La Review edition one

LA review
hier, aujourd’hui, demain

contents
a Seed
Le Cocktail • Elderflower Apéritif
La Ferme Biologique • Le Bec-Hellouin
The Story of a Chair
The Writings of John Wolfe
Pomme Prisonnière
Eden, West Nepal
In Conversation • Lydia Pearson
Hôtel • St James
In Search of: Absinthe
Dear Alex
Poetry
Beaune Marché
Book Club
Château Life
6
8
10
22
30
46
52
72
88
100
116
120
124
130
134
first edition • autumn 2018

creators
contributors
Jane Webster
Peter Webster
Lachlan Webster
Stephanie McCarthy
Mia-Francesca McAuslan
Maeve Baker
John Wolfe
Alex Webster
5

a SEED
notes from the desk of Jane Webster
It was 2.30am, the witching hour, on a cold August night a mere twelve
months ago. The day before, I had had lunch with my dearest friend,
who said innocently to me,
“I suppose you won’t be doing very many French Table groups next year
with Alex in Year 12..” She stirred at her salad and smirked the smile of a
mother who knows all too well what it is to juggle lives. To me, though,
it may as well have been the face of the reaper, twisting like a nightmare
circus clown now, all out of human proportion.
A cold knife entering my heart, I looked around at the whirl of the
restaurant, now bleeding from its edges like a watercolour, the chilled
steely feeling deepened and twisted until the pain was almost unbearable.
I was head-long down a long, dark tunnel, and I knew that when I landed,
guilt was going to be my constant companion.
Sitting bolt upright in bed that night, I knew that sleep was not mine to
be had. Not until I came up with a solution to my dilemma. To be absent for
my fourth and final child, during this, her most important of times... Then
all of a sudden it occurred to me! Alex had been talking constantly about
studying in Europe once School was over. Perhaps an International School
in Paris, then, may be an option for us all... It would allow us to be with
her, as well as allowing us all more time at Bosgouet and put me in Europe,
which would allow much easier travel to the US and the UK..
With a new book coming out with US Publishing house Assouline in
late 2018, not to mention continued travels to promote French House Chic
which Thames and Hudson had just released that last October, it could
be just the proximity I needed.
I started googling frantically all the
International schools I knew of in
Paris; The British School of Paris,
The Paris International School,
The American School of Paris... As
I searched I realised that, the
schools all being in a different
hemisphere - if this was even
to be a consideration - Alex
was going to have to repeat 6
months of Year 11 before starting
her final year. Over the course
my youngest, having watched each
of her siblings move on to their
own far-flung adventures at all
corners of the globe, while things
kept plodding along in inner-city
Melbourne as they always had…
“Mum,” said my youngest,
with a stern hand upon my knee,
“you wouldn’t bring this up with
me if you weren’t prepared to do
it, would you?”
of the next four hours, I contacted, Whatever the matter, to my notquite-utter
surprise, Alex showed
and even had feedback from a couple
of the schools. Sitting there, awake total, unbridled enthusiasm.
in the darkest hour of night, it was “Mum,” said my youngest, with
as though I was already running on a stern hand upon my knee, “you
French time. I could smell the air, wouldn’t bring this up with me if
see the light of Paris in the morning, you weren’t prepared to do it, would
which is unlike any other light in you?” A sense of calm began to flow
the world. Tentatively, with my through my veins, as we begun
hands twisting in the sheets, I began across MacRobertson’s Bridge, that
hatching a plan to bring the idea up well-known passage over the Yarra,
with our 16 year old daughter the which today was like a new river
next morning while we were driving in the golden light of spring, and
to school.
where little birds that didn’t have
I don’t know quite what it was. to be anywhere dipped and weaved
Perhaps only my lucky stars, or down into their own reflections on
perhaps a growing restlessness in its surface. When we pulled up at
6 7

le cocktail
elderflower apéritif
elderflower cordial
ingredients
gin & elderflower cocktail
ingredients
2.5kg
2
20
85g
sugar
lemons - zest and juice
fresh elderflower heads
citric acid
method
250ml
200ml
1L
1
bunch
bunch
gin
elderflower cordial
dry apple cider
sliced apple
fresh mint
pea tendrils
1
put sugar and 1.5 litres of water in a large saucepan
method
2
3
4
5
6
bring to the simmer until sugar is dissolved
once dissolved, bring to the boil, then turn off heat
add lemon juice, zest and citric acid, stir well
cover the pan, leave to infuse for twenty-four hours
ladle syrup through mesh colander
1
2
3
4
in a jam jar, mix gin and elderflower cordial
divide mixture between eight tumblers with ice
top tumblers with apple cider
garnish with fresh mint and pea tendrils
7
store in sterilised glass cordial bottles
8 9

la ferme
du Bec-Hellouin
story by Lachlan Webster
10 11

As we exit through the forest into
the wide of the open road, and
past us go the frozen fields, all covered
in blue winter shroud, the question is
asked all through the car,
“Do you think we should still be going?”
The winter outside is a vague but genuine threat, at arm’s reach for now
through the fog of the car window.
“Warm, lovely car where the hot coffee swills, and where the talk goes
on aimlessly, as it does between children, asleep in adjacent beds, adrift on
a dream of goose-down.
Pascal, our guardien for the winter, traces a thumb-line across the
speeding landscape, he whistles a little missile-fall.
“Yipee-kaye-ay!” He says, in a distinct New York State accent. He turns
towards us, beaming over his moustache, only to be met with four dull,
uncoffeed stares. He repeats to himself, softly, with a little drum upon his
knee: “yipee-kaye-ay!”
Pat’s no vegetable farmer, he says, but he just put a down-payment on
a little hut, out in Maine. Off the grid, he says. Gonna go get a little dirty
for a while.
At our own potagier at Bosgouet, there are seeds already planted for the
season, but we tend to wait for sunnier climes to venture out.
“I wonder if farmers ever have rainy days” someone wonders aloud.
We pull into the farm and feel the wheels of the van sink into the mud.
“Well, we’re here now” someone says.
I roll the door open, and look down at the ground,
unsure how to negotiate the my landing.
La Ferme Biologique du Bec Hellouin, in its infancy,
must have seemed a similarly muddy uncertainty.
The love child of Perrine and Charles Herve-Gruyer,
a green-eyed couple of urbanites turned custodians
of this land, it began, as things tend to do, on a whim.
Says Charles, “we wanted to spend our days
feeling the sun and rain on our skin, swimming in a
river, feeding our family with safe and vibrant food,
cultivated with love by our own hands.”
For her part, Perrine tells the story more of a
happiness you fall into rather than a dream you constructed.
12 13

“One day Charles said ‘I want to do this as a job. I want to be a professional
farmer.’” Cocking her head and puffing her cheeks like that, she looks every
bit the bewildered woman she was. She shrugs her shoulders and smiles
with the face of a woman who can empathize.
“Okay, go ahead” she recalls saying, “I’ll do something else.”
“Envisioning myself as a vegetable seller” she says, “I hated the idea!”
But the work was a-plenty, and little by little she got more and more
involved.
“In 2008, we found out about permaculture, and
it was really a revelation.” As she speaks, Perrine
speaks also with her hands. They are the hands of
an habitué, they are connaissant of dirt and stone,
as much as they are the hands of a born didact. A
successful corporate lawyer in a previous life, this is
only the last place she has happened to hold court. In
a kerchief and oversized turtle-neck, she is the sage
of this muddy plane, a little buddah like all of the
little buddahs of the world, doing their small part in
good will and sweet grace. “We are somehow the keeper of this little part of
the valley.” She says, putting her hands on her hips and smiling. “It’s really
beautiful,” she concedes.
“Permaculture kind of assembled all of the pieces of the puzzle” she says.
“It was difficult, because when we first discovered permaculture, we were
still learning our job, which is growing vegetables, and it’s highly technical.”
Little by little, though, they set about the task of a total rehaul. Their
new mission statement? One that would bring the enterprise of human
sustanence closer to its natural source. To embrace the cycles of nature, to
flow as water does, to no longer dash one’s head against the rocks in order
to make bread happen. Was this life? At one time it was.
14 15

With the aid of techniques passed down from les maraîchers parisiens, and
employing modern refinements conceived by such teachers as Eliot Coleman
“Vegetables in winter, even under
snow!” This was the seemingly
improbable premise upon which the
philosophy hinges.
and Jean-Martin Fortier,
Perrine & Charles’ farm was
soon transformed into a picture
of bounty. These techniques,
adopted and improved from a
culture dating to the 19th century, a time when all fruit and vegetables
eaten in Paris and its surround were grown in Ile de France itself, include
the use of a system of layered, warm manure. By utilising the heat emitted
by micro-organisms in the substrate, it is made possible to plant seedlings
very early, and thereby harvest early. Melons in April, anyone?
Centred around les marais de Paris, notably around Canal Saint Martin,
an area now known more as a hangout spot for wine-drinking youth than
anything resembling a marsh or a farm, the community of maraîchers was
already feeling the pinch of urbanization in 1845. Written by J.G Moreau
and J.J. Daverne, Le Manuel Pratique de la Culture Maraîchere de Paris was written
in hopes of passing on this knowledge to their children, and hopefully to
those who were to come after. A sort of message in a bottle to a world
already confused as to how easy things could be.
A revelation, indeed. “Vegetables in winter, even under snow!” This
was the seemingly improbable premise upon which the philosophy hinges.
“Before this, CSA saved our life” Perrine says, referring to a system in which
the consumer buys in advance a regular delivery of crop. “It’s in the Spring
that you need money, to buy the seeds, to buy - I don’t know” she gestures
through the misty pyrex dome at the land outside, “whatever it takes… But
when you go all winter, only growing a bit of spinach or mâche, maybe there
are a few squashes left... We would deliver 90 baskets to Paris every week,
which was good, but didn’t make sense… From the start, we wanted to be
16

an “oil-free” farm,” she smiles, entre guillemets, “at least to use the least nonrenewable
energy possible.”
Ten years down the line, and Perrine and Charles sell to only local
clients, including but not limited to several restaurants in the region. “It is
so funny to see when chefs come to see, they see something interesting every
square meter!” Perrine laughs. Among the restauranteurs for whom they
grow include Rodolphe Pottier, a precocious young chef already making
waves, with a Michelin star already adorning his breast at the tender age
of 26. Rodolphe is the furthest among their clients, at a 45 minute drive.
Le Comptoir De L’Arboretum in Harcourt, Perrine also mentions, with avid
recommendation. I scramble for a pad to write down the name of the place,
which I will not realise until much later I had already happened upon, one
summer past. A classically-awned French brasserie, lost in the middle of the
Norman countryside, with nothing for its neighbours but a sun-bleached
church and many boarded-up houses - this reporter can vouch for the fact
that, although some things may be too good to be true, others are just plain
good.
A series of crates are unburdened of their wrappings, and inside, tiny
radishes and shallots, pea tendrils and baby micro-greens.
“We tried the young garlic at Rodolphe’s” someone says, but not the
shallots. Perrine inclines her head, and with that same accustomed hand,
advises my mother “the shallots are even better. You okay to walk through
the mud?” She asks, already heading out the door.
On the property there are greenhouses growing bok choi, beetroots,
herbs and lettuces. Outside, chickens root around for feed while red-necked
roosters survey their claim. There are orchards and sheep and half-wooded
houses, and everywhere calm prevailing under the sleepy cover of mist.
Ever with my own designs, I fall into step with Perrine and ask her about
Wormwood. Does she know where I can get it, fresh?
“Sure” says Perrine, shrugging. “If you go over to the compost, start
18 19

digging, you can find them. I’ll let you do that.”
I wander over to the steaming mound of vegetable matter and look in.
“So… does it grow inside?”
“Grow, how do you mean?”
“L’armoise” I say, switching to French in my confusion, “il pousse làdedans?”
“Oh, l’armoise! L’armoise absinthe?” She clarifies.
“Oui”
“Oh, I thought you said you wanted to go digging for worms! I thought
okay, it’s not really fishing weather… How did you call it?”
“Wormwood”
“Ah yes, wormwood,” she says, she furrows her brow and shrugs her
shoulder to her cheek. “Because we feed it to the goats, pour les déparasiter.”
Perrine strides over to a shed and grabs a pair of secateurs. Leading us
across the muddy expanse, she tells me briefly of l’armoise; of its medicinal
properties, of its weed-like hardiness and of its god-awful taste. At some
point, I become aware that we have stopped.
“Well” says Perrine
“Well what?”
“There it is.” She designs with her secateurs a sad-looking shrub of pale
blue, barely a shin of height to it, withered by the rain like some unwanted
pet, its tendrils dragging sadly in the mud. It is furry in the way that sage is
furry, but curled in vague, directionless curls that do nothing for its charm,
like some sub-normal aunt at a family Christmas do.
So this was Wormwood. Who could ever have dreamt that this pitiful
little weed would kindle such a flame in the hearts of men? Who could have
imagined that this most humble of anti-parasitics would end up at the nexus
of one of the greatest moral outrages of history memorial? Dutifully, I taste
the thing, at Perrine’s insistence. At first impression, it tastes as though
battery acid had gotten fat and complacent and taken a day-job shuffling
20 21

papers. In there, though, developing on my tongue as it mulls around, is
the familiar numbing sensation and the bracing tonic fresh of the spirit it
is to become. Perrine takes a root cutting for me, and hands me a fistful of
foliage, explaining how to plant and take care of the thing. (Tragically, my
thumb is more yellow than it is green, and the roots do not take.)
“Have fun” she says, walking off.
After exiting through the gift shop, where we purchase a bottle of vinegar
and a case full of the organic apple cider that mothered it, we all pile into
the van and take off out of the valley. There is the warmth of the clim once
more, and something new blooming in us all, as we ponder over our own
little plots of land - those that we’ve occupied before and the ones still
to come. We are silent and content but for the hunger coming on, which
does need to be spoken of, which goes without saying. Silent all but for
Pat, who is never silent, but who is never begrudged it, so boundless is his
enthusiasm, so complete his joy.
“Oh man oh man” he whiles away, braced over his knees, tapping an
expectant little beat, smiling behind pencil moustache, the eternal child
in white and blue windbreaker, he says “you guys have given me the bug,
yessiree! Maine here I come, baby! Gonna plant me some tomatoes and
stand by the roadside, watch out, ho ho!” He rubs his hands against the
cold and blows into them like a prayer, and looking out over the hills, like
that, his eyes alight with the blue of it all, one could imagine he could see
all the way back there.
22

the story
of a chair
Jane Webster
24

People often ask me what my hobbies are, what is it that occupies
my time here in France, how do I while away the hours? It’s always
funny to me, because with a 23 bedroom house, an acre potager and a
family of 6, who needs hobbies, right?
Well, as a child I collected antique teddy bears and pressed fresh
flowers in between the pages of heavy, hardback books. In my teens,
Nestled deep within the French
countryside, Bagly Bobbins is a
massive aircraft hangar that is
stuffed to the rafters...
I moved on to writing poems and
collecting fabrics. In my early twenties
and until this day, I collect blue and
white ginger jars, and in... gulp ... middle
age - I find myself collecting chairs.
In a house of 23 bedrooms you can never have enough chairs, and I love
the story and project of a new chair from beginning to end.
It usually begins something like this.
“Janey,” Pete will begin, his head appearing on the inside of a
doorframe, smiling cheekily in. “Do you want to head out to Bagly
Bobbins?” That’s our code name for one of the places we most love for
brocanting. Nestled deep within the French countryside, Bagly Bobbins
is a massive aircraft hangar that is stuffed to the rafters with furniture,
lighting, carpets, garden furniture, paintings, China, pianos, crystal,
candelabras, linen, gilded clocks and armoires and yes, even the occasional
antique teddy bear!
These excursions usually occur mid-morning with the inevitable rush
to arrive at B.B. before 12.30 when Madame bolts the front doors. From
this point, no one will enter again until long past the time that even the
most leisurely dejeuners could possibly account for.
Our routine never waivers. Up and down the aisles with our iPhones
in our hands, ready to snap the piece we are eyeing off, making sure to
include the price tag and registration number so we can take all our
“maybe” items à la caisse.
À la caisse, and up to Madame who, with a puffing of her cheeks, begins
laboriously to look each individual
item up in her ring bound folder.
Raising her eyebrows and shoulders in
one motion, she painstakingly writes
down the item, the swing price… stops,
thinks, hums a doubtful little tune,
picks up her finely sharpened pencil, very carefully pops a cross through
the asking price and finally …voilà - writes down the new, reduced price
for the funny Australians that are always buying soooo much stuff! The
paper is turned to face us as she raises her eyebrows again and asks the
requisite question. Ça va?
This dance can go on for hours, back and forth negotiations of price and
delivery charges, phone calls to the owners of a particular piece until the
final deal is done, total is paid, Madame has hand written every reference,
benumbered not only on our facture but in her sales book, in the owner’s
sales book and in that of the delivery man! Oh la la, it is quite the process.
But to think of leaving behind one of our hard-won steals? Impossible.
Occasionally we only buy a few choice pieces and so no delivery is
required. We can simply scoop up said pieces and pop them in the back
of our 9 seater Trafic. In its ample back, it has plenty of room for two, or
even three well loved bergère chairs.
This dance can go on for hours,
back and forth, negotiations of
price and delivery charges, phone
calls to the owners of a particular
piece until the final deal is done
The real fun, however, starts after the drive back home, presuming, that
is, that our new friends survive the trip. My mind begins to reel through
the pieces of fabric I know I have carefully folded on a shelf somewhere at
home, imagining this one or that on my lovely new old chair. I can barely
26 27

wait to get home to Bosgouet to pull them all onto the floor and to begin
my dreaming.
Bursting through the door, I yell for someone to flick on the kettle
and make a pot of tea as I race up the oak staircase and just about slide
along the parquet corridor to the armoire that houses my many fabrics.
Fingering through, I find the very ones that were on my mind on the trip
home, pile them together neatly and head back downstairs to where Pete
has brought the new additions in from the car. Tea in one hand, as with
the other I send different fabrics flying over each chair, I step back and
imagine how each will look after Monsieur Jerome has had his way with
them.
It is always a pleasure to visit Mr Jerome’s tiny atelier filled with, well,
mainly chairs! There are fabric books laying all over the display room, but
Monsieur Jerome knows I collect fabric and is more than accommodating
in his congenial acceptance to use mine. He swings open a large armoire of
his own to reveal rolls and boxes of the most exquisite passementerie.
Ribbons and threads, tassels and beading, silk threads, cotton fringes
and all manner of buttons, bobbins and tacks. From here the options are
boundless, only limited by the stretch of your imagination!
When it all comes back, my new chair is that most sought-after of
things. It is not only a piece of history. It is something new, it is something
mine, it is something utterly unique.
28 29

30 31

The Writings of
John Wolfe
That is not to say I believe John’s stories to be false; quite to the contrary,
I have absolutely no doubt of their verité. But the nature of his recounts are
so fantastic, their volume so immense, one finds oneself wondering if they
could all come from the life of one man. John claims to be 93 years of age,
but it is this reporter’s firm conviction that he must be at least a quartermillenium
more. You don’t fool me, John Wolfe, not for a second - and when
you finally slip up, with some anecdote about lunch with Benedict Arnold
or a face-off with Geronimo, the yawning Apache, I’ll be there, old man,
with almanac in hand, ready to catch you out.
We drop in on John for afternoon tea. With the rest of the La Review
team busy at work, tending the grounds and designing the rag, it is just
mother and I, and with three cameras on my person, I look more fit to enter
a warzone than to sit down to tea. John and his wife, Doris, who, after a
marriage apiece, found each other later in life, in what my late grandfather
could only describe, (with only a small hint of jealousy) as a ‘miracle’, stand
in the arboured entranceway.
When we moved here au château,
back in 2005, it was John Wolfe who
first came up the long, winding drive to
make himself known to us.
“I heard Australians bought this place” he had said, climbing out of the
car, in the distinct Missouri accent which over the years, would come to be
the voice through which so many tall tales would be told, over dinner party
table and steaming pots of tea, and in our own spotted memories as we tried
later to recall all of the improbable details.
“Jeez louise, what is all this?” John says, as I approach, and I try,
unconvincingly, for levity as I tell him I have come to steal his essence.
We all sit down, and though John seems a little taken aback, before I
have even managed to find my frame, he is off on an anecdote.
He tells us the story of this house, how it was inhabited, before he and
his first wife Libby, by a family of inveterate drunks. “It was owned by a Mr
Haumeau” he says. “And living in this house, was a man who hadn’t paid
rent to Mr Haumeau for three years. But he was an invalid, and couldn’t be
thrown out by French law.”
32 33

“He and his wife and his son were drunks… alcoholics. Big alcoholics.
She would go every day to the bistro here in Flancourt for her bouteille de
rouge, and come back, and one of the days, as the story was, that she was
riding her bicycle, and she fell off the bicycle, into the ditch alongside the
road. With her legs up in the air, and no underwear on!”
We all laugh heartily. Mother puts down her tea-cup. “As school let
out!” John Wolfe adds, cracking into laughter himself. “That created quite
a commotion.”
We have none of us heard this story before. It seems he has an endless
supply of them, and he speaks with the measured patience and irreverent
humour of a born storyteller. Myself impatient by nature, I go to ask John
if he could tell us about his time in the Military Police. I am looking for
my sound-byte, something spectacular to sell a magazine on. But John sort
of just looks at me and continues, and anyway everyone is hanging on his
every word.
My mother asks him “John, do you have a copy of Snippets?”
She is referring to Snippets of Normandie, a collection of stories written
about his life in the Norman Countryside. Like so many anthologies from
so many good and bad writers, its readership has thus far been restricted to
friends, family and - let’s face it - probably Google and the NSA.
John rises from his chair and, with the hard-earned stiffness of a man a
quarter of his age (speaking of a hard-earned stiffness, I can just imagine
Doris quipping here. My grandfather Doug was not mistaken; you truly are
a miracle, Doris.) He hobbles off inside. When he returns to us, it is with a
thumb-drive, tied with a hand-written label torn out of paper. Looking at
the contents, we discover them to be not only snippets from Normandie,
but stories in the hundreds from the many walks of his long, eventful life.
A mere drop in the ocean of the man’s experience, I am sure, but a bounty
nonetheless.
Mother is bolder than I. She asks
“John, do you think we could publish some of these stories?”
John just says, in the equivocal way that he has,
“Well, I don’t see why not”
So, after warning me of the large disk-sizes of some of the chapters
(some of them weigh in at over 26MB) John hands over the thumb drive. It
is, here at La Review, our fortune, our privilege and our absolute pleasure
to present to you the writings of John Wolfe.
•
CHAPTER XXX SPAIN AND GRADUATION
After Yucatan in ’47 and Panama in ’48, I was off again in ‘49; this time it
was the Universidad de Madrid in the Basque country of Spain.
Posted on the bulletin board in the corridor outside our Spanish
classroom at Wash. U. was a notice announcing various summer courses,
one at the Universidad de Madrid. It was a chance to travel to a part of
Europe I had not seen. Classmate Charley Thomas and I reviewed the
possibilities, and I eventually decided I would take the U. de Madrid course
that was to be held at Fuenterrabía in the Basque country. I signed up and
obtained a G.I. Bill approval to transfer.
With the GI Bill authorization in hand I enrolled in the two month
course that entitled me to ship passage from N.Y. to Spain and the return
34 35

36 37

from Le Havre to Quebec as well as meals, lodging, all transportation,
tuition in Spain, and living allowance of $75 a month.
Around June 22, I took the train to N.Y.C. where I spent a week with
an old M.P. buddy from Italy, George Kramer. His father was a director of
Philipp Brothers Chemicals Company with head office at 37 Wall Street
in N.Y.City, and they were members of a country club and The Drug and
Chemical Club. A letter home tells of my stay there.
June 29. (The Drug and Chemical Club, 85 John Street, N.Y.)
It is naught but luck that you are rating a note at this point. I’ve
been going like mad for the past 6 days- golf, swimming, bridge,
bowling, etc. and all else that goes with a delightful time. At present
George and I are waiting for his father for lunch at the Chemical Club.
My golf and bowling have improved. I shot about 90 in golf the other
day and a 223 in bowling – believe it or not.
I have to get up about 4:00 tomorrow morning to get to Grand
Central by 6:30 thence to Hartford and Barcelona.
Tell Bill Collins [remember him: the VP Bengal Lancer?] I had a
wonderful interview with Mr. Hap Austin at the National City Bank,
and he was most encouraging as to potentialities in the field of foreign
banking. He told me of several fellows he had fixed up, one of whom is
now bank manager in Santiago, Cuba. He told me to write him as soon
as I got out of school and he’d see what he could do. He also gave me
three letters of reference for Barcelona, Paris, and London. I’m loaded
for bear now.
We talked for about an hour with another man from the bank who
also knew Bill Collins.
The Kramers have been extremely generous during my stay here,
and I hope to repay George this Christmas if he can stop by St. Louis
for a while.
Up until now, I don’t need more money, but another 2 weeks in
N.Y. would break me. I loathe this place.
Don’t expect too many letters as I’m not abreast of what is going
to happen.”
Though George asked me to be best man at his wedding in December
of the following year, I had already gone to Brazil and was unable to attend.
Unfortunately, we lost contact after that and never saw each other again.
I loved Spain from the first encounter and relayed an account of the
events to my folks:
“I left Bradley Field at 17:30 hours to Gander, Cape Briton Island,
to Azores, Santa Maria, and hence to Barcelona where we arrived
twenty-nine hours later. From Barcelona we visited the historic Mont
38 39

Sarrat where the Holy Grail at one time was found and where the
monk who founded the Jesuit order received his inspiration. It is an
amazing geological formation as well.
The following day we went to the Costa Brava (The Spanish Riviera)
where we swam and enjoyed ourselves. At present I’m in Zaragoza
where we [spent two days before going to] Pamplona where the fiesta
de San Fermin was swinging drunkenly and gaily into its second day.
I arrived in Pamplona at 5:30 in the morning and the second
I steppod off the bus, I was carried two blocks away doiong the
damndest dancing I ever did. I finally got away only to be shoved
into a bar and have four extremely quick beers poured down me with
many noisy toasts of arriba Espana y America y salud. Just as I escaped
my uncertain fate, one of my friends on the bus was carried off on the
shoulders of three happy drunks not to be seen again for several hours.
Disappearing with him was another fellow traveler who was caught
up and made to dance down the street with the crowd. The frenzy of
the crowd is so catching that todos no son primos sino hermanos. It’s a
wonderful sight. Surely there can be nothing like it anywhere in the
world.
Pamplona is the home of the famed encierro immortalized by
Hemingway in one of his books. The fiesta starts the 6 of July and lasts
until the 18th. Crowds of merry-makers from all over Europe flood
into the town during these days. There is as little sleep for 12 days
as there is much drinking. The program is nearly the same every day.
At 5:45 AM the bands and singers start through the streets singing,
shouting, dancing bien emborrachado from their all night vigil over
their vino, brandy, and cognac bottles. At 6:30 they all end up in the
bull ring, Plaza de Toros, where the band plays and all sing popular
songs.
At 8:00 the Encierro begins – the greatest part of all. From the
corral where the bulls are kept, to the Plaza de Toros, all the streets
are barricaded off so the bulls can be let out of the corral and charge
down the streets left open to them, finally arriving in the Plaza. All the
“brave” men in town get in the streets with the bulls and corren antes
de los toros. With six bulls thundering down the streets and hundreds
of drunken fools all think they are great matadors, you can imagine
the bedlam that breaks loose as soon as the shot is fired to signal
the release of the bulls. The barricades are lined with thousands of
screaming fiesta-loving souls who utilize all of their lung power as
soon as the bulls come in sight. Much blood is spilled and deaths
are not uncommon. To see ten or fifteen of these fools get gored and
stamped on by three, four, five, or six bulls at the same time is the
damndest thing I’ve ever witnessed.
Eventually the bulls end up in the arena where they throw some
ten or twenty more aficionados into the air and stomp some hundred
more before being led out to be rested for the corrida that takes place
at 6:00 the same evening.
At this point the bull ring is jammed with the jubilant drunks who
ran and survived the encierro. Each one thinking no existe un matador
como el. Into this mess is turned loose a young bull whose horns are
wrapped to prevent goring. The number of people tossed flying
through the air and rolling on the ground looks as though a bomb
had been dropped in their midst. The screaming and shouting of the
crowd in the stands is tremendous. Occasionally there is loud hooting
and whistling from the crowd if the aficionados gang up on the bull
so that he can’t move. After a few minutes of hysteria, the bull is led
out by two old bulls that are brought into the ring and are led around
until the young bull spots them and follows them off. The entire show
is repeated for four bulls.
At ten o’clock the solemn procession of San Fermin takes place,
40 41

and things die down pretty well until 6:30 PM when the bull fight is
celebrated. At 10:45 fireworks, dancing, and music begin and carry on
until 1:30. Then back to the bottle. Whew!”
The entrance to the arena was shaped like a funnel that created a choke
point for the arriving crowd of fleeing people with stampeding bulls close
behind. It was a mess. The floor of the arena was so packed with people
that only by following the sudden rush of the escaping crowd from one
side to the other could the charging bull be found. Occasionally a person
would be seen tossed into the air with legs and arms flailing over the heads
of everyone. It was pandemonium fueled by torrents of red wine. More fun
and excitement could not be imagined!
In my letters home, I had judiciously neglected to relate my
participation in the encierro.
The Curso de Verano para Estudiantes Norteamericanos at the Instituto
de Cultura Hispánica attracted a mixed bag of individuals. The group
numbered about thirty-five. More than half were teachers. There were five
fellows more or less my age, three of whom I roomed with. Everyone was
quite congenial with the exception of two haughty French Canadian sisters.
Though the course was essentially for Norteamericanos, there were several
aristocratic young Spanish ladies in the group:
“Carmencita Franco, the daughter of Generalissimo Francisco
42 43

Franco, la Marquesa Carmen Llanos, Paloma Bial, Maria Luisa
(Piti) Ontneros, and others. One of my room mates was Carlos Von
Der Becke, a pretty good sort without much savoir faire and son of
Generalissimo Von Der Becke of Argentina. He is madly in love with
a very wealthy (and nice) Spanish girl who is spending the summer
here in Fuenterrabia. She doesn’t give him a tumble. (Why should
she when she has me?). The second room mate is Kevin Corrigan, son
of Ambassador Corrigan, the American representative to the United
Nations. Kevin had lived much of his life in Venezuela and Salvador
and speaks Spanish very well. He is a fine fellow (a graduate of
Amherst this year). The third is Roland Burk from Washington D.C.
and now a law student at Cornell. He is 28 and was discharged from
the army a major. Also a good boy, but not too sharp in Spanish.”
Fuenterrabía was a small Basque fishing port on the Atlantic coast at
the mouth of the Bidasoa River that formed the boundary between France
and Spain. We had good lodgings in the main hotel of Fuenterrabía, the
Carlos V. Looking from my hotel room window across the Bidasoa could
be seen the French town of Hendaya. A short distance up the coast was the
famous French resort and casino town of Biarritz.
HOTEL CARLOS V FUENTERRABIA
44 45

the French side. Generalissimo Franco and the church were sticklers for
propriety. Nevertheless, we would often wait for low tide and wade across
the Bidasoa to the French beaches of Hendaya where we were free to do as
we pleased – and so were the ladies.
Our School on the fishing docks
Classes in Spanish literature, economics, folklore, and history, were from
11:00 AM to 6:00 PM with two hours off for lunch. We had ample time to
enjoy the local scene. Fenterrabía was a fishing village. Cod fish was the
main catch. When the boats returned loaded with fish, large wooden tables
were set outdoors along the docks, and the fishwives prepared a wonderful
feast. We were all invited. Never have I tasted such delicious dishes of cod.
The tables were loaded with huge steaming casseroles of fish; some were
smothered in a red sauce and others in a green sauce. The exquisite food
was washed down with porones of red wine, preferably held over the head at
arm’s length and poured in a thin stream into the mouth without dribbling
down your shirt. (It took a bit of practice.)
There were good beaches for swimming. However, they were patrolled
by the Guardia Civil in uniform with rifles slung over their shoulder. At
intervals along the beach were large signs with warnings against improper
behavior. It was prohibited to lie horizontal on the beach. The maximum
inclination was 45 degrees. Men had to wear tops to their bathing suits
– no bare torsos. It was forbidden to swim across the Bidasoa River to
46 47

Pomme
Prisonnière
Jane Webster

It was a perfect spring day deep in rural
Normandie as we set out to discover the delights
and secrets of the pomme prisonnière!
The pomme prisonnière was first marketed by the iconic Calvados
purveyors Christian Drouin in 1981.
Guillaume of the Drouin Family led the convoy by road to the orchards
that we would visit deep in rural Calvados. He explained to us that his
father had by sheer chance discovered, just a few miles from the Christian
Drouin distillery, an apple grower, Didier Alleaume. The Alleaume family
had kept alive the tradition of pomme prisonnière for over four generations.
What is a pomme prisonnière I hear you ask? Why, simply just that! Apples,
imprisoned within ornamental carafes, drowning in Calvados.
When I first saw a pomme prisonnière, I asked myself “how on earth can
they get an apple into a carafe?”
The answer to this came to us as all five senses danced and discovered
the secrets of this elusive wonder.
Each April, apple blossom covers the trees in the orchard, a pink and offwhite
dream. In May the embryo of the fruit begins to form as the blossom
begins to fade. Non-fertilized fruits abort and fall haphazardly from the
trees. As a measure of rarity, we learnt that Only 5% of the Apple embryos
become apples. Guillaume explained that if they wait for the aborted fruits
to fall before placing the carafes over the young apples there is a risk that
the neck will be too narrow. Placing the carafes too early is doomed to
failure. Thomas, the master carafe hanger interjected at this point to be
sure we understood:
51

“The difficulty consists in determining the accurate time for the carafe to
be attached to the branch so that the little apple can grow inside it during
the summer.”
In late September, the carafe is detached from the tree : it is carefully
cleaned and filled with Calvados Pays d’Auge by Christian Drouin. During
the long months of maceration, the flavours of the apple blend with those
of the Calvados.
Despite an incredibly high failure rate, Christian Drouin offers a limited
number of pomme prisonnière for sale each year. It is a magnificent souvenir
to take home with you from Normandy.
To preserve your pomme prisonnière in its full glory for many years to
come, all one has to do is to keep the apple topped with Calvados - by
Christian Drouin, naturally!
52

Eden, west nepal
Lachlan Webster
“Shhh” Gaulthier turns toward us, holding a finger
to his lips, and through the bristle of his moustache I
can see that there is true fear there, now. “Over there,”
he says, “there is tiger.”
Our guide, up ahead, one hand on the bowie knife sheathed at his waist,
holds the other to his ear, toward the squawking of the monkeys and the
birds up ahead, and beyond them, to something that is lost on everybody
but for him. This man, Gaulthier tells us, is the only one with whom you
should go into the jungle. The park, you can go with anyone, but if you
want to walk the jungle, he is the only one to take you.

We all wait silently on his sign. Our man makes several indistinct
movements with his hand and claps two fingers silently to his wrist.
Gaulthier stoops a little to talkto me from his six-foot-something height.
“okay, umm, so if you see tiger,
you must stop, look it in the
eye, and climb up a tree. Don’t
turn your back”
“There is two tigers. 50 meters away.”
He says, slowly and very clearly, in a
strong Parisian accent. His voice is
shaky, and still shaking like that, he
tells me as though an afterthought:
“okay, umm, so if you see tiger, you must stop, look it in the eye, and
climb up a tree. Don’t turn your back” he adds, hastily, already half-way
turned himself.
“What’s going on?” Says Stephanie, coming up the rear. I turn to her
and hold a finger to her lips.
“Tiger” I whisper. “Two of them.” Her heart catches in her throat, I
can hear it stop a moment among the screeching overhead. Oh my god,
oh my god, her voice barely there now, and all the greeny depths of the
jungle reflected in her eyes. This is not what she signed up for. I tell her
about the tigers, about looking them in the eye, about climbing up a
tree. Oh my god, she says again.
We are in Bardiya, in the west of Nepal. A 13 hour, cliff-edge-hugging,
sphincter-busting ride from the capital of Kathmandu, where Gaulthier,
an ex-employee of the famous Pompidou Centre, has erected for himself
his own private bit of paradise. Private, that is, but for the tigers and the
monkeys and the occasional elephant, who he says, on off-season, will
storm through any place where humans have been, piercing their clayhut
structures with their tusks and throwing them away like so much
detritus.
“They don’t like people” Gaulthier laughs. I can’t imagine why.
On our way to the jungle for our foot safari, where we will be tracking
the Greater One Horned Rhino, a beast native to all corners of the
Himalayan range, and even as far as Myanmar, we see a rather upset
monkey tied to a tree by its neck.
“What have they got it tied up for?” We ask.
Gaulthier, with the casual air of a long-time neighbour, as natural
here as he might have been at the counter of some gilt-trimmed, faded
brasserie, turns to the impassive Nepali standing at the gate, and holds
his hands up in namaste. With a gaggle of words neither of us can catch
the edges between, he makes the customary gesture with his hand.
A sort of scooping twist, as though presenting the man a handful of
emptiness, an action which on either side of the Himalayas, we have
come to observe, denotes a question asked.
The man just shrugs, and swings the scythe dangling by his wrist
unforcefully into the fence-post. Looks at it a moment, then takes it
out and begins again to swing it by his side. He jerks his head down
the path and replies, a three syllable answer, then spits and looks at
Gaulthier, as impassive as ever.
“Éléphant” shrugs Gaulthier. “It’s to scare the éléphant.”
We all thank the man and continue down the path. The air is dry
and warm, and upon it a peculiar kind of light that makes one feel
as though he has stepped into a
different era altogether. An era
before cameras and televisions and
lights were invented, into a world
not-yet-captured, as though the
air itself had never known scrutiny
nor any reason to be anything but
what it was. To be soft and uninhibited, as though the earth delighted
and rejoiced in the simple fragrance of its being, and in the still of the
56 57

summer heat, everything is as it always has been. By the side of the road,
what look like large bushes of stinging nettles tower far over our heads,
far even over Gaulthier’s. But with the blowing of a soft breeze, a familiar
perfume is carried to our nostrils, and Stephanie and I look at each other in
disbelief.
“Is that pot?” I ask .
“Where?” Asks our host, vaguely, his body carried along in the same
gentle revery that has become his everyday. I point to the patch by the roadside,
densely grown and the size of a small house fit to raise a family of five.
“Oh, yes. It’s everywhere, you know.”
In the jungle, we all wait in stunned silence, we hear the sounds
of our hearts in our chest, as the trees and all the unseen voices within
them screech out in common warning. Tiger, tiger. Two of them. There.
Stephanie’s hand in mine, our palms slip sweatily across each other, and the
heart of the jungle, beats too, like a drum in some far-foreign time. I recall a
story told to me years ago in a backpacker’s hostel in downtown Bombay. A
gentle, blond-tressed yogi in spandex garb, with soft, loving eyes, who told
of his guru, who when walking one day a narrow cliff-passage, came across
a tiger. How the guru had had in his eyes a look of pure love, and how man
and tiger had watched each other and, understanding each other, allowed
one another to pass. I wonder, standing there in the jungle, if a tiger would
see the love that was there behind my terror and unknowing. I wonder if
she would see how helpless I was, and what she would choose to do about
it. There is fear in me, but in me also is welling something of the divine, and
I feel resigned to my fate, and in that resignation I know I am as forest, as
tiger, as golden, unfettered light.
Forest that would wet his faded nike running shorts, had he not relieved
60

himself just moments before. Tiger that would flinch at the word ‘tiger’, and
turn his back, tail tucked between his legs like a well-fed housecat. Light
that would not dance, but would stand frozen in space, so that you could
see the stiffened shoulders of each and every photon, who would stand at
attention, screaming inside themselves their silent oaths.
Well, the monkeys and birds up above all quiet down and we party of five
stand, frozen in our tentative poses. The local girl who works in Gaulthier’s
kitchen, who grew up in the primitive villages surrounding, smiles serenely
from under her floppy sunhat. Our guide gives us notice with his knifehand
- all clear - and we all move deeper into the jungle.
A pile of rhino dung the size of a watermelon lets us know we are getting
closer. Our guide stands in the clearing, and looking through the foliage
at signs that remain invisible to the rest of us, he leads us their way. We
walk slowly and quietly, and repeat in our heads the instructions we have
been given. If you see the rhino, climb a tree. If you can’t climb a tree, run in
zig-zags, and find one to hide behind. The rhino, for all its force and speed,
lacks the facility to pivot. This does not frighten us, not nearly as much as
the thought of the tiger had. Can’t tigers climb trees? I wonder, vaguely, and
it is a special kind of comfort to know that, had I been prepared or not, it
would likely matter naught. Our guide puts two fingers up, a sign to remain
still.
“Two rhinos” says Gaulthier, interpreting for us what the man has just
said. “A mother and a baby.”
A little gasp of awe from Stephanie, not because she has seen the things,
but because there was always a little gasp of awe whenever mention of a
baby. We advance forward, suddenly emboldened, and find a tree in which
to sit and watch. Through the brush, we search for the grey, leathery hide of
62 63

the beasts. I pull out Stephanie’s camera, ready to shoot upon sight.
When finally I find them, in amongst the far-away leaves, what I see is
a single, pointed ear, flicking about, much like a horse’s ears flick about
when it is burdened by flies. Then my eyes focus, and I begin to make out
the shape of the mother’s body. I see movement, and suddenly the shape
of the baby is made known to me. They are standing in the jungle like any
other creature stands, close to their loved one, craning their necks to eat
the leaves from a downward-hanging branch. I try to capture the moment,
but my lens is too wide, the mother and the baby too grey in all the dusky
green brush of the jungle thick. I give it up, and sit there, watching them
feed. Stephanie, short-sighted, has taken to carving a love-heart in the tree.
From behind us, we hear the crackling of bushes, and up in a tree are
64 65

seven women, giggling in brightly coloured sarees. Local women, Gaulthier
explains, come to collect wild grass, from which could be woven baskets,
such as the one shown to us over last night’s dinner, a bowl the size of a
sunhat, spiralling out from the bottom in tightly-woven, ever-larger braids,
into which even water could be poured, he had said. The mention of table
stirs my hunger, and I think of the food we had been served; luscious honey
chicken and jasmine rice, a cuisine above and beyond any other we had had
in Nepal. It was Nepali, reimagined by a shameless gourmand. It was rich,
it was intense, it was silky smooth. It was just plain good.
As though stirred by some hereditary fear of hungry man, the rhinos stop
their eating and move off through the brush. In the quiet of the jungle, you
can hear the steady beat of their tandem hoof-fall, and as they move further
out of ear-shot, we all climb down from the tree, the ladies laughing and
chattering between themselves, and continue on our path.
Our time at Anjali’s was short-lived, but utterly unforgettable. A place
so beautiful, so remote, so untouched, is rare to find in this modern world.
Gaulthier was kind enough to sit down with us to ask him some questions.
Here is what he told us, and what we’d like to share with you.
•
LA REVIEW
Tell us about yourself. Who are you, where do you come from, and how the
hell did you end up here?
GAULTHIER
My name is Gaulthier Roux, from Paris. I quit my job at the age of 45, got
66

disgusted by the way Pompidou Centre was going. The postmodernism,
so called philosophy was disintegrating the thinking of art. The new
liberal politics brings up a special form of philanthropy, which was in fact,
advertising and “art washing”. The utopia of Pompidou Center was down.
I sold everything and went around the world. I ended in India that I knew
very well since 30 years, wrote one or two books, never edited. They deserve
it.
At that time my daughter Clementine (Anjali for Indian and Nepali, she
choosethis name from a Bollywood) was settled in North India. I went to
see her. From here I wanted to see the mountain of Kashmir. Very long
way by bus. I had rest in the holy city of Haridwar. When I saw all those
Indian making stupid pujas just by ritualism, praying to have a new car or a
youngest wife, I knew that my time in India was over. The nearest country
was Nepal, so I went there.
After the western border of Mahendranagar, the first stop is Bardiya
National Park. I stopped. This is a very remote place close to the jungle.
The tourists come here to see the tigers. Not me. I had no expectation; I
knew nothing about nature, animals and birds. I was a city guy. But I liked
this place; as in the big city you can be alone. I was staying in a nice lodge
with people who were respecting the fact that I wanted to be alone. It was
perfect.
LA REVIEW
‘Perfect’ does come to mind when you look around. So, how did it come
about that you begun to build your life here?
GAULTHIER
Few weeks after, I asked the owner to find me a very remote school, where
I could teach English. This was the beginning. Patthar Bojhi is surrounded
by the jungle where live tigers, rhinos and elephants.
I was living in a traditional farm. The life here, beside the phones and the
bicycle was very close to the Neolithic. I had just one book with me, «
Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit» of Céline. I was not bad as a teacher of bad
English with a very good French accent. In fact I enjoyed very much my
new life. The people were nice, the place amazing, the culture suited me
very well. The place chooses me, and it was time in my head to settle.
In Nepal, as a tourist, you can stay maximum 5 months a year. What to do?
Have a business visa and so, create a hotel in that place.
I will not explain how I found the land, my manager and my workers; it is
a book in itself.
We’d read it. What can you tell us?
LA REVIEW
GAULTHIER
So, 4 years ago I began to build a resort. I started from nothing, rice fields.
I was at the same time, architect, landscape, stylist and cabinetmaker
(furnishing designer). It was not so hard; I had only to use the skill of the
craftsmen and the pattern of the traditional culture, Nepali and Tharu.
One problem arose; there is no tradition of the “table” like in France. They
eat on the floor with the hand in plate in steel (thal). I create the table, a
mix up of Napoleon III and Louis XV. The chairs are closer to a modern
Italian design.
For the “service de table” I went to Thimi, close to Kathmandu to meet some
68 69

the rooms of my resort.
Once the first room was ready, I opened.
LA REVIEW
And a beautiful job you have done. How do you attract people to such a
remote place? Do you have many guests?
GAULTHIER
At the beginning, a friend of mine in Kathmandu, send me a lot of guest…
That was good. As I told you, the people come to Bardiya to see the wildlife.
I am not so good at that, but I have a good guide.
of the only ceramist of the country. Here, with him we create the plates.
Close to him was a small painter of Mithila art, Laksman. I asked him to
paint the plates…
cannabis sativa
‘marijuana’
The Mithila art is very old. In the tradition, the women were painting the
wall of the mud houses, during the festivals time, with naïve art. In the
middle of the sixties a gallerist from Japan and another from America asked
them to put it on canvas, and then it become famous abroad. Making money
is for men, so they began to paint. Mithila was an old kingdom situated
across Nepal and India. It is in the eastern part of the Terai, the capital is
Janakpur. As the painting are showing the life of the villages as well as the
Jungle, I asked Laksman, my painter to provide me some canvas to decorate
What everybody forgets is that human are a part of the wildlife. The
villagers live with the wild animal, everyday they go into the jungle to cut
the grass, to pick up the firewood. They can encounter tigers. Every year
there are people killed in the jungle. Big animals come as well in the villages;
Elephant to eat the crops, leopards to eat the small cattle.
The Tharu culture (60% of the inhabitants), close to the nature, deserve
to be discover. So I am the cultural guide to explain the way the people
are living in this remote area. As I told you, we are close to Neolithic. The
belief is shamanism, animism. The organization, inside of the family, has
not change since thousands of years.
LA REVIEW
And the land, has it changed? We can only imagine there is growing tourist
interest. As much as it is horrible to think of, we can’t imagine Bardiya
70 71

emaining this secret, untouched paradise much longer. Do you see a lot of
change happening?
GAULTHIER
The tiger will be always here, he is well protected. The culture will disappear
in a few years. It is time to come. Everything is changing so fast. I am here
since 6 years, and I can see the evolution. Concrete houses replacing mud
houses, pitch roads, concrete fences… Good or bad? Who am I to give a
judgment? Let say, it is not the fault of the tourism…
Tourism is good for the area, it brings money. We had a good quality of
guests because it is very difficult or expensive to reach us. Beside rupees,
the only impact on the culture is the weeds. More and more young people
are smoking. Before it was only the old women, beside Shivaratri (Shiva
was a junky), who were smoking the weeds, to cure the arthritis, I suppose.
LA REVIEW
It ain’t a drug if it comes from the earth! And what about you, what’s next
for Gaulthier Roux?
GAULTHIER
What is my future in this place? I don’t know! Nowadays I am looking for
some money, some partner, to finish my resort…so I will be here for 7 to 10
years more. After, I will follow my steps.
You can visit Anjali’s at http://anjalisdolphinsresort.com/ or, better yet, just
book your flight and go!
72

In Conversation
avec Lydia Pearson
story by Lachlan Webster
and Stephanie McCarthy
74

Friend and first-time visitor to the La Review headquarters, Lydia
Pearson of Australian fashion label Easton-Pearson visited us in early
Spring.
“So, you grew up in Toowoomba, but you live in Brisbane now. Do you
ever go back to Toowoomba?”
Here’s some of what was said.
“What kind of questions are you going to ask me?” Lydia asks, as
Stephanie and I bumble about the business of getting our cameras
running. After months of laying dormant, we are as children again. “Are
you going to ask me questions about the château?” She jokes.
I bite. “When was it built?” I ask her, scrolling through my menu, trying
to format an SD card that doesn’t want to be formatted.
“Nup, haven’t been back to Toowoomba since my parents left, and I
won’t ever. I have no reason to go back. I wasn’t particularly happy at
school. I didn’t like school very much.”
“Did you like anything about school?”
“What did I like at school? I liked French. I liked French and Drama,
that’s all I liked. And English” she adds. “But I didn’t like the students, the
other students.”
“1853, I believe” comes Lydia, unfettered, and I hang my head in shame.
Not only does she listen better than I do, she probably talks better, too.
“I was talking to my parents this morning on Skype, and they’re saying
‘when was it built, when was it built?’ ‘The seventeen hundreds’” - here
she puts on her best dad-voice - “‘I’d say it was built in the seventeen
hundreds.’ Dad’s always right, of course’ she says.
“All dads are always right.”
“He’s adorable, my dad. He’s such a great man. He reads more than
anyone I’ve ever known. He probably reads four books a week.”
“Who does he read?”
“Oh, anything! He doesn’t really like fiction. What he reads is nonfiction,
mainly. Historical encounters. He’s obsessed with explorers.
Anyone who’s done anything adventurous. But you can’t talk about a
single subject without him knowing so much about it.”
“Did you have many friends?” Stephanie asks
“No” Lydia laughs, as one does in the face of the preposterous. “I was
quiet. I felt very alien. Really English. And, in those days - and this is going
to sound really bad - but everyone who had enough money usually went
to a private school, not a state school, and dad was a doctor, so everyone
assumed I should be at a private school. But mum hated the private school
system, she’d been a teacher in England, and she just thought it was so
sub-standard and she wasn’t going to have me subjected to it, so I went to
state schools… And I went to seven primary schools and then I went to the
big high school.”
“Seven!?”
Lydia nods. “Because I hated them all. And even at the last one where I
had to stay at because there weren’t any others, I still had to go home for
lunch, because I just couldn’t stay in the playground. I hated it.”
“Would you get upset?”
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“Yes, I was a nightmare child.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“No, when I look back, I don’t know when it changed. I don’t know
when I got happy.”
“Did you take yourself seriously?”
“Oh yes, I’m sure I did” she laughs. “Probably far too seriously. Yes,
definitely. I was the over-indulged, eldest child. Precious and…difficult.”
and I also learned how to sew.”
“How did you learn how to sew?”
“Mum taught me! In those days, mums could sew. Mum used to sew
all my dresses, and again, the arguments about how long was the ribbon
going to be, how low was the neckline going to be, and how puffed were
the sleeves… She thought it might be good if I started making my own. So
I did.”
“Did you always have more outlandish ideas?”
“And you told me your mum used to give you an allowance”
“Oh yes, my dress allowance. Because she couldn’t stand the fights in
the shops. We used to have a lot of arguments. Not that there were many
shops in Toowoomba. You have to understand that there were only about
four, but still I always wanted to buy things that she didn’t think I should
buy. But she was really very progressive. Considering she was from a very
All I wanted were frillynecked
petticoats and pink
party dresses, so that I could
go and sit on the chair and be
a lady...
working-class family, she was an only
child… She had very broad-minded
ideas. So she gave me a dress allowance
and then I had to buy my own clothes.
So I soon found out... what that meant!
And bought my lime-green patent
leather sling-back shoes with most of the money for the whole season,
and then had nothing else to wear for the entire time. I can still remember
standing on parade in school in them, thinking “Hoo, this was a big
mistake””
She laughs. “So the next shoes I bought were very sensible, they were
antique brown leather with little bronze buckles. They were very sensible
shoes and they worked with everything. And then I started op-shopping
“Yeah. But she was also - she’s an artist - she was so creative and clever.
She was always doing interesting things. We were very lucky. You know,
one of the earliest things we had in our playroom was a painting table.
She bought an old, round table like this, a wooden one, and she chopped
the legs off low so we could all sit and paint together, and make plasticine
things, and we were always going to art camps and drama camps… We
were really, really lucky.”
“Did your mum ever shop at op shops?”
“No, she couldn’t believe.. She’d say ‘you come home with all of the
things I was dying to throw out of my mother’s house. She was an
inveterate modernist, you know, when I was a little girl I was wearing
brown corduroy trousers so that I could climb trees with the boys. All
I wanted were frilly-necked petticoats and pink party dresses, so that I
could go and sit on the chair and be a lady... I was very precious.”
“You were the only girl?”
“Well, I wasn’t, in the end, but my little sister is nine years younger
than me, so I was the only girl for nine years. I made the most of it. And
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she was a tomboy; she came out with brown corduroy trousers already on.
And she’s still a tomboy, we’re really different.”
“Do you still like dressing up?”
“Yep. I love it. I think about… not so much just for me, but I think
about how things could look all the time. That’s why I love op-shopping,
because I love going and thinking about possibilities, and you don’t have
to actually buy anything. You’re completely free to imagine. You’re not
contrained by this year’s colour. I took my two nieces into Harvey Nick’s
in London. Oh my god, I was so depressed.”
“What’s Harvey Nick’s?”
“Harvey Nichols, it’s a really really expensive shop, in London, a really
really expensive boutique.”
“Hm. Do you have to watch what you eat?”
“I don’t watch what I eat, I probably should.”
“You’d know by now.” I sigh. “Whatever happened to Marlon Brando?
“I don’t know, but he was gigantic, wasn’t he? I think boys who’ve been
really, really buff - and he was really buff - and then they don’t, can get fat.
But he looked like he was on medication.”
“Yeah, he looked kind of sick.”
“Like he was going to explode.”
“What are your thoughts on Gerard?”
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“Depardieu? I loved him when he was in Roxanne. You know, the film
about Cyrano de Bergerac? With the big nose? It’s brilliant, it’s old. He
was brilliant when he was younger but he’s gotten to be such a cliché.
He’s in every film. You can’t turn on the French anything without him
being in there.”
‘You just didn’t get angry! You got down on the floor and said ‘now
Felix, do you know what that means? This means we need to cut the
bottom off these dresses and sew them back up, and these dresses were
for our customers!” She said, “if he’d been mine, I would’ve just thrown the
scissors at him!’”
“He’s like the French De Niro. Great, and then...”
“That’s so funny! It says a lot about you and your temperament.”
“Yeah. Not so great.”
“Working on Easton Pearson with your home as the base, and having
three kids, how did you-”
“I don’t remember being that gentle, at all. I suppose I knew he didn’t
mean to. That vape smells so beautiful! It smells like a candle!”
“It’s really nice, if you want to try it.”
“I shared a nanny with my sister in law, the one with the brother who
Felix got hold of the scissors.
He was about five, I think,
or four maybe, and we had a
whole row of chiffon dresses
that we’d just finished
had five kids, so we had two nannies
on rotation, and we had some kids at
school and some kids at home and the
nannies used to overlap when the kids
came home from school, so that was the
way we sort of got through, but if you’re
working from home and one of the kids cries, you still go out and find out
what’s happened. It’s fairly distracting.
One day - I’d forgotten this, but my machinist, who had been ours at
Easton Pearson and mine before that, so we’d worked together for thirty
years - she reminded me of the day that Felix got hold of the scissors. He
was about five, I think, or four maybe, and we had a whole row of chiffon
dresses that we’d just finished, that were all hanging up, they’d been
pressed, ready to be delivered, and he got the scissors and he sat on the
floor and he just went snip, snip, snip, snip. It must have felt great, they
were really sharp scissors. All the way along, there were twenty-eight
chiffon dresses, all just snipped, and we had to shorten them all.. And she
said,
“I’ve never - how do I, do I suck?”
She vapes. She coughs.
“Do you smoke, Lydia?”
“No. I don’t do it alot. Nora loved to smoke. She loved it. So I smoked a
bit with her.”
“I don’t know if I ever met Nora.”
“No? You would remember. She was very American, very New York.”
“What did she look like?”
“Very beautiful. Dark eyes, dark hair, olive skin. Big smile, big laugh.”
“What were her origins?”
“Oh, Irish and Polish. But she was very, very olive. And dark. And very
82 83

intense.”
‘what’s a fax machine?’
“The dark Irish. They say they come from the jews at some point.”
“Oh wow. That seems like a very strange idea, that the Irish came from
the jews.”
“I don’t know, some girl at a barbecue who was really into anthropology
told me. She reckons that all dark Irish came from Jewish refugees from
Spain.”
“Pamela was telling me that there was a huge Chinese population in
Jamaica, which I was just astonished about. And when you look at Beebs,
my niece, you can really see it. She’s got these really oriental cheek bones
and long eyes… My great grandparents on my dad’s side were Jewish. They
came from Poland. My great-grandfather was a magician. He was one of
the founding members of the Magic Circle Club.”
“What’s the Magic Circle Club?”
“It’s a magician’s club in London. It’s really really old, where all of the
really established, professional magicians used to go, and out of that club
came all the magic books, the trick books. It’s where most people learn
their magic tricks from. And his wife was a musical dancer.”
“Speaking of magic, when did you first go to India?”
“Well, we first started Easton Pearson in 1989, and I first went to India
in 1996. And during that time we had wanted to really change the clothes
we were making. We started wanting to do embroidery. We were talking
the other day about what it was like when we first started our business, I
was trying to tell some of my students what it was like. I said ‘you know,
we didn’t even have a fax machine’ and they’re all looking at me thinking
There were no computers, there no mobile phones, we didn’t have
a fax machine. We used to write letters. Every swatch, every drawing,
everything that we wanted someone to get in India, had to go in an
envelope and get posted to them. When I think back, I can’t believe it! But
I can remember, putting these little drawings in an envelope and sending
them off, and the first embroidery that we did was just some birds that
we got embroidered on some buttons. And they said, you know you really
don’t understand what wonderful resources there are in India. You really
ought to come to India and have a look. But Amos was still a baby and I
kept saying ‘I can’t leave him, I can’t leave him.’ Finally Naleni said ‘he’s
two. Just leave him for ten days. You can manage for ten days.’ My mum
came and looked after the kids. And when Pam and I went to India, oh my
god. Did you just die when you first went there?”
“I died, but maybe in not the best kind of way. I had hardly slept, and
Delhi was full-on. I grew to love it, though. In Gujarat, I loved it there.”
“Well that’s where Suda’s from. She lives in Mumbai. When we went
there, it was in such an amazing way. We were with Naleni, Suda’s
driver picked us up from the airport, took us back to her amazing 50’s
apartment, right on the top of Malabar Hill in Mumbai. And she’s an
absolute genius, she’s so creative, so clever, and her place is just full of
antiques and modern art. It’s just so well done. And so we just had this
dream time. And she had been the founding member of this big women’s
cooperative in Gujarat. In Kutch. And so we flew off there and then took
the overnight train and got up in the morning and there were all these
women, with tattoos and all wearing black with red dots, black Thai-dye
with red dots. And there was the morning mist, and they were outside the
train, god, it was amazing, it was absolutely amazing.”
“Am I right in detecting a Ladakhi influence in some of the embroidery
84 85

used in your designs with Easton Pearson?”
“No, not consciously, but you know, all of the people who did the
embroidery were nomads, they were camel herders. They came from
Afghanistan or even sometimes from Africa. Alot of them settled in India
because it became impossible to live their nomadic life, because all of the
land was owned. They couldn’t traverse the country the way they had.
So, when Suda started this cooperative, it must be at least 40 years ago,
the women were on the street trying to sell their dowries, and the dowries
were their quilts and their embroideries and their beautiful bodices. She
was so horrified that they would sell them, because that’s their wealth,
their quilts and their cattle. And the men weren’t good at cultivation,
because they’d never done it. They’d just moved from place to place.
So it started as just a little thing, to stop the women from having to sell
off their embroidery. They got projects, they started doing projects. And
Suda worked for the Khadi Corporation, which is the hand-spun cotton
weaving that Ghandi used to do. So she started getting a livelihood for
the women and now it’s huge, they’ve got like 2000 women working for
them. Chandaben got the Rolex Laureate award for services to women in
the world, and with the money she bought this bus to train all the women.
It’s so fantastic, they stripped out all the seats, kept just a few benches
and some tables and they hung up all the traditional embroideries, really
good examples of all the embroideries, and the bus is completely covered
in all these digital photos of women in the desert, embroidering. It’s called
Threads of Life School on Wheels. And they drive into the desert, through
all the tiny villages, and do workshops with the young girls, so that
they’re all being trained.
They’ve got a great system. The girls all start learning when they’re six,
after school. Not that the school teacher comes very often, but… and then,
they’re not allowed to sell their work, until they’re sixteen and they’ve
87

made their dowry, and when their dowry’s complete, then they’re allowed
to make things for sale.
And Chandaben’s husband, he is 95 now, he was an industrialist,
made a fortune, and he’s ploughed it all back into the community. They
live really humbly, out in the country, and he’s taught agriculture to all
of the men. And he’s brought experts in and they do gobar gas plants
and composting and how to make sustainable, organic crops. It’s just
extraordinary, what they’ve done for the whole area.
They’re like gods in their community. People just fall at their feet. You
know how the Indians are. “
“Well, what are you looking for at the op shop, Lydia?”
“I’m looking for les ouvriers, les bleus de travails, for Amos.”
“Yeah, you and the rest of the world.”
Inquire with Jane Webster at
jane.thefrenchtable@gmail.com
about the specialised tour through
India she is curating for 2020
88 89

Hôtel
St James
story by Jane Webster
90

For many years now, Pete and I have remained loyal to the Relais
Christine Hotel in the 6th arrondissement. We discovered this
gem of a hotel walking through
the streets of Saint Michel on
our honeymoon and right then
and there, vowed and declared
that one day we would be able to afford to stay. We love the left bank,
and so it was with much angst and feeling like true traitors that we
ventured over to the 16th arrondissement to stay at the St James! The
St James is the only château-hotel in Paris and sits majestically on its
own park. Though Paris is but a few steps away, The St James is like a
little cocoon into which one can disappear and pretend otherwise, for a
precious moment.
Though Paris is but a few steps
away, The St James is like a little
cocoon into which one can disappear.
Upon arrival you will find a splendid Napoleon III residence, which
of course made us feel right at home immediately, Château de Bosgouet
being of the same architecture. The St James has been lovingly refurbished
with respect to tradition and with just a touch of pure fantasy by designer
Bambi Sloan. It is owned by the same family that own Relais Christine, so
any feelings of treachery & disloyalty soon dissipated.
This fascinating hotel also doubles as a private club, with many local
members sitting, working in the library or sharing a business lunch in the
Michelin star Restaurant on a daily basis. St James is a place of true calm
& elegance with just a touch of the quirky.
The library and bar is indeed a place to exchange whispered
confidences. A tiny pug chien roams the halls, answering to the name
of Oscar. Oscar’s “human” is a well-recognizable permanent resident, of
whose identity I am sworn to absolute secrecy. Suffice it to say, though,
that I was thoroughly star-struck.
95

The luxurious boudoir-style spa offers decadent treatments based on
the prestigious Maison Guerlain. Take the time to really spoil yourself
before venturing out to explore this beautiful arrondissement. The 16th
is very residential, very authentically Parisian and will give you a true
immersion into life in the capital before you head back to your Château
lodgings, where you will be warmly greeted as if you have just arrived
home.
St. James • 5 place du Chancelier
Adenauer 75116 Paris
98

in search of:
Absinthe
Lachlan Webster
“The third angel sounded his trumpet, and
a great star, blazing like a torch, fell from the
sky on a third of the rivers and on the springs of
water—the name of the star is Wormwood. A
third of the waters turned bitter, and many people
died from the waters that had become bitter.”
myth
Since man has walked on legs, it seems he has made it his sole duty to
judge Good from Bad. The criteria differs wherever you go, but among
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well-meaning women and men the world over, one thing remains
consistent. Set your foot into any room in the world, you will find people
straddling either side of the question of good and evil, the debauched and
the temperate, the respectable and the ousted.
Somewhere along the line, man dreamt judgement into an art, just as
today, he whittles his art back to fit the going judgement. His brain grew
bigger, his brows drew tighter, the pressure in his head was immense! It
kept building and building until soon, it filled his entire body..
And man saw it and thought it was good. Because he knew that it was
his. And man called it a soul, this displaced ache that he had, and when all
aches had ceased, and ecstasy overtook him, he called that a soul, too.
Here it would be easy to say that this is where we get to wine. That
man’s struggle with himself - that great distinction of His - his need to be
better, to be more, to be god-like, was that which pushed him to oblivion’s
edge.
artemisia absinthium
‘common wormwood’
Ah, but the soul predates the word we have given it, and man is not the
sole proprietor of thirst. At your deck-chair side on your Phuket holiday
resort, a drunken macaque sits, hunched over, eyeing your drink. In Peru,
the jaguar tracks through the jungle, in search of chacruna leaf and caapi
vine, a pair of needles in the botanical haystack that is the Amazon, where
there are over 80,000 documented species to choose from. A synergistic
mixture which is said to produce fantastic visions in the drinker, an
unearthly state resembling communion with God. Archaeologists are
uncertain as to when the yage was discovered, but we do know that the
jaguar knows how to get at it. Amongst the people of the area, it is said
that drinking the brew will bestow on you the jaguar’s hunting might.
104 105

Could it be, then, that the secret lays not in our tradition, but in
another? Could it be that the jaguar, in all its presumed intellectual
inferiority, as our measley understanding would have it, was the one that
led us to it?
Whatever the case, one thing is for sure: that where there is a soul,
there will be found the thirst to be obliterated. To be put back together.
That’s the way it seems to this reporter.
You’ve heard of the absinthe of legend. Opaque demon of myth, green,
leering witch of the fever dreams of all ancient, young, Parisian bohemia.
The plague of the drunken masses, the scourge of the middle class. She
was the final straw for one Swiss peasant, who after two glasses of the
stuff, took his old rifle off its rack and shot his wife and daughters dead,
before running out to the lawn and bungling his own end. Vincent Van
Gogh, drunk off of her sweet perfume, cut his own ear off, then folded in
his napkin, handed it off to the nearest bar wench he could find.
But what do we really know about absinthe? The word itself comes
to us via Latin from the greek ‘apsinthion’, meaning ‘wormwood’. The
story of wormwood, an innocuous-looking perennial shrub, employed
since ancient times for such humble uses as the relief of fever and the
deworming of livestock, is nonetheless replete with symbology. It is said
that, when the serpent that tempted Eve was driven out of paradise, it was
wormwood sprung up on the trail it left. Later, it was said that, should
one keep the roots of wormwood under one’s pillow, they would dream of
their true love.
Absinthe, the drink, is commonly said to have begun as a tonic and
106 107

cure-all, concocted by a French physician living in Switzerland at the
close of the 18th century. The good doctor, it is said, seeing the many
benefits of its use, saw fit to dress the plant up as a drink to be enjoyed
by the people, tempering the bitter and awful taste of the stuff with herbs
such as fennel seeds, anjelica root, calamus, and other such dainties. By the
middle of the 19th century, French colonial soldiers in Algeria were being
given absinthe, an alternative to the more expensive quinine, in order to
keep them free of worms, fever and other foreign ailments. Later, with
France’s stranglehold on the North of Africa secured, and with the soldiers
all returned to their cities and their towns, bringing with them the new,
bitterly-acquired taste. At bars and restaurants Marseille through Lille,
the people would all gather round the returning heroes, and the call
would go out from the troops for ‘une verte’. And the cheerful, red-faced
bourgeoisie, the golden light of the Gilded Age like some new Eldorado
a-rising in their eyes, would call out the same. From their busted leather
barstools, they would all toast to the glory of a renewed empire, and with
an arm laid over a bekhaki’d shoulder and a mouth full of the strange taste
of a new century, it wasn’t hard to feel as though you were really part of
something.
Ah, but this, like all great stories, could only ever be half-way true. In
fact, absinthe was not the original invention of a French physician, at all.
Dr Pierre Ordinaire, as the history-writers have called him, was merely
a convenient look for the spirit. In reality, the first absinthe was, in fact,
distilled by a Swiss woman named Mademoiselle Henriod de Couvet.
But, with absinthe well on its way to mainstream popularity, and the
grand illusion of a refound glory well on its way into the people’s hearts,
whatever nameless spin-doctors concerned saw fit to attribute it to a man.
A French man, and a doctor at that.
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Just as the story of Dr Ordinaire, with all its trimmings of scientific
legitimacy and patriotism, had ignited in the hearts of well-to-do men
and women France-over a legitimized love of the bitter green, so too had
the great myth of a rising France puffed the bourgeoisie with new lust
and greed. Deals were being made, risks were being taken, pennies being
thrown into the proverbial bucket, and absinthe, with its bright green
robe, louching a stormy, alien grey with the slow addition of iced water,
had all the alchemic connotation of a potion of love, all of the exotic
appeal of a linen-clad camel-back ride through a conquered desert. It
was France under Napolean III, and every evening between six and seven
was l’heure d’absinthe. Across Paris’ grands boulevardes, artists, poets
and the bourgeois alike could be seen, gathered around the ritual: the
slow trickling of iced water into a circle of glasses. A kind of covenant,
where for one precious moment, all gazes slowed to drink in the sight of
transformation in a fishbowl.
The Cocaine of the 19th Century
It is not surprising that absinthe’s subtle effect has fallen out of favour
in today’s society. The very moniker by which it is sometimes called – ‘the
cocaine of the 19th century’ – is indicative of the reason for the fall. In a
world that has grown accustomed to ever more refined, more effective,
more destructive pleasures – think Instagram or, say, the Atomic Bomb
– what chance could our humble, bitter green have to hold the public’s
fervour? Since the days of its notoriety, absinthe has been banned in just
about every civilized society you could think of, only to have resurfaced in
less illicit forms upon repeal. Thujone, the alkaloid mostly attributed to
the slow-forming madness said to have been experienced by absintheurs
of old, is carefully monitored under modern law, so as not to be delivered
in excess. In the Czech Republic, vulgar faeries shop themselves from
under store-front, falsely made-up in gaudy greens and cooing come-on’s
of superior thujone content to doe-eyed passers-by. A far cry from what is
allowed in modern-day France, some of these liquors boast a thujone level
of over three times the amount of their Western European counterparts.
However, these cheap imitations are a mere shadow of the elixir of old.
Mostly, they are nothing but high-proof liquors, with added colouring and
thujone. It was here, incidentally, that the slotted spoon ritual, in which
a burning sugar cube is allowed to drip into the drink, originated - most
connaisseurs say to distract from the inferior flavour profile. Alas, this is
what has become of absinthe in many places. It is little wonder, then, in
these days of misinformation and misunderstanding, that the question
of absinthe, when asked, rarely elicits any more than a passing shrug of
indifference. After all, we are talking about a world where cocaine not
only exists in abundance, but where it, or any other drug you could think
of, can be delivered to your bedroom window by drone, if you know how
to work the web.
And this is the main point of contention here, is it not? Is this drink
going to get me anywhere? Absinthe’s current fanbase, after all, is niche, to
say the least. There are the herb-coveting, Belle Epoque revisionist set, of
course. The drug-addled mystics and thrill-seekers you find lurking such
unsavoury online dens as Erowid.org and Drugs.com. Then, English lads
on stag-nights in the Czech capital of Prague. At least two of the three,
we can assume, are drawn to the faerie not by a love for the tender ritual,
nor an insatiable thirst for absinthe’s signature flavour (aniseed, anyone?)
but rather to the delirious state that its story promises. However,
many are destined to come away from the experience underwhelmed.
One particularly smarmy reporter, writing for the ‘Style & Fashion’
section of one much-heralded New York rag, distilled his understanding
of absinthe’s relevance in the modern world as one of those “falsely
subversive” phenomenons, such as “cigar bars” or “tattoos on women”.
110 111

112 113

But can absinthe really approach us to anything resembling the divine?
Was she really the woman behind so many great and tortured minds? Or
was her infamy a simple case of mistaken identity? A scapegoat for the
awful that lurks in our own, alcohol-poisoned minds? Picasso or Placebo?
Thujone has been widely misunderstood for about as long as we have
known about it. As late as the early 1970s, scientists were theorizing that
the substance acted on the same receptors as cannabinoids, the most
notable chemical compounds at work in marijuana. Research completed
in ‘75, however, made short work of that theory. We now understand
thujone to act on GABA receptors as an antagonist, which, incidentally,
is the exact opposite effect that alcohol has on these receptors. Research
completed in the year of 2000 showed that injecting mice with ethanol
counteracted the effects of a lethal dose of thujone. Essentially, what
we seem to be seeing here, then, is a perfect storm of intoxication.
While alcohol, which is in no short supply in even modern absinthes,
goes to work depressing you with its anxiety, fear and energy-depleting
properties, thujone reacts in precisely the opposite way.
Perhaps this dichotomy is why it was favoured by the artists of the
early 20th century. Hungry and uncertain, and with the need to create,
this ambiguous high that absinthe bestows upon its drinker no doubt
would have come as a godsend. To be able to drink all night, and well
into the day, without ever losing perceived lucidity, just rising and rising
to a ceilingless height - why, until la verte came along, this must have
been the sole prerogative of angels! It sounds dangerous, and it no doubt
must have been. In even the absinthes readily available now, this strange
lucidity is apparent. One friend, who I roped into drinking all night with
me, refusing him beer and wine or any of his usual preferences, through
a voice very clearly slurred, stood up and professed: “I’m not drunk at all,
I’m living in HD!”
Perhaps this is not the Green Faerie we have heard the legends of. I feel
a lifting, as dust lifts in the early evening light, toward the heavens, but I
myself am not yet as light as dust. The thing is to become dust, to become
so light as to lift as dust does! Alas, the difficulty in an investigation such
as ours is that the thing we seek to experience no longer really exists. Just
like the opium den of old, so too is the absinthe but a mere dream, gone
in the morning of a supposedly illuminated now. These days, absinthes
made in the traditional way, with what has come to be known as the
‘holy trinity’ - that is, wormwood, fennel and anise - are made this way
almost exclusively in the countries of its origin, where thujone levels are
limited to about a tenth of the supposed levels of absinthes of its heyday.
Many absintheurs speculate that there is something in this alchemy; it is
not enough, they say, to add wormwood to high proof liquor and expect
absinthe. It is in the distillation, in the intermingling of many complex
parts, that the magical and the mythical comes into existence. Absinthe
may have fallen out of favour, may have been forgotten as a myth of a
more hysterical time, many may have come to taste her, only to have left
scratching their head, wondering what all the fuss was about. But just as
the humble opium pipe cannot be known through the powdered opioids
of our vulgar times, neither can the green faerie be fully known to the
casual seeker.
Me, I have contented myself with sipping the pale green readily
available here in absinthe’s spiritual home of France, with letting its
gentle euphoria flood through me as I dream of more dazzling, less certain
times, of looking clearer at a picture, even if I cannot look through it.
With being not quite dust. For now.
114 115

116 117

Dear Alex
a quarterly advice column
“Dear Al, I’ve noticed that alot of models are now rocking the ‘heavy brow’
look, with big, natural, bushy eyebrows, but I’m worried that my brows, left au
naturel, might be a bit much. How bushy is too bushy? Is meeting in the middle
okay?
- Feeling doubtful, Fremantle”
•
Dear reader,
As someone whose eyebrows often look like they may just spread
their wings and take flight from their face, I say go au naturale. More
often than not, my eyebrows have been that of envy, rather than that of
critism. If need be you may feel obliged to pluck some hairs here and there,
but you have what many girls attempt to get with a pencil and pomade.
Embrace them if you feel the large brows suit you! If you believe that
your face would benefit from smaller brows then get a professional wax.
At the end of the day you should do whatever feels right to you, and not
listen to what others may say around you, or what is currently trendy.
Only you can know yourself, and what suits you and your personality.
-Al
“Dear Al, I like a boy at school, and sometimes I think he likes me too. When
we are alone in the back of history, we laugh alot. He laughs, mostly, and tells
me I’m hilarious, although I don’t really know what he finds so funny. The only
problem is, when he’s around his friends (he’s on the football team) he acts like
a total dick. I don’t know what to think!”
- Confused, Geelong
•
Dear reader,
Unfortunately your current situation with this jock
seems to me a textbook example of highschool dynamics
at play. I myself, never had to experience this commonality
having gone to an all-girls catholic school virtually all my life.
However, I can make a case for the odd Person in the “cool” group, who’s
apparent popularity, has got in the way of pursuing any connection with
me- lest they lose cool points by hanging out with a misfit, such as myself.
However Dear reader, it seems that by the time they’ve hurt you, and
caused you to shed needless tears, you might just find that this person isn’t
even as interesting as you once had thought. You say he laughs at things
you say, even though you don’t know why? Perhaps, he fills the silence
with needless laughter, because he doesn’t have anything of interest to say.
Dear reader, I say you take your funny self and expend your energy on
another guy, who will appreciate you, just the two of you, and with company.
-Al
118 119

“Dear Al, my young millenial daughter has been talking an awful lot about
communism lately. Whenever I talk to her about job opportunities, dreams for
the future, boys, clothes, etc.. she just says things like ‘one day this illusion will
be a mere memory’ and ‘the people will see their day’. I feel like I’m losing my
daughter, what should I do?’
-Hopeful, Singapore
•
Dear reader,
I understand your predicament entirely and you have my sympathy.
Unfortunately, the differing in opinions towards communism has
changed between your generation and your daughter’s. Whilst your
own- baby-boomer generation’s perspective is warped by the policy
that Russia took during the later half of 1900s, positioning itself as
communism, while it was, in fact, characterized more by extreme
dictatorship, now casually- but more accurately renamed, “stalinism”.
I emplore you to sit down with your daughter, to try to understand her
interest in communism, you may just find that in fact she is not looking
to spread her sphere of influence to the Eastern European countries, nor
planning to explore methods of atomic diplomacy, but rather intends for
the worlds resources to be distributed evenly and without excess towards
a common good. I might suggest you glance at Karl Marx’s ‘The Communist
Manifesto’, or Thomas Moore’s somewhat more palatable ‘Utopia’, which
details the unattainable, but idealistic notions, of true communism.
-Al
got a problem you need solved?
email Alex your questions at
•
alex @la-review.com
120 121

Poetry
Mia-Francesca McAuslan
green
there’s something about being in love
that makes us more detectivey
and about this one i said,
yeah, I feel sexy about it
because you wanted me too
because your eyes were green
because they went red
in New York
in spring
below the cherry blossoms
and everybody thought we were gay.
In Carl’s Jr we thought
the seats were nice and
I missed everything
122 123

we were already doing,
a strange missing,
a missing out on
the desert dust
turned the bathtub pink
and the sun,
it was on our shoulders
and yeah
I felt sexy about it.
Imagine
if I slept a whole night
without rolling over
and searching for the dark of you
Imagine
if the wind didn’t cut so hard
across our faces that day
in Montreal
in March
when the cold turned
our coffee to ice
and America seemed
so far away.
I want to forget it
and remember instead
the valley
the storm that blew
our tents south
the fake gold chains
I tied around our wrists
with an angel dangling from the right
so you’d remember the new law
when you couldn’t help
but swerve to the left
Your wrist,
it was too big
and mine,
so small.
in Arizona I woke
to you by the dark
of the motel window
watching the car
with a feverish sense
of belonging.
I wondered how
you could care about something like that,
because your mother was a cop?
because your sister is gay?
because you lived your whole life
on an orchard in a small town
and your father only hit you once
and do you feel sexy about it?
The gun on her belt,
California,
me,
the wrong side of the road,
changing lanes in the dark
with the windows full of our faces.
124 125

Beaune Marché
Jane Webster
Saturday mornings 8:00-13:00
Our destination was Beaune. The village lays in the very heart of
Burgundy’s famous vineyards. I have favourite markets all over France,
but this one, that runs every Saturday morning from very early until about
13:00 is everything a market should be, as far as I’m concerned.
I never tire of this market and so always organise my trips to Beaune
to fall over a weekend. It is here, on a Saturday morning, that the people
of Beaune (or the Beaunois as they are affectionately known) meet at
this rich, diverse and colourful marché. Here in Beaune, you will find
everything your gourmet heart desires. The usual suspects of fresh fruit
and vegetables, meat from the butchers’ stalls in the covered market, as
well as fish and cheese. As you walk through the market your olfactory
glands will be worked over-time as the heady aroma of spices - not to
mention the appetising smells from the rotisseries on Place Fleury - hit
your senses.
Local farmers sell Organic and local produce on long trestle tables
& brocante dealers sell their wares on Place Carnot where the antique
and brocante market provides collectors and travellers a bounty of
opportunities. Beaune and it’s wider region of Burgundy offers many
opportunities to market shop all week. There is Beaune market, which
I adore, on a Saturday morning, however the generous land of Burgundy
offers its visitors a different market every day of the week! Markets are
always held in the morning and usually operate from 8.00 to 13.00.
In addition to the fabulous food, household items, wicker market
baskets and clothing available at the markets throughout the region, don’t
forget that in Beaune from March to November, the Saturday market
also offers a flea/brocante market, where you just might find a treasure to
take home. I always think a brocante find is such a better souvenir than
anything you can find in a shop. An object that may become part of your
home and will remind you forever of that perfect Spring day, fossicking
around in a market deep in rural Burgundy.
126 127

129

Other Markets in
Burgundy
Chagny: market Thursday & Sunday
Givry: market Thursday
Epinac: market Wednesday & Sunday
Stores you simply must visit:
Fromagerie Hess • 7 Place Carnot, Beaune
This magnificent Fromagerie is the ultimate cheese shop for cheese lovers.
Fromagerie Hess is run by Alain Hess and located in the centre of Beaune
on Place Carnot. The Fromagerie Hess offers an impressive 500 varieties
of goats and cows cheese all matured here. Take a basket as you will love
the selection of wines, teas, coffees and more. If you make a rendevouz you
can arrange to have a tutored cheeses & wine tasting.
Cooks Atelier • 43 rue de Lorraine, Beaune
Beaune: market Wednesday & Saturday
Chalon-sur-Saone: market Wednesday - Friday
Bligny-sur-Ouche: market Wednesday
Le Creusot: market Tuesday & Thursday & Saturday
Verdun-sur-le-Doubs: market Thursday
Montchanin: market Wednesday
Autun: market Wednesday & Friday
Note • you will find the Brocante market on Place Carnot right in the
centre of Beaune.
130 131

Book Club
Jane Webster
It’s not a stretch to say I can’t be bothered with fiction. I have
always personally loved historical literature, and enjoy immensely
learning a little history as I read, purely for pleasure, and this book
ticked those boxes for me. A Scented Palace offered me and, indeed, our
bookclub a whole new look at the complicated world of Marie Antoinette.
Through the Scented Palace, we were taken on a journey through the eyes
and memories of her personal perfumer, Jean-Louis Fargeon.
The Author, Elizabeth de Feydeau, who works full time as a professor
at the Versailles School of Perfumers, paints a very personal life of Queen
Marie Antoinette, drawing on the ancient notes and diaries of Jean-
Louis Fargeon, himself. In this sensual book, the reader is regaled with
the secrets of Jean-Louis Fargeon’s luxurious creations, exclusive scents
formulated especially for Marie Antoinette.
Jean Louis was born and raised in the perfume capital of Montpellier...
This was a huge surprise to me. I had always thought Grasse the centre
of perfume making. The young Fargeon moved to Paris and became
an apprentice to one of the capital’s most reputable perfumers. I must
concede, Marie Antoinette was not the only one whose favours Fargeon
won, when he presented the queen with a pair of exquisite, clotted cream
kidskin riding gloves that had been embedded and infused in a box of
132 133

scented tuba roses, hyacinth and jonquils... now that is truly the present
to give the woman who has everything!
Over time, as a loyal purveyor of the court, Jean-Louis gained the
confidence and therefore loyalty of Marie Antoinette. It was Jean-Louis
who treated the queen’s secret pregnancy-related hair loss. It’s not a
stretch to say that Jean-Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette became loyal
friends.
It is through Jean-Louis’ diaries that Elizabeth de Feydeau is able to
trace Marie Antoinette’s personal and extravagant expenditures and
give the reader a real sense of the increasingly enraged - and dare I say,
justified - public opinion of the Queen of France.
Elisabeth de Feydeau maps out for the reader the great fall of the Palace
of Versailles. We live through Marie Antoinette’s rapid decline during
incarceration and play spectator to Jean-Louis Fargeon’s own fate. Even
though Jean-Louis had declared himself years prior to the revolution to be
a Republican, he was a wealthy man with very tight royal connections and
this fact made him a very real target for the Revolutionaries.
Elisabeth de Feydeau’s biography of the perfumer gives us, the readers,
an authentic glimpse inside the inner workings of the palace of Versailles
and the daily life of Queen Marie Antoinette, including her fascinatingly
elaborate 18th-century beauty secrets.
The Botanical appendix at the end of A Scented Palace, which lists all
the ingredients and methods of Fargeon’s perfume-making makes for a
fascinating read, for all you budding parfumeuses..
This reader absolutely adored this new perspective into life at
Versailles, and particularly into the profound repercussions Marie
Antoinette’s obsession with her beauty routine had on her efforts to
escape a brewing revolution..
134 135

Château Life is a peek into the wonderful exhilarating and endless
possibilities of life behind the doors of these grand old houses. This
beautifully crafted book takes the reader on a journey using food, tradition
and exquisite French elements to show the reader how the châtelaines live,
work and play on a daily basis.
A luxurious food and lifestyle book that allows the reader to peek inside
the dining rooms and kitchens of some of the most beautiful châteaux,
manor houses and colombages of Normandy & Bordeaux France.
Included are over 60 of author Jane Webster’s favourite recipes gathered
and shared over a ten-year period with like-minded food-obsessed French
and expat friends. The recipes and stories behind inspiring family meals and
exquisite private dinner parties pay homage to life at Château de Bosgouet
and explore the local cultural rituals that can be incorporated into family
life the world over.
Jane Webster welcomes the reader into her own Château de Bosgouet
taking the reader on a journey through the meals served at her table for
family and friends.
The reader will enjoy 60 family favourite recipes from Château de
Bosgouet, table scapes, interiors, dining rooms and kitchens. Superb
photographs throughout are furnished by the very talented Robyn Lea. We
take you into the potager at Bosgouet and also the gardens of many friends
throughout Normandy and other parts of France.
Readers of Jane Webster’s previous internationally successful recipe
and design books At My French Table, French Ties and French House Chic are
sure to love this sumptuous cookbook that can be used in any family, with
all the ease and style that the French so effortlessly espouse. Jane’s life,
recipes and stories attract a global audience interested in the food, travel
and the art of living well.
136 137

While Jane’s life in France may appear fairytale-like in its grand and
luxurious proportions, her recipes and personal style are delightfully
unaffected, drawing the reader into her world as though welcoming an old
friend into the warmth of her kitchen and hearth.
In the same way, Jane and Peter Webster’s friends have also opened
their châteaux, private homes and their personal recipe archives for this
book, providing the reader with further insights into this otherwise deeply
private world.
Jane provides the reader of Château Life with an introduction to
observations of French family culture of eating and how Jane came to
observe French food traditions and eating rituals. After ten years living
between Château Bosgouet and their home in Australia, Jane and her family
became entrenched with the rhythm and pace of French food obsessions.
Recipes are based on memorable meals at Bosgouet, and the châteaux
and homes of other friends in France over the years. Entwined through the
menus are stories of people and events pulled from Jane’s menu planning
book that she keeps to ensure she never serves a friend the same dish twice.
Chateau Life is sure to pull the reader into the magical life of grand French
country living and inspire readers to incorporate a little bit of France into
their daily lives.
sambucus nigra
‘elderflower’
Email Jane to purchase a signed copy, or organise a rendezvous in Paris
to have lunch and for her to deliver you a copy in-hand.
jane.thefrenchtable@gmail.com
138 139

LA review
edition one • autumn 2018
created, curated, designed by
Jane, Peter and
Lachlan Webster and
Stephanie McCarthy
in Bosgouet, Normandie.
We are an international journal and
are interested in stories the worldover.
If you have one to share, you
can reach out to us at
food, wine, art, myth,
every day anew,
distributed quarterly.
stephanie@la-review.com
www.la-review.com

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