The Life and Death of Lord Erroll: The Truth Behind the Happy Valley Murder

Joss and Idina got off the train at Gilgil, about three-quarters of the way along the Uganda railway-line. A tiny dot, hardly on the map, Gilgil was so small that it boasted only a railway-siding, but it provided a vital link with Nairobi as travel by car was barely feasible because of the appalling state of the roads. The Wanjohi Valley was tucked away in the hills behind Gilgil. This broad and undulating virgin territory, where yellow-flowering hypericum bushes grew in profusion, was watered by two rivers. The Wanjohi and the Ketai, flanked by beautiful podocarpus, ran more or less parallel and fed many icy, turbulent, gravel-filled streams, crisscrossing the valley. Ewart Scott Grogan, a pioneer settler who played an important role in the development of Kenya, had stocked these with fingerlings in 1906 – brown as well as rainbow trout. As one left the valley going uphill to ‘Bloody Corner’, so called because so many vehicles got stuck in the mud there, the Wanjohi changed its name to the Melewa. Fed by the Ketai, it flowed down towards Gilgil, ‘through the plains and past an abandoned factory and former flax lands, through dust and mud, over rocks and stones, to Naivasha, the lake thirty miles away’.8

Joss’s and Idina’s new home, Slains, was situated just eighteen miles north-east of Gilgil. On arriving at the railway-siding they were met by their farm manager, Mr Pidcock, who drove them the forty-five-minute journey to the farmhouse. Slains nestled at one end of a private two-mile murram track leading in the opposite direction from Sir John ‘Chops’ Ramsden’s seventy-thousand-acre Kipipiri Estate and his home, Kipipiri House. Slains was a rambling, charming farmhouse, low-lying and beamed, with a corrugated-iron roof, open ceilings, verandas and long bedroom wings. The kitchen, as usual in Kenya, was housed separately. The rooms were vast with partitioned walls which allowed sound to travel freely, affording little privacy.

In Kenya, this style of housing, reminiscent of Provençal dwellings, was the inspiration of Chops Ramsden and unique to the district. The houses were constructed by a builder from Norfolk whom Ramsden, a hugely wealthy landowner, had initially brought to Kenya to construct Kipipiri House. This had pleased him so much that the builder stayed on and was employed to build every additional manager’s house and the neighbours’ homes as well. Before leaving for Kenya, Idina had asked Chops Ramsden to supervise the construction of Slains ready for her and Joss’s arrival. The uniformity of the Wanjohi Valley settlers’ houses reinforced the club-like atmosphere of the area.

Slains’ setting was as dramatic as its namesake in Scotland. The early-morning mists that swamped this moorland wilderness were damp enough to warrant the wearing of wellington boots. At sundown, a chill would come into the air, making night fires a necessity. Yet by day its climate was that of a perfect English summer. The equatorial sun at an altitude of 8,500 feet produced an exuberance of growth. Looking out from the front of Slains towards Ol Bolossat, which was more often a swamp than a lake, except when it was fed during the rains by the Narok River, occasionally one could see the gleaming water flowing over a two-hundred-foot shelf at Thomson’s Falls. In the distance up the valley behind the house rose the mountain Kipipiri, which joined the Aberdare range. The cedar-clad forest ridge which ran along the valley, dubbed by Frédéric de Janzé ‘the vertical land’, dwarfed everything below, and this haunt of elephant and buffalo lent grandeur to the simplicity of daily existence.

For life in Kenya in 1924 was far from an unbroken idyll. Joss was joining a community of pioneers who were still trying to redress the effects of their absence from their farms during the First World War. These early settlers might have picked up land at bargain prices but there had been a catch: every decision affecting their livelihood was made in London. Land for farms had in the early years of the twentieth century been parcelled out under ninety-nine-year leases ‘with periodic revision of rent and reversion to the Crown with compensation for improvements’, which meant that the settlers would forfeit everything unless they developed the property to prefixed standards.9

Only a few months before Joss first arrived at Slains, the Duke of Devonshire, then Colonial Secretary, had put the wind up European settlers in Kenya by declaring that ‘primarily Kenya is African territory’, and reminding them that His Majesty’s Government would pursue the ‘paramountcy of native interests’; furthermore, ‘if the interests of the immigrant races should conflict, the former should prevail’.10 While this meant little to Joss in 1924, he would become a champion of the European settlers’ interests in due course.

In 1920 Sir Edward Northey, the Governor, had made seven major innovations. Firstly, in that year the Protectorate graduated to Crown Colony. Secondly, a new Legislative Council was set up to represent the settler and commercial interests, and European settlers were granted the vote. The colony’s affairs could now be debated in the local parliament, ‘though it was stressed that the colony was still to be ruled from Whitehall’.11 In due course Joss became a member of ‘Legco’, as it was known. Thirdly, the railway was reorganised; its finances were separated from those of the Protectorate and the railway system was placed on a business footing. Four, under the control of an intercolonial council, the first big loan was raised for a new branch railway. Joss would see its construction, as well as the harbour works, begun and completed. Five, the Civil Service was reshaped. The rates of pay were raised to put them on a level with other colonial services. Six, the budget was balanced and inflated expenditure was cut drastically ‘so as to bring the country’s coat within measure of its cloth’.12 These innovations formed the framework of the political structure within which Joss would move and be affected as a settler.

Finally, it was under Northey that the Soldier Settlement Scheme was launched. In spite of setbacks, this was acknowledged to be the most successful postwar settlement project in the Empire. And – through Idina’s ex-husband, Charles Gordon – Joss benefited from the Government’s second attempt since the building of the Uganda Railway to fill the empty land with potential taxpayers and producers of wealth. These ex-soldiers got their land on easy terms, and Charles Gordon had been one of many applicants. Sir Delves Broughton, too, had drawn soldier settlement land, coming out initially in 1919 to inspect it. Allocation tickets could be bought in Nairobi and at the Colonial Office in London. ‘By June 1919 more than two thousand applications had flooded into Nairobi to take their chance at a grand draw held on the stage of the Theatre Royal.’ Like a lottery, the tickets were placed in barrels to decide who was to get what. ‘It took two revolving drums all day to distribute the empty acres by lottery to an audience of nail-biting would-be farmers.’13

One of the first settlers in Kenya, Hugh Cholmondeley, 3rd Baron Delamere, had trekked on foot into Kenya in 1897 with camels from Somalia, arriving with a doctor, a photographer and a taxidermist. Africa infected him with its potential. In 1903, Delamere applied for land in British East Africa on the ninety-nine-year-lease scheme and was granted a total of a hundred thousand acres at Elmenteita near Gilgil and at Njoro beyond Nakuru; he called his first home Equator Ranch. Njoro was already regarded as the cradle of European settlement by the time Joss and Idina arrived in Kenya. While D, as everyone called him, was not the first to take up land, he became the most influential of all the settlers. He was to have a powerful influence on Joss – they were virtually neighbours – and gradually Joss would find himself drawn into local politics. D’Abernon had taught Joss about the Scramble for Africa, and so he knew more than most neophyte settlers about the political machinations with foreign Imperial powers that had gone before. Joss and D, both Old Etonians, were utterly different types who stood for quite different things, but they were united in their love of Kenya and a willingness to use all possible means for their cause.

D was the leading light among the settler community. When not working his farms, he headed deputations to Government House, even taking a delegation to London in early 1923 to fight the settlers’ cause with a Government now much less in favour of colonialist expansion. He also found time to sit beside his own hearth with several Maasai who had walked for miles to chat with him at Soysambu* wearing only a shuka and beads. Gilbert Colvile and Boy Long, D’s former manager – the other two in the colony’s great trio of cattle barons – would also often consort with the Maasai, who were greatly respected for their knowledge of cattle-breeding.

Gilbert Colvile was a highly eccentric character, almost a recluse. His mother Lady Colvile ran the Gilgil Hotel with her maid.14 The hotel was something of a focal point for European settlers, who would regularly call upon Lady Colvile. Her son would later get to know Joss when Joss moved to Naivasha. Colvile became one of the most successful cattle barons in Kenya, doing a great deal to improve Boran cattle by selective breeding. He had been at Eton with Delves Broughton and Lord Francis Scott. The latter, like Broughton, whose commanding officer he had been during the Great War, had drawn land from the 1919 Soldier Settlement Scheme. Scott was chosen to replace Delamere as Leader of the Elected Members of Legislative Council and as their representative to London after D’s death in 1931.15

Once Joss and Idina had settled in, the rhythm of life at Slains was orderly and as balmy as the daytime temperature. Their prelude to each day was a glorious early-morning ride. Their horses would be groomed and saddled, waiting for them to mount. Before the dew was burnt off the grass by the sun, they would ride out for miles over the soft, turf-like vegetation that rose up as if to meet the sky. The muffled thud of hooves would send warthog scurrying and the needle-horned dik-dik bounding away in pairs. Ant-bear holes were a hazard for their sure-footed Somali ponies, as the scent of bruised wild herbs rose from warm, unbroken soil under their unshod hooves in their jog home afterwards. Joss would change into a kilt and then breakfast on porridge and cream.

Labour was cheap after the war, but not readily forthcoming. District Commissioners had applied to the local chiefs to exert ‘every possible persuasion to young men to work on the farms’.16 Every servant needed training from scratch – most candidates had never set foot in a European household before. Appointing a major-domo was a complete lottery. The Hays had two Europeans on their staff, one of whom was Marie, a French maid who would become integral to Idina’s households. At times of crisis, Marie could be heard throughout the house ‘wringing her fat little hands, her voice rising higher and higher, “Cette affreuse Afrique! Cette affreuse Afrique!”, her high heels tapping out her progress on the parquet floors as she sought out Lady Hay with the latest disaster’.17 Then there was Mr Pidcock, their farm manager, who also ran the Slains dairy.

Butter-making was done early in the morning or late in the evening; the butter was washed in the clear river water, which gave it its wonderful texture. Every other day it would make its way to Gilgil by ox-cart, wrapped in a sheet torn from the Tatler.18 The Slains cuisine would never want for supplies of farm produce and, thanks to a good kitchen garden, the table there was superb. Idina’s menus were sophisticated, and Marie taught the African cook how to make soufflés and coq au vin on a blackened Dover stove fuelled by kuni.* The ring of the axe was a familiar sound since wood heated the water for baths.

Waweru, Joss’s Kikuyu servant, came to work for him in 1925 as a ‘personal boy’ and may well have started life as a kitchen toto, when Joss spotted his potential. He was only a little younger than Joss – the Africans kept no precise record of the year they were born – and had never been to school. He would work for Bwana Hay until Joss’s death, and was utterly dependable. By the time he was called as a witness during the murder trial in 1941 as ‘Lord Erroll’s native valet’ this Kikuyu man had been privy to many intimacies in Joss’s life. Eventually promoted to major-domo at Joss’s next home, Waweru ran the household very capably, performing his duties with all the expertise and dignity of a seasoned English butler, making callers welcome in Joss’s absence, arranging flowers and overseeing junior staff.19 Waweru’s opinion of Joss as a ‘good man’ made an impression in court during the trial, and certainly debunks the rumour spread after Joss’s death that he mistreated his staff.20 At Slains, the African servants were given presents on Boxing Day, amid much celebration. As Joss once explained, one had to ‘budget on the basis of two to three wives, and half a dozen children per wife per family’. Nevertheless, everyone received presents.21

Another inaccurate assessment of Joss was the assumption that, because he was rich and titled, he was nothing but a ‘veranda farmer’. He certainly enjoyed life and drove around the area dangerously fast in Idina’s Hispano-Suiza with its silver stork flying over the crest of its great bonnet. His hair-raising driving earned him his Swahili name, Bwana Vumbi Mingi Sana, meaning ‘a lot of dust’. For all his high-spirited behaviour, though, Joss was serious about farming. The Hays were the first settlers to breed high-grade Guernsey cattle in Kenya, for example. And thanks to advisers such as Boy Long and Delamere, they were able to avoid the most common blunders made by newcomers, such as putting very large bulls to native heifers, which would result in calving difficulties. The pioneers had learned the hard way. Once the conformation problem was recognised, half-bred bulls were used instead and heifers fared better.22

Joss knew a lot about horses from all his polo experience, and entrusted only Captain George Marcus Lawrence, a soldier settler who had ridden for the British Olympic team, with the schooling of his polo ponies and the training of his modest string of racehorses. Marc Lawrence would oversee the estate and the staff during Joss’s absences in Europe.23

Livestock auctions were held in the Rift Valley at Gilgil, Naivasha and Nakuru, through which the only road to Nairobi passed. Each boasted a post office, a DC’s office flying the Union Jack and a police post with the usual sprinkling of Indian dukas;* the only petrol to be found between Nakuru and Nairobi was at the garage Fernside and Reliance Motors Ltd in Naivasha.24 At the auctions Boy and Joss always stood out amongst the crowd, chatting together. Boy Long, like Joss, was good-looking and popular with women. According to Elspeth Huxley, Boy dressed ‘like an English country squire with a dash of the cowboy, accentuated by a broad-brimmed Stetson hat and a bright Somali shawl’. Joss too was establishing something of a reputation for his eccentric dress, but behind the libertine appearance of these two men were fine brains attuned to the business in hand.

On sales days just before 9 a.m., sumptuous cars would park behind the auction stand. A fine red dust with a peculiarly harsh smell would be lifted by the wind, spiralling into the sky. As the dust settled behind Joss’s Hispano-Suiza when he stepped out, it would rise again around the hooves of the Abyssinian ponies as they were trotted out for inspection, ‘thin, footsore and weary’, having been driven down by Somali herders. Joss’s polo ponies as well as his hacks were taken from Abyssinian stock, because they were exceptionally sure-footed and coped well in the rough terrain.

Wives ‘looking radiant and glamorous, smoking Egyptian cigarettes’, would gaze down at pens full of pawing, butting cattle as the bidding went on.25 Idina never seemed to suffer in the dust and heat – one of her least tolerable offences in the eyes of her detractors. Joss and she both seemed to tolerate African conditions effortlessly.

Joss often met up with D and Boy, whether at Soysambu or Nderit, where Boy lived, or Slains, and the three of them would discuss farming problems. Emergencies were forever cropping up: everyday shauries – crises among the African staff, thefts, sicknesses, snake bites and the sudden need for a vet.26 Within eighteen months of arriving in Kenya Joss, who was not a vain man, felt that he had learned enough through practical experience to describe himself as a cattle farmer.

To diversify their produce, Joss and Idina tried planting pyrethrum – in those days nobody knew for sure what would or would not grow at any altitude – a flower used in the production of crop insecticides. For this the land had to be tilled; teams of doe-eyed oxen, sixteen at a time, would drag the heavy tiller through the earth. If the wooden harness broke, it took Pidcock more than an hour to drill each hole through the hard olive-wood using a brace and bit, to make a new one. Slowly and painfully, several hundred of the Slains acres were transformed into furrow upon furrow of lacy white pyrethrum. What Joss learned here formed the basis of arguments he would later use as a member of Legislative Council, defending the high-quality production of pyrethrum for export.

Elspeth Huxley praised the Hays’ farming activities: ‘They enhanced rather than damaged the natural charms of their valley, by leaving native trees alone and … by paddocking green pastures for butter-yellow Guernseys, stocking streams.’ Idina taught her shamba* boys how to lay and look after lawns, to prune, and to cultivate English spring bulbs. Her legacy survives today on Mombasa’s north coast, where a garden of exotic shrubs and trees enhances the house where she died. At Slains they grew pansies, Albertine roses and petunias with success and around the cedar trees they planted daffodil bulbs. When these bloomed the effect was that of an English country estate. Elspeth Huxley’s parents, Joss and Nellie Grant, would drive over from Gikammeh to swap yarns and exotic cuttings.

Joss’s and Idina’s neighbours ran into one another in Gilgil – everyone used the railway-siding there. The dusty main road sported one signpost, which pointed north to Nakuru and south to Nairobi.27 Vitalbhai’s in Gilgil was the largest in a string of iron-roofed dukas. Just outside its entrance, a dhersie† toiled away on his treadle Singer sewing machine. Here, Joss and Idina bought basic provisions as well as yards and yards of corduroy in different colours on the chit system. The dhersie would stitch kanzus – long, white cotton robes rather like night-shirts – which were worn with a red cummerbund by houseboys. He also made Idina’s and Joss’s slacks in the corduroy – a fashion set by Idina, so practical that everyone followed it.

The ‘cow-town’ of Nakuru was the farming heart of the Rift Valley, and was Lord Francis Scott’s nearest shopping centre. The Scotts were never invited to Slains, though Joss and Francis Scott would become friends later. The Scotts, having met Idina first as Charles Gordon’s wife, never stopped condemning her. Eileen Scott wrote in her diary: ‘She has done a lot of harm to this country and behaved like a barmaid.’28 Elspeth Huxley’s description of Eileen suggests that the disapproval would have been mutual: ‘Eileen Scott lingers in my memory draped in chiffon scarves, clasping a French novel and possibly a small yappy dog, and uttering at intervals birdlike cries of “Oh François! François!”.’29

Notwithstanding her low opinion of Idina, Lady Eileen was among the first to recognise potential in Joss: once he joined the Naivasha Farmers’ Association she found him ‘much improved’. Joss’s success there came as a surprise to some, Lady Eileen continued: ‘Contrary to the expectations of most people, Joss Erroll was voted to the chair … It is a pity Joss hasn’t had a year’s more practice and experience; he has a brain like lightning and it is difficult for him to listen patiently to this slow-minded, if sound, community. However it is a very great step in the right direction, he is very able and a gentleman.’

While the Scotts were never guests at Slains, Joss and Idina did not want for extra companionship. With an eclectic flow of friends and visitors, local or from overseas, at Slains the mood of each gathering was dependent on kindred spirits – playful, debauched, sophisticated or civilised. Idina would preside, perpetually reloading her long amber cigarette-holder. The more often her glass was recharged – ‘Another little ginnies, dahling,’ she would drawl – the more amorous she became, a signal that things were about to liven up.30 Joss, however, ‘never smoked, seldom drank, sipping wine in small quantities at dinner; he never touched spirits’.31 He would act as barman to his guests, topping up their glasses for hours on end without any sign of irritation. Whenever alcohol was served at parties, whether in the role of host or guest, Joss kept his glass full to avoid seeming to be a killjoy when others were knocking it back. He would decline courteously if anyone pressed him to drink more and, with a knowing twinkle, would murmur, ‘I’m not going to impair my performance.’32

Joss and Idina had their own polo ground at Slains and played at weekends, generally attracting a crowd of spectators.33 The polo crowd loved Joss: ‘He was a first-class player … Clever, always had a brain … and was always ready to take advice.’34 A typical gathering would include some of Joss’s Old Etonian friends, neighbouring settlers and a sprinkling of titled guests from abroad.

Reclining in leather-covered armchairs, with those relics of life in England, a fox’s mask and crossed whips on the wall, they would talk of ‘light things – horses and the latest gossip from Government House’. Inevitably their exchanges would include chat about any new divorcees. Since the arrival of the new Governor Sir Edward Grigg, divorcees were blacklisted. ‘Queen Mary had issued her own writ to Lady Grigg: no divorcee was to be received at Government House.’35 Idina could not have cared less, though the exclusion was humiliating to some.

It soon became custom in the Wanjohi Valley for each household to throw one huge annual party. Guests converged, bringing with them a bevy of servants and tents, to be erected in the gardens as accommodation. Having come from afar, they expected to spend at least three days there – longer if the rains were making the roads impassable. A visiting mpishi* would usefully pick up tips for new dishes, and this practice caught on rapidly, further enhancing Slains’ excellent culinary reputation.

Visitors from abroad would be especially enchanted, after a dusty journey along a remote unpromising track, to reach such civilised surroundings. Slains was filled with comfortable old furniture, Persian carpets, family portraits, silver ornaments, and studded Zanzibar chests gleaming from applications of lime juice and salt. Unlike most homes in Kenya, however, there was not a stuffed animal trophy to be seen. There were baronial arrangements of flowers, spacious bedrooms with private bathrooms and a library – ‘huge and varied … full of biographies … No one knew more about contemporary literature than Idina.’ This room was dominated by Joss’s desk.36

According to its owner in the fifties, Slains’ principal bathroom was ‘superb … vast, and in the centre stood a bath of green onyx … Idina would bathe in champagne occasionally. She was a darling but very naughty.’ Idina’s excesses were conspicuous to all, and her reputation for outrageousness did nothing to improve opinion of Joss among serious-minded settlers. Idina had a walk-in cupboard, leading off their morning-tea room, which housed her shoes, shelf upon shelf and pair by pair – which was a puzzle to her African staff since she went about barefoot, even when riding, just as they did. Idina often suffered from chafed feet. One young woman friend, while applying a bandage to one foot which ‘was very swollen and obviously painful’, failed to see how Idina could bear her touch. Noticing that she did not flinch, the friend asked her if she was not afraid of anything: ‘“Yes,” Idina had replied, “old age.”’37