Under the Sun (76 page)

Max Beerbohm (1872-1956), English caricaturist.

Ronald Firbank (1886-1926), English novelist.

Lady Florentia Sale,
Journal of the Disaster in Afghanistan, 1841-2.

Loelia, Duchess of Westminster (1902-93).

E.C.: ‘I had a parrot before I was married and gave it away and I moaned and groaned so Bruce got me an African grey. It hated men, and Bruce couldn't go anywhere near it – even if it saw Bruce through the window it would shriek. I gave it back to the vendor.'

Peter Levi.

Margaret Mead (1901-78) American anthropologist. Her daughter Catherine Bateson had been at Radcliffe with Elizabeth.

Friends of Teddy Millington-Drake. Ginette Camu, a famous Belgian beauty m. to Bernard Camu, banker and bon vivant; William L. Bernhard, who bought a ruin in Patmos; Stephan von Watzdorf, brother of Thilo who worked at Sotheby's.

A poncho with checker-board patterns, sold to finance Chatwin's journey to Patagonia. The feathers were a rectangular hanging of blue and yellow parrot feathers, possibly intended for an Inca temple, discovered in an earthenware drum near the River Ocana in Peru. Bruce and Elizabeth had bought the feathers in New York with their wedding money.

J. L. Bruning,
Biological Clocks in Seasonal Reproductive Cycles
(1968).

Ron Gurney, Quaker banker; Chatwin had met Penelope Betjeman at his house near Wantage.

Clem Wood married to Jessie, daughter of Louise de Vilmourin, shared a house with the Welches on Spetsai.

Iain Watson (
b
.1942) m. in 1967 Miranda Rothschild (
b
.1940). Miranda was, in her own description, ‘a tragic young widow'. In 1964 her previous husband, an Algerian, had been assassinated as a gun-runner. ‘I found him in a charnel pit.' Rescued by her mother, Barbara Ghika, who discovered her in a hut living off worms, she went to live in Athens with her two-year-old daughter, Da'ad Boumaza.

Maxime Birley (1922 – 2009), fashion model, food writer and mother of Louise (‘Loulou') de la Falaise (
b
.1948), m. to John McKendry, curator of prints and photographs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who influenced Robert Mapplethorpe to take photography seriously.

Irina, elderly Greek woman who lived by herself.

A Mogul, jade-handled dagger.

A Napoleonic campaign bed, supposedly ‘Marshal Ney's steel campaign bed with its original lime green hangings'.

Oliver Hoare (
b
.1945), with whom Chatwin shared 9 Kynance Mews. B.C. diary: ‘V restless as myself, v likeable and attractive.' He later achieved celebrity as one of the Princess of Wales's lovers.

Monica, a dressmaker, who lived on the top floor at Holwell.

Agnes Jean Magruder (
b
.1921), Boston-born daughter of American naval commodore, m. 1st Arshile Gorky 1941 – 48, Armenian artist who coined the nickname ‘Mougouch', which meant ‘my little powerful one' in Russian; 2nd John C. Phillips Jr in 1950; 3rd Xan Fielding in 1979.

Turkish dish with aubergine.

E.C.: ‘He liked fountain pens. Like books, they had to be guarded.'

E.C.: ‘A beautiful ikat chapan from Afghanistan, a man's silk coat put on over garments, as worn by Hamid Kharzai.'

Martin Buber (1878 – 1965), Austrian-Israeli philosopher.

(Sir) Patrick Leigh Fermor (
b
.1915); author, living in Greece; m. 1968 Hon. Joan Eyres-Monsell, photographer (1912-2003), whom he had met in wartime Cairo.

E.C.: ‘He had an infection of the jaw. Eventually, I sent him to my London dentist, Russell King, who sorted him out.'

E.C.: ‘Everything having been paradise on earth suddenly turned into the biggest bore. It happened everywhere, except the Black Hill.'

Barbara (‘Llama') Hutchinson (1911 – 89) m. 1st 3rd Baron Rothschild, 2nd Rex Warner, 3rd Nico Hadjikyriakou-Ghika, painter and sculptor; mother of Miranda Rothschild.

Ferdy Mayne (1916-98) owner of Kyance Mews studio leased by Chatwin; MI5 informant and German actor, famous for playing Count von Krolock in Roman Polanski's 1967 film
The Fearless Vampire Killers
.

A bargeboard from a Polynesian hut that had belonged to the actress Sarah Bernhardt, who used it as a bedhead. On 30 June 1968 E.C. wrote to her mother: ‘Bruce has swapped the Greek head for a fantastic piece of Maori sculpture, for which he has already been offered more than twice what he paid. It belonged to Sarah Bernhardt: she brought it back in 1902 when she made a tour of New Zealand & she bought it from an already old collection then.'

London antiquities dealer, sentenced in January 2005 to two years in prison; he served seven months.

Framer.

Nomadic shepherds inhabiting the northern Greek mountains and central Balkans.

Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis and her younger sister Lee Radzwill. E.C.: ‘Derek knew everybody.'

Monica, the dressmaker, had married a policeman.

To cover running costs, the Chatwins had loaned Holwell Farm to Linda Wroth, a girlfriend of John Michell. Chatwin had walked with her in Wales; on 13 December 1969 he described Linda in his diary as having ‘the wide staring intense eyes of the American intellectual initiate'.

Desmond Fitzgerald married Olda Willes in 1970.

Sandy Martin, dealer and one-time partner with John Hewett.

Union des Transports Aériens, French airline.

Silk from Afghanistan.

Margharita had made Chatwin a tweed overcoat. E.C.: ‘She did eventually make him one that fitted.'

Sally Perry (1911-91), m. 1945 Gerald Grosvenor, 4th Duke of Westminster (1907 – 67); and companion of Henry Somerset, 10th Duke of Beaufort (1900-84), Master of Queen's Hounds; neighbour of Chatwins at Wickwar Manor.

Lenny Ballinger, the Chatwins' tenant farmer.

‘It's a Nomad Nomad Nomad NOMAD world' appeared in
Vogue
, December 1970
.

Mr Ball, known as Canon Ball.

William and Rosalie Fergusson, neighbours at Holwell.

John Michell (1933-2009), English author.
The View Over Atlantis
(1969) popularised ley-lines, ‘referring to ancient stone circles, menhirs and graveyards which are laid out in lines across Britain,' as Chatwin wrote in
The Songlines
. Chatwin walked with him in Cornwall and Wales.

Keith Steadman, horticulturalist neighbour at Wickwar.

Hercules Seghers (1589-1638), Dutch painter. Cary Welch owned a Seghers oil painting of a skull.

Miniature drawing of a sikh grandee.

Giant hogweed. E.C.: ‘Bruce thought you'd get poisoned if you stood next to it.'

Maori shell.

E.C.: ‘He really didn't know anything about animals.' Chatwin's notebook: ‘Hell is a house – house dog is Cerberus.'

E.C.: ‘I didn't.'

Fred Mewis, the Chatwins' gardener.

Anthony and Doe Bowlby lived at the Old Rectory in Ozleworth.

Elizabeth's trust at the Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh.

16 November.

Willow plantation.

Polly Devlin, journalist, married to Andy Garnett, entrepreneur, neighbours at Bradley Court near Alderley.

Independent American publishing house, founded 1936.

A stoneware firelighter soaked in kerosene.

‘I love her dearly but she is impossible to be with for longer than two hours at a stretch.' James Lees-Milne diary, 5 September 1972.

E.C.: ‘I still have it.'

Ajit Mukherjee's
The Art of Tantra
(1970) generated an interest in Tantric Art.

Elms & Sons, the Chatwins' builders.

E.C.: ‘The water was perfectly all right. The Etheridges, who owned the Lodge after us, had it tested.'

E.C.: ‘I went back to Bombay twice to meet Bruce because he said he was coming. I traipsed back, driving hundreds of miles, and he didn't come, ever.'

E.C.: ‘A half-Siamese ginger cat completely focussed on me. When I left, he went mad and never recovered.'

E.C.: ‘The sherbet spoon was mine.'

Valerian (
b
.15 December 1970), 3rd Baron Freyberg; ‘my godson and
perennial
favourite', Chatwin described him in an inscription to
On the Black Hill
.

Lady Dorothy (‘Coote') Lygon (1912 – 2000); 4th d. of 7th Earl Beauchamp: ‘I was working at Christie's in Old Masters, making a card index based on early picture sales. I was on the second floor at Blomfield Road, Bruce on the first. He had a beautiful brown silk robe which he said he had bought from nomads in Central Africa. I was very jealous of it. It had voluminous, big sleeves, so he'd put his hands up the opposite sleeve and keep himself warm.'

Pale blue silk in geometrical squares and triangles; it had belonged to the Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum.

Arthur Bamber Gascoigne (
b
.1935), author and broadcaster; m. 1963 Christina Ditchburn.
The Great Moghuls
is still in print.

Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888 – 1970), Italian modernist poet.

Neighbours on spur of the valley.

Alun Gwynne-Jones (
b
.1919), Minister in Foreign Office 1964-70; Baron Chalfont from 1964.

Dealer. E.C.: ‘We lost the boomerang when we moved.'

Keeper of Indian and South-East Asian art at the Victoria & Albert Museum.

E.C.: ‘Penelope had lost her camera. The reason we went so slowly is because she would say, “I want the evening light” and spend two nights in every place.'

E.C.: ‘An
Encyclopaedia Britannica
1911 that I found in Hyderabad. It had quite a lot of holes from silverfish.'

Made of wood and bone and lacquer. E.C.: ‘I bought them.'

Susanna Chancellor m. 1958 Nicholas Johnston (
b
.1929) architect.

On 20 January 1971, 200,000 British postal workers began a seven-week strike.

Patrick Balfour, 3rd Baron Kinross (1904-76), author, broadcaster, specialist in the Ottoman Empire. ‘The dearest old thing in the world,' according to James Lees-Milne.

Her wrist.

Chatwin's article on Lorenz did not appear in the
New York Review of Books
until December 1979. He was to interview Lorenz in July 1974 for the
Sunday Times
magazine at his home in Altenberg outside Vienna.

Gloria El-Fadil el Mahdi, Chatwin's former girlfriend; her son Sedig (Chatwin's godson); and Da'ad Boumaza, Miranda's daughter.

Arshile Gorky (1904 – 48), Armenian-born painter and Magouche's first husband.

Introductory commission.

Michel Straus had worked at Sotheby's with Chatwin in the Impressionist Department.

Miranda Rothschild. She and Akbar became lovers.

Décoration océanienne
, André Portier and François Poncetton (1931).

John Elliott, New York dealer.

Jeremy Fry (1924 – 2005), artist, inventor, philanthropist.

Natasha Litvin (
b
.1919), pianist, m. 1941 poet Stephen Spender; had a house at Les Baux. From Chatwin's notebook: ‘A description of the Stephen Spenders.
Il y aura chez lui des personnes qui vous connaissez parait-il trés bien, la femme joue au piano et écrit un livre sur les sensations auditives. L'homme est peintre. J'ai oublié le nom
. . . J-Claude-Roché.'

Henri-Pierre Roché (1879-1959), Dadaist whose semi-autobiographical novel
Jules et Jim
was filmed in 1962 by François Truffaut.