Chocolatey Clare

I watched a documentary on the history of chocolate on SBS tonight.  Fascinating stuff.  It looked at the major chocolate events on the calendar - Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween.  I didn't know that the reason why St. Valentine is remembered by lovers everywhere is due to his opposition to Emperor Claudius II's decree that marriages not be celebrated (apparently he wanted to conscript young men to the army but an old law forbade married men to be conscripted).  For his resistance, St. Valentine was beheaded.  Emperor Nero used to hold extravagant parties whereby he would "storm" the party with chocolate - meaning, he would raise the roof of his palace & arrange for thousands upon thousands of sugary chocolate-covered almonds to be showered on the party guests.  I also didn't know that in the US, Halloween is a very important day for chocolate-makers & sellers.  In that one day, chocolate-makers & sellers make up (on average) one-fifth of their chocolate revenue for the year!  Chocolate has become synonymous with celebration.  This documentary reminded me about another documentary I saw a few weeks ago on the ABC which tracked the family who created Darrell Lea.  However, their story is far from sweet.  Monty Lea & his wife built a chocolate empire which eventually destroyed their family.  The Leas had 3 natural children & adopted three more children.  Mrs. Lea ran her family like she ran her business - efficiently.  She adopted the children from young unwed mothers who worked at the factory in order to entertain her children so she wouldn't have to.  She had a theory called "walking the dog." If you have 1 dog, you need to take it out for walks.  If you have more than 1 dog, you don't need to take it out for walks because the dogs are likely to play with each other & get their exercise that way.  With 6 children she didn't believe in reading them bedtime stories in person.  She rigged an intercom system so by bedtime, when every child was in their room and she was already settled in bed, she instructed her kids to turn it on & she would read them a bedtime story through the intercom from the comfort of her bed.  Eventually the kids rebelled.  Only 2 of their children went on to work for the business.  Eventually their dogged determination for the company to succeed sapped all the energy out of their personal relationships until they were also ruined.  The eldest son even made his own son and his brother (who had worked in the business for 40 years) redundant, citing their ineffectiveness in helping Darrell Lea prosper.  Their bitterness at his betrayal followed him to the end, when he died of leukemia a number of years later.  His brother & son refused to visit him in hospital.  But he was proud & resolute right up until the end - refusing to consider that he may have been too harsh in his treatment of his only son & younger brother.  He is dead now but Darrell Lea is still strong, churning out those chocolate bars & balls.  Almost seems like the company is cursed - sapping the energy of its founding family in order to flourish.  No-one from the immediate founding family works for Darrell Lea anymore.  Only a few of the cousins still help churning out that chocolate but there is not 1 Lea that remains on the board of directors.  Tragic.  My dad would say the story of the Leas is a classic example of what is wrong with capitalism.  Yet, how could a tiny chocolate square (that helps women all over the world maintain rubber tyre tummies) do all that? . . . .

Comments

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