Karen Blixen - Isak Dinesen home

NAIROBI, Kenya -- You may as well know it before you go: Denys Finch-Hatton was no Robert Redford. That's the main disappointment voiced by visitors to the sprawling stone farmhouse, now in a Nairobi suburb, where Danish author Karen Blixen lived from 1914 to 1931 and where she welcomed her lover, Finch-Hatton.

"But who is?" countered our guide, Anne Mieke Raassen, in a lilt reminiscent of Meryl Streep, Redford's co-star in the award-winning "Out of Africa."

Since the 1985 Oscar sweep, crowds have doubled at the Blixen manor, now restored as a national museum. The celebrity has led to Karen car-washes, coffee houses, schools and shopping centers.

Even the pricey neighborhood of five-acre plots bears her name: Karen Estates. A band of eucalyptus woodland, the Ngong Road Forest, still separates the cool, upland suburb from downtown Nairobi, at 5,500 feet.

When I arrived on a quiet midweek morning, there were apologies. The electricity had been turned off by repairmen, plunging the mahogany-paneled rooms into a dim, natural light, filtered by paned glass and lace curtains.

This merely underscored the yesteryear mood.

The house and grounds were presented to Kenya as an Uhuru (Independence) gift by the Danish government. A manicured walkway circles from Karen Road to the veranda where Blixen spun stories at sundown for guests, most especially Finch-Hatton.

There was a replica of the RCA Victor gramophone on which Streep/Blixen and Redford/Finch-Hatton played Mozart concertos -- even on safari. There was the lantern that she hung outside to let him know she was home.

Floor-to-ceiling library shelves hold copies of Denys' books, each marked with a small brass plaque, DFH.

Blixen's square corner bedroom, its white wooden bed swagged with mosquito netting, is at the end of a narrow hall. A pair of leather riding boots stands near a chair. Visitors peer in and sigh.

"Those are Meryl Streep's boots," cautioned our guide, cutting through the romance. "The bed is a gift from Universal Studios."

It seems that Blixen's actual bed belongs to her godson, long retired and living in Nairobi. The museum is hoping for a bequest. Most of her other possession are in her museum in Copenhagen.

The author, who wrote as Isak Dinesen, is said to have been more headstrong than wise.

"She really didn't have a prayer with Denys because she was bossy," a Nairobi woman confided over tea at the Norfolk Hotel. "If he stayed around four days at a time, it was rare. Of course, he was a white hunter, so he had a good excuse to come and go."

Blixen's repeated attempts to establish a coffee plantation were foredoomed because neither the soil nor the altitude was right for such a venture. Financial ruin finally sent her packing home to Denmark, where she wrote with such passion of her years in what was then British East Africa.

Now the acreage is a park of palms, Norfolk pines and columnar cypress, backed by the smoky blue Ngong Hills. The most startling plant is a ghostly-gray giant cactus, shaped like a candelabra.

"It's a `candelabria euphorbia,' " a gentle voice said at my elbow. "It is 82 years old. We have many in Kenya."

I turned to see a smiling young man in a blue work shirt. His name was Henry Muoka.

"I am the gardener," he said. "That's why I am in gum boots. . . . If you saw the movie, you know about the fire at the coffee mill. But some equipment survived. Follow me and I will show you."

We crossed the grass and ducked into the bush, following a damp, shady path. In a clearing beyond, stood a rusty contraption that could have been designed by Dr. Seuss, a coffee bean husker and sorter with oddball parts imported from Liverpool and Aberdeen.

Muoka believes it to be the real thing.

As for the film, it was shot on the far side of the property in a sort-of-replica house built by Universal Studios. The real house was deemed too dark to use -- especially the dining room where Blixen entertained by candlelight, treasuring her crystal and Limoges -- and the corridors too narrow.

The heartbreak for Redford fans hangs in the last room of the tour, a profile of Finch-Hatton who, despite a rather arrogant smile, is not bad-looking.

"When he was a student at Oxford, all the fellows shaved their heads on a dare," said Anne Mieke Raassen. "Unfortunately, Denys' hair didn't grow back.