Under the Sun (74 page)

John Courtney Murray (1904-67) SJ, American theologian.

Peregrine Pollen, head of Sotheby's New York office.

E.C.: ‘He didn't understand about deep freeze. He thought it was unhealthy, a newfangled thing that made food taste awful. Even his parents thought this. I used to give them half a lamb and they ate it up as fast as they could, as if it was going to go bad in a freezer. Of course, he came round to it completely.'

Hugh Hildesley, who worked in Sotheby's Pictures Department, and his Amercian wife Connie; he later became Rector of the Church of Heavenly Rest in New York.

Leo Lerman (1914-94), American writer, had been engaged by his friend P.C.W. to write a history of the auctioneering firm, to be called
The Seismograph of Taste: Sotheby's 1744-1964
. ‘He felt hampered at the start by the lack of business archives at Sotheby's. The auction house also did not intend that Leo write honestly about auctioneering practices, which involved a great deal of obituary watching and sharp dealing.'
The Grand Surprise – The Journals of Leo Lerman
, ed. Stephen Pascal (Knopf, 2007). E.C.: ‘I had to read the obituaries in New York when I first worked for Sotheby's and find out if the deceased had had a collection and then Sotheby's would write an oily letter.'

Gouri Dixit, E.C.'s Bombay flatmate who worked for Air India.

Indian restaurant.

E.C.: ‘In those days you had to book through the operator, you couldn't just dial. It was terribly expensive, we never did it. He sent me telegrams from the
Queen Elizabeth
. EACH TURN OF THE SCREW BRINGS ME NEARER TO YOU.'

Alfred Friendly (1911-83) philanthropist, journalist, and a friend of Elizabeth's from Harvard.

Henry McIlhenny (1910-86) Philadelphia collector, philanthropist and bon vivant whose grandfather invented the gas meter. Chatwin had stayed with him in Donegal at Glenveagh Castle. ‘He has 8 gardeners, 8 indoor servants, 20,000 acres and 28 miles of fencing to maintain . . .' James Lees-Milne's diary, 4 August 1971.

Sir James Durham Dundas, 6th Baronet (1905-67).

Philippa Chatwin, daughter of Charles's late brother Humphrey.

E.C.: ‘A great big cast-iron range that was not used in summer; it was lit without opening the flue and smoked like mad.'

A panel of Tory Island off the Irish West Coast where Hill used to paint.

E.C.: ‘We were staying in my mother's flat in New York and decided to give a party. My father came and got drunk. I found the whole thing mortifying: he said to one lady in trousers, “Do you always go out in the evening dressed like that?”'

Edgar Louis Vanderstegen (‘Teddy') Millington-Drake (1932-94), painter and son of Sir Eugen Millington-Drake, British Minister in Montevideo at the time of the scuttling of the German cruiser
Admiral Graf Spee
in 1939. Chatwin stayed with him at his houses in Greece and Italy, and towards the end of his life said that Teddy was one of two men he had loved. E.C.: ‘Raulin Guild was probably the other.'

Hewett owned a farm in Kent.

Not until February 1966, after several false starts, would the Chatwins find Holwell Farm, a pink seventeenth-century house set in 47 acres near Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire. Gertrude advanced £17,000 as a wedding present for them to buy it.

In the summer Wilson had at last appointed Chatwin a director, not with a vote as he had expected, but one of nine new subsidiary directors without voting rights. A new tax law meant that the partnership would not come into effect until the following April, by which time Chatwin had made the decision to leave Sotheby's.

E.C.: ‘There was a time when we all kept our stockings in the fridge. Word got about that if nylon was left out it would ladder quicker, so you put it in the fridge and it supposedly lasted longer.'

Helena Rubinstein (1870-1965) founder of Helena Rubinstein cosmetics.

E.C.: ‘They didn't give me anything except my board and a little suede evening bag.'

Judith Small, American dealer. E.C.: ‘They did marry and had a daughter, but divorced.'

Porter Chandler had given a party in New York.

London dealer in Indian art.

E.C.: ‘I was enrolled at Edinburgh in a Russian course and language lab.'

Stuart Piggott (1910-96) held the Abercromby Chair of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. Chatwin had known of Piggott at Marlborough for his excavations of West Kennet Long Barrow. At the time of their meeting he had just published
Ancient Europe,
which included an illustration of Welch's Siberian plaque. On 15 July, after inviting Chatwin to lunch, Piggott wrote in his diary: ‘Bruce C. very good value and should be a pleasure to teach.'

E.C.: ‘He did, but it was only £275. We spent £8 a week on food.'

They had taken possession of Holwell on 9 May.

He was not allowed to have dealings once he became a partner.

The Chatwins would not, in fact, move in until the following July.

Gertrude had loaned half of the £6,500 that Chatwin needed to buy his shares.

I.F: ‘Raulin shot himself in a totally uncharacteristic moment of aberration rather than allow himself to be sent back to a nursing home near Woodbridge. I don't think anything has hit me as badly as that hit me. He was like Bruce, a man of magic.'

Burnley Building Society, for the £4,000 mortgage on Holwell Farm – to rewire, reroof, put down floors and replace the beams.

Mogul, jade-handled. E.C.: ‘He wanted to sell it.'

Felicity Nicolson, who had taken over from Chatwin as head of Antiquities. E.C. to her mother, 13 December 1965: ‘She is a very small person, with a gloomy sort of face, but is really terribly nice and rather funny, as well as very clever.'

Chief accountant, later chief executive of Sotheby's, who was one of those furious over Chatwin's resignation.

For the kitchen.

Hon. Edward (‘Eddie') Gathorne-Hardy (1901-78), botanist; known by Francis Partridge as ‘wicked old Eddie'. Chatwin had met him with Allen Bole in Crete.

Peter Davis (1918-92), botanist, expert on the flora of the Middle East and author of the multi-volume
Flora of Turkey
.

Brother of Chatwin's former lodger Anthony Spink; he lived at 11 George Square.

Elizabeth's parents came and stayed in the North British Hotel. ‘My father had late onset diabetes which meant he had to eat at regular hours.'

Tamara Talbot Rice (1904-93), Leo Tolstoy's god-daughter and author of
The Scythians
. ‘It was first through me that Bruce came to be interested in nomads.' She had fled St Petersburg in 1918, pulled, so she claimed, behind reindeer under white skins in the snow. In 1927 she married David Talbot Rice (1903-72), art historian and Watson Gordon Chair of Fine Art at Edinburgh University. His friendship at Eton with Robert Byron, pointing Byron in the direction of Byzantine art, drew Chatwin as part of his second-year course to study Fine Art under him. Byron described him as a sedate heron ‘sober always, even in insobriety'.

Hon. Penelope Chetwode (1910-86), daughter of Field Marshal Lord Chetwode, m. 1933 John Betjeman; traveller in and writer on India. E.C. to her mother, 5 April, 1966: ‘She is sort of nuts but lots of fun and crazy about horses. She practically always rides everywhere even to dinner and takes the dog along. The whole performance is a scream. She has straight grey hair with bangs and is very round with an extraordinary voice & is also crazy about Indian architecture.'

Simon Sainsbury (1930-2006), collector and philanthropist. Chatwin had had a brief romance with him in the early 1960s.

Intense ochre red.

Bought in Edinburgh.

A neighbouring National Trust farm tenant had applied for permission to build a house on a corner of the Chatwins' field. E.C.: ‘I had cards printed up and got friends to sign them whenever his application went in.'

On 6 November 1966 Tennant addressed a letter to Chatwin in pink and green inks: ‘My dear Bruce, Your enchanting letter gives me joy. Please give my greeting to Peter Davis. Could I go on taking
Art News
Bruce? I do so love it. I'm dedicating a poem to you in my new volume. It's called the Supreme Vision.'

Nebraska novelist (1873-1947), known for her depictions of prairie life.

E.C.: ‘Derek was always telling us, “Keep an eye out for Wemyss.” His house in Donegal was full of Wemyss ware, even with large pigs sitting up like a dog.'

Hermes magnifying glass in the shape of an eye. E. C.: ‘Bruce is lying: he thought it a ridiculous present.'

Alvilde Lees-Milne (1909-94), gardening expert m. 1951 James Lees-Milne (1908 – 97), architectural historian and diarist; they lived at Alderley Grange near Ozleworth.

E.C.: ‘Jewish son of famous equestrienne who escaped from Germany, married a Minnesota mining heiress and bought a beautiful Palladian house near Malmesbury, Easton Grey.'

English interior designer (1929-98), author of
On Living – with Taste
(1968).

Vaynol Park, estate belonging to Sir Michael Duff.

Alexey Kosygin (1904-80), Soviet Premier 1964-80.

Wardrop Prize ‘for the best first year's work'.

Andrew Bache had been at Old Hall.

American architect (
b
.1944).

Fernand Legros (1931-83) art dealer and former ballet dancer who sold forgeries of Elmyr de Hory. Legros and de Hory had recently been charged with fraud and jailed.

John Betjeman was not made Poet Laureate till 1972.

Elizabeth's brother John was getting married to Sheila Welch.

Bliss Collection of pre-Colombian art at Dumbarton Oaks.

Palais Stocklet, Brussels.

Rudolf Habelt, bookseller.

Wilhelm Dörpfeld (1853-1940) German archaeologist.

The Fritzdorfer gold cup is the oldest gold cup in Germany. The Rillaton gold cup was excavated from Bodmin Moor in Cornwall in 1837. Lost soon after, it turned up years later in George V's dressing room as a receptacle for his collar studs.

E.C.: ‘They'd been incredibly nasty because he was English.'

Adam Kraft (1455-1509) German sculptor.

Edinburgh dealer.

Emilia and Evzen Plesl took him along in their Skoda from Prague.

E.C: ‘In 1987 we went back to see it.'

Maurizio Tosi (
b
. 1944), Italian archaeologist.

Giuseppe Tucci (1894 – 1984), Italian scholar in Tibetan and Buddhist studies.

Danubian Neolithic settlement 40 miles east of Prague.

This wedding became the funeral scene in Chatwin's 1988 novel
Utz
.

E.C.: ‘I didn't see Istanbul till 1970.'

Judith Nash.

On 27 March 1967 Welch had written: ‘Dear Prewz, About to buy a very early Sassanian dish, 8 in dia., very heavy, so alive and stunning in quality that it just has to be bought. The subject is a REAL DISH: a fertility goddess who makes me believe in them. She dances in her buff and blue with great bodily vitality. She waves a sash overhead, and is accompanied by two big birds (peacocks?). Her face is so alive and benelovent that it might be a portrait.'

Bill Trammel, a naval friend of Admiral Chanler, as was the US Consul Betty Carp, who never left Turkey. E.C.: ‘My father was here in the 1920s and tempted to stay.'

Cary Welch, also sent by Chatwin to Carp, reported back that she had invited him to ‘a six-Princer dinner'.

Notebook, 29 August 1967: ‘I am not too thrilled with Turkey. Today it has occurred to me what is missing – a sense of the absurd. Stung by a wasp in the lorry.'

Welch had pitched to his friend the director James Ivory a film on the Mughals featuring the Beatles. (Welch had heard ‘Rain' and written to John Lennon saying it was the best Indian music since the time of Akbar). He wrote to Chatwin: ‘Also on the path of the Mughals would be a gang of international art dealer-thieves . . . If the idea comes off, I see you in it too.' Ivory, apparently, was ‘wild about the idea'.