The Mottled Lizard

Elspeth Huxley's Childhood Memoirs #2

by Elspeth Huxley

This sequel to THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA continues the story of Elspeth Huxley's childhood in Kenya. British settlers, called to serve in WW I, return to their neglected farms and ranches.

For Tilly and Robin it is back to the struggle. For their daughter, now 11, it is back to the ponies, lessons at home, wild pets (this time a cheetah named Rupert), and hunting trips with Njombo, the Kikuyu headman.

But more is happening. The child narrator is growing into a woman. We lose the wide-eyed child narrator of Thika, but gain in her place a thoughtful and prescient observer of the rapidly changing continent.

Genres: Africa, Memoir, Nonfiction, Kenya, Biography, History, Travel

311 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1962

About the author

Elspeth Joscelin Huxley was an English writer, journalist, broadcaster, magistrate, environmentalist, farmer, and government adviser. She wrote over 40 books, including her best-known lyrical books, The Flame Trees of Thika and The Mottled Lizard, based on her youth in a coffee farm in British Kenya. Her husband, Gervas Huxley, was a grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and a cousin of Aldous Huxley.

Reviews

[Daren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Huxley's first autobiography, The Flame Trees of Thika, covering her childhood up to around 10 years old, was good, but I had reservations about the adult thoughts provided via a young child. For me it affected the authenticity. It took me ten years to get to the second autobiography, which covers the period after the war, and before the author is sent to Britain for University - from around 11 to 18 years old. I had far less issue with this book - the thoughts were much more in keeping with the age of the thinker, as we witness the young girl becoming a young woman.

Kenya - and a return to Thika and the Rift Valley coffee plantation with mother Tilly, as unconventional a parent as Robin, who was already there, having had a head start. Thika provides a return to some old characters, and other settlers in the area, as well as a few trips to Nairobi, as they settle back into life in their familiar plantation. Neighbours are a source and the topic of gossip and news, and Eslpeth acquires new pets, including a cheetah (called Rupert) and later a genet (I had too google it too) called, well, Genet. Colonial African views might raise some eyebrows but I have never had an issue separating today with the past, as it examines the relationship of the settlers with the native people and the wild animals so plentiful then, yet as such risk now.

With itchy feet, they take a trip to view some land Robin - ever the speculator and optimist - had acquired in the lottery under the soldier-settlement scheme high up on the slopes of Mt Kenya. The land, of course was no good, but it stirred up some thoughts of a new farm, and a new challenge.

Another expedition to view some virgin land further out of civilisation, Njoro, where the land would need to be cleared. It was deemed favourable, so the coffee plantation at Thika was sold and the new land purchased, so things were packed and the trip made. Lots of friends and other settlers were visited on the way, and Elspeth meets more peers and, as a 16 year old is attracted to Allan, several years older, and a safari guide, who is the son of Robin and Tilly's friends.

Elspeth involves herself in hunting, assisted by Allan, initially hear his home when they are guests in transit, then on a safari Allan organises, on which Tilly accompanies her. Despite being a more than adequate shot, Elspeth decides after all that she is not motivated to kill animals when food is not required!

It is a hard life in Kenya for the settlers, and the story is riddled with sad occurrences, as well as highpoints like the visit of Tilly's cousin Hilary (a male cousin). We also see how ordinary settler life is, and how hard they must work. While we don't necessary get into the inner thoughts of the author, there are some overarching themes that Huxley explores, evolving her views with maturity.

So long as you can separate the time of the Empire in Africa from today, an enjoyable read.

4 stars

[booklady · Rating 5 out of 5]

Until I really got into this I’d planned to read it for the sake of musing, savoring Huxley’s exquisite writing.

I read the prequel, The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood, many years ago and was concerned The Mottled Lizard might be a letdown, as so many sequels are—a writer riding on the crest of a wave, drawing on previous success rather than on genuinely good new material.

That isn’t the case here. For one thing, Elspeth’s life in Africa—picks up after the First World War—and there is once again no shortage of adventures, interesting characters, and memorable moments. Robin and Tilly, are Elspeth’s quirky parents; it is their restless and adventuresome pioneering spirit which drives the family from one experiment to another. They try (exploding—well it wasn’t supposed to) honey-making, growing maize and almond trees, raising a cheetah, home-remedies on their servants, tin-can irrigation, safaris, and build-it-yourself indoor plumbing. You could say they’re every child’s dream parents as they are ‘game’ for just about everything. Many things don’t work but they simply move on to the next idea, or next beautiful unspoiled part of Africa.

Parts of Mottled Lizard reminded me of James Herriot’s world in that Huxley introduces us to an assorted cast of crazy characters and often—but not always—their significant animals and the breathtaking scenery they inhabit. Elspeth gives a sly account of her early forays into the world of writing for a newspaper, wanting no one to know who she was or what she did until she saw if her work was received. She also writes poignantly and sparingly about her sorrow at her first losses.

The following was the first of many passages in this marvelous book which struck me as profound. There are many others.

‘There is no feeling like being absolutely alone with creation, even perhaps the first man to stand upon this particular rock and set eye on this particular scene, with nothing spoilt or sullied or abused. Grass bends before the wind, a soaring buzzard seeks a nibbling shrew, crickets trill, the hyrax drowses in his hollow tree, the spider waits in a crevice of the sun-blistered rock – a whole world revolves in a balance with itself, more perfect than the finest symphony. Man alone plays no part here save as destroyer, who must cut trees to warm himself, kill beasts to feed or amuse himself, and trample the shining beetle, the fruiting moss, when he moves about. Only man is not content to leave things as they are but must always be changing them, and when he has done so, is seldom satisfied with the results.

Wonderful book! You feel like you are in Africa, a continent which the author loved and has disappeared.

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty) · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to get this through interlibrary loan, and I'm really glad I went to the trouble.

This is the follow-up to The Flame Trees of Thika. The book covers the author's life from age twelve through age eighteen. After WWI, the author and her family were able to return to their coffee plantation in Kenya. They eventually moved up to the mountains near the Rift Valley, and also attempted some other far flung moneymaking schemes. These people just never gave up!

Her parents were some of the most intrepid, good-humored, enterprising people I've ever read about. It's incredible the hardships and privations they were willing to endure in their quest for adventure and their efforts to make a living in a harsh, unpredictable land.

I especially admired her mother Tilly. They don't make us women like that anymore, do they?

The book is full of colorful people and a lot of interesting explanations of Kikuyu culture and beliefs.

[Roger Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read The Flame Trees of Thika decades ago and never forgot it. I found this one (its sequel) in a secondhand bookshop in Gümüslük in southwestern Turkey the morning after an earthquake (6.6 since you ask). Here is another fine piece of writing, as far as I can tell as good as the first. The place is the White Highlands of Kenya once more and the time just after WWI. I wonder if authors like Huxley are still read in Kenya, as Kipling (for example) is still read in India. I doubt it. Mau Mau came, Independence was accompanied by terrible violence and the old days have been, I suspect, consigned to the scrapheap. Pity. The first thing that struck me was the rather ordinary and hardworking and often unfortunate lives of the colonial farmers, with their crops attacked by bugs and droughts, their animals affected by long lists of awful accidents and diseases, their houses makeshift, their social lives almost non-existent. These were still the pioneering days and there still seemed to be a hope, in 1920, that a bunch of resourceful white farmers - British, German, Dutch, Afrikaner - might bring a measure of prosperity and security to a tough, unforgiving land without creating unsolvable tensions and resentments. Laugh if you like, but you must try to see it as it appeared then. The crux of the problem? Maybe this: 'to attempt to apply the English legal system to the Kikuyu was to grope for the scent of spices with a dockyard crane'.
The teenage Elspeth Huxley is a great companion, observant thoughtful, romantic and, like her odd but attractive parents, understated. A lovely book.

[Ellen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have read two of Elspeth Huxley's 3 autobiographical books of growing up and later living in British East Africa. In The Flame Trees of Thika, she goes out to Kenya from England with her parents in 1913 when she is about 6. It ends at the start of WWI. The Mottled Lizard picks up with their return to Africa after the war and ends with her as a teenager going off to school in England in 1925.

I found them slow but enjoyable reads. Her descriptions of the physical beauty of the land and the animals are engaging but what I find most interesting are her observations of not just how the natives and the whites struggle to co-exist but how the Kikuyu differ from the Masai and how the British differ from the Australians, the Dutch Boers and the Scots.

I look forward to reading Out in the Midday Sun when she returns as an adult in 1933.

[Catullus2 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting memoir but the slaughter of so many animals is sickening.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I bought my hardback copy of this book many years ago in a secondhand store and read it at least twice. I must say I enjoyed it more then. I don't know if it's just that I was younger and less demanding, or if it was simply that in those days books in English were expensive and hard to come by and I was desperate (they are more common now, though still unreasonably expensive, usually at least double the cover price). This time around, it wasn't as good.

I now know these "memoirs" are actually novels, which makes a bit more sense. I read The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood last year, in which the MC is meant to be between the ages of 4-8. She and her mother are sent back to Britain to wait out WW1, which lasted for four years if memory serves. And yet when they return just after the war, she is now sixteen? Well I guess she needs to be, if she's going to have a flirtation with a big-game hunter.

And that's another thing. This family who "loves" animals (dogs, sheep, horses etc) thinks nothing of going off for weeks at a time, leaving their "beloved" animals in the hands of strangers or servants (who have no truck with pets, considering them dangerous or simply unnecessary consumers of resources). But off they swan on safari or simply to see yet another piece of land and return a week or few later, astonished that their animals have come to a sticky end--which they always seem to do. Either that, or they're shooting at anything that moves, because "If I don't someone else will." The authoress is not above perpetuating a few animal-related myths,either, such as the idea that crocodiles lash their prey with their powerful tails to knock them into the water! They don't need to; they use that tail to propel themselves forward at amazing speed. Or the idea that the MC could "swim among the hippos." Uh-huh. The hippo is considered one of the most dangerous animals in Africa; vegetarians they may be, but helpless on land they most definitely are not. How could her parents be quite as clueless as they are portrayed, and survive? They wander around renting this piece of land and buying that farm, going on long trips, going into partnerships with this one and that one--as if they were wealthy landowners--and it all comes to nothing. Tilly is off living in a hut in the back of beyond--and yet some woman visitor just turns up to lunch? Permette chi dude, as they say in Italy. Funny how Huxley repeatedly states that the animals live in harmony with the landscape, and man does not. The Africans did, never hunting without need--until the white man came along and encouraged them to kill animals for their hides, tails and horns.

The African landscape is lovingly, if excessively, described over and over again in exhausting detail, and yet the actual story-of-my-youth-in-Africa is surface. We hear little of the supposed MC's actual interactions with other people. She goes off to Nairobi to school; do we read a single word about how she adapts to a new situation and makes friends? We do not. She finally meets the editor of the newspaper that she spent years writing polo articles for under the name of "Bamboo", but not a word about the meeting itself or his reaction to finding that the writer is a young girl. Literally two sentences about this encounter with the man who gave her the job that was so important to her for years. That's it.

I learned there is a third volume to Huxley's memoirs. Am I interested enough to read it, I wonder.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of those books that just meanders around forever, and you just read it for something to do, and occasionally stumble onto something nice or interesting, or interestingly nice, or nicely interesting, or something nice that's interesting, and then you just move onto the next thing. No plot, loose structure, dead animals in abundance, wild schemes, lots of taking of tea, many natives, and the blasting furnace of a sun.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book. It was more disjointed than The Flame Trees of Thika, but I found Elspeth's narration interesting and touching. It was satisfying to learn the fates of the characters in the previous book and to hear more about the characters who remained in Kenya after the war.

What a wonderful childhood!

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This memoir is the sequel to the Flame Trees of Thika. The story picks up after the author's return to Africa from England after the First World War and continues until she leaves for college. I think I was most struck by the extent of the author's preserved detailed memories of the colonial Kenya of her childhood. I thought the strength of the story was its characters, human and animal. Nostalgia for colonial Africa certainly has its problems for the modern reader, but the author was thoughtful and occasionally addresses the problems of the settler's relationship with native peoples and with the hunting of native wildlife that is now approaching extinction.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy this sequel to The Flame Trees of Thika as much as I did the first book, but I'd still recommend it highly. The book hasn't got a central plot that I recall -- it's more episodes that occurred as Huxley grew from a girl to a young woman. The same cast of characters as the first book, for the most part, with some reflections on how WWI had changed the colony.

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found that I enjoyed this one a bit more than The Flame Trees of Thika. Huxley was there to see places hardly (or ever) touched by humans and you feel her aching sadness for what Kenya had been for a time unknowingly long. A few passages stood out:

“Only man is not content to leave things as they are, but must always be changing them, and when he has done so, is seldom satisfied with the result.”

“The country had belonged neither to the black man nor the white, but to the wild animals, and now they were being dispossessed. They were being driven back; but the empty wilderness waiting to receive them seemed limitless, and no one foresaw that in less than forty years scarcely any would be left and that, like grain between grindstones, they would find no salvation.”

“To know a thing is beautiful and yet take pleasure in destroying it seems, in retrospect, an odd frame of mind, but the best hunters were the best naturalists; they loved the lives they extinguished, and enjoyed nothing more than to watch a buck at play, a herd of impala leaping, a lion on the kill, an elephant searching the wind with his trunk - unless it was to bring them down with a well-placed bullet.”

She narrates her awakening to what the colonists were doing to the place as she goes through her teenage years amidst the constant changes around her, all of it highly fictionalized, of course.

The only knock on the book is her, again, very English fascination with talkative, aristocratic bores. Early in the book you’ll have to read through pages of monologues from these characters, but if you can get through it with Jane Austen or Gerald Durrell you can certainly do it here. It’s worth getting through.

[Charles Inglin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was the follow on to Huxley's better known "The Flame Trees of Thika," and the two should be read together, and then followed by "Out in the Midday Sun." Huxley and her mother, Nellie Grant, referred to in the books as Tilly, returned to England from Kenya during World War I. In 1919 they returned to Kenya. Huxley was 12 at the time and she continues the story until she left for school in England in 1925. She wrote these books in the late '50's. Probably because she was in her early teens and growing more aware of the world and people around her during the period covered in "The Mottled Lizard" her depictions of people and events are increasingly sharp and insightful. Nellie's cousin Hilary in particular was quite entertaining, almost a character from P.G. Wodehouse. Huxley probably also had a better understanding of the native Kikuyu people who worked on the farm than her elders, who approached them with preconceived European notions. Huxley was an excellent writer and her portrayal of life in colonial Kenya are a treasure.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elspeth Huxley is one of those dream writers who seemingly comes along only once in a lifetime. I enjoyed every single detail of her memories of life in Kenya during the time of "Empire" in Africa. Some authors you just wish you could resurrect for at least one more book...or to give writer's tips. I was astonished at how early Huxley's works were being published. She was only 12 or 13 years of age (if I understood her correctly) when she began submitting articles to a magazine under a male pseudonym. She was published regularly and even began a monthly or weekly column on her views of various topics.

[Dave Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Second instalment of her biographical tale of life in West Africa … returning to Africa after the war, the author describes the next few years, scandals and travels of her family as they continue to search for the place or scheme that will secure the family fortunes … it’s obvious that her naturalist nature is starting to come thru, and she is honest in contrasting that with the hunt for game and trophies that were part of the white settlers social fabric too and which she too participated… looking forward to reading the next instalment

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written and describes how life was for the new settlers in colonial Kenya. Elspeth captures the environment, people and atmosphere of the colony as a child. One could describe the British in Africa during this time as eccentric. The Author has a gift of writing.
It's a beautiful book much appreciated by one who grew up in Africa after her time. Her other books are also worth reading.

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this book, the sequel to The Flame Trees of Thika, is not as focused or carries the same mystical newness of discovery as in the first book, it is, in a way, an even better book because of what it attempts to do: define what Africa is as a real place where real people live.

Much of the first half of the book deals with different forms of magic, be it Elspeth's attempts to perform conjuring tricks from mail-order magic kits from England, or the black-magic used by the Kikuyu to punish someone who is guilty. More subtly is the magic of life and death, and death plays a much larger role in this book than in the first. In fact so much of surviving in Africa meant coming to terms with how fleeting life can be.

When Tilly's cousin, Hillary, visits them his last act is to photograph the arch of the back of their pet cat. And while this may seem rather silly, it is a lasting image for the transitory nature of life, the need to always be in the moment before death (and death is quite savage here) finds you.

Huxley also goes to great lengths to draw the dividing line between who the Europeans are and who the Africans are. Not that she tries to segregate them, but to show how both ways of life are valid - in fact in Africa the European way of life is rather silly since the Africans know better than a bunch of foreigners about how to survive.

One of the differences she points out is, "Since routine is simply a means of controlling time, Europeans are better at it, and therefore accomplish more in a day, a month, or a year. They pay in monotony. Africans control time less efficiently, but enjoy it more: they pay in stagnation." Yet even with all of Robin and Tilly's (mostly Tilly's) industry, they are by the end of the novel almost having to start all over again. They are always poor, their plans always fail, death is ever-present, yet they are not the typical European's, they learned from the Kikuyu and the enjoy life much more.

Another point of difference she tries to explain is how the two cultures are equally sophisticated, but in very different ways. A fundamental difference in culture, she explains, is in the difference with how the Europeans play games but the Kikuyu do not. A European understands rules (rule of law) and plays within those rules (innocent until proven guilty) but the Kikuyu do not play games or sports and as that relates to law, they know if someone is guilty and that a "conviction" will eventually come - as long as they are sure there won't be any black magic or the accused isn't in good with the family - they can just blame someone else and just blackmail the "guilty". This may seem harsh or primitive, but it's just another way to get along.

Yet we too have our magic and superstitions. Robin tells the story of a general who dies of a stroke and on the next day of the platoon inspection a white cat comes along and an officer, quick on his feet, says the spirit of the dead general was now in the cat. The troops salute the cat. And while we don't believe in magic and shape shifting, the idea is still there in tradition. We recognize that there is a trick, not real magic, but we intuit it all the same. We are more "primitive" than we admit and can be just as quick to throw skepticism out the window as the Kikuyu.

The book is filled with these examples of what first appear to be very different cultures but she eventually manages to show how similar they really are depending on your point of view. Late in the book Alan and Tilly argue about Alexander The Great where Tilly believes he was just a mass murderer but Alan believes he is like the wildfire and drought, he clears out the old and weak to make room for the new and strong. Both opinions are right depending on where you place your moral emphasis.

And as the book goes I got the feeling we were going further and further back in time, back to when Africa may have been mythical Eden. The family move further away from Thika which has become more built up, she describes the safari they go on, and finally the great fire and purging of the land as if we were at the beginning of creation.

In all this is a remarkable book and between the two books I felt as if she was giving us a step-by-step guide to understanding Africa as an actual place peopled with actual human beings, not savages or slaves. And she is a middle figure of history. She feels the rush of excitement of killing an animal on the hunt while at the same time feeling guilty in that thrill and understanding all this killing for sport will eventually lead to collapse. She is the prototype for the environmentalists and conversationalists to come a few decades later. She is writing about a very brief but very important moment in history, a powerful but fleeting time when there was so much change made up of an inertia that could not not be stopped.

Africa is a much different place today, for better and for worse. This book, and the previous, are invaluable to understanding the very soul of the continent as well as what drove white people to settle there and try to make a better life for themselves. For a brief moment Africa was like America where people from all over the world came, but because they could never live with each other, because they didn't learn the lessons Elspeth learns, the outcome was much different and much sadder.

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved The Flame Trees of Thika, and bought this book many years ago. However, it got stashed in a box during one of our moves and I forgot about it. Going through some old boxes in the basement, I found this book and was thrilled.
The author is an excellent writer and the stories are amazing and interesting. I will definitely follow up and read more.

[Francie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another definite 3.5 stars -- I may have even liked this more than Flame Trees of Thika. These are not books for those looking for a plot that builds to a climax, but rather reminiscences of a childhood -- teenage years in The Mottled Lizard -- lived in a unique place at a unique time. Beautiful descriptive writing.

[Toni · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book, especially the beautiful descriptions, but it took SO long to finish it. Years. I must have started it 5 times, so I don’t feel comfortable giving it 5 stars. Just too hard to get into. The attitudes toward Africans are totally unacceptable, but of the time and community. A worthwhile book about a time and place that is no more.

[Lesley · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has been sitting on my mother's bookshelf all of my life - why did it take me so long to get round to reading it? As with 'Thika', Elspeth Huxley's description of life in early 20thC Kenya is exquisite. How times have changed.

[Tracey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having just read The Flame Trees of Thika I was happy to get the sequel through inter library loan. I highly recommend others read these 2 books if you want to get a glimpse of what life and Africa was like for English settlers around WWI

[Sharon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited when I came across this book (a 1964 edition!), as I remember loving The Flame Trees of Thika. However in the 25-odd years that have passed, I think I, and the world, have changed. It felt uncomfortably racist and colonialist, and the magic of the descriptions of Africa was gone.

[Kay Wahrsager · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming sequel to Flame Trees of Thika with more colonial adventures and hijinks among the settlers, animals and more descriptions of the beauties of Kenya.

[Sylvia J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, poignant book. We see her transition from hunter to novice conservationist. Beautifully written.

[Isabelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Colonialism in all its racist arrogant splendour

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wow! This book is well-written. I love the characters and plot. The author's insights are amazing. Highly recommended.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredibly racist. Beautiful descriptions of East Africa.

[Debra Hartsfield · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a bit difficult to read because of the time it was written and some the language used.

[Megan Clemance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great, insightful, entertaining, eye opening.