Remembering Beryl Markham During Woman History Month 2010

The fist woman to hold a horse training license in Africa and produced horses that won many races including the prestigious St. Leger, the dark continent's first woman commercial bush pilot, and the first person of any sex to fly solo and non-stop from England to North America against the wind from east to west. All that, and yet Beryl Markham (nee Beryl Clutterbuck on October 26, 1902 in Ashwell, England) is best known today as the author of a hypnotic memoir that compelled Ernest Hemingway to feel ashamed of himself as a writer.

West With the Night, first published in 1942, preserves her recollection of her adventurous life from the time her father took her (as a four years old girl) to live in British East Africa (now Kenya), where she grew up playing in the bush with local Masai children, to her days as an accomplished racehorse trainer, a bush pilot, and a record-setting aviatrix who made the first non-stop solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean from England to North America (Nova Scotia). The extremely stylish and contemplatively well-written prose clashes so much with her characteristic aversion to literature and refinement, however, that many people who knew her suspect that the book was actually ghost-written by her 3rd husband, Raoul Schumacher, a writer-journalist.

Regardless of doubts about the book's authorship, it is clear that the stories it relates came from an authentic source who had pre-developed wildness of Africa flowing through her vein. The real life Markham was a wild and discreet woman who did much and talked very little, and so was always surrounded by rumors. That combined with her unattainable nature and apparent animal magnetism made up for her appalling sexual promiscuity and lack of regard for others. Even those she abused (the son she abandoned, Gervase, included) remained attracted to her.

After spending her post-flying days in England and California, Markham moved back to Africa in 1958 and lived in poverty until her death in Nairobi on August 3rd, 1986. In 1998 an impact crater on Venus was named after her by the International Astronomical Union.

While more famous names like Amelia Earhart or Adele Fogle will not lack any recognition in occasions like this year's Woman History Month, Beryl Markham's name and deeds deserve a place among them. Her memoir is a must read for all who love nature and contemplative independence.

Sources:
Lovell, Mary, S. Straight On Till Morning: a Biography of Beryl Markham. New York: St Martin Press. 1987.
Trzerbinski, Errol. The Lives of Beryl Markham. New York: W.W. Norton Press. 1993.
Markham, Beryl. West With the Night. San Francisco: North Point Press. 1983.