Dearie

by Bob Spitz

  “We liked each other”: Smith Centennial Study, p. 2.

  “I didn’t have anything”: Ibid., pp. 3–4.

  Julia’s classes: “Courses Taken by Julia McWilliams at Smith College,” files.

  “I have never had a roommate”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 47.

  “into such terrible giggle fests”: Smith Centennial Study, p. 2.

  “A grand person generally”: H. P. Gilchrist, Julia McWilliams file, Smith College.

  “I was not going full steam”: Smith Centennial Study, p. 8.

  “Julia did not really worry”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 54.

  The Weston birthright had inflicted: “Because she came from a very inbred New England family, she had high blood pressure.” Phila Cousins, interview with author, May 11, 2009.

  “Extreme inbreeding in Dalton”: Ibid.

  “dynamo”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 18.

  “It would have killed”: Ibid., p. 55.

  “doing just enough work”: Smith Centennial Study, p. 6.

  “were awfully mad at me”: JC letter, to Caro McWilliams, 1933.

  “There was so much going on”: Ibid., p. 12.

  Annually, Smith and Amherst staged: “We drank a great deal of beer and terrible whiskey and thought we were being very wicked—and were.” Smith Centennial Study, p. 14.

  “Julia had quite a taste”: Charlotte Turgeon, interview with author, January 29, 2008.

  “scared the bejesus”: Turgeon interview.

  “It was up on the top floor”: Smith Centennial Study, pp. 12–13.

  Mary Case encountered Julia: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 61.

  “the Second Coming of Christ”: Turgeon interview.

  Julia, however, was a staunch Hoover girl: “I was a Republican until I got to New York and had to live on $18 a week.” Martha Smilgas, “A Ms. Visit with Julia Child,” Ms., Summer 2003, p. 59.

  “hated Roosevelt”: David McWilliams, interview with author, May 5, 2009, Patty McWilliams, interview with author, May 4, 2009.

  “Roosevelt was a traitor”: Cousins interview.

  “In fact, intellectuality and communism”: Smith Centennial Study, p. 9.

  “to become a great woman novelist”: Ibid., p. 4.

  “I purposely didn’t take any writing”: “I was a pure romantic. I had to live first, and then I’d write.” Ibid., p. 5.

  although a staggering number of women: Smith College, class of 1934, tenth class reunion pamphlet, 1944.

  “I only wish to god”: JC, letter to Caro McWilliams, November 26, 1934.

  “Looking back on it”: Ibid., p. 9.

  “a stunning lack of maturity”: Turgeon interview.

  “She would do well in some organized charity”: Smith College, JC file.

  “She will return here”: “Pasadena Girl Achieves High Honors in East,” Pasadena Star News, from an undated clipping in JC’s scrapbook.

  “a whirl of parties”: Caro McWilliams, letter to Dorothy McWilliams, undated.

  Midwick Country Club: “Midwick Country Club Opens Doors,” L.A. Times on-line, April 19, 2006.

  “has been taking German”: Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Spring 1935.

  “New Yorkers living on government aid”: McKinzie, The New Deal for Artists, p. 76.

  “I am learning quite a bit”: JC, letter to Marjorie P. Nield, Smith alumni office, December 6, 1935.

  “I just loved New York”: JC, interview with author, September 17, 1991.

  “felt humbled”: “Those buildings were so tall, I felt humbled.” Ibid.

  “Most of my friends”: Smith Centennial Study, p. 17.

  “When you have put your all”: JC, press release, undated, SA.

  “Being very, very tall”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 51.

  “party animal”: “My father partied quite a bit at Smith. I got the impression he was a party animal.” Jim Johnston, interview with author, September 25, 2009.

  with an outsize personality: “My father was a big personality, very outgoing, very opinionated, very attractive.” Ibid.

  “high-spirited gals”: Pat Pratt, interview with author, December 2, 2008.

  “full of Melville”: JC, diary entry, undated.

  “profoundly” in love: “I had never been profoundly in love before.” JC, diary entry, undated.

  “in heat”: Ibid.

  “financial stress”: “By midsummer she sensed that the freshness had gone out of their relationship, that he was under financial stress …” Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 68.

  “He wasn’t a rich boy”: Johnston interview.

  “big and unsophisticated”: JC, diary entry, undated, 1936.

  “I was always struggling”: Ibid.

  “FUN and complete mutual”: Ibid.

  her “great magnetism”: “She was … always the kind of person people follow because she had great magnetism.” Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 66.

  “like no one else … meant for something”: JC, diary entry, undated.

  “I do not want to be a business woman!”: JC, diary entry, 1937.

  “just didn’t have the stamina”: JC interview.

  “bored with nightclubs”: JC, diary entry, 1937.

  Four ONLY A BUTTERFLY

  “Life there seemed so much less”: JC, interview with author, September 17, 1992.

  “I really had no idea”: Ibid.

  “Stand up straight. Be Somebody!”: Jo McWilliams, interview with author, May 5, 2009.

  “Indigestion … A touch of the flu”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 72.

  “I could have been much nicer”: JC, diary entry, undated, 1937.

  John kept flunking: Phila Cousins, interview with author, May 11, 2009.

  “Father was furious”: Jo McWilliams interview.

  There had been talk of stashing: David McWilliams, author interview, May 5, 2009.

  “Father, more than anyone”: Jo McWilliams interview.

  She was beginning her junior year: Dorothy Child, letter JC, August 12, 1937.

  “He was to the right of Attila”: JC interview.

  “He hated East Coast liberals”: Rachel Child, interview with author, April 7, 2009.

  “amiable old rogues”: Mayo, Los Angeles, p. 215.

  In 1934, out of recognition: “John McWilliams was the first president of the combination of the Board of Trade and the Chamber of Commerce.” Sid Galley, Pasadena Historical Museum, interview with author, September 12, 2009.

  “My grandfather made sure”: Cousins interview.

  They leveed and damned Tulare: Review of “The King of California: J. G. Boswell and the Making of a Secret American Empire,” The New Yorker, November 10, 2003.

  “He is a strange but wonderful”: JC, diary entry, undated, 1937.

  “On this matter of ski wear”: Julia McWilliams, Coast, January 1938, p. 37.

  “All I want to do”: JC, diary entry, January 16, 1938.

  “really only a butterfly”: Ibid.

  “Julia ran with a fun, upper-crust crowd”: Jo Duff, interview with author, January 26, 2010.

  “anybody who was anybody belonged”: Katherine Schwarzenbach, interview with author, February 4, 2010.

  Darryl Zanuck was a member: “A Personal Recollection: The Midwick Country Club, by Fame Rybicki, www.cityofalhambra.org/community/midwick.

  “I want lots of people”: JC, diary entry, undated, 1938.

  “Somewhere between $100,000”: Cousins interview.

  “nice” but “somewhat stiff”: “He was very nice in a somewhat stiff way.” Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 81.

  “He was not considered”: Dennis McDougal, interview with author, October 27, 2009.

  “he was crazy about Julia”: Gay Bradley in Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 76.

  “It was easy to think”: “I knew Chandler, and I saw them together often.” Katherine [Nevins] Schwarzenbach, interview with author, February 4, 2010.

  “She felt like she was a freak”: Cousins in
terview.

  “Thank heaven I am getting”: JC, diary entry, undated, 1939.

  Not only was she required: JC’s curriculum vitae, 1966, SA.

  “One needs a much more detailed”: JC, application, U.S. Information Center, July 1942.

  “Fired,” she wrote: Ibid.

  “dissolve nobility of spirit”: “I think it is particularly interesting how these years dissolve nobility of spirit.” JC, diary entry, August 3, 1940.

  “When I was in school”: Ibid.

  “flying across the stage”: Two sources used the exact same words. “Julia was famous for flying across the stage.” Schwarzenbach interview.

  “cracking up the audience”: Duff interview.

  “some serious drinking”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 76.

  “She was quite outspoken”: Schwarzenbach interview.

  “He was a total reactionary”: McDougal, Privileged Son, pp. 152–53.

  “I found I was just as embarrassed”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 80.

  a few issues were raised: JC, diary entry, August 1940.

  “I have an idea”: Ibid.

  she was curious to know what Dort: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 80.

  “He made himself very clear”: Jo McWilliams interview.

  “a clear demonstration of national power”: Kenneth O’Brien and Lynn Parsons, The Home-Front War, pp. 2–3.

  “Invasion fever”: “Coastal communities suffered from an ‘invasion fever’ ”; “The Army Air Forces in World War II,” Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco, www.sfmuseum.org.

  “We sat in a dark, windowless”: Schwarzenbach interview.

  “in the thick of things”: “In intelligence, we were always in the thick of things, and I loved that.” JC interview.

  “And I hope I shall maintain”: JC, diary entry, April 10, 1942.

  “That was where the action”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 82.

  Five KEEPER OF THE SECRETS

  “like a scaled-down version”: JC, interview with author, September 18, 1992.

  “automatic disqualification”: JC’s application to Waves, SA.

  “I was too long”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 82.

  “to see action”: “More than anything, I wanted to see action.” JC interview.

  “a cross between a Smith graduate”: Margaret Griggs in MacDonald, Undercover Girl, pp. 21–22.

  “enforcing our will upon the enemy”: FDR, Directive No. 67, June 14, 1942, military order establishing the OSS, National Archives and Records Administration.

  “a rosy-cheeked smiling gentleman”: Bruce Barton in McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 1.

  had hunted down Pancho Villa: Ibid., p. 2.

  “He attracted the top lawyers”: Fisher Howe, interview with author, February 24, 2009.

  “where standard operating procedure”: Smith, OSS, p. 3.

  “amateur playboys”: Ibid., p. 13.

  All one needed to join was to sign an oath: McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 1.

  new leopard fur coat: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 83.

  “very bright girls engaged”: Fisher Howe interview.

  “buzzing”: McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 18.

  “Walking in, there was a feeling”: JC interview.

  “glamour girls”: Russell Baker in McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 14.

  “My typewriting helped a great deal”: JC, Smith College memoir, p. 18.

  “It was my first real encounter”: Ibid., p. 19.

  “I was sort of a plain old”: Sharon Hudgins, “What’s Cooking with Julia Child,” Stars and Stripes, September 27, 1984.

  “I never had any brilliance”: JC, Smith College memoir, p. 20.

  a self-proclaimed dilettante: “I had really been a dilettante all my life.” Ibid., p. 19.

  “my growing‑up period”: Ibid., p. 20.

  “intrigued and amused”: JC interview.

  “unconventional” … “eccentric schemers”: Smith, OSS, p. 5.

  “the fish-squeezing unit”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 84.

  “They began sending people”: JC in Hudgins, “What’s Cooking.”

  “I was just doing office work”: JC, Smith College memoir, pp. 18–19.

  “I knew I’d sometime get to Europe”: Hudgins, “What’s Cooking.”

  “keep[ing] the door open to China”: Tuchman, Stilwell and the American Experience in China, p. 328.

  there was a proviso to monitor another: Joseph R. Coolidge in McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 249.

  “the adventure of a lifetime”: JC interview.

  “more handsome men than you”: JC, letter to John McWilliams II, undated, SA.

  “Japanese subs had already sunk nine: “List of U.S. Navy Losses in World War II, www.GeoHack.com.

  “wolf calls and whistles”: Ellie Thiry in McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 269.

  “an utterly strange experience”: JC, diary entry, March 1944.

  “Julia launched a rumor”: Thiry in McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 269.

  “All my life I’ve had to push”: JC interview.

  Julia was entranced by his experiences: Of Gregory Bateson, she said: “He was very interesting because he was asking about relatives and relationships.” Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 90.

  “vegetating”: JC, diary entry, April 1944.

  “None of my college career”: JC, Smith College memoir, p. 18.

  Julia “could see and smell the haze”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 91.

  “Oh, my God, what have I”: Ibid.

  “the swell of sensations just hit you”: Fisher Howe interview.

  “Have met practically no one”: JC, diary entry, April 13, 1944.

  “a beautiful place to work”: McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 270.

  Its focus was in support of SEAC’s ongoing operations: Ibid., p. 274.

  “like Shangri-La”: “Kandy was like Shangri-La, just a beautiful place.” JC interview.

  “monks in bright saffron”: Attributed to Virginia Webbert in McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 271.

  “skin-warm”: “I find Kandy has a delightful climate, skin-warm all the time.” JC, letter to her father, undated. Schlesinger Archives.

  “probably the most beautiful spot”: Ziegler, Mountbatten, p. 279.

  “Mountbatten’s headquarters became a byword”: McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, pp. 270–71.

  “nothing so much as like a western”: Attributed to John Davies, political adviser to General Stilwell by Fisher Howe. Howe interview.

  “It is somewhat primitive”: JC, letter to John McWilliams II, undated, SA.

  “running the files”: “I ended up in a very, very menial position running the files overseas, which was called by the euphemistic title of Registry.” JC, Smith College memoir, p. 18.

  “If you don’t send Registry that report”: JC, letter to Margaret Griggs, May 25, 1944.

  “Our in-and-out material”: JC, letter to Margaret Griggs, October 6, 1944, SA.

  “Julia McWilliams was keeper”: McIntosh, Sisterhood of Spies, p. 278.

  “that was so much poppycock”: Fisher Howe interview.

  OSS classified her: Citation, Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service awarded to JC, SA.

  with “a breathtaking view practically”: Fisher Howe interview.

  Six PAUL

  Montclair, New Jersey: “List of Residences from Birth of Paul Child,” December 22, 1942, Schlesinger Archives (hereafter SA).

  “the first out of the womb”: Rachel Child, interview with author, April 7, 2009.

  he was director of the U.S. Astrophysical: “Supplemental Personal History Statement of Paul Child,” December 22, 1942, SA.

  an itinerant minister’s daughter: “Her father was an itinerant minister, Methodist, in the Boston area.” Erica Prud’homme, interview with author, March 31, 2009.

  Charles Child, riding the current: “Ch.[arlie] found for me in a personal archive drawer he has
, an account of our father’s life.” PC, journal entry, April 18, 1943, pp. 48–49.

  The How and Why of Electricity: Jon Child, interview with author, April 8, 2009.

  “He was a driven man”: Rachel Child interview.

  “a combination of malaria and typhoid”: PC, journal entry, April 18, 1943.

  “All told, his death was a shock”: Erica Prud’homme interview.

  The family moved around quite a bit: “List of Residences from Birth of Paul Child,” 1947, SA.

  “Their life became very insular”: Erica Prud’homme interview.

  Robert (who was now called Charles): “Charlie was for a short time Robert. The change was probably to honor his father.” Erica Prud’homme, interview with author, June 24, 2009.

  “like two halves of one person”: Ibid.

  “If he went anywhere, even around the block”: Rachel Child interview.

  “They beat the crap out of each other”: Jon Child interview.

  “They were brought up as a sort of couple”: Rachel Child interview.

  “one of those women who attracted”: Erica Prud’homme interview, March 31, 2009.

  sent off through Boston Commons: Ibid.

  “It didn’t matter, we were talented”: PC, diary entry, June 23, 1971.

  “who had a lovely voice”: Jon Child interview.

  “They went around New England”: Rachel Child interview.

  “the well-known Boston contralto”: “Art at Home and Abroad,” New York Times, February 28, 2003.

  they became lovers: “She was Filene’s mistress.” Jon Child interview; also confirmed by separate family sources.

  Not known for his generosity: One of Edward Filene’s biographers uses words like penny-pinching, parsimonious, tight-fisted, insensitive, and heedless to describe him. Berkley, The Filenes, pp. 65–70.

  “in a way that he could never”: Ibid., p. 68.

  “where his marks were better”: “I allowed myself to suffer a sense of inferiority vis-à-vis Charlie in school.” PC, diary entry, January 23, 1948, SA.

  “a sense of inferiority and injustice”: Ibid.

  “loving him on the one hand”: Notes from a session with Dr. Powdermaker. Ibid.

  “joined the Canadian army”: Fitch, Appetite for Life, p. 134.

  “floundered from one piddling job”: “Later on, when [Charlie] went to college I went to work at Connick’s.” PC, diary entry, January 24, 1948, SA.