Unable any longer to afford their aristocratic lifestyle in England, Berry and Co decide in 1937 to relinquish "White Ladies", their ancestral home in Hampshire, to the state for the use of the Foreign Secretary. Nostalgic for a vanished world of social events and elegant idleness, Berry and his friends move to Pau in the South of France where they spend their days picnicking on the slopes of the Ossau Valley. Deciding to settle nearby, they acquire some land on the green mountainside halfway between the thermal spa of Lally and the village of Besse and build themselves a substantial property that they name "Gracedieu."