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 – but 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 ge
t 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 Russian 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.
On the strength of this, and of the movie-rights being sold (not for much admittedly!) I bought myself in Stockholm an incredibly beautiful c. 1760 Swedish crystal chandelier627 which comes out of a manor in Southern Sweden for which it was made. God knows what to do with it, because I’m not sure it’ll look quite right in the flat: but my fantasies about Sweden are somehow connected with a lit chandelier and a crayfish party on a half-dark summer night. I propose to do something to pay for half of it. It’s not over big either.
Otherwise, nothing, except that I am inundated to write forewords for this and that. One could easily develop into an exclusive forewordmerchant : for a photograph book on Machu Picchu; for Clemente’s628 paintings of S. India; for the Sierra Club Calendar; and latest for Jackie O[nassis]’s book on Indian costume. By the last, I have to say, I was tempted in that it involved a trip to India in January. (Apparently the idea was not only hers but Mapu629 somebody’s who runs the Ahmedabad Museum). However, since Cary W[elch] was in on the act (it being in connection with the Met. Costume Institute etc.), I told Jackie I’d phone him for saying yes or no. C.W. was relentlessly hostile to the idea: you could literally feel him squirming on the other end of the line. So I chucked, and anyway the timing of it was horrendous, and might have put this book back six months. I must say she was extremely nice about it when I called. Your car is not ready yet, another three weeks or so; because it needs a new part. I’m not going to London if I can help it, and so don’t need a car. I intend to go slogging on till December 15th and then I’ll take a break. My working year was so mucked up, I think it’s the only thing to do.
John B[etjeman] had a heart attack and very nearly died630. It was national news for a week, and now he’s better.
XXXX B
To Ivry Freyberg
The Tower | Scethrog | Brecon | Powys | 3 November 1983
So glad it wasn’t too embarrassing. I had no idea what I was doing in the programme at all. xxx B
To Elisabeth Sifton
Postcard of ‘Mexikanische Miniatur-Maske aus der olmekischen Zeit’ from the Schatzkammer der Residenz, München. as from Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | 6 December 1983
How’s this for a really hideous-and-marvellous object! The hands are gold, green enamelled. The ‘work’ goes laboriously on – and is very strange but now manageable. I can begin to see the end: but not before I’ve gone to S. Africa AND back to Australia Feb/March. I miss you. I almost came to N.Y. the other day, but funked it.
Much love,
Bruce
To Murray Bail
Flat 7 | 77 Eaton Place | London | [December 1983]
March’ll be upon us before one can shout. I am coming to Australia from – of all places – South Africa, where I have to go to meet a man631. It depends on what happens there and whether I make a trip with him into the Kalahari – as to whether I come to Sydney after March 7 or before. I’ll call you, I think, sometime in January: then we can make a tentative plan.
As always, Bruce
To Shirley Hazzard
as from; 77 Eaton Place: but written nr Siena | [January 1984]
My dear Shirley,
. . . It’s late at night; there’s a peppering of snow on the ground, and the central heating’s been
turned off. I may easily be driven under the eiderdown before too long.
The piece of work which I gaily hoped to complete in a matter of months is proving far more intractable than my worst fears. Last January, in the Outback, I met an incredibly moving character whose job was to map the sacred sites of the Aborigines, especially those which might lie in the way of the new Alice-to-Darwin railway. He was the son of Russian immigrants; and when a policeman discovered his origins, he said, of us both, ‘What did I tell you? A Pom and a Com.’ Anyway, I went with this Anatoly on a surveying expedition, together with a group of Aboriginals, and on three successive nights, we sat up by the campfire discussing everything that came into our heads. Anatoly, I might say, had Cossack blood, and so was in a position to discuss my major obsession: the nomads.
I have, left over from my foray into the academic world in the late Sixties, the draft of a projected book on nomadism.632 I had written an essay which discussed whether the nomads were necessarily the destroyers of Civilisation, or whether they were the necessary impulse behind the First Civilisations; whether, in fact, the nomads gave to all Civilisations their restless and expansive character. It is not an angle that many historians have dared to tackle: I, of course, am completely incompetent to do so. Yet the subject is so compelling, I cannot leave it alone. For once you enter the world of nomadism, you have to tackle Renan’s dictum, ‘Le désert est monothéiste’ – and from there the search for nomads becomes the search for God.
Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Page 35