Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Read online

  The Chatwins honeymooned off the Maine coast in a 42-foot yawl chartered by Elizabeth’s father, who had not consulted either of them but had heard that Chatwin liked sailing. They were joined by Cary and Edith Welch on another yawl, spending much of the week fog-bound in the lobster harbour of Cape Split.

  To Derek Hill

  119a Mount Street | London | 15 October 1965

  We long to tell you about it – every succulent detail – the admiral’s jig – the Holy Water flicked in my eyes – my drunken sister-in-law doing karate on the lawn – the stove89 that exploded during the wedding feast and covered the house in black smoke – those brothers-in-law who put fire-crackers in the car – the honeymoon (dreadful word) in Maine, stuck in the fog in a small yacht . . . And we think you have something to tell US of balls (?) in Donegal. Longing to have the picture90 but we have no house to hang it in. What are we to do? Love B

  To Cary Welch

  119a Mount Street | London | [1965]

  What I have omitted to tell you is the PARTY91 for Teddy Millington-Drake. 92 Having been squared and explained to about it in Geneseo, the Admiral becomes terrified of missing something, and the day before down they come to New York, specially (ostensibly to see us off). Teddy sends round a huge quantity of flowers and that is considered very strange. Twenty or thirty people expected. The admiral puts out twenty-five glasses of all kinds. Twenty-eight people come all of whom I know except for two of Teddy’s friends and a host of Elizabeth’s. The Admiral glowers as Michele Morgan’s daughter arrives in a glittering pants suit. He then takes up a position at the front door, and glowers to each and every person who comes through the front door, leaving me to do the drinks, and saying to each in turn ‘I am Admiral Chanler; I don’t know who you are; but then I don’t know anyone here and this is my house.’ By this time he had had far too much to drink having started at four, and started to make such observations as ‘There are many people here who, under normal circumstances, I would regard as of questionable honesty,’ singling out in particular a friend of mine called Tristram Powell, ex-Eton, son of the novelist Anthony Powell, as a ‘very suspicious man with a beaky nose’. My mother-in-law’s curiosity was aroused into grilling me over dinner about the marital status of everyone present. ‘Are they married or living together?’ ‘He’s not married, is he?’ ‘No, I thought not’ and so on, and I would love to have invented so bizarre a sex life for each of the characters in turn that they would have a whole-dark-Geneseo-winter-full of conversation and speculation. THEY NEED IT. The Admiral also claimed that no less than seventy people arrived.

  The Chatwins returned to London in October and immediately started house-hunting.

  To Gertrude Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | [23 October 1965]

  Dear Mrs C.,

  I’m sitting propped up in the flat because yesterday we went to stay with a friend called John Hewett93 whose prize ram escaped. I needless to say came off worst and cut my leg right open on a barbed wire fence. The ram of course was unperturbed, was at length recaptured, only to escape again, this time for good. It later that day walked into the local garage.

  No luck with houses so far. The market is apparently depressed at the moment and we may have to wait till spring because that’s the time people put them on the market. Patience is the great thing. Just when you give up, the right thing comes along.94 I’ve been going to board meetings for the first time95 and more often than not they’re long and tedious, but sometimes they are very funny especially when all my own contemporaries stand on their dignity and get all pompous and silly. There was a marvellous piece of nonsense the other night when they held that big sale in New York. There was a black-tie audience in London and an additional auctioneer to relay bids from London through an amplified two-way telephone connection. Unfortunately something went wrong and the New York audience heard Cockney swearing, and the London audience heard a few new bits of New York slang. All that could be heard were the operators rather than the auctioneers.

  Did Lib tell you we’re probably going to Russia for eight days in December? John Hewett and I have always wanted to see the archaeological stuff in the Hermitage and so we’ve cooked up an expedition. Then we are going to Donegal to Derek [Hill]’s for Christmas, and I think that the chances are that we’ll be able to come back to America in the Spring because there’s a sale I shall have to catalogue which is scheduled for June. All rather in the air at the moment though.

  So it won’t be too long before we’ll all be back. Lib says to tell you that a friend of ours called Allen Bole may look you up.

  With love,

  Bruce

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  119a Mount Street | London | [November 1965]

  I now feel at liberty to forget your birthday present

  xxxx B

  PS do you normally keep your stockings in the ’frig?96

  In January, after their visit to Russia, Chatwin took Elizabeth as his secretary to Paris to catalogue the Helena Rubinstein collection. This would be his last major sale for Sotheby’s.

  To Gertrude Chanler

  Hotel de L’Université | Paris | France | 7 January 1966

  I have you horribly on my conscience because I didn’t yet write to thank you for my Christmas present. I tried to send something but it was of a highly perishable nature and I hated the idea of it mouldering at Rochester airport. The odds are even that we’ll both be able to come over for about a fortnight in February, but I’m not yet counting on it. Helena Rubinstein 97 wore a lot of people out during her long life, and she retains that capacity in the grave. We work from 9.00 till 8 in the evening and we still get nowhere. Then we go back to this peculiar hotel which has now become less than a joke (bathwater from midnight to 5am). Paris is wonderful for holidays but horrible to work in. I’m going to insist that E. gets paid a fortune.98 We are sitting in an Italian restaurant and the woman next to me is a blonde with a khaki face. E. and I are speculating how it got that way because she is not a negress. E. has eaten an enormous pizza, half a chicken, and is now proposing to embark on an elaborate sweet. Nobody would say she doesn’t eat! But what really irks me is that she doesn’t appear to get any fatter while I blow out like a balloon [Elizabeth: that’s because he eats candy all day long . . . It’s not my fault that this letter’s all full of spots either. David [Nash] and Judy99 are here and we think the affair is all washed up but we’re not sure]. Bruce again: We rather hope so secretly because it would be very limiting for David. E and I put different interpretations on the whole business [E: the whole thing started at Uncle’s100 party for us!]

  On 4 March 1966 Chatwin bought three paintings of nineteenth-century Indian fruits at £25 a piece.

  To Sven Gahlin101

  Wasn’t it lucky that E found some little cheques in her handbag? Otherwise!

  Bruce

  Since his return from the Sudan, Chatwin had been unable to focus on Sotheby’s. He told Robin Lane Fox how he explained the matter to Peter Wilson: ‘I don’t want to go on perched on the podium having sham orgasms as I knock down another lot.’ His disillusion over his degraded partnership added to his growing frustration with antiquities. Elizabeth communicated his malaise to Leo Lerman. On 13 July 1965 Lerman wrote in his diary: ‘Elizabeth Chanler says she was looking at some antique jewellery in the showroom. And one of the porters said she shouldn’t touch this Egyptian jewellery, because some fifteen or twenty years ago a man brought in a mummy in a case. Then he didn’t call for it for about five years. It was put on a top shelf. Finally he wanted it. When the porter tried to get it down, it broke open, and a mess of “black” matter fell on the porter, who became sick immediately, went home, and died that evening. Ever since, porters believe that “antiquities” are cursed.’

  Only part of Chatwin’s dislike was aimed at grave-robbers. Closer to home, he found himself becoming tangled in a scheme to disperse the Pitt-Rivers collection. This unique collection of ethnographic art (including 240 wo
rks from Benin retrieved as bounty by British troops during an expedition in 1897) was stored at the Farnham Museum in Dorset. Still mired in secrecy, the deal which saw their dispersal involved the tight circle of gentlemanly rogues who were Chatwin’s immediate bosses. On 27 August 1988, six months before he died, Chatwin focussed his rage against John Hewett, John and Puntzel Hunt in Ireland, and the Sotheby’s chairman, Peter Wilson: Chatwin claimed that he left Sotheby’s because he was being forced to sell the Pitt-Rivers collection ‘fraudulently’ to American and other collectors.

  In June 1966 Chatwin shocked colleagues at Sotheby’s by announcing his resignation to read archaeology at Edinburgh. The idea had been simmering ever since he had decided not to go up to Oxford. It had presented itself again in December 1965 on a visit to the Hermitage when he stood before the embalmed body of a Pasyryk chieftain who had been brought back to Leningrad in 1933 by the archaeologist Rudenko. On his return to London, Chatwin had borrowed Rudenko’s report from Robert Erskine, once an archaeologist at Cambridge, and began to look into archaeology degrees.

  Archaeology had interested Chatwin since his schooldays when his great-uncle Philip Chatwin, a force behind the Birmingham Archaeological Society, had taken Chatwin on his excavations at Weoley Castle. From Sotheby’s, Chatwin would visit Hugh at Marlborough, especially to revisit West Kennet Long Barrow, Silbury Hill and the Avebury stone circle. ‘It was in his bones,’ says Hugh. ‘He was looking for absolutes, for why we are as we are, and shifting from Anglo-Catholic certainties to pagan rites.’

  Cary Welch tried to discourage him – ‘I know, from experience, that you are too alive for the academic world’ – but agreed to write to Stuart Piggott, Professor of Prehistoric Archaeology at Edinburgh. Their meeting at the end of May decided Chatwin. Thereafter, Welch backed him. ‘Your decision to study archaeology is very exciting . . . it may be that you MUST prove yourself to yourself in the THING area. Inasmuch as its rewards can be predicted, it is a wise, safe choice. Stuart P[iggott] could not be a better sort, to my mind, and I think you are to be warmly congratulated.’

  On 24 June 1966 Elizabeth wrote to her mother: ‘Bruce has finally decided to leave Sotheby’s. He is going to go to Edinburgh University to get a degree in archaeology and this will take about 4 years. Sotheby’s is having fits of course and are trying everything they know to make him stay another year, but it just won’t work. He’s been accepted at Edinburgh and is quite determined to go now, especially as we have geared ourselves up to it . . . He said he is going to write to you himself about it all, but I thought I’d just tell you in case you found out some other way. Anyway it’s nothing to get alarmed about so don’t worry. He’s been thinking about this for ages, but couldn’t find out how to start, and where to go and it’s taken quite a while to get it all organised, especially finding the people to talk to, as most of them were out in the desert digging or something. The mechanics of his leaving Sotheby’s have not been worked out yet as he only told them a week ago, but I expect they will make the arrangements for him to sell his shares back etc.’

  To Gertrude Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | 24 June 1966

  Please don’t have a fit. We’ll survive, and before you know it Lib will be turned into a SCHOLAR!102 I’ll write soon: I’m sorry it’s all so precipitate but its no use chewing it over and over once one’s decided to take the plunge.

  With love, Bruce

  To Gertrude Chanler

  119a Mount Street | London | 6 July 1966

  Dear Gertrude,

  I am sorry that we took you by surprise the other day with my decision to give up Sotheby’s and read archaeology. The fact is that I have been chewing this idea over for at least four years. When I took up the partnership in April I had got no further and was content to let the thing drift. The main difficulty was that in this country you cannot read prehistoric archaeology as such, but have to take a first degree in classics or some such subject, and then go on for another three years with a doctorate in archaeology; the other alternative is a rather ineffectual diploma which takes two years and is not much good nowadays vis-à-vis a job at the end of it. During the last week in May I met Professor Stuart Piggott103 who has the chair in Edinburgh; he has recently reorganised the department and has a four-year honours degree; he has hardly any students to start with and will be able to take the whole thing tutorially, and he is also one of the finest archaeologists in the world. I took a very rapid decision, and it is arranged that I start in October. Over the last fortnight I have been talking to the people at Sotheby’s and although they at first wanted me to stay on for another year, they now understand that it would bring no advantage either way. By putting it off another year would be of no particular advantage financially this end either. The cost of living in London looks after all my salary and more each year but there is a definite possibility that I can get what is called a mature studentship104 which is enough to live on each year. We shall be able to spend more time at the house105 because the terms are only seven and a half weeks.

  Until last year when my salary went up I was only paid a pittance, and have always had to earn my living in a number of different ways. In fact my income since becoming a partner has gone down because I did not have a free hand.106

  My view is that the subject is so vast and complex that there is no time to be lost, and I believe that Peter Wilson at least sees this point of view, because he is gifted with a great deal of imagination and spirit. I am afraid that the art world, at least the world of art dealing, is coming to a grinding halt. It is no longer the reasonably civilised occupation it was five years ago. At any rate, it was making me extremely miserable and I feel that what I am doing is the right decision. Elizabeth does, and it was to a certain extent her firm mindedness that encouraged me to see the last few weeks through.

  I shall surrender my shares in September when I leave. I am working until October 1st; we intend to take the car to France during the second half of August returning in the first week in September. The house is coming on fine, but slowly and I’m afraid we shall not be in before Christmas at the earliest.107 Could you let me know into which account you would like the share money returned?108 It is just possible that David Nash, to whom they are being allotted, will want to make the payment directly in America, but this is an accounting problem, and there is no immediate hurry.

  With love to you all, Bruce

  Sorry

  To Derek Hill

  Postcard, skull of Cro-Magnon man, Les Eyzies | Paris | France | [August 1966]

  Overleaf is one of Elizabeth’s many relations whose loss was a terrible blow to us. We hate to think of you going the same way but just wait till you come and stay with us. Love B and E

  Michael Cannon had shared a room with Chatwin at Marlborough. This postcard was photocopied by Chatwin’s secretary, Sarah Inglis-Jones. ‘He gave it to me in Modern Paintings and said “Post this”, as he was rushing off somewhere. He was always, always rushing somewhere in a drama, rushing from behind his desk. So I photocopied it thinking he might be well-known one day.’

  To Michael Cannon

  Sotheby’s | 34 & 35 New Bond Street | London | [September 1966]

  You may not have heard that I have LEFT Sotheby’s to read a degree in archaeology at Edinburgh. Change is the only thing worth living for. Never sit your life out at a desk. Ulcers and heart condition follow.

  CHAPTER THREE

  EDINBURGH: 1966-8

  Sotheby’s kept Chatwin to the bitter end, not releasing him till 5 p.m. on the day before Edinburgh University required him to register. That night he took the sleeper to Edinburgh. No digs existed for married students.While he hunted for an unfurnished flat, he lodged for £10 a week at the Avondale B & B on the main road south out of the city.

  He had arrived in high spirits. He was part Scottish and coming back to his roots, the land of his forebears, the Bruces; and of his maternal grandmother, the gypsy-like Gaggie from Aberdeen. He was enrolled t
o study the discipline of his great-uncle Philip; the profession claimed by Robert Byron when he had sought admission to Mount Athos.

  Archaeology was a four-year course. It was arduous work. Chatwin attended from ten to fifteen lectures a week, which went on till seven in the evening; and was expected to write a weekly essay.Prescribed texts for the autumn term covered eighteen subjects, from the barbarian kingdoms of Western Europe to the uncertain frontiers of the Mongol horsemen. He also chose to learn Sanskrit.

  But, as at Sotheby’s, disillusionment set in.

  He was away from the bright lights; no wine or food in shops; he had to work hard; and as an older student he did not fit in. Here was someone who had been twice to Afghanistan, to the Sudan, to Istanbul; others, fresh from school, found him shy or stand-offish.

  Nor was archaeology the discipline he thought it was.‘Totally bewildering to me,’ he wrote in notes for his first lecture, on 8 October 1966, featuring a cairn at High Gillespie. ‘Two middle chambers only really indicated by depressions in the earth.’ Four days later, he scrawled ‘Terrifying’ – underlining the word three times. He was repeating himself, his repellence with ‘things’. As his friend Robert Erskine put it: ‘He went into archaeology thinking he’d be the next Howard Carter, walking into a room of Egyptian antiquities – and not spending his time with his bottom in the air, in the mud, groping around a megalithic site.’