Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 18 November 1986

  My dearest Derek,

  I’m terribly upset for you about your brother. One’s hold on life is so extremely tenuous; but when the blow comes, nothing, it seems, can lessen its effect.

  I feel fairly normal: and was up to cooking blinis last night for a huge pot of caviare that someone brought to the hospital at a time when I was being fed intravenously. We decided to save it for Elizabeth’s birthday. The only trouble is my legs which don’t function as they should: not surprising in that they were spindles attached to knobbly knees for 2½ months.

  To Cary and Edith Welch

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 12 December 1986

  My dear Dahlinks,

  What a lovely surprise! Your letter which has come this morning is about half as long as the telex I got from Simon and Schuster four years back in which my present publisher, Elizabeth Sifton, was accused of enticing yours truly away from their incompetent clutches. I also have to report that when, in the summer, obviously a prey to my malady, I turned arsonist and destroyed heaps of old notebooks, card indexes, correspondence, I also found a whole boxful of your letters going back to the early 60’s, and now doubtless a treasure to be hoarded.

  Tell me, did J. J. Klejeman790 really dump all those antiquities in the East River? I’d like to know if, and under what circumstances, he did so. I’m at present at work on a tale – a Hoffmann-like tale set in Prague – in which a collector of Meissen porcelain (a man I met there in 1967)791 systematically destroys his collection on his deathbed, so that it will not pass into the hands of the National Museum.

  My illness was a dramatic episode. I have always known – from a fortune-teller or from my own instinctive promptings? – that I would be terribly ill in middle-age, and would recover. All summer, while I was putting the final touches to the book, I was obviously sickening, but preferred to put it out of my mind – even though, on a sweltering summer day, I’d be wrapped in shawls beside the Aga scribbling onto a yellow pad. I imagined I’d recover if only I could reach some mountain pastures, and so gaily set off for Switzerland: only to find, next morning, that I couldn’t drag myself a hundred yards down the sidewalk. Obviously, something was seriously wrong. Thinking I was prey to some Indian amoeba, I consulted a specialist in tropical medicine, who took one look at my blood count, and, next day, said amiably: ‘I cannot understand why you’re alive. You have no red blood corpuscles left.’ He failed to make a diagnosis,792 having run through a complete set of tests; and Elizabeth came to fetch me home in a definitely dying condition. I have a vague recollection of being wheeled to the plane; another, of the ambulance at London airport and then a blank. By the time I got to Oxford I was not expected to last the night. I did incidentally have the ‘dark night experience’, followed by the Pearly Gates. In my delirium I had visions of being in a colourful and vaguely medieval court where women offered me grapes on tazzas. At one point I called to Elizabeth, ‘Where’s King Arthur? He was here a minute ago.’

  Anyway, although I was on life support, they still couldn’t find the cause until, on the fourth day, the young immunologist rushed into my room and said ‘Have you, in the past five years, been in a bats’ cave? We think you’ve got a fungus of the bone marrow, which starts off growing on bat shit.’ Yes. I had been in bat caves, in Java and in Australia. But when they grew the fungus, as one grows a culture for yoghurt, it was not mine after all. The most expert mycologists were consulted: samples were flown to the U.S., and the answer, which finally emerged, was that I had, indeed, a fungus of the marrow, but one which was known only from the corpse of a killer-whale cast up on the shores of Arabia and from ten healthy Chinese peasants, all of whom had died. Had I been consorting with killer-whales? Or with Chinese peasants? ‘Peasants,’ I said decisively. Indeed, we had. Last December we were in Western Yunnan, following the traces of the Austro-American botanist, Joseph Rock, whose book The Kingdom of the Na-Khi was admired by Ezra Pound.793 We went to peasant feasts, slept in peasant houses794, inhaled the dust of peasant winnowing; and it must be in Yunnan that I inhaled the particles of fungal dust, which set the malady in motion. I lost half my weight; came out in lumps and scabs, and looked entirely like the miniature of Akbar’s courtier in the Bodleian whose name I’ve forgotten.795 I had a fearsome drug administered on the drip constantly for six weeks. I had blood transfusions, and in the end I made a rather startling recovery: at least, one which my doctors did not expect. It’ll mean a change in one’s life, though. Apparently, one can’t ever quite get rid of a fungus like this, so I shall be on pills indefinitely; will have to report from time to time, and not alas go travelling into dangerously exotic places. The last stipulation I fully intend to ignore. In the meantime, rather than face the sodden gloom of an English winter, we are setting out for Grasse where we have borrowed a flat and where I hope to bash out my tale of the Czechoslovakian porcelain collector.

  I must stop now. We have to go to London, and have a date with Leigh Bruce,796 who is collecting the keys of my flat for Clem and Jessie [Wood] to stay in over Christmas. Talked to H[oward H[odgkin] for the first time in ages last night, and may see him this afternoon. Things turn full circle.

  Will write again from Grasse with address.

  much love Bruce

  E. sends hers, too, to you and E[dith]

  Nice to hear news of your Knellingtons, and also of the Tizzerets. I was intending to call on the Tizzer [George Ortiz] but for reasons described above failed to do so. Now I shall go down to the library where your scroll will join its brothers.

  To Pam Bell

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 15 December 1986

  Dearest Pam,

  This is an interim p/c to thank you for your letter and to confirm that I am much, much better. Quite a turn, though. I was flown from Switzerland in a state of collapse; was not expected to last the night – and got a definite glimpse of the Pearly Gates. My best to your Ma. Much love, Bruce XXX

  The ‘flat’ near Grasse where Chatwin and Elizabeth now went to stay was in fact the Chateau de Seillans, an eleventh – century fort at the edge of a 60-foot cliff, belonging to Shirley Conran, the best-selling author and mother of Jasper. Chatwin had known Shirley since the late 1970s, first meeting her at a Hatchards Author-of-the-Year party. ‘Suddenly this fair-headed chap was at my elbow and I said “What do you think is the best way to see a country?”“By boot.” My first impression was that he was a Yorkshireman and he’d said “By boat.” “Suppose it’s a place like Switzerland . . .?” ’ She described Chatwin, to whom she bore a resemblance, as ‘the older brother I never dreamed of having’, and invited him to convalesce at her house in the south of France. From December 1986 he based himself when abroad at the Chateau de Seillans.

  To Ninette Dutton

  Chateau Seillans | Seillans | France | 19 January 1987

  Dearest Nin,

  We’re hiding out in the South of France to escape one of the really awful winters on record. We read of fearsome cold in England and France. We see a bank of grey cloud over the sea. But here we bask – so far! – in a snug little microclimate that gives us temperatures in the 80’s on our terrace. I feel and look much better, but there are, it seems, one or two complications, so we may have to pack up and return to Oxford. I pray not! Last week, we went to Italy to see a succession of old friends in Tuscany;797 in Florence my legs, which are still liable to go lilac and blue in the cold, completely froze up on me. All the same, we had a lovely time.

  I’ve been completely out of touch, having had no mail for a month. The only excitement has been Werner Herzog’s production of a film of The Viceroy of Ouidah which he proposes to call Cobra Verde. We’ve just signed the purchase, not the option, contract – and at the moment some 600 Africans are recreating the King of Dahomey’s palace in modern Ghana. Anyway, it kept me very amused during these rather trying months – and it would be nice to think that at the end of it I’d touch some paper money: more at le
ast than I’m ever likely to earn writing books – and all without my having to lift a finger. Werner is doing a production of Lohengrin at Bayreuth on July 28th – and that is our one date for the summer.

  The Australian book The Songlines is in proof though Cape’s have not seen fit, yet, to send me a copy. I only hope it’s all right. There are masses of details I’d like to have checked, but physically could not.

  In the meantime, I’ve begun something new: a very fanciful tale set in the Prague of my distant memory, about a compulsive collector of Meissen porcelain – with tangents into Jewish mysticism, the Golem, the fantastical Emperor Rudolf, alchemy etc. This, again, is also keeping me amused: I feel instantly better (though tired) when writing, and depressed when not . . .

  With lots of love from Elizabeth and myself Bruce

  To Derek Hill

  Chateau de Seillans | Seillans | France | [January 1987]

  We’ve had a succession of brilliant days over Christmas, but now it’s balmy and grey. Whoever was ‘the mastermind ’ at Le Thoronet798 has, in my view, to have seen the Seljuk madrassas in Anatolia on the way to the 2nd Crusade. We take little trips about twice a week. Much love B

  To Richard Bull799

  Chateau de Seillans | Seillans | France | 8 February 1987

  Dear Richard,

  Enclosed are two sets of analysis from the laboratory in Grasse. When talking to the doctor800 over the phone I got slightly the wrong end of the stick. What he meant to say was that, the second time round, the haemoglobin was the same but that the total picture was marginally improved.

  We’re going back to Italy, for a week, as from Friday. I’ll call you from there.

  Many thanks, all well here. As always, Bruce

  To Roberto Calasso

  Chatwin’s entry to Robert Calasso’s visitor’s book | Milan | Italy | 20 February 1987

  Une Histoire de la Bourgeoisie Française

  In a restaurant801 we sat next to two hatchet-faced women who argued mercilessly as to whether an ‘Alaska’ was the same as ‘une île flotante’ or ‘une omelette norvégienne’. One of the husbands was fat, piglike, and wore six gold rings: the other was a reincarnation of Monsieur Homais.802 He was, it turned out, also a pharmacist. He averred that there was one dish he could never tire of: ‘un gigot d’agneau, pommes dauphinoises.’ Over coffee he said the following:

  ‘Je vais vous raconter l’histoire d’un homme qui est parti pour son voyage de noces avec sa nouvelle femme, et, pendant le voyage, elle était tuée, meutriée par quelqu’un. Et lui, pour oublier ses tristes souvenirs est parti pour . . .’ and at this point one expected the words ‘Tahiti’ or ‘la Nouvelle Calédonie’ . . . but no! . . .‘il est parti pour la Belgique où il est devenu président d’une société de fabrication du chocolat . . . de la laiterie . . . et même les produits chimiques’

  To Elisabeth Sifton

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 15 March 1987

  Dearest E,

  . . . Could you send copies of The Songlines to the following.

  Bill Katz 2 copies: one marked for Jasper Johns803

  Clarence Brown

  Josef Brodsky804

  Joseph Campbell805

  James Ivory

  Mrs Aristotle Onassis (I always do!)

  Diane Johnson806

  John Duff807

  + an Australian friend Pamela Bell

  Much love, B

  See you Labour Day.

  To George Ortiz

  Accra | Ghana | 23 March 1987

  Have been swanning around in Ghana for 10 days where Werner Herzog is making my book The Viceroy of Ouidah into a movie. In the evenings we would go to the Ayatollah Drinks Bar – no credit given! See you soon, Bruce.

  To Bill Buford

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [April 1987]

  My dear Bill,

  Wow! I suspect – sadly for us but not for you – that we run the risk of losing the world’s best magazine editor into the ranks of the world’s best writers! Seriously, I found it first rate.808 Soccer violence is something I’ve followed, from afar, with a certain grim fascination – but obviously I don’t know anything about it at close quarters.

  One thought strikes me. About 3 years ago I went to the Rugby final, Wales v France at Cardiff, on a filthy foggy day in winter. Then the mood of the crowd was almost liturgical; everyone singing the Welsh national Anthem etc. Why, therefore, should soccer violence be so different – unless, as you say, it is organised for the purpose of seeking out and damaging an enemy of the imagination? I couldn’t agree with you more: that violence is not necessarily the product of adverse social conditions. It strikes me that the dominant mood of this country is a desperate need to find a substitute for the enemies it has lost cf The Falklands – and that this mood, in various manifestations, is to be found in all levels of society. There’s a point at which your skinheads and members of White’s Club see exactly eye to eye.

  Can I take a strong personal interest in the manuscript? As I’ve said to you, now is not really the moment to offer advice. Just go straight ahead – it’ll be fine. One minor point: there’s something absolutely chilling about your first version: the Welsh station. I wonder if you shouldn’t give a very detailed and graphic description – it can be half-fictionalised – where the station was, the kind of people on the platform, the look of the station-master – and then, suddenly, their announcement. I may be wrong, but I found that episode so compelling that I feel it should start the book. If you begin with a plane ride to Turin, you already know there’s violence ahead. On an obscure Welsh railway station, you don’t, and therefore set up a tension which’ll carry you straight through the book. Another very minor comment: as it’s so very tough as a concept, I think there are ways of slightly toughening up the syntax and vocabulary. I could show you what I mean when we meet: I’m going to ground in France for the next two weeks and will be back by May 1 at Homer: or if not Elizabeth will know how I’m to be reached.

  With all my congratulations. Best, Bruce

  PS In haste on the way to the airport.

  At all costs stay dead pan.

  In April 1987, during a miraculous period of remission, Chatwin stayed at the Paris Ritz as a judge for the International Ritz-Hemingway Award. Elizabeth says, ‘Mohamed Al Fayed was running the prize. It was very strange. There were pornographic video – tapes to put in the TV and a mirror in the ceiling over our bed.’

  To Derek Hill

  Hotel Ritz | 15 Place Vendôme | Paris | France | [April 6 1987]

  Dearest Derek,

  Home again!

  The comforts here are not exactly those of Athos, but . . .

  Incidentally, are we going to Athos again? In the autumn?

  Bruce

  To Ninette Dutton

  Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 9 April 1987

  Dearest Nin,

  A quick note before leaving for London airport – and Nice! Elizabeth’s gone to India to do one of her Himalayan treks: perhaps the last, because the man who owns the company is seriously ill in London.809 Anyhow, it’ll be good for her to get a few whiffs of mountain air – after nursing me for 9 months! It’s much, much better: the only after-effect is a permanent pins-and-needles in my feet, but since it was once above the knee, that, too, seems to be going.

  How lovely to think you’ll be here again soon. My plans are to go to France till around May 1st, come back for 10 days, or so, and then skip away again. I’ve been lent, for a year or more, that little chateau in the village once lived in by Max Ernst. It’s super comfortable; and though over-built up for my taste the country to the back is magnificent and unspoiled. One thing is certain, I must be out of England when the book comes out in June. I hate all the publishing hoo-haa and, as I’ve discovered to my cost, you can’t give one interview without opening the floodgates. I can’t wait to get back to the south.

  The book, for all the apparent obscurity of its subject, does seem to be making a bit of a stir. Bob H[ugh
es], to whom I talked last night, is very keen: but I suspect I’ll have trodden on one or two corns.

  All of which adds up to the fact that we probably won’t be in England from mid June to mid July: but will be at Seillans. So somehow we’ll manage to meet. There are lots of rooms in the chateau and it’s 40 minutes from Nice airport. Otherwise we could come to Italy where we have masses of friends.

  In haste, much love Bruce

  PS We’ve been having the most horrendous gale, trees knocked side ways. Really, this is a very uncomfortable country.

  To Murray Bail

  as from Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [May 1987]

  Dear Murray,

  In fact, I’m writing this from the South of France, where, when I was ill in the winter, I was lent, very chivalrously, a chateau: not a very large chateau, but a chateau nonetheless. The weather is hideously hot. We came here from Paris, utterly drained: not least by the Musée d’Orsay, which in its lapidary stupidity, must be one of the nastiest museums in the world. I suggest that the only time to go there is winter, in a wheelchair, with a wide-brimmed panama to shield one’s attention from the fantastical architectural hoo-haa up above. I also – for what reason I’m hard to explain – bought myself a first edition of Madame Bovary: a talisman? a livre de chevet? God knows! From here, we intend to go, of all things, to the Bayreuth Festival where my pal, Werner Herzog, is doing a production of Lohengrin: his work on cutting my film ie The Viceroy of Ouidah (retitled Cobra Verde) will begin in August. From Bayreuth we are going to Prague: I need to do a spot of research. Then, in September, I’m supposed to be going to America, but thinking hard how I can get out of it. Then . . . ? Madrid? Perhaps! Whenever I’ve been in Madrid I’ve been penniless and the series of doss-houses I’ve occupied, usually in the vicinity of the station, would not do for Maisie Drysdale. There is always the Ritz, right next to the Prado, which as value for money, is said to be the best hotel in Europe. But what kind of money? yes. Thank you for the tip that [Thomas] Bernhard’s Gathering Evidence is out at Knopf. You should just see the savaging he gets at the hand of English reviewers, blind and completely barmey. The review of Concrete by some arse was enough to bring one to the passport-burning stage. But then England, unlike Ireland, Scotland or Wales, is an utterly barbarian country. I thought that Bernhard’s Wittgenstein’s Nephew was marvellous, especially his account of getting the Grillparzer Prize and his insight – very close to home! – that one’s dear, dear friends are appalled when, instead of dying, one re-emerges relatively fit.