Biarritz – Laurette Long

Gathering roses and banishing moths in the pays basque

Vivez, si m’en croyez, n’attendez à demain :

Cueillez dès aujourd’hui les roses de la vie.

(Heed me – wait not for tomorrow, live now:

Gather this very day the roses of life.)

Pierre de Ronsard, Sonnets pour Hélène, 1578

Today’s blog gets passionate about savouring the moment.

Nine years ago, when I started blogging, one of my first pieces was entitled Biarritz . It began:

‘Setting off with their buckets and spades, French families talk about going to ‘la mer’, the Mediterranean Sea, or ‘l océan’, the Atlantic.’

The previous year I had published Biarritz Passion, the first volume of what was to become a series, the #French Summer Novels, set in le pays basque. France is full of wonderful ‘pays’, regions of outstanding beauty with a rich local culture, but Basque country, Euskal Herria, is perhaps the most intriguing:

‘This beautiful part of Europe is home to some of the most mysterious people in the world. Where did the Basques come from? What were the origins of their language, Euskera? Nobody knows. But they were well-established when the Romans arrived in Gaul, and there is evidence to suggest they date back to pre-historic times. And one thing is sure, they are still there today, their culture intact…Of the many spectacular beaches in the region the one that is most special for me is la grande plage of Biarritz…

After finishing the last book of the series, Biarritz-Villa Julia, in 2019, I succumbed to that well-known writers’ complaint – ‘author fatigue’.

Could I really be bothered to pick up my pen again? Searching for something short, simple and non-fatiguing, I hit on the idea of a ‘garden memoir’, the story of how two horticultural innocents who should have known better moved to rural France and took on the challenge of transforming a wilderness into a Mediterranean paradise. (And we now have the hips and knees to prove it.) After all, as well as hundreds of photos, I had my diary with dates, descriptions, and notes about when to divide irises and how to treat leaf spot, mildew and aphids. All I needed to do was copy, paste, and voilà!

The best laid plans… Regular visitors to this blog will be aware how, over the last four years, this easy-peasy memoir turned into Sisyphus’ boulder, rolling back down the hill every time I’d shoved it to the top. One of the problems was the way my linear copy-and-paste ‘writing plan’ had been subverted:

‘… my subconscious had another plan, a non-linear ramble more like a drunken weave that wandered off down all sorts of paths, historical, geographical, cultural, linguistic, literary – in short, a Rebel that blew raspberries at my neat timeline…’

One of these rambles took me down a path labelled ‘Books’ to a scholarly work written in 1973 by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm in which he introduces the term ‘biophilia’ to describe an innate emotional attachment to life and living things, to growth and development. The term was taken up in 1984 by biologist Edward O. Wilson who went further, describing it as a species trait , ‘a powerfully enriching bond’ between man and nature.

What a fascinating and comforting idea! Do we humans come into the world programmed to love trees, gasp at sunsets, thrill at the song of a nightingale? As I was pondering this happy notion, I spotted an adjacent path, labelled ‘the beautiful French language’ and three perfect expressions celebrating such life-affirming impulses: le temps de vivre, la joie de vivre, and l’art de vivre.

Finally, the rambles came to an end. After one last, drastic prune, the garden memoir went off to Author Help, editor for anxious authors, who turned it into a beautifully-designed book. There remained one more thing to do before launching it into the perilous ocean of the four million books published every year. That was to link the narrative to those hundreds of photos by creating a Photo Gallery on my blog.

But first the Assistant Gardener and myself needed a break. We felt decidedly ‘moth-etten’ (moth-eaten) as my Yorkshire forebears would say, like two mouldy old jumpers in need of an airing. What better means to blow away the moths than the bracing ocean breezes of le pays basque? What better place to relax, to savour le temps de vivre and la joie de vivre than beautiful Biarritz, the place where this blog had begun?

Our 6^th-floor room in Le Grand Large had breath-taking views across the Atlantic and was perfect for the sunset aperitif, much appreciated after our five-kilometre afternoon walks and scrambles up and down the steep cliff paths.

It was also a mere five-minute walk to that hub of gastronomic joie de vivre ‘Les Halles’, the market.

Here we joined the locals, perched on stools at the bar of Paul & Louis, sipping a glass of Irouleguy while admiring the prowess of the chef working wonders with one large frying pan and two small burners.

Tears came to the eyes of the MDM when a steaming plate of tête de veau sauce gribiche (calf’s head with caper and tarragon sauce) was placed before him, transporting him to the brasseries of his Parisian youth, famous (look away vegetarians ) for concocting a host of such delicacies using the lesser-known body parts of different animals. (Fans of Inspector Maigret can find a whole list of them – kidneys, tripe, liver brains– by taking a wander on this charming blog)

Our post-prandial strolls took us along the coast from the stunning Côte des Basques, mecca for surfers, to the beautiful curve of La Grande Plage – beach of kings and king of beaches. The weather gods were with us, balmy temperatures and dazzling sun. Plus a perfect moth-banishing breeze.

Le temps de vivre, la joie de vivre, l’art de vivre… gather life’s roses, savour the moment.

A very Happy Easter and Joyeuses Pâques to all readers !🌼🌷🌹

This blog is dedicated to the memory of Marie-Hélène O’Donoghue, who left us on March 17th, 2024.

Life in the Time of Coronavirus: in your heart you know it’s flat

Biarritz: la Plage du Phare
The lighthouse built in 1834 on the cap Hainsart

Last week I held in my hands a real copy of Book 1 of the French Summer Novels, Biarritz Passion. The relief was tremendous. Since uploading the manuscript from my PC on April 6^th I had prostrated myself daily before the altar of Thoth, (scribe of the gods according to Wiki). Could it be true? Was there really a paperback out there, being virtually born? In between the click of an on-screen button saying ‘Publish’ and the emergence of a physical object with pages and a cover from a printing press in Eastern Europe, who knew what cyber- catastrophe might strike? The worst-case scenario popped up in a dream.

Dead Sea Scrolls the Damascus document https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/scrolls/images/damasc-b.jpg / CC0

The book had finally arrived! I tore off the wrapping and looked inside. What was this??? The first dozen pages were covered in fading, fragmented hieroglyphics, a bit like the dead Sea Scrolls. As I recoiled in shock, these fragments grew clearer, became legible: regurgitations from the bowels of my computer, pleading letters to the taxman, links to internet sites promising instant weight loss, adverts for haemorrhoid relief. ‘Deep embedded code is never entirely deleted,’ droned a sepulchral Cyber-Inspector in a peaked cap. ‘It can surface at any moment. Anywhere.’ (OK, I’ve been watching a LOT of Netflix. )

Waking up in a sweat from nightmares like this is the moment you know that, deep down, you really belong in the 19^th century. There’s something eminently normal and logical, eminently ‘in the order of things’ as the French say*, about the process of throwing down your quill, making a neat brown paper parcel of the ink-stained pages, tying the whole together with a length of butcher’s string and heading out to the publishers through the gas-lit, cobbled streets.

The first book I published was a text book. After many happy hours kneeling on the living room floor cutting and glueing and scribbling notes in margins I sent it off to the publishers who duly sent back proofs to correct and the next thing I knew I was holding a real book. Very hands-on, very touchy-feely. My first venture into e-publishing, six years ago, was a revelation. Not being of a scientific bent, I underwent the kind of mental torture necessary to acquire new (technological) faiths that ignorant 15^th century landlubbers must have experienced, watching ships sail into the sunset and seeing them drop off the edge of the earth only to have them pop up somewhere behind them four years later.

Painting of Christopher Columbus on the Santa Maria 1492 Wikipedia Commons

The temptation of holding a real book in my hands was irresistible. Two years ago, I had a go at converting from e-book to paperback. But in spite of Amazon’s step-by-step instructions (which are now better than ever, and accompanied by amazing tools) it soon became clear that this was a much bigger alligator to wrestle. Help was needed.

So there are now two more people to go on my Red-Cape Rescuers ‘thank you’ list. Since that exciting day in 2014 when I uploaded the first e-book, this list has grown steadily–friends, advisors, beta-readers, bloggers, reviewers, generous authors and readers already mentioned in previous blogs and on Acknowledgements pages. All have made the writing adventure even more exciting and enriching, and, though I only know most of you in a virtual sense, in this particular instance I am totally convinced of your lovely realities.

Biarritz Passion new cover by Jacqueline Abromeit at goodcoverdesign.co.uk

For the paperback, Alligator Wrestler Jacqueline Abromeit at goodcoverdesign.co.uk produced two wonderful designs for the cover, making it difficult to choose which one was more impressive (thank you helpers). I finally went for the one with the lighthouse on the headland, and the setting sun streaming through a woman’s hair (‘weave, weave, the sunlight in your hair’). Alligator Wrestler Steve Passiouras at Bookow has a magic programme which allows you to put sausage meat your Word document manuscript in at one end and produces a Saucisse de Toulouse Label Rouge a paperback pdf at the other.

Thanks also to Jacqui Brown (no stranger to these pages) for permission to quote, and to a Wise Man from the East who helped with the very last steps of this particular miracle – he knows who he is 😉

As for the marketing mastermind who decided it would be a good idea to bring out a paperback just when the world is in lockdown and the earliest postal delivery date for non-essential items (like Biarritz Passion) is January 2021 – that would be me.

My next task is to learn to believe that an invisible, sputnik-shaped object covered in reddish warts really does have the power to bring the world to its knees…

Stay safe, stay sane, stay inventive, stop binge-watching The Walking Dead and hang on to your sense of humour 😉

Amazon paperback link uk here

Amazon paperback link US here

*little factoid for folk who like that sort of stuff: ‘dans l’ordre des choses’ – an illustration of this expression can be found in a letter written in June 1871 by the great Gustave (Flaubert) who says: ‘As (Adolphe) Thiers has just done us great service, within the space of one month he will be the most hated man in his country; it’s ‘in the order.’

(Comme Thiers venait de nous rendre un très grand service, avant un mois, il sera l’homme le plus exécré de son pays ; c’est dans l’ordre.’)

Thiers had negotiated a peace treaty with the Prussians who, after defeating French forces at the Battle of Sedan (September 1870), had invaded northern France. But many Parisians were against the armistice, and the famous Paris Commune was formed to resist it. Thiers sent in the army to put a stop to the revolutionaries, uttering his famous phrase: ‘The republic is the form of government that divides us (the French) least.’ The terrible fighting of Frenchman against Frenchman continued until the end of May, when the Communards surrendered. Flaubert’s Voltairean observation was right in principle if not in date: Thiers was president from 1871 to 1873 , but on May 23^rd 1873, he was toppled by a vote of no-confidence and resigned the following day.

The Palace of Love

‘I think this calls for something really special.’ Edward had a gleam in his eye. ‘Maybe ‘special’ like lunch at the Grand Palais?’
Caroline shrieked, stood on tiptoe and gave him a kiss. Jill, who had got as far as the bottom of the stairs, gave another whoop.
‘The Grand Palais? Is that that pink thingy on the cliff with the fifty-foot gates? Will we get in? Do you have to bribe the chef? Caro, what are you going to wear?’
Extract from ‘Hot Basque’
In the ‘French Summer Novels’ the Hôtel du Palais*, sometimes referred to as ‘le Grand Palais’, makes a star appearance. This amazing building is the perfect romantic symbol. The original construction, the Villa Eugénie, was commissioned in 1854 by Napoléon III, Emperor of France, as a love token for his Spanish-born bride, Eugénie. From the windows of this summer residence, built in the shape of an E, she could look out towards the Pyrenees and her native country. The yearly visits of the royal couple and their entourage would shape the destiny of Biarritz, transforming it from a little-known fishing village to the ‘The Queen of Resorts and the Resort of Kings.’ **

Plage du Phare. The Villa Eugénie was built overlooking this beach

María Eugenia Ignacia Agustina de Palafox-Portocarrero de Guzmán y Kirkpatrick was born in Spain in 1826. Did she ever dream that that her romantic destiny was to become Empress of France? That one day she would be introduced to Louis Napoléon Bonaparte, that he would be struck by a coup de foudre, and that, after a two-year courtship involving some fancy footwork on the part of the heroine, she would finally get her man?
But the royal couple’s life together was not without its ups and downs. Napoléon was an unabashed Don Juan with an impressive list of mistresses. ‘L’empereur était volage…un incorrigible séducteur’, according to his biographers. Flighty, an inveterate seducer with an insatiable appetite for his ‘little distractions’, he reportedly said “It is usually the man who attacks. Personally, I defend myself, and I often capitulate.’
When Eugénie first appeared on the scene the beau monde was divided. Her detractors called her a ‘jumped up Spaniard’, ‘an ambitious adventuress’, while her supporters praised her ‘graciousness’ her ‘Spanish vivacity’ and striking beauty. What she thought about her poor husband having to beat off hordes of lovestruck women has gone on record when, at a famous soirée, he disappeared with a certain Mme de Castiglione. Seeing him return looking somewhat rumpled, Eugénie is said to have flown into a rage and heaped coals of wrath upon his head before the assembled guests. ***
No wonder he had to shower her with love tokens.

The imposing entrace to the Hôtel du Palais

‘As the barrier swung upwards, Jill clutched Caroline’s hand
‘Omigod…’
The taxi dropped them in front of the imposing entrance.
Caroline smiled at the look on Jill’s face as they stepped inside the foyer. She bet she’d looked exactly the same one year ago, when they first came for cocktails.
Le Grand Palais. Its interior breathed luxury, elegance and refinery. The opulent belle époque decor was so packed with tiny details, carvings, mouldings, delicate traceries of goldleaf that it could have been overwhelming. But the romantic history of the palace made everything seem quite fitting. A gift from an Emperor to his beloved, it was perfect. Marble pillars, magnificent teardrop chandeliers suspended from lofty ceilings, glittering fractals of light reflected from dozens of mirrors, all transported the beholder back to a vanished world.
‘I’m in a Renoir painting,’ said Jill. ‘Really. Do you know that one, Caro…’Dance in the City’, there’s this woman in a beautiful white satin ballgown and long white gloves, dancing with this bloke…a dark handsome stranger, a bit like Antoine now I think of it…’
Caroline nodded. It was easy to imagine a sea of dancers waltzing through the magnificent salons, across the shining floors, past the painted frescoes, pausing to chat among the palm trees and flowers. Easy to succumb to the magic, and dream.’

Empress Eugénie wearing a gown designed by Charles Frederic Worth Wikimedia Commons

Empress Eugénie wearing a gown designed by Charles Frederic Worth
Wikimedia Commons

In the portrait on the left Eugénie is wearing a gown by the father of haute couture, Charles Worth. She became his most famous client, launching a new vogue in fashion. Seeing her dresses, fashionistas in Europe and America would order la tournure, or bustle, when visiting their dressmaker: the era of the crinoline was over.
And modern fashionistas? For their chic lunch date, Caroline wears a dress of ‘vivid scarlet’. It was ‘fitted, emphasising her small round breasts and tiny waist. High-necked, and plain except for ruched cap sleeves.’ Jill wears ‘a dress in black and white georgette, the sleeves and low neckline picked out in satin which threw Jill’s velvety skin into relief. It fell semi-fitted to a slightly flared hemline, just above the knee. The bold black and white vertical stripes drew attention to her voluptuous bosom and flat stomach.’
Will hot Basque Antoine be impressed?
‘Ah, Irish. You are more beautiful zan last night. And last night you were very very beautiful.’
Aaah. Some men know just what to say to women.
Of course there’s no way our fictional heroines could have rivalled Eugénie in terms of jewelry. The Empress had a stupendous collection which included the famous Pelegrina pearl, another gift from Napoléon (what had he done?), reputed to be the most perfect pearl in the world. As part of its legend, it became famous once more in 1969, playing a role in a love story that thrilled fans everywhere when Richard Burton bought it for Elizabeth Taylor as a Valentine’s Day gift. (Actually, she lost it, and only after searching the room frantically for the priceless bauble did she recover it–from the mouth of one her Pekingese dogs…)
‘Shaded from the sun by a vast awning, the terrace seemed to overhang the sea, so close that you could almost dive in…. below, in a panoramic sweep, the Atlantic spread before them, filling the graceful curve of the bay as far as the opposite promontory.
On their visit last summer they had chosen the house cocktails, the Emperor and the Empress. Caroline remembered sharing complicit looks with Edward, their relationship was just starting to blossom, she had been filled with unbearable happiness.

‘Good,’ said Antoine, ‘Emperors and Empresses for one day. Let us dream.’

He may not have the Peregrina pearl up his sleeve, but he’s got the sexiest French accent, not to mention other assets, as Jill soon finds out…

To raise a toast to all romantic dreamers, ‘Hot Basque’ is on special offer at $ 0.99, £0.79 and €0.99 (from 26th May, limited time only)

* http://www.hotel-du-palais.com/
**for more about Biarritz see my blog post February 2015, ‘Biarritz’.
***‘Les Couples Royaux dans l’Histoire’ Jean-François Solnon, Broché.

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