Straight on Till Morning

by Mary S. Lovell

  In this way, though other people had begun to take an interest in Beryl’s book, it was George Gutekunst who – without any personal reward – was the prime mover in its republication. After reading Hemingway’s letter he went to his local library to see if they could locate a copy of the book – now, he realized, long out of print.

  The librarian searched with the help of a computer and found that one copy of the book did exist within the Marin County library system, but it was lodged in an out-of-town location. Gutekunst immediately jumped into his car and drove to the library in question. He found that the book had been issued only seven times since 1942.

  Taking a day off from running his sea-front restaurant, Ondines, at Sausalito, which is a short drive across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, Gutekunst settled down to read. He sat down at noon with a drink by his side and didn’t rise from his chair until he finished reading the book. The next day he read it again just to make sure that his enthusiasm hadn’t been misplaced. On the second reading he knew he had rediscovered a literary gem.14

  Over the previous half-decade there had been occasional perfunctory interest shown in Beryl’s book by friends and others who had contacts in the publishing world. Pamela Scott had included it in a list of books recommended for republishing that she sent to a young relative embarking on a publishing career. Petal Allen, daughter of Sir Derek Erskine, had also taken an interest. And during these years Beryl found herself an object of interest from several writers. In particular two women writers, working independently on the biographies of Karen Blixen and Denys Finch Hatton, interviewed Beryl and asked for her recollections about the two lovers. One of them who visited Beryl on a number of occasions read Beryl’s book as part of her research programme and was particularly intrigued by it. She suggested to Beryl that something should be done with the property, and Beryl agreed to allow her to investigate film rights. Beryl signed a document agreeing to this course of action, which she later repudiated, claiming that she ‘had been pressurized into signing it when she was ill’.15

  When Jack took over Beryl’s affairs, interest was being displayed in the film rights by another journalist, James Fox.16 Several people were by then talking about obtaining the film rights, but Fox purchased a renewable option for a small sum, and renewed the option regularly. In a letter dated 17 September 1982 he advised Beryl that together with Mark Peploe, he had written a ‘movie treatment’ and was hoping to get the project off the ground. This was the situation prevailing when George Gutekunst came on the scene in 1982 and when Beryl’s book was republished.

  Jack Couldrey, who already knew about the proposed resurrection of the book, saw no great income resulting from the matter, but such was Beryl’s parlous financial state that ‘every little would help’. Beryl was still surviving on her annuity and on charitable donations from friends, backed up by cheques sent regularly from the Bathurst Norman family now living in England. The upkeep of her horses and her car was a constant drain on her income, but Jack realized that without these Beryl’s life would be miserable indeed.17

  Somewhat to the surprise of both Beryl and Jack, the republication of West with the Night was received by critics in the USA with rapture. The risks that North Point Press took in publishing a book so long out of print were many, and their courage was amply repaid by the critics’ reaction and subsequent sales. Beryl, interviewed in 1983 by Associated Press journalist Barry Schlachter, who was then based in Kenya, said, ‘I thought it couldn’t possibly be as good as all that…but if people like it so much the better.’

  The article written about Beryl by Barry Schlachter was syndicated around the world and was taken up by a surprising number of newspapers, some of whom used it as useful background to the story of the republication of West with the Night.

  At the same time stories began to appear which cast doubt on Beryl’s ability to have been the sole author of West with the Night. These seem to have been fuelled by telephone calls to North Point Press and Vanity Fair by a friend of Raoul Schumacher’s, in which the caller stated that Raoul was the author, not Beryl. Following these calls the acknowledgement which Beryl had made thanking Raoul for his ‘constant help and encouragement’ was seen by some as more than a mere tribute to an editor.

  Precisely how much ‘help and encouragement’ Beryl received from Raoul in the writing of West with the Night has perplexed many people, but the charge that Beryl may not have been its author is weak. It is based on three tenets:

  In America, some friends who knew the couple say that Raoul was the writer in the family, not Beryl. ‘Beryl did not appear erudite enough to have written the book,’ said one.18 ‘Raoul told me he had written the book,’ said another, ‘and after Beryl and Raoul separated she never wrote another thing.’19 In March 1987 another friend of Raoul’s, Scott O’Dell, made a similar claim.

  Among Beryl’s acquaintances in Kenya there was disdain for small inaccuracies such as the printing of the word ‘Arab’ (as in Arab Ruta) when it should correctly be written arap, and there are spelling mistakes too in some of the Swahili words used in the text. With Beryl’s intimate knowledge of the language and of tribal etiquette, they say, she would not have made such elementary errors.20

  The general belief in Kenya (all part of the great ‘Beryl legend’) that because of her upbringing Beryl was virtually illiterate. This appears to be supported by Mansfeld Markham’s statement to his nephew that ‘Beryl was almost illiterate, and that the only thing she could understand was signing her name on a cheque’.21

  The few surviving manuscript pages for West with the Night consist of typewritten foolscap sheets with handwritten editing amendments which have been identified as Raoul’s (compared with a known sample on the flyleaf of a book in which he wrote a message).22 In addition there is clear evidence that he advised on the book’s content, for there is one page of manuscript among Beryl’s papers, on which Raoul’s handwritten comments appear scrawled across the page: ‘School at Nairobi. Balmy story. Cut school at Nairobi.’ Balmy was the name of one of Clutterbuck’s thoroughbreds and there is an anecdote about her in West with the Night.

  But this proof of editing by Raoul, which some see as evidence that Beryl might not have been the sole author of the book, surely proved only that he acted as editor. Indeed his editing may have been responsible for the minor errors such as the title arap appearing as Arab. Together with the Americanization of Beryl’s anglicized spelling, such changes could well have been standard editorial corrections (by either Raoul or Lee Barker – Houghton Mifflin’s commissioning editor) for a work aimed primarily at an American readership.

  The incorrect spelling of Swahili words has an obvious explanation. In all cases they are written as Beryl pronounced them. She had learned the language as a child from her African friends but had probably never given much thought to the spelling. Neither Raoul nor anyone at Houghton Mifflin would have known either way.

  In his letter to Vanity Fair, and in two subsequent telephone conversations with me, Scott O’Dell claimed that after he introduced Beryl and Raoul ‘they disappeared and surfaced four months later’, when Raoul told him that Beryl had written a memoir and asked what they should do with it. This is at odds with the surviving correspondence and other archived material which proves that the book was in production from early 1941 to January 1942, and that almost from the start Beryl was in contact with Lee Barker of Houghton Mifflin.

  When Raoul told his friend that it was he who had written the book, could the explanation not be that he was embittered by his own inability to write without Beryl’s inspiration? That he exaggerated his editorial assistance into authorship to cover his own lack of words as a writer?

  From the series of letters between Beryl and Houghton Mifflin, it is clear that Beryl had sent regular batches of work to the publishers from Nassau before Raoul came into the picture. As explained earlier. Dr Warren Austin lived in the Bahamas from 1942 to 1944, was physician to HRH the Duke of Windsor and became frien
ds with Major Gray Phillips. Subsequently Dr Austin lived for a while with Beryl and Raoul whilst he was looking for a house in Santa Barbara. The two often discussed their mutual connections in Raoul’s presence. Dr Austin is certain that Raoul had never visited the Bahamas, reasoning that it would certainly have been mentioned during these conversations if he had.23 This speaks for itself. If Raoul was not even present when such a significant quantity of work was produced, then that part – at the very least – must have been written by Beryl.

  My opinion is that Beryl’s acknowledgement of Raoul’s help was probably no more than a generous gesture to the man who without any question was responsible for editing the manuscript, and for valued advice regarding content and format. More important, by the time the book was completed he had become her supporter and lover, and it is not beyond credibility that her tribute served a dual purpose, embodying also a public acknowledgement of her love for him.

  The argument that Beryl was virtually illiterate because of her upbringing is the weakest of all. She was clearly not illiterate. Her letters reveal a simple elegance in phrasing, her spelling (English) is faultless and she could also type well.24 From the time of her relationship with Finch Hatton she had consciously directed her mind to educating herself, and her permanent collection of books (which I saw when I visited Beryl in 1986) reveals a wide-ranging literary taste.25 She was able to acquire a commercial pilot’s licence by passing an examination which required considerable mathematical knowledge, and her ability to plot complex navigational courses is beyond question. But is it necessary to labour the point? Has not this controversy already been given more exposure than is warranted by the flimsy evidence?

  If Beryl had a problem it was not one of literacy, but a lack of confidence in her own ability. Saint-Exupéry encouraged Beryl to start the book, and Raoul gave her the confidence to complete it.

  Conversely, there is no evidence whatsoever that Raoul had the literary ability to produce West with the Night. Indeed it is highly unlikely that the man who wrote ‘The Whip Hand’ was ever capable of writing in such a stylish manner. That he acted as the book’s primary editor is not questioned, and in this respect he was masterful. But a good editor is not necessarily a good writer and the only works ever published under his name were three short stories, the style of which is totally different, and arguably inferior to West with the Night and to Beryl’s other autobiographical works. It is however very similar to the style of all but one of the fictional works published in Beryl’s name and this is almost certainly the truth behind his statement to friends that he was a ghost writer, for there is no evidence of such activity except for the work he did with Beryl. He is not listed in any of the usual sources as having a known pseudonym. His own description of his literary career consists of a sentence in a weekly magazine interview, where he told a journalist that between 1940 and 1945 he ‘wrote short stories and doctored other people’s books’.26 Though several of his friends told me they thought Raoul wrote under a pen-name none knew what it might have been. Scott O’Dell said he thought it might have been a woman’s name but even Schumacher’s New York literary agents (MacIntosh and Otis) had no knowledge of this.

  The American writer Kay Boyle is on record as stating that West with the Night is too detailed and too impassioned to have been written at second hand.27 I agree with this opinion, and find no difficulty in believing that Beryl Markham wrote her book with no more help than any other author receives from an editor.

  Nor was her memoir her only work. Later she was to write other autobiographical works in the same style, such as ‘The Captain and his Horse’:

  Nor is our challenger alone. I see not one but a dozen buffalo heads emerging from the bush, across our path like links in an indestructible chain – and behind us the walls of the donga are remote and steep and friendless.

  Instinctively I raise my revolver, but as I raise it I realize that it won’t help. I know that even a rifle wouldn’t help. I feel my meagre store of courage dwindle, my youthful bravado become a whisper less audible than my pounding heart. I do not move, I cannot. Still grasping the reins, but unaware of them, the fingers in my left hand grope for The Baron’s mane and cling there. I do not utter them, but the words are in my heart: ‘I am afraid. I can do nothing. I depend on you’.

  Now, as I remember that moment and write it down, I am three times older than I was that day in the donga and I can humour my ego, upon occasion, by saying to myself that I am three times wiser. But even then I knew what African buffaloes were. I knew that it was less dangerous to come upon a family of lions in the open plain than to come upon a herd of buffaloes, or to come upon a single buffalo; everyone knew it – everyone except amateur hunters who liked to roll the word ‘lion’ on their lips. Few lions will attack a man unless they are goaded into it; most buffaloes will. A lion’s charge is swift and often fatal, but if it is not, he bears no grudge. He will not stalk you but a buffalo will. A buffalo is capable of mean cunning that will match the mean cunning of the men who hunt him, and every time he kills a man he atones for the death at men’s hands of many of his species. He will gore you, and when you are down he will kneel upon you and grind you into the earth…

  You can find many easy explanations for the things that animals do. You can say that they act out of fear, out of panic, that they cannot think or reason. But I know that this is wrong. I know now that The Baron reasoned, though what he did at the moment of our greatest danger seemed born more of terror than of sense.

  He whirled, striking a flame of dust from his heels, he reared high into the air until all his weight lay upon his great haunches, until his muscles tightened like springs, then he sprang…28

  There are three stories in this vein. The other two are ‘Something I Remember’, a story about her first pony, the Arab stallion Wee Macgregor, and ‘The Splendid Outcast’, which is the story of a woman trainer trying to buy a beautiful but unmanageable stallion at the horse sales. In the story the horse is brought into the ring in chains and held down by two grooms for he has recently killed a man. Again the main facts, and the setting, are true, but in reality Beryl was able to buy the horse whose name was Messenger Boy, whilst in her story she loses him to a scruffy little warned-off jockey who loves the horse and offers his last penny to buy him.

  The other stories published under her name are pure fiction, though one, ‘Brothers are the Same’, may quite possibly be based on an incident she experienced or was told about. It concerns a young African tribesman who is facing the biggest moment of his life; in order to prove his manhood he has to stalk and kill a lion single-handed with his spear. Far worse than the trial to come is his knowledge that all the warriors of his tribe are watching from a distance and that the slightest hint of fear in his demeanour will be noted by them.

  All but two of Beryl’s stories (‘The Quitter’ and ‘The Splendid Outcast’) have an African setting and all have an aviation and/or equine background. The four stories which are wholly romantic fiction, ‘The Transformation’, ‘Appointment in Khartoum’, ‘Your Heart Will Tell You’ and ‘The Quitter’, are written in a style different from her autobiographical stories. Here the writing lacks the sensitivity of her earlier work and of these, the last story was known to have been edited by Stuart Cloete. The other three appear to have been influenced to a great degree by Raoul and there are distinct similarities between them and the stories written under Raoul’s own name, but there is enough of Beryl’s unique manner of enhancing a statement using staccato supportive sentences and in the background information to betray the fact that she had some involvement and that they were not merely written by Raoul in her name.

  Despite extensive research it has not been possible to find any works by Raoul Schumacher other than the handful of short Western stories which were published under his own name, ‘The Whip Hand’, published June 1944; ‘Peaceable and Easy’, published June 1945; and ‘Sucker for a Trade’, published in November 1945. In addition it is known that he w
rote two radio playlets shortly after he and Beryl were separated. Although he is known to have received further commissions he was not able, for reasons which cannot be explained, to produce published work.

  Asked the outright question: ‘Did Raoul Schumacher write your book?’ Beryl grimaced and raised her eyes heavenwards. ‘Oh that again? No of course he didn’t.’ Asked how she answered the people who said she couldn’t have written the book, she said simply: ‘I don’t bother.’29

  Whilst researching this book I discussed this question of authorship with Miss Pamela Scott who lives near Nioro and who knew Beryl when she was Mrs Jock Purves. Miss Scott asked me: ‘Does it really matter whether she actually wrote the book or not? It is quite obviously her own story; no one else could have imagined those experiences and whether or nor she put the words down on paper is surely irrelevant…’ But I feel it is important that Beryl be given credit for her writing, for it reveals yet another facet of the talented, intricate character of a remarkable woman. My own opinion, having met Beryl, is one of astonishment that anyone could doubt her authorship. It is an opinion shared by those who knew her best.

  June 22 1983

  Dear Beryl Markham,

  Today’s post brought an interesting letter from Barry Schlachter along with enclosures of stories on Beryl Markham and West with the Night from the Kansas City Star, an Atlantic paper and one from Kenya…I loved the photo of you and that beautiful thoroughbred in the Nairobi paper! But can the beast run? Is it another Camsiscan? No, I suppose not, for it would somehow be improper if the racing world was blessed with another Camsiscan…! Barry Schlachter’s excellent story based on his interview with you has been picked up by many newspapers – big metropolitan papers as well as local and regional papers. Astonishing really, since your book has only been out a little over a month.