Straight on Till Morning Page 4

  When ploughing finally began, the settler was likely to discover to his exasperation, that it was a rare African indeed who could comprehend the meaning of a straight line. Furrows in the infant years of pioneering on the highlands, often resembled the paths left by gigantic pythons.31

  At first the Clutterbuck homestead was, like that of all newly-arrived settlers, a hut called a rondavel, made of mud and daub with a grass-thatch roof and sited on a high sunny clearing. Whatever your social standing, these native-type huts were your introduction to living in Kenya. Their dark interiors remained cool in the sun, and at night the thick mud walls were snug against the cold air of the highlands. Lord Delamere continued to live for years in his collection of huts on the Mau Escarpment – although in his case this was from personal choice. Lord Francis Scott recalled some years later: ‘For the first nine months I lived in a tent on my estate – then my wife and two young daughters came out and we put up…mud and wattle huts, until about nine months later when the house [Deloraine] was ready.’32 In The Flame Trees of Thika Elspeth Huxley wrote of her first African home that it ‘was most companionable, for a great many creatures soon joined us in the roof and the walls. The nicest were the lizards, who would stay for hours spread-eagled on a wall quite motionless, clinging to the surface with small scaly hands…the thatch was always full of sounds, little rustling, secretive noises from unseen fellow-residents.’

  These huts had no proper doors, but usually some sacking provided a little privacy. The windows were merely openings cut into the walls, but they looked out on to some of the best views in the world. Langley Morris, who was taken out to East Africa as a child to live near Njoro, recalled, ‘I can remember kneeling on my bed and looking out of the window at the Molo Hills to the north of us, it is my earliest real memory. The hills were deep blue – as blue as your dress [cobalt]. I asked one of the African boys if they were really that blue – he told me it was the mist hanging over the hills that made them appear so.’33 The cold night air often made fires at night a necessity, and the main hut on the Clutterbuck homestead nearly always had a big cedarwood fire burning after dark.

  Furnishings were a strange mixture. Treasured antique pieces shipped from ‘home’ stood shoulder to shoulder with upturned packing cases which served as makeshift chairs and tables. Beds were often animal skins on wooden stretchers. The legs of tables, chairs and beds stood in tins of water – or, if available, in paraffin – to discourage the ever-present ants.

  The main diet was ‘tommies’, the plentiful Thomson’s gazelle, though most of the settlers tried a wide variety of plains game when the need arose. Langley Morris, describing their food, said, ‘Once my father killed a python but my mother wouldn’t let me have any in case it was poisonous. My father said it was very stringy! I did eat ostrich once and that was stringy. Also it looked very unattractive – covered in pits like craters of the moon, where the quills had been pulled out.’34

  Cooking was done by Africans who coped admirably in preparing European food on primitive cooking ranges. These usually consisted of three flat stones over a fire, but the Morris household had managed to acquire a Somali cook who had his own ideas: ‘…our cooking range consisted of a sheet of corrugated galvanized iron on which several small fires of charcoal were kept burning.’35

  The pioneer settlers had little in the way of entertainment and social life, but what there was revolved around horses. Within months Charles had established his interest, and began advertising ‘For Sale at Njoro, several high class ponies 14hh–15hh. Prices Reasonable apply C.B. Clutterbuck, Njoro.’36 His remarkable talent with horses was immediately apparent when the newly organized Turf Club held a race meeting in Nairobi in February and Charles rode in many of the races on behalf of clients. He won on Lord Delamere’s Dawn and also managed several places, riding horses owned by the Delameres, R. B. Cole and others.37 From this date onwards he rode regularly in the owner-ridden Somali or country-bred horse races and was among the first to import horses to improve the blood lines.

  According to Charles, or ‘Clutt’ as he became known in the protectorate, ‘Delamere was never really keen on racing, only he saw it as a way of improving horse blood.’38 Clutt imported two Australian mares; Gladys, which he owned in partnership with Berkeley Cole, and Kathleen, which was owned by Lady Delamere. Both were trained by Clutterbuck and became famous in the early days of Kenyan racing. By 1906 Clutt was well established in racing circles. In a poem which starts ‘To the races I went and I had a good time, There was racing and laughter and Scotch Whisky wine’, his name features heavily.39

  Race meetings were only held twice a year in those early days. Handicapping was an invidious task, for the horses ranged from English thoroughbreds to Somali ‘rats’. On one occasion the handicapping steward was bitterly upbraided for putting 16 stone on the horse of a prominent settler and making it give 8 stone to a Somali pony. One might suppose that the settler’s complaint was justified until one learns that his horse started hot favourite and that he won the race ‘pulling up, in a hunting saddle’. Whenever possible Clutt personally rode the horses he trained, and despite the vagaries of the handicapper, won with what must have seemed, to rival stables, maddening consistency.40

  Clara went out to join her husband in late 1905, taking Richard and Beryl with her. As was the custom, after a few months living at the unaccustomed altitude of Njoro she went down to the coast for a few days in April 1906 to spend a short time at sea level.41 She was staying there with friends at Mombasa in April 1906 when she met Richard Meinertzhagen who recorded the meeting in his diary:

  Bowring gave a dinner party this evening at which were present Mr & Mrs Coombe, Mrs Clutterbuck, Stanley of the railways, my old Fort Hall friend Ronald Humphrey and myself. Mrs Clutterbuck told me a good story which she declared to be true. Her husband wounded an old bull elephant near Molo on the Mau Plateau but failed to recover him that day. On the following day they found that he had wandered off to a small stream, and in his efforts to get water had sunk down and died, actually in the bed of the watercourse. The stream was thus dammed but instead of the water rising and flowing over the carcass it found for itself a new course underground and now flows for over a mile in this fashion.42

  By 1906 the Protectorate of East Africa was beginning to flourish and lose some of its wildness. Nairobi had changed considerably from the tin shanty town which Charles had found two years earlier, and Meinertzhagen recorded his surprise when visiting Nairobi in 1906:

  …the town has trebled in size. Trees have sprung up everywhere, hotels exist where zebra once roamed. Private bungalows in all their ugliness now mar the landscape where I used to hunt the waterbuck, impala and duiker. The place is full of strange faces and…where two years ago I knew every soul of the twenty or thirty Europeans…there are now over 1200 Europeans in the town.43

  The Clutterbuck farm was already well established by the standards of the day. A friend who visited Green Hill Farm in that year to recuperate from an illness recalled a ‘pretty little house, with a garden full of English cottage-garden flowers’, and later recalled with amusement that she was fed on ‘roast mutton, boiled onions and tea for every meal’.44

  Clutterbuck was still working for Lord Delamere and ran regular weekly advertisements in the East African Standard: ‘FOR SALE at Lord Delamere’s Njoro Farm: Broken bullocks at 50 Rupees, Unbroken Bullocks 40 Rupees, also young large White Yorkshire, Middle white and Berkshire Pigs, Boars and Gilts at 30 Rupees each…a quantity of the above always for sale. Apply C.B. Clutterbuck Njoro.’

  In August 1906 the Ladies’ Column in the same newspaper proved that it was not ‘all work and no play’ even in the pioneering days, when it carried a report of the Turf Club Ball at Nairobi.

  The Ball Room was most tastefully decorated with flags and long trailing garlands of flowers and when everyone was dancing it was a very pretty sight. There were lots of pretty women in lovely frocks. Mrs Clutterbuck wore a perfectly lovely frock of pi
nk chiffon which suited her to perfection, Lady Delamere was in wine-coloured velvet, Mrs Bowker in a dress of fine black lace…45

  The rival newspaper, The Times of East Africa, noted at the end of that week that ‘The Delameres and the Clutterbucks have left for Njoro.’46

  Life up country was not without its excitement, however. There were constant rumours of native unrest – particularly from the Nandi and Sotik tribes a little way to the north of Njoro. Trains were not allowed through the disturbed areas at night and up-country passengers had to sleep at Nakuru and go on next day.47

  When Lord Delamere returned to England to raise capital to develop his farming interests in Kenya his admirable wife Lady Florence wrote calmly:

  I suppose you have heard of our scare. The Sotik looted two Masai villages on the other side of the line from here. Wiped them out I understand. Then the Government sent word to the el moru [elders] on our land that another party of Sotik were coming. So I borrowed 200 cartridges from Mr Clutterbuck to reinforce Casaro [the head Masai on the Delameres’ property]; but as nothing more happened, I conclude the government were misinformed. Personally I never thought they would come here but I thought it as well to get more cartridges.

  Rather amusing, the district officer at Naivasha wired…to say a loot was expected. They said looting had taken place two days before. Beauties aren’t they?48

  Native raids were not the only excitement at Njoro. There were periodic scares from lions and leopards who prowled around bomas (cattle enclosures built of thorn trees) where the oxen were herded for the night. There was always the chance of running into one after dark.49

  Langley Morris, whose family lived on a farm at Njoro from 1906 to 1914, remembered that his father had once walked three miles home in the dark and had been ‘shadowed’ by a lion. ‘It kept parallel to him the entire time, about fifty yards away. When he stopped the lion did too. He had only a pistol on him so it was pointless his trying to do anything unless the lion attacked. So he just kept on walking…and so did the lion.’50

  Lions were classed as vermin, and were shot at will, although technically only proven cattle-killers could be shot unless the hunter had the requisite licence. They were not the only ‘game’ presenting problems to pioneer farmers. Elephants, rhino, buffalo, zebra, giraffes and gazelles grazed on the crops. Lions, leopards and cheetahs threatened livestock.51

  Almost from the first, Richard, the elder Clutterbuck child, ailed. He had always been a sickly infant, slight and fair, but he now suffered a series of distressing illnesses which his parents attributed to the climate and altitude. Early settlers were by no means convinced that it was possible to rear children in the highlands, despite the views of H. M. Commissioner Sir Charles Eliot who in 1905 wrote that the fearful hazards of altitude, equatorial sun and disease had been exaggerated; fever was certainly not more prevalent than influenza in England: ‘…it will no longer sound incredible that European children can be reared [in the highlands] without danger or difficulty. The number of fat, rosy infants to be encountered on an afternoon’s walk at Nairobi is quite remarkable.’52 The young Winston Churchill disagreed: ‘It is still quite unproved that a European can make the highlands of East Africa his permanent home…still less that he can breed and rear families [at heights of] from five to eight thousand feet above sea-level.’53 In September 1906 Richard was sent home in the company of friends.54

  Settler life, despite the obvious improvements brought about since 1904, had not suited Clara. She enjoyed a busy social existence, loved parties and dancing, and could not accustom herself to the rigours, nor the social isolation, of her new life. Her single regular contact with civilization seems to have been a friendship with Lord Delamere’s wife Florence, daughter of the Earl of Enniskillen. Before being taken to India by her parents, Clara too had been gently raised in a succession of ‘big houses’ belonging to the Alexanders, a great Irish family. The two women undoubtedly shared the trauma of their changed circumstances, and the friendship between them was noted by Lord Cranworth:

  If D[elamere] was a remarkable character, no less remarkable was his wife Florence. I do not think that I have ever met a more delightful companion or a more devoted wife. She loved hunting, dancing, every form of society and every joy of life. Yet she shared an existence of the utmost discomfort without any one of these amenities with the utmost cheeriness. On their personal expenditure…the very closest watch was kept. Two poor mud huts, which would have been condemned instanter by any housing authority in England, served them for years, and there was no garden nor indeed any other amenity whatsoever. D. was away nearly all day and every day on the farm and about his various enterprises and until the coming of the Clutterbucks she had a very lonely life…55

  But the friendship of Lady Delamere could not compensate Clara for the living standards and society she missed so much, and she was not able to adapt, nor accept the privations, so well as her neighbour. Three months after young Richard had sailed for England, Clara embarked on the SS Djemnah bound for Marseilles and home.56

  In 1986 Beryl stated that her father always told her that Clara ‘ran off to England with Harry Kirkpatrick’. Major Harry Fearnley Kirkpatrick (whom Clara married some years later), was serving at the time in East Africa attached to the 3rd King’s African Rifles,57 so this must be considered as a possible reason for the separation. But Clara’s decision not to take Beryl back to England with her may have been because she originally intended to return to Njoro, and since Beryl was obviously suited to life in Africa there seemed no justification for uprooting her for the long and arduous journey to England. Whatever the reason, it was decided that Beryl would remain with her father at Njoro.

  It will probably never be known whether Clara ever seriously intended returning to Charles and the farm at Njoro. Beryl would be a grown woman before she saw her brother or her mother again. In the little time she knew him as an adult, she loved her brother. But she never forgave her mother for abandoning her.

  CHAPTER TWO

  1906–1918

  After Clara’s departure for England, the African house-servants were given the responsibility of watching over the little girl while Clutterbuck worked to establish the farm. Before 1909 when a series of governesses appeared on the scene, Beryl’s regular companions were African contemporaries, the children of the increasing number of migrant workers employed by Clutterbuck, or ‘Clutabuki’ as he quickly became known to them.1 From them Beryl learned to speak the languages of Africa, exactly as the other totos (small children) learned. The African workers on the farm were mainly Kikuyus and people from the Kavirondo district; but there were also a number of Kipsigis – a pastoral tribe allied to the warrior Nandis who hailed from the country to the north of the farm – who made particularly good herdsmen. The child’s days were filled with sunshine, the soft murmur of African voices, and the cracking whips of the Boers who drove the huge teams of oxen which were used to drag away the felled timber.

  The night sounds were those of the occasional roar of a lion in the distance, the snap and crackle of cedarwood fires, and the continuous shriek of hyraxes – attractive, small furry creatures, rodent-like but in fact the nearest living relative of the elephant.

  The absence of her mother and brother undoubtedly had an influence on Beryl’s character; indeed the strength and independence she was to show later almost certainly had their roots in this deprivation. Her lifelong habit of going barefoot whenever possible stemmed from these years, and her necessary intimacy with the African families who lived in squatter villages on the farm caused her to become almost more African than European in her thinking and attitudes. True, she acquired a veneer of European manners as she grew up, but these early years which did so much to shape her strength of personality also created within her a deep well of insecurity, and an inability to handle personal relationships. She simply ‘never knew what was required of her and her instincts were to survive at any price, no matter what the cost to other people’, a frien
d told me.2 Her own comments about her father are also revealing:

  He is a tall man my father – a lean man, and he husbands his words. It is a kind of frugality, a hatred of waste I think. Through all his garnered store of years, he has regarded wasted emotion as if it were strength lavished on futile things.3

  Beryl was always full of life and energy, and from contemporary recollections she might today be classified as a hyperactive child. But her charisma even as a young girl was outstanding, and she was regarded as having ‘powerful dawa’ (Swahili for magic or medicine) by the African workers on the farm. Her ideas were treated with respect even by adults.4

  Although the highlight of her day was to ‘do the stables with daddy’,5 her father, with his immense workload, had little time to spare. Lady Delamere kept a watching brief over her welfare. The Delameres’ own child Tom, two years older than Beryl, had been left behind in England when the couple went out to Kenya in 1902 and it therefore is hardly surprising that Clara’s child on the neighbouring farm provoked a kindly interest from Lady D. Interviewed in the spring of 1986 Beryl still retained a vague childhood memory of riding over to the Delameres’ house on her pony,6 and of ‘a white frock’ that she had been given by the woman described by Meinertzhagen as ‘very lovely, graceful and charming, and quite out of place in this savage country’.7