Straight on Till Morning (4 page)

Charles travelled up country to look at several sites, two of which were serious possibilities. One was at Thika, which he rejected.
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The other was a large tract near Njoro in the White Highlands, which marched with, and was originally part of, Delamere's own property which was known as Equator Ranch because the equator ran through one corner of it.
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Charles eventually purchased 1000 acres of this land at three rupees an acre,
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but first he got to know the land by working it for Delamere.

The land at Njoro consisted of raw and untamed bush on the slopes of the mighty Mau Escarpment, which forms the western edge of the great Rift Valley. Much of it was covered in dense forests of juniper (known as cedars), acacia and mahogo, but there were also areas of open pasture. The climate was pleasant: the site was situated at some 7000 feet, so the heat never became oppressive even in the strong sunlight of the equator, and mild frost at night was not unusual. During the day the air had an alpine sparkle to it, dry and clean.

The views were breathtaking. No man or woman alive could fail to be stirred by the sweeping vistas of the rift down to the distant Aberdare Mountains on one hand, and the multi-hued blues and greens of the Mau Forest stretching across the Rongai Valley to the slopes of the extinct volcano Menengai on the other. Game abounded in the forests, as did lions and leopards.

In one of his letters home Lord Delamere described the area around Njoro:

Charles Miller outlines the difficulties of the new settler who

With his few personal belongings, Charles settled on the land and, helped by African labour, started the task of making the farm which he optimistically called Green Hills.

In
West with the Night
Beryl wrote a poetic summary of the years which in reality must have involved a backbreaking, often heartbreaking struggle for her father. Much has been written about the difficulties besetting the pioneer settlers.
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There was often too much sun and not enough rain. Then, when the rain did come there was often too much of it. The dirt roads became impassable in hip-deep mud; the only movement possible for weeks at a time, was on horseback or on foot and the great ox-drawn wagons, scotch carts used for supplies, and water carts, stood idle.

Clearing the land could take months. A coarse outer beard of tall grass and dense knotted scrub had to be shaved clean with bush knives, or pangas as they were known. There were forests of gum, thorn trees and giant cedar to be felled, and their great stumps extracted like decayed teeth. As Charles Miller wrote:

At first the Clutterbuck homestead was, like that of all newly-arrived settlers, a hut called a rondavel, made of mud and daub with a grass-thatch roof and sited on a high sunny clearing. Whatever your social standing, these native-type huts were your introduction to living in Kenya. Their dark interiors remained cool in the sun, and at night the thick mud walls were snug against the cold air of the highlands. Lord Delamere continued to live for years in his collection of huts on the Mau Escarpment – although in his case this was from personal choice. Lord Francis Scott recalled some years later: ‘For the first nine months I lived in a tent on my estate – then my wife and two young daughters came out and we put up…mud and wattle huts, until about nine months later when the house [Deloraine] was ready.'
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In
The Flame Trees of Thika
Elspeth Huxley wrote of her first African home that it ‘was most companionable, for a great many creatures soon joined us in the roof and the walls. The nicest were the lizards, who would stay for hours spread-eagled on a wall quite motionless, clinging to the surface with small scaly hands…the thatch was always full of sounds, little rustling, secretive noises from unseen fellow-residents.'

These huts had no proper doors, but usually some sacking provided a little privacy. The windows were merely openings cut into the walls, but they looked out on to some of the best views in the world. Langley Morris, who was taken out to East Africa as a child to live near Njoro, recalled, ‘I can remember kneeling on my bed and looking out of the window at the Molo Hills to the north of us, it is my earliest real memory. The hills were deep blue – as blue as your dress [cobalt]. I asked one of the African boys if they were really that blue – he told me it was the mist hanging over the hills that made them appear so.'
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The cold night air often made fires at night a necessity, and the main hut on the Clutterbuck homestead nearly always had a big cedarwood fire burning after dark.

Furnishings were a strange mixture. Treasured antique pieces shipped from ‘home' stood shoulder to shoulder with upturned packing cases which served as makeshift chairs and tables. Beds were often animal skins on wooden stretchers. The legs of tables, chairs and beds stood in tins of water – or, if available, in paraffin – to discourage the ever-present ants.

The main diet was ‘tommies', the plentiful Thomson's gazelle, though most of the settlers tried a wide variety of plains game when the need arose. Langley Morris, describing their food, said, ‘Once my father killed a python but my mother wouldn't let me have any in case it was poisonous. My father said it was very stringy! I did eat ostrich once and
that
was stringy. Also it looked very unattractive – covered in pits like craters of the moon, where the quills had been pulled out.'
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Cooking was done by Africans who coped admirably in preparing European food on primitive cooking ranges. These usually consisted of three flat stones over a fire, but the Morris household had managed to acquire a Somali cook who had his own ideas: ‘…our cooking range consisted of a sheet of corrugated galvanized iron on which several small fires of charcoal were kept burning.'
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The pioneer settlers had little in the way of entertainment and social life, but what there was revolved around horses. Within months Charles had established his interest, and began advertising ‘For Sale at Njoro, several high class ponies 14hh–15hh. Prices Reasonable apply C.B. Clutterbuck, Njoro.'
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His remarkable talent with horses was immediately apparent when the newly organized Turf Club held a race meeting in Nairobi in February and Charles rode in many of the races on behalf of clients. He won on Lord Delamere's Dawn and also managed several places, riding horses owned by the Delameres, R. B. Cole and others.
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From this date onwards he rode regularly in the owner-ridden Somali or country-bred horse races and was among the first to import horses to improve the blood lines.

According to Charles, or ‘Clutt' as he became known in the protectorate, ‘Delamere was never really keen on racing, only he saw it as a way of improving horse blood.'
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Clutt imported two Australian mares; Gladys, which he owned in partnership with Berkeley Cole, and Kathleen, which was owned by Lady Delamere. Both were trained by Clutterbuck and became famous in the early days of Kenyan racing. By 1906 Clutt was well established in racing circles. In a poem which starts ‘To the races I went and I had a good time, There was racing and laughter and Scotch Whisky wine', his name features heavily.
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Race meetings were only held twice a year in those early days. Handicapping was an invidious task, for the horses ranged from English thoroughbreds to Somali ‘rats'. On one occasion the handicapping steward was bitterly upbraided for putting 16 stone on the horse of a prominent settler and making it give 8 stone to a Somali pony. One might suppose that the settler's complaint was justified until one learns that his horse started hot favourite and that he won the race ‘pulling up, in a hunting saddle'. Whenever possible Clutt personally rode the horses he trained, and despite the vagaries of the handicapper, won with what must have seemed, to rival stables, maddening consistency.
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Clara went out to join her husband in late 1905, taking Richard and Beryl with her. As was the custom, after a few months living at the unaccustomed altitude of Njoro she went down to the coast for a few days in April 1906 to spend a short time at sea level.
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She was staying there with friends at Mombasa in April 1906 when she met Richard Meinertzhagen who recorded the meeting in his diary:

By 1906 the Protectorate of East Africa was beginning to flourish and lose some of its wildness. Nairobi had changed considerably from the tin shanty town which Charles had found two years earlier, and Meinertzhagen recorded his surprise when visiting Nairobi in 1906:

The Clutterbuck farm was already well established by the standards of the day. A friend who visited Green Hill Farm in that year to recuperate from an illness recalled a ‘pretty little house, with a garden full of English cottage-garden flowers', and later recalled with amusement that she was fed on ‘roast mutton, boiled onions and tea for every meal'.
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Clutterbuck was still working for Lord Delamere and ran regular weekly advertisements in the
East African Standard:
‘FOR SALE at Lord Delamere's Njoro Farm: Broken bullocks at 50 Rupees, Unbroken Bullocks 40 Rupees, also young large White Yorkshire, Middle white and Berkshire Pigs, Boars and Gilts at 30 Rupees each…a quantity of the above always for sale. Apply C.B. Clutterbuck Njoro.'

In August 1906 the Ladies' Column in the same newspaper proved that it was not ‘all work and no play' even in the pioneering days, when it carried a report of the Turf Club Ball at Nairobi.

The rival newspaper,
The Times of East Africa
, noted at the end of that week that ‘The Delameres and the Clutterbucks have left for Njoro.'
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