Bruce Chatwin (9 page)
Authors: Nicholas Shakespeare
Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Literary, #Literary Collections, #Letters, #Literary Criticism, #General, #Diaries & Journals, #Personal Memoirs
The art critic Robert Hughes says, “a very important component of Bruce’s imagination is his admiration for
Wunderkammer
”. Hughes remembers Bruce’s enthusiasm for a little-known, meticulous drawing by Dürer, of the mutant pig of Landser: a portentous creature with eight legs. “He liked the off-beat. He liked the monstrous. He liked things that suggested an inadvertent crack in the seamless world of cause and effect.”
Wunderkammer
”. Hughes remembers Bruce’s enthusiasm for a little-known, meticulous drawing by Dürer, of the mutant pig of Landser: a portentous creature with eight legs. “He liked the off-beat. He liked the monstrous. He liked things that suggested an inadvertent crack in the seamless world of cause and effect.”
The phenomenon of the
Wunderkammer
began in Vienna as a response to the wonder of America. It domesticated our terror of a dangerous new world, the monsters seething on the peripheries of the medieval map. To create a
Wunderkammer
was to cast the world in your own light. It contained, according to historian Steven Mullaney, “things on holiday, randomly juxtaposed and displaced from any proper context . . . Taken together, they compose a heteroclite order without hierarchy or degree, an order in which kings mingle with clowns.” A defiance of category was crucial.
Wunderkammer
began in Vienna as a response to the wonder of America. It domesticated our terror of a dangerous new world, the monsters seething on the peripheries of the medieval map. To create a
Wunderkammer
was to cast the world in your own light. It contained, according to historian Steven Mullaney, “things on holiday, randomly juxtaposed and displaced from any proper context . . . Taken together, they compose a heteroclite order without hierarchy or degree, an order in which kings mingle with clowns.” A defiance of category was crucial.
These cabinets of curiosities were also mirrors. They reflected the collector’s extraordinariness, his journeys to marvellous places, his encounters with marvellous people, and – important when considering Bruce – they offered up a neat metaphor of a world picture that they replicated in miniature. “If nature speaks through such metaphors,” wrote the seventeenth-century musicographer Emmanuel Tesauro, “then the encyclopaedic collection, which is the sum of all possible metaphors, logically becomes the great metaphor of the world.”
The collections Bruce most admired were the Pitt-Rivers museums in Oxford and Farnham; the Cabinet des Médailles in Paris, where he proposed to his wife; the Volkerkunde in Vienna. In 1967, like the narrator of his novel
Utz,
Bruce stopped off in Vienna on his way to Prague: “The Imperial mantle of
1125
!! with gold lions attacking camels on a scarlet ground is the most wonderful thing I ever saw,” Bruce wrote to his wife. “The sword of Charles the Bold has a narwhal tusk sheath and handle, and I must say I am more than resigned to the extravagance of a tusk since seeing the unicorn presented to the Emperor Rudolf, one of the inalienable treasures of the Habsburgs together with a sumptuous Byzantine agate bowl, once considered to be the Holy Grail.”
Utz,
Bruce stopped off in Vienna on his way to Prague: “The Imperial mantle of
1125
!! with gold lions attacking camels on a scarlet ground is the most wonderful thing I ever saw,” Bruce wrote to his wife. “The sword of Charles the Bold has a narwhal tusk sheath and handle, and I must say I am more than resigned to the extravagance of a tusk since seeing the unicorn presented to the Emperor Rudolf, one of the inalienable treasures of the Habsburgs together with a sumptuous Byzantine agate bowl, once considered to be the Holy Grail.”
Isobel Chatwin’s mahogany wedding gift from Chamberlain, King and Jones was in the solid tradition of these
Wunderkammer.
With the development of British maritime power and the scientific voyages of Cook, Darwin and Huxley, most middle-class drawing rooms had a flat, glass-topped table which lifted to reveal “conversation pieces” to prove where the traveller had been. Some of the marvels turned out to be fake – the mermaid tail inevitably a piece of dried hake with a monkey sewn on. But many were genuine curios.
Wunderkammer.
With the development of British maritime power and the scientific voyages of Cook, Darwin and Huxley, most middle-class drawing rooms had a flat, glass-topped table which lifted to reveal “conversation pieces” to prove where the traveller had been. Some of the marvels turned out to be fake – the mermaid tail inevitably a piece of dried hake with a monkey sewn on. But many were genuine curios.
Isobel’s family museum was as formative in its influence on Bruce as the collections of the Habsburg Emperors in Vienna and Prague were on the Meissen collector, Utz. In his last novel Bruce reaches back to his four-year-old self, to the young Utz visiting his grandmother’s castle outside Prague and standing on tiptoe before her vitrine of antique porcelain and saying: “I want him.” The slothskin has been recast as a Meissen harlequin with a leering orange mask. “He had found his vocation: he would devote his life to collecting . . .”
Werner Muensterberger, a friend of Bruce and the author of a study of the psychology of collecting, suggests that the collector is only too aware of the futility of his compulsion: “a chronic restiveness that can be cured only by more finds or yet another acquisition”. Muensterberger, himself a collector and intimate with the “tyrannising” dedication of his calling, believes the collecting passion is an instrument “to allay a basic need brought on by early traumata”. The infant looks to alternative solutions for dealing “with anticipations of vulnerability”. For the young Bruce, always on the move, the objects in the cabinet became a fixed compass. In desiring to hold on to them, he alleviated, temporarily, his dread of being alone. “Things”, he wrote in his notebook, “are substitutes for affection.”
In his grandmother’s dining room in West Heath Road, Bruce became one of the Prague
curieux
, seeking an explanation for all things. The building bricks, Isobel’s photograph album, the tartan scraps were all part of the same plaid. No less than for Utz, his porcelain collector, “this world of little figures was the real world” – and the bombardments of the Second World War were “so many noises off”.
curieux
, seeking an explanation for all things. The building bricks, Isobel’s photograph album, the tartan scraps were all part of the same plaid. No less than for Utz, his porcelain collector, “this world of little figures was the real world” – and the bombardments of the Second World War were “so many noises off”.
Most travel writers colonise a territory. Bruce kept moving. Each of his books explores a different part of the world. They cooked in his head a long time, but the cabinet was his departure point. It was a centre of order, a larder for his daydreams, and the objects in it his toys, his routes to knowledge. Charlie Milward’s hairy remnant belongs to
In Patagonia
; Uncle Humphrey’s seed necklace to
The Viceroy of Ouidah
; Leslie’s christening mug and the “Bruce china” to
Utz
; the Victorian walker’s compass and pocket sundial to
The Songlines
.
In Patagonia
; Uncle Humphrey’s seed necklace to
The Viceroy of Ouidah
; Leslie’s christening mug and the “Bruce china” to
Utz
; the Victorian walker’s compass and pocket sundial to
The Songlines
.
“I’d polish the cabinet so it came up really lovely,” says Irene, the cleaning lady. “It must have held raptures for him.”
IV
War Baby
To Freud we owe the insight that the character of the human adult is already formed for better or worse between the ages of 3 and 5.
—BC, notebooks
“
BRUCE WAS A RAY OF SUNSHINE FROM THE DAY HE WAS BORN
,” said Margharita. Reluctant to put down roots while Charles was away at sea, she threw her energies into her son. He was a typical war baby, coddled by an anxious mother, fussed over by a team of elderly, mostly female relatives for whom he was the hope of the tribe. For four years, until his father’s return and the birth of his brother Hugh, Bruce was the uncontested man of the house.
BRUCE WAS A RAY OF SUNSHINE FROM THE DAY HE WAS BORN
,” said Margharita. Reluctant to put down roots while Charles was away at sea, she threw her energies into her son. He was a typical war baby, coddled by an anxious mother, fussed over by a team of elderly, mostly female relatives for whom he was the hope of the tribe. For four years, until his father’s return and the birth of his brother Hugh, Bruce was the uncontested man of the house.
Margharita was by nature highly-strung. Her nerves frayed with a husband at sea. Frightened by images of Charles being Stuka-bombed in the North Adantic, she would shout out “Charles! Charles!” and talk as if he were in earshot. Bruce would come running to ask what was the matter.
“Nothing, darling.”
She retreated into herself. “I hated news. I became a hermit, a complete and utter escapist.” She avoided war work, anything that might risk exposing her to bad news. “I was always doing something else when the news was read.” When John Amery was hanged, she did not want to know the details. When Aunt Grace suggested she take a job at a Royal Label factory down the road, she dug in her heels: her job was to look after Bruce until Charles came back.
Mother and son were extremely close. She read to him every night. His favourite book was
The Flower Fairies.
By the age of three he knew the names by heart. She said, “Once I threw out some flowers and Bruce found one which wasn’t quite dead. ‘Mummy, you mustn’t do that. It’s beautiful and still alive.’ I felt very humble.” They paid homage to that early bond throughout his life, signing letters to each other: “Love you pieces”.
The Flower Fairies.
By the age of three he knew the names by heart. She said, “Once I threw out some flowers and Bruce found one which wasn’t quite dead. ‘Mummy, you mustn’t do that. It’s beautiful and still alive.’ I felt very humble.” They paid homage to that early bond throughout his life, signing letters to each other: “Love you pieces”.
Then in the spring of 1943, the tenuous idyll they had created was ruptured when Bruce’s father came back for a month’s leave. This was the first of half a dozen visits he would make while serving in the Navy. Writing in his thirties, Bruce described the effect of this turmoil: “desperate attempts on my part to escape, if not mythically, by the invention of mythical paradise.”
Margharita had not seen her husband for two years. Charles had sailed in April 1941 on the new light cruiser
Euryalus.
Margharita took Bruce to Chatham to wave him off, but they were not allowed to be on the quay.
Euryalus.
Margharita took Bruce to Chatham to wave him off, but they were not allowed to be on the quay.
After a stint in Scapa Flow in the Orkneys, the
Euryalus
was despatched to protect the Malta convoys and joined the Eastern Mediterranean Fleet in Alexandria. Charles’s attitude was: “I’m in this blooming war and until it’s over I’m going to regard it as a job to be done.” The “chaps” went ashore for nightlife, but not Charles. On alternate nights he kept watch beside the ASDIC, scanning the horizon for torpedo bombers. It was his sharp eyes that first spotted the trail of enemy smoke off the Libyan coast, prior to the battle of Sirte that put the Italian fleet out of the war.
Euryalus
was despatched to protect the Malta convoys and joined the Eastern Mediterranean Fleet in Alexandria. Charles’s attitude was: “I’m in this blooming war and until it’s over I’m going to regard it as a job to be done.” The “chaps” went ashore for nightlife, but not Charles. On alternate nights he kept watch beside the ASDIC, scanning the horizon for torpedo bombers. It was his sharp eyes that first spotted the trail of enemy smoke off the Libyan coast, prior to the battle of Sirte that put the Italian fleet out of the war.
People who served with him remarked on his bravery. He rose through the ranks quickly, one of the youngest in the R.N.V.R. to get captaincy. Switched to a minesweeper, he operated out of Malta as a watch-keeping officer until, just outside Valletta harbour, a mine ripped a 20-foot hole in the hull. In the spring of 1943, his ship limped into Sheerness, from where he telegraphed Margharita in Filey urging her to come to London.
Margharita left Bruce behind with Gaggie and joined Charles in the Carlton Hotel. They reached Filey a few days later. Charles, preparing for their first proper meeting, gave his son an olive-wood camel from Port Said. He joked to Bruce: “I bought this ship of the desert in case we had to escape from Rommel.”
Bruce was wary of this man who had previously existed in a photograph beside his mother’s bed, “gazing squarely at the camera from under the patent leather peak of his naval officer’s cap”. Bruce kissed this face before going to bed. Even so, he felt Charles’s features “didn’t quite belong”.
In
What Am I Doing Here,
Bruce wrote about his first memory of his father, aged three: “He took us bicycling near Flamborough Head, the grey Yorkshire headland that Rimbaud may have seen from a brig and put into his prose-poem ‘Promontaire’.
What Am I Doing Here,
Bruce wrote about his first memory of his father, aged three: “He took us bicycling near Flamborough Head, the grey Yorkshire headland that Rimbaud may have seen from a brig and put into his prose-poem ‘Promontaire’.
“He rigged up an improvised saddle for me on his crossbar, with stirrups of purple electric wire. I pointed to a squashed brown thing on the road.
“‘What’s that, daddy?’
“‘I don’t know.’
“He did not want me to see something dead.
“‘Well, it looks to me like a piece of hedgehog’.”
Charles detected a guardedness in his son. “He was quite polite, but he didn’t recognise me. It was slighdy: ‘Who’s that man who’s come to live with us?’” Bruce felt more fury than he let his father see. In Filey, he contended, his father “found a family rather united against him. My grandmother, mother and I formed a little nucleus: I tried to pretend he was
that
man, he
wasn’t
my father.”
that
man, he
wasn’t
my father.”
Charles walked him to Filey Brig, played with him on the sand, and after a month he was gone.
This stay was unusually long. In five years, father and son saw each other on snatched visits during Charles’s standard 48-hour leaves. At the height of the U-boat war he arrived in Cardiff harbour in command of his own ship. In January 1944, Bruce and Margharita travelled by railway to Port Talbot and had lunch aboard H.M.S.
Cynthia
. Charles had brought the minesweeper all the way from Seattle.
Cynthia
. Charles had brought the minesweeper all the way from Seattle.
Once on board, Bruce stood on the bridge and yelled down the intercom. He later wrote: “The place I liked most was my father’s cabin – a calm, functional space painted a calm pale grey; the bunk was covered in black oilcloth and, on a shelf, there was a photograph of me.” Ever since then “the rooms which have really appealed to my imagination have been ship’s cabins, log cabins, monk’s cells . . .”
Charles had promised to bring Bruce a banana, but somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico the bunch rotted. Instead, he gave his son a huge conch from the Mona Straits. Bruce wrote, “He said you could hear the wind and the waves of the Caribbean Sea if you put your ear up close. I decided that my shell was a woman and we called her Mona . . .”
Just at the point when the stranger was changing shape into his father, he would set off again. For Bruce to watch Charles depart during the war was a source of confusion and pain. Alone once more with a downcast and apprehensive Margharita, he steeled himself. Thirty-six years later he would sit in a train beside the Tagus, after separating from a lover, and write in his notebook: “Now moved to tears for one of the only times in my life.” Then he added: “My father always to be departing.”
In the summer of 1943 until the following spring, Bruce attended a kindergarten in Filey. The Bluebird School cost three and a half guineas a term and faced the sea. “The house and garden are delightfully situated and there is an excellent air-raid shelter.” Bruce found it hard to conceal his boredom. Once he was sent in disgrace to a spare room and when Margharita asked what he had been doing that day, he replied: “Spitting out of the window.” Miss Taylor, the headmistress, told Margharita: “This child is different from the others.”
In Birmingham, Bruce’s Aunt Barbara discovered his habit of setting off down a track to see where it led. On Lickey Hill, she waited while he wandered out of sight. “There’s a pig up there and it goes honk, honk, honk,” he informed her, and he performed a snuffle with his nose. “He noticed everything,” said Margharita, who was struck by her son’s turn of phrase. Seeing snow for the first time in Birmingham, he pointed: “Look, Mummy. God spitting.” Another time, he asked, “If I poke a hole in the sky, will God drop it?”
He preferred the company of older people. They interested him and he got on well with them. “Are you a
very
old lady?” he asked Mrs Nunwick in Filey. He had few friends of his own age. Billeted in Barnt Green with the James family, Margharita witnessed the distress of five-year-old John James. “I was in the kitchen and suddenly this little boy ran in and said:
‘That bloody Bruce!’
I don’t know what he had done.”
very
old lady?” he asked Mrs Nunwick in Filey. He had few friends of his own age. Billeted in Barnt Green with the James family, Margharita witnessed the distress of five-year-old John James. “I was in the kitchen and suddenly this little boy ran in and said:
‘That bloody Bruce!’
I don’t know what he had done.”
Nor, today, can John recall. John’s sister, Susan, remembers “an isolated little boy with a large head in comparison to the rest of his body, self-contained in the world – and very close to Margharita.”
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