Bruce Chatwin (21 page)
Authors: Nicholas Shakespeare
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary, #Literary Collections, #Letters, #Literary Criticism, #General, #Diaries & Journals, #Personal Memoirs
Bruce smuggled his gift out of Italy in the lower bunk of a sleeper. The fragment became known as “The Bottom”.
Wilson, seeking to prise from Christie’s their traditional clients, trained his young men to cultivate connections and to nourish their contacts. The saying went that both auction houses dealt in the three Ds: Divorce, Debt and Death. The difference between them was that at the death Christie’s would send a wreath to the funeral while Sotheby’s sent a representative. Increasingly, Bruce became Wilson’s representative. “He was a bird-dog,” says Lucie-Smith. “When someone had got something, Bruce was sent to get it out of them. There are a lot of nutty people in the art world and they come no nuttier than those who have inherited. He was good at managing nuts.”
Such a collector was George Spencer-Churchill who lived near Oxford. One day Bruce drove down to Northwick Park with Robert Erskine, George Ortiz and Peter Levi. Bruce, says Levi, was extremely witty and distinctly smartish. “It wasn’t name-dropping, although names were dropped.” They drove in Erskine’s 1936 Aston Martin, and Bruce told a story about a car drive with Picasso. “Someone in the car said to Picasso, ‘I don’t know what’s to happen about Princess Margaret’s marriage. She looks very glum.’ Picasso talked over his shoulder: ‘It’s perfectly simple, she bathes him too much. Everyone knows you shouldn’t wash a commoner’s back’.” Levi was impressed. “I’d heard people make jokes about Snowdon, but no one who’d been in a car with Picasso.”
They arrived at Northwick Park where Spencer-Churchill had laid out his collection of Greek and Etruscan bronzes on a square table in a ranked pyramid with the largest in the centre. Among the bronzes was one modern toy soldier, brightly coloured, and he would ask the question, “All are
BC
: except one. Which is the
AD
one?”
BC
: except one. Which is the
AD
one?”
“He’d been shot through both temples, which left him a bit strained,” says Levi. “His habits were so odd that he had the dining room wired and if someone upset him he’d turn up the music, Wagner, very loud. He was known always to put water in the claret and when he invited us to supper, he said: ‘I only have a boiled egg, you know’.”
Taking up a gold weight made of haematite, Spencer-Churchill rubbed the back of Bruce’s neck with it.
Declining supper, the four escaped to the Lygon Arms and ordered a magnum. Levi asked Bruce: “How do you know these marvellously funny people?” It was his job, Bruce said. He
had
to know them. “If they have stuff which they one day might sell, better it comes to us than to Christie’s.” In the event, Spencer-Churchill sent his collection to Christie’s.
had
to know them. “If they have stuff which they one day might sell, better it comes to us than to Christie’s.” In the event, Spencer-Churchill sent his collection to Christie’s.
Until he turned against it, Bruce revelled in the names, the gossip and his contacts in this country-house world. He exhibited a genius for taking on the plumage of his prey. “If seriousness was required, he was good at that,” said Hewett. “If he went for a walk, or sailed, he immediately fell into the role. He
was
a chameleon, but a nice one.”
was
a chameleon, but a nice one.”
Then there was his talent for mimicking the people he met. A vigorous social life offered him plenty of scope to “do the police in different voices”, as T. S. Eliot wrote of Dickens. Bruce was a mimic after the manner of Gustave Flaubert and Konrad Lorenz who, he wrote, “became the wretched jackdaws”. He remembered books and objects and people with his grandfather Leslie Chatwin’s total recall. “Bruce on form could be the song the sirens sang,” says the artist Howard Hodgkin, who met him at this time. “You could be sitting with him and suddenly he’d be the Countess of Sutherland or Mrs Gandhi or Diana Cooper or almost anyone you could think of. In a crowded restaurant you wished you weren’t with him.” There was an additional quality to his mimicry. He did not transform his voice into the other person: they co-existed. There was Bruce’s voice and, within that, the echoing tones of the person he was imitating. “This gave the hallucinatory feeling of being confronted by two people,” says Lucie-Smith. Bruce – and Bianca Jagger’s mother, as it were, selling
refrescos
on a beach in Nicaragua. “Talking to Bruce,” says the collector Werner Muensterberger, “you could see how he got carried away with his own fantasy and even in his imitation of people how he elaborated on them: it was close, but not exactly what he had seen or heard. Someone who embellishes like that is seeing themselves as the exception: ‘It could only happen to me’.”
refrescos
on a beach in Nicaragua. “Talking to Bruce,” says the collector Werner Muensterberger, “you could see how he got carried away with his own fantasy and even in his imitation of people how he elaborated on them: it was close, but not exactly what he had seen or heard. Someone who embellishes like that is seeing themselves as the exception: ‘It could only happen to me’.”
At various moments he would lose himself so completely in the role that he lost the scent and became the person he was mimicking. By 1961, the subject of Bruce’s favourite imitations was his boss at Sotheby’s.
Wilson was shaped like a penguin, tall and slightly portly. His face was smooth and unlined and he had narrow, darting blue eyes which looked amiably down his nose. The only time he went out of doors was to admire his garden or to shoot (which he did badly).
Bruce called Wilson “The Beast” (a nickname given to him by the New York art journalist Leo Lerman). He can be glimpsed in
On the Black Hill
: “The antique dealer was entirely at his ease. He eyed the room up and down; turned a saucer over, and said, ‘Doulton’; peered at the ‘Red Indian’ to make sure it was only a print; and wondered whether, by any chance, they had any Apostle spoons.”
On the Black Hill
: “The antique dealer was entirely at his ease. He eyed the room up and down; turned a saucer over, and said, ‘Doulton’; peered at the ‘Red Indian’ to make sure it was only a print; and wondered whether, by any chance, they had any Apostle spoons.”
With a sleepy, slightly hesitant voice that proved effective particularly in America, Wilson was a prime example of “the export Englishman”. He was the son of a rakish Yorkshire baronet known as “Scatters” Wilson – so-called after his habit of carelessly leaving money about the room. It was not a trait Wilson inherited, for he never kept money on him and always took the back roads to his French chateau to avoid the motorway tolls. A late developer, he believed that people who suffered unhappy childhoods came out best in life. Described by his mother as looking like a periwinkle that might have strayed into a meadow, Wilson made no impact at Eton except to win a prize for a wild-flower arrangement, an honour he shared with Bruce. Unable to pass his first year history exams at Oxford, he left to work for Spink’s, then Reuter’s where he was sacked for not learning shorthand. From there, he sold advertising space in the
Connoisseur
before joining Sotheby’s in 1936 as a porter in the Furniture department.
Connoisseur
before joining Sotheby’s in 1936 as a porter in the Furniture department.
Thereafter Sotheby’s consumed his life, apart from a spell during the war as an intelligence officer in Gibraltar and Bermuda. His code number was OO7, but his acquaintance with the traitors Blunt, Maclean and Burgess stoked stories that he was the Fifth Man. “Nothing would surprise me, that he was the Fifth, Sixth or Seventh man,” says the art historian John Richardson. “He was incredibly sly, devious, clever, dishonest, manipulative.” His Byzantine cast of mind, useful in counter-intelligence, was equally so in the art world, which tended to thrive on tight, cell-like cliques. Several Sotheby’s directors were former spies.
Wilson was icily cutting when he wanted to be, but he was a man of exquisite charm. “He did control people to a degree you wouldn’t believe possible,” says Elizabeth Chanler, who worked in his office from 1962. “You’d see clients coming in bristling with rage and stamping and the steam coming out of their ears. And they’d go out like lambs, smiling. He knew exactly how to touch people. Bruce had this in a different, less sinister way.”
Wilson lived in London in Garden Lodge, a huge house with a ballroom rented off Tomas Harris, the dealer friend of Burgess and Maclean. The house was a monument to his taste and judgement. Wilson’s interests ranged from medieval bronzes to narwhal horns. He kept a chateau near Grasse and a country house in Kent, Stone Green Hall (sometimes known as “Stone Groin Hall”), which he shared with his former manservant, Harry Wright, an ardent gardener and gambler for whom he acquired a grocery.
Whatever his fancies, Sotheby’s was Wilson’s first passion. He built up the firm by a combination of imaginative flair, enthusiasm and ruthlessness. He would stop at nothing to bring a work of art to Sotheby’s – even if he had to chip it off the wall himself. John Mallet says, “I remember cataloguing the limestone Romanesque head of a bearded prophet. PCW [Wilson] was the seller. It was attributed to a rather specific area of France. ‘How do we know?’ I asked. ‘Well,’ explained Wilson’s office, ‘the chairman knocked it off a ruined abbey there’.”
He would go anywhere for a sale and once he had got there talk about anything except the object he had come to see, until the very last second. “Then,” says Peregrine Pollen, “he made you feel that you were unbelievably perspicacious to have bought it and he was the only person who could possibly sell it for you because he understood your cleverness.” He deployed the same flattery on his staff.
“He was a great leader,” says Howard Ricketts, who had replaced Bruce in the Furniture department. “But he had his favourites whom he later destroyed. If you got into his orbit, woe betide you: he burned you up.”
Bruce admired his chairman’s
savoir faire
and dedication. He liked to imitate Wilson holding an auction and quietly knocking “this pretty little thing” down to himself via the sales clerk. “Sold to Mr Patch . . .” He adopted the same languid mannerisms, the same intonations, the same elaborate reaction to works of art. “I’ve always heard about your wonderful collection of pictures . . .” Wilson tells a client in
What Am I Doing Here.
Bruce adds: “‘Always’ was 30 seconds beforehand.”
savoir faire
and dedication. He liked to imitate Wilson holding an auction and quietly knocking “this pretty little thing” down to himself via the sales clerk. “Sold to Mr Patch . . .” He adopted the same languid mannerisms, the same intonations, the same elaborate reaction to works of art. “I’ve always heard about your wonderful collection of pictures . . .” Wilson tells a client in
What Am I Doing Here.
Bruce adds: “‘Always’ was 30 seconds beforehand.”
Sometimes it was hard to work out where conscious imitation stopped. “Bruce modelled himself entirely on PCW,” says James Crathorne, who joined the Impressionist department in 1963. “Literally, he talked like him. They would go round speaking to each other in the same voice, with the words lengthened out.” Once Crathorne listened in bewilderment while they discussed Brancusi’s ovoid sculpture,
Le commencement du monde
. “Too mmmmarvellous. What a woonderful Brancusi. So beautiful.” A more normal response, says Crathorne, would have been to say: “That is a lovely thing.” “But this was an emotional reaction. They were vehemently angry to think people did
not
understand.”
Le commencement du monde
. “Too mmmmarvellous. What a woonderful Brancusi. So beautiful.” A more normal response, says Crathorne, would have been to say: “That is a lovely thing.” “But this was an emotional reaction. They were vehemently angry to think people did
not
understand.”
Something else struck Crathorne. “When they looked at the Brancusi they didn’t hold hands, but they were touching each other. It was an enormously close physical tie.”
With Wilson’s arm on his shoulder, the schoolboy was tipped into what Lucie-Smith called “a world of baroque monsters”.
X
The Art Smuggler
The trouble is, Bruce wanted to be Genghis Khan, but he would have preferred living in Byzantium.
—Alison Oxmantown
LIKE A STENDHAL CHARACTER WHO ARRIVES FROM THE PROVINCES
to the city, Bruce suddenly bloomed. Andrew Bache had known him as a lethargic pupil at Old Hall. He was surprised at the change he found on a visit from Cambridge in the early 1960s. “He seemed to be enjoying life, belting round London in a little car. There was an inquisitiveness, a curiosity, a great flowering of mind. He’d become worldly-wise.”
to the city, Bruce suddenly bloomed. Andrew Bache had known him as a lethargic pupil at Old Hall. He was surprised at the change he found on a visit from Cambridge in the early 1960s. “He seemed to be enjoying life, belting round London in a little car. There was an inquisitiveness, a curiosity, a great flowering of mind. He’d become worldly-wise.”
Guy Norton grew up with Bruce near Brown’s Green and was a contemporary at Marlborough. He remembers how intimidated Bruce had been in his early days in London. “He used to ring up a lot and ask me round and cook dinner.” Norton saw him again two years later. “He wasn’t the same person at all. It was a fantastic change, very fast and dramatic. You either sink or swim in London – and Bruce very much swam.”
In Grosvenor Crescent Mews, Anthony Spink observed his flat-mate’s transformation with a degree of wariness. He was struck by how intrigued Bruce was by the marriage of the interior decorator David Hicks to Pamela Mountbatten. Spink recalled an odd incident. “One weekend when I’d been away, he gave me the impression he’d been visited by Lord Mountbatten. ‘I met Mountbatten at the weekend. He came round here and you’d be
amazed
what happened’.”
amazed
what happened’.”
In July 1960, Spink moved out of Grosvenor Crescent Mews. Bruce did not seek another lodger. Instead, he shed all the furniture and arranged for Hugh to repaint it during his school holiday. “I want you to come and see London,” Bruce told him, “before you decide to bury yourself in Birmingham.”
Bruce had chosen a particular shade of white, impressed by the architecture he had seen on holiday in Greece. In 1986, he would write to his architect John Pawson, then converting his flat in Eaton Place: “I suppose it’s because I’ve lived at various times in the incomparably beautiful whitewashed houses of Greece and Andalucia that dead white walls, in England, always used to be just that: dead . . . what I’d like is something the colour of milk (if there is such a thing).”
Howard Ricketts says, “Everything was white, including the bed covers.” Knowing he collected art nouveau, Bruce offered Ricketts an Emile Gallé glass vase. “It was the last piece in the flat. He was like a child, chucking everything out from pique.”
In his 1973 essay “The Morality of Things”, Bruce described the acquisition of an object as a Grail Quest – “the chase, the recognition of the quarry, the decision to purchase, the sacrifice and fear of financial ruin, the Dark Cloud of Unknowing (‘Is it a fake?’), the wrapping, the journey home, the ecstasy of undressing the package, the object of the quest unveiled, the night one didn’t go to bed with anyone, but kept vigil, gazing, stroking, adoring the new fetish – the companion, the lover, but very shortly
the bore
, to be kicked out or sold off while another more desirable thing supplants itself in our affections.” He asked himself: “Do we not gaze coldly at our clutter and say, ‘If these objects express my personality, then I hate my personality’?”
the bore
, to be kicked out or sold off while another more desirable thing supplants itself in our affections.” He asked himself: “Do we not gaze coldly at our clutter and say, ‘If these objects express my personality, then I hate my personality’?”
He was frustrated at not being able to use his “eye” to collect for himself. Every day he exercised his taste, was asked his opinion on what museums and collectors would then buy, which he had catalogued but could not himself afford to bid for. For a while the only decorations he tolerated, pinned up in the kitchen, were cut-outs in the style of Matisse. Lucie-Smith says that he had fallen in love with a particular Matisse, a simple image of a white china fruit dish drawn in chalky outlines and piled with oranges. The painting was coming up at auction with a £15,000 estimate. “It dated from Matisse’s austerest period, before he went to Nice. Bruce was threatening to sell everything he had to buy it. He was in lust for it.”
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