The Dust Diaries: Seeking the African Legacy of Arthur Cripps

by Owen Sheers

At a family reunion in Wales several years ago, the prize-winning poet Owen Sheers stumbled across the mesmerizing story of his great-great-uncle Arthur Cripps, a mysterious figure who turned from poetry to missionary work in Africa and ultimately became a shamanlike figure, ministering to the locals.
Arthur Cripps left his native England in a ship set for southern Rhodesia in 1900. During his time as a missionary in the British colony, Cripps became passionate about indigenous ways, leaving him ostracized from the largely racist, conservative European minority. Railing against colonial injustice, Cripps became a hero to the native population. He chose to exile himself from the Anglican church, factions of which branded him a heretic and burned down his churches. All the while he hid the soul-racking secret of what had driven him from England into the heart of Africa.
The Dust Diaries is the haunting record of Sheers's all-consuming attempt to piece together the luminous fragments of Arthur Cripps's remarkable life, and to understand the mystery of why he abandoned England for life in the African veldt - a journey that takes Sheers from the genteel reading rooms of Oxford University's libraries to the parched landscape of contemporary Zimbabwe. Refracting Cripps's life through the prism of his own vivid imagination, Sheers illuminates the devastating effects of power, the potent effects of grace, and the legacy of an extraordinary life.

Genres: Africa, Travel, Zimbabwe, Nonfiction, Biography, History

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

OWEN SHEERS is a poet, author and playwright. His first novel, Resistance, was translated into ten languages and adapted into a film. The Dust Diaries, his Zimbabwean nonfiction narrative, won the Wales Book of the Year Award. His awards for poetry and drama include the Somerset Maugham Award for Skirrid Hill, the Hay Festival Medal for Poetry and Wales Book of the Year Award for Pink Mist, and the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award for his play The Two Worlds of Charlie F. His most recent novel is I Saw a Man, which was shortlisted for the Prix Femina Etranger. He lives in Wales with his wife and daughter. He has been a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow and is currently Professor in Creativity at Swansea University.

Reviews

[Richard Bartholomew · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1973, the SPCK published God's Irregular: Arthur Shearly Cripps, A Rhodesian Epic, by Douglas Steere, recounting the life of the poet and Mashonaland-based Anglican – but very independent – missionary. Twenty-four years later, Owen Sheers looked out a copy in his father's study after Cripps's name came up in a family conversation. After reading this biography of his relative – Cripps was his grandmother's uncle – Sheers found that although he now knew the shape of Cripps' life, "there are pieces missing. Triggers and gaps in the story", and that Cripps is "strangely absent".

Sheers' own book, by contrast, is an intimate and subjective exploration of the same man, who lived as an ascetic in a thatched hut and championed the rights of Africans. The work is part travelogue, as Sheers goes out into the world to follow in Cripps' footsteps, and part novel, with Sheers turning inward to imagine not just the contours of his main subject's own life, but the inner feelings of other, contrasting, characters: these include the poet Cullen Gouldsbury, who served as District Officer in North Rhodesia, and the professional soldier and intelligence officer Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen.

Sheers's literary style is meditative and poetic – at times, ponderously so, while the meandering structure verges on the languid. However, Sheers introduces a Citizen Kane-like investigative element that is serviceable as a narrative propellant: a reference in Steere's book to "an undocumented but persistent rumour of a love affair with a girl which might have changed Cripps' earlier drawing towards the celibate life." Sheers himself hears rumours of a granddaughter, and the unfolding of this story is interweaved with stories about Cripps' later life in Rhodesia (there's also a prologue in Zanzibar, where Cripps meets his friend Frank Weston – I reviewed a biography of Weston previously).

Although much of the book is imaginative and perhaps speculative, it does have merit as a source: Sheers consults Cripps papers at Oxford, and in Zimbabwe he encounters several people who knew him. These include Leonard Mamvura, who cared for Cripps in his later years, and Thomas Shonhe, who was present at the very end of his life. Sheers's description of a religious celebration at Cripps's grave gives us a sense of how the man lives on in memory (Cripps' name is also memorialized in Zimbabwe through a popular fundraising book produced by his children's home, entitled The Shearly Cripps Recipe Diary).

There's also an interesting detail when Sheers visits Zimbabwe's National Archives to read Cripps' 1927 book An Africa for Africans. Inside the archive's copy he finds a typewritten note dated 1950, in which Cripps (dictating – he was blind by this time) repudiates his book's support for a policy of segregation to protect Africans' interests: "...I am thankful for Segregation as planned by the Morris-Carter Commission for opening the way for Africans to purchase plots of land but I do not believe that Segregation is a righteous policy for a British Colony. Can it be a right policy for Christian people? Certainly not!"

[Nick Davies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though perhaps not the sort of book I would've picked up normally (purchased on the strength of having found Owen Sheers' writing very appealing previously) this was in general a pleasure. The author writes about his great uncle, a missionary in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in the first half of the 20th Century - and with enough colour and context to provide an intriguing read. Though a celebration of someone who was seen many as a kind and benevolent man, there's a darker seam which doesn't feel manufactured, and Sheers' quality of writing and research made what might've been a little stodgy a book in other author's hands into an absorbing piece of social history.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

So not having had the chance to get to Foyles to get some new books, and partly with a desire to go back to read some of my Brazilian favourites ahead of a potential visit next year, I decided to dive into my library and re-read some of my collection.

I decided to kick off with The Dust Diaries by Owen Sheers, having just emerged from the engrossing novel Street of Thieves, I fancied something non-fictional. I can’t remember why I picked this up, the travel element certainly, but also the chance to read a prose book by a poet, certainly the recommendation from Louis de Bernieres on the front would of done it no harm at all.

We follow Owen Sheers as he travels Zimbabwe, on the trail of his great, great uncle, Arthur Shearly Cripps, or Mpandi as he was called in the Shona language. Sheers starts off by stating that while the account of his own travels is true, the story of Cripps is fiction, based on fact, is a reflection of Cripps that Sheers has brought to life. And it is an incredible job done as well. I think this blend of historical fiction with biography is not something I have come across elsewhere and although this time around I found it harder to edge out the nagging in my mind that this is only what might have happened, which barely featured on my first reading, it is still a thoroughly enjoyable read.

At first I was frustrated, I had gone into this to read it as a travel book, and there was barely any travel in it, certainly not in the first few parts. We were meeting Arthur, his trip to Southern Rhodesia and the beginning of his life there. Sheers prose, seemed, to me, excessively ornate, an eager emotional poet wringing every last adjective into every sentence or phrase, which blurred and meant it took longer to read. Slowly I realised though that it was me that was causing the frustration. Certainly I had loved the poets prose on the first reading, why was I frustrated this time? Eventually I realised it was my own attitude, in deciding I was going to read a travel book, I was frustrated that it wasn’t really a travel book, and therefore was shutting down everything that wasn’t what I wanted it to be. Slowly, I relaxed my grip on the expected, and enjoyed the story of Arthur’s life, brought elegantly to life by Sheers. There were still moments, like Cloud Road I felt I was being led somewhere, the hidden love story and the rumoured child, but actually, Sheers I think puts this in as it should be, as he has to work you out, and then fill in how would fit in with your story.

Cripps was a man out of time, a likeable, passionate, stubborn, straight as an arrow missionary who embraced Rhodesisa and the native people in it as his home and family, and they in part responded to him. The moment Sheers first visits the grave, brief in the book, is a special moment, as is the festival at the end. But it is the story of Cripps that dominates Dust Diaries, as it should. An angry advocate for the local people, Cripps lived in a rondavel next to his church and over time understood the tensions between them and the colonisers. He fought against the small mindedness and discrimination and ended up almost disowned by one side, and universally adored by the other.
As you read his story, even though you know that Sheers is writing, his textured picture of Cripps is so well painted that the thoughts he puts in the missionary’s head are believable and plausible.
(blog review here)

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Dust Diaries" was the second work I've read by Owen Sheers, with "Resistance" being the first. I think "Dust Diaries" was his first full-length work which makes it all the more remarkable. He intertwines the poetic voice of Arthur Cripps - both real and imagined works, mesmerizing pose about Cripps spiritual journey to becoming African, and Sheer's own personal journey to discover his family roots.

The result - a poetic narrative allowing us to flow through the transformation of a provincial English clergyman to a radical poet who develops a true African identity. The broad outline of this story is true, with Sheer imagining the life of his great uncle based on his extensive research. It's a remarkable story, particular from a culture where a mixture of British and Dutch colonialism established one of the most racially segregated systems in our time. But even more notable than its political undertones is Arthur Cripps' dedication to the spirituality of all people.

[Oliver Rogers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arthur Shearly-Cripps was a revolutionary African missionary and poet who twice swapped Ford End, Essex for the Zimbabwean veld. He knew that African identity, as much as any people's identity, is wrapped up in the question of the ownership of land in a country. He wrote 'Africa for Africans' in 1928 and gained plenty of powerful emeries.

I first heard about Arthur Shearly-Cripps on a local historical website that said he was a relation of the pre-war socialist Chancellor, Sir Stafford Cripps. The information was not accurate, however it did reveal an interesting poet-vicar who twice worked in the parish of Ford End, Essex. He was known for travelling everywhere by foot and for his poetry and turning the vicarage in Ford End into a home for vagrants, much to the disgust of his local flock.

There is a carved, wooden memorial in Ford End church to Reverend Cripps. He disliked cars and enjoyed walking and running. In Africa, he walked 100 miles to Salisbury (Now modern day Harare) and in Essex he is said to have set up a small chapel in Littley Green near Chelmsford and managed to run back to Ford End on a Sunday to conduct services in both venues.

This book should be an advert for Ancestry or Find My Past websites as it demonstrates that little flutter of the heart when a small piece of family history is uncovered by research and seems to unlock the motivation and desires of that ancestor. Owen Sheers sets up the key question of what encouraged Cripps to swap Essex for Zimbabwe right at the start after breifly dicussing how he found out about this relation. As the vicar was a keen man of letters there is plenty of background information and backwaters to head up to find out about his life, political views and poetry. I can say that a very satisfactory post-script details the truth from the thought extensions and imaginings by the author into the life of Cripps. This is why it is such a rounded narrative of a life. A 1970s biography of Cripps, 'God's Irregular Arthur Shearly Cripps – A Rhodesian Epic' by Douglas V. Steere, sets out the building blocks of this individual's life and mysteriously hints at a romantic affair that forced the vicar to head for Africa. Indeed, the line left by the vicar on the codicil to his will about a bequeath to a mysteriously named lady allows Sheers to find out more about the potential romantic affair that could have driven Cripps to Africa.

The travelogue and historical fiction by Owen Sheers in 'The Dust Diaries' takes this hint in new directions and attempts to resolve the rumour about his relative. Anyone who has spent time chasing family history will know that often it is just not possible to find out what happened with any historical accuracy. The brilliance of this book is to resolve the issues at the heart of Arthur Shearly-Cripps's personal life and to set his political views within the context of the modern Zimbabwe. The ownership and distribution of land resources in the colony of 1928 would tighten like a knot and was at a crossroads to so many of the issues affecting the indigenous people according to Cripps. Ultimately, the issue of land ownership would lead to the fighting and seizes under Robert Mugabe during the late 1990s. The passages dealing with meetings with Zanu PF supporters and one of Mugabe's henchmen are right up there as some of the best sections in the book and certainly in the spirit of the subject matter overall.

Cripps knew that land ownership with linked to survival and hence why he wrote about an equitable distribution of Southern Rhodesia's land resources for its indigenous people in 1928 and personally purchased land to allow indigenous farmers to sustain their families and live off of the land.

One Bishop described Cripps as a modern-day saint and certainly Cripps took a long view with regards to his views on politics in Zimababwe. This is perhaps why Cripps is still held in high esteem to this day by residents of the African nation.

I liked the neatness with which Sheers is able to draw the whole book to a complete finish and he drops in at just the right places small hints of the personal life to inspire the reader on. If there was a part that worked less well for me it was the fictional accounts and the attempts to try and imagine what Cripps might have been thinking during certain episodes of his life. However, this is what makes this a different book to a standard biography and also in places they really did add to the investigative trail followed by Sheers and help get the reader into the mindset of life in the colony.

The book does not take a revisionist tone on the life of Arthur Shearly-Cripps, as the vicar has attempted in places to do this when he was near to death in 1952. Some copies of his book Africa for Africans contain notes that revise his original opinion on segregation. I took this element to be linked to the question of land ownership and he was only prepared to support segregation if it was linked to large enough areas of land and also of good enough quality being put aside for indigenous people to live on. That of course could be my benign reading of the situation and as Sheers points out everyone tends to imposes their own reading of Cripps on him.

A fascinating read and one that truly transported me to the dust of the African savanna and the missionary zeal of the early 20th century Anglican community.

Sheers's language is beautiful in places and I'll leave on this quote:

'But these diaries of our lives are written in dust; they are not what remain. History scatters them and leaves only the stories, the writing, the punctuation points and the narratives imagined by those in our future as they try to understand their past, as they try to fill out the gaps left by the dust diaries of our intimate selves.'

[Joe Tristram · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an excellent, moving and informative book. The story of Arthur Shearly Cripps, Anglican missionary to Mashonaland in 1901, who stayed until he died there in 1953, highly integrated into Shona society, and an advocate for African rights and way of life at a time when our was barely thought of that a point of view other than the European one. We also get an intriguing and emotionally gripping mystery in search of Arthur's love life.

[Rosie · Rating 5 out of 5]

About Arthur Cripps, amazing missionary to Zimbabwe for fifty years from the early 1900s. He is a great character, and the book has wonderful descriptions of Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans, as well as insights into its history and current situation. Really worth reading if you have lived in and loved Zimbabwe.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting book; non-fiction with a little fiction thrown in.

The author discovered he had a great-uncle (Arthur Cripps) who had been an African missionary and lived the 1/2 half of the 20th century in Africa (until his death in 1952). The book details his how he learned about is relative and what he learned (Anglican priest, missionary, poet, author, hiker, visionary). He took the 'facts' he learned and wove them into a story of Cripps' life. (The copy I read was my brother's. It was signed by the author, and the inside had a "£2 off" sticker. There was also a train schedule for "London to Beeston and Nottingham" Jan-May 2004, apparently used as a bookmark. Assume Bob bought to read on the train.)

[Laura Alderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars. An interesting read about a real life missionary who went out to Southern Rhodesia at the beginning of the 20th century. He found himself at odds with the administration there, and became an outspoken critic of many of the racist policies against the native population, for example, charging Africans a tax to live in their own villages, thus forcing them to work for the administration rather than farm their own land. Much of it was fictionalised as little appears to be known of Arthur Cripps- at least not enough to fill a 300 page novel. There was too much" padding" in my opinion and I began to skim towards the end, but many parts of it were an interesting read about a lost time.

[Denise Schlachtaub · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is hard to place in a genre. It's part fact, part fiction, part biography, part history, part poetry. It's the kind of book that makes you feel as if you are not just reading its pages, but are there alongside the storyteller as the story unfolds. Inspiring and moving, beautifully written prose.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lent to me, and highly recommended, this attempt by poet Owen Sheers, to write of the life of an 'obscure' relative by employing both primary sources, travelling the country of Rhodesia, interviews with those who knew Arthur Cripps and sensitively deployed imagination more than fulfilled its promise. Its spell-binding creation of time and place hits hard, and will linger for some time.

[Tien · Rating 2 out of 5]

Based on true historical person but "written as fiction..."

The author, one day, came across mention of an uncle he has never previously heard and was fascinated by his publications to follow his uncle's story.

[Jeremy Jl · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb telling of the life and work of English missionary Arthur Cripps in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. Written by his great great nephew who travels out to Africa to meet some who knew his distant relative and to create a compelling account, spanning a century, of an amazing man.

[Judith Paterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating read, A mix of fiction and documentary about a missionary in Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe. Owen Shears investigates his great uncle's life, visiting modern day Zimbabwe. Very atmospheric

[GWEN WATSON · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disjointed

[Ellian Bell · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a long time this remained one of my all time favorite books.

[Gerold Whittaker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book was inspired by a book written by Arthur Cripps, an unorthodox missionary who served the Shona people in Rhodesia from about 1902 onwards.

On a trip to Zimbabwe to research the book, Sheers gets more than he bargained for as it coincides with the violence of farm invasions orchestrated under Mugabe rule.

It contains a bit of biography and a perspective of current-day politics in Zimbabwe.

[Lin Howells · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Owen Sheers' writing but was not so keen on this book. The classic tale of a bloke who ran away from a woman and became a missionary . Contains some good political insight though and compelling narrative and description.

[Baljit · Rating 1 out of 5]

I struggled with this book. despite the subject being a man of the cloth with progressive ideas way before his time, in the veld of Rhodesia, the pace was extremely slow...too slow hold my attention to the end...

[Jill]

I often pick up random books about Africa in the airports and this was one of those. Great book about Zimbabwe, fiction, very engaging.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read and enjoyed this book twice.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderfully written account of a young man tracing his roots. Rich with nostalgia, adventure, and poignant observation about African cultures, this book is definitely worth a read or two.