Tarred with the Same Brush

by Le Comte de Janze, Cate Bryant (Introduction)

Tarred with the Same Brush is the sequel to Frederique de Janze's book called Vertical Land. Both volumes consist of a series of sketches that depict life in Kenya in the mid-1920s. The author Frédéric de Janzé and his wife were prominent members of the famous Happy Valley crowd. Alice de Janzé, who featured in the film White Mischief was played by Sarah Miles. The language is the flowery symbolist discourse fashionable in France in the 1920s, a highly stylised version of person and presence. Frédéric believed that literature and art should depict not the thing but the effect it produces. For him, literature was a contemplative refuge from a world full of strife and violence, a form of mental enjoyment. The author writes “Why? – Why try to explain? Nothing matters enough to make much difference. ,,, – impressions lasting a second, then passed for ever.” The writing is in the present tense which emphasises the idea that an impression is merely fleeting, also giving the writing a literary flavour. .

99 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 31, 2023

Reviews

[Charles Inglin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've come across mention of this book in other reading about colonial Kenya, and finally decided to see if it was available online. And it was. Frederic Comte de Janze was French count who married a wealthy American heiress, Alice Silverthorne. Alice appears to have had some mental health issues, not well understood or treated in the 1920's and would ultimately commit suicide at age 41. Because of her depression Frederic took her to Kenya in the mid-1920's in hopes that the climate and change of scene would help. They, more her than him, became part of the infamous Happy Valley Set. Frederic had a notable literary bent and produced two books about Kenya, "Tarred with the Same Brush" being a sequel to the first book, "Vertical Land."

The book is divided into two parts. In the first, a white hunter and the two couples in his party take turns telling stories around the campfire. The remainder of the book is a collection of short pieces about various characters in the colony. All the stories are fictional, but based, more or less, on actual people Frederic knew in Kenya. He changed the names, of course, and how much poetic license he took is an open question. He's a competent writer, though a bit idiosyncratic and sometimes a bit cryptic. The primary interest in the book is in its depiction of a unique time and place.