Under the Sun (41 page)

You can't hear the Indian Ocean in this shell, but I think the design is very beautiful and I chose it for you. The white things look like mountains, don't they?

When I come back to England in June, I'll come and take you out from school. I think we must find you a book on shells. If you promise to collect them and look after them, it would be lovely for me, because when I go round the world, I can find more shells and send them to you.

With love from your affectionate godfather

Bruce

Poggio al Pozzo | Siena | Italy | Easter Sunday | 3 May 1979

 

Quick card to say hello. Stuck on Tuscan hillside trying to plough my way through to finish 30 pages of manuscript but must have finished 150 of them.
⁵³¹

L.6 Albany | Piccadilly | London | 11 May 1979

 

Dear John and Hugh,

Back in London with a belated thanks for – as usual – a lovely time with you both. By
far
the best house I know in Italy! I'll be back in the solitude of Chianti in about three weeks.

In the meantime, C. Gibbs still has the Duchesse de Berry's Granet,
⁵³³
measurements on the back. It has a whopping Chatsworth frame made up from bits of late 17th century English moulding which I think makes it look marvellous. He wants about £5-6,000 for it, but is absolutely open to the idea of a swap. Apparently the National Gallery of Wales are nibbling at it, but I wonder whether they have the
nous
much love, Bruce

 

One of several Anglo-Argentines who objected to the depiction of British estancia owners in
In Patagonia
was Millicent Jane Saunders. She took particular exception to Chatwin's ‘false description' of her late husband, ‘a highly respected Patagonian'. On p.195 Chatwin had interviewed an elderly Chilean: ‘He had worked twenty years on the estancia and now he was going to die. He remembered Mr Sandars, the manager, who died and was buried at sea. He did not like Mr Sandars. He was a hard man, a despotic man . . .'

L6 Albany | Piccadilly | London | 27 September 1979

 

Dear Mrs Saunders,

. . . I deeply regret that you should have been upset by Chapter 94 of my book
In Patagonia
. I think, however, you will appreciate the circumstances under which it was written. I was simply recording the words of a dying Chilean peon. He said that the manager of his estancia had been a Mr Sandars (my spelling), who had been buried at sea, who was an ‘
hombre duro e despotico
' (his words), though he remembered him in a favourable light compared to what came after under the Allende regime and later. Having lived, as I did, in peons' quarters all over Patagonia, it was the most common thing in the world to hear men grousing about their employers in that kind of language, usually as we sat around the
maté
kettle.

My business was to record what people said. I did not, I can assure you, intend to pass any judgement on a man about whom I knew nothing, and whose name, apparently, I did not know how to spell.

Yours sincerely,

Bruce Chatwin

L6 Albany | Piccadilly | London | 15 February 1980

 

Have gone to New York for 10 days but will phone on return. xxx Bruce

 

Chatwin was in New York to work with Jim Silberman, his American editor, on
The Viceroy of Ouidah
, as his book was to be called. Previous titles he had considered were:
Dom Francisco
,
The Elephant
,
The Brazilian
,
Skin for Skin
,
The Merchant of Ouidah
. He had rewritten and typed out half a dozen drafts, changing Francisco de Souza's name to Francisco da Silva. What had commenced as the history of a Brazilian slave-trader was now a novel. An introductory paragraph composed for Silberman, and later deleted, shows that Chatwin had found it impossible to transform de Souza's life into a biography: ‘. . . when I tried to fit these pieces into a narrative, each fact seemed to contradict each other fact. The story gave out at the critical points and, with a mixture of relief and despair, I decided to write a work of the imagination. I changed the names of the principal characters, having a prejudice against making historical figures say things they did not say, or do things they did not do.And having changed the names, I was then free to borrow, to combine, to juggle with dates, to invent new characters and new situations – to such an extent that even I can hardly disentangle the real from the invented.'

[19 February 1980]
⁵³⁴

 

Jim
,

I haven't looked it over.

Parts I-II and III are I think as the Cape editor and I think they should be with
most
(!) of your suggestions incorporated.

Parts IV & V are my final retype but not yet edited by Cape's.

There are 2 small parts which I want to rewrite anyway. Please anyway be FIERCE over these final sections because they have had far less going over than the first 3.

The book is
not
a novel but a TALE (?)

?A Tale of Two Continents?

See you Tuesday,

Bruce

L6 Albany (top) | Piccadilly | London | 21 March 1980

 

Dear Francis,

You can certainly
borrow
, not rent the above, but I feel I must warn you of the drawbacks. It is
not
a flat, in the English sense of the term, but a one-room
garçonnière
such as one might find in the
Cinquième
. My tastes are also rather Spartan. It has a kind of kitchen, a minuscule shower and basin, but the lavatory is out on the landing. It has a painted
Directoire
bed, 3ft 6in wide – and definitely for Francis: sharing with
anyone
not recommended. It has a smaller, also
Directoire
, steel lit-de-camp, which can be made into a bed, though it serves as a sofa. In this Shirley would have to sleep. I
have
, on occasions, and found it small but possible.

Otherwise, there are a Jacob chair, a
Régence
chair, a table, a telephone, the King of Hawaii's bedsheet with a design of fishes (framed), a Sienese cross, and a Mughal miniature.

You will feel very cramped. I discourage visitors, but if you're prepared to put up with it, it can be yours from the 5th to the 11th.

I cannot rent it to you, because I pay no rent myself, and only have it on a friendly basis. You would have to pay my cleaning lady, Mrs Robinson, who comes on Mondays and Thursdays. You would also obviously monitor all phone calls and pay those. If you then wanted to give me a present – a bottle or two of champagne never refused – that would be up to you . . .

If I am up that week, I can easily find a billet and it will only be for a night. I have started writing about my Welsh peasants, if that's the right word for them, and don't need interruptions.

As always,

love to Shirley, Bruce

 

On 3 April 1980
The New York Review of Books
published a letter from Dieter Zimmer in response to Chatwin's review, on 6 December 1979, of Konrad Lorenz's
The Year of the Greylag Goose.
‘Mr Chatwin's central statement seems to be this: “His [Lorenz's] message is that all human behavior is biologically determined.” Now no matter how long I look at this sentence, I am not sure I understand what it is meant to say. I am perfectly sure, however, that if it is meant to say what it seems to say it is altogether wrong. I suspect that there is some fundamental misunderstanding here which blurred Mr Chatwin's picture of Lorenz.' Chatwin was given a right of reply in the same issue.

I do not agree.
The Year of the Greylag Goose
is not a ‘friendly and harmless picture volume', but a sugar-coated pill. The exquisite photographs merely served Lorenz with a vehicle to air, yet again, a philosophical credo that may have changed in tone, but never in substance, since his successful application for membership of the Nazi Party (No. 6,170,554) eight weeks after the Anschluss on May 1, 1938. For this detail, as well as an assessment of Lorenz's contribution to racial biology, readers are referred to the brilliant series of papers by Professor Theo Kalikow of Southeastern Massachusetts University (the latest being:
Konrad Lorenz's Ethological Theory: Explanation and Ideology, 1938-1943
in
Naturwissenschaft und Techniken Dritten Reich
, edited by Mehrtens and Richter, Suhrkamp, 1980.)

One should never minimise Lorenz's capacity to charm the public – or influence events. It remains for future historians of ideas to document the impact of
On Aggression
on our own times. For just as, in 1942, the biologists confirmed Hitler in his belief that the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem concurred with his Duty to the Creator, so in the 1960s the notion of ‘ritualised', limited combats seems to have lulled certain strategists (and apologists) of the Vietnam war into a belief that they were answering the Call of Nature.

L.6 Albany | Piccadilly | London | 29 April 1980

 

Dearest S.,

I have always wanted to have a letter from Macao: so the crumbling green portals of the Hotel Belavista were, to some extent, worth the sixth month wait.

I wouldn't go anywhere near New York at the minute: the whole of the US has gone collectively barking as the Ayatollah himself. I was there three weeks ago to do some pre-publicity on
The Viceroy of Ouidah
(as the new book is called), and even intelligent friends, who last year were cosmopolitan liberals were shouting ‘Bomb Qom': it's one of those slogans, like ‘I like Ike '
⁵³⁶
which conceal a complete vacuity of purpose, yet nevertheless have the power to sway the millions. The shops in 42nd street were all selling the rifleman's targets, presumably put out by some Gun Owner's Association, with the Ayatollah's photo superimposed, his nostrils being the bull's eye.

I have a sneaking regard for him, as did Wilfred Thesiger,
⁵³⁷
who when interviewed recently said: ‘You can't blame him for not wanting his country littered up with plastic.' One simply does believe in God's angels when the helicopters came out of the sky.

I long, like you, to go to China, but have never been able to cope with the idea of constant supervision and red tape. Eve Arnold
⁵³⁸
went for four months last year, even to Sinkiang and Lhasa, but although her photos were conventionally beautiful, nothing about the trip actually inspired me to follow in her footsteps.

If you stay in Hong Kong for any length of time I may visit you. It seems possible that
In Patagonia
will be translated into Japanese, and I've said I'll accept a trip instead of an advance. I have a passion to see the North of Hokkaido, the Inland Sea and the Seamier side of Downtown Tokyo. I know a very entertaining cuss called Donald Ritchie,
⁵³⁹
who is the world's expert on the Japanese film and he had always made it sound astonishing.

No. Paul Theroux's
⁵⁴⁰
The Old Patagonian Express
(such a cheat the title!) although it's a success commercially is not good. He happens to be a friend of mine, though, and if I can't quite stomach what he does, he is one of the more lively spirits around London. In November we gave a combined talk to the Royal Geographical Society, which completely bewildered types like Lord Hunt,
⁵⁴¹
as we took the audience breathlessly through a literary excursion to the Antipodes.

I, I might say, have started a new book – on a pair of Welsh hill farmers, identical twins who have slept in their mother's bed for the past forty-three years. Marvellous subject, but do I have the
poetic
talent for it?

To go back to the previous paragraph – Paul and I appeared on a TV programme
⁵⁴²
together with Jan Morris, in her/his twinset and pearls. Going back to London in the taxi she/he said: ‘I was so interested by what you said about the dangers of travel. You see, having travelled all over the world, both as a male and as a female, I can safely say it's far safer to travel as a female.'

Elizabeth was in India for a couple of months this winter, while I was on my mountain top. She even had tea with your father. I fear that our relations are going from bad to worse. The trouble with living separate lives, as we have done for so long, is that you end up with totally different conceptions of life – to the extent that when you do try and make arrangements together, they end in disaster.

Last weekend I tried to show willing and put on my best tweed suit for the Badminton Horse Trials: the result was terrible. We have since had an exchange of letters that hint of separation/divorce.
⁵⁴³

A dreadful worry: what to do?

Must go now. I have to lunch with my US publisher
⁵⁴⁴
who is the key to my present existence. Long for the news from Delhi. A friend, the Bombay popper, Asha Puthli Darling,
⁵⁴⁵
whom I saw in NY, had a very strange tale about Dumpy.
⁵⁴⁶
as always, my love to you.

B

PS Do you ever read Flannery O'Connor?
⁵⁴⁷
You should.