DIFFICULTY TIMES ON RETURN TO EUROPE (1956-1965)

Overview of the period by Beryl

“So we finally arrived, and after a brief hello to Auntie Helene in Carennac made our way to Orthez and the splendid welcome from Auntie Louise, so it was there we were able to stay, and Guy went to work on his book, Charles and Tooty started their first school and set out to master their father tongue, Beryl too, though from Auntie Louise she was to learn far more about various French dishes than she had ever heard of, much more in language, as our Aunt was much happier with the local 'patois' and Guy was kept busy translating «patois» into French and into English.

The book being completed we decided to try our luck in England, well, we didn’t have any luck, either the book wasn’t good enough or Guy as usual was in advance of his time.

So we looked for other things mainly a small business, but our capital was as small as our choice. A bike shop, a lousy cafe or a baker’s shop (everyone wanted a French baker) wasn’t tempting also Charles and Tooty were forgetting their bit of French, and in France we could keep their English, Beryl would always see to that. So bye-bye to my Mum and Dad, and back to Orthez. Guy would seriously look for a job. There we were lucky. Teachers were in short supply, Guy had the necessary qualifications to be accepted. He did speak English, all he needed was the university papers to prove it.

His first posting was to Normandy in Sées, from where he could attend the university in Caen, when his classes permitted. We were so poor that they made Beryl an English Assistant. Well paid that, and only twelve hours a week. Quite a joke as Beryl learnt a lot more French than her pupils did English. Also if they gave trouble, she could send them to Guy for correction. So on the whole they behaved well enough. This went on for two years with Guy sailing through his exams. Time indeed to get on with the rest of the family.”

Arrival in Carennac

Unfortunately, Beryl's diary had ended in Rome, so we do not have any first-hand account of those events, which I remember dimly. Family memory has kept Hélène's indignation that Guy insisted on arriving at the house via the carreyrou, which features in so many of his letters from Australia. He also had announced beforehand that he would only stay "a few dozen hours" in Carennac because he had to finish his book as soon as possible, and the sepulchral quiet of his step-mother's house would be conducive to good work.

The family did stay a few days, but lifted anchor very rapidly, luckily we have a few details from Hélène's diary. The first visit was naturally for Granou, then the second for Glanes. Meanwhile, there were several interviews with journalists¹⁶², and this was quite an event in the village. On the last day, the family visited Philip Oyler in Chapou, and then Le Merle, to renew with Jean Montin and the cousins. It is possible that Beryl was not impressed with the first contact with the Carennac house, and already found Hélène overbearing, though I am sure the aunt was on her best behaviour.

At least the press coverage continued unabated, motivated by the fact that it was a local hero that was being celebrated. Two serious articles came out in the days following their arrival.

Both are distinguished by a good style, and got the facts right. The first, in Sud-Ouest, celebrates the exploit: "Coming all the way from Sydney to Carennac in such a set-up is a marvellous achievement." "It was noticeable that after spending 300 nights in their waggon, they were not used to their aunt's cosy home. (…) our Australian and Indian colleagues, who interviewed the travellers as they passed, were struck by the ingeniousness of the tiny mobile home, gently dubbed 'put-put' or 'S-cargo'. Nothing is missing: petrol stove, medicine chest, stores for two weeks, etc.". The article 'is ends on Guy's conclusion: 'my purpose is taking this trip was not scientific, but to show that a healthy family could travel economically over long distances visiting the world."

The other article is very similar in content, spanning both the exploit and the actors, written by André Vedrenne, probably the son of the author of the 1930's brochure on Carennac. One of Guy's best answers was to the question: 'Why did you come to think of such a project? "A life without risk, monotonous, too quickly prosperous. In France, we have to run after our keep, over there, it's the opposite, the money is running after you." In French, the expression was 'courrir après le beefsteak'. The biggest trouble they faced along the way was dysentery. The reporter, at the end, indicated that the Montins had accumulated a wealth of photographs and other evidence, from which they were thinking of writing a book and newspaper articles, and giving conferences.

The story produced two more articles in England: the Kent messenger (26 April) titled: "Kent parents can now sit back and relax, daughter complets 15,000 mil journey from Australia", viewing the trip from the Busters café in High Street Margate. The paper stated: "they had arrived in Carennac in central France, Guy Montin's home town. There they will stay for a while savouring the luxury of clean sheets and regular meals. The journey was made extremely adventurous because of their mode of transport – a three wheeled scooter and plywood trailer. (…) From the time they left Sydney, they have endeavoured to appear as much like the natives of the lands they were in as possible. Beryl wore a sari in India, her husband flourished a fine black beard. KN the countries around Turkey, they wore thick fleece-lined jackets."

Selling the story: Paris (May-June 1957)

In the Rue Saint-Gilles (21 April), the welcome was equally warm, but with no publicity, which allows us to say that the real terminus of the trip was Carennac. Perhaps Auntie Hélène had won the battle between Carennac and Orthez, the official arrival point had always been his mother's small village.

Beryl described the Marie-Claire order¹⁶⁶: "they want to incorporate (the feature) in a 'Do-It-Yourself' article, no doubt in due time France will be full of little family put-puts all put-putting their way to Australia, while aunties will be growing white hairs at home just thinking about it…" Guy was pleased to announce that the Marie-Claire order included, with a cheque for 300,000 F, a total rehabilitation of the put-put, which took two weeks. He was less pleased that his initial 25 page draft "had been whittled down to 12 by the sub-editor, with the soppy story at the beginning intact but all the rest hopeless jumbled. The names Carennac and Orthez got mixed up and they just selected the shortest."

Back to Orthez to finish the book and inherit (July- November 1957)

Having done all they could in Paris, the family now returned to Orthez, after a more prolonged stop in Carennac,¹⁶⁸ which was the first of a few stormy visits to Hélène over that period. On this first proper return to the land of his ancestors, Guy had time to visit all the family landmarks, Glanes specially, but also Teyssieu, even La Blénie, but Hélène also recorded several very tense discussions, concluding after several days "quelque chose est brisé". Even Beryl has a little scene with the demanding aunt. On two or three occasions, the children were left with their great-aunt, which must have been a strange situation.

Finally, the family made it to Orthez and the comforts of Rue Saint-Gilles, to give Guy a quiet place to complete his writing. This is another of the places that have an important family significance, though not as great as Carennac. We lived there on and off in 1957 to 1959, and then came back after our time in Normandy, then in Maupoey. I remember it as quite grand, though later it appeared to me as a tomb, a sinister, ill-built town house. But as I child, I loved the garden, in which I had my own secret place in a tree, and there were plenty of outhouses to explore with their mysterious and dark corners. I knew that my father had lived there as a child when he was my age, and that was significant. In our stay in the 60's, I was even given his room. Auntie Louise, who had never had children of her own, was impatient, just like Hélène, and did not like to hear children making noise, even Tooty and I, who were supposed to be well brought-up. The house also contained a family history, with a few objects and books that had belonged to Auguste. It was the first time I had some background, and it must have been interesting that it was French.

In August, Tooty and I were sent to kindergarten, probably to keep the house quiet for the adults, while "Guy types away at (his) book with the insouciance that is (his) main trait.¹⁶⁹" He is invited to give a conference with slides at the Protestant Cercle Fraternel. In October, Charles and Tooty start school at Saint Joseph, by which time they must have already learnt some French, as I remember no trauma for being plunged in a place where I did not speak the language. This is how their father described them after a few days at school: "Tooty est un cancre précoce et Charles un génie retardé."

But the big business of these months were the plans made by Louise to make her step-son her legal heir, passing over her own nephews and nieces. Louise, after catching a bad cold, took fright and sent him to the notaire, who came up with a brilliant idea requiring some old documents. We know about it, because Guy had to find proof that he had lived in the house for x number of years before leaving it in 1940, and he enlisted the urgent help of the family archivist, Hélène¹⁷⁰. Finally, this evidence was not necessary, because the notaire suggested that Louise adopt Guy, his name becoming Montin-Pourtau. This apparently required the agreement of the other holders of the name, his brother Charles.

I will not quote here the intellectual acrobatics¹⁷¹ that Guy went through to accept to be seen as squeezing a house and a farm out of an old relative, by-passing the natural heirs. We know from his previous writings that he was keen on appearing detached from these sordid considerations. But the fact is he did lend himself to these manoeuvers, and became the owner of the two properties for the price of the legal fees only¹⁷². He managed to express his reticence by refusing to hassle his children into calling Louise "grand-mère", (while the Eauze Montins had been doing so for some time¹⁷³.) Louise herself was most bent on secrecy, wishing all her relatives not to know that they had been disinherited.¹⁷⁴

In September, Hélène paid a short visit to Orthez¹⁷⁵, after a stop in Lourdes. She stayed at the hotel opposite the Rue St Gilles house, and got to know the family a bit better, taking the children for walks and to the public garden. Guy took a short trip to Eauze with Léopold Junqua.

In October, Mrs Lidwell, perhaps desperate at not seeing her daughter in England, and in spite of her deafness, came by train to Orthez for a few weeks, during which she of course had to be taken on a visit to Lourdes, being a devout Catholic. But we know she was fearless, she had travelled from Sydney to England and back by herself in 1955 to see her sister. She had a fine sense of humour, answering, when it was offered that she visit the Orthez cemetery where Toussaint flowers were going to be deposited on the Montin tomb: No thank you, my first visit will be the last."¹⁷⁶ But she declined a ride to Carennac to see Hèlène, it is not too difficult to guess why, after a short outing in the put-put in the vicinity of Orthez. After her stay, Guy reported to Hélène that during that visit, Beryl had been able to see the gap in values and outlook on life that now separated her from her parents¹⁷⁷. A later card told of the poor deaf grandma's adventurous return: she was put on the wrong train by an unscrupulous or stupid porter, and had to be rescued and re-routed by top SNCF officials.

Just after Toussaint, the family took another short trip to Carennac and Granou, in spite of the bad weather. Hélène again in charge of the children.

A (half-hearted?) attempt to settle in England

There is visibly a gap in the archive, as there is nearly nothing for the period starting November 1957, till the return to Orthez 12 months later¹⁷⁸. But I remember vaguely some of that time, so the account will be brief, but not empty. There is an entry in Hélène's diary that the Montin family stopped for three nights in Carennac (11-14 June 1958) on their way to England, Tooty was unwell. Hélène had a big discussion with her nephew and was sad to see them leave. The family stayed some time in Paris, then moved on to Margate (Guy sent a card to Hélène from Dunkerque on 1 July). It is probably around that date that the family visited Expo58, in Brussels, which I dimly remember (the Atomium was quite striking even for a 6 year-old).

In spite of the warm welcome by his step-mother and aunt, Guy's dislike for France endured, perhaps fuelled by the difficulties of making a living. Reinstallation in England instead of France had also never been ruled out, if only because of Beryl's attachment to her parents. Guy must also have had nice memories of his time in the UK during the war. He knew however that he could not expect much financial assistance from his in-laws, in view of "different family customs" in the UK.

Added to that was the reason that Beryl had probably by now guessed that she would be expected to look after Louise once her old hanger-on Lucie died of her cancer, and she must have put her foot down refusing indignantly, in spite of the benefits heaped on the family since their return, and her affection for Louise. The reason they gave the step mother for leaving Orthez seems to have been to be in a better position to get the travel book published in London. After all, it had been written in English, or at least the last draft was.
"So after a time in Paris, we arrived in Margate, where we stayed for about a year¹⁷⁹, returning to Orthez in November 1958" (Beryl's summary for Tony Barker).

In her short summary written for Tony Barker, this is how Beryl explained that period. "The book being completed we decided to try our luck in England, well, we didn’t have any luck, either the book wasn’t good enough or Guy as usual was in advance of his time.

So we looked for other things mainly a small business, but our capital was as small as our choice. A bike shop, a lousy cafe or a baker’s shop (everyone wanted a French baker) weren’t tempting; also Charles and Tooty were forgetting their bit of French, and in France we could keep their English, Beryl would always see to that."

Now there is no written documentation about the time spent in Margate. But I remember the back yard at "Busters"¹⁸⁰, the café owned by my grandparents Harry and Olive Lidwell, because there was a bombed out area just behind it. Tooty and I were sent to school in Cliftonville, which is a twin-town on a hill going West from the centre of Margate. All that remains of those days are the school photograph portraits of Tooty and I.

I also remember the Guy Fawkes bomb fire, which must have been 1958, as the year before we were still in Orthez. On the day itself, the people had brought all sorts of old pieces of furniture and chairs which made an enormous fire at night. I must have been still quite young, because the next day, I wanted to go back to check if the sand has melted or otherwise suffered from the heat.

There is no account on the file about the various attempts to get the book sold, called "Dreamalive" by that time. There are only two letters, one of clear rejection from Robert Hale Limited and G. Bell and son respectively both London publishing companies. Both letters and polite, and the Bell one has liked the samples, "looking forward to seeing the completed manuscript."¹⁸¹ We know from Beryl's summary that they gave up at this stage, though the book was completed.

This may be the moment, when Dreamalive was buried, to take a look at what must have been a major disappointment for Guy (and Beryl). I have set the book in electronic format and published in on the web, as part of the Overland crossing memorial.¹⁸² This initiative was motivated by the number of people enquiring about the trip, nearly exclusively from a Lambretta fan-club perspective, i.e. a love of the three-wheeler, now a vintage collectable.

The book is quite readable, but it fails as a travel book because it is focused not on what the protagonists saw and learnt, but most of the text is taken up by the conversations, loaded with quips. There are many ways of getting a book wrong, and this was just one of the many. The product was not uninteresting, but it was not marketable, mainly because it had been written with no idea, or wrong ones, about what publishers would take. As far as I can establish, Guy did not seek any advice on approaching the profession, especially before drafting. He must have thought that his experience of journalism, from the readers' room in Australia, would serve. Fundamentally, he believed in his own literary talent, in the old fashioned way, which would be recognised unless the "system" decided to ostracise him unjustly. He probably had not accepted the idea that genius was "10% inspiration, 90% perspiration."¹⁸³ And here we arrive at one the character flaws identified early by his aunt Hélène, who confided it to me, that he never sought the company and advice of successful people, probably preferring to explain their success by "piston" or willyness rather than talent. A sign of this was his reluctance to profit from the wisdom of the great Delage, a friend of the family for decades, and even his examiner at the baccalaureat in 1938¹⁸⁴.

It is also interesting to compare with Gabrielle Hirzel's book, "Cinq de Billancourt" published at about the same time: much longer, it unashamedly reads as a travel book, ferreting out interesting anecdotes on the mishaps of the crew in those difficult countries. Though much longer and perhaps heavily sub-edited, it is a remarkable achievement. It may perhaps be said to run out of steam at the end, the Australia bit, but this may be because Gaby thought the country uninteresting, or it had been handled before too many times. The book has a lot of dialogue too, but all the discussions are aimed at highlighting some exotic trait or habit to make the reader laugh or cry. The characters are not the point of the book. It must have been very vexing for Guy and Beryl that this secretary from Renault had been published in the good Seuil house.

Return to Orthez

It is not too easy to establish, more than sixty years later, why the English experience came to an end so quickly. The Lidwells must have been happy to have their daughter back, even if they never took to Guy who represented, at least for Harry, everything that the ordinary Brit disliked about foreigners. Later Guy would say that he could never have felt at home in the petit bourgeois atmosphere of a little sea coast town in England, where he found the same prejudice against Mediterranean types as he had suffered in Australia. With his father-in-law in particular, they were like chalk and cheese, there was never any common ground between them. We luckily do have one letter from Margate to his stepmother, dated 18 October 1958, which does give some clues in passing, it is fairly conventional and does not ring quite true: Guy explained that "Beryl says that we must come back to Orthez, first because it is our duty towards you, that it would be a crime to abandon you completely in the case that Lucie dies. She wanted to come back one month after arriving (in England). But for me, coming back now means giving up my dearest ambition for a long time and perhaps for ever. If I come back I need to give up the past, sell the scooter and buy a car to arrive in Orthez like everybody. Especially if I want to find a job in Lacq." The rest of the letter is a request for a loan of 200,000 F to buy a car, when coming back via Paris. He wanted to keep 1,000 £ in England to be on the safe side, and would be arriving in Orthez with nearly nothing, not more than 100,000F, determined to take any odd job. Finally, "Beryl will look after you and the children."

But perhaps the last sentences of the letter are sincere: "I would for myself be quite happy, fundamentally (au fond) to come back once and for all. Especially now that politics are much better¹⁸⁵. Don't tell anyone, except people who may find a job for me." It seems that he had buried his pride and was willing to throw himself on the mercy of his step, now adoptive, mother, and enter at last "the rat-race". I draw attention to this concept which was one of my parents favourites, that I heard all through my childhood. It meant that there was something fundamentally demeaning in holding a small job and taking all the meanness required to make one's way to a better position.

Hélène heard about the impending return from her friend in Paris Lucienne (4 November), with the indication "sentiments mitigés" (probably hers). On 25 November, Guy visited very briefly Hélène in flat at 16 rue Carnot, Brive, arriving alone in the put-put and returning by train. This was as usual not a success, something to do with Beryl (Hélène complains of his "dureté abominable" in her diary). The next day Guy left for a day in Carennac to mothball the old put-put. The whole family arrived a few days later in a Vespa (according to the diary). I think this was the new car bought with money from Orthez to give the appearance of being a normal family. In the evening they took the children to see the "moving toys" and be photographed.¹⁸⁶.Then they visited Granou and the day after departed for Orthez, leaving all their food behind.
By then, the family was being helped through a difficult patch by the two aunts, Hélène, in Brive and Louise in Orthez. While Louise offered a spacious house in an area not devoid of jobs for English speakers, it was Hélène who had the connections that would prove more useful. It is well-known that such returnees face big problems, as their experience abroad is downplayed, or not valued enough, by those who stayed put and applied themselves to whatever calling was placed in their way. There were a few exemptions, people a little more enlightened who were sensitive to a wider outlook, either because of a more open personality, or a genuine interest in foreign culture. Even in Orthez, there were such people. A retired teacher, Mr Lapassade¹⁸⁷ was particularly helpful and supportive at the time Guy was looking for a teaching post in 1957, and we were friends for many years. When I was as student in Pau, he gave me some philosophy books which I still possess. I remember he has produced a map of Gascogne with the local variants of a number of most frequently used words. He later became a well-known scholar in the Occitan language and literature. The Tourné family, who owned one of the most prosperous pharmacies in Orthez, were particularly supportive and remained became life-long friends, often visiting in Bérilegui from their house in Ciboure. They were, I remember, the (official) closest friends of the family when we had the slightly grand funeral of Auntie Louise, metaphorically holding our hands.

The difficult search for a job

This part, though heavily documented, I will keep short, as it is a little embarrassing for a son to witness his father at a disadvantage, and unnecessarily trying to shield with from the most unpleasant aspects, what he himself saw as humiliations (even if we don't seem them as such). So I will summarize the dossier, and those interested can examine the sources if they wish so for more details.

My parents were lucky to fairly easily find a new professional start, those were the days of growth and full employment just starting. Not everybody had followed the straight path, and there were still opportunities for less conventional types like Guy. All the same, it must have been an unsettling time for the young couple stuck in Rue Saint Gilles with a loving but old-fashioned stepmother, and facing what they saw as the sneers of established people vis-à-vis those with no social standing of their own.

The early months of 1959 were a stressful time for the family, living with Guy's stepmother at 1 rue St Gilles in Orthez. It is well documented from a number of letters to Hélène, who was masterminding the search once it had narrowed down to teaching opportunities, on her suggestion.¹⁸⁸ The family now had a small but normal car, a Vespa 400. Owning a very small car was presented as a sign of not being as conventional as everyone else, who would be buying Renault 4 CV, or a Dauphine, I am not mentioning more bourgeois vehicle. As a little boy, I was naturally interested in cars, the best one in those days was the Citroën DS. I do not remember how the put-put cabin was left in Carennac while the engine and chassis was given to Granou to raise the water from the Bave to the farm on the hill above.

The first months were devoted to a search around Orthez, with the help of childhood friend Jacques Moutet, son of the maire and future MP and maire himself, whose house was just opposite ours in the Rue Saint Gilles. As I have stated before, Guy belonged to the commercial bourgeoisie of Orthez, quite an enviable position, and could call on quite a few people for help. Introductions were given to a number of companies at Lacq, the main employer in the region deemed to have jobs requiring English, mainly because of the prospects of the new Common Market. But at the SNPA (the main company there), there was downsizing occurring after several fat cow years where too many people and entered via connections rather than skills, and Guy felt looked down upon by the engineers who ruled those concerns.

It must have been Hélène who, in December 1958, put him on the scent of a teaching job, by detailing the age limits for entering the profession, for those with military services and children. In her diary entry for 12 December, she noted that Guy was about to embrace teaching, and that she referred him by return of post to the Delage, who were very old friends. In his case he could apply until he was 37. Guy then asked his aunt to check the requirements in detail, and was then in a position to visit the Rectorat and the Inspection d'Académie in Bordeaux. M. Delage may have refused to see him, and following this possible rejection, Guy wrote a masterpiece of hypocrisy¹⁸⁹, which he himself described at the letter of a "pignouf", a term questioned by Hélène. In those days, with a "bac complet", i.e. the two parts, you could get a teaching job without sitting an exam. You seemed to have to enrol your own children at the state school however (rather than catholic ones), from what Guy found out, and Tooty and I were at St Joseph, so in the "wrong" school.¹⁹⁰

Guy also tried the American connection in Bordeaux, probably on the strength of his position in the US consulate in Indochina, without success.

In mid- January he visited Brive from where he took short trips to Tulle to see the inspecteur d'académie, and Clermont Ferrand, where he checked employment possibilities in Michelin, which Guy found too patronising. He wrote to Beryl that if he had a job there, they would have to attend church. Finally, he sent off applications to two départements, Orne and Seine Maritime and asked for information about jobs in Morocco.

From all those contacts arose the possibility of a position in the Pas-de-Calais, where they would not know what the children were doing in Orthez: then as now it was easier to find jobs further from the sun. The baccalaureate was enough of a formal diploma, and there was a dossier to fill in about "antecedents and knowledge" which would have brought out his impressive experience of Anglophone countries.

The rest of the dossier is a week-by-week account of the procedure, with constant quips from Guy, embarrassing to read now, so I will not quote from this part of the file. Guy himself realised, and admitted to his aunt, that his irony was in the end his worst enemy, as it did not ingratiate him with future employers.

All the time in Orthez, he was supported by the good Mr Lapassade, also president of the Cercle Fraternel and secretary of the film club, who constantly reassured him that "the Alma Mater is a gentle mad house" where he would find his place¹⁹¹. Guy gave him as a referee when he applied in the Academy of Orne, thanks to an introduction from Hélène, and apparently wrote a more "orthodox" application.

These efforts met with success quite rapidly, and Guy's tone changes completely. On the way up to take his job in Sees, he wrote from Brive¹⁹², where he spent the weekend with Hélène in her flat. This rare letter to his wife was the start of a correspondence which lasted until Beryl moved with the children to Sées. He was very confident and happy about the new start: "This is a new adventure just as fun as any other and you'll be in it before you know where you are." But Hélène did not keep a good memory of the visit: in her diary she quoted Guy refusing offers of money with this verbatim "nous n'avons pas besoin d'argent, mère poule sans tête !!" She was furious.

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