Bruce Chatwin (80 page)
Authors: Nicholas Shakespeare
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary, #Literary Collections, #Letters, #Literary Criticism, #General, #Diaries & Journals, #Personal Memoirs
He was also ill. On 20 November 1984, Elizabeth wrote to Gertrude: “Bruce is well, but has a nasty virus on his face which looks like chicken pox. He’s apparently had it for a couple of years, but it didn’t show up much. The only treatment is to have some incredibly cold nitrogen put on it which sort of burns off the spots.” In his run-down state, he developed bronchitis.
As winter approached, he did not find it any easier to concentrate at Homer End, “this promenade-deck-of-the-Queen-Mary house of ours”. The house was light, with a sweeping view, but he was easily distracted, not least by Elizabeth’s cats. “This a.m. there was an unfortunate incident,” Elizabeth wrote to Gertrude. “I usually get down 1st & check the kitchen for corpses and remains, but today missed a nasty pile of something they sicked up & Bruce sat on it. It was on his chair . . .”
He poured out his heart to Kasmin: “This peripatetic existence of mine must stop. I must have
mon bureau, mes fauteuils, mon jardin
(as Flaubert writes in a letter) – somewhere in a relatively good climate, which means the Mediterranean
(pas des bêtes!
), and I must have it soon. God knows how I’ll raise the cash, if it means the sale of my London flat + my art then
tant pis pour eux
!”
mon bureau, mes fauteuils, mon jardin
(as Flaubert writes in a letter) – somewhere in a relatively good climate, which means the Mediterranean
(pas des bêtes!
), and I must have it soon. God knows how I’ll raise the cash, if it means the sale of my London flat + my art then
tant pis pour eux
!”
He spent Christmas at Homer End, then packed up his books, his notes, his scuba suit and his surfboard and departed by car for the Mani. He had been quite ill, Elizabeth told Gertrude, “and needed clearance from the Doctor before setting off on his long drive to Greece”.
He had found “the most beautiful place you can imagine”: a self-service flat set in an abundance of silvery-green olives within the sound of the sea at Kardamyli. He arrived at the Hotel Theano on 1 January 1985.
Bruce’s seclusion in Greece lasted seven months while he ground out a first draft. Elizabeth and Margharita would join him for several weeks in January. For the rest of the time, he worked alone. One of his few correspondents was Murray Bail. “I’ve put a block on being available from London, and that includes the post,” Bruce wrote. “I have a room with a view of olives, cypresses, a bay. I work till 3; then walk in the hills; then read; then sleep. Not bad. Costs next to nothing. I go on with the book and have reached such a stage, I simply daren’t look back.”
Bruce described Bail to Nin Dutton as “a really good egg!” They had enjoyed each other’s company immediately and he grew to depend on the younger writer for advice, especially about Australia. They became literary intimates. “What am I reading here?” wrote Bruce on 1 March 1985. “I have the Sinyavsky, in French
(Bonne Nuit),
but cannot finish it . . . Otherwise, three novels of Svevo, who I’d never read before;
The Idiot
, which I last read in the Sahara; Michel Tournier, who is obviously inventive, but I now think is far too kitsch;
Dialogues
of Plato, to see how you express ideas in dialogue (The answer is, ‘I don’t’) plus the usual array of technical and scientific stuff.”
(Bonne Nuit),
but cannot finish it . . . Otherwise, three novels of Svevo, who I’d never read before;
The Idiot
, which I last read in the Sahara; Michel Tournier, who is obviously inventive, but I now think is far too kitsch;
Dialogues
of Plato, to see how you express ideas in dialogue (The answer is, ‘I don’t’) plus the usual array of technical and scientific stuff.”
Drawn to Bail’s quiet wit, Bruce found himself in the unusual position of trusting another writer. In his letters to him, he entered into the equivalent of a Platonic dialogue.
Bail had visited Bruce at Homer End in August. Bruce read to him the Swartkrans section, after which Bail wrote in his notebook: “It’s ambitious, difficult. Felt it was written too smoothly, lightly.” Bail told him of his misgivings. He suggested that if something was impossible to prove then the tone had to be searching. Bruce was immediately grateful for his uncompromising reaction. “I feel I must reply at once to say how much I value your comments about not making the book so easy . . . I know exactly what you mean and have, anyway, embarked on a different track.”
It was from Bail that Bruce learned of the publication of another book on songlines, Charles Mountford’s
Nomads of the Desert.
“A disaster with the Australian book – in that another, by accident, had cannibalised it – temporarily,” he wrote to Penelope Tree. Bruce was alarmed at Mountford’s fate. The Aboriginals had decided that he had broken Aborigine law by reproducing secret ceremonial material. “The entire edition was pulped,” wrote Bail.
Nomads of the Desert.
“A disaster with the Australian book – in that another, by accident, had cannibalised it – temporarily,” he wrote to Penelope Tree. Bruce was alarmed at Mountford’s fate. The Aboriginals had decided that he had broken Aborigine law by reproducing secret ceremonial material. “The entire edition was pulped,” wrote Bail.
Chosen as an intimate, Bail found himself fielding Bruce’s worries and frustrations. “He spent so much time imagining himself that people do have trouble adding his parts up, and so did he,” says Bail. “It troubled and confused him. He never seemed at one. He’s a construct, a bower-bird – as is anyone who’s a good mimic. The original Cubist, all surfaces in different directions, including from behind.”
Few understood Bruce’s aesthetic better. “It was an aesthetic of removal.” It struck Bail from their discussions on art how many of the paintings and photographs Bruce admired had no people in them: Malevich’s white canvasses; the cloud scenes of Turner and Constable; the spotted bare landscapes of Fred Williams, whose work would appear on the paperback cover of
The Songlines
; the grey abstracts of the Australian Ian Fairweather (on whom Bail had written a monograph). “They were emptied of characters and references.” Bruce’s admiration for austerity and plainness pervaded the arts. He urged Bail to visit the unfinished Cistercian Abbey at Le Thoronet in the Var. “Everything had been removed,” says Bail. “It was plain, immaterial and resonant because of the emptiness. It summed him up.”
The Songlines
; the grey abstracts of the Australian Ian Fairweather (on whom Bail had written a monograph). “They were emptied of characters and references.” Bruce’s admiration for austerity and plainness pervaded the arts. He urged Bail to visit the unfinished Cistercian Abbey at Le Thoronet in the Var. “Everything had been removed,” says Bail. “It was plain, immaterial and resonant because of the emptiness. It summed him up.”
Bail stayed in Eaton Place during the summer of 1984: “It was like being in a space-capsule, secretive, on the top looking down, everything hidden away. If you swung a cat, you would smash its head four times, straight off.” The flat was so small that the person to occupy it before Bail, while making love to a famous model, had electrocuted himself in the single deadly light socket.
“To gain extra purchase,
he put his foot against a plug in the wall,” Bruce told Bail with glee.
“To gain extra purchase,
he put his foot against a plug in the wall,” Bruce told Bail with glee.
Hugh Honour wrote of Eaton Place: “Although Bruce’s mind might seem to have been a
Schatzkammer
filled to bursting with a miscellany of impressions which flowed out impetuously in his conversation, his apartment in London belied this. Hardly more than a box-room converted into a tiny bed-sitting room . . . he called it ‘a place to hang a hat’. Spartan in its spareness – polished wood floor, no carpets or rugs, a built-in bunk for bed, and very little furniture apart from his Empire sofa and two plywood tables by Aalto – the surroundings he created for himself and for the objects he loved were no less rigorously pared down than was his prose.”
Schatzkammer
filled to bursting with a miscellany of impressions which flowed out impetuously in his conversation, his apartment in London belied this. Hardly more than a box-room converted into a tiny bed-sitting room . . . he called it ‘a place to hang a hat’. Spartan in its spareness – polished wood floor, no carpets or rugs, a built-in bunk for bed, and very little furniture apart from his Empire sofa and two plywood tables by Aalto – the surroundings he created for himself and for the objects he loved were no less rigorously pared down than was his prose.”
This spareness was a deceptive camouflage. John Pawson, the architect whom Bruce employed to convert the flat, noticed that the cupboards were stuffed with Russian gold forks and Fortnum’s Gunpowder teas. “I got into frightful trouble by saying he wasn’t living as simply as he was professing.”
Bail sat on a Napoleonic steel folding-bed. “It was elegant, but would he have bought it if he hadn’t known Marshal Ney had lugged it to Moscow? Draped over the bed was Freud’s shawl. ‘Not only that . . .’ said Bruce. I waited for the punch line. ‘This is the
very
shawl Freud had around his shoulder when he fled Nazi Europe and arrived in Charing Cross.’ Everything needed a myth. It made them more exclusive.” But the campaign bed had nothing to do with Ney: Bruce had bought it in Paris. As for the “shawl” – a thin, pale indigo bedspread, hand-woven with West African symbols – this had belonged to his Kynance Mews landlord. “He had some connection to Freud’s sister,” says Elizabeth. “Bruce loved it because it was African. It got more and more interesting the longer he had it. ‘Maybe Freud had laid it on his couch for people to lie on . . .”’
very
shawl Freud had around his shoulder when he fled Nazi Europe and arrived in Charing Cross.’ Everything needed a myth. It made them more exclusive.” But the campaign bed had nothing to do with Ney: Bruce had bought it in Paris. As for the “shawl” – a thin, pale indigo bedspread, hand-woven with West African symbols – this had belonged to his Kynance Mews landlord. “He had some connection to Freud’s sister,” says Elizabeth. “Bruce loved it because it was African. It got more and more interesting the longer he had it. ‘Maybe Freud had laid it on his couch for people to lie on . . .”’
Into this confined space Bruce hung an eighteenth-century Swedish chandelier. “It was very handsome, but conventional,” says Hodgkin, “and he talked about it in the most marvellous way. ‘You can see it comes from the north and it’s snow and it’s ice and I’m lighting it just for you.’ The wax dropped plop, plop, plop, onto the floor. ‘Bruce, Bruce, shouldn’t we put something down?’ Bruce was totally impervious. ‘What are you
talking
about?”’
talking
about?”’
In the same breath as he rhapsodised about Malevich and Fairweather, Bruce singled out to Bail an unlikely canvas by a nineteenth-century Australian artist as one of his favourite examples of Australian art. In Adelaide, he had stood transported before Tom Roberts’s 1891 narrative work
A Breakaway!
The painting depicts a young horseman in an arid landscape stretching from his saddle to control a stampede of drought-stricken sheep. Bail saw this competing tension at work in Bruce. “He was very awkward about a number of things. He could not bring himself to be natural. He had a smooth attractive surface, but he was split, rather like his books, between fact and imagination. It was very hard to determine his true shape.”
A Breakaway!
The painting depicts a young horseman in an arid landscape stretching from his saddle to control a stampede of drought-stricken sheep. Bail saw this competing tension at work in Bruce. “He was very awkward about a number of things. He could not bring himself to be natural. He had a smooth attractive surface, but he was split, rather like his books, between fact and imagination. It was very hard to determine his true shape.”
The Cistercian emptiness he strove for was aesthetic rather than spiritual. “He was not at all a moralist,” said Rezzori. “His morality was totally aesthetic – built of the best inks, but not with blood.” He once told Hodgkin: “I want you to read this.” It was a short story, based on something by Poe. “But why?” said Hodgkin. “I think you’re quite beady about these sort of things,” replied Bruce. Hodgkin says: “It was the same expression that he used when he showed me an Indian painting – to test whether it was genuine or fake. He was very concerned about his own writing being as good as possible. He had a sort of artistic morality.”
It was a state he achieved most satisfactorily in his prose, where he could shuffle the contents and subtract and subtract until he had wrought the clarity and resonance of Le Thoronet. Naturally his impulse was towards the baroque of his conversation and storytelling. He had to labour for his simplicity, discarding the ornate by first verbally sculpting the story, word by word, version after version, often, as he admitted, to the “intense irritation” of his audience. Krüger, his German publisher, remembers how Bruce told him about
On the Black Hill
in Lindos, the waves coming in and Bruce talking very quickly, like a machine. “I’ve never met anyone who talked so quickly. It was psychotic, not making an end, and, whenever interrupted, zigzagging back. It was a kind of sickness.” When
In Patagonia
was published, Bruce told Hodgkin: “Oh, you don’t need to read it.” He had already spoken it. “He had told it word for word, telling me on walks.” It was the same with
Utz.
One night in New York he called on Sontag. “For an hour he told me
Utz,
non-stop. Then the book came out. There was virtually nothing new. Bruce didn’t relinquish control; there was no letting go. What went in is what he originally wanted it to be.”
On the Black Hill
in Lindos, the waves coming in and Bruce talking very quickly, like a machine. “I’ve never met anyone who talked so quickly. It was psychotic, not making an end, and, whenever interrupted, zigzagging back. It was a kind of sickness.” When
In Patagonia
was published, Bruce told Hodgkin: “Oh, you don’t need to read it.” He had already spoken it. “He had told it word for word, telling me on walks.” It was the same with
Utz.
One night in New York he called on Sontag. “For an hour he told me
Utz,
non-stop. Then the book came out. There was virtually nothing new. Bruce didn’t relinquish control; there was no letting go. What went in is what he originally wanted it to be.”
“His instinct was always to pare down,” Bail says. “He liked a plain, firmly based simplicity of style: Turgenev, Flaubert, Edmund Wilson. He wanted to be a clean, clear writer and introduce ideas that were original. That stuffed him up as a novelist. He always researched his novels too much, except
In Patagonia
where he’s not presenting a theory. He has a plainness of language, which is good, but it’s a teacher’s language rather than free-floating. He stands behind the lectern, putting an extra distance between himself and the reader. He can’t tell a story without giving a lecture on twins or nomads. But he’s not a novelist: he couldn’t imagine them. And he couldn’t go the full distance of research in understanding his subject. So he could make two readers unhappy.” This, for Bail, was the problem with
The Songlines.
“He took risks with it, which I admired, but the book is split between fact and imagination and the imagination part comes off second-best.”
In Patagonia
where he’s not presenting a theory. He has a plainness of language, which is good, but it’s a teacher’s language rather than free-floating. He stands behind the lectern, putting an extra distance between himself and the reader. He can’t tell a story without giving a lecture on twins or nomads. But he’s not a novelist: he couldn’t imagine them. And he couldn’t go the full distance of research in understanding his subject. So he could make two readers unhappy.” This, for Bail, was the problem with
The Songlines.
“He took risks with it, which I admired, but the book is split between fact and imagination and the imagination part comes off second-best.”
Bruce longed for Bail to look over his text. He planned to go to India in the New Year. “It would be terrific if you were there too,” he wrote. “In fact, I cannot imagine anything in the world I’d like more.”
Bruce’s room in the Hotel Theano was a convenient five-minute walk from the home of Paddy and Joan Leigh Fermor. Their low arcaded house of red-streaked limestone was perched on a steep cliff opposite the waterless island of Merope. Magouche Fielding had introduced Bruce to the Leigh Fermors in 1970. That August, Bruce had stayed with them when writing the first draft of
The Nomadic Alternative.
“The whole Taygetus range plunges straight down into the sea and eagles float in thermals above the house,” he had written to Elizabeth. Then he brimmed with hope for an early completion of his book. “I really do think it will/or can be ready in its first draft by
November
(early).” That was fifteen years before.
The Nomadic Alternative.
“The whole Taygetus range plunges straight down into the sea and eagles float in thermals above the house,” he had written to Elizabeth. Then he brimmed with hope for an early completion of his book. “I really do think it will/or can be ready in its first draft by
November
(early).” That was fifteen years before.
At the end of most days Bruce walked through the olive groves down to their house in a hollow surrounded by “pencil thin” cypresses. Leigh Fermor was Bruce’s last guru.
Leigh Fermor was a man of action and of knowledge to a degree that Bruce envied. As a child, he lived at the vicarage in Ipsden near Homer End. He was the son of an absentee father, a geologist in India. He had known Peter Wilson before the war, when Wilson lived in Maids of Honour Row (“where he played the accordion”). He had met a drunk Robert Byron in The Nest nightclub. His war career had inspired a film (based on his capture of the German commander in Crete, General Kreipe). He spoke Latin, Greek and Romanian (Bruce, he said, reminded him of the Romanian proverb: “a child with too many motivations remains with his navel string uncut”). And he knew almost as much about nomads as Bruce.
A dedicated wanderer, Leigh Fermor had written a classic book based on a walk through pre-war Europe. In 1933, at the age of 18, he had set off on foot from London to Constantinople, returning four years later. He had taken with him the canvas rucksack “weathered and faded by Macedonian suns” which Robert Byron and David Talbot Rice had carried to Mount Athos in 1927.
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