My rucksack is taking [on] the most beautiful patina.
B
To John Kasmin
Cueva del Milodon | Ultima Esperanza | Chile | 10 February 1975
This is the cave where my great uncle Charlie Milward the Sailor dug up the remains of the Mylodon, or Giant Sloth, perfectly preserved in saltpetre. Have been sleeping everywhere from the open pampas, to peons huts in the rain forest, to (last night) a Jewish millionairess’s residence (c.1900) that looked as if it had been translated bodily from the Bois de Boulogne to this, the most southerly city in the world. Much love to all XX B
To Elizabeth Chatwin
Punta Arenas | Chile | [1 March 1975]
Dear E,
Notepaper of the British Consulate cut off to avoid offending la Reina Isabel!
Now re Peru.
I may be able to get though quicker in BA than I had hoped. So what I suggest is the following. For you and Gertrude to fly to Lima on/or around the 1st April (no later) and stay in the pension on the beach that Monica knows, see Dum Tweedie398 (whom I can personally be without) and the dreaded Mrs Porras,399 visit the museums (which are wonderful) Gold Museum, National Museum, Herrera Museum, visit perhaps Pachacamac great Inca site on the coast – in other words finish with Lima which I have done and I will turn up any time in that week not later than the 7th so that, in this way, we have wasted no time – because you, bless you, will have made all the superlatively organised arrangements that our expedition requires. I suggest we then go up the Andean highway onto the tableland and loop around Lake Titicaca via Cuzco, Macchu Picchu coming back through Arequipa.
Important points to remember.
1. Try and get hold of some decent maps in the U.S. because you can bet we’ll get none in Peru.
2. Bring pair of binoculars, for watching condors (A pair hovered above my head 15ft up in Tierra del Fuego. Incredible. Like a bombing raid.)
3. 1 pair of jeans please button-up 32 waist 34 leg. Mine were mangled without apology together with all my other clothes by a woman who did not know how to operate a washing machine. The hotel even tried to charge me for rags!
4. My canvas sided boots. Also really sensible light boot/shoes for you both. Wouldn’t mind a good thick woollen sweater. Light warm/wind proof gear. Remember it is 14,000 ft.
5. Some form of camp cooking equipment.
6. A new battery for my exposure meter to fit the small Leica CL; it is like a small pill ½ in diam.
7. If the camper is not going to work out: this you will have to check on the phone with Monica. I suggest we have an emergency tent; because I gather it will be much more comfortable than the hotels. Gertrude should invest in a big double-size sleeping bag that zips down the side + air mattress.400
8. Read Prescott’s History of the Conquest of Peru for a start. Also bring with you if you can some sensible but not sensational accounts of Peruvian Archaeology. See if you can find the dope on the Nazca Desert Drawings, because if all works out well we will go to interview Maria Reiche,401 octogenarian Austrian? mystic-archaeologist-recluse for the Sunday Times and then charter a plane (at S.T. expense) and get them photographed from the air.
. . . Nowhere is smaller than Patagonia. Of course the good-looking American couple in the Hotel Cabo de Hornos lived near Barrytown, New York. Of course, he was painted as a boy by Robert Chanler.402 I have been hurtling around Punta Arenas in search of the ghost of Charlie Milward. Fascinating place. For example parked on a beach with a rash of tin shacks almost on top of it is the Kabenga, the boat that took Stanley up the Congo. There is a concrete replica of the Parthenon which is the Gymnasium, there are little octagonal summer houses that could be Turkish. My menu of last night was as follows –
Loco de mer mayonnaise (Abalone)
Jambon Cru de la Terre de Feu
Pejerrey a la planche
Latuna nature (prickly pear)
Café
I am really looking forward to Peru and our circuit round the sites. How about your learning Quetchua (?sp) if you want to be really useful – or at least some Spanish.403 Could probably do with some sunglasses if only for the wind.
Don’t forget International Driving Licence
Bless you,
B
PS. Don’t forget a big – and I mean big bag – or bags – of bran. Hopeless line. Apparently it’s always the same xxxx B
To Charles and Margharita Chatwin
Cueva del Milodon | Ultima Esperanza | Chile | 15 March 1975
The story of Charlie the Sailor is, as I originally guessed, absolutely fascinating. Monica has the manuscript, albeit unfinished, of his autobiography, which introduces me into a Conradian world of sailing ships. Then from this end I have unearthed an extraordinary mass of documents of his extraordinary activities in Chile. He was German vice-consul as well as English. No wonder Winston Churchill and Lord Fisher thought he was a German agent. Am returning up the Canales Fueginos and Magellanes to Puerto Montt, thence to Buenos Aires to work in the libraries for a week and will meet Elizabeth and Gertrude in Peru on the 5th April. Much love B
Early in April, Elizabeth and Gertrude met up with Chatwin in Monica Barnett’s house in Lima. After visiting Arequipa and the Convent of Santa Catalina, they travelled by train to Cuzco in order to see Machu Picchu, and then flew back to Lima where they picked up the Barnetts’ camper van, driving to Huaraz, Chavin and Nazca, before returning to New York.
Unwilling to work at Holwell, Chatwin rented a house on Fishers Island, a private island off the Connecticut coast, while Elizabeth returned to England to oversee renovations.
To Elizabeth Chatwin
1030 5th Avenue | New York | 7 June 1975
Dear E.
When you have Mr Elms fix the study at the end why don’t we lay your sisal on the floor, BUT making first very sure that the floor is sealed with some insulating material to keep out the draughts and the cold from underneath. Also let us plan on having a Franklin or a Shaker stove. Ask him how complicated it would be to remove the fireplace entirely. I don’t think very.
Went last night to the most ghastly, chicy, swanky occasion at George Plimpton’s,404 all the people I most hate, which left me in a vile depression. I think I might try my hand at a short story called THE GADARENE LEFT.
Longing for you to see my Norman tower on the beach.405 It is slightly like a set for a Hitchcock movie, with a castle beyond and flights of ferocious seagulls. I got slightly alarmed about the cost, and went to Nantucket to try my hand there for a house – and hated it. Full of maddening boutiques and middle class American children pretending to be hippies. Fishers Island on the other hand though it may be stuffy as all hell has a dreamlike vaguely surrealist atmosphere that is not at all disagreeable.
Adrian406 is here and looks a bit better and less depressed. Perhaps he is getting the upper hand. much love,
B
To Elizabeth Chatwin
Box 271 | Fishers Island | New York | [July 1975]
Dear E.,
Got your letter. R[obert] E[rskine] is here. We have had an enormous lunch of steamed clams and grilled shrimp, and will have lobsters for dinner. Whew? There is a grey fog. Did I not tell you this house is not near the beach but in the beach. To such an extent that I have seagulls nesting in the house. Moules, delicious moules, not fifty yards from where I type, that is at low tide.407
Among the books I shall need are: Marshall Sahlins. Stone Age Economics. Lovejoy and Boas, Primitivism and other related Ideas in Antiquity . And Il Jimmy, the story of a Patagonian Outlaw. The first I once lent to Charles [Tomlinson] who may still have it. Of course there is too much furniture in the end room [at Holwell]. It should have: a desk, a chair, an easy chair, the stand, the French chair y nada mas.
Was supposed to go to N.Y. next week, but am having cold feet about it, because I do not like going off the island.
I had wondered why the main house had an astonishingly beautiful appearance and was full of amazing things. Huge Hawaii
an bowl to keep the magazines. French Empire painted screens of Incas. Hokusai wave in the bedroom, but have since learned that it was decorated in 1932 by the famous Lady Mendl.408 Now being turned, rapidissimo, into the spirit of Bloomingdales, like everything else in the U.S.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX B
P.S. Did you send the Ladies of Lima409 to Monica. If so, good. If not, why not and how do we get it to her? One way is to get it to Christopher Barnett who would I suppose take it to Lima. I haven’t heard from Monica.
In a lost letter to Robin Lane Fox, whom he had invited to go with him to Patagonia, Chatwin explained: ‘I’m having to write my account and you will think it is a contrived attempt at noticing, and I step out every morning looking at the ordinary world as if through a kaleidoscope of fractured glass – that’s what you will say, but I’m aware I’m doing it.’ Lane Fox says: ‘He later showed me a draft of In Patagonia. I said: “It’s too brightly lit, you’ve decided to go and notice everything.” Chatwin replied: “But the point of it is precisely that.”’
To Charles and Margharita Chatwin
Fishers Island | New York | 25 August 1975
Dear C and M,
Well, I have done about half the book of Patagonia. There is a 3-inch pile of manuscript, much of which will have to be scrapped when I come to the revision. This island has been well worthwhile. We rented a tiny Norman style garage stuck right out in the middle of the sea. It belongs to a family of mattress makers who have the big house. Seagulls virtually live in the house. Fifty yards away is the hideous mansion of Mr Henry Luce, the proprietor of Time Magazine, whose banal conversation makes one long for England.
I am just starting in on the part of the book which deals with the legendary Charlie Milward the Sailor. What a history! The life as a cadet up the mast of the Cape Horners. A shark-riding episode. Shanghaiing in San Francisco. Mad passengers etc. Monica has let me have a copy of his manuscript which describes the wreck on Cape Pillar at the entrance to the Straits of Magellan. The extraordinary thing about Milward is that he could never shake off Birmingham. The house in Punta Arena is pure Edgbaston arts and crafts. In his letter book there are a number of letters from L.B.C.410 Evidently he was fond of his cousin Isobel. From time to time he sent odd curiosities of Patagonia, such as a bow and some arrow heads of the Ona Indians. And I imagine he sent the piece of Giant Sloth at the same time.
Many thanks for your letter, which was also a bulletin of the doings of the family. In doing this piece about Charlie Milward I have wondered about them from time to time. I must say I was amazed to hear that the Joneses411 were still with us. That really takes me back. I’m told by people, here even, that John Chatwin412 is considered quite a name among young modern architects in England.
We leave here next week and go to New York for a few days. I am going to the West to Utah to do an article for the Sunday Times. Absurd subject. Butch Cassidy, the most famous cowboy outlaw of the West, skipped the USA in 1902 and managed to shake off the men from the Pinkerton Detective Agency. He and his friend the Sundance Kid got a concession of land in Northern Patagonia at a place called Cholila, where they lived from 1903 to 1910. There are people who remember them quite well, and their log cabin survives with its wall-paper intact. Later they were supposed to have been killed in Bolivia but Cassidy’s sister, now in her 90’s in Utah says her brother spent the twenties as a country gentleman in Ireland and returned to Utah for burial. This is the case of the Hero that never dies.
I am in two minds about coming back before this is finished, but I think it will probably be better to come over in October, stay at least a couple of months and do my extra research in Oxford rather than Harvard. I talked to Cary [Welch] today and he’s going to give me a room in their house. So I am going to have 2 weeks at least in Harvard!
I must say Gertrude was very remarkable in Peru. We had her climbing up mountains at 10,000 feet. Her friends say she has stretched upright since going away. She had never been on a camper before and although she got a bit tired, I think she enjoyed it. Peru was extremely beautiful, but it gives you the cold shudders. The Spanish colonial empire does have a very lowering effect. In Argentina, though, where everything was chaos, and one was supposed to be machine-gunned at every second if you believe the foreign press, it struck me as being about as peaceful as Stratford-on-Avon.
I’m sorry I’m so hopeless at writing. When you pore over the typewriter all day it’s the last thing you want to do.
X B
Chatwin stayed on in Fishers Island till after Labour Day in September, returning to England on the new Queen Elizabeth II. He had a second-class ticket, but obtained permission from a steward to work in the first-class library, until he was discovered and ejected. ‘He came home in a rage saying how horrible it was, all plastic furniture and terrible muzac.’ He was still writing In Patagonia.
That November, he rented a house in Bonnieux belonging to Anthony Carver, brother of the Field Marshal. Elizabeth says, ‘I am sent on ahead AS USUAL to drive on my own, 500 miles, to the Vaucluse, to prepare it. The place was impractical, uninsulated and insanely badly arranged, the top two floors of a house built into a cliff. We had a catalytic gas heater which ate up all the oxygen, and were feeling cold and nauseous, until we realised that we had to have the window open all the time.’ Visitors over the winter included Kasmin, some friends from Paris and Chatwin’s parents.
To Charles Chatwin
Postcard, Bonnieux | 12 Rue Droite | Bonnieux | France | 2 December 1975
Our terrace marked with a pretty indistinct arrow. Weather fine, clear and quite cold. Mountain air etc. make one feel very well. I will be signing a cheque for £900 shortly. Could you please check with bank that this is O.K. in view of the £650 from Sunday Times due at the end of Dec. If not please transfer funds to cover. Many thanks. See you. B
To John Kasmin
12 Rue Droite | Bonnieux | France | 12 January 1976
Dear Kassl,
Seems ages since you left. Probably because I have the family here.413 I haven’t lived with them like this for twenty odd years and I feel I am back at school. Everyone holds opinions and airs them at great length while I am trying to write or think or even breathe.
Reached a crisis the other morning and so I packed a little section of my writing into the leather rucksack414 and headed for the Luberon. By lunch next day I was at Le Beaumanière at Les Baux and sat down to a solitary and enormous lunch of Paté des Anguilles aux pistaches, Noisettes de Chevreuil etc. The maitre d’hotel was charmed by the leather rucksack and bore it in his arms to the cloakroom, showing it to the owner’s wife who bought me a glass of champagne. I have conceived a plan of walking to all of the best restaurants in France from a distance of fifty miles.
We have admittedly had ten days of the clearest weather, some days so hot I had to sit in the shade rather than let my brain burn up in the sun. I have packed my family out house hunting, but can’t decide if I like the region well enough. I do find that phoney Provencal atmosphere rather trying.
I had quite a funny letter today from the Rasputins415 who enclosed the particulars of that nouvelle cuisine restaurant and spa at Eugénie les Bains. Somewhere obviously to be avoided at all costs. I don’t see the point of taking a health cure at a place so pretentious that it would give you an apoplectic seizure after two hours.
I enclose a cheque payable to David416 for £133. I hope this is enough. I also have your Guide Gourmand de la France which I conveniently and truthfully discovered half an hour after the Sulzberger contingent left. I have taken to reading it in conjunction with Pound’s Cantos as bed-time reading. My parents will bring it back to you, unless I go up to Paris and give it to Sulz[berger] to bring over.
Let me know if you plan to go skiing with Grisha417 and I might come over to Sestrìere and join you.
Love to Linda.418 Keep your marriage guidance counsellor posted on that front.
Love, Bruce
To Derek Hill
12 Rue Droite | Bonnieux | France | 12 January [1976]
My dear D.,
We have let the house to Alistair Sutherland419 and are squatting here for the winter in a rather Spartan dwelling. But the sun seems to shine with regularity, and I must say it’s comforting to have to sit in the shade outside while writing.
I was in England for a month only in the autumn, and before that I was in Argentina, Chile and Peru, taking Gertrude round the Andes in my cousin’s camper truck.
I am writing about my cousin Charlie Milward the Sailor, who ran away to sea; was shipwrecked near Cape Horn; introduced reindeer to South Georgia; found the Giant Sloth in a cave in Last Hope Sound, preserved in salt; was accused by Churchill of being a German spy in the First War. I am cobbling his diaries together with Patagonian Giants; an Anarchist revolution against British estancia owners; the albatross; E. Allan Poe; the Patagonian Welsh; Boers; Butch Cassidy and the inevitable Mr Darwin.
I am going to sit it out here until it’s done. Once you break it, fatal. I like this country and we’re thinking of buying a cabanon here, even if it is a bit like the geriatrics ward . . .
We hear you’re writing your biography.420 That’ll give reviewers like Mr [Douglas] Cooper some fun. I always used to like him in a perverse way, but no more. Last November in New York I went to a dinner, and suddenly heard floating from the next table: ‘My dear, I can’t IMAGINE what Grace Dudley421 thinks she’s doing bringin’ in that piece of trash.’
Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Page 24