Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Bruce Chatwin

  To Monica Barnett

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 14 January 1978

  Dear Monica,

  I am most sorry not to have written before. The postal service has all but broken down in Italy. I did not receive your letter until after Christmas, acted on it, and returned to London to see what could and should be done.

  In Patagonia will be published in the United States by Summit Books, who are a subsidiary of Simon and Schuster. The process had already gone farther than I knew, but, mercifully, the letter came just in time to halt the printing.

  I deeply regret what has happened and take full blame for misinterpreting your wishes. I had understood that you wished to exclude all reference to the circumstances of your brother’s birth.460 I phrased the episode vaguely and this has led to the trouble.

  The picture I wanted to convey was of two people, of different ages and backgrounds, both stranded at the end of the world; both wronged by a society (which, for all I can learn of it, was considerably off-beam), both of whom found consolation in each other’s company and fell in love. Otherwise, to me at least, their behaviour is inexplicable.

  That your father should have looked after her is typical of him: his sympathy for the underdog was automatic; hypocrisy was an anathema to him. That your mother should have returned to a place that must have been hateful to her, that she should have supported him through his disaster, is surely proof of her rocklike character and her devotion. That the Milwards (please let us mention no names) misunderstood their relationship is history. That the ‘true Britisher’ element in Punta Arenas ostracised them is something I learned from two people, who recalled events before 1919 with astonishing precision (though I fear one of them hispanicised the name ‘Belle’).

  But the idea that your mother, in her condition, would have had ‘carnal relations’ before her marriage is something that never entered my head. If there are innuendos to that effect, I most humbly apologise for them and promise they are not there intentionally. It is safe to say that no reviewer (and I think no reader unaware of the facts) has picked on the episode.

  The image of my great grandfather loomed over my life almost as much as ‘the piece of brontosaurus’. After my grandmother’s death I found his court suit and sword in a tin trunk. But you are quite right about the footnote, though it does give a hint of the somewhat fantastical nature of C[harles] A. M[ilward]’s family in England. It does not now belong in the text, but it did have a place in the original draft.

  I did not take the facts of Harding Milward’s bankruptcy from family sources, but from a standard biography of Winston Churchill. Milward apparently looked after the finances of the young Winston. The naval historians whom I consulted also make it clear that the decision to ignore Consul Milward’s report on the Dresden came from Churchill himself, then First Lord of the Admiralty. I voiced the possibility that the two were connected, but that paragraph sat like a lump in the text and I cut it out.

  It is quite clear that the footnotes and the offending paragraph must come out of future editions. There is a paperback in the pipeline; possible foreign translations, and then a reprinting since the first edition was small.

  The changes I have forwarded to the US publisher are as follows.

  p.148 Cut footnote.

  p.157 Cut ‘The Milwards’ and ‘as Milward gossip maintained . . .’

  p.173 Para 1 should now read:

  Meanwhile the ex-consul’s life had taken a new direction. He had met a young Scotswoman called Isabel, who had got stranded penniless in Punta Arenas, after working on an estancia in Santa Cruz. Charley looked after her and paid her fare back to England. He was lonely again once she had gone. They wrote to each other: one of his letters contained a proposal.

  Belle came back and they started a family . . .

  p. 174 Change Bella to Belle . . .

  2nd para ‘Belle kept the books: she would carry on for nearly forty years . . .’

  The question of copyright. In your house I made rough notes from the letter-book and the stories. Only when you allowed me to take the manuscript to the photocopier, did I get copies of The Wreck, Smallbones, The Doctor and his Wife, The Albatrosses, The Emperor of Brazil, The Dancing Pygmies, Hobbs and the Onas, The Salesians and the Alakalufs.

  The Albatross story is probably the ‘best’. The Wreck was essential to my tale but I had to paraphrase it to bring it down to size. But by far my favourites are Smallbones and the Doctor’s Wife, both of which I would love to have used but are long and plainly belong to your story rather than mine. Instead, apart from the marvellously funny paragraph on Dom Pedro, I stuck to three small stories which concern the fate of nomadic peoples, a vital sub-theme of my book.

  In Patagonia went to press when I was in Brazil last spring. In Cape’s view my letter confirming your ownership of the stories was sufficient as long as there was an acknowledgement. I, however, insisted on crediting you on the copyright page for those stories which were reprinted almost verbatim; though not for the ones which were, for better or worse, contracted, paraphrased or adapted.

  I always wanted C.A.M. to [do] the talking. His tone is inimitable. Had I never seen the manuscript the result would have had the character of a reconstruction from secondary sources. For me it is clear when he does talk, he is talking out of your source-book.

  To clarify the position we should retain the copyright on the title page and adapt the note as follows:

  Captain Charles Amherst Milward.

  I could not have written this book without the help of Charley Milward’s daughter, Monica Barnett, of Lima. She allowed me access to her father’s papers and the unpublished manuscript of his stories in her possession. This was particularly generous since she is writing her own biography461 in which the stories will appear in full. My sections 73, 75 and 86 are printed with minor alterations. His other stories, from sections 72 to 85, have been adapted from the original.

  Please can you confirm whether you agree? I hate to try and rush you after what has occurred, but additions and subtractions are complicated and costly at this stage. The book is being offset in America and not reprinted. The publication is announced for the spring and if it fails to meet the date, it will have to be delayed till Fall. I have asked them to hold back till I hear from you. As each day counts, would it be too much for you to send me a cable to Holwell Farm?462

  Please forgive.

  yours ever,

  Bruce

  To Valerian Freyberg

  Inscription to In Patagonia, 16 February 1978

  For Valerian, when he’s a little older and feeling restless. Affectionately, Bruce

  To Ivry Freyberg

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 22 March 1978

  I’m crazy about my godson and want to see him more and more often.

  I may be off to India in the week to interview the redoubtable Mrs G.463 now making a comeback. Wonderful to see you all! Much love, Bruce

  To Cary Welch

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 21 May 1978

  Dear C.,

  I got back from Injuh to find your very welcome cheque, all the more welcome in that I have bought a flat in Islington, tiny but remarkable flat sitting in a garden with wild ducks nesting all round.464 You would never have guessed what I’ve been doing: interviewing, travelling with that nightmarish lady, Indira Gandhi, have covered virtually the whole of India, from Cape Cormorin to the Himalayas, on her whistle-stop tour.465 She’s far worse than you’d ever imagine. I was prepared to allow her at least a dimension of greatness, but all you find is a lying, scheming bitch. If she were really evil, that would be something. If she were really Indian, that also would be something. Eventually I decided she was the memsahib behind the silver teapot congratulating General Dyer466 on his courageous action at Amritsar. One of her ex-Cabinet Ministers said to me: ‘The atmosphere round Mrs G[andhi] is like that of Arsenic and Old Lace.’467

  She charmed me at first, I have to ad
mit. But I couldn’t stomach the pettiness of the lies. Her enemy Charan Singh468 summed her up when he said: ‘Mrs Gandhi is incapable of telling the truth even by mistake.’

  I did have some extremely funny times. Not the least was our visit to the Durga Temple in Benares, where a monkey with mastitis tried to rip off her sari. When I told the Rajmata of Gwalior that she had dipped herself in the Ganges, she said: ‘Sacrilege!’

  Now Benares is a place I wouldn’t mind holing up in. Where else do the Ancient World and Twentieth Century Decadence meet in such harmony? The only trouble was a temperature of 42 degrees centigrade, with the result that I came back feeling a bit dessicated.

  Sorry for the quick note. We hope to be over shortly, love B

  On Mr Dhavan’s desk (her Assistant Private Secretary) I found a manual for ventriloquists called Mimicry and Monoacting.

  To Monica Barnett

  Draft letter, Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 10 June 1978

  Dear Monica,

  Now it’s my turn to apologise for the delay. Your letter reached here the morning I flew to India to interview Mrs Gandhi (and that’s another story). The one to Deborah Rogers had got there three days earlier. I spent six weeks in India and since coming back have hardly had time to eat, let alone think.

  In the meantime the advance copies of the New York edition of Patagonia have arrived here, not seen yet. I’ll have the publishers send you and Lala469 a copy each. If there’s anyone else you can think of I’d be very happy to do the same . . .

  Now, with regard to the stories, I accept your position and most sincerely apologise for the misunderstanding. If I am in the wrong, then I am deeply in the wrong. But I recall the matter differently: I was not at all certain, in Lima, whether you would allow me to photocopy the journal, and was therefore extremely pleased, when one day after lunch when Gertrude and Elizabeth were there, you gave me the manuscript and told me I could go to the photocopiers. I have a copy of a letter to you dated 4th of May 1975, which starts:

  This letter confirms that I have photocopied biographical material relating to your father the late Charles Amherst Milward, and also a great part of his uncompleted book. I have also taken extensive notes. I understand that you have no objection to my using it in the book I shall be writing about Patagonia. I also understand that this permission is subject to the following condition: that you hold full copyright over the material in your possession and that when you come to write the full biography of your parents there shall be no prevention to stop you using the same stories that I will have used. The same will apply to any photographs that will belong to you.

  On my return to England I shall ask my literary agent to confirm this arrangement so that it is watertight.

  yours ever,

  Bruce Chatwin

  To Desmond Morris

  c/o Deborah Rogers Ltd | 5-11 Mortimer Stree | London | [June 1978]

  Dear Professor Morris,

  I did enjoy our conversation last week about my wolf child470. I enclose a fiendishly bad photocopy of the piece and hope you didn’t mind my quoting you – or half-quoting you – in the final passage. If you feel that it’s wrong, please don’t hesitate to let me know through Deborah [Rogers].

  I thought you might like a copy of the book I wrote for Tom [Maschler] last year. American edition, I’m afraid.

  Yours sincerely, Bruce Chatwin

  While following Mrs Gandhi on her election tour, Chatwin had met Sunil Sethi, ‘the 23 yr old whizz-kid of Indian journalism’, who was starting out on India Today. Chatwin found him ‘an exhilarating companion. He had been everywhere in India, roughing it. He could take in Hindi and spit it out in English from the sides of his mouth.’

  To Sunil Sethi

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 18 June 1978

  Dearest Sunil,

  Well, that was a cheering letter. I had been waiting for it with a certain tetchy anticipation. Admittedly, it came at the end of a more cheering week. Had it come the week before, I might very easily have taken the next plane to Delhi. I was laid out. Laid out with such a monumental depression that I couldn’t drag myself out of bed in the morning for fear of what frightful things the day had in store. I think I gave you to understand I was going back in such haste to see someone.471 This is not my usual practice: usually I delay departure for England (Le Tombeau Vert) until the last possible moment. However, when the someone met me at the airport, I knew that something was seriously wrong (frightening how people can change in a month), and for three weeks the wrongness built up in a crocodile of misery, while I battled at my typewriter with that beastly woman who had ruined my journey to India. Emotionally, I always seem to suffer from transcontinental dislocation. Anyway for the past month I’ve been cursing myself for leaving YOU and you’ll have to put up with it.

  So, on Monday, stuck in bed at 10am on a bright sunny morning, Tom Maschler my publisher rang to say that In Patagonia had won the Hawthornden Prize for imaginative literature (previous winners include Evelyn Waugh and Dom Moraes!). So I stopped mooning and pulled myself together. Not that I am normally a mooner, but I have discovered I am far less hard-boiled than I thought.

  Of course, In Patagonia isn’t meant to be a travel book, but only you and the T.L.S. reviewer had the wit to see that, while I have been so browbeaten by people saying it is a travel book that I half came to believe it – or believed that I had failed in my purpose – to write an allegorical journey on the classic pattern (narrator goes in search of beast etc). Thank you for ‘a matter of multiple passions resolving into a final simplicity.’

  Then there were rows at the Sunday Times. I felt the only way to tackle the woman was to do it obliquely, elliptically. How can any European presume to pontificate about India? Vainly, I tried to describe what I saw and left the readers to make up their minds. The copy came back scrawled all over: WELL? IS SHE COMING BACK OR ISN’T SHE or WHAT IS THE POLITICAL SCENE? That kind of thing, with a request that I rewrite.

  But why should I? Print or don’t print, but don’t bother me. That has been my attitude over the past week. Preferably, don’t print, because anyway I don’t like writing about people I don’t like.

  English newspapers are dreadful. Unreadable, so why should one presume to write for them? The besetting sin of all English writers is their fatal attraction for periodicals, their fascination for reviews, and their passion for bickering in print.

  Resolution of the month: Never to write for newspapers.

  Quotation of the Month (from Cyril Connolly’s The Unquiet Grave):

  ‘The more books we read, the sooner we perceive that the true function of the writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence. Obvious though this should be, how few writers will admit it or having made the admission, will be prepared to lay aside the piece of iridescent mediocrity on which they have embarked! Writers always hope that their new book is going to be their best, for they will not acknowledge that it is their present way of life which prevents them creating anything different.

  ‘All excursions into journalism, broadcasting, propaganda and writing of films, however grandiose, are doomed to disappointment. To put of our best into these forms is another folly, since thereby we condemn good ideas as well as bad to oblivion. It is in the nature of such work not to last, so it should not be undertaken . . .’

  But what about the rent and drink bills? When the bills of his Horizon mounted to intolerable proportions, he sold himself to the Sunday Times and died there.

  I am not suggesting you walk out of India Today, but feel you have reached a point where journalism has taught you the necessary art of condensation and the technique of story-hunting, but as such has nothing to offer you. Nor am I suggesting you abandon your project on the dynasties of the demagogues (though that is grandiose and journalistic): but with your particular gifts, with your passion for India (though you needn’t confine yourself to India); with your unbearable curiosity into the motivations o
f people; with your capacity to arrange characters on a written page; you should be able to produce at least one lasting masterpiece. Don’t leave it too late. I’ve left it far too late.