Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Read online

  Have you been getting Art News? I have sent you 1 year’s subscription as a Christmas present so if you didn’t get it I shall raise a storm.

  I saw none of my friends in New York, but spent many tedious evenings with the so-called ‘Great Collectors’; they reduce one to a state of physical and visual indigestion.

  May I come again at the end of Jan? I have to go to hospital for my eye soon, but after then.

  As ever Bruce

  To Cary Welch

  119a Mount Street | London | [January 1965]

  Dear Cary,

  A quick note. Am rather depressed because the focussing in my right eye has packed-up. Apparently the result of over-doing it in America.

  You don’t have any worries about the tax people looking into the accounts of Parke-Bernet unless you have a Federal Tax investigation against you in which case P-B are obliged to open their books to them. Many thanks for everything.

  Am not intending to return until I can SEE.

  British Paintings Dept suggest reserves

  Sutherland57 – £125

  Palmers – £150 each

  Please let me know.

  If you think too little, I think I can sell the geometric Palmer for that at least to Derek Hill58 who wants it but is neurotic about bidding in sales.

  Say boo to the Knellingtons,

  as ever, B

  On 5 February 1965 Chatwin set off for the Sudan where he was the guest of a former girlfriend; Gloria Taylor had married Tahir El-Fadil el Mahdi, the Cambridge-educated grandson of Siddig el Mahdi, who had won Sudan’s independence from Britain. After a week in Khartoum, Chatwin met Abdul Mohnim, a geologist who was leaving on an expedition to the Red Sea Hills to look for kaolin deposits.‘I asked if I could come along and he said I could.’ Here, on a short camel trek in the Eastern Sudan, Chatwin experienced his first taste of nomadic life.

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, camel riders at El Obeid | Sudan | 13 March 1965

  Many thanks for your cable. That makes life a lot easier. 3 more books I’ve remembered. Palmer’s Myceneans and Minoans. Weigall’s Travels in The Upper Egyptian Desert, The Red Sea Hills of Egypt. Do you have the christening mug? If not the swine [Pascal] has that too. Have got a cold – now better. Bruce

  After six weeks recuperating in the Sudan, Chatwin returned to London by way of Greece.

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, fish plate in Museum of Corinth | Athens | Greece| [27 March 1965]

  Arrived here . . . 3 days ago because it was hotting up too much. I must say I had a marvellous time there. Will be in Crete as from tomorrow. It’s bitterly cold in Athens but the sun shines and the flowers are out. The eyes vary from day to day, and are obviously still far from right, although they got much better at one stage. Let me know how things are. XXX Bruce

  To Derek Hill

  Chania | Crete | 10 April 1965

  I have been trampling over the White Mountains hunting for a fritillary for Paul Furse. No luck so far. Eye better. See you soon. Bruce

  In London, Rear-Admiral Furse had told Chatwin about an exceedingly rare flower, the Paeonia clusii, endemic to Crete. One ‘wild April day’ Chatwin decided to dig up a seedling for Furse. He borrowed Allen Bole’s Volkswagen and drove to a gorge above the village of Lakkoi in Western Crete. Ignoring Pliny’s advice to dig at night, he found his Paeonia clusii.Curious things then happened. ‘The seedling was minute, but the fleshy root vast. Growing as it was among boulders, the business became a major excavation, and when the precious root had been secured I was ashamed at the devastation I had caused. As I entered the village, with one peony and a few tulips in a basket, a stout Lakkiot was haranguing the crowd, but I was aware that I was the centre of attention. Shortly after, two police officers stopped me and there began a very curious cross-questioning. Barely understanding the questions my answers were unsatisfactory, and they began to scrutinise each tulip and the peony. I was at great pains to point out that neither were opium poppies and the interview dissolved into laughter. The explanation came a year later. There were two versions and both originated in the stout Lakkiot, the first that I had been walking down the mountainside with an antique vase filled with gold coins, the second that I had been sent to recover a hoard of gold sovereigns buried by the Germans before they evacuated the island.’

  On his return, Chatwin gave the peony – at that time the only one in England – to Furse. When Furse died, it went to John Hewett’s wife Diana, a keen gardener, and then to Chatwin’s old girlfriend Gloria Taylor.

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Chania | Crete | [10 April 1965]

  What about the PASCAL affair59 and am I expected back in April, if so when? Can I know soon? Try to postpone till mid-May. I shall return by sea and land as the aeroplane, for CERTAIN, does me no good. Eye took 10 days to recover after KHARTOUM-ATHENS. Much better now, in fact am very fit. Walked Knossos to Phaestos along the ancient Minoan Road. Would mummy like to meet me in Paris for a couple or 3 days on my way back at MY expense?

  Love B

  To Ivry Freyberg

  Chania | Crete | [20 April 1965]

  Your letter went half way round the world before I got it. I lost the focussing however in one eye, but it has at last recovered. I’ll come back in May. Crete is wonderful, but is in the throes of a great spring, hail, thunder and earthquakes.

  Will ring you on return, Love Bruce

  To Charles and Margharita Chatwin

  Postcard, hall of the double axes, Knossos | Crete | [21 April 1965]

  Suggest we leave the Paris excursion to the autumn when I go on business. It sounds a bit complicated now. Shall be there probably for 1 or 2 days in May, but don’t want to be tied down as the Pascal case is not fixed. Quite right about the mug. Am going to Rhodes for 5 days over Easter. Back to climb Mount Ida with the Sinclair Hoods60 on the 3rd – 4th and then start for home. Will return before the 12th. XX Bruce

  Chatwin had made an important decision in the Sudanese desert. Encouraged by Cary Welch, instead of going to Rhodes for Easter he invited Elizabeth Chanler to Paris. There, in the Cabinet de Medailles in the Louvre, he proposed. The engagement was still a secret when he met her parents a fortnight later in Ireland.

  To Gertrude Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | [25 May 1965]

  Dear Mrs Chanler,

  I did enjoy my weekend in Dublin61 enormously. Thank you very much. Liz obviously had a good ten days. She came back looking wonderfully well. She certainly needed it. Sotheby’s is frantic at the moment and having taken things at my own pace for the past few months I find the changeover alarming. We were all turned upside down by the Telstar broadcast62 the other night. Contrary to everyone’s gloomy predictions it was a riotous success.

  Liz63 and I went to the Chelsea Flower Show yesterday morning for the preview. The flowers are so overbred and look more and more like plastic with each year that passes. There are one or two places from Scotland and Ireland who stick to straight-forward plant species and they are always infinitely preferable. I do hope to see you both again before long, and again many thanks.

  Yours ever, Bruce Chatwin

  To Ivry Freyberg

  119a Mount Street | London | 8 June 1965

  My Dear Ivry,

  Bless you for your cable! The deed is done, and in about three months I’ll no longer be a free man. Secrecy is rather necessary for a bit, partly because we both find the word fiancé(e) difficult to pronounce with the right expression.64 May we come down and see you sometime during the summer?

  A beaming face waved and shouted from a taxi this afternoon. It was Raulin,65 looking marvellously well I must say.

  Love to you both, Bruce

  To Gertrude Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | June 22 1965

  Elizabeth calls you M & B66. I think this is irreverent, but I haven’t an idea what to call you. I’ve discussed it for an hour, but she�
�s offered no constructive suggestion. I’m amazed by the elaborate detail of her letter – Not a word to tell you how happy we both are, and how much we look forward to the end of August (? or September) and seeing you again. Please don’t worry too much about the Chatwin contingent. We will fit in entirely with your plans. I simply can’t make it vis-à-vis Sotheby’s before the 21 st, and I’m sure it would be a horrible rush for you too. So any day from the 21 st on will be perfectly all right.

  Also I don’t really see why it has to be on a weekend. Surely during August people are fairly relaxed in their offices? I have a very few friends in New York who will be able to come, and also Cary and Edith Welch from Boston. I imagine we will be twelve at the most. I’m not intending very light grey67, and my mother is not in a flap; that crisis seems to be solved already.

  I do hope you will not worry about my not being a Catholic.68 I have always been brought up according to the Church of England, as were both my parents. A few relations of my grandfather’s generation were Catholic converts. I am absolutely willing, not to say anxious, that any of my children shall be brought up as Catholics, and I intend to talk to a great friend of mine Peter Levi69 who is a Jesuit. I know you’ll agree that it would be a great mistake to take steps in this direction just at this moment. All I can say is that at the time I left school I was influenced strongly by Catholicism and have an entirely open mind about the future.

  I’ve got a small flat in Mount Street just opposite the Connaught Hotel. We have decided we would prefer to live there for the time being rather than face a major upheaval just now. It’s a bit like a couple of staterooms on a liner, but its advantages are its economy, cupboard space, living-in housekeeper in the basement, and the fact that it is 2 minutes flat from Sotheby’s.

  My father and I have entered our little boat into the Round-the Island race on Saturday,70 and Lib71 will be on the finishing line to greet us (if we make it!) Looking forward to August immensely. If I can help with anything at all do let me know,

  Love Bruce

  To Stephen Tennant

  Postcard, Historiska Museum, Stockholm | Sweden | 29 June 1965

  Would love to come down after July 10 and will drop a line to see which day’s covenient.

  Bruce

  On 12 July 1965, after Elizabeth had flown to New York, a notice appeared in The Times announcing the engagement ‘between Charles Bruce elder son of Mr and Mrs C. L. Chatwin of 16 College Street, Stratford on Avon and Elizabeth Margaret Therese, eldest daughter of Rear Admiral and Mrs Hubert Chanler of Washington DC and Geneseo, New York. The marriage will take place in America in August.’

  To Ivry Freyberg

  119a Mount Street | London | Saturday [July 1965]

  My dear Ivry,

  So very many thanks for your letters. Sorry that everything was still in its early stages when I first wrote. I do hope you didn’t see that terrible little piece in the Evening Standard entitled ‘Love among the Pictures’. Elizabeth’s already gone to America and I leave on the Queen Elizabeth in ten days – a good 5 days rest. We are getting married in their family chapel on their estate which is at the back of beyond in New York State near the Canadian border. We’re going to give a party when we get back in the autumn. I need your advice. Where is a good room for 350 people to dance in?72 I’ve no idea about these things. We both send our love and long to see you. Bruce and Elizabeth

  To Elizabeth Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | Wednesday [15 July 1965]

  My Dearest Liz,

  Please write to P. Wilson. Katherine73 says there is a slight huff74 about you leaving at all. Typical of course, and don’t give it a thought. But write your charmingest letter to say how sorry you were that when you came to say goodbye he wasn’t there, and that you’re horribly sorry not to have given more notice.

  The Greek head75 arrived, and is quite incredible. I think I see how to work it all out. But we won’t be able to have much else for years. Do you mind if I divest us of the green head, because I shall probably have to? Why don’t you say for wedding presents credit at John Hewett,76 173 New Bond St W1? Father Murray77 is a real treasure and we’re going to have the sessions alternately in the flat and Farm St.

  May be in America sooner than you think. Having eluded the 10 journalists on Monday morning I find a P.P.78 directive saying that my presence is required for certain antiquities in N.Y. in August anyway. Nothing happens here so I might just as well come over. What about that?

  All is love,

  B

  To Elizabeth Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | [22 July 1965]

  My Dear Liz,

  After our telephone conversation I had a sleepless night. The real reason for my insomnia was caused by the recollection of a conversation we had before you left, a conversation of which I only just realise the horrendous implications. You said that you were going to learn how to work a deep freeze!!79

  Now all week I have been instructed about the evils of paganism and heresy. I have learned the implications of life everlasting, the light of Heaven, the darkness of Hell, and the mist of Purgatory. But I now find myself faced with the greatest HERESY known to man, the DEEP FREEZE.

  Imagine if you were put in a deep freeze. Your outward form might remain, but where would your soul be? Flitting about the Fields of Asphodels or knocking at the Golden gate. But vegetables have no souls; they die. It is a major article of my faith never to eat dead vegetables.

  A doctor friend of mine nearly dropped down dead in Harley Street as a result of eating dead vegetables. It is a complaint known as scarlatina. So give up all this nonsense of a deep freeze, do not deprive me of the pleasure of eating fresh food in its due season and learn to make a proper apple pie and the best chowder.

  xxxx B

  To Elizabeth Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | [July 1965]

  Dearest E,

  I’m in a vile mood today. I went to Hugh and Connie’s80 party last night, drank champagne and feel lousy and lonely. Connie is really quite a dish, isn’t she?

  Katherine had obviously what was a catty letter from Leo,81 and is purring. P.C.W. has gone to Lady Sarah Russell. George O[rtiz] sends his love . . . Took Gouri82 out to dinner at the Narain.83 This gave me fearful attack of wind which was embarrassing at the tailor’s. Your trust money came in and was about £1200 for which congratulations.

  Had the nicest letter from Cary [Welch] which got me through yesterday. He suggests that we all drive together to Maine, and why ever not. We’ll have our hire-car man disguised as an azalea at the bottom of your drive, change in the rhododenrons, give the car over to him and jump into the Welch station waggon. When I am cooped up in that miserable boat you will simply have to telephone once a day, otherwise I shall arrive a jabbering wreck. We shall have to look on our telephone calls as capital investment.84 I should never have let you go. Letters are all very well, but by the time they reach they are old hat. Can you imagine what it must have been like in the 18th Century, with the husband disappearing for years to India, and with a postal service of three months? I now have all the right papers signed by Church, notaries and State. I assume that it is all right to bring them over with me? My uncle Anthony just came in with an unbelievably hideous and special metronomic (?) clock which was exhibited in the Great Exhibition. There is also a postcard signed Alfred (Friendly);85 it shows a long Italian tunnel with apparently no ending. How right he is? I can’t lay my hands on it just now, but will send it on.

  The sight of you at the docks will be worth all this trial.

  Love, love love, Bruce

  Have a marvellous Hawaiian feather necklet for you.

  To Elizabeth Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | 30 July 1965

  My Liz,

  Would we like as a wedding present, a yacht trip around the coast of Crete next summer with a character called Allen Bole, who is a rather hopeless but highly entertaining American living in Chania. I think so, don�
��t you? Also the nicest letter from Henry Mac.86 We are invited to Glenveagh for the stalking in Oct. Or would you prefer Sir James Dundas’s87 fishing lodge opposite Mull which is ours whenever we like in the autumn. Cheque from New Zealand cousins.88 Am much cheered this morning by your telephone call, the host and the weather. No houses on the market. Chairs, blinds, etc all arriving soon, must shampoo carpet.

  A million hugs!

  B

  On 21 August Bruce and Elizabeth were married at a Nuptial Mass in the Chanler family chapel at Sweet Briar Farm, Geneseo. David Nash was best man. Elizabeth’s aunt Maria gave her this advice for their wedding night: ‘Don’t forget to cut your toenails.’