West With The Night (VMC) (Virago Modern Classics)

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The ensuing publicity led to the memoir's republication and, today, it's considered a classic book on adventure and the outdoors. But as with so much of Markham's life—from her potentially illegitimate son with a Windsor royal to her love triangle involving the author of Out of Africa—her memoir is also shrouded in rumor. Some claim her journalist third husband wrote it; others insist every word is hers. It was during a long, grueling two-year stint working as a banker in Huntsville, Alabama, I finally realized I needed to follow my dreams. After sojourning several places across the country, I now call Asheville, North Carolina, home, where I am the co-founder, publisher and editor of The Golf Sport ( www.golfsportmag.com) magazine and editor of Sporting Classics Daily ( www.sportingclassicsdaily.com). I am also a contributor to OutdoorHub and Global Outfitters, and hope to really inflate that balloon over the next couple years. Beryl she stayed behind. A few days later, Finch Hatton and his servant were killed upon take-off in a fiery crash. His death came at the height of their romance, so what would have happened next is pure speculate.

It is still the host of all my darkest fears, the cradle of mysteries always intriguing, but never wholly solved. It is the remembrance of sunlight and green hills, cool water and the yellow warmth of bright mornings. It is as ruthless as any sea, more uncompromising than its own deserts. It is without temperance in its harshness or in its favours. It yields nothing, offering much to men of all races.” But they gave him a gun, so he left the spear and the shield behind him and took the courage, and went where they sent him because they said this was his duty and he believed in duty. ... West with the Night” is the title of Beryl Markham’s memoirs of her childhood and young adult life (as a racehorse trainer and bush pilot) in what is now Kenya. She was an unconventional woman - adventurous, original and insightful - and a talented writer. I did have a moment of real doubt when Beryl took a job flying big game hunters into the wilds of Kenya to shoot elephants. The money was really good, but there is something soulless about shooting elephants. She even said, ”It is absurd for a man to kill an elephant. It is not brutal, it is not heroic, and certainly it is not easy; it is just one of the preposterous things that men do.” You may not pull the trigger, but if you are helping these hunters find their prey via an airplane, you are as responsible for the death of the elephant as the men who fire the bullet. She had some wonderful, inspiring descriptions of how smart the elephants were and how many times they would fool the hunters. Those stories confirmed me in my belief that elephants are intelligent sacred animals and should be left in peace. So why do some people feel so driven to hunt these beautiful animals or put themselves in other death defying situations? One of the Kenyan guides remarked to Markham: ”White men pay for danger--we poor cannot afford it.”The author tends to get slightly lyrical about Africa and exoticises the country, but draws the line at doing the same to the people who live there. This is probably because she grew up with the Nandi tribe and her best friend was a Nandi boy. She even reflects on how their relationship changes once they become adults, he becoming the servant, and she the mistress, unable to withstand the force of colonialism. I liked her a bit more for this regret, general colonial attitudes and privilege notwithstanding. It is no good telling yourself that one day you will wish you had never made that change; it is no good anticipating regrets. Every tomorrow ought not to resemble every yesterday." Adventurous, fearless, Beryl Markham shattered glass ceilings long before the term had been coined. To borrow from William Butler Yeats, she had a fascination with what is difficult, and she has bequeathed her memories and experiences in her fine book and stories to generations of readers. Rumors that Markham hadn’t written West with the Night began to surface, and dogged her for decades. The gossip was brutal — particularly the claim was nearly illiterate and couldn’t have written such a book. The sun is going and shadows lay like broad hurdles across my path. Nothing is of any importance to me except my dog. The boar is not retreating; he is leading Buller away from me, away from my help.

Divorce Court File: 7428. Appellant: Mansfield Markham. Respondent: Beryl Markham..." nationalarchives.gov.uk . Retrieved 11 March 2016. Harmony comes gradually to a pilot and his plane. The wing does not want so much to fly true as to tug at the hands that guide it; the ship would rather hunt the wind than lay her nose to the horizon far ahead. She has a derelict quality in her character; she toys with freedom and hints at liberation. What a wonderful and eventful life! Whether Beryl herself wrote the memoir or not, it hardly makes a dent in the kind of pride I have in her as a woman clearing the way for other women to come after her. Ernest Hemingway called her a 'high-grade bitch'. I wonder if he knew that a century later, this would reflect more on him than on her? You can be assured that this review will in no way be as well written as Beryl Markham's "West with the Night." Oh, I am so very tempted to read this one again....Shall I do another book about flying? Another book about Kenya? So soon? *sigh* I probably will give in to temptation because I loved this book beyond measure when I read it as a teenager and Hannah and Jeannette both confirmed my memory of how good it was.So she had flown, and once airborne, once she had yielded to the sophistry of a draughtsman’s board, she had said, ‘There. I have lifted the weight. Now, where are we bound?’—and the question had frightened me. Africa was the breath and life of my childhood. It is still the host of all my darkest fears, the cradle of mysteries always intriguing, but never wholly solved. It is the remembrance of sunlight and green hills, cool water and the yellow warmth of bright mornings. It is as ruthless as any sea, more uncompromising than its own deserts. It is without temperance in its harshness or in its favours. It yields nothing, offering much to men of all races." Contrary to this absurd claim, anyone who is illiterate couldn’t possibly earn a commercial pilot’s license, nor speak five languages. Markham had many mentors, including her father as well as Denys Finch Hatton, who encouraged her to educate herself.

I must not stop for a minute. My muscles begin to ache, my legs bleed from the 'wait-a-bit' thorns and the blades of elephant grass. My hand, wet with perspiration, slips on the handle of my spear. I stumble, recover, and run on as the sound of Buller's bark grows louder, closer, then fades again.

The chapters in West with the Night could each stand on their own as short stories. The prose is elegant (perhaps Saint Exupery’s influence) and lovingly detailed. Passages are infused with haunting phantasmagoric beauty, bringing to life a world that no longer exists.