Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  True nomads watch the passing of civilisation with equanimity; so does China, the unique combination of civilisation and barbarism. There is a good Egyptian text to illustrate the patronising attitude of the super-civilised in his self-confident days. ‘The miserable Asiatic . . . he does not live in one place but his feet wander . . . he is not conquered, neither does he conquer. He may plunder a lonely settlement but he will never take a populous city.’ Civilisations destroy themselves; nomads have never (to my certain knowledge) destroyed one, though they are never far away at the kill, and may topple a disintegrating structure. The civilised alone have control of their identity, and I do not believe in any of the cyclical theories of decline, fall and rebirth.

  Now for today. We may have enough food even, but we certainly do not have enough room. Marshall McLuhan asks us to accept that literacy, the lynch-pin of civilisation is OUT; that electric technology is by-passing the ‘rational processes of learning’ and that jobs and specialists are things of the past. ‘The world has become a Global Village,’ he says. Or is it Mobile Encampments? ‘The expert is the man who stays put.’ Literature, he says, will disappear and the social barriers are coming down; everyone is free for the higher exercises of the mind (or spirit?). One thing is certain – the Paterfamilias, that bastion of civilisation (not the matriarch) is right OUT.

  McLuhan is correct in much of his analysis of the effects of the new media. He does not seem to appreciate their probable long-term consequences. They are likely to be rather less than comfortable. The old nostalgic dream of a free classless society may indeed now be possible. But there are too many of us and there would have to be a drastic drop in population. Much of the world’s population is on the move as never before, tourists, businessmen, itinerant labour, drop-outs, political activists etc. Like the nomads who first sat on a horse, we have again the means for total mobility. As anyone who owns a house knows, it is often cheaper to move than to stay. But this new Internationalism has activated a new parochialism. Separatism is rampant. Minorities feel threatened; small exclusive groups splinter off. The £50 travel allowance was not imposed for purely academic reasons.

  Are these two trends not representative of the two basic human characteristics I mentioned earlier?

  Yours ever,

  Bruce Chatwin

  P.S. Sorry I have a fiendish typewriter. B.C.

  On 26 February 1969 Deborah Rogers submitted Chatwin’s letter to Maschler. ‘The idea is emerging with greater clarity as he progresses, despite the intentional looseness and preambly-ness of the enclosed. The next stage is probably for him to tackle a full chapter.’ Maschler replied to Chatwin on 3 March 1969: ‘I read the synopsis you will be amused to know in my cottage in the Black Mountains, surrounded by deep snow for miles in all directions. The book is indeed beginning to take shape, and to look exciting. Deborah mentioned that before you move onto the next stage, that is to say, you tackle a full chapter, you would like to see me again . . . I have a hunch, as we say.’ On 13 March 1969 Maschler wrote again: ‘I do just want to put into writing that I am convinced it will be an important book. Important in the way The Naked Ape was important . . . I very much look forward to the first chapters of the book just as soon as you can manage them.’

  To Tom Maschler

  c/o David Nash | 42 Eaton Square | London | 12 May 1969

  Dear Tom,

  I was delighted to get your letter. I’m sorry I didn’t answer before, but my wife thought it was a bill and kept it from me. I have just returned from Tunis where I bought some South Sea sculpture213 and tried to see some Sahara nomads, who, poor things, hardly exist in that mean little country. Algeria must be a better bet for them. Next week I hope to go to Le Mans. I have a new friend, a self-employed motor bicycle ace, who follows a prescribed range from Grand Prix to Grand Prix, and shows all the characteristics of a true nomad.

  I am delighted with Desmond Morris’s comments.214 He’s very kind to bother. I too have come to the same conclusion. The word NOMAD must go. It is too vague unless used in its strictest sense, that is a ‘wandering herdsman’, and too loaded with emotional prejudices. In my view hobos and other dropouts are not nomads at all. They are vagrants. Nomadic wandering is purposive, and is usually contained within a fixed home range or territory. Vagrancy is aimless. I would have thought that the Jet Set are vagrants along with the tramps. After all both are parasitic, and one could never describe them as socially secure in this age. Their ‘fabulous fixed home bases’ are little more than temporary encampments.

  Taking him up on his first point, total nomadism, herdsmen permanently on the move, evolved as a technology, in direct competition to the city’s control over surrounding agricultural lands. The first true nomads came later than the first urban populations. To talk of hunting nomads or nomadic apes, as everyone does, is stretching the point.

  I am leaving England in mid June to follow the Silk Route with Peter Levi. It’s also the hippie route to Nepal. I’ll be away about three months. I have been reading heavily in the literature of animal behaviour for my first chapter. When it’s ready do you think Desmond Morris would look over it?

  As ever, Bruce

  Is Deborah back?

  To Tom Maschler

  c/o David Nash | 42 Eaton Square | London | 15 May 1969

  Dear Tom,

  The first will be a Wandering Beast chapter, preceded by an introduction. This you will have by October as I don’t think it will be watertight before I go, although most of the notes are ready. I estimate that the manuscript should be ready to hack together by this time next year, that is providing we don’t decide to enlarge it with a section on the Lone American, who is beginning to be a much more significant figure than I had imagined.

  Desmond Morris has a very good point about the contrast of nomad and civilisation. I am beginning to think that there are two interlocking sets of ideas here which I should separate. The second set I should write as a sort of anarchist tract to be called the BARBARIC ALTERNATIVE,

  as ever, B

  On 26 May 1969 Stuart Piggott received a letter from Chatwin ‘admitting that the idea of his becoming an academic archaeologist was a mistake and formally withdrawing’. Meanwhile, Chatwin prepared for his Afghan journey with Peter Levi.‘It was evident archaeology was over for him,’ says the Italian archaeologist Maurizio Tosi, whom Chatwin introduced to Levi at Campion Hall. ‘His references to archaeology were mainly humorous . . . He spent one full day with me at the Institute of Archaeology to photograph pot shards from Baluchistan which I had been studying. But it was very much like an elder brother helping the naïve dreams of his younger brother. His eyes were shining with excitement only when he spoke about the trip to Afghanistan which he and Peter were to undertake that summer.’ Chatwin invited Elizabeth to join them in August.

  To Peter Levi

  c/o Robert Erskine | 2 Cambridge Place | London | [May 1969]

  Dear Peter,

  Help! The Afghan Embassy have issued me with a transit visa of one week only. They require now that you write a supporting letter saying that I am going with you. What a performance. I suppose they imagine that I was some sort of hippie, and there was a terrible scene in which the consul was determined not to lose face. Can you please write two letters, one to him, the other to me. He says it’ll only take a day. It is the never never land of the nearly impossible!

  As ever, B

  PS We both need 3 month visas and must say so.

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  c/o British Embassy | Kabul | Afghanistan | 6 July 1969

  Have just been up a mountain at 12,000 ft and we’re both feeling rather whacked out from the heat. We’re hiring a Land-Rover for a fortnight at vast expense but it does seem to be the best way of getting about. Very comfortably installed in the Embassy in a wholly unreal atmosphere of the latter day British Empire.

  XXX B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  c/o British Embassy | Kabul | Afghanistan | 12 July 1969


  We went to Isfahan by air at a vast extravagance. British School in Teheran was populated by the most awful Cambridge archaeologists you can imagine. Breathing tomb fungus. We barged in on the Bala Hissar, a military fort, and both got lashed at by a very irate infantryman with his belt. Very uncomfortable but in fact quite funny. Flowers are still marvellous. Ambassadress a botanist. Have arranged to stay with the second secretary.215 Would you be prepared to come at a cable’s notice. Get your jabs, visa etc NOW for Afghanistan. Prepare to leave early August.

  To Kenneth Rose

  c/o British Embassy | Kabul | Afghanistan | 12 July 1969

  The embassy was built to the order of Curzon to dominate Kabul. Kabul grew the other way and it is now stranded like an English country house. There no flowers grow that one wouldn’t find in the Home Counties. As I sit one can hear the noise of tennis balls and click of croquet mallets. We are off to Badakhstan in a day or so. By mistake we infringed the military area in the Bala Hissar and were belted by an outraged infantryman, inflamed by the heat of the day and our retreating hindquarters . . . Bruce

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  c/o British Embassy | Kabul | Afghanistan | 21 July 1969

  Dear E.

  Have just returned from the mountains of Ghor, and have visited the minaret of Jam etc on horse 4 day trek. Cholera raging in Herat and there’s no question of getting out of Afghanistan while it continues. Also (wait for it) I have seen and photographed The Mausoleum of Gohar Shad in the heart of a military area being the first (I believe) person to do so except for a Russian lady from Tashkent, and this is the monument that D[erek] has been longing to get at for years but was refused permission. I simply got myself up in a turban and fitted a jeep with Afghans, presented bottles of coca cola to the soldiers and drove by. Whoopee! I hope that I have been taking some rather sensational photos and so I am not too discouraged about finance. Guy H216 should have paid you £312.10.0 already and they will owe me the same amount on Aug 25 as they are back-dating my retainer (which I have accepted and the hell with the rest of all those backbiters!). So what I suggest is this – that as it is really bloody hot here, and as Peter, I think, is quite ill – drinking bad water against my advice – and also as I am only going to pay rather a perfunctory visit to Pakistan – that we meet somewhere in Western rather than Central Asia on or around Aug 25th. This will have given me time to photograph the North – I have permissions to go right up to the Oxus and Badakshan – go to photograph Nuristan for a few days – pass on to Swat, Dir and Hunza then fly back from Lahore or Karachi. Now as always when I am festering away in exotic climates I have a longing for CIVILISATION with a capital C. and I suggest that the best thing may be for you to drive the car to Rome/or Athens if you can face it though I don’t really see much point except that I may have rather a lot of books to carry home – having extricated the £812 from Guy Hannon on say Aug 10 instead of the 24th. You would then fly either to Teheran (which I doubt the merit of) or to Cairo depending on whether they want me there) or to Cyprus (if I can get there from Cairo – which I must be able to do via Beirut) or possibly Ankara or Istanbul. I will certainly take you to Istanbul as I want to go and look at the Fatih Album properly. We will go to Patmos to stay with Teddy [Millington-Drake]. In short I think the best way of arranging all this may be as follows. You meet me in Cairo – car in Athens or alone. My baggage sent on ahead from Kabul – air freight – we then go by air to Cyprus – boat to Rhodes – Patmos – cross to Turkey (Smyrna) Istanbul – Athens and back. How’s that?217 Then on the return through Italy Tuscany etc and the Dordogne late Sept.

  I have realised several things on this trip. You know – they are very good for me. They act as purgatives. a. I have decided to condemn Miss Smallclothes . . . and that lot to a bottomless perdition and not to speak to them again. b. I am pleased about it and have decided to act upon it. c. I am going to be a serious, and systematic writer d. I am fed to the back teeth by the happy hippie hashishish culture, (jail is the answer) and the artworld (finally) and the little Bo-Peeps Corps,218 and it’s just as well one isn’t a member of the drop-out generation (just). e. I love you.

  XXXX B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Postcard of camels, Nekzad Market | Kabul | Afghanistan | 21 July 1969

  This CANCELS letter if you get either in time. Finance isn’t all that bad in view of Christie’s extra £600. Please COME now. Take the car to ROME and fly via Teheran. On arrival contact Chris Rundle 2nd Sec at Embassy who will put you up if we are out of town, as we are leaving for 10 days to the NORTH. We will then all go to Nuristan before going to W. Pakistan. On return I want to have a few days in Teheran before flying to CAIRO if Christie’s want me to. If you come later than Aug 1st here there is really no point in spending all that money for 3 weeks. I fancy a drive through Italy and France as an antidote to all this. Guy Hannon will I am sure give you extra cash as my retainer which was backdated to March comes due on Aug 24. Please bring basic minimum in clothing as I am horribly overweight and am contemplating AIR-freighting my stuff to Rome or England from here. Please ensure that yr cholera is OK as there is a scare. 15 rolls Colour Ektachrome 35 shots to each. Ask Semple219 to give you £100 if he wants me to buy cheap and v. good kelims, dhurries etc. More if he can spare it as there is plenty to be bought. I’ll account to him. If you can’t make it please cable and I suggest we meet up in Cairo Athens or Istanbul. Mrs Seiferbitch,220 Madame Smallclothes, Master Rash and the ever-exploding S221 can all boil in their own filth. xxxxxx B.

  Pay for fare if poss. Also get £200 from Hannon. Finance not so desperate. £1250 from Xties. Good prospects for book etc

  To Derek Hill

  Patmos | Greece | 19 September 1969

  Well, I have a couple of tiles from Masud’s Palace (probably) at Ghazni. I jolly nearly got out a large piece of marble frieze, but honestly showed it to the Museum who promptly seized it. This shows honesty does not pay necessarily. I am longing to see you. I hope with successful photographs of the Mausoleum of Gohar Shad at Khosan – probably the most beautiful of all Timurid buildings. AND those of the Nouh Goumbed at Balkh which escaped the notice of the ever-unobservant French though they surveyed and excavated not half a mile away – a mosque of the 9th century with brick work as fine as Sultan Ismail at Bokhara and vine scroll stuccos finer and earlier than Naylu. Have also located but not seen the Gate of the Arabs which has a brick mosque probably of the 10th/11th Cent at 11,000 ft in the Hindu Kush.

  To Peter Levi

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | [Winter 1969]

  Dear Peter,

  I have just found a piece of paper on which is scrawled in your handwriting ‘The 9th Century Mosque at Balkh, the Lion Throne, 4 copies of the horse photo.’ The horse photo I trust you now have. In enlargement you really do have a savage look . . .

  I shall be going to America immediately after Christmas to devote myself to many forms of Oriental art and, worse, people devoted to Oriental Art. Thence I shall go to Morocco, I suppose to devote myself to Orientals, if such they can be called in the Far West.

  Very interesting the use of the word ‘nomad ’ as a term of abuse in the Sharon Tate murder case.222 ‘A band of hate oriented 20th century nomads’ is as bad a condemnation as one can get. I have written two chapters of my book. Then I decided they were boring. So they will have to be rewritten. If only I didn’t have an argument to follow. Arguments are fatal. One always forgets what they’re about.

  Love, Bruce

  PS Try and come here before you go.

  Late in 1969, at Howard Hodgkin’s house near Bath, Chatwin met the American film director James Ivory. A friend of Cary Welch, who nicknamed him ‘Jungle Jim’, Ivory was preparing to make his fourth feature film, ‘Bombay Talkie’.

  To James Ivory

  9 Kynance Mews223 | London | December 8 1969

  Dear Jim,

  I have just returned to a grey London from the country, where I have written a chapter of
my book, and decided on the train that the whole thing must be rewritten. This evening I am spending with someone called Galt MacDermott who wrote the music of Hair. In a moment of enthusiasm, or rather infatuated by a member of the cast,224 I wrote a scenario for a musical one bright spring day. It has been languishing around ever since, but now sparks from elsewhere, scriptwriters, lyric writers and musicians. What a performance! The Living Theatre. And furthermore lunch with Noel Coward on Friday. I’m a sucker for theatrical camp. Hence the Mongol outfit.