Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Bruce Chatwin

  To Anne-Marie Mykyta

  as from Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 26 November 1984

  My dear Anne-Marie,

  This is my last evening in England since I’m going to go doggo in the Aegean all winter: and am flying to Crete in the morning. I just thought I’d nip into the flat and there was your card.

  I didn’t mention the Salman R[ushdie] business because a. I knew you’d have been hurt: the question was how hurt b. I’ve had a terrific falling out with him over it. Really, it was too thoughtlessly cruel. And to what end? There he’d been feted, applauded – which apparently he needs – and then that! I’d rather if this was between us; but I do think he can be excused only on the grounds that he was going a bit off his rocker at the time. He wrote one wonderful book. For once the judges of a big literary prize were right at the right moment, but the whole business seems to have unhinged him a bit. The fatal thing is to turn oneself into a ‘writer’.

  I could, I’m sure, get the Tatler to print what you have to say: but, in this tricksy city, people’s memories are so very short, and it would, I feel, only titillate a morbid interest which would have nothing to do with Adelaide as such/or the Festival: but now S[alman] R[ushdie] has shot his mouth off again.

  I can’t quite remember whether you met him with me in all that hubbub; but he certainly knew of you through me and all that guff about the party was just a lot of blarney.

  I’m riveted by the affair of Kath Strehlow and the Aboriginal collection. 666 What a mayhem it all is? Pint-sized egos being inflated all round. She was here for a bit on her way to Canada: I must say I’m sympathetic to the fact that they – whoever they are – were definitely trying, for the most venal and short-sighted reasons, to dismember Ted Strehlow’s life work: And he – make no mistake – was a real homespun genius: examples of which, as we know, are in short supply. His Songs of Central Australia – wildly eccentric as it is – is not simply some kind of ethnographical tract: but perhaps the only book in the world – the only real attempt since the Poetics of Aristotle to define what song (and with song all language) is. He arrives at his conclusion in a crabby way. He must also have been impossible. But nonetheless VERY great, and far too important, obviously, to be seized upon by a bunch of ambitious bureaucrats.

  If the matter hots up, I may, indeed have to hot foot it back. In the meantime I’ll plod on.

  As always with love,

  Bruce

  PS Do let me know if there’s anything you want me to do vis-à-vis para 2.

  Excuse the yellow pad: it’s all I have.

  To John Kasmin

  as from: Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | [November 1984]

  Dearest Kaz, I have, temporarily, unfrozen myself vis-à-vis the book: it’s rather like sailing round a headland in flat calm, every little puff helps. Well, I’ve had the teeniest puff and have gone to Crete for a couple of weeks to see how I like it there and whether or not I want to spend the winter there. See you around Christmas. XX B

  To Murray Bail

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | [December 1984]

  Dear Murray

  A quick note in extremis, ie from London. I had two glorious weeks in Crete, and then the Peloponnese where I have rented a flat for the winter.667 Then the return, where as usual everything has piled up. Will I go and see a film about Freud’s last patient? Will I write a foreword? Will I pay my tax (but what with?) Will I . . . will I . . . NO!

  I don’t know what to do. My impulse is to sell up and go away somewhere rather primitive – or at least isolated from the literary ‘buzz’ that nags at me with the insistence of a pneumatic drill in a neighbouring street. The answer is this: that no amount of comfort, padding recognition etc, is, in any way, a compensation for having one’s head and time free. And London is such an abominable trap!

  I had your letters simultaneously: the first with The Plains668 seems to have been opened, and tampered with, presumably in case it contained a bomb. It actually seems to have arrived here after the second.

  I’m going to sit down for a few days and read that, and the new Sinyavsky Bonne Nuit! (as yet in French) and a book on Rimbaud in Ethiopia and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

  Aren’t Victoria Falls a surprise? Nowhere else in the world, perhaps, can we look down on the sublime. There is, strangely enough, a rather wonderful 19th century painting of it in the Royal Geographic Soc[iety] by an artist whose name I forget.

  I dread to do your bidding with the Sunday Times and Observer vis-à-vis Fairweather. I don’t know them at all on S.T. . .. and it’s all a mafia of sneer and pretentiousness with art critics reviewing etc. If you ever read the reviews that Marina Vaizey669 puts out, you’d be amazed. She went to Paris the other day (imagine!) and panned an exhibition of Douanier Rousseau;670 said the colour was crude. Tut! Tut!

  On the other hand, I could I think somehow fix something better for the T.L.S.

  Sorry for the disjointed and probably illegible page. But I feel I must reply at once to say how much I value your comments about not making the book so ‘easy’671 . . . I know exactly what you mean and have, any way, embarked on a different track.

  Much love to Margaret as from E

  Bruce

  Will write from the Mani. I was swimming there last week. Here I am completely gummed up with green phlegm. Dining with Salman tonight.

  B

  To Ninette Dutton

  c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardamyli | Messinia | Greece | [January 1985]

  Forgive the silence: I’ve been estranged from my post for over a month, and will be for another. I have a flat overlooking olives, cypresses and the sea. The iris and anemones (of Adonis) are out. Some days, like yesterday, are balmy and beautiful, but in the night we had a non-stop gale from Kamchatka that broke the shutters. The book edges along. I keep wishing I was in Australia – and now consider myself badly bitten. Much love B

  To Diana Melly

  c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardamyli | Messinia | Greece | 30 January 1985

  Dearest D,

  Well, I’ve been here a month now, in the most beautiful place you can imagine. A view of olives and cypresses, a little island and the sea. Some days are clear and blue and the sun so hot it could be June. Occasionally, it blows from Siberia and the sea below my window is a churning mass. The place I’m staying in is ideal for writing: in fact, it would do for anyone doing a stint of work between October and May when the tourists come and make a bit of noise.

  My mother’s been in the flat next door. My poor father didn’t get to sail the Atlantic672. Once they got to the Cape Verde Islands they ran into a strong trade wind, and apparently the boat became unmanageable, slewing this way and that, and burying her bow into the waves: so they decided it would be unsafe to go on, and gave up. We got some news of this, but in a garbled form, and there were one or two days of mild anxiety.

  Up behind Kardamyli, there is a first line of hills with little villages dotted about, and then a line of snowy mountains. I usually break off at 2 and go walking with Paddy. Yesterday, he had a hilarious letter from Daphne Fielding about the ‘Duke diggers’673 at Badminton. Both she and Diana thought the two boys who did it were ‘very romantic’ and had ‘wonderful cheekbones’. I can’t think that Sally would have seen the comic side.

  I have to come back to London for about a week, as from the 6th Feb, partly to sort out one or two odds and ends, to see JC674 but otherwise to lie rather low. Please do be in London then.

  Forgive the scrappy note,

  Much love Bruce

  To Murray Bail

  as from Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 11 February 1985

  Dear Murray,

  Pam B[ell] sent me a copy of your essay on [John] Passmore:675 very, very good. Imagine a single one of the art-blatherers in this country matching a single one of your lines. I now want to know what a Passmore really is like: and, stuck as I am, in the Southern Peloponnese, I won’t find out for a bit.

  The above is a white lie: I’ve been in G
reece now for 7 weeks and have come back for 3 days ONLY! to cope with the mail, pay bills etc. Then I’m off back again. I have a room with a view of olives, cypresses, a bay. I work till 3; then walk in the hills; then read; then sleep. Not bad. Costs next to nothing. I go on with the book, and have reached such a stage, I simply daren’t look back.

  I’m home at the moment, after finding in Barcelona a wonderful Romanesque (Catalan) panel. 13th century – tempera: of King David and a stork – all reds, black and white – with incredibly lively, rather coarse drawing. Such a thing is apparently RARISSIMO – but I think it was just too lively for most people. E sends her fondest love, and so do I to you and Margaret. Bruce

  PS I hear that S[alman] R[ushdie] and the camel lady are back again.676

  To Pam Bell

  c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardamyli | Messinia | Greece | 22 February 1985

  This is more like it: at least I’ve been writing instead of procrastinating all the time. I now find city life rather hell except for the odd weekly visit. How was your trip to London? I have bought a wonderful painting! A 13th century Romanesque panel – from Catalonia – of King David and a Pelican. Many thanks for M[urray] B[ail]’s piece. AI as usual. Much love, Bruce

  To Valerian Freyberg

  c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardamyli | Messinia | Greece | 22 February 1985

  Your dreadful godfather has gone into hiding in Greece for months and months in the hope that he will be able to finish his 4th book. Each time round it gets harder and harder. But I will be around in England in the summer! I think of you often – and wonder how you’re getting on. Much love Bruce

  To Murray Bail

  c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardamyli | Messinia | Greece | 1 March 1985

  Dear Murray,

  Got your letter yesterday. I don’t get many here, because I’ve put a block on being available from London, and that includes the post. Without wanting to sound unpatriotic . . . I now find that a week in my own country is as much as I can stomach. It used to be two months, but now, like the dwindling pound, it gets whittled down and down and down . . . I went for 8 days, to sort out various affairs, in February, and by the 8th was nearly bonkers. E. too, is beginning to feel the same way. I think the way of solving the matter is to let things slide; not to take any bold, self-conscious decision to leave, but, in practice, to do just that. I shall stay here in Greece until the early summer; then, as I have to be in Helsinki, on midsummer’s day, I thought I’d have a stint in the north. Then I’ve promised to go and do a ‘small’ job in Hong Kong. Then to America for six weeks to ‘teach’ – God save me! in October.677 Then basta! BUT, the way my mind’s working is to join E. in India on or around November 1st and stay, if necessary, for months and months. It’s not that I want to write a book about India – though I am sure it still is the land of the short story. I simply want to float there for a while, from the plains to the hills. I want to see Orissa or Bengal in full monsoon: that kind of thing . . . It would be terrific if you were there too. In fact, I cannot imagine anything in the world I’d like more.

  I may, in the course of these violent wanderings, have to show up in Oz, in order to check things out for the book. A very peculiar work, let me tell you. Far too diffuse and repetitive at present. How I long for the light exhilarating days on constructing Patagonia. This is altogether too weighty and serious and needs, I fear, a good shot of . . . well, I dread the word ‘local colour’ to bring it to life.

  Vis-à-vis the Cézanne problem.678 He is, surely, like all the truly greats, a somewhat hit-and-miss performer. And one never knows on what scale he’s going to hit the bull’s eye. If your pal679 will look through the Christie’s catalogues of Impressionist sales for the late ’60’s – say 68-70, but I may be wrong about that, he will find an oil sketch of Mont St Victoire – with literally about ten brushstrokes on a plain white primed ground. I honestly believe it is one of the most breathtakingly beautiful paintings I have ever set eyes on. It went for about 20,000 pounds – far less even then than a sketchy drawing of the same subject – and was bought by Beyeler of Basel, who sold it to a Swiss collector. It might just be worth following up. It is, admittedly, Mt. St Victoire reduced to almost Malevich-like abstraction: but that, if I were buying a Cézanne for a national Gallery is the kind of thing I’d aim for, rather than complete, early, or untypical ‘Tentation’ etc. Your pal obviously seems to know the market pretty well: and I am hopelessly out of date. Like some old dowager of the Belle Epoque, ‘Je garde mes souvenirs . . .’

  The most beautiful Cézanne in the world is to my mind Henry McIllhenny’s Portrait of Madame Cézanne, a tiny picture by comparison with others, but . . . He is a nice, tough, open-minded man, who likes Australia a lot, and has of course recently sold the wonderful, but very conventional still-life to pay for his yacht. I wonder whether it would be worth putting some kind of proposal to him: that eventually etc, in return for keeping it now, and in return for X dollars now and Y later, he might even like the idea of it ending up in Canberra. Instead, that is, of Philadelphia, which is of course bursting with Cézannes.

  Poor Madame de Chaisemartin680. In my day she was quite a character: a defending barrister, who specialised in the cases of poor Algerian immigrants on murder charges. I thought she was terrific. It was I . . . Je garde mes souvenirs . . . who set in motion the deal whereby the Grandes Baigneuses, then hanging in the maid’s corridor, was bought by the National Gallery.

  What am I reading here? I have the Sinyavsky, in French, but cannot finish it. Abram Terz to the fore, and less of Sinyavsky. Brilliant flashes, but on the whole, unacceptable lumps of fantasy. Don’t know anything about The Case of Mr Crump.681 The Plains I like a lot. Strangely Germanic in tone; but then I have thought that the Germanic suits Australia very well. I’d love to see what else he does. That’s a real voice for you. Otherwise, three novels of [Italo] Svevo682 who I’d never read before; The Idiot, which I last read in the Sahara; Michel Tournier, who is obviously inventive but I now think is far too kitsch; Dialogues of Plato, to see how you express ideas in dialogue (The answer is, ‘I don’t’) plus the usual array of technical and scientific stuff. I have a new friend in Michael Ignatieff,683 a Canadian-Russian, whose grandfather was Education Minister in the Duma. You might like to look at his essays published by Chatto, The Needs of Strangers. Otherwise, I am completely out of it . . . They were trying to get me to write something on the sinking of the Belgrano. I had a go, but was so disgusted by what I’d written – bellelettristic outpouring on events I knew nothing about, that I gave up – to everyone’s annoyance. I wouldn’t mind a glance at the S[hirley] H[azzard] Lecture;684 I agree with you, the days of the pontificateur are over.

  It’s getting dark and a bit cold on my terrace; the bats are out, the sea is calm and grey, and there is a lurid orange line along the horizon.

  As always, B

  PS Let me know about India

  Whew! The S[alman] R[ushdie]685 drama. Give them my love if you see them. I may have put my foot in it: because when he was in London, with his wife, I gave my congratulations etc when, in fact, he was leaving for Australia then and there.

  To Diana Melly

  c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardamyli | Messinia | Greece | [March 1985]

  Dearest Diana,

  Lovely to get your card. I couldn’t think who would be writing from the Lygon Arms. Shades of my great-aunts686 who would go to paint watercolours in the Cotswolds!

  The weather here is alternatively lovely and tempestuous. But my room is always warm and, in a way, I rather welcome a storm. From the window I can watch the cypresses lashing about and the frothing waves a hundred yards away. After a storm though, I begin to get a bit chesty: but then everyone else does, so I’m not alone. I now realise the full enormity of this book, which seems to stretch before me like an endless tunnel. The only thing to do is press on regardless without looking back even, and then – only then – see if one can sort out the mess. It may take years.

  I’m glad I came here.
The winter in England is going to do me in, and I simply cannot summon up the concentration for a big work. They were after me the other day to write a piece for Granta on the Belgrano. I spent four days or so, fretting, getting unbelievably angry, and writing such drivel that, in the end, I had to give up. I cannot write about what I cannot know. The only letters I seem to get are from Australians: they’re wonderful correspondents, as indeed they have to be. My great friend Nin Dutton is coming over in the summer, and I hope to spend some time with her in Prague. Otherwise, the only date is Midsummer’s Night in Finland, where I have to make some kind of speech. The trouble is that this place fills up around the middle of May: so I will have to find somewhere else. Maybe Patmos even?

  I know it’s bad of me, but I’m not really inclined to leave Greece. I wish you’d come here in late April . . . Let me know because I’ll have to make sure there’s space. I’m sure there is.

  Love to everyone. XXXB

  PS I’m writing to Tom Maschler to see if he’ll send me a copy/proof of Francis [Wyndham]’s book.687

  On 4 February Tom Maschler had written asking to know when Chatwin might complete his manuscript. ‘I assume it is the book we talked about! i.e. in shorthand AFRICA.’

  To Tom Maschler

  c/o Leigh Fermor | Kardarmyli | Messinia | Greece | 1 March 1985