Under the Sun (79 page)

Paul Scott (1920-78), British novelist best known for
The Raj Quartet
.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (
b
.1927), novelist and screenwriter who worked with James Ivory.

R. K. Narayan (1906-2001), Indian writer in English much praised by Graham Greene, who published him.

(Sir) V. S. Naipaul (
b
.1932), British writer of Indo-Trinidadian descent.

Ivan Bunin (1870-1953), Russian short story writer. One of Chatwin's unfinished projects was to write an introduction to
Dark Avenues
for Robinson Books.

Russian poet and essayist (1891-1938).

Les Prés D'Eugénie, Eugénie les Bains.

Sonia Brownell (1918-80) m. George Orwell 1949 and 1958-65 Michael Pitt-Rivers.

Chatwin had visited Nadezhda Mandelstam in Moscow, through the introduction of Martha Gellhorn who advised him to take her ‘champagne, cheap thrillers and marmalade'. A dishcloth printed with a map of Queensland hung from a hook on the door. She asked him to straighten a picture, explaining: ‘I threw a book and hit it by mistake. A disgusting book by an Australian woman. Don't you want to know what the book was?
The Female Eunuch
.' Chatwin's introduction to Clarence Brown's translation of
Journey to Armenia
(1933) was first published in
Bananas, Russian Issue
(1978), and later by the Redstone Press (1989).

Emma Tennant (
b
.1937), British novelist.

His Highness Maharaja Sri Gaj Singhji of Marwar-Jodhpur (
b
.1948), or ‘Bapji', was at Eton and Christ Church.

British artist (
b
.1945), specialising in crosses, who had introduced Chatwin to Donald Richards.

Novel written by Stendhal in 52 days (from 4 November to 26 December 1839).

Jan Morris (
b
.1926), British writer known as James Morris prior to sex change in 1973.

Kynaston McShine, curator at Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Alison's husband Brendan had worked for the United Nations in Dahomey in the late 1960s; it was partly at his urging that Chatwin had made his first visit there in 1972. The Oxmantons were now based in Algiers.

‘Fatal Journey to Marseilles – North Africans in France,'
Sunday Times
magazine, 6 January 1974.

American actor and director (
b
.1942).

James Fox, journalist on
Sunday Times
magazine (
b
.1945), m. Chloe Peploe.

Xan Fielding (1918-91), British S.O.E. agent and author, was writing a book on the wind,
Aeolus Displayed
(1991). He and Magouche would marry in 1979.

Acheson's family home on the Welsh Marches.

Joao was barman at the Othon Palace Hotel on Copacabana.

‘I have been thinking of you a lot, day and night, all the time – don't forget me I do my love my beautiful, I really want to hug you, kiss you, feel your body that makes me feel so good. When it's cold I think about going out to look for you so that you can warm me, warm my body with your heat, but suddenly I remember that it's impossible to meet you because you are such a long way from me.'

Acheson's family had worked in Iqique during Chile's nitrate boom, before the discovery of artificial fertiliser in the late 1920s. The story of their overnight decline and humiliating suburban decay – ‘still wearing tattered Worth dresses' – captivated Chatwin.

BBC television producer (1934-84).

L'Atalante
(1934), French film directed by Jean Vigo about a honeymoon barge trip between Le Havre and Paris. Chatwin's parents were shareholders of an Atalanta class low-keeled boat, ideal for exploring estuaries and canals. H.C.: ‘Margharita had fallen in love with the simple life of French couples operating the sand barges of the Seine. If born again into another existence, she said, this was to be her preferred occupation.' The Royal Crusing Club, of which Charles was a member, enjoyed mooring rights on the Isle de la Cité.

Chatwin's accountants, now Ernst & Whinney.

On 27 January 1978 Tom Maschler had asked Chatwin for £100 for bills that had accumulated at Carney. ‘Sorry it's so much but as you will see most of it is your telephone conversations!'

Social-climbing New Yorker and ex-drinking partner of Ernest Hemingway.

Princess Marie (‘Missie') Vassiltchikov (1917-78), author of
Berlin Diaries 1940-45
.

Indian philosopher (1872-1950) who founded an ashram in his name.

Kasmin had bought a mason's cottage in a gulley surrounded by footpaths on the Dorset coast.

Gertrude did decide to sell the main house in Geneseo and build another one.

Editor-in-chief, Collins Harvill.

The Snow Leopard
by Peter Matthiessen, American writer (
b
.1927); his previous book had been the novel
Far Tortuga
(1975) about nine men schooner-fishing for green turtles in the Caribbean.

Editor, 1974-81,
Times Literary Supplement
.

David Sulzberger; nicknamed Smallbones after a ‘young scamp' in Milward's journal (‘about 12 years of age, about 4 feet nothing,' who ‘was exceptionally clever and could pick up anything almost at once . . . but he was a perfect little devil to handle, and he would do anything to humbug anyone in authority over him'). D.S: ‘Bruce was very envious of, and kept using, my American legal pads, longer than A
₄
, which I bought from the Coop in Harvard Square, Massachusetts.'

After his initial enthusiasm, Brenan had tired of his verbal ping-pong with Chatwin. ‘He is a man enclosed like an insect in a tight coating of chitin – totally insensitive, needs to talk all the time,' Brenan wrote to V. S. Pritchett on 24 October 1978. ‘I can't say I really like him – an egotistical little boy – yet his energy was impressive.'

Maro Gorky (
b
.1943) artist m. 1962 Matthew Spender (
b
.1945), writer and sculptor.

Hiram Winterbotham had had a stroke and was in a wheelchair.

E.C.: ‘He would pay all these bills and say “I've no money left,” and I would feel desperate about it. I had my tiny quarterly allowance of £250 from Mellon, a trust set up by my mother in 1958, and it was already spoken for.'

Magouche's daughter.

Jacqueline Bouvier (1929-94); m. 1st 1953 John F. Kennedy, President of United States, 1961-3; 2nd 1968 Aristotle Onassis (1906-75). Notebooks: ‘She came in: in black gold pyjama pants, looking wonderful. The whisper is conspiratorial, not affected. The whisper of a naughty child egging you on to do something mildly wicked. To behave badly without being rude.'

John Russell (1919-2008), art critic of the
New York Times
.

Charles Rosen (
b
.1927), pianist, music theorist and critic.

New York socialite.

In November, he had had varicose veins removed from his legs at St Mary's Paddington.

In January Chatwin had travelled to Haiti with Kasmin.

Chanler Chapman, E.C.'s father's first cousin. On 3 January 1979 he wrote to Elizabeth's mother from his hospital bed in Rhinebeck: ‘This morning at 4 a.m. I finished
In Patagonia
. It's a savage sour book with a vengeance built on a wilderness of horror, terrible climate. The pages are loaded with hatred. I stuck with it because of the wellbalanced pen of Bruce Chatwin. He practically never gives way to journalism. When he does allow 3 or 4 words of wonderfully keen observation to take fire and make a whole page fly, he does it with the unconcern of a man lifting a piece of bread to his lips. There is a compulsion that comes from the bowels of death. Darned tiresome but somehow Chatwin makes it significant. I'm proud of Elizabeth for marrying Bruce. Give her my love.'

William Shawn, editor of
New Yorker
1952-87, did not after all take a single one of Chatwin's offerings. On June 24 1980 he rejected
The Viceroy of Ouidah
– ‘We did not think it quite worked out as fiction we could publish'; in 1982 Shawn also turned down
On The Black Hill
as ‘too episodic', none of the episodes seeming to amount to short stories.

Jane Kramer, European correspondent for
New Yorker
and partner of Vincent Crapanzano, professor of anthropology at New York City University.

The arrangement barely endured two years. On 15 December 1980 Chatwin received a letter from Lt.-Col. Chetwynd-Talbot, secretary of Albany, in reply to his request for a more permanent apartment. ‘Some of what you say . . . is quite honestly, best forgotten. In telling me that Christopher Gibbs has lent you his top room for two years, you convict him of a breach of his lease with Peterhouse . . . On page 2 you urge me to connive in others breaking their leases! In any case, the top rooms, all part of their sets below, belong to different Proprietors and are not the property of the Trustees. So that, I fear, is that!'

Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at Princeton and biographer and translator of Osip Mandelstam.

E.C.: ‘I had given Bruce a silver drinking cup for Christmas. When in Peru with my mother, he was bowled over when she pulled out one from a fitted leather case.'

Australian-born poet (
b
.1947).

Theodore Weiss (1916-2003), American poet and literary critic.

The 1979 E. M. Forster Award, a $20,000 grant to fund a period of travel in the United States.

Notebook, May 1979: ‘
Princeton
. Visit to Clarence Brown: liked him but not a success. Waste of time for him I fear. Lack of communication. Both exceptionally nervous . . . I signed his copy of
In Pat
. But forgot to ask him to sign
Journey to A
. Was he offended? Came out of lunch with a decided spell of jitters . . . Not at all good at talking about my work with other writers.'

Documentary-maker, author and longstanding friend of Eileen Gray whose biography he would write (1988). Chatwin had a brief involvement with Adam at this time.

Chatwin delivered the manuscript to Tom Maschler in the summer. On 14 November Maschler paid an advance of £2,500.

British art historians and life partners who lived in the Villa Marchiò above Lucca. They had first met Chatwin in Venice.

A huge interior of a Capucine convent in Rome, by the French painter François Marius Granet (1775-1849). H.H.: ‘It was too big to fit into our little house.'

On 15 February Silberman had agreed an advance of $15,000.

American Flaubert scholar (1904-94) m. 1963 Shirley Hazzard (
b
.1931), Sydney-born novelist.

Slogan in 1950s for Dwight D. Eisenhower, President of the United States 1953-61.

Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003), British explorer and travel writer. He met Chatwin once at the Hampshire home of Adrian House. ‘He turned up and talked all through lunch and dinner and he sat outside my bedroom door and kept me awake talking and I rather wished he'd gone to bed.'

Eve Arnold (
b
.1912), American photographer; she took the photos for Chatwin's articles on Mrs Gandhi and André Malraux.

Donald Richie (
b
.1924), American-born director and writer on Japanese cinema.

Paul Theroux (
b
.1941), American travel-writer and novelist.

John Hunt (1910-98), leader of the 1953 expedition to Mount Everest and president of Royal Geographical Society.

The Late Show
, BBC2, 8 March 1979.

E.C.: ‘I was furious with him, totally fed up and exasperated that he took me for granted. He brought down David Nash, but had never communicated to me (a) he was coming (b) he was bringing David, (c) never mind finding out any arrangements I'd made. I wrote to him and said “You'd better not come here till I tell you. I don't want you around, please.”

Elisabeth Sifton, editor-in-chief of Viking Penguin.

Asha Puthli, lively pop and blues singer from Bombay who appeared naked in the Merchant-Ivory film
Savages
.