Read Online Under the Sun by Bruce Chatwin - Free Book Online Page A

became happier with themselves and each other for so doing.’

    In Crete, Chatwin stayed with Allen Bole, ‘a rather hopeless but highly entertaining American’ who lived in a house in Chania near the harbour. Bole, a musician, had been Wanda Landowska’s assistant on the harpsichord and was now trying to write. Chatwin used to say of him:‘He doesn’t realise that the Mediterranean is very tough. People come here and think dolce far niente – it’s nice to do nothing – and it ruins them.’
    Chatwin several times returned to Crete before his marriage, to walk but also to seek out rare plants.‘I once spent the whole month of April combing the White Mountains in search of the rare Fritillaria sphaciotica , and my search was a total failure.’ He was possibly influenced by Robert Byron who, when visiting Mount Athos, had dug up for his mother, who had implored him to bring her ‘something living from the Mountain,’ a species of crocus. (‘Grasping pseudo-trowels of living marble we gouged a dozen sepulchred bulbs into a biscuit tin.’) In a draft for a botanical essay on the flowers of Greece, Chatwin wrote of these pleasures: ‘If you will take a light-hearted walk through the hills of Attica in spring time, or wander through the upland pastures of Crete, your bag full of late oranges and hard goat cheese, resting in the odd shepherd’s hut and drinking his staccha, the rich soured ewe’s milk of spring, and possibly clamber up to the snow line of Ida for the sheets of the blue Chionodoxa nana and the tricoloured Cretan crocus, C. sieberi , there are rewards that no life in sombre cities can dispel.’

To Ivry Freyberg 40
    18 Grosvenor Crescent Mews SW1|10 October 1960
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    My dear Ivry,
    Have just got Avril’s 41 mother’s invitation for the 24th with a note from A saying that you’re having a dinner party. Should love to come. Feeling much better 42 and am back at work. Sorry short note. Love B

To Charles and Margharita Chatwin
    Postcard, Matisse window | Chapelle du Rosaire | Vence | France | 25 May 1961
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    Went today to see this. 43 Marvellous weather. Have done absolutely nothing except get really quite a good colour. Love B
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    On 17 December 1961 he flew to Cairo to buy antiquities with the dealer and collector Robert Erskine.

To Charles and Margharita Chatwin
    Cairo | Egypt | Christmas 1961
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    Arrived safely but 1 day late owing to fog. Weather marvellous. Writing from the Step Pyramid.
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    On 27 December he travelled to Wadi Halfa, his first trip to the Sudan.

To Charles and Margharita Chatwin
    Postcard, The Khonsu Temple | Karnak | Egypt | 30 December 1961
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    Having a wonderful time. Back from the Sudan to see Abu Simbel. Return to Cairo and back Mon. XXX B

To Charles and Margharita Chatwin
    Postcard, Panarea, Isole Eolie | Messina | Italy | [summer 1962]
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    Had a cable from Hugh yesterday. He appears to be in Athens by now. I may meet him in Sicily next week. 44 This island is absolute paradise.
    It’s very easy to take a little house here in the summer for almost nothing, and money is virtually still unheard of. B

To Charles and Margharita Chatwin
    Postcard of Brooklyn Bridge | New York | 3 January 1963
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    An average of –
4 parties a day,
4 times the work.
4 hours sleep
4 times as expensive
– and I’m fine. B
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    Eager to go further in tracing Robert Byron’s footsteps, in the summer of 1963 Chatwin travelled with Robert Erskine to Afghanistan, the first of three visits.

To Margharita Chatwin
    Herat | Afghanistan | 10 September [1963]
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    Darling Mum,
    Afghanistan at last! It took three days to penetrate this far from Meshed which is only 250 miles away over the Persian border. Robert had a fetish that the bus service was totally useless. We were told that oil tankers crossed to Kandahar daily and duly made arrangements to accompany a Mr Huchang Fesolahi at 7am