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Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton

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If you know of Denys Finch Hatton, you probably know of him as the flyer in _Out of Africa_, whether in the memoir by Karen Blixen (under the pen name Isak Dinesen) or in the movie as played by Robert Redford. His long and troubled love affair with Blixen and her commemoration of him in her writing are now just about all there is to Hatton, but that was not what those around him would have thought. He was a legend in his own time, idolized by men and adored by women, as unforgettable a personality as anyone around him had ever met. The new biography of Hatton, _Too Close to the Sun: The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton_ (Random House) by Sara Wheeler, contains many reminiscences of those whom Hatton had impressed. "As for charm, I suspect Denys invented it," wrote aviatrix Beryl Markham, who also wrote of her lover in the memoir _West with the Night_. "The man with about the most impressive personality I have ever known," wrote Bertie, Lord Cranworth, who had fought alongside him. Yet as Wheeler admits, "the real Denys" is unknowable. He did not leave a diary, and there are only a few dozen letters existent. It is clear that except for making himself into a legend, his accomplishments were minimal. Since he died in 1931, no one now alive has adult memories of him. He is thus perhaps a thin subject for a full biography, but Wheeler has summarized both the life and the social forces of its time, to make a portrait of a man who charmed himself into history as effortlessly and successfully as he did everything else he tried.

He was schooled at Eton, which remained in his memory as his happiest years. He was admired there for his good looks, ability at sports, and his wit. At Oxford, he excelled in sports, and didn't care much about academics, leaving with a fourth-class degree and no particular enthusiasm for a career. In 1911 he headed for British East Africa, now Kenya. He had to do something, and he invested in land, in shops, in cattle, and in mining, with little effect. He served in the African arena of WWI, but a friend remembered that he "made no secret of the fact that warfare bored him to distraction." It was only after the war that he discovered the vocation of big game hunter (and guide to would-be big game hunters) that was perfect for him. He was just the fellow to kill two lions with successive bullets from a double-barreled rifle. He eventually worried about the toll that such killing was taking on the area's ecology, and long before his countrymen came around, he was talking about the importance of conservation. He took up photography and advocated that visitors come shooting with the goal of bringing back as trophies photographs rather than mounted heads. He had many satisfied customers, none more important than the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII), who didn't like anyone much, but liked Hatton. The Prince bet him that he couldn't affix the king's head to the bottom of a rhinoceros, but the fearless Hatton managed it, putting postage stamps on each buttock of a sleeping rhino. He had the Prince's admiration, and he also had the Prince's ear and understanding as he advocated for photography of game and against the useless shooting of it from motorcars.

On another safari, he was asked by American tycoon Frederic B. Patterson how it was that he came to the career of guide. "Oh, it just happened, if you know what I mean," came the reply. He was exactly right; striving for accomplishment was not in him. When he encouraged Karen Blixen to resume painting for relaxation, she wrote, "He has a great talent himself but cannot be bothered to do anything about it." He also could not do anything about relationships with women, of whom Blixen was merely the most important and enduring. Book and film have made her part in his story well-known, but he did leave her when she was emotionally and financially at her neediest. And then, never having accomplished much besides being well liked and admired by almost everyone, and loved by many, in 1931 he was killed in a plane crash, sealing the legend forever, and preventing any resolution of the many enigmas he personified. He might be a minor figure, but he is a fascinating one, and for all his limitations, and the sparseness of documentation of his own reflections, Wheeler has given as good a portrait as he is likely to get. No one knew him well during his lifetime, and not even Wheeler's careful attention explains him satisfactorily, but he is worth knowing even just a little, as all around him would have said.

I picked up this book after finishing Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen's OUT OF AFRICA and Beryl Markham's WEST WITH THE NIGHT. When I found out that a biography about Denys Finch-Hatton had just been published, I thought it was too good to be true - he is so fascinating, and so mysterious, in Blixen and Markham's memoirs that it's hard to read them without wanting to learn more.

It turns out it WAS too good to be true.

Finch-Hatton left little to no record of his own life. There are no diaries and very, very few letters. My burning questions were: What is the interior world of a charming, dashing adventurer like? What is he thinking while he's busy making life brighter, sweeter, and more exciting for others? Wheeler has no more idea than anyone else. Finch-Hatton has left no record of what his life was like, from his own point of view.

Aside from Blixen and Markham, whose portraits of Finch-Hatton are already well known, his nearest and dearest didn't sit down to describe his character, his thoughts or hidden sides. I recognized huge sections of OUT OF AFRICA and WEST WITH THE NIGHT rephrased here, with additional comments pulled from research into Blixen or Markham's life, plumped up with (generally fascinating) cultural and historical context and (generally very clever) anecdotes and asides. But this was an enhanced reading of Blixen or Markham's life, nothing new, and at a real distance from the actual subject of this biography.

I learned a lot about a particular moment in the history of British East Africa. I learned some things that I didn't know about Blixen and Markham and, yes, even a few things that I didn't know about Denys Finch-Hatton - a bit about his family history, where he went to school, where he was during the war and how he became involved in big game hunting and conservation.

Wheeler writes beautifully; she has an exquisite style. She clearly hopes that if she can plump up her scanty material with lots of dazzling imagery, we won't notice that this lengthy description of the English countryside or that lengthy description of the Serengeti actually isn't telling us anything at all about Denys Finch-Hatton. This felt like sleight of hand to me, like a trick, and I resented her for it. I want to see gorgeous style used to make good, solid research come to life. I don't want to see it poorly masking the author's failure to gather enough material to justify a book.

In short, even though I generally enjoyed reading TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN, I disliked it.

Having been to Africa several times, I had high hopes for this book. Unfortunately the book fell short.

First, the good: The opening of the book is well done. Using evocative language, she sets out the story and her motivations for writing it. She goes on to place her characters in history, describing both personal and political backgrounds. And this is the real strength of the book; Wheeler manages to conjure the mood of the time in which Denys lived and this goes a long way to explaining him. Looking at the accompanying pictures, you can almost imagine how he moved and spoke. The other key strength of the book is that it was meticulously researched. There are myriad entertaining stories about minor characters in the book, from Beryl Markham to Bror Blixen to the hedonists of the Happy Valley set.

Now the not so good: Wheeler clearly dislikes Karen Blixen. This would be fine if there were some objective reasons to back it up, but there simply aren't. Wheeler goes on and on about Blixen's histrionics and neediness and takes numerous shots at her abilities as a writer. By the book's midpoint the cattiness is bordering on the pathological. Apart from a grudging complement to Karen's "endurance" at the book's close, it seems she can do no right - especially in contrast to the supremely English Denys. And this "English good" while "others bad" runs throughout the book, so much so that I began to wonder if there wasn't a kind of cultural myopia at work. What Wheeler attacks as Karen's grandiosity (when she compares herself to a retreating Napoleon) was probably really an example of the Danish sense of humour, viz. bathos (read some Kierkegaard to see that in action!) At any rate, Wheeler's constant jibes at Karen were enough to wreck my enjoyment of the book - and to erode my confidence in her objectivity.

The other criticism I have is in the writing itself. To be sure, Wheeler is a gifted wordsmith with a prodigious vocabulary (I had to run for my dictionary on numerous occasions) but she can also overdo things, wantonly at times. Long stretches of text are so crammed with adjectives it becomes hard to follow what she's saying. Take for example:

"Below the fretworked balconies of close-packed coral-lime houses, rickshaw boys with teaky backs pulled carts teetering with the graying boards of dried kingfish."

Happily, the writing isn't all so airless. Worth buying if you're very interested in East Africa in the early 20th century.

Ever since I saw the movie "Out of Africa" I have been captivated with the lives of Karen Blixen, Beryl Markham and Denys Finch Hatton. "Too Close to the Sun" focuses on the unique life of Denys and tries to explain how and why he lived his life according to his own rules.

The book also describes the history of British East Africa or Kenya as we now know it.

This biography was a facinating read and hard to put down!!!

Why some books win prizes and others do not eludes me; this one is a prize winner.

Too Close to the Sun has set me on a worthy adventure to understand the Victorian/Edwardian cusp especially in British Africa and for this I am thankful because those were glory days.

Through Ms. Wheeler I have met persons Much More Interesting than me and my friends. Her dogged research has invigorated my life. For her reader's delight, the author darns together memories, letters, and written data concerning a self-effacing gentleman, Denys Finch Hatton. Luckily for us we may now tag along in the glow of his charisma and be voyeurs of his well-born and lively acquaintances. We may celebrate with African settlers as they host a wilderness New Year's dinner 'comme il faut', we may sit in our a.c. as British soldiers portage battleships across a brutal continent during WWI, we may brush dust off our jackets after cavalierly shooting two charging lions with a double-barreled shotgun, we may politely manoevre and entertain a persnickity Prince of Wales.

I thank Ms. Wheeler for her Fascination of What's Difficult, to paraphrase Mr. Yeats, because pulling together a three-dimensional picture of This Time using only carefully chosen evidence is difficult and more honest than throwing together hearsay and calling it a book.

Her talent as a lover of language is evident as she brings us the scents, sounds, atmosphere, gossip, innuendo, mores, jokes, custom, and emotion that enliven her facts and put feet in Finch Hatton's footsteps. Ms. Wheeler's pages rebuild that World before the Wars that we 21st centuriers can't understand and most often wrongly judge.

I sprinted to the bookstore for more news of the largely-lived lives mentioned throughout Too Close To The Sun. I'm now hooked on the soap opera of the Blixens (the 2nd Mrs.,too), Lord Delamere, the Masai, Lord Carberry, various British Generals, the younger Mr. Roosevelt.... I can't think of any group more instructive to learn about!

Beryl Markham's West With the Night was my next read. What a woman, and how fascinating to get to know her from her own writing, so different than her appearance in TCTTS. I have ordered Bror Blixen's African Hunter, to catch his and Dr. Turvey's viewpoint on the Kenyan crowd. I plan to read Elspeth Huxley's book about growing up on a coffee plantation. Like craning to hear the whispered name of someone you love, I want to hear again the names that Ms. Wheeler has called forth.

Too Close to the Sun, The Audacious Life and Times of Denys Finch Hatton is as much a detailed history of British East Africa--the country known today as Kenya--as it is the story of Denys Finch Hatton's life. In other words, the focus is keener on the times than on the life.

Finch Hatton, a notorious and romantic character portrayed in Out of Africa (Modern Library), the book of stories by Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) and the in the film played by Robert Redford, didn't keep a journal or, for that matter, write many letters. As a result, a great deal of the exhaustive research on him compiled by dedicated author, Sara Wheeler, is derived from Dinesen's fiction and other contemporary, Beryl Markham's autobiography, West With the Night. Generally well written, a bit on the formal side, the prose wavers between colorful and descriptive and textbook laborious. (Have your dictionary nearby!) The subject, Finch Hatton, might have been better left to the material written by his former lovers than the subject of an entire biography.

What I enjoyed most about this book was the trip to Kenya and the stunning visuals it provided. Having spent time there, including a visit to the town now known as "Karen," and a tour of Blixen's house, the pages of this book gave it a living history quality. Wheeler also clarifies Finch Hatton's character as more than the uncommitted lover of Karen Blixen ("Tania")--"They were living in different mental worlds, as unhappy lovers do, coexisting like the twin beaters of a rotary whisk, spinning in time by never touching"-- but also notes he was one of the first to point out the dangers of uncontrolled hunting on safari endangering Africa's wildlife. "For the first time in his life, he had found something he believed in, a cause that was worth commitment." Hence, his legacy as "an eternal wanderer on a perpetual quest for knowledge and experience," which is the main thrust of this dissertation.

Michele Cozzens, author of I'm Living Your Dream Life: The Story of a Northwoods Resort Owner.

I visited East Africa and while in and around Nairobi took a chance on visiting the public museum that is now entrusted in preserving Karen Blixen's original home and a few acres that remain the last remnant of the Karen Coffee Plantation. On the tour I came to learn of Denis Fitch Hatton, the early days of colonization of British East Africa

( World War I in East Africa) and the likes of Lord Delamere, Count Blixen, Beryl Markham, Kermit Roosevelt and Prince Edward. Although much has been written by and /or about Isak Dinesen, Beryl Markham, Blix (and the others) so very little was available to learn more of the elusive Finch Hatton as early flyer, big game hunter, East African land speculator, conservationist, herdsman, nature photographer...and here again the author admits that accurate personal historical information remains sparse. Nevertheless the author is to be commended and this book can be highly recommended as a worthy presentation of an unusual life "well lived" in the context of his time and place. Admittedly it is not all "easy reading" and the author does perhaps over indulge in the "who's who" and "who's title is the umpteenth earl of somewhere....but I can accept all of that as necessary and essential to that time and place in history.

The book especially captures the land,it's colonists, it's native people, the animals and Denis Finch Hatton's place within East African history. Thoroughly enjoyable and informative reading.

Sara Wheeler's "Too Close to the Sun" is as much a biography of a place and of an era as it is of a man. The author went looking for Denys Finch Hatton and found East Africa as well as her elusive subject.

The man, himself, was once a nearly mythical East African figure. Finch Hatton is best known today as Karen Blixen's long-time inamorata in the film version of her book "Out of Africa." In life, he was a privileged Englishman who often worked as an African guide and professional hunter and who flourished and died during Kenya's colonial period. He was also a reluctant soldier, a glad aviator and a man who loved theatre, photography, dance, books and women.

Ms. Wheeler says that her aims in writing the biography were: "to depict a figure in the landscape, to explore the universal themes threaded through his story, and to find out why he was an engine of myth." Other than a few personal letters and some newspaper articles, he wrote little. Because of this, and because she writes so many years after his death, Ms. Wheeler is left with little more than trace evidence and the words of others with which to develop her theme and achieve those goals. Fortunately, she's an able writer and tenacious researcher. She also uses the words of Teddy Roosevelt, H. Rider Haggard, Ernest Hemingway, Siegfried Sassoon, Elspeth Huxley, W.B. Yeats and Evelyn Waugh, among others, as sources to help her develop her African story.

Karen Blixen is, perhaps, her most famous source for direct Denys Finch Hatton information. Karen Blixen (aka Isak Dinesen) wrote about Finch Hatton as her lover and used her version of him as an element to drive her own story. Sara Wheeler, on the other hand, is a graduate of the same Oxford college as Finch Hatton and seems more in sympathy with him as a human being.

Beryl Markham, an aviatrix, writer and renowned wild child, is another useful source. Martha Gellhorn (Hemingway's third wife) described her as, "Not your ordinary Circe." Beryl says of Denys, "As for charm, I suspect that Denys invented it." Those may be the final words on Denys Finch Hatton. In two-hundred-fifty-two pages of text, author Wheeler can't find anyone to say a bad word about him.

Sara Wheeler certainly charmed this reviewer when she quoted Anthony Blanche, a character in Evelyn Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited." Antoine, as he's known, warns another character about the danger of English charm, stating that it blights anything it touches. Ms. Wheeler believes that Finch Hatton's own charm nearly destroyed his ambition.

Ms. Wheeler's writing skills are (to say the least) fully developed. She calls the disastrous British 1916 offensive in France the "Apocalypse on the Somme." In one chapter, she describes the deteriorating relationship between Finch Hatton and Karen Blixen by saying, "They were living in different mental worlds...coexisting like the twin beaters of a rotary whisk." In passing, Ms. Wheeler notes what she calls "the spiritual journey at the heart of all great literature."

She's made some interesting choices in her own life, both as an author and as a person. By her own reckoning, she spent three years researching and writing "Too Close to the Sun." She also traveled to three continents (Europe, Africa and America) doing research. She's also written "Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica," and "Cherry: a Life of Apsley Cherry Garrard." She spent six months in Antarctica paying part of the personal tariff for creating these two works. She paid another similar price to research her South American book, "Travels in a Thin Country."

There's a theme here: Much time and energy spent on projects with a limited market potential. That may be crass, and those of us who are interested in any of her subjects do have reason to be glad that she invested the time as she has. Considering her enormous writing ability, however, had she devoted the same amount of skill and effort in another direction, she might well have become the new James Michener or the next Donna Tartt or A.S. Byatt. Instead, she's chosen to forgo the probability of huge literary or popular success and with such success, big bucks and big acclaim. Perhaps this is too American a perspective about writing or living, but Ms. Wheeler's choices do remain interesting questions. In his day, Denys Finch Hatton was already becoming an anachronism. Sara Wheeler, who refers to modern-day Istanbul as Constantinople may also fit into that category. Bless them both.

The bottom line on the book is that for anyone with even a drop of Walter Mitty blood, "Too Close to the Sun" is a splendid read. James Joyce has given Daedalus his modern day due. Let's hear it for the new Icarus.

This biography is about Denys George Finch Hatton (24 April 1887 - 14 May 1931). Finch Hatton was one of the British settlers of East Africa early in the 20th century, was a big-game hunter, and also the lover of Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen), who wrote about him in `Out of Africa' (first published in 1937). And, while it's the `Out of Africa' connection which led me to read this book, it's the history of these times in East Africa which kept me turning the pages.

Denys Finch Hatton was, apparently, the kind of man that women adored and men idolized. He was an accomplished athlete whilst at Eton and Oxford but seemed to have little purpose in his life until he sailed to British East Africa in 1910 and fell in love with the continent. During his time in Africa, Finch Hatton saw action in the battlefields of the East Africa campaign where he was serving as a captain in the allied forces when he first met Karen Blixen in Nairobi.

The facts of Finch Hatton's life - his aristocratic heritage, his adventurous and restless spirit, and his affairs reflect aspects of a generation of Edwardian British settlers in East Africa. Not particularly likeable in many respects and from this distance, but certainly interesting. Ms Wheeler writes of Finch Hatton, of Blixen, and of some others, as pioneers in a land which was quickly becoming transformed as a consequence of struggles between European powers.

Towards the end of his life, Finch Hatton was more interested in photographing animals than in shooting them. Perhaps, if he'd lived longer, he may have made an impact on conservation. Perhaps, given his restless spirit, he may have moved onto something completely different.

'No one who ever met him,' his Times obituary concluded, 'whether man or woman, old or young, white or black, failed to come under his spell.'

It's hard to argue with a Times obituary, but the man those people met does not fully come to life for me on these pages. Denys Finch Hatton himself left few papers: no diaries, and only a few letters. I enjoyed this book, but less as a biography than as a history of colonial East Africa and of a period of British social history.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

Having lived in Kenya, I looked forward to Sarah Wheeler's book. Her tremendous research is apparent in the loving care afforded to specific details, especially concerning the early settlers in Kenya. I very much enjoyed the historical backdrop which gave context to behaviors and attitudes. However, Ms. Wheeler's view of Finch-Hatton is almost hagiographic. When the word "selfish" is floated in connection with his seemingly aloof response to Karen Blixen, Ms. Wheeler immediately counters with its romantic counterpart "elusive." She claims that this "elusiveness" was part of Finch-Hatton's charm and his attractiveness for women. I also have to agree with another reviewer; Karen Blixen is virtually excoriated throughout a good deal of this book. Ms. Wheeler's conclusions may be the result of interviews with Blixen's and Finch-Hatton's families. However, the trashing of Ms. Blixen's fiction seems particularly uncharitable and subjective. From this book, it appears that Finch-Hatton was the result of a pampered childhood and early schooling at Eton where he never recovered from being an "adored tyrant", and felt unable to "engage" with anything or anyone despite the devotion of many friends and lovers. Ms. Wheeler appears to agree with Beryl Markham who states that Finch-Hatton "was a great man who never achieved arrogance." However, Finch-Hatton seems more reminiscent of Henry James' John Marcher in "Beast in the Jungle" who waits for some great life-defining event to take place. Unlike Marcher, Finch-Hatton may never have understood that he allowed his life to slip away from him.