Instigated divorce from Ben Birkbeck to marry Bror Blixen. Elspeth Huxley writes - 'I wish I could convey in writing even an echo of her wit and talent as a raconteur.'

Cockie Hoogterp, who had been Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke’s second wife, his first being Karen of Out of Africa fame, had an obituary erroneously published in The Daily Telegraph, a British newspaper, in 1938 after the Baron's third wife died in a car accident. Mrs. Hoogterp sent all her bills back marked "Deceased" and survived her premature obituary by over 50 years

Nellie - came to Kenya with her husband Ben under the post-war Soldier Settlement Scheme. A great friend of Nellie Grant. She shared with Nellie a great love of jokes and fun, and had the gift of turning the most commonplace statement into a funny remark. ....... (1933) - 'Cockie rang up last night to say could she come for two nights and bring Kiki Preston. This little house wasn't built for international drug fiends {Kiki was a heroin addict},'

Midday Sun - 'Cockie had come to Kenya immediately after the First World War with her husband Ben Birkbeck, hoping, as all the soldier-settlers did, to make their fortunes. They soon ran out of money and Ben went back to England to raise some more. This left Cockie homeless. 'Nellie invited me for a weekend and I stayed for 3 months,' she declared. They laughed for much of the time. Cockie had a repertoire of music hall songs described in those days as risqué. .......... It was during Ben's absence in England that Cockie met the Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, ........ 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. Despite Blix's extravagance, fecklessness and philandering, the hearts of neither friends nor wives ever hardened against him. Cockie's divorce from Ben followed 2 years later. 'I hope you'll both be very happy,' said a friend after their wedding. 'So do I,' replied Cockie 'but that may be difficult, literally without a penny.' The friend's response was to offer Cockie £800 a year to go to Tanganyika, locate some land whose lease he had been granted, and plant coffee. ........ (more - lonely and unsuccessful) ........ 'They were the happiest years of my life,' Cockie said. Yet she was nothing if not gregarious. [One neighbour - Dr. Popp & his wife] ........…..

Soon after they had settled at Babati, Blix was summoned to Arusha by Denys Finch Hatton, who was in charge of an important safari. The client was the Prince of Wales. Blix was invited to join the safari as second hunter; Cockie went back to Babati, only to be awakened from her sleep by the arrival of 5 weary, hungry and bedraggled travellers: Blix and Finch Hatton with the Prince and 2 aides, the Hon Piers Legh and Alan Lascelles. They demanded food, but Cockie told them that the meat-safe was empty. 'You must have something,' said the Prince. 'Only eggs.' 'Well then, scrambled eggs.' They scrambled the eggs together. 'Is Blixen leaving you all alone here?' the royal guest enquired. Cockie said yes. 'Then you'd better come with us.' So Cockie did. ........... (more about safari) ..........

The Blixen's idyll at Babati ended. The coffee did not thrive and the enterprise was closed down by its owner. Cockie started a dress shop in Nairobi while Blix turned back to hunting for his livelihood, and also resumed his pursuit of attractive ladies. He was in turn pursued by a lady who had never met him but had heard so much about him in their native Sweden that she had resolved to become the third Baroness Blixen. So she set out for Africa, arrived at Babati, where Blix had his safari base, and announced that she had come to stay. And stay she did. For a while Blix, African-style, enjoyed the company of one wife in the bush and another in Nairobi; but when a friend invited him to stay and he accepted with the rider: 'I shall bring both wives,' Cockie responded with the edict: 'You will take only one.' He took Eva. So the marriage ended.

Cockie took as her third and last husband the handsome Hollander Jan Hoogterp. They moved to Johannesburg ........ (more) ....... It was while in Johannesburg that Cockie had the unusual experience of reading her own obituary. Eva was killed in a motor accident in Baghdad and the leading newspaper muddled up the Baronesses von Blixen. The editor, on learning of the mistake, rang up to apologise. 'Don't mention it,' Cockie responded. 'I'm returning all my bills marked Deceased.' The editor insisted that a correction must be published, in any words Cockie cared to choose. 'Any words?' Certainly, the editor confirmed. Cockie dictated the correction. 'Mrs Hoogterp wishes it to be known that she has not yet been screwed in her coffin.' Her real name was Jacqueline but her father, when she was a baby, had called her coq-a-leeky after the soup, and the abbreviation remained after nappies had been discarded. .......... The real love of her life was Blix.    

Mischief - a close friend of Kiki Preston and remembers her extraordinary performance with her silver syringe. 'She was great fun and very witty and never made any bones about morphine. She always looked marvellous. She would be quite open about it, digging the needle into herself while we sat up drinking whisky. She never went to bed until 4 am. Next morning we were always hung over and sleeping; but she was up at 8 am. beautifully dressed, and looking lovely, as if nothing had happened.'                                                                                                                                          Mischief - met Diana and Jock Delves Broughton in Johannesburg  and wrote to Lord Francis Scott and told him she thought Diana was, 'an extremely glamorous girl, with a heart of steel and that she was a 'gold digger'.

Telegraph - 13/12/1988 - Obituary - {bits & pieces} .…. While married to Blixen Cockie entertained the Prince of Wales and Lady Furness on safari in Tanganyika and he was much diverted by her company.

Cockie Hoogterp certainly added to the gaiety of nations and enriched the public stock of harmless pleasure. She was invariably witty in conversation, sometimes wickedly so, and given to impromptu practical jokes. .….…..

Many of the Happy Valley crowd were Cockie Hoogterps friends though she was not one of the 'set'. She did not take drugs, as many of them did, but enjoyed describing one, Kiki Preston, as being 'clever with her needles'. .….….

'Cockie' Hoogterp was born Jacqueline Harriet Alexander in London in 1892, the daughter of James Alexander, a banker of Irish Ascendancy Stock and his wife Lady Emily Boyle, eldest daughter of the 9th Earl of Cork and Orrery.

'Cockie' was thrice married: first in 1914 to Major Benedict Birkbeck, a fellow officer of her brother Ulick (later Keeper of the Privy Purse to King George VI); then to Blixen; and lastly to Jan 'Hookie'Hoogterp a South African. There were no children.

 Markham - met Beryl Markham in London in 1924 and helped her considerably when she was almost destitute. Told her about her brother Dickie's death at Molo. ............. 1935 - Cockie not only found on her return from Europe that Blix was more broke and that his affections had wandered towards another blonde pilot, Eva Dixon. Divorce was instigated. Then Blix had an affair with Diana Guest an American beauty - Blix took her brothers on safari.

Bror Letters - 'Cockie came from a well-connected family and had been raised in a rather grand manner in England, she had no money of her own. Her father, a rich banker, had often told the family that when he died nothing would be left. ....... (this was so!) .......... Cockie loved to play bridge and there was plenty of that (at Babati) .... Cockie is an immensely generous person, but in bridge she could be a bit avaricious. Bror once invited her cousin Jerry Alexander from Molo and his mother to come down and stay at Singu. On their arrival the bridge table was already prepared, and they were made to play for the next three days from nine AM to midnight. The arrangement was not quite fair, as Cockie insisted on having me {G.F.V. Kleen} as a permanent partner. At that time contract bridge was fairly new in Kenya, but Cockie and I had played it quite a lot in Europe. The Alexanders were beginners, and I doubt if they enjoyed their stay, since they eventually left quite a bit poorer. On another occasion Blix and I had gone to Moshi to attend a funeral, leaving Cockie in Arusha, the nearest large town. When the funeral was over I got a telephone call from Cockie, asking me to return to Arusha forthwith. It seems she had been out the night before playing bridge, with the result that she was obliged to leave a check behind, and this would have to be retrieved before the bank opened on Monday morning. This was done and the check was exchanged for another one in our favour. (Incidentally Cockie had many meetings with the bank manager, a dour Scotsman named Dunn. She usually left him with the words "Dunn again")

Fielding - attended the fashionable day school run by Miss Wolff, an excellent and unusual teacher with a method of instruction peculuiar to herself. Her classes were held in a private home in South Audley Street, and her pupils sat around tables in the drawing-room, not at desks and not in separate forms. ……Another close friend [of Iris Tree] was Jacqueline Alexander, brown-eyed, plump, pert as a robin, and appropriately nicknamed 'Cocky'. She was usually in Miss Wolff's black books for breaking rules and playing practical jokes. Her sense of fun seemed to bubble up from a source of mirth which could not be contained and overflowed when any degree of solemnity was required. She and Iris shared secrets, hatched plots and corresponded with each other in a code of their own devising. She came to stay in the summer holidays, when the Trees took a house near the sea. Sometimes the two girls made roving expeditions in a pony cart, rattling down Sussex lanes, singing popular songs, trails of eglantine and honeysuckle twisted round their haymakers' hats. Other days they spent on isolated beahces, dancing and singing on the shore. Before leaving their marine picnic ground each of them would cast one stocking into the sea as a votive offering. The governess engaged for the holiday could not understand why they invariably returned wearing only one stocking each. When questioned, they gave absurd answers: 'We had to strangle someone', 'A man wanted a keepsake', 'We gave them to the pony - it was hungry', 'We used them for shrimping'. The local pastry-cooks provided opportunity for further sport. While one of them engaged the shop assistant in conversation, pretending to deliberate over the choice of cakes, the other would finger the jam tarts, deliberately crumbling the edge of the pastry. Then they would both say, 'We'd like a couple of these, but for the price of one because they're damaged'.

Aschan - [Blixens in London] - Geoffrey Buxton, a friend from Kenya, organized a small dinner party. Blix went alone. Among the guests were Buxton's cousin, Ben Birkbeck, and his wife Cockie. Cockie loved parties and was without a doubt a lively member of any gathering. She had an arch sense of humour and a predilection for off-colour music hall songs.

Aschan - No one ever knew Cockie by her real name, Jacqueline. She had been nicknamed after coq-a-leeky soup, and the name stuck. She was not a conventional beauty. Bobbed black hair framed a soft round face and wide mouth; her face was beautiful, except for a beaky nose. She adored clothes and dressed cleverly to conceal a plump figure. Her great attraction stemmed from an infectious gaiety. She could see the funny side of everything. Never lost for a word, she could turn a phrase or situation into one of outright hilarity. Fiercely independent herself, she unselfishly recognized the same need in Blix.