Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin
Page 40
Dear Paul,
Patagonia Revisited 707 isn’t at all bad looking, is it? It’d be lovely to see you. I go to China in Nov. Bruce.
To Charles Way
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 16 September 1985
I should, in early Oct, be staying at the Tower for 2 weeks. Working – but there would be time off to talk.708
To Elizabeth Chatwin
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [September 1985]
E. Oh God! – as Joan [Leigh Fermor] would say.
1. Jacob R[othschild] has twisted my arm to attend a meeting – attend only! – on Friday lunch.709
1a. where this puts the weekend, can’t say.
2. I shall have to go to Oxford, tomorrow, have lunch . . . sign books, go to the Bodleian – then London.
3. The fireplace man is coming at 9.30 tom.
4. The glass man has been.
5. The Times rang up to try and get me to review. NO!
6. Possible to put creases in grey suit?
7. It’s too much!
To Ninette Dutton
Birr Castle | Co. Offaly | Ireland | as from Homer End | 1 October 1985
E. has gone off to India for her tour. Tremendous drama at the airport as she lost her passport and couldn’t fly with the tour!710 I have sloped off to Ireland on a ‘memory tour’ of old friends – Birr, now inhabited by my friend Brendan Rosse,711 has the most magical arboretum: 4 generations of plant-hunter earls. The leaves are just beginning to turn, and it is quite magical.
Could you drop on a postcard a piece of seemingly useless information. I need to know what in the way of fanged beasts a boy of 3 in 1954 would have seen in the Adelaide zoo. Would there have been a leopard? Or a tiger? Or lion? A dingo is a bit mild for my purpose. If not I shall have to make do with a fictitious Irish wolfhound or Alsatian in a neighbour’s house.
Ah well, I’ll be in touch with plans as I know them.
Much love, dearest.
Bruce
PS There is a totally weird Australian here, a Mr Bartlett from Perth. Knows Geoff [Dutton], slightly. Literary ambitions to write Australian short stories or an updated Suetonius, in the most haunted medieval town in Ireland.
PPS re the above. If there were such a beast i.e leopard I’d like a word about its history, name etc. How much was the age? Feeding time?
To Ninette Dutton
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [October 1985]
Dearest Nin,
Many many thanks for your note on the feeding of the lions. Exactly what I need: if only for one line of the book.
The blow, of course, is Piers Hill.712 What horrible decision to have to make – especially in view of the garden. My parents faced exactly the same thing over our house in Warwickshire – just that much too big. Running into just that more than they could cope with – and I must say that by taking the decision to move to a small house when they did i.e. in their late 50’s and by their acquiring their shack in the south of France, they seem to live a happy, varied and very independent life.
But I’m sure you must have somewhere in the country. I know it sounds bananas to suggest it. But what if you not exactly demolished but let go half the house? Bankers and the rest always speak of ruining your investment without realising it is you who have to live there. The site at Piers Hill is so perfect, it makes me wish there was no house there at all, but a tiny log cabin. Of course you might find just such another site and build one.
I feel so hopeless so many thousands of miles away: but I wouldn’t be rushed. My friends in Ireland, the Rosses, who have inherited a vast castle and garden with very little money are amazed by the way in which things are working back in their favour. Life in cities has become so drab and meaningless that there is, in Ireland, at least, a flocking back to land by people who want nothing more than the roof over their heads and food in return for really substantial doses of work in the open air.
We leave for Hong Kong on the 7th Nov. I’ll keep you posted with the Nepal address as from Dec 1.
Much love B
To Ninette Dutton
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [November 1985]
Gearing up for our long promised month in China – we leave on the 7th for Hong Kong. Then (???). I’ve rented an Englishman’s bungalow in the Valley of Kathmandu. Dec-Mar. Be lovely if you could come.713 Much love B
To Charles Way
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [November 1985]
Dear Charlie,
Here is the book I promised to try and find.714 My method, very often, was to check out the ‘truth’ of one of these photos – which would then unloose a flow of reminiscences . . . Best of luck, as always, Bruce
To Ninette Dutton
Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 5 November 1985
Dearest Nin,
A quick line on the eve of departure. Yes, we, apparently, do have the house all through Jan – and would adore you to come. But I do want to know what I’m inviting you to, before inviting you – if you get my clumsy meaning. What it boils down to is this. E leaves me in Hong Kong on Dec 3rd and I follow 10 days later. She is going to inspect the house – then we’ll call you. Does that sound hideously complicated?
No. You mustn’t move to town.
Much love, Bruce
CHAPTER TEN
CHINA AND INDIA: 1985-6
On 7 November 1985 Chatwin flew with Elizabeth on the first leg of their journey to Kathmandu, where they had taken a three-month lease on an unfurnished house. They stopped off in Hong Kong to make an excursion into China, the New York Times magazine having commissioned a profile of Joseph Rock, the Austro-American botanist who lived from 1922-49 in the Lijiang Valley. By late November, they were back in Hong Kong. They went to the races – where Chatwin placed a bet and won: he spent his winnings on some rare tea and a trip to the Taipei Museum in Taiwan. Then, while Chatwin lingered in Hong Kong and visited the bird market, Elizabeth flew on ahead to prepare the house in Kathmandu. On his arrival, he found her sick with bronchitis and the original house let to someone else.
To Ninette Dutton
c/o Lisa van Gruisen | Tiger Tops | Kathmandu | Nepal | Christmas Day 1985
Dearest Nin,
Well, I finally got here from China and Hong Kong. We had an unbelievably fascinating time in northern Yunnan, on the borders of Burma and Tibet. I have put off going to China for so long, for fear that the China of my imagination, a kind of ideal China composed of such congenial spirits as Li Po715 and Tu Fu did not exist. But they are still there! We met a village doctor and herbalist,716 a sort of Taoist sage who went gathering herbs in the mountains, painted orchids and bamboos and wrote calligraphies of the great Tang poems.
Hong Kong’s a bit of a nightmare, but not without a certain fascination. On the Kowloon side is the area known as Mong Kok the most densely populated square mile in the world, but it really is astonishing how people can, if pressed, live in such numbers without friction.
To my bitter disappointment, our house in Kathmandu valley fell through at the last moment. The owner, a British ex-army type let it over our heads for six months instead of our three. Typical! I knew the house, knew it was somewhere I’d work well in, and it was quite a blow. Instead, for the time being we are in a minuscule cottage, built for one of the Ranas as a student right in the middle of town. Dust everywhere! And quite a lot of noise! Plus the fact that Kathmandu is the world’s Number One capital of respiratory diseases (that I didn’t know). Elizabeth promptly got bronchitis, and has half given it to me. This country is so wonderful the moment you get out of the city that I can’t regret coming here. But I think we’re a bit unsettled and quite honestly I think the only thing is to put on earplugs and knuckle down to the book for the whole of January and then think again.
I keep worrying about Piers Hill. Do let me know if you think there’s anything I can do to help.
Had a card from Robyn [Davidson] and Salman, who are using Homer End as a weekend retreat. Bitter complaints from th
em about the London fog.
All my love to you, Bruce
PS Tomorrow night, for dinner, we are meeting a Mr Chang, the Number One official in charge of foreign travel in Tibet. Now that really would be something, if we can swing a trip on him. All the places I dreamed of going to: Kashgar, Urumchi, The Takla-Maklan, Lhasa – are suddenly OPEN.
Over Christmas, the Chatwins were joined in Kathmandu by Kasmin – Ninette Dutton and Chatwin’s parents having cried off. But Elizabeth’s bronchitis had worsened. ‘The city was cold and damp and polluted, I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t lie down to sleep.’ Early in the New Year, Kasmin suggested that they leave. The three of them flew to Benares and drove to Delhi where Chatwin had arranged to meet Murray and Margaret Bail. Dropping Kasmin at the Oberoi Hotel, the Chatwins accompanied the Bails to Jodhpur.There, after inspecting several houses, Chatwin found the ideal place in which to complete The Songlines, a red sandstone fort 20 miles from Jodhpur.
To Francis Wyndham
Benares | India | [January 1986]
Have fled from disease-ridden Kathmandu: the world’s No 1 capital for complaints of the upper respiratory tract – and am now on the loose in India. I have, even with near pneumonia and the constant upheavals, done some writing.
Love as always, BC
To John Pawson717
c/o Manvendra Singh | The Fort | Rohet | Jodhpur | India | 23 January 1986
Dear John,
At last I have an address that may last a month or two. Our rented house in the Kathmandu Valley turned out to be a catastrophe . . .
Can you let me know if the flat is now empty? And if not when it will be? Next, can you work out what’s owing? As it’s been such a long time, frankly I don’t want to spend all of it on repairs. Some can go to pay off the mortgage.
Can you arrange the shower to be tiled first, and put completely in working order? The same tiles as you have in Drayton Gardens. I think it’s very important that the whole thing is leak-proof. The next step, I think, should be to prepare the surfaces for painting, filling in old plaster etc. But I feel we should wait till I get back for its final colour. I don’t think I want it dead white. Or if I did want it white, then I feel the colour of the floor should be changed, bleached or something.
I’ll take a decision as to what to do with the place when I get back. Frankly, it must either be arranged so it is lettable: company lets etc., in which case I must remove all my things and have it anonymous. But the business of letting anyone into so small a space, if the things are there, is really not possible. Or at least, it causes more angst than it’s worth. Everyone, in some way or other, is territorial, and there’s no point in having a place that isn’t one’s own.
I have, here, a suite of cool blue rooms in a Rajput Fort. Turtledoves cooing, peacocks honking, and little children with bells on their clothes playing hide-and-seek in the garden below. I battle on with the arid landscapes of Central Australia.
Do send other news. The baby? The projects in N.Y.? I’ve been completely out of touch now, without so much as a letter, only some asinine telexes from Vanity Fair, for three months.
as always,
Bruce
To John Kasmin
c/o Manvendra Singh | The Fort | Rohet | Jodhpur | India | 27 January 1986
Dear Kassl,
I must say communication in this country is really very dicey. We had calls from you, and then cancelled, and then when we did finally make it to the receptionist in the [Hotel] Oberoi [in Delhi] we were told you’d just gone. The first stab at this mythical beast ‘the place to write in’ was a dud. Babji Jodhpur said he had a cottage with a swimming pool in a mango orchard halfway to Udaipur, in a place called Ranakpur, where there is an astonishing Jain temple. The whole thing sounded wonderful, but wasn’t; in that a bus load of tourists were liable to swoop on the place for lunch, and besides it was all a bit cramped and there was no place to spread.718 We did, however, at H.H.’s birthday celebrations, meet an extremely pukkah gentleman, ex-zamindar type who said he had a fort in the country. Absolutely secluded, on a lake, with an ageing mother in the zennana, a kitchen full of cooks with traditions going back to the 17th century – and I might say, fabulous miniatures (though if you breathe one word to the other H.H. [Howard Hodgkin], I’ll brain you!). On the lake, spoonbills, cormorants, pochards, storks, three species of kingfisher. Slight ruckus from the peacocks in the early morning. Anglo-Indian furniture of the mid-19th century. A cool blue study overlooking the garden. A saloon with ancestral portraits. Bedroom giving out onto the terrace. Unbelievably beautiful girls who come with hot water, with real coffee, with papayas, with a mango milk-shake. In short, I’m really feeling quite contented. The cold and cough has been hard to shake off. A dry cough always is. But thanks to an ayurvedic cough preparation, it really does seem to be on the wane. Today was Republic Day, with Mrs Chatwin on hand to present the prize to the volleyball team, and sweeties to 500 schoolchildren . . . she’s gone today via Jaipur and Agra [to Delhi] leaving me to sahib-ish splendour. Over the past week I have at last been cutting some fresh furrows with the book, and I don’t think I have quite the same sinking feeling that all the rest of it was in chaos. Murray [Bail] was, in fact, a great help with Australianisms.719 I’ll have to watch the whole thing like a hawk. What one can’t help feeling is the degree to which English has been Americanised, compared to Australia. I’ve always thought that Australian writing, on a page, looks a little archaic: now I’m beginning to realise why. They went off to Udaipur, and we came here.
Lots of love to B[eatrice] and G[regori Von Rezzori] – and I hope all goes well with the party. And to you, always B
PS I wonder what you’d think of Gadda 720, That Awful Mess on the Via Merulana. My pal Calasso says Gadda is wonderful. Murray lent it to me. I love it.
To Charles and Margharita Chatwin
c/o Manvendra Singh | The Fort | Rohet | Jodhpur | India | 1 February 1986
Dear Charles and Margharita,
Well, all we can say is some little fly must have buzzed in your ear a warning, ‘Don’t go to Kathmandu!’ I don’t know if you’ve heard what happened. The house we were promised: an Englishman’s house with servants and sofas, in the country etc fell through and E. was then offered a cottage orné, in a garden admittedly right in the heart of the city, not far from the Royal palace. She had to furnish it etc, which all cost money; and when I arrived from Hong Kong, I had, I have to say, misgivings. Almost immediately the offer came up of a trek in the mountains to prospect a new route for Shirley Williams,721 so I went off walking for six days, came back feeling wonderful, only to find a message at the airport that E. had bronchitis, which for her, is very unusual. Within a couple of days, I then had a lung collapse on the scale of my Christmas performance last year.722 The house, it turned out, was sitting in a pool of pollution, plus the fact that over the wall was the city shit-house, plus the fact that they burned the shit and other refuse at night so that the fumes would settle in our throats. All I can say is that it brought back a kind of bronchial misery I associate with Stirling Road winter ’47.723
Kasmin, who misbehaved dreadfully, then came up trumps and suggested flight, at once, to India: not next week, now. The first flight we could get on was to Benares, and to Benares we went. I’ve become completely neurotic about overweight, seeing that I’m forty kilos over, in books: but we sailed through that, arrived; went to watch the Burning Ghat (which is not at all sinister, but calming. You literally stand within, say 15 feet, of half a dozen burning corpses: and after you get used to the smell – though I with my cold, could hardly smell a thing – it all seems perfectly natural and harmonious). We then drove to Delhi along the Grand Trunk Road (all planes and trains booked) in a taxi. I hoped to show Kas the Martinière which is an enormous ‘French’ 18th century chateau, now a boy’s school, but since the fog was such that we couldn’t see the bonnet of the car, there seemed little point.724 On to Delhi where we stayed with my pal, Sunil Sethi, a journalist
whom I first met while ‘doing Mrs G[andhi]’, now the editor of a new newspaper The Indian Mail. He has a new and beautiful wife: all very soignée. Then our Australian friends, Murray and Margaret Bail, he a novelist, she seems to run the welfare department of Sydney, and we went off to Jodhpur, where they had already arranged to go and I know the maharajah. The palace in Jodhpur is the last great ruler’s palace to be built anywhere: at least as large as Buckingham Palace and completed, finally, in 1949. My friend H.H. (or Babji), a totally wonderful character, replied to my note at once, saying he was overcome with his 40th birthday celebrations. Would we come for a drink now? This minute? Which we did: to find him also entertaining a real lunatic, the Belgian ambassador to Iran. The question then was how to get rid of the Belgian, and keep us back for dinner – which I might say then developed into a farce, with the ambassador hoping he’d been invited, we knowing he hadn’t but too polite to say so, etc. It passed off. I said I was looking for somewhere to write, and Babji immediately proposed a cottage in a mango orchard laid out by his grandparents at a place called Ranakpur, about 75 miles away (we went there, later, with the Bails; but it wasn’t really very satisfactory. Every day, tourists staying in one of Babji’s hotels would descend for lunch, and there was nowhere really for me to spread my books). The next night, however, was the birthday; the maharanee choked solid with diamonds and emeralds;725 all the courtiers in whirligig Rajasthani turbans and real white jodhpurs; the musicians playing ghazals; polo playing colonels; the British Ambassador – Wade-Gery,726 distinguished for a change! And then we met a real charmer! Manvendra Singh.