Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Bruce Chatwin

  One day I want to make a really long and slow trip right across Asia, by the most obscure frontier posts and along the least frequented routes. I would write the whole thing into a semi-imaginary picaresque journey, which is a form that has always appealed to me. Have you ever read a weird book called The Asiatics by Frederick Prokosch,229 a bit hammy in parts, but really quite interesting. It would be a way for me to incorporate all my fragmented diaries of episodes of my travels. I have always thought that an archaeological fraud film has possibilities. I was once very closely involved in one, which in reality was far more fantastic than anything one could ever write. It had everything from the Persian Royal Family, Armenian ladies in Beirut, American Museum directors, and a leprous-faced recluse living in the Place Vendome, writing and rewriting an imaginary biography of the young Michelangelo.

  Till January 8th I’ll be in the country. Holwell Farm.

  Do write. I had a good time too.

  Bruce

  To Derek Hill

  9 Kynance Mews|London|8 January 1970

  Off on Thursday morning with Penelope Betjeman to New York230 . . . So the machinations of Sir Noel231 worked—I’m really glad. Think of all the theatrical knights one has never heard of – let alone seen. love, B

  In the spring of 1970 Chatwin submitted an untitled chapter of his book to Tom Maschler. On 23 March an anonymous reader at Cape reported back:

  ‘Bruce Chatwyn [sic] is obviously a lively-minded and contentious young man, not afraid to take a swipe at all the ethnologists within reach and some out of it . . . His sample chapter is all over the place but I am inclined to think that it would be better to give him his head for the moment and let him do his own disciplining as he goes along, which I have a hunch he will, cutting out the wilder digressions and more outrageous statements, which only damage the impression made by his more sensible ideas. He sets out to explain the wandering urge in man, which is an interesting basis for a book, and if he keeps his eye on the subject he may produce a rather good book.’

  To James Ivory

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 9 April 1970

  Found your letter on arrival back from Mauretania – probably the most pleasant country on earth in which to travel. Had intended writing about it for travel magazines etc but how could one write for the public about a place where police are non-existent as well as passport controls? Nothing but blue men walking through orange and purple landscapes and a few left over Spanish who run their settlements as brothels for imported Senegalese. Should be here in the summer unless I go to rent a little house in Patmos to write in June/July. Will inform. Flat let in London.232 Money exhausted by journey. Love B

  To James Ivory

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 21 May 1970

  Dear Jim,

  Letters from you and Cary [Welch] today. A good post. Cary in fine form having, he says, bought a farm in New Hampshire, where the Welches can retire to and grow vegetables if the WORST COMES TO THE WORST as many people seem to be predicting in America right now: though in the unlikely event of that happening, I dare say there would be hordes of hungry barbarians in flashy clothes, probably on horseback,233 who would dig into their radish patch with their swords (ammunition being no longer available). Small quick crops of quick growing things like cress would be all that would have time to grow before the hordes swept down again. The key to the whole thing surely is that book The Making of the President;234 nothing is more violence inducing than a sense of individual powerlessness.

  You must be bloody hot out there. You might let me know if you’re going to be there next winter, because we have plans to come in October and remain till May. I want to go if possible to Sikkim in the spring and also to the far south in the winter. This is something that has been planned for four years, and as with all long term plans I shall only decide two weeks beforehand.

  I spend the weeks in Oxford now, heavily disguised as a skiiing undergraduate, and, I confess, celebrating my thirtieth birthday with a skittish affair. Merton College, jasmine tea, shades of Max Beerbohm235, red lacquer, ecclesiastical drag, mystical excesses of the Early Church Fathers combined with the intellectual mentality of Ronald Firbank.236 You get the picture? Not serious, very pretty.

  I may go to Patmos in July and August, where I have undertaken to rent a house, providing a. I have finished my so-called research b. I have the funds. Do you know that island? The most beautiful in all the Aegean. Couldn’t you come there?

  Off to Ireland for a week or so then here.

  Do write.

  love B

  To Derek Hill

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 8 June [1970]

  In the course of a letter to Hill, Elizabeth wrote: ‘They are thinking of making a film of Lady Sale.237 Don’t you think Loelia238 would be perfect as the star?’ Chatwin then added this PS:

  Do you know the story of her retreat from Kabul? Refusal to cut her personal staff below 46. Insistence on removing her grand piano down the gorge in midwinter, and solemn devotion to her needlework throughout capture and possibe rape. L[oelia] wouldn’t have to act.

  Dog has torn up my last jersey, but it is all quiet without the parrot239 for whose continued absence I pray. Love B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Chora | Patmos | Greece | [July 1970]

  Monday

  Dear E.,

  Am very well installed after an uneventful journey with the Father240 who sends you his love. We stayed two days in Athens with his friends, which was not entirely thrilling except for one hilarious interlude. La Vache sacrée of American anthropology, Margaret Mead241 no less, at luncheon in a restaurant with her students – or rather her menagerie, one of each ethnic type from Eskimo to Javanese, obviously all hating each other and her in particular. She, garrulous and white fleshed, held forth on a number of very audible topics. When I heard her say ‘Well, I think we’ve got a bunch of silly egalitarian ideas about the place,’ I fixed her with my well known acid blue glare, and if it didn’t shut her up entirely, at least it made her profoundly nervous.

  Ginette Camu, Bill Bernhard and Thilo von Watzdorf’s brother are here.242 Otherwise the horde has not yet descended. The weather is perfect, and the melteme doesn’t come for another fortnight. I am feeling human again. As one gets older, one realises that there are some places that suit one, and others that emphatically do not. One can only find out by experience. Paris and this place are two of them. I don’t think we could afford to live in Paris, but I must say I wouldn’t mind a try. Can you let me know how you get on with the unholy alliance of trustees? Please also can you contact David and Judy [Nash] at 42, Eaton Square, and retrieve from them the Inca as and when you take the feathers.243 Please be doubly careful of the frame, and use blankets. Remember it is very heavy, heavier than you would think, and once the edges are bashed up it will be very difficult to repair.

  When a book comes from Blackwells for me by Bruning, called Biological Clocks,244 will you let me know at once. Then I will have you send it to someone coming out here like Ron245 . . . Clem and Jessie246 were well in Paris, and were driving to Greece today. Poor Iain Watson247 had bronchial pneumonia which loused up their plans for Istanbul.

  Incidentally, that gramophone record we heard at Derek [Hill]’s was Autour du Celebre canon de Pachelbel. I just found the note of it today. Why do you not order a copy from Discurio in Shepherd’s Market?

  The post takes for ages – about one week from London, and so we will have to cable if anything becomes urgent. Work begins in earnest in two days time. Meanwhile I have swum several miles, and will swim several more.

  B

  P.S. Will you buy 2 small Winsor-Newton Watercolour brushes for me. I only have the smallest and 2 large.

  P.S. Can you try and do something for me? It is rather complicated. Either at the Bodleian or the British Museum they have services for photocopying articles. I have decided that I must have that famous Lorenz article copied and then translat
ed. The reference is . . . Konrad Lorenz, Die Angeborengen Formen Moglisher Erfahrung in Zoologische Tierpsychologie , V, 1943, pp. 235-409. (God help us for the number of pages) I shall need it directly I get back and will have to find someone to translate it. If the cost is desperate, obviously don’t do it. The Bodleian card number is 20374 if they have any queries.

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Chora | Patmos | Greece | 1 August 1970

  Dear E.,

  . . . You may complain of my lefty views, but God I’m right. We have the daughters of the upper classes here in force and I have been listening to a baklava of snobbery and prejudice for the past week. Maxime McKendry248 and John are here, which is quite fun, but they are rather brittle too. Shilly shallying conversation and no desire to go to the beach. I go down and talk to Irina249 occasionally in her little house. Otherwise nothing. I would sell the car if you want to. I really don’t care for it as you know, though as I definitely do not want one myself I leave it entirely to you.

  Heaven knows what we can do about the money situation. If you like why don’t you flog those chairs back again if you feel it would solve anything. Also if you feel like it, I have a mustard pot that could go.

  I am not particularly keen on entering India with cash on the black in Kabul if I am only coming in with a rucksack. I simply can’t think why you can’t arrange your money problems in India in advance. I shall take about £150 of my own, but I am not keen on the idea of being searched. Please get in touch with Robert [Erskine] and ask him what he does over his picture buying. I cannot believe you would have to get the rates of the bank.

  I sold the dagger250 for about £120 which I have in cash. The bed shop was closed and so I shall probably arrange it251 on my return through Paris. On the other hand I have become more and more anti-possession minded except perhaps for 2 little portable things, that I really may scotch it. You can also flog the Anglo-Indian chair of mine which I certainly don’t want and never really liked, though I would like the money to go towards the thing I bought in Christies, which is marvellous.

  . . . The other thing is that I think the best thing would be to get the flat off my hands, so when O.252 arrives back if it’s not before you come out, what do you think about setting that up too? Or perhaps you might find out from the Grosvenor estate what they have going in the way of one-roomers or two roomers.

  The writing is not coming along too badly. I have done two chapters in the rough. I have a new method and am leaving whole sections very rough and charging on to finish and absorb all the material before cutting and polishing. As you know I make no promises as to when it will be finished but it should be by November. Where the hell’s name am I going to stay in England? I really cannot see why I shouldn’t have the use of the house and my study until I go, and I think you’d better warn Monica253 accordingly, though Lord knows I don’t find her exactly palatable company.

  Margaret Mead plainly the Queen of Hags

  Love B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Chora | Patmos | Greece | 12 August 1970

  Dear E.,

  God how the time flies. Have written nearly 40,000 words and that isn’t fast enough. I keep on getting terribly stuck for two or three days at a go, and then it starts to come right again. Am just rewriting the first three chapters again for the fourth time.

  This letter is being posted in London by M. Van den Bosch, the Belgian Ambassador, who is leaving for London tonight. We have had some really sweltering windless days and Chora sizzled. Tremendous drama when Bessie Schwartzenberg’s mother collapsed of a haemorrhage caused by heatstroke and died at once. Then Bernard Camu reported to have skin cancer in New York and they are all leaving at once. Magouche Phillips254 is here and quite wonderful, a great relief after rather a procession of fine looking but dreary ladies. I couldn’t have been more pleased when Maxime McKendry left. God what a bore. Forever reminiscing about amusing boites on the Left Bank in the old days when we were young and gay. Then followed by alcoholic soulful looks. If you see Ron [Gurney], can you put some coriander and cumin in a little package as I want to do the fainting imam.255 Also you couldn’t I suppose send me another little Schaffers256 as mine disappeared from the room together with my penknife, but I don’t think I can make a fuss about it. I shall go from here to Samos, then to Smyrna and Istanbul when you are about to appear, then come back here for a fortnight or so; after that I can use Peter [Levi]’s room in Athens until I am ready to go to London. Iain [Watson] and Miranda [Rothschild] hate Istanbul so that is that. God alone knows what they’ll do about it all.

  Magouche is very funny about her ex-husband and yesterday we went on very long walks. Letter from my Romanian admirer. I seem to think he was the station master of the logging railway, or he may have been an archaeologist or the beekeeper. I can’t be sure but have sent him a postcard.

  I really think the answer is NO to Straker. It257 is quite unsuitable to be worn out in the open at all, and I won’t have it rained on by all that filthy Edinburgh. Apologetic regrets. It would swamp him anyway.

  Must get on with Martin Buber.258

  xxxxxxxxxxxx B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Kardamyli | Messenia | Greece | [30 August 1970]

  Dear E.

  I am sitting on the terrace of Paddy and Joan Leigh Fermor’s259 house in the Mani. Quite heavenly here. The whole Taygetos range plunges straight down into the sea and eagles float in thermals above the house – a low arcaded affair of limestone beautifully marked with red karst. Olives and pencil thin cypress clothe the terrace between the mountains and the sea. From the house one can dip into the water. Magouche Phillips and I came here from Patmos having spent 2 days in Athens to get my teeth seen to260. We were both rather glad to go. Apart from the nannying that went on, Patmos is the most enervating place – bar Edinburgh – I have ever spent any time on. One was really ready for the Revelation.261 Beautiful though it is – the wind howls – or it blisters in the sun, those pinnacles of jagged rock finally pierce through to the subconscious. Smart English girls of brittle conversation burst into tears after a week. No food or water, but above all that terrible feeling of not being able to get off which is psychologically devastating. If I hadn’t had something to do I would have gone mad. As it is I have done – in the rough, five chapters each of about 12,000 words, despite constant interruptions. I am not exactly thrilled by all of it – and it can be polished and resorted later, but still it is something done instead of flailing about.

  I am coming to the conclusion that there is no point at all in coming back to England in the autumn. Llama Ghika262 has got to be in Athens all the time which bores her stiff and I can sit in a sort of penthouse they have – or in Peter [Levi]’s room which is the nicest room in Athens facing Lycabettus, the Parthenon, Hymettus and the sea. Going back to England would only disrupt the book further and make me a month later in India by the time one had got there and I really do think it will/or can be ready in its first draft by November (early). I would then send a copy to London – and get them to annotate a version and have it sent to India somewhere. Anyway going back to England is bound to cost £200 at least by the time one has fiddled about. I suggest therefore we meet in Salonika – if you pass through Salonika on yr Istanbul voyage + 1 winter suit and some cold weather clothes for Turkey in winter. Gloves, my windjammer rucksack – the one I had for Mauretania and boots and new laces and socks. Also you’d better bring my camera en route. I don’t know quite what to do about money, but I believe I do get £1,000 on delivery of the manuscript. The other thing that has struck me is that I might establish non-residence in England this year in case any decent money ever came from it. Apparently I can – for a time – become non-resident without you at all – and after next July 15 would anyway be entitled to 3 months in England. Anyhow we can discuss it. I do suggest that you pre-pay a cable to the Nash’s in N.Y for permission to get out the Inca Poncho before you leave – and apprise Oliver [Hoare] and Ferdy Mayne263 that I
don’t want the flat. We should rescue the bed and the Navaho carpet – and that spit roaster (but I’m not sure about the latter because it’s on the H/P with the frig). Anyhow I’d be prepared to let the whole thing go and those beastly cushions if I did not have any expense of any kind to pay. If you can’t arrange it I suppose H.P.C. [Hugh Chatwin] can be called in if necessary. If the Maori264 sells, it sells. If it doesn’t I’m not sorry because damn it it is still a very good work of art. Robin Symes265 was in Patmos with a couple of King’s Road shits. Don’t wear well in the sun those antiques boys – they acquire a fake patina. I do want that Maori piece paid for and collected at Christie’s – a great buy quite beautiful – also the Arctic Tern is at Pollack Blue Boar Yard266 and should be ready mid Sept if you had time.

  Very entertaining here. Much more my style than those brittle conversations about blokes and sofas.

  write c/o Nikos Ghika, Kricozotov 3, Athens

  xxxx B

  PS Let me have yr dates + itinerary soonest. May want to meet you Igoumenitza if I go to see the Vlachs.267

  To Derek Hill

  Corfu | Greece | [September 1970]

  Dear D

  Patmos was buzzing with the helicopters of your friends. Visits from Jackie and Lee268 disturbing the Revelation. Would to God that Greece was preserved as overleaf – as it is bad Beaulieu-sur-Mer in summer – with an overdose of hippies – decapitations under LSD on Spetsai – and new love from island to island for the rich. May go direct from here to India – await the yellow caravan of ladies in Salonika, Love B