Feeling Ouchy (near Geneva)

This blog is about family travel around the world without leaving the UK. Impossible? No. This time a book in French provides a wonderful family project - and the surprising news that Charles Dickens was friends with a great great great uncle when he was living in Switzerland. This post is by Nicola Baird (see www.nicolabaird.com for more info about books and blogs)   

A couple of Christmases ago I organised for a book written in French by my great great aunt Anne Van Muyden-Baird (1855-1945) to be rebound. Anne (see pic sidesaddle above) grew up in a lovely villa, Bellerive by Lake Geneva, Switzerland. The village is called Ouchy (you need to say this in a very French accent, it shouldn't sound like you hurt yourself). Then I gave it to my mum. Two years on mum has translated the rebound book into English and printed 29 copies for members of our family as a unique present.

Like Lausanne, Ouchy used to be full of expats, including many retired ex-colonial solders, although Anne's parents were Swiss-Irish. The book was published in Lausanne in 1943, two years before Anne died at the mighty age of 90. In it she describes her young life (1855-1880) growing up in a world I know as history.


While wars spread across Europe her parents are able to pop to Florence for a ball, and wherever she visits there appears to be an Emperor (French, Italian, Austrian!) to put a pretty crinoline on for, or goggle at as they pass in a coach.

Friends with Dickens
Anne often recalls her adventures with all her de Cerjat cousins (who raised her father after his parents both died) and lived close by in various villas - Fantaisie; Montchoisi and Bellerive. At one stage Charles Dickens came to stay at Lausanne and rented a pretty "dollshouse" villa, called Rosemount, which shared a driveway with Bellerive. While at Rosemount Dickens wrote Dombey and Son (here's the free ebook link). Not surprisingly, given how close they lived, the de Cerjat uncle (William Woodley de Cerjat) and Dickens' family became friends. Anne recalls this story:

"The entrance to the house at that time was in the centre and it was necessary to go round to it on arrival and the ground was treacherous. The coach used was always a sidecar pulled by a single horse. We were waiting one day for the Dickenses to arrive for a meal; suddenly... cries... we went to look; the sidecar had turned over, trapping the Dickens family, who were lying on their backs with their feet sticking out of the windows calling for help!"

Anne also remembers (p29) that: "after Dickens left Lausanne, he and my uncle remained close and corresponded. The letters of the celebrated English writer were without doubt full of wit, and my cousins said that their father shut himself up for three days at a time to put together the ideas for letters to his friend which were worth reading."

The old lady's words ought to be enough, but I was very excited to cross-reference this in the biography of Charles Dickens by Peter Ackroyd (p523-524). Ackroyd calls the de Cerjats "a rich but artistic and philanthropic couple..."

Things change. Money gets spent. And Bellerive was sold and is now IMD business school where you can be Chair of Coca Cola lecturing and orchestrate performance improvement (picture above is how it looks now - huge!). But it is wonderful to know that I don't have to define my past ancestors entirely as a hunting, shooting, fishing set. It also seems that a great number of them were also bi-lingual or tri-lingual - skills that completely impress me. Perhaps one day we will visit Switzerland and tour Ouchy. After all Nell, my nearly 11 year old, does want to go on a yeti hunting mission although I think now all she'd find in that area is the super rich. And the Swiss trains are renowned... Nowadays Ouchy is allegedly THE place to go for rollerskating and skateboarding - as well as a stunning view of France across Lake Geneva.

Here are photos from one hotel I found that gives a taste of what those villas, that were once family homes, were like.

A special thank you to my friend Helen Burley who roughly translated Anne's story in 2009 over a long breakfast at my house when the book was falling apart. The experience provided enough hints (and not just info about 19th century hair styles) that this was a fantastic story and the book deserved to be rebound despite the £40 price tag for repair! By chance there's even a book binder in a road near me, see here.

The actual book translation was done by Fiona Baird and Anthony Parish.

Ouchy mon village by Anne Van Muyden-Baird is also available on the web (slightly puzzling with a 1989 French reprint edition made in Switzerland available on the web here). The story of who else is interested in this lady, may well be a future post. Do let me know if you've got some clues - or have made a similar exciting family discovery.

Indian tastes change

Pete, Nicola, Lola and Nell love to travel. With this blog find out how to travel the world in a very low carbon way. This post is by Nicola

Dear friends arrive from Wales for a cuppa and then some spaghetti pomodore - and being generous they bring along a treat. It's a box of delicious Indian sweets from Drummond Street behind Euston where you go to get the tastiest, and best value Indian buffet in London. Conversations later we're talking about the iniquity and misery of boarding schools. The children know them from Harry Potter (or even friends) and aren't taking the sides that George, Pete and I are. Turns out George's dad was sent to England from India when he was just three and then neglected in schools here. Pete's dad didn't board but he certainly got bullied. Mine boarded and remembered secondary school as a bullyfest, with him as the whipping boy. It probably didn't help that he was 4ft 6in aged 14 - though subsequently grew to 6ft!

Our dads were at school when England still had an empire. I find this quite astonishing, and of course the links to India are still there. Our friend Anthony, just turned 70, was born and grew up in India where his father worked. George's grandfather was military in India. Taking it further back one of my famous relatives (possibly famous for bad temper rather than actually famous) was Sir David Baird - on of the winning generals at Seringapatam (sp?) in 1799. If you don't know the battle, you might know the pic of the Fall of Tippoo Sultan, see here.

"Still it's all different now," muttered someone at the table. Did they then say modernity started with George Orwell and the Road to Wigan Pier? I can't remember, might have dreamt it, but checking up on these facts suddenly saw that George Orwell was born in India too. When it comes to my generation, or my kids' generation for that matter, the people I know who were born in India are no longer repressed Englishmen/women sticking to Victorian values, way past their sell-by date. They are sassy, bright young men and women who are making up the rules for the new media age. We do have something in common, all of us  still like those luminous coloured, teeth-rotting, exotically enormous Indian sweets...

Essex discoveries part 1

Nicola, Pete, Lola and Nell love travelling around the UK. Here's some ideas to fill your holidays and keep your carbon footprint low. This post about Essex is by Nicola

It's a swap thing: Pete was born in Herts, and I was born in Essex. But he's all Essex humour and I'm the posh bird from Hertfordshire. Although we didn't meet until I was 29 years old for a time we'd both lived pretty much equi-distance from Bishop's Stortford, the Hertfordshire market town that protects us from Essex. Or vice versa. Anyway, ahhh.

Nell, 9, is intrigued by Essex, she's hardly ever been there and yet there's a map on our corridor wall with rings around all the places that are family important (and yes, Nasty and Ugley, High Easter and Cold Christmas - we lost control of the highlighter pen!). And so the plan is get-to-know Essex better. It also means we've got a travel theme and Nell hopefully won't feel so cheated by her friends and their climate-bashing tales of "when I was at the airport...".

We've started well this Essex-themed Easter holidays well with a quick walk through Hatfield Forest, just outside Bishop's Stortford. Hatfield Forest is a remnant of the Great Essex Forest, mimics a medieval working woodland and is now run by the National Trust. As an added bonus it's opposite Stansted Airport working as a seriously green lung by the bypass and perimeter fence. Using a very easy to follow map we walked around the lake created by the one-time owner, a Hugenot refugee, who built a shell house for picnics - the shells (see pic left) are from the Caribbean and Africa, brought to the UK in the ballast of the ships that created such wealth for some of the old families (there's clearly a link to slavery here). The nice volunteer guide inside the Shell House encouraged the girls to play with these shells... And I swear I spotted the shells of African land snails too...

A family hunt
Next stop was just outside Great Dunmow (a place Pete could remember his Dad recalling the Saracen's Head and his mum rolling her eyes at the metropolis) for Great Garnetts farm by Barnston. This is where his dad, Denis May, had his first tenancy farm, eventually moving to the other side of Essex when offered more land for his dairy herd.

The big house at Great Garnetts was Elizabethan, with tall chimneys. There's still an interesting arch in or out of the stable yard and we hope to find out more when we go to the farmers' market held just about once a month (except August when everyone's too busy harvesting) - in 2010 they are on the 2nd Saturday of each month so try 10 April, 8 May, 12 June, 10 July, 11 Sep, 9 Oct and 13 Nov.

When Pete's mum, Sheila, moved in to the semi-detached farm cottage (see pic above) there was no heating except wood fires. I think she said there was no water as well. It must have been terrible for her especially looking after a four year old and Pete for his first eight months. No wonder he puts up with the cold... The farm cottages look picture perfect now and I think Lola and Nell were a tad jealous of the three children rolling outside with a pack of black labradors.

We also went to the pub that Denis used to walk to after his chores were finished. Lucky for us The Spotted Dog, in Bishop's Green (tel: 01245 231598), a lovely old thatched place, had just been redone and opened on 1 April (five days ago) as a gastro pub which still served real ale. We had our dog, so we ate on a bench outside, thinking about Denis all those years ago propping up the bar with a few old farmer friends. Maybe.

It's an irony that Denis felt so strongly that organic was a fad, and now even the old pubs are going all foodie and his old farm has recreated itself as a farmers' market. Obviously it's not all organic, but the locally grown element - pork and turkey - is key to this farming renaissance.