Kimani Mburu stumbled upon my post on the Lord Egerton’s castle. He sent back by far the longest reply I have ever received. I loved his mind, life policy and interpretation of the whole Egerton saga so I asked him if I could blog his reply as a new post, he agreed :-) Below is Mburu’s castle encounter, a reply to my post. After a slight edit this is black roses FIRST GUEST POST. In the end are six responses from me to him. 

Wonderful read Anyix.

My cousin Kim, my brother Múgo and I visited our late grandfather Kímani at the KARI Research Institute in Njoro sometime in the late 90′s. I must have been around twelve, Kim was even younger. On the second day of our visit, our teenage aunties Shiro and Hiúko took us on a tour to Egerton Castle. The castle we saw was quite different from what you describe …

It was decrepit and in a terrible state of neglect but we were understandably excited. It was overgrown with weeds and there was no one about, save for a boy of about thirteen who showed us around. The flower beds and gardens were unkempt. The lawn was still impressive though. The rooms were filthy and long-deserted, begging for a coat of paint. I remember the ball room with the broken piano. I tried to push the piano around on its rusted casters. I marveled at the strength of whoever it was that moved it there (probably Mister Robert).

There were so many bathrooms with heavy metallic bath tubs and ornate taps and things. Some doors were locked too. In the manner of children, we settled quickly into a game of hide and seek. I guarantee you, that was my childhood’s best game ever. We hid in every corner, to emerge upon discovery, gloriously draped in cobwebs. There is no corner we did not visit, we even went up among the trusses in the roof, and the space there was cavernous and dark, save for arrows of light shooting down from holes in the shingles. We could even see clusters (hordes, flocks, herds, bunches) of bats dangling from the roof beams, oblivious to our presence.

We marveled at everything with childish wonderment. I remember the grand sweeping staircase at the entrance, with the lions (they couldn’t have been sphinxes, their noses were intact) standing on guard. I may not have been very perceptive then, but I recall being impressed by one; the sizes of the rooms. And two; the richness of the fittings, odds and ends. The doors were also exceptionally heavy, and the creaked suitably, like you’d expect them to in an old house.

We got separated several times, and all the shouting and hollering would not help, for the sound would just bounce and echo through the empty halls, that was great! For all its spooky appearance at the time, Egerton Castle was far from scary. Coming at a time when we read The Famous Five, The Secret Seven (and thought Enid Blyton was a man), Hardy Boy’s and all. This was a most thrilling adventure that found itself in many compositions and inshas, without a need for too many embellishments.

I can’t remember many of the details you mention here as time has dimmed my memory. And as kids, we obviously spied things through a different lens. We did not have the benefit of a thoroughly versed guide like yours, so I must say the history in your post makes for an interesting read. It is amazing what the men of the British empire could achieve (for all their ills). It’s also a shameful testament, at least to the Kenya of the 90′s that such a wonderful, rich piece of history would lie in ruin. It is a relief to learn that it has been restored. And can they fix the piano too?

From your short account Egerton was an impressive man. These men of olden days always strike me as having been men of profound strength, character and resilience. I imagine that Egerton’s standards and expectations on companionship were the primary cause of his solitude. I admire that. Most men of yore were all round impressive. They fought and died in wars and lived at a time when life was ‘nasty, brutish and short’ (Hobbes). They were men of grit. Men of higher ideals. Thinkers onto themselves. Unlike us today, hedonism among these men’s priorities.

We can safely deduce that despite his obvious wealth, he was not an avaricious man, given that he was before living comfortably in a thatched house. Your characterisation of ‘poor’ Egerton and his ‘shattered’ search for love is so characteristically effeminate :-) I imagine it would bother any woman to see a successful man so unencumbered by the pedestrian preoccupation with companionship. To me, i think he was a man who lived his life to the fullest. His resumé says it all; Frontiersman, farmer, aviator, film maker, photographer, lover of music, educationalist and a man of wealth. This does not strike me as a man who can have ‘his spirit broken’ by a departing Austrian Fräulein. In fact this is the kind of man who can win a woman over if he set his mind to it. Presented with the shoes of his life, I would gladly give up the false security of home and hearth, for this bush-jacket-with-many-pockets life. But it is okay to romanticize. It lends a certain poignant quality to the story. I still think it is probably not true. What if Lord Egerton had settled with the Austrian Fräulein in his thatch house? Would there be a castle to write about?

This man was cast from the same mould as two other Englishmen. Dr. William Geoffrey Griffin, OGH, MBS, OBE and Sir. Wilfred Patrick Thesiger, CBE, DSO,FRAS, FRGS (OMG?). Both these men shunned the matrimonial way in life and dedicated themselves to greater causes. Had they chosen otherwise, I doubt they would have so much alphabet after their names. These men may not have borne offspring, but their names will endure longer than their peers’, even longer after their bones turn to dust.

This trio of Englishmen, Egerton, Griffin and Thesiger were all accomplished outdoors-men. Griffin spent many years surveying the Kenyan wild and a few years as a soldier. He was a big game hunter and a scoutmaster. Thesiger was a world-renowned explorer, an honorary Game warden in Turkana for many years, a decorated soldier too. I think such an intimate connection with nature inured such men against the need to travel other well beaten paths.

The lesson I take away from Egerton’s saga is to define and chart the course of my life the best way I know how, and to take ‘The Road Less Travelled’ (Frost). It is also very possible that Egerton just discovered very early on that ‘bitches be crazy’ and did the smart thing. In another time, in this place, I will endeavour for a life that will take me away from the concrete jungle, down a road less travelled, to a place of solitude, like Egerton’s Ngata Farm and castle, like Griffin’s sojourns across the Kenyan wild, like Thesiger’s Abbysinia, Arabia, Sudan and Turkana. To a bucolic place, with cows and trees. A faithful dog and a butler, a Man Friday of sorts, a kind of My Man Jeeves. I am sure Egerton had a butler.

All this is if life allows me. For a life of solitude is not of necessity a bad thing. There ought to be such a thing as hermetic splendour.

It’s more than a decade since that late evening walk we took from the castle back to Njoro. We were very happy. My bro Múgo is now married, same as aunt Hiúko. We are all much older. I have since grown distant from my aunties. That’s what growing up does to people. Your post brought back a cache of sweet childhood memories, the closest we ever come to time travel.

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