She just didn’t have time for a baby and anyway she certainly wasn’t the maternal type.’24 Mansfield was equally furious and they had a row in which Beryl allegedly flung at him the angry words: ‘You don’t even know that it’s yours anyway, so why should you worry?’ If this report is true, it was probably this remark which accounted for Mansfield’s subsequent behaviour towards his son.25 Tania Blixen reported in July to her mother that she had lunched with the couple at Muthaiga, and that Beryl ‘looks ill and I think they are rather unhappy’.26
Throughout August and September whilst Beryl continued her successful training activities,27 Nairobi became a hive of activity. The forthcoming visit of the Prince of Wales and his brother Prince Henry was the major topic of conversation. Perhaps because Beryl had met both men socially she was asked to help with the hostessing arrangements for the safari.28
The life of a safari hostess is really a social and administrative one. Safari life was certainly adventurous and hard at times, but the camps themselves were as comfortable as money was able to make them. The weary hunters could expect to find sundowner cocktails awaiting their return to camp. A relaxing drink was followed by a relaxing hot bath, in a canvas bathtub.29 The guests, clad in pyjamas and dressing gowns, then sat down to dinner (often game shot by the hunters), which was served on tables in the open, and if the evening became chilly a huge camp fire blazed with entire tree trunks as logs. Usually the administrative details of providing this comfort – stores, furnishings, the provision of constant hot water for baths etc. was the responsibility of a camp hostess, and Beryl was clearly delighted to be involved in planning these details.30 When the princes arrived in Nairobi on 1 October she was in the vanguard of those waiting to welcome the royal party. A description of the event is recorded in Sport and Travel in East Africa, a book compiled by Patrick Chalmers from the diaries of the Prince of Wales.
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