Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Bruce Chatwin

  To Emma Bunker

  [Elizabeth’s handwriting] | Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 1 September 1988

  Dear Emmy,

  You can study nomads in the Inner Mongolian milieu. You can also catch outrageous diseases in the same area.

  I caught a fungus of the bone marrow which is presumably in Yunnan Mongolia and Tibet. It was otherwise known from 10 Chinese corpses. I was the only European.

  As to HIV, the situation is much less of a problem here than in America because people have learned not to be hysterical. Many people seem to move from HIV negative to positive without any medication.

  In France they are even more advanced. A man called Jean Franchome has even developed a vaccine from the people who have recovered. I hope I have got his name right. But if you are interested I can find out much more about him.

  I shall be in San Francisco shortly after Christmas on our way to Australia.

  Much love,

  Bruce [his handwriting]

  To Paul Theroux

  [Elizabeth’s handwriting] | Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | [October 1988]

  Dear Paul,

  Many thanks for your card. I am more or less bed ridden and would love a visit if it was convenient.

  Bruce

  Utz, which Chatwin had managed to write during his remission in 1987, was published on 22 September. Few readers appreciated it more than Charles Chatwin. ‘He slipped into the mode of seriously pleased father,’ says Hugh. ‘He remarked: “A real gem of a book. The surprise is to find out that what has been holding you is a love story.” ’ The novel was one of six shortlisted for the 1988 Booker Prize, along with Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses. Tom Maschler wrote to Gillon Aitken: ‘Bruce as you know is determined to be present at the Booker Prize dinner.’ He wished to bring along Elizabeth, Diana Melly, Kevin Volans and Roger Clarke. On the afternoon of 25 October Chatwin was telephoned with advance information that he had not won and should spare himself the journey to that evening’s televised dinner at the Guildhall (where the prize was awarded to Peter Carey for Oscar and Lucinda). On 27 October Maschler sent Chatwin a bound copy of Utz as a souvenir of the event. ‘You really didn’t miss anything.’

  To Matthew Spender

  [Elizabeth’s handwriting] Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 3 November 1988

  Dear Matthew, Thanks for your communications, always encouraging when one is a bit low. I’m afraid I can’t get very worked up about the Booker & just try to go on producing my strange books. Obviously I’m taking a year’s respite at present. Love to Maro.

  Bruce [his handwriting]

  To David Miller864

  [Elizabeth’s handwriting] Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 3 November 1988

  It simply doesn’t matter about the Booker because it’s a complete lottery. I wish I remembered you in your cot, but I can’t say that I do. Thank you for writing.

  Yours sincerely, Bruce Chatwin.

  To Charles Way

  [Elizabeth’s handwriting] Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 10 November 1988

  Dear Charlie,

  I am not that unwell but owing to a bad blood transfusion I am numb in my hands and quite unable to use my legs.

  The most that can be said about the Booker prize nomination is that it passed off. I was advised at the last minute not to go and it was one of the best pieces of advice I have had recently.

  I have always had an idea Alun Lewis865 must be a very moving poet and have taken your tip and ordered his work from the bookshop.

  I look forward to see you before too long.

  Best regards, Bruce

  To Sarah Bennett866

  [Elizabeth’s handwriting] Homer End | Ipsden | Oxford | 12 November 1988

  Dear Sarah,

  I am not as ill as all that, but I don’t have the use of my legs having had a unit of blood at refrigerated temperature in the course of a transfusion

  It is strange to think of you living on the doorstep of my childhood haunts. We lived at Tamworth-in-Arden. My old great uncle867 was the architect in charge of the Beauchamp Chapel which is where I got my feeling for history.

  It would be really nice to see you sometime.

  with love Bruce

  On 20 November Chatwin left England for the last time, returning to the Chateau de Seillans. He started making notes for his Russian novel, but he was becoming daily more resistant to remedies. On 19 December Elizabeth wrote to Kath Strehlow on his behalf to say that he was unable, after all, to write the foreword for her late husband’s Songs of Central Australia. ‘He is really too weak & ill to do anything. We’ve come here as it’s warmer & brighter than England in the winter & he loves being away from there. He dictates to me occasionally the beginning of a new book but hasn’t the energy to do anything else. He is having some treatment from a doctor in Paris, which at first after an intensive 2 weeks of non-stop IVs had a very good effect. However, a lot of that has now worn off & he’s very depressed . . . Keep up the prayers – all of them help.’

  To Nicholas Shakespeare

  [Elizabeth’s handwriting] Chateau de Seillans | Seillans | France | 29 December 1988

  Your pretty p/c from Morocco arrived 2 days ago. So what’s so awful about writing another book. You can’t escape your vocation. What is the publication date of Maria – ?868 We are here till mid-March with a trip for medication in Paris at some stage. It’s wonderfully warm and sunny & certainly improves one’s mood. Love, Bruce and Elizabeth

  Early in the New Year Chatwin was taken for another transfusion to the Sunny Bank Anglo-American Hospital in Cannes. The remainder of the time he stayed at the Chateau de Seillans in a former priest’s room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling on the ground floor leading to the terrace. In the first week of January he invited Werner Herzog to Seillans.‘Bruce said; “Werner, I’m dying.”And I said, “Yes, I’m aware of that.”And then he said: “You must carry my rucksack, you are the one who must carry it.”’

  Another visitor was Kevin Volans who played him the Songlines string quartet which had premiered at the Lincoln Centre in New York in November. The white fungus in Chatwin’s mouth made speaking difficult. He was incontinent, thin, exhausted by coughing. All he could say was: ‘Lovely.’

  Shirley Conran arrived the same afternoon; Francis Wyndham and the Mellys the next day, Saturday 14 January. Also at Seillans was a homeopathic doctor from London, David Curtin. Elizabeth had contacted Curtin to oversee Chatwin’s return to England. She hoped to fly back with Chatwin on Monday and put him in The Lighthouse, an Aids hospice off Ladbroke Grove, where Curtin could treat him. She says, ‘I later asked him: “What were you going to give Bruce?” “Gold.” ’

  Gregor Von Rezzori wrote: ‘When he was on his deathbed and even phone conversations exhausted him he couldn’t take my last call. His wife Elizabeth offered to pass on a message. I asked her to tell him from me: Schemnitz Chemnitz Nagybanya Ofenbanya Vöröspatàk.’

  Chatwin deteriorated fast. He spent most of Sunday 15 January, his last day conscious, lying on the terrace. Teddy Millington-Drake telephoned from Italy to tell Shirley Conran that Alberto Moravia had loved Utz and written a full-page‘rave’review. ‘I went straight and told Bruce and he gave a long slow smile and he just said: “Better than the Booker.” ’ When the sun went in that afternoon, it grew cold very quickly. Elizabeth carried Chatwin inside and lay him on their bed.

  Elizabeth says, ‘In the middle of the night he started making this terrible noise. I said, “Bruce, Bruce, turn your head,” but he was unconscious. He’d gone into a coma.’

  He never regained consciousness. He was taken by ambulance to the state hospital in Nice, where he died at 1.30 p.m. on Wednesday 18 January, four months short of his forty-ninth birthday.

  On 20 January 1989 Elizabeth arranged for Chatwin to be cremated in Nice. ‘I had a Greek service at the crematorium and a service at my church in Watlington and a memorial service at the Greek Orthodox Cathedral of Santa Sophia in Bayswater, which everybody came to.’<
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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  This book could not have been completed without the assistance of Hugh Chatwin. We are enormously grateful to him for his patience, explications and insights, particularly into his brother’s early years.

  We would like to express our immense gratitude to the following: Nigel Acheson, Peter Adam, Gillon Aitken, Stella Astor, Margaret Bail, Murray Bail, the late Monica Barnett, Magnus Bartlett, Andrew Batey, the late Pam Bell, Sarah Bennett, Ray Boulton, Bob Brain, Peter Bratt, the late Gerald Brenan, Clarence Brown, Bill Buford, Richard Bull, Emma Bunker, Roberto Calasso, Michael Cannon, the late Gertrude Chanler, the late Charles and Margharita Chatwin, Lisa Choeygal, Susannah Clapp, the late Michael Davie, the late Ninette Dutton, Tisi Dutton, Jean-Claude Fasquelle, the late John Fleming, Belinda Foster-Melliar, Ivry Freyberg, Valerian Freyberg, Sven Gahlin, Phillippe Garner, Greg Gatenby, Graham C. Greene, Curtis Harnack, Harriet Harvey-Wood, Shirley Hazzard, the late John Hewett, the late Derek Hill, Hugh Honour, James Ivory, Bill Katz, David King, Robin Lane Fox, the late Joan Leigh Fermor, Patrick Leigh Fermor, the late Peter Levi, Lydia Livingstone, Ted Lucie-Smith, Candida Lycett Greene, Christopher MacLehose, Harry Marshall, Tom Maschler, David Mason, Candida Melly, Diana Melly, David Miller, Jonathan Miller, Keith Milow, Beatrice Monti, Desmond Morris, Anne-Marie Mykyta, George Ortiz, John Pawson, the late Edward Peregrine, John Peregrine, Lynda Pranger, Robyn Ravlich, the late Gregor Von Rezzori, Tegai Roberts, Deborah Rogers, Alison and Brendan Rosse, Hannah Rothschild, Miranda Rothschild, Salman Rushdie, Millicent Jane Saunders, Toly Sawenko, Sunil Sethi, Elisabeth Sifton, Jim Silberman, Peter Smetacek, the late Susan Sontag, Matthew Spender, Kath Strehlow, David Sulzberger, the late Stephen Tennant, Paul Theroux, David Thomas, Colin Thubron, Charles and Brenda Tomlinson, Penelope Tree, Petronella Vaarzon-Morel, Kallistos Ware, David Warrell, Charles Way, the late Cary Welch, Edith Welch, Martin Wilkinson, the late Peter Willey, J. Howard Woolmer, Andrew Wylie, Francis Wyndham, Jorge Torres Zavaleta.

  We would like to thank the editors of The London Review of Books for permission to reproduce Chatwin’s letter of 7 July 1988 (Vol.10, Issue 13).

  For permission to use their own letters, diaries and unpublished manuscripts, we would like to thank Murray Bail; John Barnett and the estate of his late wife Monica; Clarence Brown; Sheila Chanler and the estate of her late husband John; Robert Erskine; Michael Ignatieff; James Ivory; John Kasmin; Candida Lycett-Greene and the estate of the late Penelope Betjeman; Desmond Morris; David Nash; the estate of the late Stuart Piggott; David Plante; David Rieff and the estate of the late Susan Sontag; Kenneth Rose; the estate of the late Stephen Tennant; the estate of the late Cary Welch.

  For access to collections of Bruce Chatwin’s papers and related material we would like to thank: Colin Harris and Judith Priestman at the Bodleian Library in Oxford; the Churchill Hospital in Oxford; Gemma McCallion at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland; Kate Arnold-Forster and Nancy Fulford at Reading University; the Burns Library in Boston; Lalice Hatayama of the Charles E. Young Library in Los Angeles; Elaina Richardson at Yaddo.

  We would also like to thank the estate and publisher of the late W. G. Sebald for permission to quote from ‘The Mystery of the Red-Brown Skin,’ in Campo Santo, trans. Anthea Bell (Hamish Hamilton, 2005); Nicholas Robinson, Michael Bloch and the estate and publisher of the late James Lees-Milne for permission to quote from Diaries, 1971-83, and Diaries, 1984-97 (John Murray, 2008); Murray Bail for permission to quote from Notebooks 1970-2003 (Harvill, 2006). Don Bachardy and Kate Bucknall for permission to quote from Christopher Isherwood’s forthcoming diaries Liberation: Diaries Volume 3, 1970-1983 (Faber, 2010); Kenneth Pearson & Patricia Connor for permission to quote from The Dorak Affair (Michael Joseph, 1967); Patrick Leigh Fermor and Deborah Devonshire for permission to quote from In Tearing Haste: Letters between Deborah Devonshire and Patrick Leigh Fermor, ed. Charlotte Mosley (John Murray, 2008); Diana di Caraci and the estate of the late Teddy Millington-Drake for permission to quote from Shapes on the Horizon (London, 1996); the estate and publisher of the late Leo Lerman for permission to quote from The Grand Surprise – The Journals of Leo Lerman, ed. Stephen Pascal (Knopf, 2007); David Mason for permission to quote from ‘On Bruce Chatwin’s Ashes’, Mondo Greco, premier issue (Spring 1999); Johnathan Gathorne-Hardy and the estate of the late Gerald Brenan for permission to quote from The Interior Castle: A life of Gerald Brenan (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1992); the estate and publisher of the late Frances Partridge for permission to quote from Ups and Downs: Diaries 1972-5 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001).

  The quotation of Cyril Connolly is taken from The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle, by Palinurus (1944). The quotation of Osip Mandelstam is taken from The Noise of Time, trans. Clarence Brown (Quartet Books, 1988).

  We have made every effort to trace copyright holders. We greatly regret any omissions, but these will be rectified in future editions.

  INDEX

  Aachen Cathedral, postcard of

  Aalto, Alvar

  ABC radio

  Abidjan

  Abomey, BC writes from

  Aborigines and

  Abu’l Faz’land n

  Abu Simbel

  Accra, BC writes from

  Acheson, Nigel

  letters to

  Adam, Peter

  letters to

  Adams, Lindaand n

  Adelaide

  Festival

  Adler, Renataand n

  Aegina

  Afghanistan

  BC’s film idea based on episode on trip to

  BC’s visits to

  Africa see also names of countries

  Agades

  BC writes from

  Agadir

  Agontimé, Queen of Dahomey

  Agra

  Ahmed, Akbar (‘Dumpy’)and n

  AIDS/HIV

  Ai Khanum

  Aïr Mountains

  Aitken, Gillonand n

  letters to

  Aix

  Schatzkammer

  Akbar, Ghulamand n

  Alaska

  Albigenses

  Alexander the Great

  Al Fayed, Mohamed

  Algeriasee also Algiers

  Alghero

  Algiersand n

  Alhaurin-el-Grande

  Alice Springs

  BC in

  Allan, Ranaldand n

  Alpujaras, the

  Alunda, postcard from

  Amanullah

  Amazons

  Achilleon, postcard from

  America

  BC sends postcards to parents from

  BC makes frequent trips for Sotheby’s to

  BC has eye problems after working in

  BC’s marriage arranged to take place in

  the Chatwins’ wedding and honeymoon in

  BC involved in exhibition arrangements in

  EC visits for her sister’s wedding

  BC stays in Oregon

  BC stays in rented house on Fishers Island

  In Patagonia published in

  reviews of In Patagonia in

  Elizabeth deals with family affairs in

  BC comments on situation in

  BC recommended for Yaddo fellowship

  BC based at Yaddo

  reviews of On the Black Hill in

  BC plans to teach in Vassarand n

  BC describes visit to

  AIDS/HIV in

  brief references and n

  see also names of places

  America

  American Indians

  Amis, Kingsleyand n

  Amis, Martin

  Amritsarand n

  Amsterdam, BC writes from

  Anatolia

  Andalusia

  Anderson, Sherwood

  Andes

  Angelico, Fra, sale of paintings by

  Ankara

  BC writes from

  Annacatand n

  Ansari

  Anti-Slavery Societyand n

  Ant
ofagasta

  Apsall: St Mary Church of Grace

  Apt

  postcard of

  Arabs

  Arctic Tern pictureand n

  Arequipa

  Aretino

  Argentina

  BC writes from

  Argentina Austral

  Arnold, Eveand n

  Artemis

  Art News

  Aryan myth

  Aryans

  Ashland

  Asia House Gallery exhibition, BC involved in

  Askey, Arthur

  Astor, Chiquita

  Athens

  postcard sent from

  Athos see Mount Athos

  Atlantic Oceanand n

  Atlas mountains

  Attlee, Clement

  Aubenas-les-Alpes

  BC writes from

  Aula

  Aurobindo, Sriand n

  Australia

  BC’s visits to

  brief references

  see also names of places

  Austria

  BC writes from

  Avebury

  Avery, Peterand n

  Avon, Clarissa, Eden, Countess ofand n

  Ayer’s Rock

  Babel, Isaacand n

  Red Cavalry

  Babur, Zahir ud-Din Mohammad: The Baburnama and n

  Bacchae

  Bache, Andrew

  Badakhshan

  Badmintonand n

  Horse Trials

  Badrinath

  Bagshaw, Geoffand n

  Bahia Blanca

  Bail, Margaretand n

  letter to

  Bail, Murray and n

  letters to

  Writings:

  Holden’s Performance

  Ian Fairweatherand n

  Bailey, Pauland n

  Baja Caracolles

  BC writes from