Marriage and happy days in Australia

Getting back in touch with the family

The reconciliation, if you can use this word for the end of a long silence, clearly took place on the insistence of my mother. Shortly after his marriage, Guy wrote to his brother Charles, the chemist in Eauze (Gers)⁸¹:

In this same letter, he expresses one of his life-long favourite ideas: "one thing I can say in favour of international marriages: instead of blaming the spouse, one can take it out on the nation, and thank God, the love of one's country is less touchy than amour-propre.. The Frenchmen are lazy, the English girls are hypocrites, and one starts to discuss these stereotypes and the argument loses all its bite".

He also got back in touch, and perhaps he had never severed the connection, with his step mother Louise in Orthez, with whom he had remained on easy terms. Thanking her for having sent some foie gras pâté, he raises the issue of his return, adn his difficulty of getting re-connecting with his brother, admitting that "he had never given Charles a reason to help him".⁸²

But renewing contact with his brother was comparatively easy, compared to the embarrassment and pain of getting back in touch with Auntie Hélène. But it had the collateral consequence for us that Guy spent a lot of energy trying to explain, or perhaps justify his past silence. It was Beryl who decided to mend bridges, by writing to announce the birth of their first child, in June 1951. To this letter she appended two unsent letters written by Guy in the preceding year. Guy himself only wrote a cheeky post-scriptum, in tiny handwriting, at the bottom of his wife's letter: "Tard vaut-il mieux que jamais? Meilleurs baisers et à bientôt chère Tante, je finirai bien par t'écrire. Ecrire à sa Tante, c'est un peu comme fumer la pipe, çà n'est vraiment naturel qu'après la trentaine. Plus que six mois !"

It is worth taking a look at my mother's olive branch, which seems to be not the very first letter, or to be in response to a letter from Hélène who may have got the address from Orthez.

Dear Aunt Helene, I was very happy to hear from you Guy told me a lot about his youth in Carennac, he has only pleasant recollections of that period , and the main reason why he does not write seems to be a certain uneasiness of conscience, he has started many letters to you and I enclose copies of two I have found in his files. I am sure I will manage to make him finish a letter to you next time I have him to myself during a holiday or sickness.

As you know, we were married last September, which will spare you the surprise of finding yourself a great-aunt early next year. We are very happy to have a child in a country where it will have the best material chances, but we are rather worried as to its cultural future. Guy thinks that he would prefer to leave this prosperous country to having our children grow up as perfect strangers with the definitely inferior culture of a very young country, this is as near as I can get to answering your question regarding our return to Europe, of course we would like to go back very much but our present circumstances are too favourable here and too uncertain in the old world.

I was thrilled with the photo of Guy, the dear little boy, he still is a dear little boy though terribly grown up at times and quite a handful. He tells me he would give anything for a few of the pictures he knows you have of his Carennac vacations, his period with the White Fathers, the Carennac house and with a special mention a picture of his mother at about the age of fourteen. If you could possibly part with some of these photos I'm sure Guy and I will owe you one of our loveliest evenings. I am looking forward to your next letter, especially as you are the only relative of Guy's that I am able to correspond with… my French is still in its early infancy and I must say Guy is of little help. I shall probably learn more from our progeny. Yours, with love, Beryl

At least Beryl does not beat around the bush, and this is the earliest and clearest expression of the view that the couple could not stay in Australia once the children would grow up. This was confirmed in a letter from Guy to his step-mother⁸³, which were generally more serious in tone and content: "Beryl is learning French with records. It is very difficult for her because she is very busy. We have decided to come back to France, whether there is war or peace, prosperity or famine, before Charles reaches the age of going to school. We absolutely don't want him to become an Australian. There are a few rate nice Australians, but they only think about leaving the country. Even Beryl who is English says that she would much prefer to go without many things and live in a beautiful country like France, than to have everything, nor nearly everything, in Australia."

It is striking that even in 2014, things had still not changed for European immigrants with some education or cultural background: the very same thing was said to me by a French young hotel employee, a father himself, of about Guy's age at the time. Now let us turn to the enclosures, the two draft Canossa letters from Guy to his aunt.

The first is dated 17 March, presumably 1949, at a time when Guy, still a bachelor, probably ill and perhaps in a lonely and dark mood. It is headed from Guy's very first address in Australia, before he moved to rented accommodation. It is inscribed by a cautious foreword by my mother:

Because it is such a landmark, though unofficial, I will give long extracts of this unsent letter, and my work is made easier by the fact that the original is in English.

Thirty years later, the same themes were still being discussed, with no change to the relationship, so I am quite familiar with the issue, and have made up my mind on the subject, though I will spare the readers my views, letting them make their own opinion. They should simply bear in mind that Guy had gone through some traumatic times. He had not suffered any personal tragedy (he does not mention his father's death anywhere), but seems to have been hard hit by the defeat of France, the calamity of Nazi occupation, and the disappointments of the Liberation⁸⁸.

A second unsent letter, dated 4 January 1951, by a recently married Guy is already much better spirited and optimistic and no longer dwells on the past. Here are some translated excerpts:

God knows that I have always felt like writing to you and the only thing that always stopped me is my congenital epistolary laziness, worsened by the need to write a long epistle to excuse my past prolonged neglect. A sort of vicious circle. My most recent such effort dates from last year, when, having fallen ill, I started an extensive act of contrition which fell short, as you will see⁸⁹.

Having now got married four months ago, I was weak enough to hint to my wife that I owne an Aunt, to whom I had not written for ages. "That isn't don. So here I am starting another letter to Auntie Helen" ⁹⁰ with however better chances of finishing it.

Ma dear wife, formerly Beryl Huntington Lidwell, is an English young woman from Margate who followed her parents to Australia where they were hoping to retire. But devaluation does not encourage such idleness, so they have bought a small food shop which is growing in today's Australia. Our material life is therefore quite successful in a quite stable world, and the only thing we are missing is the feeling of being at home. This country is a caricature of England and the social atmosphere is as insipid as a pudding which would have crossed the Equator Like all those newly arrived in these new countries, we care caught between nostalgia for Europe and the well-being of the Antipodes. As by design, it is, at least for the moment, impossible to combine the two by traveling. One can't have everything.

I do not know if you remember sending me, to Nay in 1936, a collection of photographs of the major cities of the British Empire. One of them was an aerial view of Sydney, showing in the forefront the famous bridge, then brand new and still today the widest arch in the world. I naturally noticed this striking photograph and I remember well having thought at the time: "another thing that I will probably never see!" Well, now it has been 2 years that I have been spending eight hours a day at the top of said bridge, and I must say that I find that time short. (…) As my English is now very fluent, and many people think they are the only ones to know French, many funny things happen to me. I meet all sorts of people from different countries, which does not prevent me from not understanding anything about the general situation, which seems unconnected with the sum of local problems. (…)

The first true letter (handwritten and signed) from Guy is dated 8 October 1951 contains some useful explanations; here it is in translation:

The rest of the letter is quite fascinating, describing friends from many countries, and the easy Australian way of life, including lots of details about life in the country, the price of land, etc.

Once the contact had been established, Guy and Hélène, and even Beryl, became regular correspondents. Letter writing became a regular habit once more, and has given us a very detailed view of that stage of my parents life, with loads of details about baby Charles. Presents started to flow back and forth across the oceans: food parcels for auntie, clothes, magazines and baby presents for the young ones.

Of special significance were the material sent by Hélène, at the request of her nephew: photographs of Guy as a child, during his holidays at Carennac, as a Père Blanc. Hélène also sent a copy of the Philip Oyler book on the Dordogne valley that paints an idyllic picture of that little country.⁹² According to his wife, Guy was "quite homesick" after reading the book.

One of the constant themes of the correspondence is Carennac, the house and the environs. Auntie Hélène had always maintained, and she was still doing so 30 years later when I was by then an adult, that she had kept the house by a sense of duty towards her father and her nephew, probably hoping against hope to elicit some gratefulness. She would even put forward all the expenses she had had for maintenance, to which Guy used to retort that she had had the house rent-free for decades. So at that early stage, it seems she must have wanted to make sure that her future retirement there would be recognised as a sacrifice to family interests. The only sympathy she would get was an encouragement to live as long as possible to spare him the care of the property

While continuing to claim his love of the village and its region, Guy expressed realistic doubts as to the possibility of actually living there, apart from retirement. "Carennac is of course a delightful place, way above anywhere else. But how the devil can one live there? Of course Carennac interests us! There is probably nowhere in the world more pleasant and beautiful to live in (douceur de vivre). But I have the impression that it is a lost paradise. If you think you can show me a way of living in France that would allow me to spend two months a year in Carennac, I promise I will come back as soon as the baby can travel.

Birth of Charles Harry, nicknamed "Napoleon"

The birth of Charles on 8 January 1952, in the middle of a heat wave, was a great event for Guy and Beryl, judging by their enthusiastic letters to Auntie Hélène, who by that time had been reinstated as the closest relative, and fairy godmother. 1952 is the year most abundantly documented in the file, with the future looking bright. A telegram was sent to Hélène on the 10^th, and Beryl was the first to write, from the hospital itself, on 14 January. "Both Guy and I are very thrilled with having a son. I don't think either of us expected we should get what we wanted. The Grandparents are living up to tradition and being proud. I feel we shall have to produce another to prevent the little mite from getting spoilt, and anyhow Guy seems to have set his heart on three more, so I look like being pretty busy."

As the author of this chronicle, who started life with this silly nickname Napoleon, which looks much too grand for such a poor "mite", I must explain. His parents had not been blinded by parenthood, as you may imagine, but were just conveying their surprise (and delight) at the imperious and selfish attitude of their first born, king of his own universe. The baby received many other flattering names, such as "Junket", a reference to his milky diet. This is perhaps the first instance on file of my father's annoying knack of giving nicknames to everybody⁹³.

Several letters insist on the quality of the care given to mothers and babies in Australia. Even before the birth, Guy informed his brother⁹⁴ that the government had gone to great expense to make births safe and comfortable, so much so that Australian women volunteered to have many babies.

It may also be worth reading Guy's long first letter, written on his 30^th birthday⁹⁵, about his son: the "creature" has a most evil expression, and its cranium looks like of a 75mm shell ("obus"). Even after a week, the tot preserved either a disgusted or a furious countenance, where Guy finds a resemblance with grandfather Bouyssonie's range of expressions. Only when the baby had taken possession of the purpose-built 2m X 2m room erected by his father according to childcare manuals, did he start mellowing. Apparently, the glare of the lighting at the maternity was the cause of his distress. Follows a detailed description which modesty prevents me from copying here. All in all, a very proud father with some literary talent for describing new-borns.

The corner shop at Newtown

In April 1953, Guy and Beryl took their first step towards economic success by buying a small business in Newtown, a suburb on the south side of the city. The place was chosen because of its good location for business, the price being moderate because the building was in such a bad state . The corner shop at 85 Darley Street sold fruit, vegetables and lollies, which Guy would buy wholesale three times a week at dawn, competing with the Italians who made up a majority of the traders. That is where he started to learn Italian, a language he had always been attracted to, for its association with Roman history. Beryl looked after the shop while Guy continued to work at the Pylon. The house that came with the shop was sufficiently large to accommodate four boarders who paid 3 pounds ten shillings a week. No wonder he would write to Hélène that they worked on average 60 hours a week, in the hope of making enough money to be in a position to safely return to France. There is also the story that the baby Charles would deplete the stock by taking one mouthful out of any apple he could lay hands on, before tossing it away. The corner shop is still there unchanged, displaying the pretty friezes that are distinctive to the early Australian style, and must be worth, in spite of its small size, more than 1 million euros. It can be viewed easily on Google Maps. During our 1983 visit, we were able to see and photograph the corner house.

In July 1953, Guy shared with his aunt Hélène their project "of the moment": selling up and buying a business on the English coast, in "Bournemouth [!] or Margate, which would allow us to spend one or two months a year in France, and I could then envisage settling in France knowing all the facts." To reach that goal, he says that both Beryl and himself have to work themselves to death, to put aside 20 pounds a week, and accumulate the necessary 3000£.

Birth of Yvonne Esther, aka Tooty

On 13 January, Beryl wrote to Aunt Hélène that she was expecting anytime "the next Montin." No doubt tired by the pregnancy while having to look after the shop, she had entered the hospital a few days in advance of her confinement to get some rest: "I feel on top of the world and the sooner the better" speaking about the impending birth. "Guy wants another son, I think I do to, Charles is so encouraging, but a little daughter would be nice too. I hope you understand why Guy and I never write. The shop takes up all our time."

Tooty was born at the Paddington Hospital for Women, just like her brother. Continuing the same letter, Beryl wrote: "Well Auntie Helene, all over again, Yvonne Montin arrived 1:40 Saturday Jan 16^th, 7lb, 22' long, very well and healthy. An easy time for me too, took just over two hours, which is amazingly quick. I think she looks just like Charles did, she's managed to be one oz heavier and half inch longer, we're all very happy, my Mother and Father particularly wanted a gran-daughter this time. Charles didn't say what he wanted, but Guy and I agree perhaps as there is only two years difference a sister might be better. (…) We are now trying very hard to sell our business, with two babies it would be difficult to give the time and help that Guy needs from me to keep things running. (…) We shall continue to save, the ambition is to return to Europe is still very much with us."

Tooty's first home was the flat above the Darley Street corner shop. She was baptised on 21 March of the same year at St Pius V Catholic Church in Enmore⁹⁶. Yvonne, was christened, naturally, in honour of Guy's mother, who died in childbirth. Yvonne's godfather was family friend Jack Aberbethy, and her godmother Marie-France Montin, eldest child of Charles in Eauze.

A few months later⁹⁷, Beryl reports that the children are very well: "Yvonne is nine months now, rather on the small side, but has the sweetest temper and seems to love her big brother who plays very gently (so far) with her. They are both very much alike."

Becoming landlords: the Bondi Junction boarding house

In May 1954, having thanks to hard work doubled their capital⁹⁸, they sold the corner shop business and bought a house at 59 Lawson Street, Bondi Junction. The house itself has now been replaced by a modern higher building, but its neighbour, n°61, must be very much like the one where Tooty and I played as young children. It was spacious enough for Beryl to renew with the Lidwell tradition of taking in four boarders, making 10 to 12 pounds a week in rents. In later years, Guy used to explain the bonanza of this new country where an immigrant, arriving with nothing, could own a house five years later. Their mortgage was only1/4 of the purchase price of 2,600 pounds, while the accrued capital, once realised, would later be used for the return and re-installation in France.

Perhaps getting desperate, Hélène offered to give Guy half a million francs to help him settle back in France. This was not acceptable, but Guy offered that she use part of the money to come and join them in Sydney, and spend her first winter of retirement in the southern summer⁹⁹. He explained that she could take a cargo ship from the Messageries Maritimes, which accepted 12 passengers, who have access to the whole ship and take their meals in the officers' quarter. Individual cabins and long stopovers. Once in Sydney, she could even live on very little money, and she would be a guest for the first six months, with the advantage that she could teach the children "their real language". This is true a case of "absence makes the heart grow fonder", as in later years, Guy could not stand the idea that Hélène might come and live even for a week with the family. At that stage, he seemed slightly less in a hurry, preferring not to "lâcher la proie pour l'ombre" [needs translation] and come back around age 35 with enough capital to re-establish himself in France.

Beryl too tried to temper her aunt's impatience, while supporting the scheme to get Hélène to take the trip down under:

"I would dearly love to tell you exactly when we will come back but all I can say is if you could spare the time to write and worry Guy more often, it would be good, a letter from home fires him with fresh enthusiasm, even if he takes time to reply. I am really sorry that you think Australia is too far to visit us, of course I understand but I wish you would give it more thought.. My mother travelled to England and back this year in the space of four months with the added difficulty of deafness. She went to see her sister and also to find out the possibilities of settling there again. She returned undecided as before. Still my father is very keen so they may go back next year."

Proof-reader at the Sun

Guy had always been worried about the lack of continuity in his professional experience, which he had apparently inherited from his own father, Auguste: "My worthy father used to say 'Douze métiers, treize misères', with the implied warning, I suppose, not to follow the same path."¹⁰⁰ Apparently, Hélène shared the view that there was a risk, so much so that he had to find a way of forestalling such criticism when he told her he had changed jobs:

"New avatar: proof-reader at the "Sun", one of the two Sydney evening papers. Your astonishment at my return to the "that wretched Pylon" helped me face again the reproach of being unstable. I have left the Pylon without regrets, I do keep my royalties on the tourist-traps, which makes my financial situation well above the Australian average. Our average weekly savings are now 25£ (x780 fr.) The little Charles is in blooming health and is starting to speak English with his mother's pretty accent. One thing that pleases and astonishes me is that the young animal seem to have a sense of humour (at 2 and 9 months if you please). He refuses to believe that we can make a stew with his teddy bear. Tooty is now 11 months old and very small for her age. If she were not so happy and smiley, we would be worried about her size and having such a small appetite. (…) My new job is very nice.

Here I can insert a short text written by Tony Barker as a contribution to Guy's biography by someone who was his friend at the time:

I met Guy when I returned to Sydney in late 1953 after a couple of years in England and Europe. In London I’d befriended another chap from Sydney, Jack Abernethy, who had also worked at the Pylon Lookout. He told me a lot about Guy, and not long after I had returned to Sydney he took me to meet him and look over their workplace. At the time I was working as a proof reader at the Sun newspaper in Elizabeth Street. My job must have sounded a better one to Guy than his, because before long he’d talked his way into a job in the Sun reading room. For the next eighteen months or so we saw each other daily, and I got to know him well. Eight years my senior, worldly wise, well read, he became my Continental guide and mentor. I learnt many things from him, from philosophical paradoxes to the marvels of French dressing and how it transformed a lunch box of left-overs into a delicious salad. We often ate our lunch together, sometimes on the open rooftop of the Sun office building.

Finally, by 1954, after the restrictions and the dangers of the war period, and the hardships of life in Indochina, this was the first time Guy had had anything like prosperity and security. Living in his own house, with a pleasant job, he was delighted by his life with a charming and helpful wife, and had taken great pleasure and pride in becoming a father. Of course, as he explained later, the first generation of European immigrants, full of energy and hope, far outshone the "mediocre" locals, kept in a semi-vegetative state by generations of easy life. He was soon sending food parcels to his relatives in France. While enjoying the full benefits of the Australian way of life, they could save three quarters of their weekly 15 to 20 pounds earnings.

Doubts as to the wisdom of his exile were however quick to appear. In a letter to his aunt a few months before his first son's birth, referring to the bulletin from his old schoolfellows' association in Orthez, he wonders "it is a bit worrying to think while my schoolmates have grown up, I continue to consider the world as just a big playground."

The decision to return to France

There are several accounts, including the one published in Marie-Claire in 1956, which is again the most poetic. As Guy never mentioned this in later years, he probably made it up entirely for media use. And indeed, we have to applaud Guy's innate sense of what can make a good story, which he could have been put to good use as a journalist if circumstances had been different. Here is the text, in my translation;

A sentence from a novel sparks off the adventure.

The Montins were living in Sydney, in a big bungalow, ugly but comfortable. Guy, a French immigrant, was a proof-writer in a paper and earnt a good living. Beryl kept house, listening to the radio, looking after her two children, still too young to go to school. A random sentence from the British novelist Aldous Huxley sparked of the whole business. In the intervals of his proof-reading, Guy used to read. He had already sailed through Shakespeare and Dickens. On a November 1955 day, he stumbled on these words of Huxley: "what do you want to be? A gelatinous organism swimming in a tepid murky sea?" It struck him to the core: this tepid sea was his life. That evening, the words were still resonating in his mind when he saddled his motorbike for his daily commute back to his yellow painted bungalow, Beryl and the two kids.

November, in Sydney, is the height of summer. The heat was unbearable; the tarmac was melting in the streets. Suddenly, on his bike, Guy realised he was whistling an old French tune. And this song carried with it a cool breeze and a flow of memories; and with them a nostalgia that melted with Huxley's sentence. This nostalgia carried him 13 years back in time, to a spring night when he had clandestinely crossed a border. That night, he had heard the whisper of a cool brook and the warble of the nightingale. In spite of the noisy traffic in the Sydney street, he could clearly hear that music; and now it was taking on a mysterious meaning. In Australia, there are marvellous birds, some dating back to prehistoric times, others like the koukabora, sound like a human hysteric laugh. But there are no nightingales. The last nightingale he had heard was back in Orthez, in France. After that, there had only been only foreign sounds: the drone of the engines of the RAF planes he had flown, the bombs, the machine guns, then after silence had returned to Europe, the air-raids, this time in the Far East. And he had asked himself: "why not continue on the roads of travel?" (…) On that November 1955 evening, once he had parked his motorbike, Guy was enjoying Beryl's lemon meringue pie. After a long silence, he asked her: "can you imagine a couple of about our age, with two children, setting off for Europe on a scooter with a trailer?" "Why not?" said Beryl. "With the kids? Think about it, you would never accept to do that" Guy insisted. "Me, retorted Beryl in a huff, with a big enough scooter, I'd leave tomorrow !"

The quotation is from a journalist who let his imagination run amok, with some prompting from Guy, one of my father's great regrets in life had precisely been that he had never seen any military action. At the time when Orthez was cleft by the demarcation line, he was safely away in Tunisia. Guy used to tell a variant quite often which has 100% chance of being true: he was traveling on his motorbike or the forerunner to the Put-put, on a fine Spring morning, winding his way through the commuter traffic, when his thoughts turned to the view over the Dordogne valley, from the hills overlooking Carennac. And then he realised with a pang that the eucalyptuses were in bloom and diffusing a faint fragrance that had subliminally carried his thoughts back to his childhood scene, unleashing an irresistible nostalgia. Proust and your madeleine, stand aside !

Another journalist, who was interviewing at length Guy in New Dehli in 1956, may have got it right. We know from Beryl's diary that this interview lasted three hours and veered to a confession. Anyhow, the journalist capture some truth when under the title "Getting away from it all", he surmised that after a few years, "Guy's Continental temperament was tired of the Anglo-Saxon way of life as it was lived in Australia".

In reality, again things happened very differently, and the idea of returning to Europe grew gradually instead of appearing suddenly, but the causes are the same as in the Marie-Claire story: the emptiness of a materialistic world in which foreigners, however talented, would never feel perfectly at home. More specifically, in later years Guy used to explain that he had reached the decision once he saw that if the family stayed in Australia, his children would speak with an Aussie accent, which seemed unacceptable. This is stated in several letters, and confirmed by his friend Jack Abernethy¹⁰¹, who for a while exchanged letters with Auntie Hélène, especially in the context of his search for employment in a touristic area.

Even before that, in the letter written on his 30^th birthday¹⁰² to announce the birth of his son, Guy: "my best reason to come back to France is called Charles. There is no way he can stay in Australia between the ages of 10 and 20."

One of the reasons Guy was in no hurry to return is purely practical and financial. He seems to have harboured great doubts about his employability. Still in the key 30^th birthday letter, he asks his aunt, in English for confidentiality, to enquire about Orthez's views: "If you can stand further contact with the rest of the family (although you seem to think it's easy for me), do try and find ouit what would their reaction be to my coming back with an English wife and brat. Could they help in finding for me a position which would save the Montin "prestige". I just can't bring myself to hooting the subject!"

Perhaps Hélène could not help him, or did not want to, so Guy raises the issue directly with Louise a few months later.¹⁰³ "You have mentioned sharing Papa's estate. Could I make use of any of my share to buy an insurance agency (portefeuille d'assurances) or a business which would allow me to live with my wife a little as we used to live before the war? We have enough money for our return but not much more than to pay our living expenses for a year after disembarking. Now that I am married I am a little worried to take the leap and I would like to be sure before arriving in Marseille or Bordeaux. I miss the country more and more every day and if you could tell me that it would be possible to settle within a year and without being a burden to you, I think we could come back next summer."

Guy also developed the theory about Australia of "reverse selection" or "selection of the unfittest", the opposite of Darwin's natural selection: "If you doubt our intention of coming back to France, consider the fact that explains, in my view, the mediocrity of Australia: anybody even just a bit smart leaves Australia as soon as they have they have taken advantage of the material advantages of the country. Only the mediocre remain, which brings about a vicious circle."¹⁰⁴ However, in another later letter, he wrote that "for any rich Australian-born, which was everybody whose father wasn't a drunkard, the idea leaving Australia was heretical."

Looking back to this period, I think Guy's concern proceeded from an already outdated view of the possibilities of the French economy, and of his chances of making of success of his life. These were the beginnings of the 30 year economic boom, with unemployment virtually unknown. Guy was assuming that France had not changed after the war, and memories of the great Depression, which although less severe than in the U.S., may have influenced his view. He viewed France as the antithesis of Australia: whereas he had taken a variety of low-ranking jobs to make a living in Sydney, he could not imagine doing the same in France without loss of face, hence his insistence on following on his father's footsteps by purchasing an insurance agency. He unashamedly claimed to be a bourgeois, but lacked the means to sustain a bourgeois lifestyle. His legitimate concerns about providing for his little family without being on a burden on his two aunts is however creditable and it is understandable that it was not a foolishly proud position to stay in Australia long enough to avoid having to come back as a beggar.

His very negative view of Australia was also quite excessive, as he came to realise it even before leaving the country. On two occasions, he has the opportunity of introducing Australians to his aunt. First, In 1953, Jack Abernathy was hitch-hiking through Europe and Guy warmly recommended him to Hélène, as the best type of young man, energetic and culturally minded, that a classy Australian can be. Later, he was very keen on Mrs Rentoul, his former employer, being a guest in Carennac, and portrayed her as quite as sharp and complex as any Frenchwoman, comparing her commercial smile to that of his step mother Louise. Those Australians are themselves aware of the Australian "cultural desert"

So in the end I believe that Guy was suffering what all immigrants have to deal with: a struggle to make their way in a foreign, already organised society where they have to start from scratch, without the certainty of ever being accepted. The French nationality itself was far from an advantage, being classed along with the Italians and the Greeks in the social pecking order. This can only be acceptable when you have fled misery or persecution, which was not my father's case, having two loving relatives clamouring for his return.

My own experience of Australia and even more so New Zealand corroborates of course Guy's analysis, but, having a secure position giving me access to very interesting people, and with a limited timeframe for my stay, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, in fact meeting professionals that I would never have been in touch with in France, like politicians and artists, though this may be because it was such a smaller country. It is interesting to ask the question: what would I have become if my parents had not fled the new country. While in NZ, our family was befriended by some very nice cultivated and artistic English people who had arrived in Wellington much at the same time as my parents. They had a son who was exactly my age, who has now been an ambassador and a minister for many years, showing that the first generation has a hard time, but the next one can reap the full benefit of their effort. It is only in exceptional cases, such as Arnold Schwarzeneger, that the immigrant himself reaches the top.

And another factor, pointed out by Guy in his days, has greatly changed the situation: the ease and more reasonable cost of international air travel, making it possible to break the isolation much more frequently.

Finally, our most recent visit to Australia itself gave us a very different view of the country: free museums everywhere, strong public encouragement to the arts, lots of cultivated people. The one sore point of the 1950's, the 'cultural desert' seems to have been left far behind.

Proof reading at the Sun; new friends

Tony Barker wrote this short text in 2016 as a contribution to this memoir: "I was involved with Guy for only the period he worked at the Sun office, which was probably not much more than a year, during which we saw each other almost every working day. How did he come to join the Sun? I’ve always assumed that my job as a proof reader’s assistant must have seemed to both Jack Abernethy and Guy a much better job than theirs at the Pylon lookout. For an unskilled job, where the only qualification needed was the ability to read English, it was reasonably well paid and the working conditions were quite good provided you didn’t mind working on public holidays (for which you were compensated by getting five weeks’ paid annual leave). Jack Abernethy, whose father was chief engineer at the Sydney Morning Herald, soon found a job in the reading room there, and not long afterwards (I don’t remember exactly when), Guy applied for a job in the Sun reading room and got it. I was surprised to see him when he appeared there on his first morning. (Concerning his opinions) I remember him mentioning Oblomov, by Ivan Goncharov. In fact he coined the word oblomovitis to describe the laziness and apathy of some of his fellow workers in the reading room and indeed of his typical Australian. He enjoyed coining English words. Bexomatosis was another, to describe an disorder widespread in the Australian community (Bex was a cheap Australian headache powder used extensively, and addictively, by the general public; bexomatosis was a play on the word myxomatosis, a disease introduced around that time to kill wild rabbits). (…) Another friend of your father was Jaapi (Jack) Kunst also came to work at the Sun reading room with Jack Abernethy and me—Guy would have left by then, I think. The Sun had become part of the Fairfax (Sydney Morning Herald) organization, and both reading room staffs now worked together in a new building. Jaapi’s father, also Jaap Kunst, was an ethnomusicologist at the Institute of the Tropics in Amsterdam."

Tony Barker and Jack Abernethy took a year off hitchhiking round the Continent in 1952, an equivalent to the Grand Tour of their British ancestors. They were most pressingly invited to visit Auntie Hélène, but did not do so, in spite of Jack's preparation¹⁰⁵, in part because it appeared that there were no temporary job prospects for them in Carennac¹⁰⁶.

Preparing for the big departure

Thanks to the numerous letters to Aunt Hélène, we are well informed about that period of intense preparation.

By February 1955, one year before departure, the decision had been made and preparations could begin. This apparently cheered up the French aunties in Orthez and Carennac. Guy had announced that he would leave around end of March 1956, with about 2.2 million FF, keeping 500k for the trip. He was now trying to measure his chances of re-establishing himself professionally: "About my capacities, it would be best to assume that I have no experience. I am very adaptable and capable of hard work, physical or intellectual, provided I can face the future confidently."¹⁰⁷

Several letters to Hélène explored at length future plans for making a living, even in Carennac: growing strawberries in the garden, or mushrooms in the various cellars, including future 'Maud's cellar' which he remembered well. I sympathise with Hélène's despair at being asked to support such hair-brained schemes. In his dreams, Guy confided that he would much prefer to return to Carennac than Orthez, though then just as now, the opportunities were much better in the latter.

He turned down Hélène's idea of converting the attic of the Carennac house into bedrooms for the family, on the strength of the idea that the family "could live in a nutshell, that it fared best when it was concentrated." He did however raise the question of running water, but offered to deal with the plumbing himself.

But of course, the main concern was to find the right vehicle for such a difficult voyage. The name "put-put" was already the one designating the first Lambretta, with the box at the front, so named by Tooty by reference to the noise of its engine. It is sturdy, can carry 300kg across France for 20 litres of petrol, can be disassembled with a spanner and a screwdriver, and "can slip through the carreyrou without treading on a nettle. It gets sympathy from the most hardened policeman, interests old fogies, raises enthusiasm among young people and enlists the cooperation of members of the public. Please acknowledge that this contraption (engine) was predestined to sleep in the cellar under grandfather's room, now ours, and will not mobilise your dreadful garage at the bottom of the garden, leaving it to house a cow or two goats." Anticipating the impossibility for his English wife to live in Carennac as it stood, the letters went on in great detail on how to improve the facilities of the Carennac house, such as installing a hand pump to raise the water from the cistern to the kitchen. He knew that it would not be possible to leave Beryl unassisted in the primitive comforts of the house (leaks from the roof, rusty saucepans, WC at the end of the garden, etc.), which she could be enticed to see as a lark, if he was there to share in the discomfort. We also find in these letters quite a few of the future fads which I will get to be familiar with in later years, such as the wind turbine to generate electricity, or the "belier" to raise water without external energy. But this planning the use of Carennac from the other side of the world is not completely serious, he admitted it readily.

At that stage, Guy took his aunt into his confidence: he acknowledged that the Orthez house could be more comfortable, but "thinking about Orthez gives me the creeps" (me fait froid dans le dos), which must have been honey in Hélène's ears. He feared what the Rue Saint Gilles would think of the return of the prodigal son with two children and an English wife who could not speak French. His own son was already laughing at his English. He was also worried about settling in a house that does not belong to him, raising eybrows of his relatives in Orthez (including his brother Charles). He asked about a possible legal loop-hole such as a donation to Charles, or a rente viagère, in a curious anticipation of what will happen twenty years later.

Though this was another solution because the Lidwells were returning to England¹⁰⁸, settling in Margate was not a good solution either, because Guy's mother-in-law (Nana) was always spoiling Charles, buying him too many sweets and toys. "Ma belle-mère est complètement folle de ce gosse, il le sait et l'exploite sans vergogne." My father is right there, I remember great love from my grand-mother until I was a teenager, and she was the only one, later on, to remember me as a baby and a small child, telling with relish my childish pranks and bons mots. Guy compared this situation with his own bliss during his summer holidays at his grandparents, being spoilt ("la cocagne carennacoise annuelle"), and saw in it the origin of his love for Carennac, and even his future search for the never never land which exiled him to Australia. Orthez, by contrast, with its matter-of-fact normal life had never held any special attraction.

The initial plan was to take a ship to Naples, buy a bigger Lambretta and travel by road the rest of the way, leaving in early 1956 and arrive by Easter. In a later letter, he denied the promise of arriving by Easter.

In July 1955, Guy realised that there was no real professional opportunity in Carennac for him, agricultural or otherwise, in spite of all talk about the "rehabilitation of French smallholdings".

In August, Mrs Rentoul visited Carennac and was hosted by Hélène. Guy was very keen on such a meeting, for reasons we are left to imagine, though it is clear that he was proud of his French background, and was hoping his former employer would be suitably impressed. Later in the year, Hélène reported that Mrs Rentoul had found Carennac the prettiest place she had seen in France

It was around that time that Guy first thought of coming home "off the beaten track, and if I can get my way, with a typewriter and a good Kodachrome camera."¹⁰⁹ This became, in October, the "chemin des écoliers"¹¹⁰.

In December 1955, the sale of the house brought the expected price of 2,650A£, minus 100 in agency commission.

Guy left his job at the Sydney Herald on 18 February 1956, with a end of mission letter with only minimal praise, one can guess at several reasons for the implied reservations: "His services have proved satisfactory, and he leaves of his own accord." This is very different from Mrs Rentoul's unqualified appreciation.

Meanwhile Guy and Beryl were getting to research the challenge ahead. At that time, there was a steady stream of overland travellers, starting with Guy's friend Tony Barker, who had returned by road at the end of his gap year. Another opportunity was the arrival in Sydney of Raymond and Gabrielle Hirzel, who had travelled with three friends in 1954 from Paris by land¹¹¹. They had at least on dinner, remembered by Tony Barker, where they provided detailed information about roads, hotels, and difficulties along the long route.

“They’ve just driven out from France in a Renault. I thought you’d like to compare notes.” In 1953 I’d travelled overland from London to Sydney in an old London taxi. It seems Guy had another reason for the dinner party: he wanted to listen in to the conversation of the overland travellers. Because not long afterwards he left his job at the Sun to prepare for his own epic journey."

The book that Gabrielle, a secretary at Renault, wrote on return to Paris is interesting in that it shows that just a few years earlier, the trip was more interesting, as you could go via Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and even Afghanistan. The Hirzels too got the automobile clubs interested, but they never got the same publicity in the press, perhaps because there was less human interest than in a family with young children in a strange vehicle. At the time, publishers accepted this travel literature, and there is another, even earlier, in our Carennac: 'Seul en bicyclette de Paris à Saigon', written in 1948.¹¹² I will return to these books when I examine Guy's literary handling of the same type of travel achievement.

The put-put was delivered on 19 January 1956, having been shipped from Italy. It cost 140A£, paid partly with a loan from Mrs Rentoul. There is a family story that Tooty was extremely frightened when the vehicle was first shown, and I have a vague memory of that important moment. As the family left Sydney itself on 21 February, Guy lost no time in building the cabin, a mixture of plywood and canvas, which is now in our cellar in Carennac. The best descriptions of this small camper-van were later given by the Marie-Claire magazine, with drawings, lists of equipment (tools and kitchen utensils), even the list of items in the portable medicine chest.¹¹³

[insert here Marie-Claire picture]

Here is how Guy describes his machine in his book Dreamalive: "There she stands, too tall for her three small wheels. The front is a motor scooter. The rear is a baby truck with a plywood body and roof of green canvas like the covered wagons of the Old west." A more technical description is given by the owner's manual, copied in the novelised account:

the

SCOOTOVAN

Three-wheeler

Delivery

Unit
Tenacious Road Holding

Favorable Load Distribution

Easy Transport of Bulky Goods

Comfortable Riding on All Surfaces

Steering : 1 Front wheel on Handlebars

Drive : 2 Back wheels on Differential

Engine : 2-Stroke 148cc – 1.25 H.P.

Load : 0.34 Tons¹¹⁴ Tare: 375 lbs

Speed : 34 MPH Cruising 25 MPH

FUEL CONSUMPTION : 100 MILES PER GALLON

Price : Austr.Pounds : 140/0/0

US dollars: 300.00

CHASSIS ONLY -- F.O.B. GENOA

The contraption also later receive a second name: "S-Cargo".

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