Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Read online

  In Crete, Chatwin stayed with Allen Bole, ‘a rather hopeless but highly entertaining American’ who lived in a house in Chania near the harbour. Bole, a musician, had been Wanda Landowska’s assistant on the harpsichord and was now trying to write. Chatwin used to say of him:‘He doesn’t realise that the Mediterranean is very tough. People come here and think dolce far niente – it’s nice to do nothing – and it ruins them.’

  Chatwin several times returned to Crete before his marriage, to walk but also to seek out rare plants.‘I once spent the whole month of April combing the White Mountains in search of the rare Fritillaria sphaciotica, and my search was a total failure.’ He was possibly influenced by Robert Byron who, when visiting Mount Athos, had dug up for his mother, who had implored him to bring her ‘something living from the Mountain,’ a species of crocus. (‘Grasping pseudo-trowels of living marble we gouged a dozen sepulchred bulbs into a biscuit tin.’) In a draft for a botanical essay on the flowers of Greece, Chatwin wrote of these pleasures: ‘If you will take a light-hearted walk through the hills of Attica in spring time, or wander through the upland pastures of Crete, your bag full of late oranges and hard goat cheese, resting in the odd shepherd’s hut and drinking his staccha, the rich soured ewe’s milk of spring, and possibly clamber up to the snow line of Ida for the sheets of the blue Chionodoxa nana and the tricoloured Cretan crocus, C. sieberi, there are rewards that no life in sombre cities can dispel.’

  To Ivry Freyberg40

  18 Grosvenor Crescent Mews SW1|10 October 1960

  My dear Ivry,

  Have just got Avril’s41 mother’s invitation for the 24th with a note from A saying that you’re having a dinner party. Should love to come. Feeling much better42 and am back at work. Sorry short note. Love B

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, Matisse window | Chapelle du Rosaire | Vence | France | 25 May 1961

  Went today to see this.43 Marvellous weather. Have done absolutely nothing except get really quite a good colour. Love B

  On 17 December 1961 he flew to Cairo to buy antiquities with the dealer and collector Robert Erskine.

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Cairo | Egypt | Christmas 1961

  Arrived safely but 1 day late owing to fog. Weather marvellous. Writing from the Step Pyramid.

  On 27 December he travelled to Wadi Halfa, his first trip to the Sudan.

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, The Khonsu Temple | Karnak | Egypt | 30 December 1961

  Having a wonderful time. Back from the Sudan to see Abu Simbel. Return to Cairo and back Mon. XXX B

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, Panarea, Isole Eolie | Messina | Italy | [summer 1962]

  Had a cable from Hugh yesterday. He appears to be in Athens by now. I may meet him in Sicily next week.44 This island is absolute paradise.

  It’s very easy to take a little house here in the summer for almost nothing, and money is virtually still unheard of. B

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard of Brooklyn Bridge | New York | 3 January 1963

  An average of –

  4 parties a day,

  4 times the work.

  4 hours sleep

  4 times as expensive

  – and I’m fine. B

  Eager to go further in tracing Robert Byron’s footsteps, in the summer of 1963 Chatwin travelled with Robert Erskine to Afghanistan, the first of three visits.

  To Margharita Chatwin

  Herat | Afghanistan | 10 September [1963]

  Darling Mum,

  Afghanistan at last! It took three days to penetrate this far from Meshed which is only 250 miles away over the Persian border. Robert had a fetish that the bus service was totally useless. We were told that oil tankers crossed to Kandahar daily and duly made arrangements to accompany a Mr Huchang Fesolahi at 7am the next morning. We were half an hour late. Mr Fesolahi was nearly a whole day late. We drove with him for a hundred miles in acute discomfort and apprehension; it makes one nervous when the thousand gallon tank is behind one’s head and in spite of a large DO NOT SMOKE sign Mr Fesolahi has smoked at least 5 packets of nasty cigarettes. He then let go of the wheel and shrieked with alarm. The receipt for his load had apparently blown out of the window. He expressed his intention of returning to Meshed at once. He didn’t though and drove to a road hut built of mud and straw. He entered and slept; the inhabitants drove us out. We attempted sleep in the cab which was worse than useless. At dawn I caught Mr Fesolahi escaping. He meant to leave us in charge of the tanker until his return two days hence. A gale was blowing, billowing sand in our faces and blotting out parts of the road. We did not mean to stop. We found two friendly Afghans in a lorry with scenes painted from Shakespeare’s Avon, the monarch of the Glen and other pictures taken from Mehem-Sahibs Christmas cards of 45 years ago.

  Arrived after two hours with them at a tea-house at Turbat-Jam where there is a 15th century shrine. I ran to it and back in 12 minutes, and when I returned the Afghans and Robert and a host of others were sitting round in front of the lorry smoking marijuana through a hookah. In pieces together with the hookah was the dynamo. The result – need for a new one. It was 7 o’clock. We waited till late afternoon sipping tea and very irritable. A posse of Land Rovers driven by dashing Afghans then gave us a lift. By 10.30 we were over the border. Wild eyed frontier guards were armed with bayonets. Customs officers at this post have great difficulty at night. They have one hurricane lamp. It was blowing another gale as we stopped at the only rest house, a mud affair built below the ground. The gale howled; the proprietor, wall-eyed, continually blew his nose on the end of his turban. A mess of chicken appeared which I was unable to face. The others all did, I sipped tea. Herat at last at 3 in the morning. The Park Hotel was built by Amanullah in the days of his ‘folie de grandeur’. Furnished extravagantly in the manner of the Paris World’s Fair of 1925, it has the appearance of an expensive hotel in Juan-Les-Pins. The garden is attractive; it is well-painted, deckchairs and cheerful awnings are on the terrace, within a gracious loggia, tables and chairs ranged all around; but this is Herat and not the South of France. Demand for lunch produced a triumphant smile. Yes, sir, no meat, no rice, no butter, no Pepsi-Cola, no Coca-Cola, no drink, no fruit. Bread and tea only. ‘Eggs? Maybe yes! Tomorrow!’ Flanking the portrait of the King however are a pair of dusty vitrines of misplaced flashiness. If they were in our imaginary Juan-les-Pins hotel they would contain beachwear, ties, scent of works of art. Here no! There are two tins of corned beef, rusty and probably useless, 1 tin of nescafé, opened dampened and caked, a tin of tuna fish, some old lard and a carton of Californian honey. The corned beef costs about £1. Robert is famished and so we settle for the tuna, only a little less expensive.

  To the bazaar in a curricle, jingling with bells and hung with red pom-poms. You sit back to back, the form of these vehicles hasn’t changed since Alexander used one to cross from here into India.

  The bazaar is quite incredible. All women are in yashmaks. The men storm about with artificial ferocity, flashing dark and disdainful glances. In fact their eyes are made up, but then the outward appearance is all important. Turbans are often yards of ice-pink silk and reach gigantic proportions. Behind a street of little booths we found a vast caravanserai, an enclosure with two layers of arches, built at the time when Herat was one of the greatest trading posts in Asia. Camel trains are still to be seen all over Afghanistan but they have deserted this one. It has become a cloth market; from every arch row upon row of colourful clothes are suspended and are blown about in the breeze. What is extraordinary in this last outpost of untrammelled orient is that all are Western. A genius has bought up a gigantic horde of American ladies dresses and has sold them here. A student of modern fashion could find no better museum of modern dress. From Maine to Texas, from Chicago to Hollywood the wardrobes of thousands of American ladies over forty years are hanging into the breeze. Gowns t
hat could have been worn by Mary Pickford, shiny black velvet with no back, or by Clara Bow, red lace and bead fringes, Jean Harlow, flamingo pink crepe off the shoulder with sequin butterflies on the hips, Shirley Temple, bows and pink lace, the folk weave skirts they square-danced in, the crinolines they waltzed in, fiery sheaths they tangoed in, utility frocks they won the War in, the New Look, the A line, the H line, the X line, all are there, just waiting for some Afghan lady to descend from her mud-built mountain village and choose the dress of her dreams all to be closely concealed under her yashmak.

  I am sure she will get far more pleasure from it than its original owner.

  Tomorrow we will ride out to Gazar Gah, the 14th century tomb of a saint called Ansari; he was a prodigious old bore who had visions while sucking his mother’s milk and who went through life moralising until he was over 90.

  We will start for Kabul on Thursday.

  XXX Bruce

  PS I forgot to tell you that the total cooking arrangements for a first-class hotel with 20 bedrooms consist of one noxious primus!

  To Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, ancient mountain fortress near Bamyan | Afghanistan | [September 1963]

  Off to Peshawar in the Embassy truck tomorrow, so that we can eat curry to burn out Robert’s cold and see Taxila, a Buddhist site on the Indus. X B

  Chatwin’s lease on Grosvenor Crescent Mews was due to run out in September. While away in Afghanistan he had sub-let the flat to a Frenchman called Pascal on the understanding that he would collect his belongings upon his return. However, when Chatwin got back he found that Pascal had changed the locks; further, Pascal claimed the flat’s contents as his. Someone suggested that for £20 Chatwin could hire ‘two goons’ to knock down the door, but his father’s name was on the lease and he did not have the stomach for this. It would involve more than a year of legal action to retrieve his belongings, Pascal settling out of court on the eve of the trial. Even so, Chatwin lost several favourite possessions, including his christening mug and a watercolour of a Roman mosaic pavement in Gloucester that he had wanted to donate to the British Museum. Increasingly, from this time on, he supplemented his meagre income from Sotheby’s through private deals and running errands. He later wrote: ‘It was still possible in the early 60s to buy Greek antiquities without causing legal harm.’

  To Edward Peregrine

  New address: 119a Mount Street | London | 27 December 1963

  Dear E.F.P.,

  I was just about to write to you. I had news from America just the other day to say that the picture safely arrived there. The cleaning took ages, and I saw it before it was sent over. The man did a most wonderful job and there is no cause for worry about it at all. Eugene Thaw45 asked me to tell you that he wants just a little more time as nobody does anything around Christmas in America and it naturally slowed things up, the death of Kennedy. He will certainly be getting in touch with you direct in the middle of January. He is a charming person and I have 100% faith in him and his judgment.

  Merry Christmas (belated) to you, Molly and the family.

  Bruce

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, ivory ointment box in Brooklyn Museum | New York | May 22 [1964]

  Total chaos here as usual and horrible humidity. Hope to be back Tuesday after reopening of Museum of Modern Art here, love B

  In 1964 Sotheby’s purchase of the New York auction house of Parke Bernet required Chatwin to make frequent trips to America. But after six years, a loathing had started to set in. He confided his frustrations to Cary Welch, an American curator and collector of Indian miniatures and nomadic art. Described by Chatwin as a ‘hypnotic character’,Welch (1928 – 2008) was married to Elizabeth’s cousin Edith; he had been introduced to Chatwin in Paris by Welch’s old Harvard room-mate, the collector George Ortiz Patino. ‘We became instant friends,’ said Welch.‘In life, one does run into people who are the perfect ping-pong opponent. In some ways I became the mentor/father figure.’

  To Cary Welch

  119a Mount Street | London | 27 July 1964

  Dear Cary,

  We are now the proud possessors of Parke-Bernet which I personally think is a highly dubious venture but do on no account want to be quoted as such. Am given over to much private melancholy on the subject as well as to my own future. The great golden handshake seems to have turned out to be of baser metal.46 It’s like a game of snakes and ladders and as far as Sotheby’s are concerned I have slid down the snake to square one. This means that to go up the ladders again it will be a question of threats, imbecilic charm, insinuous manoeuvring and a better spy-ring. One day I shall kick the whole thing in the pants and retire to Crete. Sorry to be so devious – the details I’ll fill in when I see you.

  I have bought nothing and am not interested in doing so.

  I am going again to Afghanistan with a friend.47 We are going to walk this time in the Eastern part of Kafiristan. I am saying hell to works of art and have been given equipment and supplies from Kew on condition that I collect plants for them.48 The area has never been botanised before at all. It is one of the last botanical unknowns in the world. This is my ambition – BOTANIST written in my passport. The sale of works of art is the most unloveable profession in the world.

  Am just a touch cross over the painting by Daulat,49 but don’t let on to Howard.50 I think it is a very good thing and that you should have it. Please bear in mind that whatever I may say about not wanting works of art I do want to buy sometime soon a really good Mughal painting. Perhaps we could go into a huddle and find something in the Spencer-Churchill sale. This last has really thrown Mr T.51 He even flew back from Greece to see the poor old thing almost breathing his last, and is now astonished to find that the lot are going to be sold. I do envy you your boat and wish I were on it.

  All the best to the Knellingtons52 and their mother,

  Bruce

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, Zamzama or Kim’s Gun, Lahore | Pakistan | [August 1964]

  This is the gun that Kim used to sit under. We are doing a tour of N Pakistan because my arm went septic (as usual)53 and we had to return after having got a third of the way. We are spending a week in Chitral then return via Beirut.

  XX Bruce

  To Stephen Tennant

  119a Mount Street | London | 20 October [1964]

  Dear Stephen Tennant,54

  I do so much look forward to the 2nd of November. We did decide to come by car after all as the drive is so pleasant in the autumn.

  I’m longing to see the cottage55 and do fervently hope that no one else takes it in the meantime. I’m sure from what you say that it’s absolutely charming.

  Delighted that you enjoyed the Gauguin56. The two figures have an immutability and ineloquence that recalls Piero.

  Till the 2nd,

  As ever,

  Bruce Chatwin

  Aside from his arm, Chatwin was having trouble with his eyes. Sotheby’s acquisition of Parke-Bernet had demanded a succession of transatlantic flights which exhausted him. Plus he was responsible for two important sales. On 16 and 17 November 1964 Sotheby’s auctioned the Ernest Brummer collection of Egyptian and Near Eastern Antiquities, which Chatwin had catalogued with Elizabeth Chanler, Peter Wilson’s American assistant. He had also helped catalogue 540 works for the Impressionist sale four days later, including Cézanne’s Grandes Baigneuses, acquired by the National Gallery for a record sum of £500, 000. By his own account, he went blind after these sales. On 31 December 1964 he visited the eye specialist Patrick Trevor-Roper and told him:‘When I look upward I feel brown clouds.’ The symptoms seem to have been a flare-up of his 1955 complaint. Trevor-Roper advised him to give up concentrated work and get away from the office for a few months.

  ‘“You’ve been looking too closely at works of art. I suggest long horizons. Where do you want to go?”

  ‘“Africa,” I said.’

  To Stephen Tennant

  1
19a Mount Street | London | Sun [January 1965]

  Dear Stephen,

  New York turned me inside out and has left me in a highly nervous state also without the power to focus my right eye. Exciting yes but it would kill me to live there.