Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Rochester is a far cry from Kardamyli: it so happens that both loom large in my life: my in-laws (alas, now separated) live in the Genesee valley. Above address is reasonably permanent. Have just been following the route of the Vikings down the Volga.581 Hence the card. As ever Bruce

  Penelope Betjeman had introduced Chatwin to the central characters in On the Black Hill and was one of the first to read the finished novel. On 10 June 1982 she wrote to Chatwin: ‘When St Thomas Aquinas was dying he had a VISION and when he came to he made the following statement (with which you are no doubt familiar!). “All that I have written is like STRAW compared with the things I have now seen.”All that you have written previously: your two books etc. are like STRAW compared to On the Black Hill. I have been walking all day in a DAZE after finishing it. I think it will prove to be the greatest regional novel of the century, as good as anything Hardy wrote.’

  The novel’s publication in the autumn was accompanied by a television programme on ITV’s The South Bank Show. In November 1982 it won the Whitbread Prize in the first novel category, the judges appearing to overlook The Viceroy of Ouidah as a work of fiction.

  CHAPTER NINE

  THE SONGLINES: 1983-5

  Still fragile after an operation in St Thomas’s Hospital, possibly for haemorrhoids or else connected with his ‘dread stomach disorder’, Chatwin chose to recuperate as far as possible from England. On 19 December 1982 he gathered up the card index of The Nomadic Alternative – ‘a mishmash of nearly indecipherable jottings, “thoughts”, quotations, brief encounters, travel notes, notes for stories’ – and flew to Sydney.‘. . . I planned to hole up somewhere in the desert, away from libraries and other men’s work, and take a fresh look at what they contained.’ Elizabeth expressed her relief to Gertrude: ‘I’m glad he’s finally gone as he’s had a fixation about it for years. He’ll either love it or hate it, but he might find it a vehicle for the nomads or it’ll finish him off.’

  To Francis Wyndham

  c/o Ben Gannon | 11 Gaerlich Avenue | Bondi | Sydney | Australia | 11 January 1983

  Dearest F.,

  It was such a treat to get your cable. Good for Sir Victor!582 The whole US publication seems to be going off rather well. An over the top review on the front page of the NY Times Book Supplement by Robert Towers, rather missing, however, the point. An equally over-the-top effort by John Leonard in the Daily Times – though I strongly resent classifying The Viceroy of Ouidah as ‘homoerotic and sadomasochistic’. In fact the Time review was, from my point of view, the best of all – in that he got the message of the ‘still centre’. However, I cannot possibly complain: the reviewers over there are simply far more attentive readers. On the B.H. is also, I may say, no. 4 of the Sydney Morning Herald’s hardback best-seller list . . .

  I have to say I’m enjoying it here. Glorious summer days. A wonderful doctor seems to have completely restored me to health. In a week or so, I’m thinking of taking off into drought-stricken New South Wales. The dust is the worst in living memory.

  Penelope and Ricky583 send their love.

  All mine to you and to James [Fox] etc.

  Bruce

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  c/o Penelope Tree | 19a Eastbourne Rd | Darling Point | Sydney | Australia | 12 January 1983

  Dear Charles and Margharita,

  Well, I must say I’m feeling extremely revived. I seem to have recovered totally in the sun and wide open spaces. Physically, Australia is definitely for me: the land is so beautiful, and you get none of that terrible usurped quality I always feel about America. But so far, I’ve really done nothing, except recuperate, read books, windsurf and go to aerobics class in the gym with Penelope Tree. She, as you may know, was once the most photographed model in the world: but has now decided that she can’t bear either England or the US and has settled here.

  On the Black Hill is going great guns in the US. The idea of a ‘still centre’ is apparently something of real attraction to the American reading public; and they’ve already reprinted, and are thinking of a third. I’m left with a tremendous problem as to what to do next, and have temporarily exhausted myself doing articles I didn’t want to write. The instant I arrived here I was pursued like by the Furies, by a string of telegrams; ‘will I write just 2000 words, on this, that or the other?’ It can really give you such a profound distaste for writing that you long to take up landscape gardening or whatever.

  Next week, however, I am clearing out of town with my rucksack, and will be more or less incommunicado for a month. I want to go to some of the Aboriginal reservations in the heart of the country; and if possible to Broome, the pearling town in the far North West. I am hoping that the concept of the new book will begin to germinate, however blank I feel about it at present. With so many ‘cooked-up’ books knocking around, I don’t really believe in writing unless one has to.

  I’m gearing up to the point when I tackle ringing up all six of the J.J. James’s584 in the phone book.

  Much love

  B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  c/o Penelope Tree | 19a Eastbourne Rd | Darling Point | Sydney | Australia | 12 January 1983

  Dear E,

  This, I must say, is the country to settle in. You’ve no idea how beautiful the land is, and the climate, just on the fringe of the arid and wet zones. Rolling farm land, forests, vines, and none of that terrible property-mad usurpation you find in the U.S. The Hunter valley is like Provence or Tuscany but Anglo-Saxon. Wine and food delicious. And the trees! The Australian section of the Sydney Botanical garden is incredible, not just for the gums and banksias but hundreds and hundreds of other species. Also all the great flowering trees of temperate China seem to grow here as well. Of course, on one level, it’s a complete Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, really very far away from the rest of the world; and it’s going through a recession; but if anywhere has an underlying optimism this is it. I think really a combination of things like the Malvinas (as I now persist in calling them) and Paul Bailey’s snarky review585 have made me feel so irreversibly un-English that I really had better start doing something about it.

  On the Black Hill is apparently going great guns in the U.S. The reviews such as I’ve seen are not simply favourable; they understand what’s going on. Robert Towers on the front page of the New York Times Supplement completely got the hang, but the one that pleased me most was the man in Time, and the concept of the ‘still centre’. Anyway, all this makes very little impact on my tremendous difficulty dreaming up what to do next. I have an idea – yes. A relatively outlandish one, that will take me to Broome in the Far North West, or rather to a place called Beagle Bay. I have a card index of the old nomad book to plunder – but God knows what’ll happen.

  In the meantime, we surf, sunbathe, windsurf, and go to an aerobics class in the gym. Am vastly recovered but after such an infection am bound to feel a bit crotchety for a while. xxx B

  Penelope will take messages or Benny Gannon’s586 secretary at 02-357-XXXX

  To Deborah Rogers

  c/o Ben Gannon | 11 Gaerloch Avenue | Bondi | Sydney | Australia | 23 January 1983

  Dear Deborah,

  The sky is so blue, the sea is so blue, and the surfers so unbelievably elegant that the room in which I have been trying to write has not seen much actual writing . . . for the next month or so I shall be in the Outback and really quite unavailable. I think I’m on the trail of something.

  The ‘something’ had been gestating in his system a long while, and stemmed from a conversation Bruce had had, back in 1970, with the Australian archaeologist John Mulvaney at the Pitt-Rivers Museum in Oxford. Chatwin – then curating his exhibition of nomadic art – had sought out Mulvaney in the hope he might be able to shed light on the nature of human restlessness. In particular, ‘I wanted to know about the “walkabout”, but you can hardly find it in the literature.’ Mulvaney, apparently – he has no recollection of the meeting – had pointed Chatwin in the direction of the anthropolo
gist Theodor Strehlow, who had lived and worked with Aboriginals in Central Australia. ‘He is the man who really knows. You ought to come and see him.’

  Strehlow had died in 1978, but his widow Kath lived in Adelaide. On 28 January Chatwin turned up at her house wishing to purchase a copy of Strehlow’s Songs of Central Australia, a difficult book, long-ignored and virtually impossible to get hold of.

  ‘When Bruce introduced himself on the phone, my words to him were: “Let me say hello to the first man in the world who’s read it.”’

  Kath sold him an unbound proof. ‘I put a map in the back so he could see where the songlines were.’ She also produced her husband’s daybooks and diaries for him to read. The next couple of hours defined Chatwin’s next three years. ‘I sat down, only for a morning,’ he said, ‘and I suddenly realised everything that I rather hoped these songlines would be, just were.’

  Revitalised, Chatwin flew to Alice Springs to study Strehlow’s book in situ and test his theory. ‘I wanted to find how it worked.’

  To Elisabeth Sifton

  Alice Springs | Australia | 7 February 1983

  My dear Elisabeth,

  I wonder if you could ask Altie587 to help. Iris Harvey who runs a magnificent bookshop in Alice Springs has been trying without success to buy copies of a book republished by the Johnson reprint Co. but cannot get a reply to her letters. The book is by the late Prof T. G. H. Strehlow,588 Aranda Traditions and is an essential work for the study of Australian anthropology – indeed perhaps the reason for my being here in Australia. Mrs Harvey believes that Johnson have a remnant stock of about 500; and if so she’d like to buy up as many as possible. Could Altie, therefore, find out a. the address and phone no. of Johnson b. the name of the person in charge to whom Mrs Harvey could communicate. I believe that the reprint houses who xerox the original edition have a system of being able to reorder copies of course at extra cost. I don’t know if that is still done.

  Much love

  B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Haasts Bluff Aboriginal Reservation | Alice Springs | Australia | 7 February 1983

  The Aboriginals though infinitely fascinating are also infinitely sad: so sad, in fact, that I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that to write a book about them would be impossible. And as for the arid outback, it would be another In Patagonia minus the poetic dimension. Should be back mid to late March. XXX B

  To David Thomas589

  Alice Springs | Australia | 20 February 1983

  At first I was dumbstruck with horror. Alice is a hornet’s nest – of drunks, Pommie-bashers, earnest Lutheran missionaries, and apocalyptically-minded do-gooders. Gradually, however, I’m learning to live with it. A day or two in town . . . five or more out bush. The complexity of the Aboriginal Dreaming Tracks (bad expression) is so staggeringly complex, and on such a colossal scale, intellectually, that they make the Pyramids seem like sand castles. But how to write about them – without spending 20 years here?

  Always

  Bruce

  To Diana Melly

  c/o Ben Gannon | 11 Gaerloch Avenue | Bondi | Sydney | Australia | 1 March [1983]

  Dearest Di,

  Last night I got back to Sydney and we sat up watching Bob Hawke become the new Prime Minister. Secretly, although one can’t say so, I think they’ll regret it: not because he’s LEFT or Republican etc but because he has the meanest mouth imaginable and terribly shifty eyes. However . . .

  I have been on a marathon, extremely expensive zig-zag across the continent from Adelaide, rip through Alice Springs, over to Broome and the Kimberleys, down to Perth and back: Georgie590 will probably have told you how I tracked him down to a sort of rustic amphitheatre in the forest.

  You fry in the Centre of Australia: but I can’t complain. I never once FELL for the country, except perhaps in the most abstract way with the landscape. The Aboriginal situation is too disheartening, the whites so disjointed, or plainly disagreeable, but I did, often enough, light on a situation that grabbed my attention. Also, I do have what I was looking for: the ‘Australia’ peg on which to hang my ‘nomadic’ material. The title is to be ‘A Monk by the Sea’ – where, indeed, I found him: a Cistercian ascetic591 who had lived in London, entered this most severe monastic order, worked on an Aboriginal mission, and then had returned to a hermitage of corrugated sheet (the cross was made by a pair of crossed oars, washed up by a cyclone) on the most abstract beach in N. Australia. He also happened to be obsessed by the story of the Israelites wandering in the desert, by Sufism, Taoism etc. Anyway, I have begun to sketch . . .

  I intend to do a trilogy of 3 tiny novels which can all be bound together. 1. The Monk (affairs of the spirit) 2. A new story I’ve been told of a black woman and a Scandinavian diplomat 3. The old tale of the man with porcelains in Prague.

  We shall see . . .

  The news of Donald [Richards] is that he’s landed himself – after weeks of angst – with a wonderful job – as Deputy Director of the ‘Future’ Brisbane Festival. It was absolutely impossible to have him moping around, penniless and frustrated, and he’s already become a creature transformed. As far as readjusting to Australia, it couldn’t be better. He seemed excessively nervous here in Sydney, and has now returned to his own.592 So, as usual, I seem to have been sprung back to my usual condition . . . THE ROAD . . .

  As for the US reception of On the B.H. Well! Review after review with endless comparisons . . . How they love comparisons! Hardy, Spencer, D.H. Lawrence, Vermeer. The review I most liked was in the Houston Globe: ‘If you really want to sit by the fireside, going grey with a cameo tied round your neck, listening to a two-piece orchestra banging out the same old tune, good for you. As for me, I’m off to find my own excitement in the West Loop . . .’ After a 10 minute read with Penelope Tree the whole lot enjoyed the hospitality of her garbage can . . .

  I do hope Candy’s593 all right. How terribly worrying for you. I have to say that although she’s very sweet, touching etc I could also BRAIN that Sophia594. Though I never met Marco I remember the whole thing starting. I took her to dinner one winter night in Siena, and she told me all about him. I remember having forebodings at the time – because, though they can’t help it, those upper-class girls can be terribly and wantonly destructive. The Jasper Guinness595 set in Tuscany has really a lot to answer for.

  Plans? I can’t begin to say. I want to go and hide and write. But can’t decide whether to stay here or come back in April. Am feeling very pushed and pulled.

  I really do have a mountain of mail – so here’s all my dearest love. B

  To Paul Theroux

  Postcard of ‘The Breakaway’ by Tom Roberts (Australian artist, 1856-1931) | Sydney | Australia | 7 March 1983

  All going well down-under – with a new Republican Prime Minister poised to cut the umbilical cord from the Mutterland. Have become interested in a very extreme situation – of Spanish monks in an Aboriginal Mission and am about to start sketching an outline. Anyway, the crisis of the ‘shall-never-write-another-line ’ sort is now over. As always Bruce

  In mid-March Chatwin flew to Jakarta to meet Jasper Conran, the young couturier to whom he had been introduced the previous summer at a restaurant in Greece. Twenty years younger than Chatwin, Jasper was more intellectually matched to him than was Donald Richards, whose relationship with Chatwin had petered out over the New Year. ‘I was in love,’ says Jasper. ‘It was very much my first love. There was nobody like him. He was gorgeous and he knew it. To be clever, witty and bright is a devastating combination.’ In Indonesia, the two of them swam out over the reefs, looked for Indian textiles and, in Java, visited the ninth-century Buddhist temple of Borobudur, parking outside a bat cave. On 6 April Chatwin returned to Sydney running a high fever.

  To Deborah Rogers

  c/o Ben Gannon | Sydney | Australia | 18 April 1983

  Dearest Deborah,

  I shall be back soon . . . Australia, I’m afraid, has been a bit of a flop. I feel a bit t
he same way as Lawrence in Kangaroo.596 Flat, dried out, alienated. None of the rich vein of fantasy you can tap by simply landing in S. America.

  Oh Well! I have at least got one thing of inordinate fascination which can be worked into an essay. Then I’m rearing to go into more fiction. Sorry for this negative note: perhaps conditioned by the hideous food poisoning I got in Java last week.

  To Lydia Livingstone597

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 4 June 1983

  Darling Lydia,

  Over a rather gloomy pre-election lunch (all the vegetables, in the middle of summer, were canned!) both Mr [James] Fox and I agreed that the best thing in Australia is Lydia Livingstone. His drama continues slowly: but I’m sure that, in his slow and thoughtful way, he’s going to find a solution. Anyway, this is just to say how infuriating it is to think you’re so far away BUT I am coming back. I had Mr H598 on the phone for half an hour this morning from Melbourne. The money is there; the Aboriginal half of the cast is being ‘rounded up’ – or is that expression too strong? – and shooting is supposed to start on August 15th. I’ll fly probably direct to Melbourne around the 5th. What I long for is that you should come to Coober Pedy in some nebulous but alluring capacity. You with your finely-tuned sense of the ridiculous would, I think, also enjoy it.