Backstage with Julia

by Nancy Verde Barr

  She told me the first while we were shopping and I was trying on shoes.

  "You're always looking for a pair of little black shoes," she correctly observed.

  "And never finding the perfect ones that are both comfortable and good-looking."

  "Just you wait until you're in your seventies," she said, and that's when she told me about the straps. I looked down at her size 12 black leather Mary Jane pumps and wondered how long it would be before I reluctantly purchased the same strapped pump I had incessantly begged my mother to buy me at an age she said was too young for heels.

  Julia in her comfortable Mary Janes and me in stylish shoes that were most likely killing my feet.

  Julia gave me the cosmetic advice one morning at her house as she was sheepishly ducking out of the work we were doing.

  "I'm going out. I won't be long," she said, adding that her friend Pat Pratt was picking her up.

  "Where are you going?" I asked, a bit miffed to be left at the house while she and Pat tootled off to have fun somewhere.

  She smirked as though she had the best joke but wasn't going to tell. Then she owned up to where she was going. "After a certain age, a woman has to keep an eye on her chin." She admitted that she never found more than a couple of unwelcome strands, and since I had been waxing for years, that bit of advice did not bother me nearly as much as the straps.

  Other than shoes that would suddenly start falling off my feet and hair that would rudely sprout in unwelcome places, she did not suggest that I would have to make any concessions to age. Lord knows she didn't! Not even in 1992, the year she turned eighty. Despite the fading ink on her birth certificate, she did not consider herself to be in her twilight years. Nor could she identify with her contemporaries who did. When she returned from her sixtieth reunion at Smith College, I asked her if she'd had a good time.

  "No!" she bellowed disgustedly. "I'm never going to another one."

  "Why not?" I asked, foolishly thinking that the two-hour road trip from Cambridge to Northampton had been too much for her.

  "They're all old people!" she said.

  When Julia said "old," it had nothing to do with years and everything to do with attitude. Many of her contemporaries had settled into complacent, sedentary lifestyles and she simply could not relate to them. So she gravitated to younger friends who were as active as she was—or perhaps we gravitated to her because she was as youthful as any of us and a heck of a lot more fun than most. When I look at over twenty years of favorite photos taken at parties, on trips, or at spontaneous get-togethers, there's Julia in the midst of our cozy group of friends, all of whom were much younger. And she always fit in. We never truncated our plans because lunch, then dinner, then a late-night party might be too much for an octogenarian. We didn't temper our words, withhold racy stories, or refrain from telling dirty jokes because they might be offensive to someone born into a less permissive generation. Actually, as I think about it, Julia told more of those stories and jokes than we did.

  On the few occasions when something reminded us that Julia was indeed so much older than the rest of us, it actually took us aback.

  Julia with her "contemporaries" at Susy Davidson's bridal shower.

  Just before Julia's eightieth birthday, Susy Davidson traveled with her to France. Their day began with a predawn wake-up call and a live appearance on Good Morning America. After taping some additional shows, Julia and Susy spent the better part of the afternoon at a veal-tasting lunch arranged by Food & Wine magazine and representatives from the veal board. Then Julia and Susy left for the airport. Susy wrote me an account of their travels.

  "We took an overnight flight to Paris, then a taxi to the Gare de Lyon. We were on our way to visit Pat and Walter Wells and Walter had offered to meet us at the station so he could drive us the hour or so to their house. Julia insisted that wouldn't be necessary. We'd be fine. But when we arrived at the station, we searched futilely for a porter and had no choice but to lug our suitcases up a huge staircase to the train platforms and then onto the train. Once we heaved everything on the train and got it all stowed, Julia sank down in her seat and sighed, 'I just can't believe there was no one to help us with our bags. What would old people do?' To illustrate, she then pointed to a gray-haired lady sitting in front of us. 'Just look at her. What would she do?'"

  Susy told me that it was only when she observed that, except for the color of her hair, the gray-haired woman didn't look so much older than Julia, did it occur to her that Julia had probably been coloring her hair for over forty years.

  I had a similar awakening in London when Julia and I were there for a long weekend. A revival of Noël Coward's 1930 play Private Lives was in the theater and Julia wanted to see it, mostly because the British-born, flamboyantly risqué American actress Joan Collins was starring. Somehow Susy Davidson rooted up two front-row seats for us to the standing-room-only performance, and Julia was thrilled.

  When the lights went up at intermission, I turned to her and asked, "How do you like it?"

  "It's good. But I liked the original better. I saw Noël Coward and Gertrude Lawrence in it and they were very good."

  It took me a minute to wrap my mind around that piece of information. Julia was old enough to have attended a play that starred people who, in my frame of reference, were historical figures. That realization did nothing to alter my sense of Julia's youthfulness, but it heightened my awareness of just how long she had been living.

  Even as I write about Julia and age, I can feel her index finger firmly poking into my upper arm and her telling me to drop it, it's not significant. It wasn't to her, and it wasn't to us, but now, looking back, I have to ask myself what it was that kept her so young. Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "Men do not quit playing because they grow old; they grow old because they quit playing." Julia simply never stopped playing. Throughout her life, she maintained an unflagging passion for her work, a relentless curiosity about everything and everyone, and a constant drive to try new things. "Life itself is the proper binge," she told Time magazine when she was in her sixties, and in her eighties, she was as she always had been, insatiable. There were still places she wanted to go, things she needed to do, and, as it turns out, people she wanted to meet.

  In the years since my divorce and Paul's placement in the nursing home, Julia and I talked a lot about how sad it was to be alone. She said that we had to keep busy, so we made a pact to be each other's Saturday night date when we had nothing else to do. But this plan was only semisatisfactory to Julia. "I don't think it's good for us to always be seen out with women," she said. "I think we need to find some nice men to go out with." Julia's emotional attachment and daily attention to Paul were as fervent and unambiguous as they ever were, but she wanted to walk into the plethora of events she attended with a man, not a woman, taking her arm.

  "I agree, but nice men aren't all that easy to find."

  "Well, let's work at it."

  She called me less than a week after the "nice men" conversation.

  "I won't be available this Saturday night. I found a man." Who knew she meant we should find men right away? I hadn't even made a list of prospects and she already had a date.

  John McJennett was an old friend of the Childs. John's late wife, Toni, had met Paul in 1928 when he crashed her twenty-first-birthday party at her Paris apartment on the Left Bank. Paul, cradling two bottles of claret, knocked on Toni's door and introduced himself by saying, "You're having a party. I think I'd like to come." They kept in touch and renewed the friendship after Toni married John, Julia married Paul, and the two men served in the State Department. John was a few years older than Julia and at least an inch taller. A Harvard graduate, he was smart; a marine who had survived two Iwo Jima landings, he knew well how to tough things out; a former semiprofessional baseball player, he was agile. He was also interesting, dashingly handsome, and one of the nicest men I've ever known. The only thing John was missing was a knowledge of who was who and what was what in the culina
ry world. One night at dinner, a large group of us was discussing Martha Stewart's latest projects, and for quite a while we shared information about Martha doing this and Martha doing that. John listened patiently and then after several minutes asked, "Who is this Martha chick anyway?"

  Me with John in Julia's kitchen for my fiftieth-birthday party.

  Having John in her life was good for Julia. There was a renewed spark in her desire to entertain at home. She held more dinner parties and reestablished her annual Christmas cocktail party. As any good friend would be, I was downright jealous, and told Julia so. So she offered to fix me up with another old friend. "We'll have to dust him off a bit," she said. "But he's quite presentable." I declined her offer and instead feigned her can-do attitude and began to find dates on my own, thanks mostly to our friend Sally Jackson, who kept a Rolodex of old boyfriends. But it would be five years and three boyfriends before I met my perfect "nice man."

  John had a great sense of humor and made us all laugh—obviously!

  During the seven months that led to her August 15 eightieth birthday, from New Orleans to San Diego, San Francisco, Napa and Sonoma, Las Vegas, Miami, France, Chicago, and Texas, Julia went at a pace that defied her age, and she entirely ignored what had become the B-word. She considered the milestone irrelevant. The culinary world, on the other hand, was obsessed with it. Beginning weeks before her actual birthday and continuing well into the following year, more than three hundred Julia parties were celebrated, and she appeared at them all. All! As reticent as she was to celebrate her age, the outpouring of affection touched her.

  Most of the parties were lavishly produced, extravagantly orchestrated, jolly affairs that were also fund-raisers for causes dear to Julia, so with swelled coffers as an incentive she agreed to take part in them. The Boston television station that had launched Julia's career, WGBH, hosted a party in November at the Copley Plaza in Boston. Luminaries from the worlds of gastronomy, arts, and politics filled the room or appeared on the large portable screen to pay tribute. The Boston Pops paraded into the room playing a piece especially composed for her, "Fanfare with Pots and Pots," with pots, pans, whisks, and wooden spoons. They continued to serenade Julia from the stage, and it was truly amazing how melodious the music was. I guess if the metaphor holds that Julia made music in the kitchen, it follows that the Pops made kitchen in their music. The actress Diana Rigg took the stage and read "Cook and Nifty Wench," a poem Paul had written for Julia's forty-ninth birthday; it was a bittersweet moment. I know Julia wished he were there.

  Me with Julia's Johnny-on-the-spot, Stephanie Hersh, at the Boston birthday party.

  Me with John McJennet at the Boston birthday party.

  Fourteen chefs prepared a delicious meal the following January at the Rainbow Room in New York. It was a good time, but perhaps it went on too long because she abandoned me. She stayed to cheer the parade of waiters carrying sparkler-lit, individual baked Alaskas around the darkened room, and to hear Jean Stapleton read a poem. But after Julia accepted a giant whisk garnished with flowers and pearls and marched around the room with it on her shoulder, she gave me a subtle poke and said, "Let's go. I'll call for the car."

  I was more than ready; it wasn't my only party with her that week. "I'm going to the ladies' room first," I said.

  "Okay. I'll get our coats."

  Ladies' room accomplished, I went to the coat check area, but there was no Julia. I waited for a while, knowing how long it can take Julia to walk through a crowd. Then I decided to get our coats to be ready for her. I had to describe them to the girl at the coat check because, at Julia's suggestion, I had hidden my small purse with my money and claim check in the sleeve of my coat so I wouldn't have to carry it around.

  "Mrs. Child picked them up already," the girl told me.

  "Did she leave?" I asked. She didn't know. I looked back into the dining room and went back to the ladies' room; no Julia. I decided to wait in the car, hoping that she would assume that's where I was. I stepped out onto the street just in time to see the car pulling away from the curb with Julia sitting in the backseat. I had to run half a block in heels too high for walking to catch them at the corner and beat on the window.

  "What are you doing?" I asked, truly incredulous that she was leaving without me.

  "I thought you were having a good time and would find your way back when you were ready."

  "But you have my coat and my purse and my money!" I wailed at her like a petulant child as I slid onto the seat next to her. "What were you thinking?"

  She just grinned at me like a party girl who'd eaten the whole baked Alaska and split the scene with someone else's cash and fur coat. She thought it was terribly funny, but I told her I was not amused at the thought of traipsing coatless and penniless through the late-night streets of New York, where untold dangers would most likely deprive my sons of a mother. In truth, I was really only pretending to be miffed at her. I knew she would have sent the car back for me, with my coat and purse, but I wanted to be able to needle her for a couple of days. I guess I was just addicted to that devilish grin and the twinkle in her eyes that needling wrought.

  We began Julia's New York party the night before with dinner at the Rainbow Room. John, Julia, Michael Whiting, me, Will Lashley, Susy Davidson, and Rozanne Gold.

  For the February party at the Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, California, the hosts flew in a gaggle of nine French chefs to join forces in the kitchen with some sixty American chefs who held sway over French-inspired restaurants. The spirited, good-natured Gallic kitchen bantering was projected onto screens in the dining room for the entertainment of the five hundred guests, who enjoyed an incredible five-hour meal preceded by about sixty different kinds of hors d'oeuvres. At the end of dinner, the chefs rolled out a cart with a birthday cake carved, molded, and decorated as a replica of her kitchen, complete with a marzipan Julia standing by a chocolate stove. The French chefs then performed a quite admirable can-can.

  Me and Sally Jackson expressing our affection with a cardboard cutout doll of Julia at her party in Marina del Rey.

  The public parties were, as Julia noted, embarrassingly prolific. The private ones were special. A small group of us gathered at her friend Jasper White's Cambridge restaurant. For dessert, he prepared chocolate bars with "Happy Birthday Julia" written in icing so she could take a bite out of the hoopla of her birthday. She did so with great relish. Pam Fiore, who was then the editor of Travel & Leisure magazine, held a beautiful dinner party in Julia's honor at her New York apartment, where a group of us including Susy, Victor and Marcella Hazan, Food & Wine editor Mary Simons, and Good Morning America producer Jane Bollinger, did our best to sing on key the lyrics of songs Pam wrote for Julia.

  Julia, Russ Morash, Jasper White, me, and Sally Jackson celebrating Julia at Jasper's restaurant.

  Julia taking a bite out of her birthday at Jasper's restaurant party.

  Pam Fiore passing the song round off to Mary Simons, then editor of Food & Wine magazine.

  Pam Fiore encouraging John and me to sing on key. It was hopeless!

  Pam Fiore's song lyrics.

  Pam Fiore's song lyrics.

  Pam Fiore's song lyrics.

  Susy Davidson planned the perfect Julia party at Julia's home. Close friends gathered in the Cambridge kitchen to cook dinner together. Before congregating in her backyard to sip cocktails and devour Jonah crab claws and an assortment of her favorite oysters, we gossiped and gabbed in her kitchen while trimming, peeling, and roasting. We didn't want Julia to have to do any of the work, but she couldn't keep out of the kitchen. She found a space by a cutting board, looked around at us all clad in specially made aprons stenciled with "Happy Birthday Julia," and beamed. "Isn't cooking together fun?"

  The toasts we gave that evening, unlike those at the public gatherings, didn't tout Julia's many accomplishments or extol her generous contributions to the field of gastronomy. We poked fun at her. In my toast, I accused her of being a real pain. "You jus
t never let up. You told me to write magazine articles. I did. Then you said write more and I did. Then you said to write a book. I did. You just never know when to stop pushing."

  Before my bottom hit the chair, Julia shot back, "When are you going to write another book?"

  Me in Julia's kitchen trimming the meat for her party.

  Susy Davidson, Paula Lambert, and me in our "Happy Birthday Julia" aprons in Julia's dining room.

  Julia and Evan Jones in their birthday aprons admiring her cake.

  Julia on her way to a lecture at the Oxford Symposium.

  So at eighty, with her energy, passion, and quick wit still intact, she kept going and doing as she always had, or perhaps more so. She seemed determined to pack as much living into her life as was humanly possible.

  Some of our esteemed classmates from the Oxford Symposium: Paul Levy, author of The Official Foodie Handbook, Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue food critic, and British author and scholar Alan Davidson.

  In September 1992, Julia and I had plans to attend the Oxford Symposium on Food. About a month before we were to leave, Julia learned that Sarah Nops, a director of London's Cordon Bleu cooking school, was planning a reception to introduce the local community to the American Institute of Wine and Food. "Well, we have to go," Julia told me, and we changed our travel dates to include a stay in London. Then about two weeks before we left for London, I received an invitation from Anna Tasca Lanza to visit her in Sicily. The contessa would be conducting cooking classes at her grand, twelve-hundred-acre country estate, Regaleali, which is both a vineyard and a working farm that produces all the food for the estate. It was an opportunity to experience Sicilian cuisine at its best, but the classes began two days after the end of the Oxford Symposium, and as much as I wanted to go, it just didn't seem possible.