Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  To Jim Silberman

  [19 February 1980]534

  Jim,

  I haven’t looked it over.

  Parts I-II and III are I think as the Cape editor and I think they should be with most (!) of your suggestions incorporated.

  Parts IV & V are my final retype but not yet edited by Cape’s.

  There are 2 small parts which I want to rewrite anyway. Please anyway be FIERCE over these final sections because they have had far less going over than the first 3.

  The book is not a novel but a TALE (?)

  ?A Tale of Two Continents?

  See you Tuesday,

  Bruce

  To Francis Steegmuller535

  L6 Albany (top) | Piccadilly | London | 21 March 1980

  Dear Francis,

  You can certainly borrow, not rent the above, but I feel I must warn you of the drawbacks. It is not a flat, in the English sense of the term, but a one-room garçonnière such as one might find in the Cinquième. My tastes are also rather Spartan. It has a kind of kitchen, a minuscule shower and basin, but the lavatory is out on the landing. It has a painted Directoire bed, 3ft 6in wide – and definitely for Francis: sharing with anyone not recommended. It has a smaller, also Directoire, steel lit-de-camp, which can be made into a bed, though it serves as a sofa. In this Shirley would have to sleep. I have, on occasions, and found it small but possible.

  Otherwise, there are a Jacob chair, a Régence chair, a table, a telephone, the King of Hawaii’s bedsheet with a design of fishes (framed), a Sienese cross, and a Mughal miniature.

  You will feel very cramped. I discourage visitors, but if you’re prepared to put up with it, it can be yours from the 5th to the 11th.

  I cannot rent it to you, because I pay no rent myself, and only have it on a friendly basis. You would have to pay my cleaning lady, Mrs Robinson, who comes on Mondays and Thursdays. You would also obviously monitor all phone calls and pay those. If you then wanted to give me a present – a bottle or two of champagne never refused – that would be up to you . . .

  If I am up that week, I can easily find a billet and it will only be for a night. I have started writing about my Welsh peasants, if that’s the right word for them, and don’t need interruptions.

  As always,

  love to Shirley, Bruce

  On 3 April 1980 The New York Review of Books published a letter from Dieter Zimmer in response to Chatwin’s review, on 6 December 1979, of Konrad Lorenz’s The Year of the Greylag Goose. ‘Mr Chatwin’s central statement seems to be this: “His [Lorenz’s] message is that all human behavior is biologically determined.” Now no matter how long I look at this sentence, I am not sure I understand what it is meant to say. I am perfectly sure, however, that if it is meant to say what it seems to say it is altogether wrong. I suspect that there is some fundamental misunderstanding here which blurred Mr Chatwin’s picture of Lorenz.’ Chatwin was given a right of reply in the same issue.

  To the New York Review of Books

  I do not agree. The Year of the Greylag Goose is not a ‘friendly and harmless picture volume’, but a sugar-coated pill. The exquisite photographs merely served Lorenz with a vehicle to air, yet again, a philosophical credo that may have changed in tone, but never in substance, since his successful application for membership of the Nazi Party (No. 6,170,554) eight weeks after the Anschluss on May 1, 1938. For this detail, as well as an assessment of Lorenz’s contribution to racial biology, readers are referred to the brilliant series of papers by Professor Theo Kalikow of Southeastern Massachusetts University (the latest being: Konrad Lorenz’s Ethological Theory: Explanation and Ideology, 1938-1943 in Naturwissenschaft und Techniken Dritten Reich, edited by Mehrtens and Richter, Suhrkamp, 1980.)

  One should never minimise Lorenz’s capacity to charm the public – or influence events. It remains for future historians of ideas to document the impact of On Aggression on our own times. For just as, in 1942, the biologists confirmed Hitler in his belief that the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem concurred with his Duty to the Creator, so in the 1960s the notion of ‘ritualised’, limited combats seems to have lulled certain strategists (and apologists) of the Vietnam war into a belief that they were answering the Call of Nature.

  To Sunil Sethi

  L.6 Albany | Piccadilly | London | 29 April 1980

  Dearest S.,

  I have always wanted to have a letter from Macao: so the crumbling green portals of the Hotel Belavista were, to some extent, worth the sixth month wait.

  I wouldn’t go anywhere near New York at the minute: the whole of the US has gone collectively barking as the Ayatollah himself. I was there three weeks ago to do some pre-publicity on The Viceroy of Ouidah (as the new book is called), and even intelligent friends, who last year were cosmopolitan liberals were shouting ‘Bomb Qom’: it’s one of those slogans, like ‘I like Ike ’536 which conceal a complete vacuity of purpose, yet nevertheless have the power to sway the millions. The shops in 42nd street were all selling the rifleman’s targets, presumably put out by some Gun Owner’s Association, with the Ayatollah’s photo superimposed, his nostrils being the bull’s eye.

  I have a sneaking regard for him, as did Wilfred Thesiger,537 who when interviewed recently said: ‘You can’t blame him for not wanting his country littered up with plastic.’ One simply does believe in God’s angels when the helicopters came out of the sky.

  I long, like you, to go to China, but have never been able to cope with the idea of constant supervision and red tape. Eve Arnold538 went for four months last year, even to Sinkiang and Lhasa, but although her photos were conventionally beautiful, nothing about the trip actually inspired me to follow in her footsteps.

  If you stay in Hong Kong for any length of time I may visit you. It seems possible that In Patagonia will be translated into Japanese, and I’ve said I’ll accept a trip instead of an advance. I have a passion to see the North of Hokkaido, the Inland Sea and the Seamier side of Downtown Tokyo. I know a very entertaining cuss called Donald Ritchie,539 who is the world’s expert on the Japanese film and he had always made it sound astonishing.

  No. Paul Theroux’s540 The Old Patagonian Express (such a cheat the title!) although it’s a success commercially is not good. He happens to be a friend of mine, though, and if I can’t quite stomach what he does, he is one of the more lively spirits around London. In November we gave a combined talk to the Royal Geographical Society, which completely bewildered types like Lord Hunt,541 as we took the audience breathlessly through a literary excursion to the Antipodes.

  I, I might say, have started a new book – on a pair of Welsh hill farmers, identical twins who have slept in their mother’s bed for the past forty-three years. Marvellous subject, but do I have the poetic talent for it?

  To go back to the previous paragraph – Paul and I appeared on a TV programme542 together with Jan Morris, in her/his twinset and pearls. Going back to London in the taxi she/he said: ‘I was so interested by what you said about the dangers of travel. You see, having travelled all over the world, both as a male and as a female, I can safely say it’s far safer to travel as a female.’

  Elizabeth was in India for a couple of months this winter, while I was on my mountain top. She even had tea with your father. I fear that our relations are going from bad to worse. The trouble with living separate lives, as we have done for so long, is that you end up with totally different conceptions of life – to the extent that when you do try and make arrangements together, they end in disaster.

  Last weekend I tried to show willing and put on my best tweed suit for the Badminton Horse Trials: the result was terrible. We have since had an exchange of letters that hint of separation/divorce.543

  A dreadful worry: what to do?

  Must go now. I have to lunch with my US publisher544 who is the key to my present existence. Long for the news from Delhi. A friend, the Bombay popper, Asha Puthli Darling,545 whom I saw in NY, had a very strange tale about Dumpy.546 as always, my love to you.


  B

  PS Do you ever read Flannery O’Connor?547 You should.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ON THE BLACK HILL: 1980-83

  Three months after Elizabeth ejected Chatwin from Holwell Farm, they met for lunch in London. On 22 July 1980 Chatwin wrote in his notebook: ‘On train to Newport. Ah! The joy of not going places by car. The relief to find that you are in possession of yourself . . . Lunch with Elizabeth. Poignant. Sad. We discussed our lives in the past tense.’ Their separation had become a fait accompli without any discussion, but as a Catholic she refused to divorce him. They had met to discuss the sale of Holwell Farm, their home since 1966 and now too large for Elizabeth to manage on her own: ‘I knew I couldn’t end my days there. I couldn’t bear the lack of sun.’ She was, she wrote to her mother, ‘frantically looking’ for a house with light and enough land on which to graze her sheep. ‘Bruce is v. busy writing and says he has so many projects for the next 10 years that he can’t really think about it so I must just go ahead and find what suits me.’ She did not speak directly about her troubled marriage to Gertrude.Nor did Chatwin tell his parents.

  Throughout 1980, as his relationship with Elizabeth continued to disintegrate, Chatwin assembled material for a new book, returning to the area he loved best: the Welsh border country which he had discovered on school and family holidays. ‘The Welsh border I regard as one of the emotional centres of my life . . . It’s what Proust calls the soil on which I still may build.’ He billeted himself in several houses: Carney Farm, Tom Maschler’s cottage not far from Llanthony Priory, where Chatwin as a schoolboy had come on a bicycling weekend from Marlborough; The Cwm in Shropshire, belonging to Martin and Stella Wilkinson; New House, Penelope Betjeman’s home in Cusop above Hay-on-Wye; and The Tower in Scethrog belonging to Diana and George Melly.

  To Ivry Freyberg

  The Tower | Scethrog | Brecon | Powys | 9 July 1980

  Lovely the 16th!548 So happens have to be in town for that day only – but anyway I’d leave my Welsh mountain for you XXX Bruce

  In October Chatwin was staying in Greece with the Leigh Fermors, waiting for a bus, when he fell into conversation with an aspiring American writer who had lived in Alaska. David Mason had arrived in Kardamyli two months before with his wife. His meeting with Chatwin was to be their only one, but typical of several short, single, intense encounters. Mason wrote: ‘Though our acquaintance was based upon little more than three hours of conversation and a sporadic correspondence over several years, I can say that he had a powerful influence upon my own life.’

  To David Mason

  L.6 Albany | London | 30 October 1980

  Nice talking to you at the bus stop. Sorry it couldn’t go on longer. Best of luck with your novel. I’m just off to N.Y. to see about mine. Regards, Bruce Chatwin Copy of In Patagonia in post.

  The Viceroy of Ouidah was published on 23 October 1980.Maschler sent a telegram to Chatwin at the Albany. NO LIVING WRITERS WORK MEANS MORE TO ME THAN YOURS STOP EVERY GOOD WISH ON PUBLICATION DAY TOM. The novel had many good reviews, but overall the reception was one of rather qualified rapture, a feeling that Chatwin’s fascination with the grotesque had run away with him. Robin Lane Fox wrote ‘a not very easy review’ for the Financial Times.‘I got back a rather noble letter from Bruce; he was sorry I hadn’t liked the book, but he didn’t feel I’d understood it, or that it had the “brightly-lit superficiality” that my review suggested. In his mind had been Flaubert’s travels in North Africa and the model of Trois Contes.’

  The disappointing response – hardback sales were 4,938, fewer than for his first book – accounted for the direction Chatwin now took: to retreat into the Hardy-like solidity of a story about ‘a pair of Welsh hill farmers, identical twins who have slept in their mother’s bed for the past 43 years’.

  To Francis and Shirley Steegmuller

  The Cwm | Ludlow | Shropshire | 15 December 1980

  A thousand thanks for everything during that whirlwind visit. I am writing this on a tempestuous night in Wales. The rain beats on the Gothic panes of my little stable-study window. Miserable heat from a single bar electric heater. Wish I was back in New York. Much love Bruce

  To Derek Hill

  Amsterdam | 1 January 1981

  For months on end, I’ve been in a rather strange frame of mind, writing, in a remote corner of the Welsh Border, about people who never go out. All the hogwash of travel, of nomadism, etc, seems to have burned itself out. I now find it harder and harder to move one inch. E. on the other hand is now the footloose lady traveller – off with the Duchess [of Westminster] on a tour of maharajahs. Will we meet soon? I do come to London every now and then

  To Susannah Clapp

  L.6 Albany | London [8 January 1981]

  Phew! Yes, we seem to have just almost got away with it. Am up to the armpits in the mud of the welsh Borders, but one day, perhaps, that too will pass.

  XXX Bruce

  The following note accompanied the gift of a purple lacquer tile to Bill Katz, a NewYork designer and architect who had invited Chatwin to stay at St Maarten in the house of the artist Jasper Johns.

  To William Katz

  New York | 6 February 1981

  This is Eileen Gray’s only attempt – in all probability the world’s only attempt – to make purple lacquer. Bruce Chatwin

  To David Mason

  [New York but as from] L.6 Albany | London | 16 February 1981

  Many thanks for your card – which was lost and is found. I hope all goes well with Alaska. I, on the other hand, am off to the Caribbean to work on Wales. Such are the habits of writers. As ever Bruce C.

  On 24 February Chatwin visited Yaddo, a writer’s colony near New York that provided its residents with ‘room, board and studio space, and almost unlimited time in which to do concentrated work’. Previous residents numbered Flannery O’Connor, Patricia Highsmith and Robert Frost. Sponsored by Barbara Epstein, founder and editor of the New York Review of Books, Chatwin applied for a six-week Fellowship during April and May to finish the last third of his Welsh novel. Spaces were tight, but Yaddo’s Director Curtis Harnack recommended him to the Admissions Committee: ‘I believe he would fit the “outright” invitation category – a writer whose work and worth is generally known, therefore usual procedures suspended.’ Harnack wrote to Chatwin on 4 March: ‘The Admissions Committee in Literature reviews hundreds of applications each year, and I am happy to report that your name was very high on the list. It is the hope of everyone that this time free of distractions will enable you to finish your book.’

  To Curtis Harnack

  c/o Jasper Johns | Terres Basses | St Maarten | French West Indies | 20 March, 1981

  Dear Curtis Harnack,

  Very many thanks for your letter – and if I haven’t replied before, this is because the post from this island to the U.S. takes a couple of weeks and it seemed better to wait until someone was returning to New York.

  I am very happy that you can have me at Yaddo during April and May: concentrated work is, at the moment, the order of the day.

  I shall leave here around the 27th and fly back to New York, but it is just possible that my wife may fly out from England & spend a few days with me there. If so, I may not get to you till April the 14th or thereabouts; but in any event I’ll let you know by phone immediately the plans crystallise.

  I very much look forward to coming.

  With all good wishes,

  Bruce Chatwin

  In the event, Elizabeth did not join him in New York and Chatwin arrived at Yaddo late in March.

  To An Unknown Photographer

  c/o Yaddo | Saratoga Springs | New York | 28 March 1981

  Dear Everett,549

  Yes, I was in New York around the 20th, feeling pretty low, one way and another, and also quite embarrassed about not calling you. I kept putting it off, and then the morning came to clear out, and it was then too late – which I regret. I like you a lot. I think you’re a fine photographer. You
have a fine eye, and compassion for your subjects. I was moved by your picture of the funeral, and wanted a copy of it. I did not want it because I am a collector of photographs. I have no photographs and I think the whole photography collecting business is a bit of a bore. Nor did I want it because it was taken by you, especially. I wanted it because it was what it was.

  But . . . I asked you if you would have another copy made and find out from those in the know what would be a reasonable price to pay. Instead of which, you sent the only existing print, inscribed to me, and then, after you knew I had it and was pleased by it, priced it at five hundred bucks on the grounds it was ‘unique ’.

  So it may be. But . . . there is uniqueness and uniqueness and there is also such a thing as a studio copy. Now my photography-buff friends tell me that almost every Steichen550 print that gets sold in an auction is a copy. So I don’t quite get the hang of the value of its uniqueness in cash terms.