Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Read online

  Lots of love, Bruce

  PS Hugh much better

  To Cary Welch

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 8 February 1968

  By Air Love

  Dear C.,

  I was not aware that E. had spoken to the unspeakable Roger.186 For me personally R. has the same effect as Edith’s friends who I met on Crete, a reaction that is rarely less than physical. In my view it would be a bad idea, though I don’t want it to get back to E. that I said so. Everything Roger touches has the kiss of agonising DEATH. It could be that he has turned the corner, but as I have been an appalled witness to such endeavours as a motor-racing magazine, a colour book about maharajas in decline, a collection of Holbeins belonging to an Irish peer, a collection of ikons belonging to an Austrian prince, plus God knows what in the way of trying to sell an Egyptian mummy to Kathmandu, the last I admit not without its funny side, I rather doubt his ability to handle anything, least of all Mr Mac C., who will undoubtedly have a ferocious chemical reaction too. Worse Roger has two hangers on called the Princess Toy and the Prince Chip, while he hangs on to a very pleasant lady called Mrs Brydon Brown187 on the principle of little fish suck bigger fish. The combination would be fatal. No wonder E. didn’t confess to her indiscretion.

  Will you let me know if you have any spring plans in our direction because we wouldn’t want to miss you. I shall leave here on about March 16th en route for Helsinki, probably to be birched in the sauna at the expense of Asia House. I’ve never been able to make up my mind if I like the idea or not. Wouldn’t it be awful if one suddenly found one was a physical masochist as well as everything else? My friend Mr Batey wants to come and look at the architecture of Alvar Aalto but I’m not sure if it’s a good idea as he’s wildly unreliable and unpunctual, and as I have work to do, it would be a distraction. I have promised though to take him to the Stocklet House, which is a marvel. Last time I sat in a white leather sheepfold, drank wishy washy tea from rock crystal cups, and watched the Rembrandts and a Simone Martini wheeled by on a stainless steel trolley. When the lights in the theatre go up, they shine through Mexican alabaster masks on the Han tomb reliefs flanking the auditorium. Mr B[atey] is marrying his childhood sweetheart in California in late September, and his father in law to be seems to be that rich that he is doshing out air tickets to friends for the CEREMONY. He has also given him the fastest and most expensive Mercedes that money can buy in which I shall probably be killed if he comes to the continent. I have already had the nastiest moment of my life in his £20 Austin Seven.

  I have bought the largest coco-de-mer I have ever seen. Beautiful and obscene. We take it to bed.188 Did I give you the message that Mr H[ewett] will NEVER sell the Migration style brooch away from you, and I am going to take a photo when I go down there. I am buying a bellows for my Asia House Tour.

  Love B

  PS Got your letter this morning and will reply soon, but I am plunged in the Neolithic of Bulgaria, who is a very demanding master.

  To Emma Bunker

  Postcard, greenstone sculpture of Neolithic elk, Alunda, Uppland. Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | [April 1968]

  Will write again when my photos of the objects are printed. I couldn’t make Budapest or Bucharest because the visa complications were vast. Ortiz collection has proved to be a great success and photos expected in 2 weeks. Would you ever go to Toronto where the Royal Ontario museum has Borowski’s Ordos Coll. Bruce

  In April 1968 Cary Welch wrote to say that he had seen another early Sassanian dish with a motif of Shapur I slaying lions with a bow.‘I think it is the best hunting piece I have seen.’

  To Cary Welch

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | [April 1968]

  Your letter of this morning re the Sassanian dish. You may think I am mad, but I urgently counsel you not to buy it. I am certain from the photographs that it is a forgery – although a damn good one. If you’ll forgive me saying so, I think you are judging it by the same standards you would apply to Indian painting from Rajasthan around 1800. I have always been of the opinion that the forgeries of Iranian objects rely on Indian inspirations, if not actual workmanship.

  Anatomically I think that the foreleg of the deer is horrible, also the position of the lion’s paws wholly out of keeping, also the rib cages of both animals are like car radiators. Furthermore the animal is a deer and should have antlers; instead it has antelope horns which should be curving backwards, except those of the saiga antelope (which this is not) which curve backwards before their tips begin to come forwards. No a thousand times NO. IT IS NOT GENUINE. It is less of a joke than the object from the Kimble Foundation in the Asia House Exhibition which is grotesque.

  I simply cannot imagine how you could be bothered to fling away genuine objects for this. Sassanian silver dishes and Sassanian art in general may be clumsy and inaccurate at times, but never slick (and sleazy) like this.

  It was for peddling this sort of object round America that Mr Safani189 offered me 100,000 dollars a year.

  Forgive the ranting.

  Love B

  On 19 April 1968 Chatwin had lunch with the journalist Kenneth Rose and two South American girls. Rose wrote in his diary: ‘We have a jolly lunch, all shouting at once. Bruce tells us that his great-grandfather was a celebrated swindler, who cheated the then Duke of Marlborough out of many millions as his family solicitor. “He cheated old women out of their few pounds, too.”. . . Bruce has tried to get his father to talk about the case, but cannot get a word out of him. He asks me to see.’ On 30 April 1968 Rose wrote to Chatwin of his discovery that Robert Harding Milward had owed his creditors £108,595.15.11, for which he was sentenced to six years, dying in prison a few months after receiving his sentence.

  To Kenneth Rose190

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | [April 1968]

  A real operator – £108,595.15.11 is no mean sum. If only he hadn’t been found out! One can hardly breath for fog and rain. A visit from you in May would be a blessing, but I may try to escape south to do my revision. Do let me know if you are going to be up here. Winston must have known R.H.M[ilward] for there to be a reference to him at all.191 His hey-day with the Marlboroughs was a good twenty years before in the’70’s and ’80’s. I’ll try and whip up the Gounod, Wagner, Richter correspondence for you to see. Bruce

  To Ivry Freyberg

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 10 June [1968]

  Lovely party. I couldn’t have enjoyed it more. Maddeningly I missed the train but there was a perfectly good one later at 11.30. I can’t imagine why I was taking the 10.30. Come down, PLEASE, to Glos. It’s quite beautiful at the moment. Can put you up in minimal comfort! but GOOD FOOD! Am in the middle of sitting exams. Lots of love, Bruce

  In the summer of 1968 Stuart Piggott invited Chatwin to join him and Ruth Tringham on an official tour of archaeological museums in the Soviet Union. On Sunday 30 June 1968 Andrew Batey drove Chatwin and Piggott to Dover; from Ostend they took a train to Warsaw to meet Tringham – also George Ortiz, whom Chatwin had invited separately. Elizabeth was to join Chatwin for the second part of the journey, through Rumania and the Caucasus. On 3 July, Piggott wrote in his diary that foreign travel was an escape-route clearly for Chatwin, ‘who is running away from himself by travelling’.

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Hotel Orbis Bristol | Warsaw | Poland | [July 1968]

  Dear E.,

  Visit to Warsaw of high fantasy with ambassadorial dinner parties and visits to the Academy. Freedom of movement circumscribed owing to lack of transport. Also our official Soviet invitation came through some two days after the visit was supposed to begin. This may mean we have to scrap our whole programme for the Caucasus/Iran but God alone knows! Could you try and bring with you my compass which is somewhere in my room I think, and failing that can you buy a fairly good one? Can you also bring my copy of Parvan’s Dacia,192 a small green book in my shelves and a map of Rumania. I only hope you’ll be able to come o
n the Transylvanian jaunt.193 Also remember to put the tent in the car + a small billycan for gas in case you run out.

  While enquiring about the Bulgar/Rumanian section in the car can you find out if one can cross the Danube by ferry going due north from Sofia, through Vraca and thus missing out Bucharest. I think the best thing is to miss out Hungary if this is going to be difficult by taking the Yugoslav autobahn from Belgrade to Lyubliana. On looking at Stuart’s map I see that one cannot cross the Danube anywhere else but at Guirgui nr Bucharest.

  Love, B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Hotel Orbis Bristol | Warsaw | Poland | [July 1968]

  Dear E,

  We are faced with a totally Kafka-esque situation. We are now on two tours, one organised by ourselves going Leningrad – Moscow – Kiev and the Caucasus, the other at Ministerial and Ambassadorial level going to Leningrad – Moscow – Suzdal – Siberia and Moldavia with camping equipment and excavation tools provided. Flurries of cables have been exchanged between half the British embassies of E. Europe. Ambassadorial and ministerial receptions and dinner have been arranged. George [Ortiz]194 is arriving tonight and may well be collected from the airport in a Rolls-Royce. How can one explain his Bolivian nationality – as a fellow of Che Guevara? Ruth has apparently lost her passport and the British Council Representative is a collector of Bloomers in the [Eddie] Gaythorne-Hardy manner.

  Love B

  PS Please try and bring 3 tubes of Dylon – quick wash – excellent! We may now go to Moldavia rather than the Caucasus after all. Will write c/o British School of Archaeology in Athens. Please contact for messages. B

  Piggott’s group broke up on 20 July, Chatwin heading off to Bucharest. In August he was in Kiev where he watched ‘a squadron of Cossack cavalry exercising down a cobbled street: glossy black horses, scarlet capes, high hats worn at an angle; and the sour resentful faces of the crowd.’ One month later, Russian tanks rolled into Prague. Chatwin by then had joined Elizabeth at the Welches’ house in Spetsai. The invasion of Czechoslovakia and the événements in Paris that summer passed him by, his concentration focused on the Asia House exhibition. On 7 September Piggott wrote in his diary: ‘Bruce rang up on Monday in London; caught night train; breakfasted with me; collected some books he wanted and returned to London by the 10 a.m. Very mad.’ Days afterwards, he flew to New York for a meeting with his fellow curators, Emma Bunker and Ann Farkas.

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  1030 Fifth Avenue | New York | [September 1968]

  Dear E,

  Flight at present is fixed for the morning of the 10th approx 8am. But I may have to go to dinner with the Rockinghorses195 the night before and leave from NY rather than Boston. Possibility of massive research grant from Rockerfeller. Asia House Exhibition neither better nor worse than expected. Emmy [Bunker] is fine but listens to not one word. Ann Farkas severe academic, but not unsympathetic. New possibility of exhibition at Museum of Primitive Art to coincide with Asia House.

  English invasion in force. Mr Fish,196 Blades, Annacat,197 all up Madison there are slow English drawls. Steph198 decorating Blades. Desmond Guinness,199 David Hicks – Tous. Many parties. Charities etc. Go to Philadelphia tomorrow. Atmosphere very nervous with possibility of vast negro vote for Wallace (!) to precipitate to struggle. Please go to Holland if you feel like it but let me know if you’re going. Otherwise see you sometime on 10 Oct . . .

  Dining with Cousin O’D200 this evening at 7.0. Brendan & Ali201 with the Irish Georgians on Tu.

  Love B

  Chatwin—‘a compass without a needle’ as one friend called him at this time – now replaced Piggott with a new guru. Peter Levi, the Jesuit priest and poet whom he had known since Sotheby’s, was teaching in Oxford. Elizabeth says,‘I’d go and wander round the Botanical Gardens with my cat while Bruce and Peter talked in Campion Hall.’ For Chatwin, the thin and handsome Levi was a figure of glamour. Levi said: ‘He thought it a wonderful idea to have all these pads all over the place: a room at Campion Hall; a room in Athens; a room in Eastbourne, where my mother lived. He wanted from me a way of life that was largely in his imagination. He thought my life was some kind of solution: I travelled and I was a writer.’ A main topic of discussion was the introductory essay on nomadic art that Chatwin was contributing to the catalogue for the Asia House exhibition. Levi said: ‘He was then in the process of transforming himself from an archaeologist into a writer and so far as any advice was called for, it was I who advised him to make the change. You write in order to change yourself in my view. He was trying to remake his life and become a writer.’ Another topic was Afghanistan: Levi had been commissioned by Collins to write a travel book on the Greek influence in Afghanistan. He suggested that Chatwin come with him and take the photographs. ‘You can look at nomads and I can look at Greeks.’

  To Peter Levi

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 15 October 1968

  Dear Peter,

  Many thanks for the poems.202 It would have been delightful to think that we might have met up on Saturday but I’m afraid that Edinburgh is calling.

  My summer was disastrous too, or rather wasteful. I shall not repeat the experiment of travel in the Soviet Union until there is clear sign of a change. Every plan was frustrated, and I’m afraid that most traditional Russian hospitality is a deep-seated desire to see foreigners drunk. I did manage to see Professor Masson203 under his own table, while reciting a Shakespeare sonnet for the benefit of his wife. It was not worth the supreme effort for I was crippled with a liver attack for days after.204

  I am certainly going to Afghanistan next summer, if not before. I refuse to delay it one moment longer in the interests of spurious scholarship in Eastern Europe. I have been to Lahore, but not to Swat. I have every intention to go to Swat, Dir, Chitral (which I know), Hunza and Baltit. In the Lahore Museum there is a suit of leather armour which belonged to a stray Mongol dessicated in the desert of Sind. We could even try to go to Pir-Sar, which Aurel Stein identified with Alexander’s Aornos.

  Didn’t you find America in a curious calm? A negro told me that the word was out ‘Vote Wallace! He don’t give you no shit.’ Refugees of 1938 now talk openly of returning to Europe. People discuss when and how the country shall be split. In the Ukraine they talk darkly of big trouble in Lvov, and the Khirgiz virtually push the Muscovites off the pavement. Are the Super-powers superannuated?

  I’ll try and come and see you soon. Bruce

  After attending Andrew Batey’s marriage in Pasadena – ‘Bruce gave me a Mogul dagger with a jade handle as a wedding present (for an exquisite death)’ – Chatwin returned to Edinburgh on 10 October. He had moved out of the Canongate flat in the summer. On 22 October Stuart Piggott wrote in his diary: ‘B now staying at the Abercromby Hotel up the road; madder I think. He and/or his marriage will crack up before long.’

  In late November Elizabeth drove up to fetch him – they were flying to America for Thanksgiving. She found Chatwin fed up with having to study Roman Britain, and fed up as well with Piggott, whose attitude towards him, says Elizabeth, had become bizarre to say the least, even frightening. An entry in Chatwin’s notebook, one of several on this theme, attest to his mounting suspicion that ‘most archaeologists interpret the things of the remote past in terms of their own projected suicide’. Elizabeth says, ‘More than once Stuart suggested that the three of us go away and kill ourselves.’

  The Chatwins spent Christmas in Geneseo, but Bruce did not reappear in Edinburgh. On 9 January Piggott wrote: ‘Absolutely no news of Bruce Chatwin. He came to me in a great state last term saying he was £6, 000 in debt owing to buying the Glos. house, wouldn’t take money from Elizabeth’s family & simply had to take a job – offered one at £1, 000 a year, one day a week from Christie’s. Shot off to London to investigate & hasn’t been heard of since.’

  CHAPTER FOUR

  THE NOMADIC ALTERNATIVE: 1969-72

  On their return from Christmas in America Elizabeth asked Bruce
: ‘Aren’t you going back to Edinburgh?’‘No.’ Fired by the example of Peter Levi, Chatwin had fastened on expanding his Asia House essay into a book: his proposed subject—‘nomads here, there, past and present.’ He hoped that the book would shed light ‘on what is, for me, the question of questions: the nature of human restlessness’. Almost thirty, Chatwin was mindful of the words of a Marlborough master: ‘Every man who ever stretched himself has one book in him . . . although it may be a better book if he delays delivering it to publishers until he has attained the age of sixty.’ Through the poet Edward Lucie-Smith he met the literary agent Deborah Rogers in London and she agreed to act for him.