Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  I’m sorry this is the shortest possible communication. I have myself ONE day to grapple with a mountain of turgid mail. I bought 40 air-letter forms and am now down to five. So I know you’ll understand – this is not the best moment for enlightened correspondence. I feel quite awful about B[en] G[annon]. Two American cheques I gave him bounced because of the immense complications of my American account. Anyway it should be sorted out by now.

  All my love to you.

  XXXXX Bruce

  On their visit to Ayer’s Rock a year later, Chatwin would tell Salman Rushdie: ‘I’ve been very unhappy lately and for a long time I couldn’t work out why, and then I suddenly realised it was because I missed my wife. I sent her a telegram to meet me in Kathmandu and she sent a telegram back to say she would.’ The way Chatwin and Elizabeth got back together did not in fact begin with a judicious exchange of telegrams but with a telephone call from Sydney. When Esquire magazine offered Chatwin a commission ‘to go anywhere I want’, he telephoned Elizabeth at Homer End and asked her to suggest a place. ‘He said he’d like to go to the South Sea Islands or to Nepal. So I said Nepal. I’d never been there.’ He paid for his airfare to Kathmandu by reading In Patagonia in six instalments for ABC radio. In the middle of April the Australian novelist Murray Bail drove Chatwin to the Blue Mountains outside Sydney.‘I stepped back for him to admire the view, as you do up there. He looked at it for a second and then turned to me:“What’s the date today? Next week I’ll be at the base camp of Everest.” ’ One year younger than Chatwin, the dry-witted and well-read Bail – he had worked on the Times Literary Supplement – was to become one of his most regular correspondents.

  To Murray Bail

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

  Dear Murray,

  This is a very short communication. Before settling down to write, or at least to set down on paper, some of my Australian thoughts, I’ve set myself one day to grapple with a mountain of mail. I bought from the Sloane Square Post office 40 air-mail letters at 9am and at 7pm I am down to three. That says nothing about the English side.

  I loved our drive in the country.599 It should be the first of many more. I have in mind to rent a house in the Vaucluse for next winter, and if I do I’m going to try and tempt you over to Cézanne and Van Gogh country.

  England, as usual, is in a soupy pre-Fascist condition. The weather has been vile. But I have been hardened and burnished by a month of trekking around the base of Mount Everest, so I’m up to it, for a bit.

  Also I seem to be coming back to Australia in August, for five weeks, in connection with Werner Herzog’s film,600 and this will give me the opportunity to make another foray into the centre, at a less blistering time of year. Why don’t you come?

  In haste, and best to Margaret601

  as always

  Bruce

  To Lisa Van Gruisen602

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 13 June 1983

  Sunday

  My darling Lisa,

  It’s hard to write this letter because I have deep physical ache to be back in Nepal. Gradually, over the past couple of weeks, I already feel my knuckles whitening with impotent rage, and my guts twisting into knots. I had to write 75 letters. I had to cope with VAT. I watched the appalling spectacle of the election.603 I was subjected to bullying demands to do this and that. Esquire Magazine wanted me to rewrite the piece in terms of a Yeti-hunt604 – which as one damn well knows it wasn’t. Altogether I feel shredded and sliced. Now to cap everything, I’ve lost somewhere between my flat and E’s house my principal Australian notebook, without which I am truly sunk SUNK . . . SUNK . . . SUNK . . .

  I am sorry to gripe on: but you do see the contrast with one’s unalloyed happiness in Nepal, where I never for a second felt mildly annoyed. I’ll write again soon, hopefully in a better frame of mind. If you want the flat for a week or so, let me know and I’ll see if it works out. In the meantime there’s a vague warning: it is JUST conceivable that my American bank which of course is completely computerised and therefore not amenable to the human will, will bounce the cheque. I have, in fact, in the account about 20,000 dollars, but I’ve been juggling the accounts round, and it may be that, despite instructions to honour all cheques, they will reject one on my old cheque book – without of course having provided me with a new one. If so, tell them not to be alarmed, because I’ll fix it at once.

  All my love to you. I AM sorry for this negative note . . . XXXX B

  To Jorge Torres Zavaleta

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 16 June 1983

  My dear Jorge,

  It was lovely to get your letter, six months late, from John Sandoe.605 And thank you for that excessively kind review. I have always been a bit mystified about the Book [In Patagonia]’s reception in Argentina, particularly since the Spanish translation, published by Sudamericana seems to have sunk without trace.

  However, I do know the book is at least known. For example last week I heard that it was thought to be of consequence by Vargas Llosa,606 to such an extent that there’s a possibility I shall go on some TV chatshow 607 with him and, of all people, Borges,608 who, to my astonishment, is apparently coming here for three days in the autumn. Could that be true?

  The War horrified me rigid. Disregarding the very obvious Argentine right to the islands, and the obvious threat that the ‘pirates’ nest poses to Argentine security and ideals, it showed that the British are still the militaristic nation they always were; that they were itching to go to war with someone, no matter where; and that when the opportunity was offered, they went for it, blindly, without even contemplating the rights or wrongs. The Belgrano episode609 has to be one of the most cowardly acts of the century, or else a fatuous bungle, but in neither case forgiveable. I agree with you: Mrs T.610 and Galtieri611 are the mirror image of one another; and had the gamble not come off, as it might very easily not have, she would be where Galtieri is today . . .

  I’m prostrated by paperwork. I had to buy 60 air-letter forms on my return, and wrote them all. Yours is the second batch. I’ve had a minor literary success, well and good, but what must it be like to have a major success? I’d like to think that there was still a place for me, an Englishman, in Patagonia. I’ll try and get your story from Maxi and look forward to reading it. Chiquita [Astor] told me it was marvellous when I last saw her in December.

  My contribution to the war was to find myself inveighing against it on Italian TV, where I suggested that no encouragement should be given to either belligerent by the Common Market Community. Next day Italy refused to renew economic sanctions – for which of course I was roundly castigated by the British Embassy. Someone even suggested I should be put in the Tower of London.

  So there we are. I’d love to see you soon . . .

  as always, Bruce

  To Nicholas Shakespeare612

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | [August 1983]

  Can you, please, somehow, by the 28th Sept get me a copy of the Vargas Llosa War at the End of the World – in Spanish or whatever. This is about the war of Canudos about which I can wax eloquent – having been there. Etc. B.C.

  To Murray Bail

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 3 August 1983

  Dear Murray,

  Alas! I’m not coming. These past three months have been little short of a nightmare. I feel I’ve been got at in all directions, to do things I didn’t want to do etc. So in the end my only recourse was to cancel everything, and try and get down to some work. The only thing I have done is to accept an invitation to come to the Adelaide Festival in March: and that makes me feel somewhat less bad. Then, hopefully, I shall have quite a lot on paper, which will make sense of my return trip.

  The weather in England has been tropical; my flat unbearable: so I’ve been holing up in a mediaeval tower in Wales.

  Incidentally, is the pulped book on songlines, to which you referred, Mountford’s Nomads of the Desert (or whatever the title)?613 If so, I know it – bu
t if not I’d be glad to have the reference. Oddly enough, it was the Germans who first cottoned onto the idea of the songlines: one of my favourite anthropologists is a Father Worms.

  I’ve sent for Correction from New York. All of Bernhard614 – or nearly all – is translated into French: though of course not into English. According to an article in the T.L.S. by George Steiner, fifty copies of the American edition of C. sold. So till March then, or maybe a bit before, and a thousand regrets it can’t be sooner, unless of course you care to take a foray in this direction.

  Love to Margaret, as always Bruce

  To Kath Strehlow615

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 24 August 1983

  My dear Kathie,

  We seem to have missed each other by several continents. I am, however, coming back to Adelaide, having been invited to come by the Festival in March. I want, too, to spend some more time in the Centre when it gets colder in April and May. I am writing away like a loonie. I have absorbed vast quantities of literature on Aboriginals; and my admiration for T.S. grows and grows. Sometimes, when reading Songs of Central Australia, I feel I’m reading Heidegger or Wittgenstein.

  The real scandal, frankly, is that Aranda Traditions is out of print. It is a 20th century lynch-pin: you only have to look at the work of Levi-Strauss to realise this. I’m sure that something must be possible.

  Incidentally, there’s a man here, at Durham University, called Bob Layton616, who was something to do with the Ayer’s Rock case. I don’t know what his role was, or really what his line is, but his enthusiasm for T.S. matches my own.

  Let’s keep in touch,

  as always,

  Bruce

  I came back to a legal can of worms!

  To David Mason

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 30 August 1983

  Send a PC with your phone no. It’s conceivable that I may come and spend Christmas with my wife’s family in Geneseo NY (not 30 miles from you). If so, I would need some LOCAL moral support. As always Bruce.

  Their month in the Himalayas marked the beginning of Chatwin’s rapprochement with Elizabeth. They had come back from Nepal together and there was no further talk of separation. Chatwin used Homer End as a base and treated it as home.‘He’d open up his boxes and play with his things, or sit outside under the cherry tree and write, which he was never able to do at Holwell. And it was very close to London. He’d take his little 2CV with a surfboard on top to the local reservoir at Eynsham, to Spain, to Greece, everywhere. It practically never came off. He loved it because it wasn’t flying, but as close as you could get.’

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Chora | Patmos | Greece | 28 September 1983

  Dearest E,

  Most successful time in Patmos – in that, at last! I’ve found the right formula for the book: It’s to be called, simply, OF THE NOMADS – A discourse. And it takes the form of about six excursions into the outback with a semi-imaginary character called Sergei during which the narrator and He have long conversations. Sergei is incredibly well-informed, sympathetic but extremely wary of generalisations – and is always ready to put the spoke into an argument. The narrator is a relentless talker/arguer. I’ve done two chapters and it really seems to work in that it gives me the necessary flexibility. Needless to say the models for such an enterprise are Plato’s Symposium and the Apology. But so what? I’ve never seen anything like it in modern literature, a complete hybrid between fiction and philosophy: so here goes.

  Patmos beautiful as ever but we now have Clarissa Avon617 who, to my mind, casts rather a pall over the atmosphere: so I’m off for a couple of days to the dreaded Beatrice [von Rezzori] where Kässl [Kasmin] is celebrating his birthday:618 then back to the horrors of London, to Stockholm, back to London for the Borges, and then to the Tower. The cottage619 went for £17,000: so I chickened out. It was quite wonderful in its way: but the responsibility and hassle of leaving it empty were just too much: and I would, definitely, prefer a bolt-hole in the Mediterranean, wouldn’t you. I got so carried away by the book that the search, this time, was impossible: but I think one day next year, we should go on a tour of the islands and pick which one; then rent a place to make sure, and while renting, if possible, buy.

  I should with luck be able to come to America around Christmas. I’m certainly not taking on anything, though, that’s going to disrupt the flow. If only I can get this one off my mind, it will be an enormous relief and I might start living a relatively normal life thereafter.

  I must say I’m itching to be back in Nepal.

  I’ll have to go down to Homer if only to get my loden coat: apparently it’s freezing in Stockholm. On the B.H. has apparently come out in Germany to one or two rave reviews.

  Much love to Lisa [van Gruisen]. I hope all your charges behaved themselves.620

  xxxxB

  To Kath Strehlow

  Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 9 October 1983

  Dear Kathie

  As I think I’ve told you, I shall – God willing! – be holding forth at the Adelaide Festival in March. Can we postpone the discussion of the foreword or whatever till then?621

  I am absolutely delighted to think that you would have me as a fellow of the Strehlow Foundation – and, of course, accept.

  Forgive this scribbled note. I’ve just been in Sweden and Finland for a fortnight and am trying to catch up with a mountain of mail. I’ll write when I have more news.

  As always Bruce

  To Murray Bail

  The Tower | Scethrog | Brecon | Powys | 20 October 1983

  My dear Murray,

  All well here, but I’ve been sauntering here and there on entertaining, but fairly fruitless jaunts. First to Greece, where I actually made a proper start on the new work. Then to Sweden and Finland, where my books came out. The Finnish title of On the Black Hill, by the time it had been changed and translated, was Erottamattomat – which of course was the title I’d been looking for all the time! Then to cap everything, I went on a TV chat show in London with Borges and Mario Vargas Llosa. Llosa and I share some of the same ground, in that we have both written about a Brazilian village called Uaua:622 we were even there in the same month. I thought it’d be rather a good thing to chat about the dreariness of Uaua: but he thought otherwise, and the moment the cameras were turned on him, he turned from being lively and entertaining into the WRITER-AS-PUBLIC-FIGURE! Of course, we both dutifully held our tongues when the Magus of B.A. appeared, and any attempt to have a chat thereafter was drowned in a flow of beautiful 17th Century English and beautiful Castilian verse.623

  Blast the Madison Avenue Bookshop! I still haven’t had Correction yet, despite a reminder. Not a hope of getting it in this country. I suppose I better read it in the Edition Gallimard. George S[teiner] is inclined to exaggerate, you know – though don’t for God’s sake say I said so. I stayed with him the other day in Cambridge, on my way down from Scotland. He thought I had been with Updike et al. at the Edinburgh festival, but I said (revealing my fantastic error before I actually said it): ‘No I’ve been doing something much more atavistic. Shooting stags!’ – which, I’m afraid, was true.624 It had the most terrible effect; and I’m sure that no matter what I say and do, he’ll look on me, in his heart of hearts, as a murderer. Be that as it may, I’ve shot stags since I was a boy. And though I say it, I’m a good clean shot – when it comes to stags, and nothing else.

  I secretly dread the Adelaide Festival. They wrote to me the other day, and said that ‘since I fit into no known category’ they are going to programme ‘An Hour with Bruce Chatwin.’ Lord save us! What shall I say?

  I’m writing this in the half dark, in the mediaeval tower I’ve borrowed in the middle of the River Usk. Henry Vaughan625 used to live in the ruined cottage in the field a hundred yards away. The typewriter is atrocious: so I can’t go over any of the mistakes. My progress, if such it can be called, is equally atrocious. Dismal. The novel, if such it be, consists of the narrator (myself) and a Rus
sian immigrant to Melbourne (based loosely on someone I met) having a long drawn-out conversation in the shade of a mulga tree. I think perhaps I should come and sit under a mulga tree in the hope that progress might speed up. Or would it? Australia, I find, even on the most superficial level, is extremely difficult to describe. More soon. Love to Margaret. Should be there by mid Feb.

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  The Tower | Scethrog | Brecon | Powys | 20 October 1983

  Dear E.,

  So here I am alone in the Tower, which is, I have to say, a lovely place to work, the only distraction being a view of a white farmhouse through a slit window. The new book at least exists as an entity and that, I suppose, is the main thing. The Swedish and Finnish (!) journey went off very well. I was definitely upstaged by the Golding Nobel Prize626 which was announced at the same time: but I was so pleased to be there that nothing got me down. The title of On the Black Hill in Finnish is Erottamattomat, which I think should be the title all round. It’s published there in a wildly distinguished list called the yellow Library – Faulkner, Hemingway, Joyce, Bellow – that kind of list: so I felt immensely flattered.