The lasting legacy of Joy and George Adamson is the Born Free story, which is about how they raised and then de-habituated the lioness Elsa and her cubs. The two eventually went their own ways, Joy helping to rewild Pippa the cheetah and then Penny the leopard.
At the same time George, a busy man through and through, went to Kora National Park in the north where he lived with and rewilded male lions, the most famous of which were Boy and Christian - as close companions as any man ever had. He sent her out to Africa to scout for a place where they might live out the impending war in the late s. On the boat trip over She met the handsome but introverted botanist Peter Bally, who was to influence her to become an outstanding botanical and ethnographic artist.
It was also he who coined her name "Joy" and soon after coming ashore, he became her second husband. Early in the s, the newly married couple went on safari with a dangerously dashing game ranger George Adamson, and that sealed their fate for the rest of their lives.
George was born in India and came to Kenya as a young man. His first job was as a nomadic goat salesman along with the country's hostile Frontier Territory in the far north. From that, he progressed to minerals prospector and ultimately to a game ranger in the borderlands. He was devilishly handsome, with long hair and eventually a silver beard. In his later years, he came to resemble the full-maned lions that were his closest companions.
While on safari he met Joy and was strongly attracted to her, but managed to put her out of his mind until they saw one another again sometime later at a Christmas party in Nairobi. Like numerous men before as well as after him, he was smitten. Joy was variously described as lascivious, neurotic and worse. She was probably all the things said of her. One thing was certain: when this Austro-Hungarian vamp set her sights on a man, he was a goner.
