When she wanted a more private conversation, she didn't leave the kitchen. She'd sit on the stool in the corner and pick up the receiver. The one-sided conversations we heard were no less engaging. When her friend and lawyer Bob Johnson was in the hospital, Julia called him often. One day as Susy Davidson and I cooked, Julia sat on the stool, picked up the phone, and dialed the hospital. "Robert Johnson's room, please," we heard, and then, after a pause, "Hi, Bob, it's Julia." There was another very brief pause and then Julia said she was sorry to have disturbed the person. She hung up, dialed again, told the answering party that she had been given the wrong room, and again asked to speak to Bob. This time she knew right away that the person who answered was not Bob because she immediately said she was extremely sorry and called the hospital switchboard a third time. Amazingly, the mix-up occurred again, but this time we heard her say, "Well, I'm awfully sorry that I have bothered you again. I was trying to reach a friend who is there also. But tell me, how are you?" She spoke to the unknown patient for at least five minutes, and Susy and I had to leave the room to prevent our giggling from disturbing the call.
Working with Julia on her projects provided all the professional stimulation I thought I needed, but she was not about to let me make a career just being a Julia Child associate. Even during those periods when our work together was time-consuming and extensive, she encouraged me to continue with my own work. She suggested classes for me to take, introduced me to people I should know, and brought me out front onstage with her to give me exposure to her audiences. And, for which I am so very grateful, she encouraged me to write.
"It's publish or perish," she told me about a year after I began working for her. We were riding in the car on a long trip somewhere and talking about college. She told me that when she went to Smith she'd intended to be "a great novelist," but when she graduated and applied for a job at the New Yorker, "they had no interest in me whatsoever." After trying Newsweek, she finally got a job in public relations and advertising for the W. & J. Sloane furniture store in New York. Eventually, of course, she achieved success as a writer; cookbooks were her novels. And she was a fine writer, with a full, colorful vocabulary, meticulous attention to grammar and syntax, and an enviably natural way of expressing her thoughts. She was careful about her text and fluently descriptive with her recipes.
During that ride, after she told me her college story, I told her mine. I had also aspired to be a writer, although—typical of the differences in our personalities—I'd never thought "great novelist," simply "writer." My aspirations were sideswiped not by the New Yorker but by a classmate in my junior year. We were in Mr. Taylor's creative writing class and one by one we had to read essays we wrote. When the boy sitting next to me read his, I had an epiphany, and not a good one. He's a writer, I said to myself. I'm not. That boy was Tom Griffin, who went on to be a noted playwright (The Boys Next Door, Einstein and the Polar Bear). Had Julia been my friend back then, she would never have allowed me to give up my dream just because someone else was better at what I wanted to do.
After that conversation, she began to encourage me to send articles to culinary magazines. I did, and when I proudly announced that I had sold my first one to Food & Wine magazine, she said to send more, to all the magazines. Gourmet, Cook's Illustrated, and Bon Appétit bought my articles, and as soon as the issues arrived at her door, she called or wrote to tell me how much she enjoyed what I had written.
When I told her of an idea I had for a book, she wrote back: "Glad you got through your last classes and that you are really in there writing—that's the way to do it. Yes, for the book—but get lots done first so you'll have something to show, including a complete outline for all of it. The illustrations sound good and original. (We rewrote our Mastering I three or four times—so never get discouraged whatever happens.)"
Postcard from Julia congratulating me on my first magazine article.
It was three years before I decided I was ready to propose the book. I got "lots of it done," as Julia suggested, included a "complete outline," and sent it to an agent in spite of the fact that many friends suggested I ask Julia to show it to her editor at Knopf, Judith Jones. But by the time I was ready to pitch my book, I had learned an important fact about Julia. She did not lend her name easily, did not write forewords or blurbs for other people's books. Unless she herself had tested every recipe in that book, she wasn't going to imply approval of it by having her name associated with it. Companies asked her constantly for endorsements, and she always said flat out, "No. How do you know that company will still be good in six months? If it goes downhill, my name goes with it."
So completely did I understand and respect that about her that I never considered asking her even to suggest to Judith that I might be able to write a book. Suppose I couldn't? Then Julia would be barreling down a hill with me. Since Julia's lawyer negotiated her contracts, she never used an agent and couldn't recommend one. Cookbook author Jean Anderson generously loaned me hers, Julie Fallowfield, and ironically, the first publishing house Julie pitched was Knopf. And it wound up being the only one she pitched, since Judith bought it. Julia was thrilled, not only that I had sold the book but that I would be working with Judith. "None better," she said as she opened a bottle of champagne to toast my success. That was the celebrating part of the book, the part before the actual dogged work of writing it.
At the time I sold that book, We Called It Macaroni, I was still working on a typewriter—an electric typewriter, but a typewriter—and Julia's immediate advice to me was "Get a computer." She was already using one.
So I invested in the computer; I bought a printer and reams of that old computer paper with yards of attached sheets folded on top of each other and tiny holes running down the sides to move it through the rollers. I loaded the paper in the printer, installed a word-processing program, and composed my first work—a letter to Julia. Her return letter was an enthusiastic response to my computer efforts.
"Dearest Nancy," she wrote in July 1985. "Delighted to have your letter on your WP, and aren't they wonderful! I'm getting really used to mine, and can do pretty much what I want—but do I know all that it can do? That will be an eternal question. Certainly, once you've gotten onto the processor (like the food processor), you'll never go back. However, I still have my electric typewriter, and use it for corrections on sticky tape."
Letters to Julia were easy; the book was hard. Not the recipes—I knew which ones I wanted to include, and I was as exacting as Julia was about testing and retesting. The problem was all that copy around the recipes. It did not exactly flow onto the computer screen, and I understood what Gene Fowler meant when he said, "Writing is easy. All you do is stare at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead."
Judith was a no-nonsense, thorough, and exacting editor, and quite honestly, she scared me to death. She wanted cookbooks that told a story or at least said something, and that something had better not be drivel. Julia described Judith's editorial approach as "an iron fist in a kid glove," and indeed, Judith could not have been gentler as she encouraged me to write and praised my progress, but I still constantly feared that iron fist crushing my meager manuscript into hundreds of tiny shreds. (Years later, when I worked on my second book with Judith, I came to realize that the kid glove goes pretty deep. She no longer scared me; she simply overwhelmed me with her capabilities.)
When I was certain the amount of blood pouring from my head would cause my demise, it was Julia who mopped my brow and convinced me I wasn't going to die. It helped that she was also struggling with the book she was writing, The Way to Cook. She intended for it to be a comprehensive, instructional cookbook, but it was becoming massive and she knew she had to rope it back into a manageable shape—not a simple task when you consider that this was the same woman who in her Mastering the Art of French Cooking books devoted eight pages to describing how to make an omelet and eighteen to French bread. "Oh, my book!" she wrote to me. "It is getting so large—I h
ave no idea how many pages but I've now done only two chapters, Poultry and Vegetables, and they seem immense, and it takes so long. How are you doing on yours?" And later in the letter, she admitted that she was "taking the day off as a reward for finishing my vegetable chapter. And I'm not going to take any work at all on this European trip—for the first time ever!" I'll bet she didn't write that last part to Judith.
"Blue-pencil" is the term used for what an editor does in editing a manuscript. Originally, all editors wrote in blue so their notes would stand out against white paper and black writing. Judith doesn't blue-pencil, she green-pencils. And she writes in small, finely formed cursive. When she returned my manuscript with her first edits, I sat down and page by page read her clear notes. What was that in the margin outside that paragraph? The writing was much smaller than the rest, infinitesimal, and I had to get out a magnifying glass. It was one word, nice, with an exclamation point after it. I stopped going through page by page and began flipping the pages over rapidly to find more nices. There were three. Three Pulitzer prizes on the first read alone.
Julia called me shortly after I received the edit and wanted to know how it went. I told her that Judith must have liked what I wrote about such-and such because she'd written "nice" next to it with an exclamation point.
The elevated level of excitement in her tone was unmistakable. "How many nices did you get?" she asked.
"Three."
"Why, that's wonderful! I always look for them first. Never get too many, but I love it when I do." From that point on, Julia and I shared the number of nices as soon as we received our edits from Judith.
So, though our problems were quite different—Julia wondering what she could cut without jeopardizing her intent and I struggling with what to put in—we formed a writers' bond that replayed some years later when she asked me to write two books with her. Julia was much too gracious a person to suggest even remotely that she had as much to do with my book as she did, but I know she felt a connection to it. When eventually she gave the majority of her cookbooks to the Schlesinger Library, she told me, "But I still have yours. Always will."
Julia's postcard from Italy, where she was delighted to discover that Italians do call pasta "macaroni."
I cannot separate Julia from my professional career. I don't know if I ever would have written cookbooks or even magazine articles were it not for her. It is doubtful that I would have had the opportunity to work in television. She was all that a mentor should be, and when my personal life needed guidance, she provided that as well.
When I originally enrolled in Madeleine Kamman's Modern Gourmet culinary school, my intention was to follow my nonprofessional degree with a teacher's diploma. Two pregnancies interrupted that goal, and it was seven years before I applied to Madeleine for a student-teacher position. By that time, she had moved the school to Annecy, France, which meant I would have to fulfill my two-week apprenticeship there. It was a difficult decision because I had never left my family for such a long stretch. No less difficult was my awareness that I was entering enemy camp, so to speak.
Sometime long before I applied to the program, Julia explained to me why she didn't trust "that woman from Newton." When Madeleine first moved to Boston to teach cooking classes, Julia invited her to her home and introduced her to the local culinary community. Julia thought she had a great new ally in her goal of introducing good French food to Americans since she and Madeleine shared not only a passion for classic French cuisine but also an unwavering goal of teaching its principles and techniques. But then, for reasons only she could know, Madeleine wrote a critical letter to WGBH, Julia's public broadcasting station in Boston, stating not only that Julia was neither French nor a chef but that perhaps she had other issues that made her unfit for the show. Liz told me that it was a "vicious" letter. Then, during a newspaper interview, Madeleine told the press that she had taken classes with Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking co-authors Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle at Ecole des Trois Gourmandes, the cooking school the three had started in France, but had not learned a thing. She said she actually taught them a thing or two. Julia was at first stung and then angry. From that point on, even as I watched Madeleine try to assume a kinship over the years, Julia's comment was always, "Don't turn your back on her."
I'm not quite sure why Madeleine accepted me into the apprenticeship program, because from the very first class she was relentless in her quips about my work with Julia. "I suppose you learned that from Julia!" she'd say, and "Is that the way Julia does it?"—always out loud in the middle of a class I was teaching. At one point, in an attempt to relax a young student who was near-spasmodically trying to bone squab, I put my hand on her shoulder and said, "Relax. Cooking is fun."
"Fun!" Madeleine erupted from the other side of the kitchen. "You think this is fun? It's hard work and don't forget it." I tried to convince myself that it wasn't me, that Madeleine was just being her ornery self, but a fellow student teacher told me that she was appalled at the hostility vented my way. After less than a week, I found the constant animosity unbearable, and I thought longingly of Julia, who was at her home in Provence. Philip and I had spent four perfect days there with her and Paul before he returned home and I left for Annecy. I wished desperately I could return to the warm environment of her home.
Me having fun cooking in Julia's kitchen at La Pitchoune.
Lunch outside at La Pitchoune with Paul, Julia, and Simca.
So I called her. For years after, when Julia and I recounted the story of my experience, we always said I called "sobbing." We liked to tell it that way because Julia liked to parody me by making the most despondent sobbing sounds and it made the story all the more funny and dramatic. I don't recall if I actually sobbed when I called, but I have no problem remembering how wretched I felt. "This was a big mistake. I'm so miserable," I said. "I think I'm going to leave. I was thinking that I could come back to La Pitchoune until it's time for me to return home."
"Don't you dare!" she said firmly instead of cooing the you-come-right-back-here-dearie words I expected to hear. "You bull it through and don't let that woman know she's getting to you."
"But—"
"No buts. Just do it!" Had she no heart? I needed rescuing, but she would have none of it. She acknowledged that "that woman" was most likely taking it out on me because I was "consorting with the enemy," but she insisted I tough it out.
I stayed in Annecy and did not let on to Madeleine how miserable she was making me, and for no reason I can comprehend, by the time I left, her attitude had completely changed. She saw me off at the train station, where she presented me with a lovely blue and white faience serving plate as a gift. Go figure.
It wasn't until we were both back home that Julia, with unmistakable compassion, told me how distressed she had been I was having such a hard time. "I wanted to run right up there and snatch you out of her clutches." It was, of course, exactly what I'd wanted her to do at the time. Instead, she allowed me to have the satisfaction of having bulled it through a tough situation, which is what she would have done, and it felt damned good.
Chapter 6
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
—Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin
"Let's get a hot dog," Julia said. We were driving south from Cambridge on Route 128. It was about ten in the morning, and I was surprised, not by the hot dog but because Julia almost never ate be- tween meals. She believed that snacking was a regrettable American habit brought about by a lack of enjoying good, satisfying food at mealtimes. I love hot dogs, but they were not on my mind at that particular time and place.
"Where should we go?" I asked.
"There's a highway stop just up ahead." Okay, it was going to be a fast-food hot dog.
The dog wasn't half bad, but the real feast was seeing other travelers poke each other and point our way, most likely asking if that really w
as Julia Child pushing a plastic cafeteria tray along the counter and ordering "one with everything."
Before I knew her, I would have been as amazed or amused as they were at the sight of not just any celebrity but a gourmet celebrity ordering a hot dog at a quick roadside stop. But I wasn't with a celebrity; I was with a friend.
In his Life of Johnson, James Boswell wrote, "We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over." In a profession dominated by the pleasures of the table, the lines between collegial and social are often blurred, since so much of our work involves sharing good food and fine wine at a table surrounded by people who are jovial and friendly just because they are eating. Julia had good friends and it was obvious who they were, but she also had a most splendid way of making many people around her feel like friends. I don't know at what point I began to think of her as a friend or she me, but I remember the first time she said it.
We were working alone in her kitchen. It was late morning, three or maybe more years after we met. "Let's go out for lunch," she said.
"Great idea. Let's do it."
Two other people were working in the upstairs office, and I asked if I should invite them to join us.
"No," she said, and then, perhaps to clarify her quick response, she added, "They work for me. We're friends." I remember feeling glad that she'd said it. I felt that we were friends, and it was good to know she did as well.
From the get-go Julia made it easy to be her friend, and it could have been otherwise. After all, to culinary zealots, she was the food goddess, the high priestess of cuisine. Many devotees admit that dining with her for the first time involved a lot of self-pinching and silent repetition of I am sitting at the table with Julia Child! In less time than it takes to scramble an egg, she cleared idolatry from the table by being so regular, so utterly unpretentious. Those who couldn't make a quick transition from hero worship to "Let's go get a hot dog" missed out on the fun; Julia did not warm to constant fawners at all.
Backstage with Julia Page 12