Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
Page 48
Do show this to John [Chanler] or any priest. But I’d rather it doesn’t go any further.
Bless you, Bruce
John Chanler replied to Gertrude: ‘Ma, I have very carefully read Bruce’s letter twice . . . obviously some of it is a pure fantasy. His marriage to Lib is a fantasy. They don’t communicate on even a basic level. He should discuss his finances and she should discuss her finances together and Bruce should not put Lib’s financial situation in your head.
‘If he had this much income in 1987 then he is a rich man and can afford to support Lib and not make her feel guilty about spending money. She is so careful with her money because she never can be sure of getting any money from him. If they had a true marriage it is not his money, or her money, but our money. It belongs to both of them.
‘I would suggest that your reply to Bruce is that you are happy that he has come to some conclusions but that you don’t feel comfortable in making any commitments or decisions without talking in person with both him and Lib in person together and now is not convenient.
‘The horse routine is not a real good idea at all.’
To Gertrude Chanler
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 17 May 1988
Dearest Gertrude,
The horse!854 Obviously she has to be an Arab mare, not perhaps up to competition standard, but breedable. What I suggest is this, you and I go dutch on the purchase, the fence needed to prevent her getting in the garden, a prefabricated wooden stable, saddle etc. We also go dutch on her upkeep – with the proviso, if money matters go wrong (and if they don’t get rid of Mrs Thatcher we shall have a Labour government) there will be a ‘safety-net’ so that the horse doesn’t have to be sold for ‘economic reasons’.
I get better by the day – although the neuropathy in my legs makes me very tottery. Yesterday, I went to the neurologist who said he could treat it right away, but with steroids – which is obviously out! The nerves should heal entirely within five years.855
Fondest love, Bruce
That summer, to the alarm of passers-by, a man in a wheelchair hurtled up the Burlington Arcade towards Piccadilly. It had begun to rain and across his lap he wore a cheap plastic mackintosh. The traffic was dense in Piccadilly, but this did not perturb him. He raised his arm and declared: ‘Stop all cars!’ Then he urged his companion, Kevin Volans, to push. ‘His mind was soaring,’ says Volans. ‘He was really enjoying himself.’
Chatwin was on a shopping spree. Attached to his wheelchair clanked several plastic bags. These, hurriedly packed by astonished dealers in Cork Street and Bond Street, contained items of enormous value. A Bronze Age arm band for which he had written out a cheque for £65, 000; an Etruscan head worth £150, 000; a jade prehistoric English cutting knife; a flint Norwegian handaxe and an Aleutian Islands hat.
On another outing, he crossed Duke Street and called at Artemis where Adrian Eales worked, a former Sotheby’s colleague who had bought Holwell Farm from Elizabeth. Chatwin specifically asked for an engraving, The Melancholy of Michaelangelo, by the sixteenth-century artist Giorgio Ghisi. By rare chance, Eales had the print in stock. The price: £20,000. Chatwin told him he was building a collection for Elizabeth. He was then wheeled to the Ritz where he had rented a room. During the afternoon more dealers were summoned to his bed. When he was finished, he turned to his friend Christopher Gibbs with an ebullient eye. ‘Tomorrow, musical instruments, women’s clothes and incunables!’
To Gertrude Chanler
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 26 June 1988
My dear Gertrude,
Everything seems to be going to plan. You mustn’t worry about the horse because I am not going to consider the horse unless we have a full time groom. I am fairly certain we have the money for it.
I have been buying your daughter the beginnings of an art collection which I hope will be wonderful.
In New York we bought the wax model for Giovanni da Bologna’s Neptune856 which has to be one of the most beautiful small sculptures in existence. We are making arrangements to give it to the Bargello in Florence with the use of it in our life times. We also bought an incredible German drawing of the mid fifteenth century.857
With lots of love Bruce
As fast as he bought works of art, Chatwin started to shed possessions. Robin Lane Fox says, ‘I received through the post a hard brown A4 envelope with Bruce’s handwriting on it and inside four black and white photographs of Nuristan boys in trailing vine leaves. “Dear Robin, you will understand that these are what I want you most to have and remember.” ’
Michael Ignatieff was sent a rare first edition of Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry not long after making a visit to Homer End. Early in July 1988 Ignatieff wrote to thank Chatwin – ‘few books are more precious to me than that, and few friends more beloved than you. So I will always keep it on the topmost shelf of the heart and think of your absurd and loveable generosity.’ Ignatieff went on eloquently to express the concerns and fears which he shared with Chatwin’s family and friends. ‘I came away from my visit with you full of dark and strange thoughts. You seemed in a realm of exultation – extreme physical dilapidation seems to have sent you shooting up into the sky with the angels. And your talk – adorable as always – was as wild as I’ve ever heard it: vows of purity, orthodoxy, crofts in the Shetlands, the art of the sublime, and the UR virus all contending, barging each other aside in your speech. Over it all hung an unmistakeable air of Nunc Dimittis, cheerful, joyous even, but hard to bear for those of us who would much rather prefer for you to remain with us a bit longer instead of ascending into the smoke or the monk’s cell. Even harder to bear was some feeling – forgive me if I’m wrong – that you are in the grips of something, mastered by something, a fever, a conversion, an intoxication, I don’t know what to call it, that is forcing its pace on you, forcing you to accelerate, to struggle breathlessly behind it, chucking away your life behind you as you pursue it. Over everything you said there was the image of Time running, running, and you at your wit’s end to catch up.
‘It’s quite possible that you experience this apparent frenzy from inside some deep calm, some serenity that I heard in your music from the savannas. But those who love you – and see only the outside – see someone haunted and in breathless pursuit.
‘I’m not sure it is among the offices of friendship to convey my sense of foreboding & disquiet at how I saw you. I may just be expressing a friend’s regret at losing you to a great wave of conviction, to some gust of certainty, that leaves me here, rooted to the spot, and you carried far away. In which case, I can only wave you onto your journey.’
To the Editor of the London Review of Books
Oxford Team for Research into Infectious Tropical Diseases, Oxford University | 7 July 1988
Aids Panic
In a review of three American books, And the band played on, Crisis: Heterosexual Behaviour in the Age of Aids and The Forbidden Zone, Mr John Ryle (LRB, 19 May) begins: ‘There is no good news about Aids. With a total of 85,000 cases reported at the beginning of this year the World Health Organisation estimate of the true figure is nearer 150,000. Their global estimate for HIV infection is between five and ten million. Most HIV-POSITIVE individuals have no symptoms and don’t know they are infected: but the majority of them – possibly all of them – will eventually develop Aids and die; in the meantime, of course, they may infect anyone they have sex with and any children they bear.’ This is hogwash. The word ‘Aids’ is one of the cruellest and silliest neologisms of our time. ‘Aid’ means help, succour, comfort – yet with a hissing sibilant tacked onto the end it becomes a nightmare. It should never be used in front of patients. HIV (Human Immuno-Deficiency Virus) is a perfectly easy name to live with. ‘Aids’ causes panic and despair and has probably done something to facilitate the spread of the disease. In France, not even M. Le Pen could do much with le Sida. He had a go, but was made to look completely ridiculous. HIV is not some gay Gotterdammerung: it is another African virus, a very dangerous one,
presenting the greatest challenge to medicine since tuberculosis, but one for which a cure will be found. Any virus, be it chicken-pox, mumps or HIV, will create a kind of mirror image of itself known as an ‘antibody’ which in time will stabilise the infected person. That should be the pattern. But HIV is a very slippery customer. There is no positive evidence of antibodies at work, only negative evidence that a great many infected people are alive. In one case in the US an infected person suddenly became HIV negative. We should, in fact, take Mr Ryle’s own figures. There have been 800,000 infected persons in the United States, of whom 80,000 have died. That means nine survivors to one death. This can mean only one thing: that some mechanism, pharmaceutical or otherwise, is keeping them alive.
One point cannot be emphasised too strongly. An infected person must never use anyone else’s toothbrush or an electric razor. We all have gingivitis from time to time.
What is most horrifying about Mr Ryle’s article is the callous cruelty with which he condemns hundreds of thousands of people to death. If a young man who has just been told that he is HIV positive got hold of the article, the chances are he might commit suicide. There have been many such cases.
Bruce Chatwin
To Kath Strehlow
Dedication written in The Songlines on Strehlow’s visit to Homer End, 9 July 1988
For Kath with love beyond the grave, Bruce.
To Harry Marshall858
Dictated by Bruce Chatwin | Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 25 July [1988]
Dear Harry,
Since we met my life’s taken a number of zig-zag directions. I’ve had malaria anaemia semi paralysis of the hands and feet – all now better but I’m still a wheelchair case.
On the intellectual front I’ve been collecting Russian icons, trying to arrange to become an Orthodox Priest859 & have evolved certain notions about virology which I’m told by the professors will transform their discipline. Anyway I’m an Oxford don & member of the team for research into tropical medicine.
This means that any TV appearances are out at present, but in the autumn we might reconsider outside the framework of Peter’s series. I promise to give you an exclusive. Best, Bruce
To Cary Welch
The Radcliffe Medical Foundation | ‘Expanding the Frontiers of Medicine’ | Manor House | Headley Way | Headington | Oxford | 25 July 1988
Dear Cary,
We live in a time of new viruses: a time of Pandora’s Box. Climatic change is the motor of evolution, and the sweeping changes in climate that have affected many parts of Africa offer ideal conditions for a virus that may have been stable over many thousands of years to burst its bounds, and set off to colonise the world.
The most pressing medical problem since tuberculosis is HIV (Human Immuno-deficiency Virus), vulgarly known as Aids. The word Aids should never be used by the medical profession, since it plays into the hands of the gutter press, and causes panic and despair: in France, not even M. le Pen could do much with ‘le S.I.D.A.’ There is, in fact, no cause for panic. H.I.V. is not a late twentieth century Gotterdammerung: it is another African virus.
My friend, David Warrell, is Professor of tropical medicine and infectious diseases at Oxford University. He is one of the finest clinical physicians in this country. He has spent many years in the Far East, working in the field to advance the study of cerebral malaria. He is a world authority on snake-bite; but he has recently returned to Oxford to lead a team of researchers into HIV.
As you probably know the virus constantly mutates and there seems little hope at present of preparing a vaccine. Excellent results have been achieved by the laboratories in describing the virus; but in the future we shall have to look elsewhere. The stable form of the primordial HIV must exist in Africa, and we intend to find it. The pessimists will say it is like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The problem may be simpler: that of the archaeologist who knows where to dig.
Once the stable virus is found, it may be possible to produce a vaccine. In any case, the answer will probably not come out of the laboratory, but from the field.
The Oxford Team runs a two-fold operation. It has a programme of laboratory and clinical research based in Nairobi, the aim of which is:
a) to alleviate the sufferings of those stricken by the HIV disease in Kenya and Uganda;
b) to keep a watchful eye on any new mutation of the virus;
c) to find the ‘primordial’ virus.
Back in Oxford we have a most urgent need to build an isolation unit of twelve or fifteen beds, in which exceptional cases can be flown in, observed and nursed under optimal conditions. Of course, this would not be confined to ‘foreigners’: the exceptional case might come from Oxford nor would it be confined to HIV cases alone: any virus from anywhere in the world that showed peculiar characteristics would be included. The team intends to study dengue fever, lassa fever, rabies, cerebral malaria and fulminating chicken-pox. All this will cost money, but the sums needed immediately are not immense. The Oxford Team is expert in making money go a long way – although in this field of research there will never be enough.
Any contribution, however small, will be most welcome. In the UK there are a number of ways in which donations can receive tax relief. This will vary from case to case and the manner in which the donation is given. For any further information would you please contact Mr David Davies of the Radcliffe Medical Foundation, Manor House, Headley Way, Headington, Oxford OX39DZ to whom all contributions should be sent?
I would like to think of this letter as an endless chain. If you have friends or relations who you think would be interested, I would gladly send it to them.
love Bruce
To Gertrude Chanler
[Elizabeth’s handwriting] Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 16 August 1988
Dear Gertrude,
Elizabeth came back worried about our nephew, Kevin.860 From the sound of it, I think he should take an art course, preferably the Sotheby Art Course in N[ew] Y[ork]. These tend to get overbooked, but I think I can fix it with David Nash. He can then decide if he wants to go on in the art business or take a higher degree. In any case he would be an invaluable ally in reforming the Laughlin Collection861 – apart from the fun!
Love B
Dear Mummy,
As you can see this was dictated. Makes perfectly good sense except for the end. Still grandiose. The pills are working a bit but it’s slow. Am now trying to prevent wild travel schemes. I will try and pay my air fare with the travellers checks I brought over if the agent will accept them. Will need money to send him to Athos but can probably get it from my mutual fund. If it takes too long can I borrow it from you?
Haven’t got a nurse yet, but hoping for something to turn up. Have a one day a week girl who lives less than 2 miles away. Have started taking lambs to kill and hope to get on with it in the next few weeks. Elizabeth.
To Murray Bail
[Elizabeth’s handwriting] | Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 28 August 1988
Dear Murray,
You must forgive me if I don’t quite subscribe to your view of yourself as an ungenerous, selfish intolerant old codger. The best bit of news in the entire letter was the fact that you say the divorce is very far off.862 By the time you’ve lived through this for a year or 2, you’ll be back again in each other’s arms. On the other hand, I do see the need for a change of scene and that you must unclutter yourself from Australia by coming, not Lord knows to Tuscany, but by living somewhere which you can then write about, not as an Australian, but as a kind of world citizen. Being Australian, I do see, is very specific. My book Utz is nearly out and a copy follows under separate cover. All my love to you both,
Bruce
He’s still incredibly weak and immobilised. I wrote to his dictation. I really hope we’ll be able to make it in the winter but he certainly couldn’t do anything at the moment. We may be starting a new form of therapy tomorrow and I hope they’ll take him on and that there’s a chance of success – love,
Elizabeth
To Ninette Dutton
[Elizabeth’s handwriting] Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 28 August 1988
Dearest Nin,
I haven’t really been sick except that I had undiagnosed malaria for 13½ months and the fungus came back, necessitating a blood transfusion and the nurse put blood straight from the fridge into my system, thereby completely screwing up the nerves in my legs and hands. I am much better but it is incredibly slow to repair anything to do with the nervous system. I hope to be much better by the winter and we’re both looking forward to coming to Australia. Any chance of being able to stay with you for an extended period? I hope to be writing again by then.
We see a lot of Rebecca Hossack863 these days.
Much love, Bruce
Nin – I wrote this at his dictation. I just hope he will be able to travel. We are embarking on a new course of therapy/alternative medicine this week to see if they can do anything to strengthen him and get the nerves repaired. Pray for him – Elizabeth.