Memoir West with the Night collects twenty-four vivid stories by the remarkably fearless bush pilot, horse trainer, and aviation pioneer, Beryl Markham (1902–1986). Although British-born, Markham passed her childhood on her father’s farm in Njoro, Kenya. Her first language was Swahili. Her first playmates were Nandi and Murani boys. In this memoir she tells of informal hunts in which she ran barefoot with her Masai spear in search of warthog. In another story, her child-self skips gaily past a lion living on a neighboring farm, with near-tragic results. By the time she is eighteen, she knows enough about training race horses to get a job doing it. And then she learns to pilot airplanes. As a bush pilot, she flies missions of mercy as well as more mercenary safari scoutings. The penultimate story in West with the Night describes her setting a record in 1936 as the first pilot to fly nonstop from England to North America. This memoir’s title is derived from that westerly nighttime flight.
Not to diminish Markham’s world record, but I feel the title chosen for her memoir does not reflect its most compelling stories. Markham’s visceral imagery took me to pristine East Africa in the nineteen-teens and nineteen-twenties. I was hunting that warthog. I was worried it had gored my dog Buller. I was all alone with the warthog until the Murani warrior fortuitously appeared. Later, I tamed a proud stallion, and later cheered on Wild Child at a Nairobi race track. A little later, searching for downed fellow bush pilot Woody, I glimpsed a flash of silver as I flew above jungles and plains. I cannot imagine a more engrossing memoir. For me, the decades leading up to Markham’s trans-Atlantic flight hold the most interest.
Also, I love the wit and wisdom of her writing. Her flights with Baron von Blixen are hilarious. And at times she asks thoughtful questions like these: “What can be said of Buller—a dog like any other, except only to me?” [page 136]; and of Paddy the lion, “Who thinks it just to be judged by a single error?” [page 66]
Markham’s descriptions include personification, such as “arrogant little engines of the Uganda Railway.” [page 70] She uses imagery that really takes me there: “Often a herd of giraffe found it expedient to cross the railroad tracks, but would not condescend to bow to the elevated metal strands that proclaimed the White Man’s mandate over their feeding grounds. As a result, many telegrams en route from Mombasa to Kisumu, or the other way around, were intercepted, their cryptic dots and dashes frozen in a festoon of golden wire dangling from one or another of the longest necks in Africa.” [page 69]
I have high praise for many aspects of West with the Night. But what fascinates me most is how young Beryl absorbs the Nandi, Murani, Masai, Kikuyu, and Kavirondo understanding of and appreciation for Africa’s wild animals. Their and her love and respect for animals is palpable. Markham brilliantly writes her Chapter Nine, “Royal Exile,” in the emotional voice of a thoroughbred stallion, Camciscan, purchased by her father for her to tame and train. I don’t doubt that the intuition and instinct Markham needs to become a fearless, accomplished pilot, were born in the primal lessons she absorbs from her native African companions.
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