Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin

by Nicholas Shakespeare

  I hate chisellers and I hate chiselling over the price of something one wants – and, as I usually want nothing, this doesn’t present too much of a problem. But disregarding the fact that I am as usual, flat broke, five hundred bucks is far more than I would pay – or that it would be reasonable to pay, given the choice. Besides, if the print were that valuable in terms of your career why let it out of your ken, when you know as I know, that a copy would have been quite as acceptable?

  I think the only thing for me to do is for me to get it back to you. This may take until the end of the month, because I am holed up in this soi-disant monastery for soi-disant writers, and because I will have to get someone to fish it out of my apartment in London and then get someone else to bring it over here.

  A pity to get snarled up like this.

  As ever Bruce

  To Diana Melly

  c/o Yaddo | Saratoga Springs | New York | [April 1981]

  My dearest Di,

  Well, I must say the Caribbean is a perfectly acceptable tonic in the dead of winter. I had such a foul chest, such foul green phlegm in London that I really thought my last days had come. The house in St Maarten, of course, was designed for ‘visual’ people, that is to say, there was not a single spot to read a book, let alone write one, without breaking your back or lying on the baked earth with the ants. All the same, I didn’t perform too badly there and was able to get one or two ideas into focus.

  But now . . . now I am immured in this ‘monastery’ for artists, for composers, for writers. People predicted instant insanity, or important production. Neither, of course, is true: but the pile of pages does mount up. It’s extremely strange to conjure up a vision of Radnor or Brecon, hemmed in, as I am between a racecourse and a kind of suburban pine forest. I suppose, anyway, that all fiction has to be illusion, and my cardboard surroundings make my subject seem realler than ever. The same goes for the inmates. They’re a well-meaning lot – writing plays on the Russian Revolution; poetry about Little Italy; novels on Outer Space or Mississippi – but the dinner conversation is so unreal – or have I yet to learn the language? – that the characters of the day’s fiction seem far more palpable by contrast.

  All this may be wishful thinking.

  I had hoped to go on long bicycle rides in the surrounding countryside. I even bought a bike for the purpose, but, after hubris, a most frightful fall!

  Zapping through the State Park, and musing on the banality of America as a country where every kid who reaches the Sixth Grade thinks he must be the President or shoot one, a Chevy swoops up close behind: I wobble, hit a pothole, fly head first over the handlebars and bust my arm. Agony – total agony at first – but, by some great mercy, the bonesetter peered at the X-rays and said it didn’t warrant a cast. Uncomfortable now, but at least I can continue to type.

  Now what to do? What I would like to do, of course, is come to The Tower? But I really think I must go on here until – if that is feasible – I finish a draft.

  All that, too, may be wishful thinking.

  I’d love a card if you can face it: for I shall be here at least another month.

  All my love to you,

  XXX Bruce

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Yaddo | Saratoga Springs | New York | 13 April 1981

  All well except for broken arm – not in any way serious – or even seriously incapacitating in that I can still type. A place of zero distractions, but a fairly breezy climate and outlook quite suitable for work, XXX B

  To Martin and Stella Wilkinson

  c/o Chanler | 66 East 79 | New York | 27 April 1981

  Dearest Martin and Stella,

  Silence profonde! – and for which a million apologies. No excuses are better, in this case, for lame ones. I went first to New York for a week of the usual round of varied pleasures – all ultimately the same. Then to an island called St Maarten, the wreck of somewhere really rather beautiful, wrecked in the sense that it was absolutely overrun by Yanks. However, the compensations were a quiet house and in the afternoons, WIND-SURFING. I have to say that I really do want to be seventeen all over again, and become a professional windsurfer. I am not bad. I stay up in Force 3-4 winds. I can bounce the board a bit over the wave-crests, but I shall never be good. Also went to Martinique, which is delicious, a kind of tropical Provence of the mid-20’s – delicious food and the tourists penned in to a few Americanised playpens in one remote corner of the island. More wind-surfing. Then, I began to make a discovery. It was far easier to conjure up Jean the Barn and the rest of them when separated by five thousand miles of sea. Why, I can’t say? I think it’s because the story stands a chance of being a circular whole, when you can’t get at any more material. If I am thinking, what colour are those clouds, or what are the twins up to, the story rapidly gets out of shape, becomes instead of circular – pear-shaped. So, I got a fellowship at a sort of ‘monastery ’ for writers called Yaddo, and here I am, writing this now (the above address is E.’s mother in NY). Yaddo is a mansion, positively Arthurian in style, situated on the edge of the famous race-course at Saratoga Springs. Here congregate various types (for free) to cultivate their artistic sensibilities in conditions of unusual, rather melancholic calm. There are composers, there are poets, there are novelists, most of the Space-fantasy kind, and there are visual artists, rich young Jewish divorcees with sparklets on their cheeks, creating feminine sexual fantasies in sand and acrylic. What do I do, they say? Mixed media! I fit rather uneasily in this community, largely because I am outnumbered seven to one, female to male. They all adore Shakespeare and they adore my beautiful English voice and they adore it when I do Hamlet or Prospero, in the evenings, in an overstuffed medieval saloon. Or rather I did it once, weakly, and they’ve now decided this is going to be a regular entertainment. BUT, instead of having about 120 pages of the book, and because this place is entirely like sitting on the Moon, I now have some 300 pages, and there are moments when I do believe I am heading for the final canter. In fact, that is an illusion – the final canter of the first draft is more correct: this is a book where there will be endless bits of shading and colouring. But at least I do hope, someday not too far off, to have a framework on which to build. Every day, three times a week, I wish I were there, at The Cwm, not here.

  Also I broke my arm. I bought a bike to zap around the surrounding countryside, and on my first day was thinking some rather anti-American thoughts when I daydreamed myself into a pothole and – wham! – over the handlebars. It does, mercifully, appear to be mending. After this place, I think I may go to the West on an early summer walk in some mountains, and then back home in mid June.

  E. seems to think she wants to buy a ’thirties house551 somewhere near Henley-on-Thames. Sounds as though one needs it like a hole in the head but there’s no accounting for taste. As for me, I’ve got the itchy feet again, so I suppose it doesn’t really matter.

  I obviously missed Chiquita552 in NY in February, but hope she had a good time and give her my love.

  Forgive this rather demented letter, written very late at night, the trucks on the thoroughway howling past beyond the screen of cupressus macrocarpa.

  all love to you, Bruce

  Chatwin’s brush with a pothole was not his only unfortunate encounter at Yaddo. On 1 May one of the staff reported: ,‘3.00pm. Bruce Chatwin would like his bedroom sprayed. He has a rash he believes to be caused from bed bugs. He brought in something to show me that looks like a flea. Says a Doctor in NYC diagnosed him as having scabies. Should we give him a spray can – or will someone take care of the fumigating?? . . . or what?’

  To Paul Theroux

  c/o Yaddo | Saratoga Springs | New York | 4 May 1981

  Your name, bandied about the breakfast table at this colony of insecure and initiated writers and artists, prompts me to send a card to say hello. V strange. A lot of lady artists – vaginal iconography in sand and acrylic. That kind of thing.

  As always Bruce

  To David Mas
on

  c/o Yaddo | Saratoga Springs | New York | [May 1981]

  Here we are sprung to the opposite ends of the earth. I hope to go to the Aleuthians/or Alaska in June553 Bruce

  To Diana Melly

  c/o Yaddo | Saratoga Springs | New York | 10 May 1981

  Dearest Di,

  What a lovely letter – a kind of letter prose poem! Ever since it arrived this morning, I keep wondering how I can use it. The idea of you and Francis [Wyndham] locked in a bucolic existence has a potent effect on the imagination. So different with the signals I have been getting out of England. I won’t bore you with them. The gist of it being this: we were supposed to sell Holwell Farm so that Elizabeth could have a small house in the country; that I could have a shoe-box in London or wherever; and that she would have some capital to live on. Instead of which, she found the house of her dreams (sic) between Henley-on-Thames and Oxford (ie millionaire commuter country) for the same amount of money as Holwell. I said on the ’phone she should have it if that’s what she really wanted – and then, faced with a bill from the Inland Revenue for five years back taxes, I simply couldn’t face it and said NO. What’s the point in having a £160,000 house554 if you can’t buy a bottle of plonk? Anyway – as far as I can judge over the phone – terrible sulks and recriminations. I do think the £50 limit on possessions is the answer for the ’80s.

  Meanwhile, Yaddo has changed. Gone the April crowd. Gone the Maine-backwoodsman educationist and his 20-year old lithographer girlfriend: gone the vampire-painter (‘vaginal iconography in sand and acrylic’). Gone the prose-poet (60 pages of a woman masturbating with a banana); gone too one very bright girl from the bayou of Louisiana. The newcomers are brighter, older, and more argumentative – and include a heroically proportioned N.Y. campaigner for women artists’ rights; a bearded novelist from Oregon; a real charmer called Elizabeth Spencer – Mississippi novelist and friend of Eudora Welty.555 But I am beginning to wonder if one isn’t getting a bit exhausted in talk. What I want to do is to get a very rough 1st draft and then come and stay with you. Quite sizable it is – about 300 pp already and at least 100 to go.

  The grave we must go and see is that of Dafyd Ap Gwilym 14th century poet at Strata Florida.556 My version of the Welsh in the post to you.

  XXXX B

  While in America Chatwin met up again with Andrew Batey and his wife Hope in Yountville, California. They made a trip to Mexico, ‘a carefully planned tour,’ according to Batey, of the best houses and gardens of the Mexican architect Luis Barrágan (1902- 88). ‘Bruce regarded Luis as the greatest modern architect. He saw a picture of one of his buildings in English Vogue, April 1966, and showed it to me as an example of what I should be doing. So I worked for him – no pay, for a year. Since Luis was quite ill, the visit had to be choreographed.’ They started in Guadalajara, Barrágan’s birthplace; saw his gardens on Lake Chapala, and stayed at his house in Mexico City. Batey returned to California and never saw Chatwin again. ‘My ex-wife died on the same day as Bruce and I flew to London for the Valentine’s Day memorial service, and slipped out inconspicuously. I now know he had the greatest influence on my life – and countless others.’

  To Ivry Freyberg

  Change of address card: ‘As from 10th September 1981, Mr & Mrs C. B. Chatwin will be at Homer End.’

  17 August 1981

  Did my godson get a kite from me sent from San Francisco? B

  To Francis Wyndham

  The Scethrog Experiment | Brecon | Powys | Thursday [September 1981]

  My dear Francis,

  How funny you should have picked up on Michel Tournier!557 One day, I’ve promised myself to have a big go at Michel Tournier. He’s obviously one of the most interesting writers in Europe – to me, at least, in that his themes (quite unintentionally on my part) seem to correspond to my own. For all that, whenever I try and tackle one of his books – the last was a version of Robinson Crusoe – either my French isn’t up to it, or I start feeling there’s something unbearably portentous about the writing; that he’s an ‘important’ literary personage, and is concerned to let you know it.

  But my involvement with Gemini, published in France as Météores, is rather droll. A French friend, married to an identical twin, told me to read it – which I did, or got half-way through. Then when I went on to read the psychoanalytic literature on twins, the only book that really impressed was by a Professor Zazzo, written, I think in the ’Forties.558 Last January, I went to lunch with the translator of The Viceroy in Paris, and there, on his desk, was Météores. ‘Funny,’ I said, ‘I’m writing a book about twins.’ ‘Funny,’ he said, ‘my wife is a psychiatrist who works with the leading expert on twins, one Professor Zazzo.’ We rang for an appointment. The professor was in his eighties. Utterly charming! I apologised for disturbing him. My questions were those of a novelist. I wanted to make sure my story held together. ‘But, Monsieur,’ he replied. ‘I have 1200 case histories on twins, and if I had your talents, I would be Balzac.’ He then put me right on a number of points, and mentioned Tournier. It seemed that Tournier had also been obsessed by his book and had checked his plot with Zazzo, as I did mine.

  This morning it was blowing a gale, pouring with rain and the sun was shining strongly as well . . . The sheep were the same golden colour as the dying grass. A rainbow stretched from one corner to the other, and under it, a flock of rooks was blown this way and that, like black diamonds, glittering.

  Much love

  Bruce

  PS Diana’s claim that I have colonised the whole house is quite without foundation. She is the puppet mistress who moves me around. We are expecting guests in quantity. One guest room reeks of elderberry wine – a smell resembling a dead mouse – the other of an unmentionable garden product hanging up to dry.559

  To David King

  The Tower | Scethrog | Brecon | Powys | 9 September 1981

  Seeing that we’re both in the collecting game I would like – though you must NOT feel obliged to comply – to collect (and pay for!) one of your first editions (the 2nd won’t be quite as valuable in years to come) i.e. the Black Lamp560 which I admire immensely and want. As always BC

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  The Tower | Scethrog | Brecon | Powys | 22 September 1981

  The big novel (440 pp so far) creaks on towards the end: but there will be endless rewriting to do. Spent a week repapering561 Homer End – which, I have to say, is extremely glamorous – if something of a threat to my writing. XXX B

  To Francis Wyndham

  c/o Von Rezzori | Donnini | Florence | Italy | 6 November 1981

  Dear Francis,

  All well here. The sun shines in Tuscany, and, so far, until I hit the snags, it isn’t taking as long as I thought. I’ve revised 200 pages and type up a hundred. But there are still hundreds and hundreds of minor points. In London, however, there appears to be a fantastic brouhaha about my wanting to go to Viking. I hadn’t realised that in all Simon and Schuster contracts there’s a little clause slipped in about the right to see the next book; and they refuse to waive the right etc, etc. It’s all very tedious, because this is the moment when I need Elisabeth Sifton’s562 help, not later when the book is ready for press. Anyway, I refuse to be bullied by big companies; and I’m even gearing myself to present them with a book of my collected journalism, which, if they had the least grain of sense they would turn down, and that would be that.

  Last night, Grisha Rezzori was visited by a Rumanian compatriot, who appeared, from what he said, to be at the top of the Writer’s Union. We had half-expected Marxist platitudes: instead, during supper, he let out, ‘Hitler had a very good reputation in my country’ – which shows you just how careful you have to be in gauging the mood in Eastern Europe.

  all love, B

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  c/o Von Rezzori | Donnini | Florence | Italy | 7 November [1981]

  Hello!

  I did my usual bolting act and went to Tuscany to
the tower where I work extremely well, in order to retype the manuscript. Almost 500 pages! What a weight!

  Unfortunately, there is a considerable amount of urgency. I shall have to deliver the whole thing at the latest by January 1st if it is to be published in the autumn. Coupled with which, I seem to have stirred up a fantastic brouhaha. Last summer, in America, I met a woman called Elisabeth Sifton, who is well known to be the best editor in America. She had said to a friend that the one young English writer she wanted to publish was me. When we met, it was, on my part, a love-match (literary variety), because we found that all of our tastes etc. were held in common. She read nearly all of the new manuscript and offered about £30,000 but apparently I now, because of an option clause that got left in the last contract WHICH I GAVE SPECIAL ORDERS TO BE TAKEN OUT, can’t leave the other publisher. You can imagine the fuss. I’m better off in Tuscany.

  But I have found a flat. I spent a totally dispiriting week looking around Camden Hill and Notting Hill, and seeing one gloomier flat than the next. Then I realised, battling through the traffic to the West End that the one thing I need London for is to be in walking distance of the London Library. I said to myself, ‘If I can’t have Albany, then what I want is a one-room attic in Eaton Place’; and there, in the Sunday Times next day, it was! It’s actually quite a large room, at least twice the size of the whole of Albany, but so hideously cut up, messed up, and hideously decorated that no one apparently wanted it. Price came down from £35,000 to £31,000. Grosvenor Estate lease of 53 years or so. The total outgoings are about £1,000 but that included a caretaker and constant hot water and heating, so I’m not unduly worried. It’ll need quite a bit spending on it because there’s no point in doing this kind of thing in dribs and drabs. I’ve left the matter in the hands of Gerald.563 The banks are giving a bridging loan, and then we’ll see how much of the American money to put in, and how much one should mortgage. Apparently, I should have some mortgage in view of the possibility of my income next year being somewhat over £40,000. When I’m finished it’ll be very nice, though. Three big windows facing due south over the rooftops.