[issybird]

Originally Posted by CRussel

It's hard to fault her for the time and attitudes she was brought up in. And it's clear from what she wrote, and what others have written since, that she was raised rather more by Africa than by her father. And certainly her "governess" had no impact at all except to cause her to live in a separate building from her father from a very early age.

Given that her governess also physically abused her, to the extent of beating her savagely with a bull whip, I'd argue that she, plus the abandonment by Beryl's mother, was the root cause of Beryl's obvious and pronounced misogyny.

As for accuracy? In re-reading this book for this discussion, and also reading the two somewhat reliable biographies, it's clear to me that the stories are, in their essentials, true. Are some embellished? Probably. But the heart and intent of them are true, IMO.

I agree that much of Beryl's story is true (although as I said, I have my doubts about the boar hunt); however, I think the accuracy of the Lovell biography is called into question by the authorship issue, where the facts were misrepresented to make it impossible for Schumacher to have ghosted West with the Night. For me, Trzebinski's case is unassailable.

Oddly enough, what the authorship issue here most evokes for me is the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, where it seems highly likely that while Laura provided the raw material, her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, actually wrote them (there is some disagreement about the extent of Lane's input; I tend toward the "it's obvious that Lane wrote them" end of the spectrum). But while people read them as biography, the Little House books are classed as fiction. From what I know of the literary works in both cases and the actual biographies behind them, the level of "truth" seems roughly the same. Which brings me back to my question of just how much embroidery and "art" are allowed before a memoir crosses the line into fiction?

I admit it, I have issues with an unacknowledged ghost writer who did not even see the Africa he described. And what was widely hailed as a feminist tract when it was re-released in 1983 loses much force if a man actually molded it and wrote it. Obviously MMV and does about this.

One more issue that comes up with me in regard to West is to what extent it might have been conceived and influenced by Isak Dinesen's Out of Africa, which preceeded it by several years. Obviously the white community in the Happy Valley was small and the same people would recur; moreover, Beryl stalked Dinesen's lover Denys Finch Hatton for years before becoming his mistress shortly before his death. Still, I wonder if West with the Night was trying to capitalize a bit on Out of Africa. Beryl was obviously a private person (she didn't share her affairs with royalty, for example, or other notables) and that she'd give such promiinence in her memoir to both Finch Hatton and Dinesen's husband Bror Blixen, seems suggestive to me.

Originally Posted by CRussel

There's a back story that doesn't appear in the book. Her father brought in a governess, "Mrs. Orchardson", who ended up being his mistress and eventually his wife. Beryl and she were not on speaking terms, even many years later, and she refused to set foot in the house on the farm. Instead, she lived in her own native-style mud rondoval. Her escape and sneaking was to avoid Mrs. Orchardson, who she still referred to nearly 80 years later as "that bloody woman".

You beat me to this. I think Clutterbuck's attitude toward Beryl was essentially just neglect, not enlightened. He did have a son, after all, and never seemed that exercised about keeping either his wife or son in Africa (and Beryl's brother was there for a significant part of her growing up). And when he wanted to leave Africa for Peru, Beryl was on her own, at about 19. I think he just didn't care very much.