Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  Off again to Edinburgh in a few days. It is a far better course this year, and in point of fact one in which I have covered more of the ground than last year. I can’t slack off though and be a flash in the pan. We are hoping that the Linlithgows may have a flat or cottage for us at Hopetown which is five miles from the city in wonderful country which leads down to the Forth. She is American and apparently gets very bored with the locals. So I would have thought there was a chance. In any case we must move from the smokey zone into the New Town if possible because one gets absolutely black where we are.

  Captain Trammel was very nice to me in Ankara. He didn’t look at all too good when I went the first time, but was up and cheerful the second time. I didn’t ask Betty Carp what was the matter because it was obviously tactless to do so. It seems that he was waiting the results of tests which had been sent to Germany. I did gather though that it might have been quite serious. He was very interesting about Turkey and appears to know Istanbul backwards. Another person who knows Istanbul backwards by now is Andrew Batey. My Turkish friends almost ate him up entirely, and although he was supposed to come in to the wilds of Anatolia with me he never left the city for five weeks. I warned him in advance that it would happen if he weren’t firm minded and it did.

  The things that Elizabeth brought back are wonderful particularly the plain George II silver plate, which is in my opinion exactly how silver should look. I love its simplicity, and the tankard looks grand on it. I had one bit of luck in that I found an agate and silver gilt salt cellar in Edinburgh, and when I was in Vienna found almost the pair to it. Instead of being 17th century as I had thought it turns out to be Burgundian circa 1480, and the Vienna example comes from the Imperial treasury. When I have to learn German we’ll go to Vienna rather than Germany. I had three most enjoyable days there, which was a great relief after Nuremburg where I had a fight with a hotel keeper.

  Congratulations on your wedding anniversary and wish Bobby many happy returns of the day. Too late, I’m afraid, but as I once forgot my own birthday until it was a week too late, frankly it’s not surprising. There’ll be so many people to see again at Christmas and its very exciting. Cary [Welch] says he’ll be in India but I am not sure I believe it yet. But as he was going through a craze for the Beatles, and since they are going too, I feel there may be more in it this time.160 I would rather like to go to the Philadelphia University Museum for two or three days, and we could stay with Billy and Mia Wood. Otherwise the slate is clean. We both look forward to it immensely. It seems ages since last October. So much water has flown under the bridges, but I’ve never felt a twinge of regret about Sotheby’s, and every time I go back and see my poor ex-colleagues, I find they all want to do the same.

  With much love, and please forgive the typing,

  Bruce

  Chatwin started his second year as the lone male on his course, which had slimmed from 41 students to seven. A favourite lecturer had also moved on.

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 24 October 1967

  Horribly cold here, bring plenty of warm clothes. Edinburgh the same. Charles Thomas appointed professor at Leicester.161 Am going to Stuart [Piggott] on Sunday. Otherwise nothing. Will you please bring Huxley’s Flora of Greece162 RHS pamphlet in the journals, also his flora of the Mediterranean in the attic and Piggott’s Penguin Approach to Archaeology in the Lodge.

  On 16 November 1967 Hugh had a car accident in Birmingham. ‘I was travelling down Bradford Street in a red Austín 1100 when a lorry jumped the lights and I swerved to avoid it and a bus I had overtaken came in and spat me out under the lorry. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. They scraped me off the road and got me to hospital, I had 57 stitches in my head and was unconscious for two days.’ During this time he dreamed about Bruce.

  To Hugh Chatwin

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 1 December 1967

  Dear H,

  All this business about dreams. I never knew we were telepathic.163 Believe it or not I had a dream about you to coincide with yours about me. It’s this wild Celtic blood. Very sinister. I nearly came down today, but Father said you’d prefer it when you’re a bit better. Congratulations on your exams.164 I’ve got some at the end of next week. My whole life consists of struggling from one exam to the next. Felicity Nicolson is here for the week and she and E. have been charging down to Galloway and have come back with a couple of whopping Benin bronze heads.165 Everyone writes to me to see if I can get them into Sotheby’s. Any one would think it was the Christian Church in the 4th Century. I was always of the opinion that Sotheby’s was some kind of religious cult. Now I know. How awful to have been an unbeliever. An unrepentant pagan. If you want some light if rather embarrassing entertainment get hold of a copy of a book by Connor and Pearson called The Dorak Affair, with a totally fictitious conversation with your brother not one word of which did he say.166 The so-called treasure worth millions never existed so it is naturally somewhat difficult to find out where it has disappeared to. It’s like finding the Holy Grail. We have done rather well with our sales so far and haven’t had to sell the silver, because we got £150 for a picture167 I TOLD Elizabeth to buy for £35 in a Sotheby’s sale a year ago. How’s that for a good profit.

  Get well soon.168

  B

  In the winter of 1967 Cary Welch recommended Chatwin to curate an exhibition at the Asia House Gallery in New York devoted to the Nomadic Art of the Asian Steppes to be called The Animal Style. The exhibition was not to open until January 1970. Until that time Chatwin was expected to use his Sotheby’s training to contact museums and collectors and to gather the best examples of nomadic art. This was where he now directed his energies.

  To Cary Welch

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 13 January 1968

  Dear C,

  Since you seem prepared to spend vast sums on works of art, I enclose the following three photos (three life size) of an object I want to buy. It is Archaic Eskimo probably from North Alaska, exactly which of the eskimo cultures I wouldn’t like to predict. It is in MAMMOTH ivory. I have had this checked by the Natural History Museum. It belongs to a jeweller in Glasgow. I believe he will ask a hefty price for it. He has always promised to sell it to me one day, and I would like not to refuse to pay it. It is of course an arrow-shaft straightener of a type well attested from the Madgalenian to the Eskimo of today. I personally hardly know of a more satisfying Eskimo object, it has gone the colour of rich mahogany tempered with a sort of cloudy effect on the surface. I have been thinking of Eskimo objects for the exhibition and this is what has brought the question again into the open. I don’t think I will be able to afford to buy it at the moment, but would buy it for you if you were interested, providing I am able to buy it back after your death in the unlikely event that you should DIE before me. Or maybe you think it is boring.169

  I am on the verge of buying however a really exquisite Parthian silver earring [of an elephant head], the head and ears unbelievably fine with the trunk curling round in a loop, in silver, very hard and fine, the ears like some kind of ruched curtain, as in Uncle Nasli’s170 dish. 1½ in diam, it seems raving but not considering my preoccupation with objects that fit into a matchbox.

  Mercifully, the Edinburgh library has all the books I need for the Animal Style. It becomes more and more exciting as I spot, or think I do, wide ranging new possibilities. I have also found a fabulous 19th century travel book, with plates in the manner of Gustav Doré, called Una Estate in Siberio, fantastic engravings of shaman offerings and fetishes in dark mesolithic woods. They would do wonderfully as end covers, and could be elaborated ad nauseam by Mr MacCracken.171 I spent the whole day with a friend from London on the prowl round the shops. The barrenness was numbing. I think I will buy a 19th century wax cast of the face of an Australian aboriginal reputedly from the collection of Charles Darwin or maybe a coco-de-mer. I did buy a Peruvian maté gourd 18th century, with silver mounts, the best I have ever se
en, and that is not saying much.

  Love, Bruce

  To Cary Welch

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 30 January 1968

  Dear C.,

  This letter is being written in high dudgeon, and is really to let off steam. The dahling172 despite frequent warnings that they should be insured, and a strict injunction not to consign them to the tender hands of the GPO has lost her pearl necklace valued in 1936 for £7,000, or rather the postman ‘lost’ the registered package on his delivery round, thinking it must have slipped out of his postbag when the bus turned a sharp corner.

  Consequently the whole of my life for the past three days has been full of the wails of the dahling, disgruntled telephone calls to America, who are needless to say not best pleased, expensive lawyers, devious jewellers, obdurate post-officials, lightfingered (in my opinion) postmen, hopeless policemen etc., just when I had hoped to do some work on the Exhibition.

  The dahling is QUITE HOPELESS about her possessions. She is rapidly divesting herself of all her jewellery (and her and my clothing) on planes, trains and buses, when it could either be turned into CASH or mortgaged, or merely kept in a Bank. It is a stupid waste to LOSE it. It makes me a. socially conscious b. furious that I could have used the money much better. It now would appear that we can recover at least some of its value due to Gross Negligence on the part of the Post Office though that was not without an intense struggle.

  I also wanted to go for the weekend to the Shetlands to the annual Viking Festival the ‘Up-Helly-Aa’ at which they burn a replica of a Viking ship and send it off to sea, although admittedly I was secretly glad that I didn’t have to face the 80mph gale in which the boat got stuck . . .

  I shall go to Glasgow next week to see about the Eskimo object. We have a new car, a Volkswagen to replace my beloved Citroen van173 which the dahling always hated. I don’t like the image of the former. Who is this Peter Avery?174 The name rings a big bell. I have bought this Parthian silver earring, very cheaply. It has apparently been vetted as ancient by some lab, God knows where. It is very appealing, but I cannot help wondering if it is marvellous quality Art Nouveau, if so what a conception. The Professor175 and I would love to have a look at a slide of the FIBULA with a promise not to publish etc. We are also very taken with the idea of the silk176. If it is silk then it is the first occurrence in West Asia, but very interestingly there is evidence of an incipient SILK ROUTE leading to Celtic Europe in the 6th Century BC, where it is found in the Heuneberg,177 conveyed by our old friends the Scythians on their stocky ponies with their animal style trappings. Or is the fragment really too small to tell even under the most powerful microscope.

  Elizabeth is going down to London to see about the BLOODY pearls, and so I shall have the weekend to do some work. Give my greetings to the infant MacCracken

  Love

  B

  PS I went to London the other day and saw the Knight178 at a party, wife in Portugal, and he was off there the next day. I have never liked the Knight more and we had an endless conversation. We wished you had been there to see the English in Fancy Dress. All my old friends in multicoloured silk finery and furs or transparent plastic. I had a fascinating conversation with a Qantas Air Steward who told me a long saga of the secrets of AIR LOVE. Elizabeth was rather offended not to be introduced 179 though it would have shut him up like a clam.

  To Derek Hill

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 8 February 1968

  Dear D.,

  How badly I want to see you! I wish we could come down but we simply cannot. I am up to my eyes in work and debt and cannot stir. Edinburgh is a penance for frittering away all those years of doing nothing. I am going to organise an exhibition for the Asia Society in New York. It is John D. Rockefeller’s plaything of the moment, though the chances of his continued enchantment with Asia in general are, I imagine, dimming. The title is ‘The Animal Style of Mounted Asian Nomads’. The J.D.R. fund for Asiatic research is packing me off first to Finland, Sweden, Germany and a string of eastern European countries in March, and in the summer to Russia and my goal of the moment, Mongolia, if the Mongols are receiving. My collaborator is the topical Emmy Bunker whose father-in-law is ambassador in Saigon. Consequently she prefers not to be seen in Soviet circles. It opens in the winter of 1970. I would so liked to have come on that Iranian conference, but the dates conflict with the term. Beware of a gentleman called Mr M who will be intimately entwined in the whole business. He has silverly hair and the manner of Vittorio de Sica.180 He is married to a Persian lady who secured him three archaeological concessions ‘une pour la recherché, deux pour la commerce’. I was once at a curious lunch at the Cavalry Club at which Signor M tried to sell the ex-conservative M.P. for Plymouth, a Captain Plugge, a monstrous fake silver vase purporting to be 2nd Millennium BC. Also present were Dr Barnett of the B.M. and the Air attaché of the American Embassy, whose only counsel when asked a question was ‘Bomb North Vietnam’ and whose wife ‘just adored antiques’. The Captain was attracted to Mr M’s girlfriend, who was being let off for the day. Dr Barnett who was called upon to authenticate the vase sat in a cold sweat, and I laughed . . .

  I suppose you’ll never come here again now that poor Mrs Crabbie181 has died . . . Our house is in the doldrums. It is finished structurally; the central heating keeps it warm and dry. There are some expensive pieces of furniture, but neither carpets, curtains nor paint. Nor have we the time to see to it. We make the best of Edinburgh, but it is very second best, and our immediate reaction on leaving here is to get abroad.

  What are your plans for the summer? I secretly may go on to Japan on the Trans-Siberian railway, but cannot imagine how I would get back. I suddenly feel a great fascination for the far north but imagine it is only a phase; I don’t think I shall ever be a serious archaeologist because my whole approach is wrong. I can only see it in terms of getting someone else to pay for my travels . . .

  We stayed four days in the Chanler apartment in New York. It really is inconceivable to me that they should have copied curtain materials that should have been swept away in 1918. There are a number of other touches that you would appreciate such as my father-in-law’s proud hanging of the pictures, where neither he nor anyone else can see them, particularly the Chardin182 which is totally concealed from view.

  Love, Bruce

  To Gertrude Chanler

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 8 February 1968

  Dear Gertrude,

  What a week it’s been! I must say that when the postman arrived on the doorstep and said they’d lost the package, bedlam broke loose. We were in awful suspense over the weekend, and it was only slightly relieving to hear from Cartiers that they were insured. The police pulled very grave faces and said they doubted it would ever be found again. They were the only people in the whole business who were enjoying themselves. I imagine that in Edinburgh they are constantly being sent off for worthless bits of rubbish, but valuable purralls really captured their imagination. Eliz[abeth] went to London because we decided to get Ian Murray183 to handle the whole thing for us, and that evening there was a loud rat-tat-tat on the door, and the two most comic CID detectives standing outside. They looked at us as though they had stepped out of a very slow moving comedy thriller of the ’thirties, one six foot five at least and nearly as wide with a beetroot coloured face, the other less than five feet a sort of ashy colour. With the maximum of ceremony they pulled it out of an envelope, and asked me to identify it. I pulled out my glass in a very knowledgeable way and said ‘Boucheron 1920’ in a very knowing way. Then they told the story. The postman must have dropped it out of his bag onto the pavement at the top end of Princes Street. A shop assistant walking to work after ‘a tiff with er boyfriend’ and in a blind fury sees a little package and kicks at it, not once but for half a mile like a football. When she gets to the shop, she sees some cotton wool poking out from one end and inside ‘a wee string o’ beads’ which she keeps at the bottom of her shop bag for a
week. In the meantime she makes it up with her boyfriend (quite bright the boyfriend) who says purralls. She takes them to a jeweller for valuation so she can get the reward for finding them ha! ha! and the jeweller who was apparently not very bright but who had a visit from our friends the detectives the day before telephones the police. We are now trying to get the girl off because under Scotch Law she has to be charged for withholding them.

  It sounds all very well after the event but I had a feeling that something might go wrong and said that the post wasn’t the proper place for them. In any case I have now made E. get them insured.

  We have sold the old van very well to a friend of mine184 who set her heart on it and despite the fact that I have told her twice what it was worth. We have got a rather smart green Volkswagen instead which is what E always wanted. Last night we went to see Mrs Murray185 who was very nice and asked to be reminded to you. She has a fine portrait of Mrs Wadsworth by Thomas Sully. She says that she can fix up some stalking for me next year on her old estate.

  We did have a wonderful time at Christmas. I have never really enjoyed America more, because always in the past there was the gloomy shadow of Parke-Bernet looming up in the background. I will have to come over to talk about the exhibition and then of course we must come for the opening which will be Christmas the year after next and that time we won’t be in a rush at all because the days of exams will be over. We have been having the vilest weather here and were knocked off our feet in the great gale the other day. It was dangerous to be out at all because the air was filled with flying rubbish. But so far we haven’t had the fantastic snowfalls that they have been having in the south.