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Then and Now
With Fred Glueckstein |
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Beryl Markham (1902-1986): Aviatrix, Author, and Horse Trainer Won the Kenya Derby Eight Times |
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Beryl Markham 's life was one of adventure. She was a pioneer aviator - the first woman to be given a commercial license in Africa and the first person to make a solo journey over the Atlantic Ocean from east (England) to |
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west (Nova Scotia) in 1936 - and a highly successful horse trainer, who won the prestigious Kenya Derby eight times. Markham was also the author of a beautifully penned memoir - West with the Night (1942) - that included some of the finest stories ever written about horses. |
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Born in England on October 26, 1902 , she arrived with her parents, Charles and Clara Clutterbuck, and a brother in 1906 in British East Africa , later known as Kenya . Africa was a harsh and beautiful country at the turn of the century. However, Beryl's mother was unable to adjust to her new homeland, and she returned to England with her son.
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Beryl and her father stayed in Africa and built a new life. |
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Beryl's father was a resourceful man, who was determined to succeed. She recalled how he built the farm at Njoro, an expansive land of forest and bush, with hard labor, ingenuity, and patience. "Our stables grew from a few stalls to long row of loose-boxes, and our Thoroughbred horses grew from two to a dozen, and then to a hundred," she wrote in West with the Night, "until my father had recovered his love again, which had always been horses, and I gained my first love which has never left me." |
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Growing up in Kenya , Beryl's life revolved around horses. She wrote: "Horses in particular have been as much a part of my life as past birthdays. I remember them more clearly. There is no phase of childhood I cannot recall by |
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remembering a horse I owned then, or one my father owned, or one I knew. They were not all gentle and kind. They were not all alike. With some my father won races and with some he lost. His black-and-yellow colours have swept past the post from Nairobi to Peru to Durban. Some horses he brought thousands of miles from England just for breeding."
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There were treasured times riding with her father such as to the Elkington Farm by Kabete Station, near Nairobi on the Kikuyi Reserve. One day, however, Beryl almost lost her life when Paddy, the Elkington's 'pet' lion who roamed the farm, pounced on her as she went searching for berries. |
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There was the time that Beryl took one of her father's best Thoroughbred race horses, a light bay filly named Balmy, out for a workout. On Green Hill, overlooking the Rongai Valley, Beryl and Balmy met a herd of Zebra. One Zebra foal became enthralled with Balmy that he left his dam and the herd and followed Beryl and Balmy back to the farm. The zebra who Beryl called Punda - the Swahili word for donkey - moved into Balmy's stall, and horse and zebra became devoted friends.
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At the age of 18, Beryl was given a professional horse trainer's license - the first one ever issued to a woman in Africa. Her skills as a horsewoman became well-known, and she was hired to train the stables of others in the British colony. At the age of 24, Beryl won the prestigious St. Leger at the big Race Meeting in Nairobi with a bay filly named Wise Child. Three years later Beryl, who was considered one of the most beautiful women in the colony, married an Englishman named Mansfield Markham. |
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Soon afterwards, Beryl became interested in flying. "When I sat in the rear cockpit, a fumbling beginner, apprehensive and wondering how my hands, so used to strips of leather and my feet so used to stirrups, would ever get to used to this..." With the same determination and persistence that she exhibited as a horse trainer, Beryl became the first woman in Africa to receive a commercial aviation license. She started up her one-woman air transport business, which delivered the mail, transported passengers, and scouted elephant herds for safaris. With few airfields in Kenya , Beryl often had to land and take-off in small clearings in rugged terrain. |
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No challenge or adventure was too great. |
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She flew from Nairobi to London - a distance of six thousand miles - six times; four of which she flew solo. Her biggest accomplishment occurred in 1936. That year Beryl became the first person to fly alone from England to North America . After twenty-one hours and twenty-five minutes in the air in her single engine monoplane, bad weather and an empty fuel tank forced her to crash in a bog in Nova Scotia Canada. Her plans had called for her to land in New York. After recovering from a bruise on her head and exhaustion, she went on to New York City, where she was given a ticker-tape parade. |
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Afterwards, she was drawn back to Africa and her beloved horses. In 1942, Beryl Markham published West with the Night; a wondrous literary achievement whose lovely prose astonished even Ernest |
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Hemingway, who knew Beryl Markham from his days in Africa. (West with the Night would be 'rediscovered' and re-issued by North Point Press in 1983 to critical acclaim.) After the publication of the book, Beryl again trained professional race horses and from 1958 to 1972 won many classics, including the Kenya Derby eight times. |
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Beryl Markham never forgot the people and horses of her youth. In this passage that began about her father, she wrote: "He sometimes dreamed over the thick black book [the farm's stud book] - almost as I am dreaming now, now that the names are just names, and the great-grandchildren of those elegant dams and sterling sires are dispersed, like a broken family," wrote Markham. "But all great characters come back to life if you call them - even great horses." |
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And she did call them back into the pages of her memoir - horses named Camciscan, Coquette, Pegasus, Wrack, and Wise Child. |
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Beryl Markham died on August 3, 1986 in Nairobi. Her cremated remains were scattered near the Ngong Race Course.
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Read comments or post your own comments to this article at the bottom of this page. |
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Fred Glueckstein was raised in New York City and attended Queens College of the City University of New York and New York University. Fred has written extensively about horses. His work has appeared in The Chronicle of the Horse, The Backstretch, Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred, Horses in Art, Equestrian, 2007 Preakness Souvenir Magazine, ARMY, The Cavalry Journal, Finest Hour, the official journal of the Churchill Centre and Societies, and other publications. His non-fiction book on baseball titled The '27 Yankees was published by Xlibris in 2005. Of Men, Women and Horses, a collection of stories, was also published by Xlibris in 2006. Fred and his wife Eileen live in Maryland. They have two children, Brian and Debra.
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Copyright © 2008 All rights reserved. The above article is the property of the Author and may not be duplicated or redistributed in any way without permission. |
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