Under the Sun: The Letters of Bruce Chatwin Read online

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Avondale | Edinburgh | 30 October 1966

  Sat

  Dear E.

  Tried to ring you but this is cheaper.

  1. Will you come straight here next Fri as I won’t be able to meet the plane?

  Will try and get hold of James Dundas.

  2. Daddy should deal with the Burnley110.

  3. Can you bring typewriter if it’s not too much trouble.

  4. I’ll pay Feaver but only when Sotheby’s pay me my pension etc.

  5. Dagger111 must wait till I’ve had a proper search. Am telling F.N.112 to keep Lloyd Williams113 informed.

  6. Suggest 6x6 square tiles, not the octagonal ones as they’ll look a bit corny114.

  Am seeing Eddie’s115 friend Peter Davis116 today after beagling (!) with Bill Spink117. We’re now in a tiny room which is sad.

  XXX

  B

  p.s £6-10-0 is a sleeper to Edinburgh

  To Stephen Tennant

  Avondale | Edinburgh | [October 1966]

  There is a great friend of mine here called Peter Davis. He is one of the leading botanists of the day and is embarked on a complete Flora of Turkey, in 14 volumes! He is also one of your fervent admirers. He bought a picture in your London exhibition and is desperately keen to have another or more. Do you think he could buy one? I seem to remember that there are two in Sotheby’s, and maybe he’d like one of those. But then I couldn’t know how much to ask. Do let me know if you can spare one, one with Lascars? He really is terribly keen and asks constantly.

  Yours ever, Bruce Chatwin

  PS The weather is unbelievably horrible here, but at least one breathes fresh air which is a change after London.

  On 1 November, Chatwin took a three-year lease on an apartment in the Royal Mile.

  To Derek Hill

  Avondale | Edinburgh | 8 November 1966

  We have a flat . . . but I do not think we’ll be in it by November 20th. Address is c/o Dept of Archaeology, 19 George Sq, Edinburgh, but no phone. We had the Chanlers here. Great dramas over regular feeding118 times. Considerably recovered after that horrible auctioneer had nearly drunk the last drop, but will I pass the exams? B

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 30 November 1966

  Tuesday

  Term will soon be over and I’m in a state about exams. At least they can only chuck me out at the end of the year. Had a very funny lunch on Sunday with the Talbot-Rices119 who you’ll love. She is a big Russian version of Penelope Betjeman120, and he beams. They live at Fossebridge and so we are going over to see them soon. Otherwise nothing but the orange linoleum. I think I’ve changed my mind again about the floor and want plain pine again. I want to experiment with dirt and caustic on a piece. When I come back through London I’ll make some enquiries. I thought I might stay with old Simon Snell121 for two nights. I also want to see about getting some crushed terracotta for painting the house. I think the Rokeby122 colour needs toning down a bit for Glos. Would the Victorian curtains123 be nice in the back bedroom? The only place for them. Had just remembered how nice the Persian textile will look in dining room. Redman124 sounds a real menace. Terrible dramas about getting a painting by Stephen Tennant for Peter Davis. S[tephen] T[ennant] writes illuminated letters to the Department and tells me he has dedicated a poem to me called the ‘Supreme Vision’.125

  One can only pray to God it will never be published. He also says that he has been asked to go to the University of Wisconsin to give a seminar on Willa Cather.126 If he does it would be one of the spectacles of the century, and we ought to go and write a book about it. Peter Davis is giving a dinner party for the Southern blonde and her husband on the Thursday. Sotheby’s kept my pension and contra-ed it which I thought was rather forward of them without asking. One can’t complain really and I shall take even longer to pay the rest off. Very patronising letter from Llewellyn. ‘With each day that passes, the fatter their arses.’

  xxxx B

  In November an illuminated letter had arrived from Tennant at the Archaeology Department to say that he was writing a play set in Aix les Bains, Madame is Resting, which he hoped to sell as a brisk farce. ‘Edinburgh must be very handsome in sombre autumn. You do sound studious: what period are you studying? Boadicea? Camelot? Constantine? Bion?’

  To Stephen Tennant

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 24 November 1966

  Dear Stephen,

  I have never been so overworked in my life. Even duchesses take up less time than history essays. It really is a most extraordinary sensation going back to school. I have learnt never to offend the second-year students, who are immensely full of their own self-importance. One second-yearer leaned across my shoulder and asked me why I was reading a particularly devious book, and then said that first-year students were not able to understand its mysteries. A rigid stratification divides the years and the twain shall never meet let alone for a conversation. There are some anti-conventional characters as well. There’s a wonderful young man with carrot-coloured plaits who wears a red plastic coat and no shoes even though there’s ice on the pavement. I have only once been out of Edinburgh and that was to stay in Traquair; the hills above Glen were covered in snow even in October. May I come shortly after Christmas or else immediately before on about the 20th. I have to take exams here which I feel sure I shall fail, and will be in need of cheerfulness.

  As ever, Bruce

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 27 November 1966

  I still think that the 9in tiles would be nice in the dining room and don’t think they would be too noisy. We could put an easy chair up by the fireplace with a rug in front to give it a bit of warmth. They might look very well laid diagonally but I’m not sure about that. I think you can get Dutch Delft copies with the little figures in the middle; they might be better than nothing. Also make sure they sink a space for a door mat (big) inside the back door.

  XXX B

  On 20 December 1966 Stuart Piggott invited Chatwin to dinner (‘smoked salmon & venison, ananas au cognac’), afterwards writing in his diary: ‘I became bored as he stayed until 1.30 a.m. oh my God. I suppose he was enjoying himself but oh when will the young realise that three hours is the ideal time to come and stay for a meal?’ On 6 February 1967 Chatwin invited himself to dinner again,‘revealing all in the same breath and too obviously that Elizabeth had gone back to their Gloucestershire house, and sounding rather gay and relieved about it’. Piggott speculated whether Chatwin ‘has homo. tendencies. No change to be had from me!’

  To Derek Hill

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | Saturday [February 1967]

  Dear D.,

  My parents have lent us their car and we got out of this place, thank God, for the first time. In Perth we found a huge Wemyss jardinière127 which I thought was horrid, but could scarcely be considered an expert judge. Enclosed is the shop’s card. Run by a very swishy number who couldn’t decide whether he was going to talk Highland or Hairdresser. I thought it was fiendishly expensive, but considering the prices here for really bad and beaten up bowls I suppose you would be getting value for money. Green bands above and below, green handles and cabbage roses on the body. Am very keen about this Hermes glass128, which I have tried to monopolise, but E. thinks she would like to wear. I have just bought her a lacquered Javanese coolie hat. When are you coming to see us in Glos? We can put you up as yet in a state of intense discomfort, but the food is delicious, or perhaps you’d prefer the rival attractions of our nearest neighbour, Alvilde L.-M.129 I say you were right about Peter Saunders 130. After greasing about for months sending messages about how keen he was to meet us, when I said that I was an undergraduate he looked slightly nonplussed, spluttered something about Sotheby’s and after the truth had dawned, ignored us. Poor thing to have wasted a whole moneymaking evening; he was quite crestfallen; I feel he may have wanted a free evaluation. He se
ems to have a beastly collection of modern pictures. Did you see his house tarted up by David Hicks131 in that decorating book? It is quite the funniest book to appear last year.

  We are going down to Glos in Mid-March and don’t have to be back again till the end of April. I HAVE to go and excavate in Bangor, on some beastly Neolithic site being developed for industry just opposite the front gates of Vaynol.132 As it is very easy to get on the ferry to N. Ireland from there I thought we might come over to Ireland for a week. Are you going to be there in early April? We can’t make it definite because it rather depends on the state of the house. Do let me know?

  What are you doing in the summer? I intend to go to Afghanistan and Persia and possibly N. India and Nepal for four months with E. joining me for some of the time only because she is going home for her brother’s wedding. I really feel I am justified in opting out. It’s bad enough raising the wind for one air fare let alone two. Spent the whole of December having my teeth seen to in Birmingham; owing to incompetent dentistry of the most expensive Harley St kind, they were on the point of falling out, but were rescued just in time. I went to Sotheby’s for two hours and felt that feeling of helpless rage coming over me again. I am afraid it is terribly boring here; I expected it, and have to convince myself that it’s good for me. But the intense relief of not having to turn up each morning to that lugubrious firm is a compensation. And I dare say that a really massive trip will put me right. I haven’t had a proper holiday for two years. You are lucky to be going to Greece at this time of year. I once went on the Acropolis in February and there was nobody else except a party of Russian sailors. Edinburgh station is draped in Hammers and Sickles for Mr Kosygin,133 and there is a ramshackle bunch of demonstrators demanding freedom for the Ukraine.

  Love, Bruce

  To Derek Hill

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-Under-Edge | Glos | 29 March 1967

  V. sorry cannot make it. At the moment, I have a streaming cold. That’s what comes of excavating in the snow.

  To Derek Hill

  Flat 6 | 234 Canongate | Edinburgh | 8 May 1967

  I have a Wemyss pot and cover with strawberries for you. No one could accuse me of divided loyalties. Bruce

  In June 1967, after sitting his first-year exams, Chatwin left Edinburgh for the summer and moved in to Holwell Farm. The renovations had taken more than a year.

  To Gertrude Chanler

  Holwell Farm | Wotton-Under-Edge | Glos | 5 July 1967

  Dear Gertrude,

  We are covered in paint. Things are suddenly beginning to happen, like the electricity is going to be switched on and the central heating given its trial run. Needless to say when we are really settled down to a job of work there is always a country drama. I have spent half the morning chasing somebody else’s cows out. The kitchen is all but ready and we aim to move into it, one bedroom and the little study at the end of the house very soon. It will be a great relief to get out of the lodge and begin to lead a civilised life again.

  The examinations went off all right, and in fact I was top of the year and a prizewinner,134 something that never happened to me at school, and despite my gloomy predictions to the contrary; it was all very encouraging. Stuart [Piggott] is not excavating this year and I am off in ten days to Czechoslovakia, Rumania and Bulgaria to see some museums and excavations. He has given me a whole battery of introductions. This year is International Tourist year and it does seem rather amazing that one does not require visas for an Iron Curtain Country except Russia. An old school friend135 is in the embassy in Sofia which will make life more comfortable and interesting there. I am then going to Turkey for about three weeks with Andrew Batey136 and hope that Lib will come out and join us on the way back. I have just finished an article I am writing for a book on the flowers of Greece, not really my subject and I am afraid it’s been more hard work than it’s worth. I dread that it is inaccurate and that learned botanists will tear it to shreds.

  I have been howling with laughter at all the hoo-haa in the press about the art forgeries. This is in fact only the tip of the iceberg and more will come. But I do take a certain pleasure in the fact that I threw Mr Legros137 physically out of Sotheby’s by the neck some four years ago.

  Last weekend we went to Penelope Betjeman’s. He is about to be made Poet Laureate138 and wasn’t there, and she is so exhausting that we came back here to collapse. This weekend we hope to have a real work corvée, and Felicity [Nicolson] is expected too. The cat has had kittens and this time they are doing fine even though she is a hopeless mother. Poor David Nash has mumps terribly badly in New York and has temperatures up to 105. They are now recovering in Brittany and I am going to wait for them to arrive here before setting off. I hope that Cary [Welch] will come over this autumn. We have just had a totally incoherent letter from him. They are building a house in Greece with Billy Wood’s brother Clem and one day it’ll be lovely for us to use it as well. Then he has schemes for other hide-outs in Mexico: and the Burning Ghats in Benares!

  We must go back to the scraping. I’ll send John and Sheila139 a cable from darkest Moravia, but this time the cables office must send them on.

  Lots of love B

  No sooner had he moved into Holwell Farm than Chatwin set off for his summer’s excavation at Zàvist, south of Prague. He took with him for the first and last parts of the journey a 23-year-old American architecture student, Andrew Batey. This was ‘the steamer-chair character’ whom he had met on board the Queen Elizabeth when sailing to get married. Batey, then studying history at Occidental College in Los Angeles, was sailing home. ‘We had adjacent deck chairs on the stormy, freezing crossing. One moved over and it turned out to be Bruce.’ So began a fifteen-year friendship. Chatwin, says Elizabeth, was ‘very, very keen’ on the willowy Batey, who in 1966 matriculated at St Catherine’s College, Oxford. Batey visited the Chatwins at Ozleworth and pestered Chatwin to go travelling. In July 1967 they took the Orient Express to Venice, stopping off at the Villa Malcontenta to meet Dorothea Landsberg. Batey continued by train through Bulgaria to Turkey; Chatwin to digs in Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Rumania. They planned to reunite in Istanbul.

  This letter would, twenty years later, inspire the opening of Chatwin’s novel Utz about a collector of Meissen porcelain in Cold War Prague.

  To Elizabeth Chatwin

  Hotel Kaiserhof | Frankenberggasse | Vienna | Austria | [July 1967]

  Dear E,

  I am very late in my time-table because I should be through Hungary by now. I arrived here today from Bratislava and spent the afternoon in the Volkerkunde museum as everything else was shut. There are three feather Aztec objects here, which I knew vaguely about but was totally unprepared for. One is Montezuma’s fan (from the collections of H. Cortez and Charles V – no less), a circular arrangement of brilliant feathers with an acid green butterfly in the middle. Then there is his green feather headdress with blue and red stripes and little gold plaques and another circular fan with a coyote in violet and orange in a raspberry fan. These three objects make the Bliss collection140 et al sink into nothingness, and there is heaven knows what besides.

  We failed to get into the Stocklet Collection141 because the objects and the furniture were all put away for the summer, but Mme S[tocklet] was very accommodating and asked me to come again in the autumn. She even remembered my visit of 1960! Then we went to Aix and looked at Charlemagne and the Schatzkammer where there are some objects that nearly made me die, especially the engraving on the back of the cross of Lothar and Richard of Cornwall’s sceptre. We separated at Cologne after looking over that monstrous cathedral and I went to an exhibition of ‘Rome on the Rhine’ which was only fairly instructive and visually barren. I then went on to Bonn, to Habelt142 the bookseller where I found a copy of Dörpfeld’s143 Troy and the v. rare Berlin Troy catalogue both of which I bought. The Bonn Landesmuseum has the gold Fritzdorf Cup which is paralleled by the Wessex Culture Rillaton Cup144 and one from Mycenae. There was also a smashing Hunnish cauldron
which I had not known about. On to Nuremberg where I had the row with the hotel145 and would never have set foot in Germany again were it not for the great kindness on the part of the manageress of the next hotel who was so appalled that she treated me to breakfast. In the Dom is the fantastic, hideous but rather wonderful ‘sacrament haus’ of Adam Kraft146 who portrayed himself with his mason’s mallet supporting the monstrous load. The museum is quite wonderful with Durers and manuscripts of Otto III’s scriptorium at Endernach. I made the happy discovery that the chalcedony salt [cellar] I bought from David Lethan147 is Augsburg c.1600, and that means it’s really worth something.

  Prague is one of the most curious places in the world. The whole place is utterly bourgeois and always obviously was. Communism sits on it in a most uneasy way, and I would have said cannot last long. It is virtually impossible to meet a single communist. Even in the trains and buses they joke about it. Some of the younger generation might be communist but would not dream of owning up to the fact. It must be one of the few places in the world where one can hear the American position in Vietnam actually defended. They loathe the Russians and Chinese with an emotional fervour. A great many speak English, and I had a long lecture from a man on the excavation who could only be described as a peasant on the merits of Eton and how England was an education to the world. The world is full of surprises.