The Bolter by Frances Osborne
A bolter, as readers of the novels of Nancy Mitford know, refers not to a horse, but rather an unconventional (or wicked) woman who leaves her husband(s). And the most infamous bolter of the 1920s and 1930s was Idina Sackville (1893-1955), author Frances Osborne’s great-grandmother.
Idina seemed like a conventional Edwardian young lady, but at the end of the First World War, she left her charming, rich husband and their two little boys for another man, Charles Gordon. In wake of the tremendous scandal, it was impossible for the Gordons to stay in London. The newlyweds departed for Kenya in British East Africa, and Idina didn’t see her children for fifteen years.
In Africa, Idina was a member of the “Happy Valley” set, the glamorous, louche British expats who settled in the Wanjohi Valley near the Aberdare Mountain range between the wars. Their antics have been the subject of many books including Out of Africa. Idina bought a farm and built an enormous house, Clouds, where she entertained grandly and often. She also however took her crops and cattle seriously since the farm was expected to turn a profit (which it did only occasionally).
After a few years of marriage and serial bed hopping, she left her second husband. She married and divorced three more times. Her scandalous reputation was further cemented when her third husband, from whom she was divorced but still close, Josselyn Hay, 22nd Earl of Erroll, was murdered in 1941. (His murder is the subject of the true crime novel and film White Mischief.)
On the surface, the “Happy Valley” life appeared rather exciting, the parties, the clothes, the homes, the exotic locale, but there was a sense of yearning even desperation in Idina’s frantic pace. Money and man trouble plagued her always; often simultaneously. By the end of her life, her beloved Kenya was disintegrating; the Mau Mau Rebellion raged from 1952-60 resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Africans. Idina died in Kenya in 1955 and is buried there.
A fascinating portrait of a woman and an era. A treat for Anglophiles.