Bruce Chatwin (55 page)
Authors: Nicholas Shakespeare
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary, #Literary Collections, #Letters, #Literary Criticism, #General, #Diaries & Journals, #Personal Memoirs
Punta Arenas at the time of Milward’s shipwreck in 1898 was known as Sandy Point and had the air of a British colony. Until the opening of the Panama Canal in 1912, workers were paid in English currency. A casual leaf through the
Magellan Times
, “the farthest south British newspaper”, conjures up glimpses of their lifestyle in advertisements for Egyptian cigarettes, Ford cars (“the car of the camp”), and Robertson’s dip (“a sure scab-killer”).
Magellan Times
, “the farthest south British newspaper”, conjures up glimpses of their lifestyle in advertisements for Egyptian cigarettes, Ford cars (“the car of the camp”), and Robertson’s dip (“a sure scab-killer”).
And then a new notice: “C. A. Milward – engineer, boilermaker and ship repairers”. Milward was forever looking to improve his lot at the end of the world. He first considered placing vast billboards along the Magellan Straits. Then he bought a foundry with a German partner whose nationality at the time was not a problem. Milward cut a respectable if not grand figure in Punta Arenas. He was a founder of the International Rifle Shooting Association and prominent in the Fire Brigade. From 1903, he also acted as both British and German Consul. But something in his nature led him to believe he could always ride two horses. “He was German Vice-Consul as well as English. No wonder Winston Churchill and Lord Fisher thought he was a German agent,” Bruce wrote to his father. The appearance at his house in Calle España, in bizarre circumstances, of a young Scottish woman in a distressed state did not enhance his standing.
On 10 February, Bruce wrote to Elizabeth: “I have been hurtling around
Punta Arenas in search of the ghost of Charlie Milward. Fascinating place. For example, parked on a beach with a rash of tin shacks almost on top of it is the
Kabenga,
the boat that took Stanley up the Congo. There is a concrete replica of the Parthenon which is the Gymnasium. There are little octagonal summer houses that could be Turkish. My menu of last night was as follows:
Loco de mer mayonnaise
(Abalone)/
Jambon Cru de la Terre de Feu/Pejerrey a la planche/Latuna nature
(prickly pear).”
Kabenga,
the boat that took Stanley up the Congo. There is a concrete replica of the Parthenon which is the Gymnasium. There are little octagonal summer houses that could be Turkish. My menu of last night was as follows:
Loco de mer mayonnaise
(Abalone)/
Jambon Cru de la Terre de Feu/Pejerrey a la planche/Latuna nature
(prickly pear).”
Punta Arenas was a town to Bruce’s taste and in atmosphere rather like Victoria, British Columbia, visited by him the previous year. The houses of the English, mansions in the style of Sunningdale, lay up the hill, while the palaces of the Braun-Menendez family were hidden off the main square behind cypresses and monkey-puzzles that were lashed by a perpetual hurricane. “These houses were imported piece by piece from France and still look as though they have been miraculously dislodged from the Bois de Boulogne. I dined with the Brauns last night among their palms, their Cordoba leather, their aseptic marble goddesses . . .”
He found his cousin’s front door overlooking Calle España, not far from the still-existing foundry, behind a green gate cast with the letter “M”. “Captain Milward’s house, which I mistook for the Anglican church, is a towered, crenellated building with overtones of Edgbaston, Birmingham, now turned into a claustrophobic Chilean middle-class home.” Modelled on his father’s vicarage of St Clements and painted in a hideous dark brown, it was nicknamed “the chocolate castle”. In the garden there was an octagonal summerhouse and a crazy-paving path bordered with London Pride and Sweet William.
Bruce spoke to his cousin’s friends and detractors. Francisco Campos Menendez, “a foppish man with an English accent”, told how during the First World War Milward would go and see the harbourmaster very early in the morning to demand the expulsion of the
Dresden
and one day received a jug of cold water poured on his head. Bruce met a woman who had worked for the Milwards. “Said they were
dreadful
. He . . . put her on a bread and water diet for a week for breaking a bottle of brandy. She was 14 at the time.” She found Mrs Milward “really common”, her husband “not much better”.
Dresden
and one day received a jug of cold water poured on his head. Bruce met a woman who had worked for the Milwards. “Said they were
dreadful
. He . . . put her on a bread and water diet for a week for breaking a bottle of brandy. She was 14 at the time.” She found Mrs Milward “really common”, her husband “not much better”.
Bruce detected a whiff of scandal hanging about Milward’s later years. He seems to have been ostracised by the “true Britisher” element of Punta Arenas. This stemmed in part from gossip surrounding his marriage, in part from his close links with the German community. On 25 February 1915, Milward was replaced after 13 years as British consul. He was given a Landsdowne gold watch for his services, but his obituary in the
Magellan Times
hinted at strenuous opposition in the British community. “When the war broke out . . . his position became a difficult one.” His fortune drained away. The Panama Canal had opened, fewer ships required his foundry. Meanwhile, his German partner had run up debts. Alongside Royal Ventua toothpaste and an undertaker offering a stock of zinc-lined coffins, Milward’s advertisements grew smaller and smaller.
Magellan Times
hinted at strenuous opposition in the British community. “When the war broke out . . . his position became a difficult one.” His fortune drained away. The Panama Canal had opened, fewer ships required his foundry. Meanwhile, his German partner had run up debts. Alongside Royal Ventua toothpaste and an undertaker offering a stock of zinc-lined coffins, Milward’s advertisements grew smaller and smaller.
Milward died in his bed in the early hours of 6 December 1928. The British Legion cancelled a picnic. He was buried in the local cemetery facing the low outline of Tierra del Fuego across the choppy straits where 30 years before he had been shipwrecked.
Today, the graves in the English sector are in a sorry state, vandalised or choked by lupins and pansies. It takes a while to find Milward’s. The wind blows a bush of white snowberries over the grey headstone of his brother Arthur, known as “Old Mother Milward”. Charles’s name is hard to decipher. On the slab of muddy white marble stands an empty mayonnaise jar.
In Punta Arenas, Bruce befriended an Australian girl ten years his junior. Judith Jesser and her companion Paul were precursors of those who would descend on the country clutching tattered paperback copies of
In Patagonia
. Jesser, in a letter to her mother, wrote of Bruce: “We met this Eng journalist and author Charles Bruce Chatwin, who is writing a number of articles for the London
Times
plus gathering information for a book he is writing. He is rather an eccentric type of chap, who is in his middle 30s but still looks like the typical private school English boy with big feet and blond hair that he parts down the centre, and he has a very pronounced Oxford accent. He is married to an Elizabeth née Chanler, whose father was apparently in charge of the Intelligence section at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed it, and hence was not held in esteem for some period after. This Bruce is interesting to listen to and since we have been on the mainland we keep meeting each other.”
In Patagonia
. Jesser, in a letter to her mother, wrote of Bruce: “We met this Eng journalist and author Charles Bruce Chatwin, who is writing a number of articles for the London
Times
plus gathering information for a book he is writing. He is rather an eccentric type of chap, who is in his middle 30s but still looks like the typical private school English boy with big feet and blond hair that he parts down the centre, and he has a very pronounced Oxford accent. He is married to an Elizabeth née Chanler, whose father was apparently in charge of the Intelligence section at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese bombed it, and hence was not held in esteem for some period after. This Bruce is interesting to listen to and since we have been on the mainland we keep meeting each other.”
Bruce saw a lot of Jesser. Later, they travelled on the same boat to Chiloe, an island off the Chilean coast. “He never stopped talking,” she says – about Elizabeth, about Butch Cassidy, about how Chilean communists, as soon as they got into power, killed off the stud merino rams for food.
On 11 March, a cloudless day, Bruce chartered a plane to fly over Desolation Island. He wanted to look down on the spot where Milward’s ship had sunk. Scared of flying on his own, he asked Jesser and Paul to come along. “He found us. He was frightened. Would we please go with him?”
Two days later, Jesser witnessed a more unsettling episode. The three of them took the bus to an old fort with a museum in Fuerte Bulnes, south of Punta Arenas. They started walking back along the beach. Bruce’s talking now got out of hand. Without warning, they stumbled into what seemed to be a military establishment with a dug-out and camouflage. “He was walking along, chatter, chatter, chatter and I said: ‘I’m not pleased with this, this doesn’t feel right’.” Bruce insisted there was nothing to worry about. “Then all of a sudden we were arrested,” says Jesser. “We were put in this little wooden building while ten to 15 really young interns stood around training machine guns on us.” A nervous young officer came and asked what they were doing. Jesser looked to Bruce, the oldest of the party, to quieten him down. She was unprepared for what happened next.
“Bruce was really naïve. He started to ask these questions which were not pertinent to the situation, like ‘How many people are there in this establishment?’” The tension was deepening by the minute when Paul noticed the officer wore an Alpinist badge and indicated that he too was a climber. The situation eased, but Jesser was surprised at Bruce for having misjudged it. “I thought he was bloody dumb.”
They flew with Bruce to Puerto Natales, from where it was a short journey further north to the “
cueva del milodon”.
She and Paul slept in a hut while Bruce stayed in a hotel. On visiting his room, she found, open on his bed, her missing copy of D. H. Lawrence’s
Kangaroo
.
cueva del milodon”.
She and Paul slept in a hut while Bruce stayed in a hotel. On visiting his room, she found, open on his bed, her missing copy of D. H. Lawrence’s
Kangaroo
.
In 1895, a man called Eberhard discovered the hide of a strange animal at the back of a cave on his land. One evening in March, Bruce arrived at the nearby
estancia
of Eberhard’s grandson. “On a wet and windy night a complete stranger, muttering strange gibberish about the mylodon, was taken in, fed, bedded and entertained by the most hospitable household in Magellanes,” he wrote in the guest book. When he explained why he had come, Eberhard replied in English: “So . . . you are of the family of the robber.”
estancia
of Eberhard’s grandson. “On a wet and windy night a complete stranger, muttering strange gibberish about the mylodon, was taken in, fed, bedded and entertained by the most hospitable household in Magellanes,” he wrote in the guest book. When he explained why he had come, Eberhard replied in English: “So . . . you are of the family of the robber.”
The animal skin had measured four feet by two and its discovery prompted a widespread belief that “a great mysterious quadruped” might still be extant. Scientists in London, La Plata and Berlin clamoured for evidence. One of Milward’s money-making schemes was to dynamite Eberhard’s cave for lucrative scraps. He sold one consignment of skin, claws and bones to the British Museum for £400; and, of course, he sent a tuft to Bruce’s grandmother as her wedding present. “It all went,” says Señora Eberhard. “Nothing’s left. Only a mountain of shit.”
Bruce spent the night at the Eberhards’ and in the morning walked the four miles to the cave. It lies in a spectacular setting, gawping over Last Hope Sound from a cliff of pebbly conglomerate. Bands of white
margarita silvestri
border the path and the air smells of camphor and clover. Seen from the back wall through a frieze of southern beech, the black mountains patched with snow rise from the bay. The cave mouth is 200 yards wide, 30 metres high and a whole village could fit inside. The visitor’s imagination is depressed only by the life-sized fibreglass effigy at the entrance, resembling a shaggy, small-eared horse standing on its hind legs.
margarita silvestri
border the path and the air smells of camphor and clover. Seen from the back wall through a frieze of southern beech, the black mountains patched with snow rise from the bay. The cave mouth is 200 yards wide, 30 metres high and a whole village could fit inside. The visitor’s imagination is depressed only by the life-sized fibreglass effigy at the entrance, resembling a shaggy, small-eared horse standing on its hind legs.
This cave provided the emotional focus of Bruce’s pilgrimage. He wrote in
In Patagonia
: “I tried to picture the cave with sloths in it, but I could not erase the fanged monster I associate with a blacked-out bedroom in wartime England.”
In Patagonia
: “I tried to picture the cave with sloths in it, but I could not erase the fanged monster I associate with a blacked-out bedroom in wartime England.”
Milward’s wedding gift was not a piece of “monster”. The mylodon was a herbivorous ground sloth three metres long with thick skin and powerful claws with which it grubbed for insects. It frequented the cave between 11,500 and 8,000
BC
to take advantage of the salt-lick and did not have the most sophisticated digestive system. “The floor was covered with turds, sloth turds, outsize black leathery turds, full of ill-digested grass, that looked as if they had been shat that week.”
BC
to take advantage of the salt-lick and did not have the most sophisticated digestive system. “The floor was covered with turds, sloth turds, outsize black leathery turds, full of ill-digested grass, that looked as if they had been shat that week.”
Bruce emerged with some coarse, wiry strands of reddish hair. He had his Fleece. On 5 April, he walked into the Barnetts’ house in Lima carrying a ball of fossilised mylodon dung which he plonked on the tea-table. “The dung was odourless,” says Monica’s husband. “But Bruce was still slightly whiffy.”
XXIII
I Don’t Know What You’ll Make of It
I recall that on the 31st August last you telephoned to say that you were now writing books and that your first story would be published on 21st September, and I am wondering, please, what monies you are expecting from this source. At the present time the Bank’s only security for your account is the guarantee of Mr C. L. Chatwin for £500 (unsupported) and a life policy surrender value £87.
—Lloyd’s Bank, Birmingham, to BC, 7 October 1977
ELIZABETH AND HER MOTHER JOINED BRUCE IN LIMA
.
HE HAD
set off for Patagonia with a rucksack and a little duffel bag. “When we met him five months later in Peru he was in a small room and the walls were lined on at least three sides with stacked up books that he’d picked up. And he’d left a lot of stuff in Buenos Aires and he had to go back and pick
that
up.” Together they toured Peru in the Barnetts’ camper van. On 5 May, he arrived in New York, impatient to start writing.
.
HE HAD
set off for Patagonia with a rucksack and a little duffel bag. “When we met him five months later in Peru he was in a small room and the walls were lined on at least three sides with stacked up books that he’d picked up. And he’d left a lot of stuff in Buenos Aires and he had to go back and pick
that
up.” Together they toured Peru in the Barnetts’ camper van. On 5 May, he arrived in New York, impatient to start writing.
Unwilling to work at Holwell, he rented a house on a private island off the Connecticut coast. Fisher’s Island was an enclave of Waspdom, “stuffy as all hell”, but he found the “dreamlike surrealist atmosphere” agreeable.
Stone Cottage belonged to a family of mattress makers and was the gatehouse to their “Norman castle”. It had a conical tower, gabled windows smothered in ivy and lay at the tip of the eight-mile island on a promontory surrounded by wind and sea “and flights of ferocious seagulls”. Elizabeth bicycled up and down to fetch groceries in her basket while he arranged his notes.
A number of eccentric writers had borrowed the gatehouse, named after a turn-of-the-century Tolkien called Stone who had created an imaginary language for his novel
Islandia.
“It is slightly like a set for a Hitchcock movie,” Bruce wrote in one of the very rare letters he sent from Stone Cottage. He apologised to his parents for the silence: “I’m sorry I’m so hopeless at writing. When you pore over the typewriter all day, it’s the last thing you want to do.”
Islandia.
“It is slightly like a set for a Hitchcock movie,” Bruce wrote in one of the very rare letters he sent from Stone Cottage. He apologised to his parents for the silence: “I’m sorry I’m so hopeless at writing. When you pore over the typewriter all day, it’s the last thing you want to do.”
On 25 August, he was able to tell them he had completed half the book. “There is a 3-inch pile of manuscript, much of which will have to be scrapped when I come to the revision. The island has been well worth while.”
He was reluctant to return to London until he had finished, but could no longer fend off the
Sunday Times
. He had written to Francis Wyndham: “I don’t want to receive any official
S. T
. correspondence in the Argentine.” To justify his $3,500 advance from the magazine, Bruce now submitted two profiles: on the Guggenheim family and on Maria Reiche, a German expert on the Nazca Lines whom he had visited with Elizabeth and her mother in Peru. He also planned a third article. “I am going to the West to Utah to do an article for the
Sunday Times
,” he wrote to his parents. This was on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, whose tracks he had occasionally crossed or followed in Patagonia. The pair were thought to have been killed in Bolivia, “but Cassidy’s sister, now in her 90s in Utah, says her brother spent the ‘20s as a country gentleman in Ireland and returned to Utah for burial. This is the case of the Hero that never dies.”
Sunday Times
. He had written to Francis Wyndham: “I don’t want to receive any official
S. T
. correspondence in the Argentine.” To justify his $3,500 advance from the magazine, Bruce now submitted two profiles: on the Guggenheim family and on Maria Reiche, a German expert on the Nazca Lines whom he had visited with Elizabeth and her mother in Peru. He also planned a third article. “I am going to the West to Utah to do an article for the
Sunday Times
,” he wrote to his parents. This was on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, whose tracks he had occasionally crossed or followed in Patagonia. The pair were thought to have been killed in Bolivia, “but Cassidy’s sister, now in her 90s in Utah, says her brother spent the ‘20s as a country gentleman in Ireland and returned to Utah for burial. This is the case of the Hero that never dies.”
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