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Name: BLIXEN-FINECKE, Karen von, Baroness

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Nee: Dinesen. Sometimes known as Tania or Isak Dinesen

Birth Date: 17 Apr 1885 Rungsted Horsholm, Denmark

Death Date: 7 Sept 1962 Rungsted Horsholm, Denmark

First Date: 1913

Last Date: 1931

Profession: Coffee farmer outside Nairobi - 6000 acres; writer

Area: Nairobi, 1930 Box 223, Nairobi

Married: In Mombasa 1914 Baron Tinecke Bror Fredrick von Blixen-Finecke (1886-1946) (div. 1925). Prince Wilhelm of Sweden was best man.

Author: 'Out of Africa'

Book Reference: Best, Midday Sun, Thomas, Markham, Red 31, Chandler, Aschan

General Information:

Best - Though she had no illusions about the English upper classes, she was in fact a confirmed Anglophile and a woman of strong character who became a pillar of Nairobi society in the years following WW1. Few people of consequence, including the Prince of Wales on his visit to the colony in 1928, failed to have dinner at her farmhouse at the foot of the Ngong Hills. She made great friends in particular with Berkeley Cole and with Denys Finch-Hatton, brother of the Earl of Winchilsea, who may perhaps have been her lover, though it is doubtful whether she derived much pleasure from the sex act.    
Best - Her brother, a Prussian-hating Dane who had abandoned his neutrality in the belief that no decent man could keep out of the war, won the Victoria Cross near Amiens while serving as a private in Canada's Quebec Regiment.     In 1915 Karen returned to Denmark via France, Switzerland and Germany to be treated for the venereal disease with which her husband had infected her, and which may have contributed to the ill health that dogged her for the rest of her life. They separated in 1921 and were divorced 4 years later. Karen kept the title though, even after Bror found himself another baroness.  She was one of those women who always have to dominate the proceedings, who become petulant and irritable if they are not at once the centre of attention. ............. The Duke of Portland, then a young settler named Ferdinand Cavendish-Bentinck, remembers her as 'plain, fat and very tiresome'. He liked her husband better. (more)                        
Midday Sun - 'The Blixen marriage was already on the rocks. Tania's famous love affair with Denys Finch Hatton was under way and the Baron, Blix as he was known, had been expelled by Tania's family from the management of their farm at Ngong. ...... Blix, possessed of much charm but no money, was living a kind of gypsy life in the bush with no fixed abode, existing on tick, and dodging his creditors. There was a shop in Nairobi called The Dustpan, kept by a Mr Jacobs, where Blix got his bare necessities. Mr Jacobs was patient, but there came a time when Blix was threatened with imprisonment for debt. He was in despair. Cockie offered Mr Jacobs her pearls in settlement. Mr Jacobs refused the pearls saying: 'The Baron will hear no more of this little difficulty.' And he did not. Blix and Cockie worked out an unusual way to make their assignations. They concealed their messages in the barrel of Blix's rifle, which was taken to Tania's farm manager, who acted as a go-between. 'It must be our secret,' Cockie said of their affair. One day the manager's wife discovered the ruse, informed a furious Tania, and Blix wrote: 'It is our secret no longer.' In 1922 Tania and Blix were divorced, thankfully on his part and somewhat reluctantly on hers.'
Boyles - 'I met only two people who had known Karen Blixen in Kenya, but both of them agreed that she was pretentious and affected, and they liked her better in the movie. To those whites  she considered beneath her she appeared aloof, even downright rude .......... Her democratic ideals were somewhat situational , however. All her life she insisted on being addressed by her title, and she once wrote that, sure, Bror had been a pain but "it was worth having syphilis in order to become a 'Baroness' " ....... She had an obsession with the aristocracy .....…..'
Midday Sun - 'in time the Baroness became reconciled to the Griggs. They could be 'tremendously pleasant', she wrote, in contrast to most of the British, whom she found bourgeois, dreary, ill-bred and philistine. But with the Griggs she could discuss Shakespeare and the Old Testament.' .............. She arrived in Mombasa and was married next day to Bror, but by the DC, not in the Cathedral. Prince Wilhelm of Sweden was a witness; the Governor, Sir Henry Belfield, sent his dining car, and the American millionaire Northrup McMillan his cook to accompany the pair by rail to Nairobi.
Thomas - In 1915 she returned to Copenhagen for medical treatment. ......... A limited liability company was formed 'The Karen Coffee Company Ltd.' Many members of the family put their money into it, bought shares, and a bank loan of a million was raised. .......... In 1918 she wrote to her brother - ".... if you come to France as a pilot, then you might possibly meet a person called Denys Finch-Hatton, who is also a pilot on the French front, and that would please me greatly. In my old age, I have had the good fortune to meet my living ideal in him, and it would be nice if you two could meet. ......." ........ In 1921 Thomas realised that Bror and Tanne's marriage would shortly end. Bror left the farm in mid 1921 - not to return. The divorce was finalised in 1925. ........ Thomas says that throughout her life Karen possessed the ability to get her own way.
Aschan - Karen Dinesen, known to family and friends as Tanne, and the Blixen twins had known each other from childhood. Blix's mother and Tanne's father were cousins. While Tanne was still very young, her father took his life as a result of having contracted syphilis while in America, where he had lived as a young man with the Sioux and Pawnee Indian tribes of Nebraska.

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