Read Straight on Till Morning Online
Authors: Mary S. Lovell
Straight on Till Morning (8 page)
The same friend met Beryl a year later in different circumstances. It had been obvious for a long time that the wilful teenager would not learn anything from Mrs Orchardson. Jealousy was almost certainly the reason for this since her father and Mrs Orchardson were by then living together. But none of the governesses who succeeded her fared any better than Mrs Orchardson. Beryl ââ¦got rid of them by putting spiders in their beds'. A particularly stubborn one threw back the covers to look for a suspected spider and found a black mamba.
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Two male tutors were engaged in succession and Beryl remembered them as being more successful, but these arrangements were curtailed by the war.
Towards the end of 1915 or early 1916 Miss Hilda Hill-Williams and her sister âTuppence' were sent to school in Nairobi. The school was run by Miss Secombe who had been a former governess of the Hill-Williams girls. âBeryl had been there some little while when we arrived,' wrote the elder of the two girls. âLooking back we must have been a very difficult bunch of independent young things for the poor starched teacher-ladies to try and manage.' The school was housed in a âghastly little old wood and iron building on The Hill [the part of Nairobi where Government House was located]. We, boys and girls, had mostly come from farm homes where we ran free and rode our ponies and had wonderful lives. We were suddenly confined in what we felt was a prison. It was not easy for staff or pupils. I remember that Beryl didn't care for authority at all. We were very awe-inspired by her, as she was older and taller and
very
beautiful. She was one of the loveliest girls I have ever seen.'
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Another pupil at the school, the late Sonny Bumpus (who would later join Beryl in one of the highlights of her life), described her differently. âShe was a gawky girl, two years older than meâ¦She tried to organize cricket, which never interested me, so I avoided playing and didn't see very much of her. She was all arms and legs â no chocolate-box beauty. I think she was a very serious-minded person though, she was grown up from the time she was small.'
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Beryl remained at the school for some two and a half years, the only formal education she was to receive. She was a bright pupil but once again she resented the discipline. Cast as Alice in Wonderland in the school play she looked the part, but she was anything but the âbutter-wouldn't-melt-in-her-mouth' child she appears in the photograph of the event. âBeryl always did things better than anyone else â not popular at school,' a friend noted with amusement.
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Eventually the teachers tired of her trouble-making and she was expelled â probably to considerable mutual relief. The same friend told me, âShe didn't get the sack just for being naughty, I think she tried to organize a revolt.'
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The previous few years had been especially difficult for Beryl. Lady Delamere had died, and â soon after he had joined the KAR (King's African Rifles) â
arap
Maina had been killed fighting in Tanganyika. Then, later in that same year Beryl learned that her mother, Clara, had divorced her father âon the grounds of adultery, coupled with desertion'. Clutterbuck having failed to comply with a decree for restitution of conjugal rights dated 30 November 1913,
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Clara married Harry Fearnley Kirkpatrick in England on the day after the divorce became absolute, following which Charles Clutterbuck and Mrs Orchardson announced their intention to marry as soon as she too could obtain her freedom. After this, but not necessarily as a direct result, Beryl had been sent away to school in Nairobi where she was expected to conform and behave like a conventionally reared Edwardian child.
Any one of these incidents could have been traumatic; coming, as they did, in close succession, it is hardly surprising that the naturally intelligent youngster sought some outlet for her feelings of repression. A latent talent surfaced while Beryl was at school. It was a love of music. She showed great promise at the piano and had she pursued this, could have been a passable player.
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In 1916, following her expulsion, Beryl found herself at home in her beloved Njoro again. There was no more nonsense about Mrs Orchardson being her governess,
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although Emma and Clutterbuck were never able to marry legally as they had intended. Beryl continued to dislike her and refused to live in the farmhouse with her. Instead she remained independent in her own little house, a âgingerbread' structure built for her by Clutterbuck, and made of cedar shingles from their own forest and saw mill.
It was a building to enchant a teenager, a low single-storey cottage with just three rooms. Each room had a pretty gabled roof whose point was topped with a decorative spike. The wooden floors and glass windows were a novelty after her grass hut and it was furnished with two chairs, a table and shelves for her books: âI used to read all the time â I could never get enough books.'
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Beryl's little house is still there today, as are the huge barn-like stables. The cluster of buildings stands on a high sunny plateau under hot clear equatorial skies, surrounded by views that defy description.
In these stables the teenage Beryl was soon acting as head lad. It was her special responsibility to foal down the highly strung thoroughbred mares, and for this alone she must have been an invaluable aid to her father. Clutterbuck was more and more involved with farming and financial matters as the rains failed and he struggled to meet contractual obligations for the supply of posho at a fixed rate. True, he had gained a reputation as âthe best trainer in the country', but this was technically a sideline to the farm even though he had over eighty horses in his stables, among them the most successful racehorses in the country. Some belonged to him and the rest to leading figures in the protectorate.
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In 1917 Beryl supervised the foaling of a horse that was to mean a great deal to her â Pegasus. He was by an imported thoroughbred stallion out of a native mare. She remembered him still in 1986 as âa big bay gelding. I could do anything with him.' In her memoir she explains the allegorical references to the name Pegasus that she chose for him on the night he was born, but friends thought she actually got the idea from the name of a brand of petrol widely available in Kenya at that time, which pictured a horse with wings. âPegasus â the spirit of mileage and power' ran the slogan.
Beryl became a well-known figure on Pegasus as the pair roamed the countryside together and won events at race days, gymkhanas and shows.
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One occasion has become a Kenya legend. In the show-jumping ring one of the jumps was a huge double which was causing some distress among the competitors. To the amazement of the crowd, Pegasus successfully cleared it in one enormous leap.
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Another horse came into Beryl's life at this time, one of the few that she was to remember into old age. He was a big half-bred dark bay with a white blaze, his thoroughbred quartering obvious only in his courage for he had a large common head, and feathers, where Beryl was used to the clean-legged grace of her father's thoroughbreds.
This horse was brought to Njoro by two men from F.O.B. Wilson's Scouts.
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They had come to recuperate from the fighting with Von Lettow Vorbeck's forces in German East Africa. When the party arrived they were all sick â the two men and the six horses. Beryl sat up for several nights nursing the horse to health. Afterwards she rode him out and came to know and love him for the generosity of his temperament. âIf Camsiscan was the prince,' she said later, âThe Baron was the general, he was more capable than many men.' He was a gallant campaign horse who had seen dreadful sights and had carried his unconscious rider to safety through some of the fiercest fighting on the front. The rider had half his face shot away and the horse too was badly injured.
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His rider, a captain whose name was Dennis, was tall, fair and a good horseman. He played endless games of cricket with Beryl while his face healed to a mass of scar tissue. They went shooting for the pot on horseback. In a short story published in 1944 Beryl wrote:
They taught me how to use a revolver. Mounted on their best horse called The Baron, I would go off with them. Those days stick in my mind as some of the happiest and most exciting in my life. We would come home tired and happy and in the evenings when my father had finished working, we would all play whisky-poker. I say when my father finished working at times he would work up till all hours of the morning, as he seldom got back from the forest and the mills etc., before dark. Then he had all his book work and accounts.
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Eventually the men and horses went back to the war and she never saw them again, but the horse left behind a bright and ever-present memory of a gallant animal, and a hatred of the sheer stupidity of war. First her friend
arap
Maina had been sacrificed to its senseless brutality, and now this horse with whom she had developed a special relationship had returned to almost certain slaughter. Many years later she wrote about the episode, as usual subtly altering the facts to provide a moving climax to her story.
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Again and again, people who had known Beryl as a growing teenager paid tribute to her horsemanship and fearlessness. âThere was no horse she could not ride â even as quite a young girl.' âShe used to ride fearsome stallions with the reins held up loosely under her chin. Even as a child of eleven she was riding out alone on her father's racehorses.' It is difficult to deny that for Beryl, animals were her only real friends.
As she left her childhood behind, her extraordinary personality was beginning to emerge. She was fearless, strong and physically able to undertake any task she set herself. She was thoroughly at home in her surroundings and as at one with her adopted country as it is possible to be. She had great ability and was competent and knowledgeable at her work; and she had a unique facility for developing relationships with animals. What she lacked was the ability to handle human relationships. During her formative teenage years, when she perhaps could have achieved the closeness with her father for which she subconsciously yearned, she was driven from his presence more and more by her (self-inflicted and unreciprocated) dislike for her stepmother; and apart from her friendship with Kibii she developed no close relationship with anyone. In consequence she was a complex mixture of physical self-confidence and emotional awkwardness.
About this time, a clairvoyant told her, âYou will always be successful, but you will never be happy.'
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It was a remarkably succinct summary. Beryl seemed to spend her adult life searching for something. Neither she nor anyone else knew what that something was, but she drove herself on in seemingly relentless determination to attain it. At sixteen Beryl had no way of knowing that it was to be a life full of adventure and incident, and would take her far from her beloved Njoro.
1918â1927
At sixteen Beryl was a tall, long-limbed and wilful beauty. She was afraid of nothing and was able to talk and compete with men on their own level. She knew and spoke her own mind and she had the reputation for upsetting people, especially female contemporaries. âShe wasn't very friendlyâ¦' said one.
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She had virtually been raised as a boy and was hardly ever seen wearing a skirt after she left school.
Despite this she was intensely feminine. She took great pains over her appearance, and there was now no tomboyishness about her patrician beauty, which was enhanced by her sense of fun and an extraordinary energy. She developed the unconscious mannerism of patting her long hair into docility with her long shapely hands. With her clear, fair skin tanned to a golden brown, her light brown hair bleached by the sun because she never wore a hat, and her vivacious energy, she was in great demand as a dancing partner in the celebrations held to mark the end of the Great War. As yet she was unpolished. She did not know how to dress, and she had no one to tell her; socially she was gauche and awkward, with an appealing vulnerability.
Her life was a full one. She worked happily and competently for her father, spending her spare time riding or travelling round to race meetings, and there was a crowd of young people to provide a round of social activities. She was confident in herself and her skill with horses, and as a friend told me, âShe was just not like other girls of that age.'
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Evanston Muwangi worked for Beryl in the stables at Green Hills, and still works on the farm which is now owned by a weaving cooperative.
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He remembered that Beryl loved horses more than people. She was very strict with syces: âIf you did good work she had no quarrel, but to those who did not do right she was tough.' Another friend said, âShe was very particular about feeding and grooming. A syce hadn't to behave badly more than once and he was outâ¦If he failed to clean out his horse's feet when he should have, or something like that, she would say, “Look for a job somewhere else â I don't want you in my stable.”'
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She was hard but fair, she knew her job and worked hard and expected the same of others.
With around a hundred horses in his stables, both Clutt and Beryl were kept busy. Clutterbuck rarely involved himself in politics or any other non-equine activities. It is difficult to find much trace of him, outside of faded memories, and innumerable reports of racing successes, but a number of letters written by him to the editor of the
East African Standard
reveal something of his character.
The following letter, written in September 1918, was in response to a letter printed the previous week in the
Standard
, from Berkeley Cole â an old friend from the early days of European settlement in Kenya, and one of Clutt's horse owners:
I have just read Mr C.B. Cole's letter in your issue of 21st, in which he apparently condemns the action of the authorities in calling on the Masai
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to produce 400 men for the KAR [King's African Rifles] and upholds the attitude of the Masai in refusing to do so.
I fail to understand Mr Cole's arguments. Large numbers of every other tribe in the protectorate have been called upon to do their share in the war, many of them both as Askaris [guards or policemen] and Porters; and practically all the Masai have done is to sell cattle and sheep for cash, which I consider they ought to have been compelled to do even before the war for their own good and the country at large.
There have always been a number of âMasai Maniacs' in the country, some honestly so, and some because they think it is the swagger thing to be followed about by a Masai boy, who is too tired to speak unless he can lean against something to support him while he is doing so, and who would have a fit if requested to carry his master's bag! The Masai boast that they are a fighting people. They were told to supply only 400 fighting men, which they refused to do. In my opinion they should no longer be given the chance, but 2000 of them should now be taken, not as fighting men but as porters.
It appears to me to be a most undesirable thing ifâ¦Lord Delamere has been asked to âclean up the mess'. He has always been the arch Masai Maniac, when not engaged in writing letters on behalf of the Somalis and equally useless and objectionable people. To the uninitiated savage (and there is no greater savage than the Masai), this must appear a confirmation of the weakness of the authorities. Mr Cole seems to be rather frightened about his herd boys. This, to the man in the street, might suggest the possibility of his letter being not altogether uninterested. I have not heard the employer of the Kavirondo, Wakikuyu or Wakamba labour complain, when thousands or hundreds of these tribesmen were taken as porters, nor would the tribes in question have been given the chance of listening to the soft persuasive utterances of the noble Lord, before being punished if they had the temerity to refuse to obey orders.
As far as I can see, the Masai, when competing with other tribes in the protectorate, have not done their bit in any way since the war was declared. If, as Mr Cole states, they are not amenable to discipline, then the sooner they are taught to do so the better, and as they are apparently too proud or too frightened to fight, a little load carrying would act as a very useful tonic for their swollen heads.
A further letter in a lighter tone appeared in August 1919, complaining about a recent article by the
Standard'
s racing correspondent regarding the merits of moving the racecourse
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to another site. It gives an insight into his pithy sense of humour.
â¦It is a pity that if you must publish articles on racing, that you do not get them written by someone who understands a little of the game. The gentleman who wrote the article in your issue of last Tuesday would appear to be more conversant with whippets than horses!
In rapid succession Clutterbuck took every major racing trophy, among them the Jubiland Cup, the Produce Stakes, Kenya Steeplechase Cup, Naval and Military Cup, War Memorial Cup and the
East African Standard
Gold Cup. Camsiscan ran often and with great success in spite of being heavily handicapped. There can be no doubt that Clutterbuck had a genius for bringing out the very best in horses. All the knowledge he had, he passed on to his daughter.
There was another talented youngster around the Clutterbuck farm. Arthur Orchardson, the son of Mrs Orchardson and her ever-absent anthropologist husband, also grew up with a tremendous knowledge of horses and was a good rider.
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In later years he was to be a great help to Beryl as a trusted aide and jockey.
Meanwhile, the drought which had been creating severe problems for settler farmers caused even greater concern to Clutterbuck. He had contracted to supply large quantities of grain to the authorities at a fixed price. He could not grow sufficient grain to meet the contract, and as the rains failed the price of grain rocketed and grain stores emptied. In order to meet his obligations Clutterbuck had to buy grain for more than his contracted sale price for the milled product. He purchased all he could get from his neighbours, among whom was âJock' Purves.
Alexander Laidlaw Purves, known to all and sundry as Jock, had recently returned to his farm having served as a captain in the 3rd King's African Rifles during the First World War. He was then in his early thirties, a powerfully built and athletic man. Born in England in August 1886, the eldest of four brothers, Jock had been educated at Fettes College, Edinburgh. During his years at Fettes the school was turning out scholars and international sportsmen in profusion, many of them combining both learning and athletic skills, and âthe 1st XV must have been very hard to get into'.
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Nevertheless Jock had won his place in the rugby team playing centre three-quarter beside the brilliant K. G. Macleod, as a consequence of which he was somewhat overshadowed on the playing field. He was halfway up the Modern
VI
form when he left (the scholars were in the Classics
VI
), and was considered to be bright but âa late developer who would have made more of a mark academically if he had stayed a year longer'.
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His father was Dr William Laidlaw Purves, the founder of the prestigious Royal St George's Golf Club, and Jock's three brothers all carved distinguished army careers for themselves and were renowned all-round sportsmen.
In 1905, at the age of eighteen, Jock joined the London Scottish regiment. In 1906 he played in his first rugby international, and during the following two years he was capped ten times as a Scottish International.
The Times
described him as âthat type of Rugby footballer who, with half a try in sight made it a whole. He took part in Scotland's memorable victory over the South Africans in Glasgow in 1906, in which season Scotland also beat England, Ireland and Wales.'
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In 1908 he left the regiment and went to Madras to seek his fortune. At the outset of war he joined the Madras Volunteers and shipped to Kenya, where he later transferred to the King's African Rifles. At the end of the war he managed, with the help of his family, to buy 600 acres of land at Njoro, and in the early days, before his own farm was self-supporting, he worked for Clutterbuck on a part-time basis.
There is a story, which may be no more than rumour, that Jock became one of Clutterbuck's biggest creditors and arrived at some sort of deal regarding the amount of money he was owed. The story goes that Jock agreed to forget the debt if Clutterbuck would allow him to marry Beryl.
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Beryl smiled serenely at this story and claimed she couldn't remember, but recalled Jock as âa very nice man, and a kind man, very strongâ¦'
Beryl was only sixteen when she became engaged to Jock in August 1919. There is also a story that Clutterbuck could not remember her exact age and âaged' her along with the racehorses,
12
so that on 1 August each year Beryl became a year older.
13
Assuming this story is true, even by Clutterbuck's reckoning Beryl would have been seventeen when she married Jock on 15 October, though in fact she was still only sixteen, and roughly half the age of her bridegroom. The marriage certificate gives her age as eighteen and this was witnessed by her father and Lord Delamere, both of whom must have known very well that she was not eighteen. But this was probably done in order to meet the legal age requirement for marriage in the protectorate.
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Delamere was always prepared to sacrifice strict accuracy where expediency was at stake.
There were the inevitable newspaper reports of the wedding: in
The Leader
the report was headlined âA Sporting Wedding', whilst the report in the
East African Standard
was accompanied by a typically wooden photograph of the wedding party, in which Beryl appears a very mature sixteen-year-old, and could easily have passed for eighteen. Jock Purves was over six foot tall and powerfully built, but Beryl is very nearly his height and is inches taller than her father.
East African Standard
Saturday 18 October 1919
NAIROBI WEDDING
Miss B. Clutterbuck & Captn A. L. Purves
Local Society Event
There was a large influx of up country folk for the wedding at Nairobi on Wednesday afternoon of Captain Alexander Laidlaw Purves KAR, and Miss Beryl Clutterbuck daughter of Mr Charles B. Clutterbuck of Njoro. The friends and relatives made a congregation that filled All Saints Church. The bridegroom's brother officers of the KAR were strongly represented.
Just on 2.30 pm the bride, accompanied by her father who gave her away drove to the church and amid the strains of âLead us heavenly father lead us' proceeded up the aisle followed by her train bearer Miss Elizabeth Milne. The bridegroom was attended by Captain Lavender, his best manâ¦The bride looked charming in a dress of ivory satin with an embroidered corsage, veiled
ninon
ornamented with pearl trimmings and a girdle of orange blossom. Her train of ivory satin was embroidered with roses and thistles. Her veil was white silk net with a garland of orange blossom.
After the wedding ceremony a very largely attended reception was held at the Norfolk Hotel when photographs of the wedding group were taken. The KAR band played outside the hotel. The newly wedded pair received the congratulations of a host of friends and left for the honeymoon which is to be spent in India.
Mrs Purves' travelling costume was a tailored suit in white gabardine, pleated shirt and neat coat with a long rolled collar.
The dress with its symbolic motif consisting of roses for England (the bride), and thistles for Scotland (the groom), implies that a considerable amount of planning went into the event. The list of gifts included all the usual paraphernalia: a number of cheques, a cake stand, a gold chain, a silver cigarette case, a silver calendar and vase, silver napkin rings etc. Lord Delamere gave a silver spirit kettle; and the more unusual items included a cutting whip and a box made from a rhino's foot.
While the couple departed for India where they stayed with Jock's relatives, and enjoyed a honeymoon which Beryl remembered as âgreat fun and very glamorous â we both had people out there and played a lot of polo', the protectorate, shortly to become a colony, experienced the first influx of soldier settlers. The Soldier Settler Scheme was a lottery for which the participants qualified by virtue of war service.
Two ballots were held, one at the Theatre Royal in Nairobi in May 1919, and the other a few weeks later at the Colonial Office in London. Since the prizes consisted of plots of land which were to be offered to the winners at virtually give-away prices, it is hardly surprising that the scheme was a huge success and many thousands of applications were received. Before the year ended some fifteen hundred new settlers had arrived in British East Africa to settle mainly in the highlands.