Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Read online

  Dear Mummy & Daddy,

  I have just discovered that my bird-books are worth £10 for the set, and will soon be very valuable.11 I have decided that I would prefer a lightweight sports bycicle than an ordinary bycicle with a 3 speed gear. The trunks have come up and the play is going on quite well now. Boss has put a lot of his imagination in it. I think that if acted propaly it will be very nice.12 I came second in the term order. I didn’t want to be first because it is to much of a fag. Thank you very much for sending me the Globe-Theatre Micro-model. I have made a lot of Christmas decorations for the holidays. Our dormitory is festooned with them.

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 4 March [1951]

  Dear Mummy and daddy,

  I hope you are all well. I have got a lovely little smoothing plane, it is only 3 ins long, and the blade is ⅞ of an inch thick. Please could you send me an Anorma Post Office. Please get the money out off my savings. Mr Whitton gave a lecture on archaeolagy, it was very interesting. Conjouring has taken itself in the school and I am very interested in it. I am making some tricks myself. I have made some more things for you and Hugh.

  With love from Bruce

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 18 March [1951]

  Dear Mummy & Daddy,

  I hope you are all well . . . We had the Gym Competition on Tuesday.

  I boxed in the ring on Monday against a tough.13 I won 5-3. I am in the final for the Junior Cup. I have got a very good chance.

  With love from Bruce

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 15 July [1951]

  Dear Mummy and Daddy,

  I hope you are all well. There was a match yesturday against Yarlet Hall. It was a draw. We were 125 for two. They were 4 for nine. It will soon be the end of term . . . How are the little black pigs14 getting on? I was awfully embarrassed yesturday, some weomen, and one man, sat on our bench, while we were watching the match. I had to entertain them.

  With love from

  Bruce

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 30 September [1951]

  Dear Mummy and daddy,

  I hope you are all well. I am afraid that I have not got much to say as I only came on Thursday. Have you enjoyed your holiday at Marlborough. Please will you plant the bulbs I bought. The romundculus are those tentacle looking things and the iascas the little bulbs. Are the gold fish all right? The new matron staff is most peculiar, especially Miss Griffiths who we have nicknamed ‘The Grifon’. She is most peculier and waddles about like a duck.

  With love

  From

  Bruce

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 7 October [1951]

  Dear Mummy and Daddy,

  On Friday night the fireworks were very nice. There were very big cathrine weels. I had a lovely firwork to hold called a flying star. On Tuesday we had a lovely film called the Overlanders. It was about driving cattale over Australia. They went from the Northern Territory to Queenslands. They came to a deep river were there were two big crocodiles. When the cart was going over one of the crocidiles woke up and splashed into the water. It came up to the cart when one of the men took a shot at it and killed it and then they got to a city they took the catle through. Then one of the men fell of his horse and broke his arm and some catle trod on him and he broke his leg, so they took him to hospidle for three days and for six days they went with out water. They found some water at a windmill pump but the horses only had a little drink when it stoped. They rested them and there was a fire. The cattle rushed untll they smelt water, the men rushed to see what it was but it was a bog. They tried to get them back but the horses got poisoned and they ran very fast, but they fell over, and they died. They went back to the cart. One day when they were lying on a rock some wild horses came and they made a wire fence and they traped them and they broke them in so they had some more horses. They went up a mountain when they were nerby at the top a tree blocked up the way and a man climbed up but he was to late. Two of the cattle fell of. Then the man when he got to the top fastened the rope to the horse and pulled the tree out but the horse very nerly sliped but he cut the rope and they got down

  With love from Bruce

  To Hugh Chatwin

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 21 October [1951]

  Dear Hugh,

  I have got a Dinky Toy for you I will give it to you on visiting day

  From Bruce

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 17 February [1952]

  Dear Mummy and Daddy,

  I hope you are both well . . . I am going in for a competition in which you can choose your own prizes. We had a jolly good film last night called ‘Riders in the Forest’ it was about a New Forest Pony. I am most certainly in the mood for writing letters. I am shooting up the form. I came 5th in Maths this fortnight.

  With love from Bruce

  To Margharita Chatwin

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | [May 1952]

  Dear Mummy

  Hugh is settling down well. Unfortunately he is in form I and has been placed miles too low. He has begun music and he wants his old music book. He has lost his mack and does not care the slightest bit. I have swaped a lot of stamps.15 As soon as he got there he made friends with Cant. I have had a food rash but it is nearly gone.

  Bruce

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  The Old Hall School | Wellington | Shropshire | 25 May [1952]

  Dear Mummy and daddy,

  I hope you are both well, Hugh has had a spell of being good. He has had no blacks for a fortnight now. If he gets on well I have promised him a clockwork submarine, which dives and surfaces again . . .16 Unfortunately Hugh dislikes Cant and Reynolds and has taken to a boy called Taylor III who has invited him to stay with him, and his cousin, Williams, who lives 2 miles away from Taylor III, has invited me to go to stay with him.

  With

  Love

  From

  Bruce

  In the summer of 1953 Chatwin passed his Common Entrance Exam and was accepted by Marlborough College in Wiltshire. On 22 July Fee-Smith wrote to his parents: ‘Thank you so much for the cheque for Bruce’s contribution towards a garden seat, his name and date of leaving will be inscribed on it. I shall miss him next term – such a nice boy & such good company.’

  In September 1953, after a sailing holiday on the river Hamble, Chatwin’s parents drove him in their old black Rover to begin at Marlborough, a public school founded in 1843 for educating the sons of poor clergy. He spent his first year in Priory, a pleasant out-of-college junior house situated in the middle of town, with two acres of grounds sloping down to the River Kennet. Chatwin had left Old Hall School already stage-struck, having picked up, in Hugh’s words, ‘a respect – and fancy for – the vestments and rituals of authority’. Marlborough, with 800 boys, was more like a university. Life was not so organised. You had to be your own Boss. Hugh followed his brother to Marlborough four years later: ‘Old Hall was an enclosed, monastic environment, caged by absolutes. Marlborough offered freedom from all that. The symbol and physical reality of freedom were bicycles. At Priory, so long as we promised to stay in pairs (in case of trouble), from the age of thirteen we could ride out of Marlborough in any direction to celebrate whatever Wiltshire’s Great Outdoors had to offer. Additionally, we were expected to join three to five of the College’s 50 boy-self-managing Societies, but it was entirely down to our own taste and aptitude what we might choose to do with our spare time, inside or outside the gates.’

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Priory House | Marlborough College | Wiltshire | Sunday [September 1953]

  Dear Mummy and Daddy,

  I am thoroughly enjoying myself here and I am settling down well. The Shell form that I am in is Shell A. There are six Shell forms. Shell A is the first. I have made several friends already. I get on very well with Ed
wards. I have made friends also with a boy called Ghalib,17 whose father is a Turk. The food in Priory is excellent and I have had no need to delve into my tuck-box yet. Don’t bother to send on the cycle-clips as we have to cycle in shorts. I don’t know what the Master’s name is yet and he is always called the Master.18 Yesterday he had a talk with all the new boys and he is very nice. My bicycle has proved invaluable as we have to clear out of the house for one hour every day and we have 3 half holidays a week. Please will you send me some books because for an hour in the evening we have to read. I have seen all the other ex Old Hall boys . . . Massey19 is a house captain and is in charge of my dormitory. Any band instrument can be taken. I can have free coaching for the first term and if the music master thinks I am good enough he will ask for it to be continued. Most boys here play the trombone. But I don’t think I will have enough time.20

  With Love

  Bruce

  Little correspondence survives from Chatwin’s time at Marlborough. He was under no pressure to write letters – family visiting arrangements were made from a coin telephone in B2 House, the spartan, less expensive in-house to where he moved in 1954. As well, a close friend of Margharita’s, Barbara Farrington, provided ‘open house’ to the Chatwin family at Minal Woodlands House, two miles east of Marlborough. Hugh says, ‘Margharita was free to come down and join in the social life of Marlborough masters and their wives.’

  At the end of his first year at Marlborough, the Bratt family in Sweden contacted Charles through a friend. Would Chatwin like to stay the summer at their lake-side home south of Stockholm and teach English to their son, Thomas, who was the same age? Margharita saw him off at Tilbury on the SS Patricia. Aside from family sailing holidays in France, it was Chatwin’s first experience of abroad.

  Lundby Gard | Sweden | [July 1954]

  Friday

  Dear Mummy and daddy,

  I arrived safely yesterday and had a wonderful crossing . . . It was rather unfortunate that the passengers in my cabin were a young man who was hoping to become a monk and said his prayers aloud all night in Latin and another who I think was a Polish Jew who snored all night. So what with snoring and Latin I did not get much sleep. But I was sitting at table with some very nice people. They were Swedes living in Finland and both of them had a most marvellous sense of humour. They have a boat in Finland and had just been to Lymington to see Laurent Giles21 about designing another. He and I talked boats solidly all afternoon.

  When the boat docked everything went smoothly until I came to the customs. The officer thought that I was French, why I don’t know and then proceeded to take out everything from my case, searched all the pockets in my suits and then stalked off. After I had got all my things together again I only just caught the train. But when I was sitting down I discovered the reason for the customs officer. A boy came in and produced from various places 1000 cigarettes! The train went very fast and by lunch we came to Katrineholm. I got out and there was only the station-master there. But after waiting about ten minutes came Mr Bratt. I had expected Thomas to be fair-haired etc but he has jet black hair and dark skin which makes him look like an Italian. We packed into their huge Cadillac and soon came to Lundby Gard which is just about a village not a farm. There is Mr Bratt’s brother in one house,22 in another his father, and another his uncle Percy!23 The lake is only the odd 30 miles long and joins up with several others; opposite the farm is an island on which is a castle and that is nearly five miles long and two and a half wide. There is not a shop for miles and everything has to be ordered, so my £10 may come back unmolested, especially as I earned 10 kroner this morning. They have a motor boat, rowing boat, sailing dinghy, an ordinary canoe, a Canadian birch bark and a very narrow canoe in which I went in several times trying to balance it.24 We are going to Stockholm next week. I hope Hugh has got his post card. I tried to get you a picture of the Smorgasbord, the Swedish national dish which is a kind of hors d’oeuvre only on a far bigger scale. Hope you got the cable. Bruce

  Postcard, b & w photograph of Lake Yngaren | Sweden | 20 August, 1954

  This is part of their lake. All the land you can see the other side is an island. Their house is between the island and the mainland. We are going on a boat trip to another lake; all the lakes are just about joined up with each other. We spent 3 days in Stockholm and saw it thoroughly. It’s a pity I didn’t bring my camera because it is so beautiful country. We went down a very deep iron mine the other day;25 it was very interesting. I will telephone you as soon as I get to London and let you know what train I am going on. Bruce

  In the summer of 1957, after passing his driving test, Chatwin borrowed Charles’s van and drove to the south of France, returning with a cane-seated high chair. It made a pair with his first major furniture acquisition, a grey Louis XVI chair costing £2.10s. Both requiring restoration, he bought a set of wood chisels and, in the next stage after model-making, stripped them down in the box room at Brown’s Green Farm. In recognition of this passion, his parents gave him a book on French furniture.

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  B2 | Marlborough College | Wiltshire | [autumn 1957]

  Dear Mummy and Daddy,

  Thank you very much indeed for that wonderful surprise. It really is a wonderful book, and on really looking at it closely it seems even better. Like many French books it is eminently sensible in that it does not deal exclusively with those fabulous rarities that are locked behind glass cases in museums, and on that account are apt to be dull. But most of the things are all first rate examples that one would be likely to come across. It is not a book for the super expert, because volumes could be written on each of the subjects but it gives a very clear picture of what was going on, and of course those wonderful pictures help immensely, because it would be nonsense to suggest that the best way of learning about such things is to see them personally or failing that to look at them by photographs. I have been reassured on several points. Firstly that it is justifiable to refurnish French furniture completely, and secondly that the two chairs are definitely genuine . . . The second chair really is a rarity, it appears; square-backed Louis XVI bergère chairs with that standard of carving and those spiral legs are very very highly sought after, and even in that book there are few that have its elegance. Also the book does not appear to worry too much about ébénistes stamps, though of course, they add to the value to a large extent.26

  What is the name of the painter of your picture of ‘The America’ at the office? for I think you will be interested to learn that during April a picture, painted contemporary with the first America Cup, by a hitherto obscure painter named Carmichael,27 showing the America,28 was sold to an American bidder, I think at Christie’s, for somewhat over £2,000 owning to the exceptional interest show over here by the new challenge.

  The book has made my birthday. Thank you very much.

  Love B

  PS Buns lovely! Best for a long time. Aunt Cicely and Uncle Philip29 sent 10/ – for a Wallace Collection catalogue. Hugh gave me a blue and white striped mug to replace one that I broke.

  Love B

  For his 1957 Easter holiday, Chatwin travelled to Italy with another Marlburian, Richard Sturt.

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Rome | Italy | 2 April 1957

  We had a fairly uneventful journey; wonderful scenery from the train. The sun was blazing as we crossed the Alps, but a confectioner from Scarborough, and a German girl in the same carriage insisted on having the windows firmly shut. We got here rather tired, took a taxi driven by a very smooth gent and before we knew what had happened he charged us £1. We argued and argued, and when he began to get nasty we gave him half, but it only should have cost about 2/6. The pensione was very grand, and now we have got a nice, much cheaper place. We went on a tour of Rome today with Father O’Flaherty30, Richard’s friend, and tomorrow morning, together with several hundred other people, we are going to an audience with the Pope himself. Frankly, except for the Coliseum, th
e arch of Constantine, and Trajan’s column, the Roman remains are rather dull to compare with the fantastic Medici palaces and the like. But it really is an incredibly modern city moving at a colossal speed. We have been made honorary members of an English club where we had tea with five very jolly Irish fathers. Love B

  ‘Always a good listener, Margharita was seldom stuck for words, except on one notable occasion,’ says Hugh. ‘This was on Bruce’s return from Rome in 1957. He regaled us in the Brown’s Green kitchen with features of that city, ancient and modern, of its Seven Hills, of the fountains, of his lodgings beside the Spanish Steps, of the contents of its museums, of the Cardinal through whom his visit and audience with the Pope was pre-arranged – of the glamour of Rome’s streets, of fashion amongst its women. “Golly!” was Margharita’s interjection, as Bruce paused for breath before continuing his report. Thenceforward, it became our mother’s party piece to trade on her astonishment of her and Charles’s friends, giggling all the while, at the conditions in which her elder son was growing up, gallivanting about the Continent, whilst she was still plucking fowl and scrubbing eggs for sale at Henley-in-Arden’s packing station.’