Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  So I wouldn’t worry if I were you. The thing with me is that if I break the continuity it always goes to pot. This has happened before, but as I hope to remain comfortably installed in Blomfield Road it should be OK. Incidentally it’s the nicest place to live in London and really convenient because the Oxford motorway streams right by. There is none of that Cromwell Roadism, it’s also very convenient for the West End and the City.

  In spite of my screamings or I suppose because of them the Vogue article appeared with title. The typography made it look as though it had the title NOMADS, and the shrieks of acid laughter were not quite as loud as I feared. Lesson learned. Never write an article for the fashionable press after a hangover in two hours. It doesn’t pay off in the end.

  I am really quite worried about Charles [Tomlinson]. For three years he has worked on translations of the poetry of Ungaretti.309 Oxford guaranteed to publish etc. Now he has found that some snake who he told about it, extracted from Ungaretti’s publisher the rights to all translations in English, and Charles can’t even publish at all. Coupled with that he is really ill. Now I think this is something we must look into. He has a permanent pain in his intestine on the right side accompanied by a constant urge to pee and couldn’t eat anything for days. But before Christmas I had exactly the same. I couldn’t sit at the typewriter because of the agony in my stomach, coupled with really terrible nervous depressions. C[harles] says it was so bad for him some years ago that he went to the Bristol Hospital with suspected kidney disease for check ups and they found NOTHING. I went up to the Doctor in London three times and he found nothing. I am having the water tested. I am quite decided it isn’t my fertile imaginations. It is quite definitely something biological in the water, local virus etc. God knows! But we really must find out.

  Great drama. A rogue sewage lorry dumped all its filthy effluent on the drive in that open patch. We i.e the police and I believe the Spyvees310 put them up to it. If I wasn’t in so financially tight straits I’d have sued both of them. The only thing I have made them do without going to court is to cover the whole thing with lime. Really filthy. I think it does give us a stronger hand with the Glos. C.C. over the private road, and when you come back you and C.L.C. [Charles Chatwin] should have another go at getting it closed.

  Am taking a few days off actually to write an article on the horrors of Konrad Lorenz for the New York Review. I’ve really got him. ‘The Jews, through inbreeding have formed a tumerous growth in a civilised nation.’ ‘Tolerance towards the inferior is a danger for the people.’ I also have a new friend Lord Chalfont311 who helps my schemes. Although this is the nadir of our fortunes, I am not sure that one or two little plans are not working out.

  Lights have gone on again. Thank God! We’ve had the worst frosts ever. Today I looked in at Roger Warner312 and bought a very nice old boomerang and three of those cloche tops with rather ropy bottoms which we could easily have fixed, or have new ones made. The border at the back of the house my dear is going to be a blaze in fact not a blaze at all because it’s all white and soft blue and yellow and greyish green. I think you ought to have a plant licence, because if you come through Afghanistan in April you’ll be able to get handy with your trowel. One thing very nice. Japanese winter flowering cherry, about twelve willows. Magnolia Sieboldii if it survives, a dream my dear a dream.

  Robert Skelton313 is going to get Penelope’s camera equipment out to her by Feb 11 if I can’t come out. He has someone going, and they will be dropped off at the High Commission in Delhi. She can use my camera if she likes on condition she replaces anything lost, and repairs all defects.314

  Your mother has been getting your letters because I have heard from her. I wrote asking her to send another Cape Cod lighter which Linda finally broke. Chatty letter in return to the effect that your father had sprained or broken something and she’d fallen from a horse. Thank God you did not buy the Encylopaedia.315 Never heard such a ridiculous idea. In India of all places.

  I hope you bought the Maharajah’s Dumbbells.316 They sound very nice. Kitty Puss is fatter than she was. She went through a bad patch, but is now better. Probably pining.

  PLANS AGAIN. Will you cable me where you are on Jan 28th-Feb 7th and I will let you know mine. I think that’s the best way of leaving things. If by then, the thing is looking like completion within a reasonable time I will come out maybe just on an ordinary return fare for a month or so if the return journey can be sorted out. I’d no idea you were going to be in Bombay as we were without news till yesterday when the letters from both Bombay and Hyderabad came together.

  Lovely New Years party at Susanna’s317 then passed on to the Erskines – and horrors. I have never been in a room with so many people lacking one redeeming physical feature.

  Have decided to do nothing about UTA and Ceylon. Too complicated. You don’t any way know how lucky you are not to have to face the flight!

  Cable if you’d like your reactions to Plans. Address c/o Ghika, 27 Blomfield Road, London W.9

  Love as ever, BBB BBBBBBB B No pen.

  P.S. Have just got here from the farm again, and after loading the car with books I think I’ve done my back in again. Agony. There’s really going to be no point in sitting cooped up in a car if it goes on, and frankly I become more and more convinced I won’t be able to make it. I did it shovelling earth into the border behind the back of the house. Sitting in a confined position makes it worse, and one has to have an upright chair with a pillow in the middle of the back.

  Write soon. Must get on with the New York Review article. Real acid. Love B

  P.P.S Had a sudden panic this morning as I couldn’t find this and wondered if I’d left it on the kitchen table for Linda to see.

  B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  c/o Ghika | 27 Blomfield Road | London | [but franked on envelope Lisbon | Hotel Tivoli] | 1 February 1971

  Dear E,

  What with the postal strike318 and everything closed here, how are we going to be in touch. Suggest the best thing as per my cable is to cable c/o G. Ortiz office in Paris, or c/o Jessie Wood, 16 bis Rue L’Abbé de l’Epee, Paris VI.

  Rather depressing here in London, and the book still grinds on with remorseless slowness. If I start at 9-30 in the morning and finish at four I am intellectually exhausted. In theory one ought to be able to go on all night, but it always turns out badly if I do.

  Went down to the farm last weekend for Sunday night to get some books. Everything is OK but Linda [Wroth] continues to rule. I wanted to go down this weekend but she rang on Tuesday and said it was inconvenient. We shall have to cut the tree in the lane as the oil people simply will not deliver any more until it is out. He breaks the driving mirror each time. Please give instructions, as I said the hedge ought to be laid and everyone else says you have said no. What also shall we do about the garden? I can’t dig any more even if I’m there. Shall I employ David Hann, Keith [Steadman]’s helper, to come and do some things or not. If so where’s the money coming from?

  My back’s still there. Some days it’s O.K. others not. Particularly bad with driving. Last night we had Stephanides and the Johnstons here for dinner, and Miranda [Rothschild] and I got frantic with boredom half way through. They arrived an hour late after the dinner was spoiled, and then batted on remorselessly about what Jeremy and Antonia, or Amabel and Clive were or were not doing with each other, stayed yacking till 1-30. God the English are a bore. I have never felt such a yearning to be something else.

  Let us know through Jessie [Wood] what your plans are and what you want me to do.

  Much love, XXX Bruce

  P.S. Have absolutely no money since the Maori fiasco but just manage as long as there are no expenses.

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  c/o 27 Blomfield Road | London | or as next week c/o Wood 16 bis Rue L’Abbé de l’Epee Paris VI | [February 1971]

  My dear E,

  Have just heard via Patrick Kinross319 that Jack Richards is bringing a lot of films
to Penelope and so I’m scrawling a few lines to catch you because the whole country has seized up with the postal strike – and I haven’t heard a word since about 5 weeks I thought it’d be a good opportunity. Apparently you can send cables via Western Union.

  The book isn’t bad but of course still not over. Oh God when will I get it done. I’ve worked and worked for example 8am to 12 midnight yesterday. I am beginning to think it’s rather good in parts at any rate but it is an endless drama of shuffling and reshuffling the component parts, turning passive verbs into active verbs etc. Miranda and Iain are going to Paris on Thursday and I am hitching a lift with them to give myself a break – collect the famous bed and get Iain [Watson] to bring it back in four days. Then I shall have the house to myself for about a couple of weeks and then Llama [Ghika] comes back. I would really then like to move back to the farm but because of the Linda situation I don’t know what to do. Shall I kick her out before you come back or leave her? Can’t stay under the same roof. Unbearably rude whenever I go. Apparently Sally [Westminster]’s broken something hunting320 so I must ring up. Sold some absolute rubbish inc. that Punic head brought in Tunis £68 and some others. Then I found another Moroccan shroud like ours. Rather beautiful £10. Finances bad but not so bad.

  Am writing the anti-Konrad Lorenz article with great excitement and this is going to be a bomb for NY Review of Books – already accepted.321 I would love to go away and will probably come and fetch you part of the way out. I would like some sort of instructions! I think now March-April for the book ending. The garden’s in chaos at the farm as there has never been so much as a trowel lifted except for my operations at the back of the house. But the vegetable patch – horrors!

  Miranda [Rothschild] has found out she has no female hormones!! and is turning into a man – imagine! Chaos with endless visits to the endoliologists. I cannot now decide if she wants to be a woman so the position is very complicated. She is having a long confab with Patrick Kinross (who sends his love) on the subject. M[iranda] has struck up a friendship with Gloria,322 Sedig and Da’ad are fast friends and make a great noise.

  My parents are well and had a funny time in Majorca. H[ugh]. P. C[hatwin] seems to be much better after his operation but my God what stitches all over his head.

  Bhutan is now off because I cannot do it in time. Just for the hell of it I have the permission forms in for September. What to do? As I say, have no plans till the bloody work is finished. One’s 30th year you know is make or break year. I’m rather superstitious about it. Must be over by May or something awful might happen. Having dinner with Magouche Phillips, very nice with paintings by Gorky.323 First line of the book – the best travellers are illiterate. Last line quotation from Chinese. To allow the people to pass freely for that is the Way of Heaven.

  Darling D[erek] here in London. We dined at the Johnstons on Wednesday and this weekend he has gone to Jim and Alvilde [Lees-Milne]. We shall have to have the hedge cut apparently. Also there is great trouble. The Middle East oil shortage means that oil is v scarce. We can’t get it at Blomfield Road. Send cable c/o Wood. Jessie has sent her Max Ernst to Sotheby’s and I get I/C.324 Still hopping mad with them, but am cushioned from the horrors by v amiable Thilo Von Watzdorf who works for Shellers325 and finds that my antipathy is mirrored in him.

  Oliver Hoare and I went to a Japanese masseuse.

  Everyone sends love.

  XXX

  Bruce

  On 29 March 1971, in response to an SOS from Elizabeth, Chatwin flew to Teheran to drive her back. She brought with her a 19-year-old Pathan boy, Ghulam Akbar, whom they had met a year before in Multan. They dropped Akbar off in Greece to sort out his Italian visa.

  To James Ivory

  Postcard from Achilleon | Corfu | [May 1971]

  . . . I had to go to Persia to bring back Elizabeth and her companions. Beautiful Persian spring followed by dismal Anatolian winter. Turkey does not unfreeze till May. A series of near calamities on the way – the loss of passports – then of Elizabeth’s Pathan in Brindisi found later by a friend of mine on the streets of Paris326. We shall be here till August at least while I try to finish my book. Great sessions yet to come. One month away has quite broken my train of thought and after one day I am already shaking with the malaise of settlement. I do hope I haven’t missed you

  love B

  On Friday 14 May 1971 Prince William of Gloucester unveiled a sculpture in St Mary Church of Grace, Apsall,in memory of Raulin Guild who had died five years earlier.

  To Ivry Freyberg

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 17 May 1971

  My Dear Ivry,

  Of course it was all perfect. The weather, the service and the lunch. It was as though we were all celebrating the gift of life. I don’t think anyone missed Raulin because he was quite emphatically there in everything we said and did.

  The sculpture is very beautiful. I think you did very well to commission it.

  Elizabeth sends her love and hopes to see you both soon.

  Much love

  Bruce

  Three years after buying Sarah Bernhardt’s Maori headboard, Chatwin sold it to Cary Welch for £3,000.

  To Cary Welch

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 17 May 1971

  Dear C.,

  I am having T. Rogers, Mason’s Yard, SWI send you Air Freight the Maori artwork. I’ve declared it for £1500 and insured it for £3000. Anyhow you get it through the customs as it’s not dutiable; have dated it circa 1800. I’ll let you have the details of its publication, a book by Portier and Someone else called Decoration Oceanienne327 which I have never seen. There is no hurry about payment at all, so take your time within reason, but please pay Gertrude Chanler or someone else of her choice in America, and not here, if that’s possible. The reason being she is helping me finance a flat in London and I will want the money to come from America anyway. With it I am sending the metal stand which hitches the thing up diagonally, two sort of hooks fitting through the open work. It will need a bit of experiment to see which hole fits, so don’t try and strain it. It does look marvellous on this stand because the line now follows the line of the house roof. With the exception of the pieces in Wellington and Auckland I have still yet to see a better piece of house decoration, and I don’t care what anyone says. The bits in the B[ritish] M[useum] and the Pitt-Rivers just simply lack the movement and that tornado quality. The reason for delay in writing is that I went to Persia to drive Elizabeth back, and had with one or two major tragedies a rather wonderful time. Saw the Q’ashgais on their spring migration which was thrilling, and for five days filled a British Embassy Land Rover full of sheep, tribesmen, women suckling babies etc.

  All well here. The Chanlers went yesterday. The Madame of Glyn goes into hospital to produce, one hopes, the Knightlet. I had to assist Prince William of Gloucester unveil a memorial plaque to a mutual friend who died, and imagine the shock when we saw the memorial underneath the veil – a sculpture of a boy, naked and beckoning in a Michelangelesque way with the caption under‘. . . of all sorts enchantingly beloved’. Not far from the truth and that was the trouble.

  Elizabeth’s young Pakistani friend Akbar couldn’t get into England and is now stuck in France, where he is adopted by the Rothschilds as their latest amusement and a lot of talk about the Lost Tribes of Israel. We are prevented from talking to him on the phone so jealously is he guarded. Very irresponsible performance on the part of everybody. O to finish the book. I wrote the last sentence before I went away. Since when some ideas have evaporated and new ones have taken their place. Two three perhaps four months of revision. But the general plan is an American autumn and a South American winter. Might we even all go to Maine or swan around the New Hampshire farm, which I am very keen to see. March is the very worst time to come to England with everyone at their level worst. Now the spring is here tempers are less frayed.

  love B

  PS have written to Jungle Jim [Ivory]. He will see you soon, com
e over for the festival of his filums in June??

  To Cary Welch

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | [June 1971]

  Dear Cary,

  I had just written you and yours came. So now I start again. Sarah Bernhardt has been sent via Rogers to Boston . . . As you know Sandy sold the thing to me three years ago, and he couldn’t sell it since. On the other hand Maori art is very very unfashionable. There was in Christie’s a marvellous huge canoe prow which was not as exciting as the Bernhardt and it only brought about £5,000. The argument obviously seems to centre on whether they are Pre – or just post-Cook, which is a magic word for the difference between metal or stone tools. Sandy emphatically believes it to be pre-Cook and bought it with the recommendation of Ken Webster, who as you may know was the great Maori expert in England and buyer for the New Zealand museums. He said it was pre-Cook. The centrepiece I know about and is apparently in a private collection in Paris. I have never been able to get to see the photograph of the three together and Miss Small Clothes never told me that she had a copy. She sold hers to Elliott328 for 12,000 dollars. I do know that. I think – and this was K.J[ohn] H[ewett]’s objection – that the principal argument against them is the way in which they are broken, but when you get it on the stand I have had made you will see that it hardly matters.