You will have to admit that my instincts about P[enelope] were fully justified. Eccentricity carried to that extent is egomania, and not particularly interesting. John B[etjeman] is having her letter describing the rape photostatted and circulated, so Jim L[ees]-M[ilne] told me.
Phone rings at 8am brightly yesterday. Sally [Westminster] inviting herself to lunch. And last night I was at Keith [Steadman]’s to meet the Garnetts294 when Derek [Hill] rang saying he had something vital to talk to me about, the worst possible news, something really serious had happened. For some reason I could not sleep and when I did I dreamed horrible nightmares of Derek and the Andy Garnetts in a futuristic house. This morning too at 8-30 Derek in a funereal voice, spent five minutes telling me how serious and terrible the situation was without telling me what it was.
It seems that Faber’s have turned his Morocco book down unless D[erek] manages to produce £8000 to cover the printing costs. Did I know a foundation who would put up the money. What I did not say was that D[erek]’s photos are so atrocious that it would be a miracle if any publisher looked at them with or without the £8000. Anyhow I suggested the Mellon Foundation, and much cheered he said he would write AT ONCE to Bunny Mellon, and of course etc. etc. she’d do everything to help being such a close friend. I am afraid that was the cruellest thing possible because poor Mrs Mellon if she has any sense will say no and there will be an embarrassing scene and a broken friendship (by whom?). The simple fact remains that it is unpublishable. Why are all one’s friends lunatics?
Charles T[omlinson] came to dinner with the Hodgkins and Kasmin the other night, and the morning before Charles appeared with his latest monotypes, which I like in a way as they have a certain quality. Would I mind hanging them in the drawing room so that Kasmin etc might take a look, and possibly have an exhibition etc. etc? Really quite dotty because the Kasmin Gallery only goes in for Candy stripes twenty feet long, and not black blodges 2⅔ by 3¼ in.
I have sold the Maori so it seems. It has to be confirmed. I shall hang on to that money, but will probably buy an Eskimo seal with plaintive eyes that have been looking at me for three weeks. How I am bored with large things! Never liked them anyway. A phase – only a phase, but in fact my collecting if such it be is becoming less and less expensive as I can only bear a smooth pebble or a simple harpoon.
Writing not bad. Refuse to be hurried, and one IS in a much better frame of mind if one exercises one day in four. No doubt about it. You couldn’t send me a cheque on your Geneseo account could you because I want to order one or two paperbacks from New Directions.295 Or can I ask your mother for them?
The carpets finally arrived from Morocco with a consignment of C. Gibbs, but the one I bought was so hideous in the grisliness of England that I gave it promptly to the Knight and Olda who were Thrilled by it. This shows their terrible judgement and everyone is happy all round. I keep on paying little bills for you . . .
F[elicity] N[icolson] says she wouldn’t have you interrupt your plans and drive specially to Bombay for her as she still won’t decide what to do. Neither will I, though I will be able to give you some idea in a month. She thinks the best thing is for you to do what you like, and she will fit in or not as the case may be.
XXXXX B
Linda [Wroth] is the most interminable telephonist I have ever known up to three quarters of an hour to London.
To Gertrude Chanler
Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 16 November 1970
Dear Gertrude,
As Elizabeth probably told you I had to come back because of a hideous episode with my teeth. A rotten dentist years ago made a complete muck of a filling and it went horribly bad underneath.
I am sitting here in the farm for a bit, writing each day. These things take far longer than one imagines and I procrastinate over every word. Have celebrated E.’s birthday by a massive planting session. A pyramid of top soil arrived and we now have some proper borders in the back with tree paeonies and big species roses plus a very pretty plantation of willows. I want to try and pave the back this winter, but can’t find the stone slabs at the moment.
One thing. We have bust the Cape Cod lighter burner,296 and Elizabeth will be furious. This being an American ritual the English don’t understand, how can I get some more? I think we’d better have two or three so that they’ll last.
I keep hearing about the lady adventurers from time to time. Penelope [Betjeman] seems to be very demanding and I’m afraid that eccentricity has an uncommon tendency to develop into egomania. This is perfectly all right as long as you don’t have to travel with it. I think I’d have gone absolutely crazy already.297 Three days was enough in Istanbul. I will fly out in January. I can’t see that going overland would solve anything, and the spring gets very hot by March
with love,
Bruce
To Elizabeth Chatwin
Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 24 November 1970
Dear E.,
Many thanks for yr Kampur and Delhi letters which arrived together. Felicity [Nicolson] is writing to you about her visit – and is procrastinating. I simply cannot see any chance of coming out immediately after Christmas. End of Jan is the earliest possible. You must realise if I don’t do this thing now it’ll sit here for ever as I have a million other plans as well. I’m very sorry but there it is. I am going on and on until the first draft is available for Tom Maschler and have his opinion. Then I’ll decide. I know the whole thing is very irritating for you especially with your companions – and incidentally Penelope [Betjeman] is the last person I want to show me round Delhi and would put me off for ever. You still have never said when you want to be back here – and Linda [Wroth] would roughly like to know where she stands. She is v competent etc but somewhat gloomy to be with!
. . . As I’ve told you I have sold the Maori and am treating myself to the most astonishing object belonging to C. Gibbs my favourite of all his things – a Shinto Mitsutomoe (C17 at latest maybe C15) symbol in gilt bronze 3 ft across like a Brancusi only better – £250 for nothing!298 In part exchange am letting him have the little Moroccan table for which he’ll give a good price. One bit of replaceable tat for something really stupendous. Otherwise nothing very much of note here except for the mildness of the weather and corresponding legions of flies. Have you met this rather famous man Ajit Mukherjee299 in Delhi who runs the crafts museum and is a great one for folklore etc. I believe he is very very weird but interesting too. Why don’t you buy a lot of the Penguin and other cheap Indian texts and really study while the others draw and mooch around. All books are terribly cheap.
The hedge as I told you arrived and is planted. I contemplate another tree order – one to plant the Amur oak whose bark provided the Imperial Yellow dye for the Chinese Emperors. Available at Hilliers . . . I thought I might take a day off and go over there myself and collect them personally which is a much better bet than all that delivery horror.
I’m rather alarmed that the Death Watch beetle in the beam above the bedroom seems to be active. I will try and get someone to look at it. No sign of Mr Elms.300 Also Linda and I both have Holwell Farm stomach ache and we wonder if it could be anything to do with the well.301
Must begin again upstairs. Have just spent the morning shopping for the week in Wotton as I am alone till Friday
xxxx B
Chatwin had been writing The Nomadic Alternative for almost a year and kept thinking that it was about to be done – in much the same way he continued to believe that he had sold Sarah Bernhardt’s Maori bedstead. In this state of mind, he made plans to join Elizabeth at various dates over the winter and spring. But the end of the book was unreachable, ‘a Sisyphean job’ in Elizabeth’s words. A month-long postal strike made communication difficult since the post office ran the telephone system as well.
To Elizabeth Chatwin
Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 1 December 1970
Dear E.,
Today I start on a new chapter. The las
t one on the Hunters now finished has gone on for nearly thirty thousand words and will probably have to be halved. I don’t know what I can say about coming. I wish I did. I can’t tell you how much I long to get away. But if I break the threads of concentration now, I’m honestly afraid that the whole thing will go down the drain. I sit here from 9 a.m. till 10 p.m. but of course the length of time offered does not necessarily make a complete working day. Some days it comes easily, others I battle with 500 words.
I think you can calculate on Feb 7th, let’s say as a firm date, and if there is any likelihood of it happening any quicker I’ll be the first to let you know. The main difficulty is that HAVING written this enormous bulk I may want to refine the whole thing down to my inimitable (!) style with the exception that this time I want it to glitter like a diamond. Maybe I’d better sit in the Red Fort and correct the proofs.
F[elicity] N[icolson] has been rather remiss. She has had your addresses for four weeks and told me yesterday she hadn’t even written. The chances of her coming are I tell you REMOTE. Do not make any effort to go to Bombay to meet her or me. When I come I will find you wherever you happen to be.302 I shall be virtually without luggage and such as I have will be left at Bombay or Delhi . . .
We are the proud proprietors of an Eskimo seal at nearly £100 per inch. It’s tiny, but the most appetising Eskimo animal I have ever seen except for the archaic Point Hope walrus. It is so balanced that when I write at the typewriter on this table it bobs up and down exactly as a seal does, and looks at me with a pair of dark sympathetic melancholy eyes. It’s even got a suggestion of whiskers from the crystalline centre of the nose and a wholly seal-like expression in the mouth. When you stroke it, it responds back. It is exactly a similar model that Brancusi took for his Lying Seal. There are one or two other little treasures such as the pipe and tobacco box of an 18th Cent Welsh shepherd of unbelievable elegance and simplicity.
Last weekend full of Gloucestershire dinners. Ninety laughs a minute. ‘What do you do?’ ‘I’m writing a book. What do you do?’ ‘DO? What d’ye mean DO? I hunt four times a week. How d’ye expect me to Do anything?’
Am going to some people called Clifford who live in Frampton Court, a great Vanbrugh pile. Conversation with Mrs Clifford is like talking to a portico. Long letter from Penelope [Bejteman] which I cannot read. Also from your mother in answer to one from me requesting a Cape Cod lighter burner as the one here seems to have finally collapsed. I am employing someone called David Hann who works for Keith to do some things in the garden. We only have occasional visits from Tigger303 who has gone very wild. It’s no use keeping him in as he just howls to be let out.
I have to take a little time off occasionally, and one day before Christmas I mean to go to the hawking centre in Newent. They train eagles like the Kirghiz – imagine! love, B
To Elizabeth Chatwin
Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 11 December 1970
Dear E.,
Have just had yours from Gwalior this morning and am going up to the dentist tonight. I wrote to you yesterday but haven’t posted the letter because it was quite a stream of invective against that Linda. She really is quite awful. I can’t stand her, and she’s been making such a fearful scene because I’m here at all. When I suggested she GO and I STAY, there was no question of it. She was intending to STAY. Not that she’s had to pay one penny so far. I footed all the bills. She even complains about not having enough money to eat, because she’s not prepared to sell her shares, but is quite content when her boyfriends eat and drink all the drink on me. I’m hardly ever here at all. Sitting in the study. Have asked no one here for fear of disrupting her, and when Miranda and Fatby [Miranda’s daughter, Da’ad Boumaza] came for a couple of nights she threw the most almighty scene and refused to speak. Very unpleasant.
Coupled with a fearful row with Sotheby’s. Jessie Wood gave me a very nice gold box to put into Sotheby’s with a res. of £800. I phoned up after the sale and was assured it had been sold for £800 on the reserve. Then no confirmation of sale. I ring up and they say that the last bid in the room was £760, and that it had never reached £800. They are all such liars because they’ve contradicted themselves several times over. There’s some shenanigans about the whole thing, and I am insisting they cough up.
I just don’t know what to do about the book. I am going to talk to Deborah [Rogers] today about it. It is very nearly finished but is in the most unholy mess. What do I do? Come to India and work in Bombay. The books etc will not be needed because it will all be in the files. Cable me if you feel like it from Hyderabad. F[elicity] N[icolson] now says flatly she’s not coming. I may have found a lead into Sikkim and Bhutan and will let you know. I’ll go to the Indian High Commission tomorrow.
Furthermore I have strained my back, and may even have slipped a disc GARDENING. Winter flowering cherry planted, now in bloom. Very beautiful. Charles T[omlinson] has been coughing blood. Very worrying, now in bed. I hope he hasn’t got T.B. Been looking awful recently.
Never want to write another thing again.
much love, B
PS Have talked to Deborah today. First draft v. nearly done. B
To Valerian Freyberg
Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | [December 1970]
The enclosed is an 18th century sherbet spoon304 which should be used by my godson Valerian for his first ice-cream or water ice. I am very keen on my godson305 and want to see him, often, when is his birthday?
PS Should be used but not if he’s going to bite it to bits. I detected a certain firmness of attitude to crowds and the House of Lords. I had one winning smile and for that am grateful.
To Elizabeth Chatwin
Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 2 January 1971
Dear E.
I have your letters today, as I’ve come down from London to the farm for a night to get some things. Iain and Miranda have let me stay in Llama [Ghika]’s house in Little Venice, which I share with Coote Lygon.306 At the end of the month if I’m still here, I shall have the place to myself. I am afraid I simply couldn’t stand the atmosphere here one minute longer and one day filled up the car and fled. She infuriates me to the point of no return and has mercifully gone to Bath for the night which is why I have come today. However she does look after the house well despite everything. Though a sinister crack has appeared in the beam in the dining-room due to the jolting of her constant intercourse. SHARK’S CUNT Miranda and I have called her. She and Fattles [Miranda’s daughter] came down for the night before Christmas, and Miranda did some wonderful cooking which she did not deign to touch. Though the lot which we had hoped to eat for lunch next day was spirited away in the night.
Then the drama of my back. GARDENING My Dear! Lugging soil for the new planting at the back of the house. A slipped disc, no more no less – and three weeks of agony. The third vertebra in my back, and it has caught the nerve which leads to one’s crutch and balls and I felt someone had given me the most almighty boot where it hurts most. Two sessions with the back man at St Thomas’s and he wasn’t too optimistic, and then suddenly it’s gone. Touch wood! I still have to be careful about getting in and out of bed and lifting things.
The next drama. Sandy Martin said he had sold the Maori the opening day of his exhibition. It got the red spot and was duly considered sold. I found out it was to G[eorge] O[rtiz] P[atino]. The payment to be made Jan 1st. Dec 30th phone call to Sandy. He wouldn’t buy after all. Says he told Sandy he would buy on one condition that it was prior to 1800. Took the photos to an expert in New Zealand who said Very fine quality but 1810-1820. K. J[ohn] H[ewett] says this is nonsense. Now there‘s an almighty stink broken out, but Sandy who had written to my bank guaranteeing the money, then wrote off to cancel it before even telling me. They’re all such liars. K.J.H. being very helpful about it. Overdraft now £1,250. Oh God!
I’m taking up to London the Persian silk textile307 and will probably be able to get £500 for it. The Moroccan one is ready a
nd looks marvellous and so it can hang in its place. I vastly prefer it anyway. That’ll relieve the situation temporarily at least. Am rather loath to sell anything else just at this minute. The Mitsutomoe is a huge gilt roundel Japanese of uncertain date but probably Muromachi that is to say 15th-16th Century with three enormous blobs like ying and yang except the Japanese Shintoists with their flair for the ambiguous have gone in for HE SHE AND IT. Magnificent. It’s like having your own Brancusi 2½ feet diam. Best thing I’ve ever had except for the Eskimo seal another Brancusi-ish object.
The lights have gone off. The third power cut in two days apparently. The deep freeze stuff is a wreckage according to the note left by Linda. They had a fourteen-hour cut. There is one candle in the Japanese lantern, and I am thankful I am going out to dinner with the Gascoynes,308 and will refuse to be put off. Bamber and his wife have spent a winter in India and are writing a Mughal book – such a novel idea. They’re rather silly.
PLANS. In a way I’m rather sad you think you must be here in May – like May 1st? Especially as I have been laying a series of very well conceived ones to be invited by the King of Bhutan and you as well. All the papers have gone off last week. Oh dear! What to do about? As you know, to me this book is really important. It is, though I say it myself, coming on all right. There are parts I am pleased with and parts that are a mess. One cannot hurry something that can’t be hurried. Am lurching through the last section quite rapidly now, next week will come to the Hero and the road of trials, followed by anarchists and modern revolutionaries, and then a concluding chapter where all the heavy guns are fired. Nerve required. I am quite unaware at the moment if I have gone off my head or whether the ideas are so novel, so outrageous, so shattering that no one will be able to put the book down. Or neither, just a silly mess? Iain Watson who is normally a stickler about such things is highly enthusiastic. I read him passages and he corrects it. Quite toughminded Iain when it comes to the point. We shall see. The Book must be done. The back of it may get done by mid-Feb in a state visible to Tom Maschler i.e. in an intelligible first draft. I don’t want to be disturbed till then particularly. That is if you are happy, and you sound infinitely more cheerful than previous letters which were giving me a slightly guilty complex. My father has made no holiday plans. He I think would come out and help you. I believe that if one asked he might very well like to come anyway, but I think one should provide some entertaining diversion in India or en route for him.
Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Page 17