Under the Sun (25 page)

Miranda [Rothschild] has found out she has no female hormones!! and is turning into a man – imagine! Chaos with endless visits to the endoliologists. I cannot now decide if she wants to be a woman so the position is very complicated. She is having a long confab with Patrick Kinross (who sends his love) on the subject. M[iranda] has struck up a friendship with Gloria,
³²²
Sedig and Da'ad are fast friends and make a great noise.

My parents are well and had a funny time in Majorca. H[ugh]. P. C[hatwin] seems to be much better after his operation but my God what stitches all over his head.

Bhutan is now off because I cannot do it in time. Just for the hell of it I have the permission forms in for September. What to do? As I say, have no plans till the bloody work is finished. One's 30th year you know is make or break year. I'm rather superstitious about it. Must be over by May or something awful might happen. Having dinner with Magouche Phillips, very nice with paintings by Gorky.
³²³
First line of the book – the best travellers are illiterate. Last line quotation from Chinese. To allow the people to pass freely for that is the Way of Heaven.

Darling D[erek] here in London. We dined at the Johnstons on Wednesday and this weekend he has gone to Jim and Alvilde [Lees-Milne]. We shall have to have the hedge cut apparently. Also there is great trouble. The Middle East oil shortage means that oil is v scarce. We can't get it at Blomfield Road. Send cable c/o Wood. Jessie has sent her Max Ernst to Sotheby's and I get I/C.
³²⁴
Still hopping mad with them, but am cushioned from the horrors by v amiable Thilo Von Watzdorf who works for Shellers
³²⁵
and finds that my antipathy is mirrored in him.

Oliver Hoare and I went to a Japanese masseuse.

Everyone sends love.

XXX

Bruce

 

. . . I had to go to Persia to bring back Elizabeth and her companions. Beautiful Persian spring followed by dismal Anatolian winter. Turkey does not unfreeze till May. A series of near calamities on the way – the loss of passports – then of Elizabeth's Pathan in Brindisi found later by a friend of mine on the streets of Paris
³²⁶
. We shall be here till August at least while I try to finish my book. Great sessions yet to come. One month away has quite broken my train of thought and after one day I am already shaking with the malaise of settlement. I do hope I haven't missed you

love B

 

Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 17 May 1971

 

My Dear Ivry,

Of course it was all perfect. The weather, the service and the lunch. It was as though we were all celebrating the gift of life. I don't think anyone missed Raulin because he was quite emphatically
there
in everything we said and did.

The sculpture is very beautiful. I think you did very well to commission it.

Elizabeth sends her love and hopes to see you both soon.

Much love

Bruce

 

Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 17 May 1971

 

Dear C.,

I am having T. Rogers, Mason's Yard, SWI send you Air Freight the Maori artwork. I've declared it for £1500 and insured it for £3000. Anyhow you get it through the customs as it's not dutiable; have dated it circa 1800. I'll let you have the details of its publication, a book by Portier and Someone else called
Decoration Oceanienne
³²⁷
which I have never seen. There is no hurry about payment at all, so take your time within reason, but please pay Gertrude Chanler or someone else of her choice
in America
, and not here, if that's possible. The reason being she is helping me finance a flat in London and I will want the money to come from America anyway. With it I am sending the metal stand which hitches the thing up diagonally, two sort of hooks fitting through the open work. It will need a bit of experiment to see which hole fits, so don't try and strain it. It
does
look marvellous on this stand because the line now follows the line of the house roof. With the exception of the pieces in Wellington and Auckland I have still yet to see a better piece of house decoration, and I don't care what anyone says. The bits in the B[ritish] M[useum] and the Pitt-Rivers just simply lack the movement and that tornado quality. The reason for delay in writing is that I went to Persia to drive Elizabeth back, and had with one or two major tragedies a rather wonderful time. Saw the Q'ashgais on their spring migration which was thrilling, and for five days filled a British Embassy Land Rover full of sheep, tribesmen, women suckling babies etc.

All well here. The Chanlers went yesterday. The Madame of Glyn goes into hospital to produce, one hopes, the Knightlet. I had to assist Prince William of Gloucester unveil a memorial plaque to a mutual friend who died, and imagine the shock when we saw the memorial underneath the veil – a sculpture of a boy, naked and beckoning in a Michelangelesque way with the caption under‘. . . of all sorts enchantingly beloved'. Not far from the truth and that was the trouble.

Elizabeth's young Pakistani friend Akbar couldn't get into England and is now stuck in France, where he is adopted by the Rothschilds as their latest amusement and a lot of talk about the Lost Tribes of Israel. We are prevented from talking to him on the phone so jealously is he guarded. Very irresponsible performance on the part of everybody. O to finish the book. I wrote the last sentence before I went away. Since when some ideas have evaporated and new ones have taken their place. Two three perhaps four months of revision. But the general plan is an American autumn and a South American winter. Might we even all go to Maine or swan around the New Hampshire farm, which I am very keen to see. March is the very worst time to come to England with everyone at their level worst. Now the spring is here tempers are less frayed.

love B

PS have written to Jungle Jim [Ivory]. He will see you soon, come over for the festival of his filums in June??

Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | [June 1971]

 

Dear Cary,

I had just written you and yours came. So now I start again. Sarah Bernhardt has been sent via Rogers to Boston . . . As you know Sandy sold the thing to me three years ago, and he couldn't sell it since. On the other hand Maori art is very very unfashionable. There was in Christie's a marvellous
huge
canoe prow which was not as exciting as the Bernhardt and it only brought about £5,000. The argument obviously seems to centre on whether they are Pre – or just post-Cook, which is a magic word for the difference between metal or stone tools. Sandy emphatically believes it to be pre-Cook and bought it with the recommendation of Ken Webster, who as you may know was the great Maori expert in England and buyer for the New Zealand museums. He said it was pre-Cook. The centrepiece I know about and is apparently in a private collection in Paris. I have never been able to get to see the photograph of the three together and Miss Small Clothes never told me that she had a copy. She sold hers to Elliott
³²⁸
for 12,000 dollars. I do know that. I think – and this was K.J[ohn] H[ewett]'s objection – that the principal argument against them is the way in which they are broken, but when you get it on the stand I have had made you will see that it hardly matters.

 

Family Tree 2 pieces

Christopher Gibbs and Kasmin are here for the weekend and there is a sudden call to walk to the Hodgkins for lunch four hours away. And this letter which might have gone on for some pages more is coming to an
abrupt
halt.

love B

 

Holwell Farm | Wotton-under-Edge | Glos | 11 June 1971

 

Dear C.,

The weather is so infinitely frightful that I have just decided to go to the South of France with my typewriter and E is going to follow later.

As I told you the £3,000 for the Maori is going to be used on a flat in London for me. But I am also owed about £700 in August and at the moment am flat broke. Would it be asking too much for you to send me (or rather
Elizabeth
because she has an external account) £300 or $800 to keep me going through the summer?

Many thanks if you can.

love Bruce

 

Le Grand Banc | Oppedette | Basse Alpes | France | 22 June [1971]

 

Dear E.,

Have just arrived and been out on a long walk for my first day. I had no idea about this stretch of country. It's quite beautiful and completely unspoiled. Not a tourist in sight, and any amount of crumbling farm houses to buy, my dear. High up, plenty of air and wind. One wouldn't need a garden for the wild flowers are a treat, all wild briars and honeysuckle, my dear. The restaurant, if one and a half tables qualifies as a restaurant, serves a perfectly decent meal for ten francs. The village is quintessenially FRY,
³²⁹
with any amount of ingenious gadgets which don't quite work. The famous phone has been
enlevé
as he didn't pay the bill.

Madame Luc at the café says she knows of someone who has a
hameau
(whatever that may mean under the circumstances) which may or may not be to let during August. If so, would you like to up-sticks and come here during August. If not, we must think again. One couldn't live here all the year round without going slightly potty, but I do think it would be well worth while looking for a rough house. It's far nicer than Natasha Spender's
³³⁰
and all that Basse Provence part, and it doesn't take any more than an hour to get here by car from Avignon and the Paris sleeper.

Love B

Postcard Apt church | Le Grand Banc | Oppedette | France | 3 July 1971

 

Come, do come, but quickly. I have this place which is incidentally a whole village all to myself till 17th-18th July. After that I must
station
myself elsewhere. It is remote and beautiful, high on a mountain. The phone has been cut off. I have no car. Neighbours fetch me to dinner occasionally, or I walk to the shop ½ hr away. So if you come you
must
hire a car. Fly to Marseilles and come here. Then we're mobile and you won't be bored. If you have my telegram, we will have talked on phone. If not leave message with Telephone Publique at Oppedette. Have tried twice with no success.

Or a message with HIRAM WINTERBOTHAM RUSTREL 2

Oppedette | France | 3 July 1971

 

DO COME BUT QUICK STOP HIRE CAR MARSEILLE STOP CABLE OPPEDETTE LOVE BRUCE

Le Grand Banc | Oppedette | Basse Alpes | France | 12 July 1971

 

Dear Jim,

Have just intercepted your letter. The postman calls every other day so I have it one day earlier. I
have
rented another house from the 18th c/o Jean-Claude Roché, Aubenas-les-Alpes, Haute Provence. Tel 1. Aubenas. He is a great expert on birdsong and periodically leaves for Patagonia or the Galapagos to record the dawn chorus. Very unusual for a Frenchman to have an enthusiasm. The father was a famous old art collector called Henri-Pierre Roché
³³¹
who knew Picasso in the good old days of 1910 and wrote
Jules et Jim
. The snag to this one is that Mrs C[hatwin] wants to come to France. I have told her the 25th would be the right date. This could be delayed a bit but not much. Do please try and come after the 19th for a few days. You can always fly on to Tangier from Marseille. Perhaps I could go to Tangier too, but that might be a bad idea until I negotiate a cheque from Edith's for something I sold Cary (note the order of progression: the Dahlink is paying). And money matters take a horribly long time in France. Also I am very very anxious about getting this book done. I know myself too well. Once in Morocco the footsteps lead to another horizon. I am a bum and I do not believe in work of any kind.