by Luke Barr
Of course, the house and grounds required constant care and attention. In semirural Provence that meant maintaining contact with a long list of local purveyors and handymen. Things were always breaking and needing to be repaired. But then, that was all part of the pleasure of living like a local: making the everyday connections and setting down roots.
Julia and Paul would soon be headed to “La Peetch,” as they affectionately referred to their place, but first came the launch of the new book, Mastering II, in New York. This was the long-awaited sequel to Child and Beck’s definitive 1961 treatise, the book that had, along with Child’s genre-defining television cooking show, introduced a generation of Americans to sophisticated home cooking—which, at that time, really meant French cooking. Of course, Child wasn’t the only one responsible—no single person brings about such a large-scale cultural shift, and this was the 1960s; there was a lot of shifting going on in general. Still, she was the face of cooking in America, the one who’d appeared on the cover of Time magazine in 1966. The French Chef television program had been on hiatus while she worked on the book, but it was returning to the air that fall.
The book was a high-profile release, with a first printing of one hundred thousand copies, a second printing already in the works, and a number of glamorous parties to kick off the publication.
In late September there had been a Boston event at the Plaza Hotel, hosted by PBS, which broadcast Child’s television show. And on October 22 was the official launch party in New York, at the Ford Foundation, on East Forty-Third Street. The twelve-story building had been completed two years earlier, designed by architect Kevin Roche, who had run Eero Saarinen’s firm for years. It had a tree-filled interior atrium, the first in the city, and was the perfect place for a party.
Child made sure to tell Beck that only press and food people, and very few friends, were to be invited. This was just the sort of practical detail that her coauthor could sometimes fail to comprehend. Beck was a force of nature. She was a brilliant cook, but not always a master of social niceties and practicalities. She was tough and direct—imperious. French, in other words. Not only was she French, but in her partnership with Child, being French had become a key element of her persona. She saw herself as the guarantor of authenticity when it came to their cookbooks, the one who made sure that no stray, vulgar Americanisms snuck into their recipes. Child had dubbed her la Super-Française.
Beck, known to her friends and family by her nickname, Simca, charged through life like an overconfident whirlwind, bluffing and blustering her way into every situation. Paul Child, for one, had little patience with her, though he was the first to admit that she got things done. It was Beck and her husband, Jean Fischbacher, who had built La Pitchoune, finessing and cajoling the local contractors and craftsmen. And Paul appreciated that. But dealing with Beck in social situations was another story.
The Childs had driven down from Boston; Beck was flying in from Paris, where she was based. There were press interviews to be done, and a brief but intense book tour, with stops in Minneapolis, Cleveland, and Chicago, and then Philadelphia, Washington, and Boston. In each city, they performed a cooking demonstration (mayonnaise in a Cuisinart, every time) at a local department store and then attended to various local press opportunities. In New York, they were interviewed on the Today show, and Child went on the seminal David Frost interview show, newly imported from England.
Child was a reluctant talk show guest: “I am not an entertainer—I am a cook, that’s it,” she would say. “But cookbook über alles.”
Volume II was an instant hit. In Newsweek, the critic Raymond Sokolov declared, “It is hard to conceive of a cookbook to follow this one. It is without rival, the finest gourmet cookbook for the non-chef in the history of American stomachs.” Gael Greene lauded the book in Life. It was the talk of the town in New York, she said, at least among the gastronomic set. And of course there was the inevitable backlash, too. In the New York Times, Nika Hazelton complained that the book had been “heralded like the Second Coming” and said it reminded her of Versailles, “a noble structure, whose excellence is above suspicion.” Though Hazelton was respectful, all her compliments were barbed: “The elegance and accuracy of the authors’ recipes are not to be questioned, nor are the results if you have the kind of mind and temperament to follow their recipe writing—that of people who learn to drive a car by having the workings of the internal combustion engine explained to them in full detail.” She thought the recipes were too complicated. “French bread alone takes 24 pages and 54 drawings,” she noted.
This sort of sniping was par for the course in the food world, which was small enough that everything was always personal. Child would not forget Hazelton’s swipe, and she couldn’t help but notice that earlier in the same roundup of the season’s new cookbooks, Hazelton had sung the praises of Richard Olney’s debut, The French Menu Cookbook. It contained “menus and recipes that are the soul of French cooking, as practiced by the French and as evocative of French living as anything I’ve ever seen in print. This is the way La Douce France eats when still uncorrupted by expediency foods and methods—balanced, uncluttered meals that never pall.”
Julia and Paul had met Olney the previous summer in France—he’d been introduced by Eda Lord and Sybille Bedford. Julia, always supportive of new culinary talent, was intrigued by his book. His recipes had a personal, passionate quality, in contrast to her and Beck’s more formal Mastering style. She was sure she’d see him again upon her return to France. Meanwhile, she fumed at Hazelton’s critique, and was happy to receive notes of admiration and applause from her friends. M.F. sent a postcard: “Wonderful job. Very proud of you.” James Beard missed the launch party at the Ford Foundation; he had a cooking class to teach—“Tant pis!” she thought—but he adored the book and had told her so. Beard was also en route to Provence in the coming weeks. And Judith Jones, the editor at Knopf to whom Child and Beck owed so much, was coming to France with her husband, Evan, to celebrate the completion of Mastering II. They were staying at an auberge just down the road from La Pitchoune. Such was the nature of the food world. On the one hand, yes, it was small and could sometimes be catty and vindictive. On the other hand, these were Child’s friends!
And the truth was none of the reviews really mattered. The book sold itself. Home cooking was bigger now than it had ever been—it was happening. “Gourmet” had entered the cultural mainstream in America. There were more cookbooks, cooking schools, chefs, and restaurants than ever, not to mention a growing national conversation about health food and organic products on the one hand, and fast food and the dangers of MSG, artificial sweeteners, and “coffee whiteners” on the other. There was new excitement about ethnic food. Most of all, there was the power of television to drive the national conversation about food. That was what Child had been doing with The French Chef, and what no one had done before.
Child was a new kind of celebrity: She was a woman in her fifties, and she played herself on television. She was real. She made mistakes. Of course she was a masterful cook, but when things went wrong, she embraced the opportunity to use her mistakes to teach—here’s what you should do if this happens. Indeed, one of her key talents was the ability to roll with the punches and to improvise and explain. Her viewers loved these moments—the famous potato pancake scooped back onto the pan after accidentally landing on the counter (“Nobody’s looking,” she said) or the fallen soufflés (“Never apologize—nobody knows what you’re aiming at, so just bring it to the table”). Her unflappability was her calling card. Her realness distinguished her. She embodied the infectious pleasure and sheer thrill of cooking. And most of all, she was fun to watch. It was almost bizarre, the swooping, careening voice and grand gestures, the plummy, patrician accent. It was riveting television, and by the late 1960s, Child was well on her way to becoming an American icon.
Now, after launching the new book and the new season of the French Chef television show, Child wanted nothing more th
an to stand on her Provençal terrace and admire her olive trees.
Judith Jones had thrown herself into the production of Mastering II, making regular trips to Cambridge during the intense final months of work, sitting at the kitchen table with Child late into the night. She stayed in the guest bedroom, and then it was up early and back to the kitchen, testing, revising, and editing.
It was Jones who had encouraged Child and Beck to really delve into charcuterie. She and her husband, Evan, were enthusiastic amateur sausage makers. Evan was an accomplished writer, publishing books on history and magazine articles on food, and also a serious cook. They had met in Paris in the late 1940s.
Jones got her start at Knopf working on English translations of Sartre and Camus. When the enormous manuscript for the first Mastering book came across her desk in 1959, she had immediately taken it home and started cooking from the recipes, beginning with the bœuf bourguignon. She and Evan agreed: it was the best they’d had since leaving France.
For the new book, in addition to the sausages and pâtés, Jones had also proposed a recipe for bread (“such an integral part of a French meal”) since good bread was still hard to find in America, even in New York. And thus began an epic series of bread experiments, mostly carried out by Paul, who baked more than sixty loaves, some of which he mailed to Jones in New York. The result was the astonishingly detailed bread recipe in the new book.
Like Child, Jones was ready for a break. She was looking forward to Christmas in Provence.
This was Richard Olney’s moment, too.
With his first book, The French Menu Cookbook, he was suddenly, at least briefly, in the limelight. He was getting good reviews—not only from Hazelton, but also from House Beautiful and Gourmet. In late October, his publisher, Simon and Schuster, wired from New York: Urgent. Craig Claiborne to be in Paris to interview Olney for the New York Times.
Momentarily irked by the fact that he was being summoned (Olney was an easy man to irk), he nevertheless made his way “obediently” to Paris and spent the day with the all-powerful food writer. They had never met, but they got along fine. They ate at Chez Garin. Olney had introduced the owner, Georges Garin, to the American woman who would become Garin’s second wife. The Garins were Olney’s close friends.
The resulting article was stiff, Olney thought, referring to him throughout as “the gentleman.” “He is, by his own definition, a hermit,” the article began.
He is described by his French colleagues as ’pur, droit, épatant,’ and is a man possessed of an uncommon palate for food and wine … Mr. Olney lives on a hillside near Solliès-Toucas in the southern part of France, about eight miles from Toulon, in a home without a telephone. The house, incidentally, has no heat except that which emanates from the fireplace and the kitchen range. It does have a sizable wine cellar, which the owner dug himself over a two-year period.
Claiborne explained that Olney had bought the house in 1961, and spent the next five years renovating the place. He was in his early forties. He’d used the money he’d been paid to write the cookbook to buy a new stove. It was a La Cornue, a fantastically solid, traditional French appliance, and fantastically expensive, too. He lived alone and cooked himself simple dishes—soups, grilled meats, and snails, which were abundant in his garden.
Claiborne was not the first of the American food establishment to recognize Olney’s talent. Julia Child had written to Beard over the summer about how impressed she was by him: “It is high time we had some more French cooking types, and he is unusually well qualified, being American. I know he is very much respected among the French, which is rare indeed. We hope his book gets a good sendoff. Do you know him?”
Beard hadn’t met him yet, but reviewed the book in his weekly syndicated newspaper column, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times and in sixty other papers across the country, in September. He loved it: “Offhand, I can think of only two Americans who have absorbed the essence of France and its cooking thoroughly,” Beard wrote. “One is Julia Child. The other is Richard Olney, who has lived in France for 21 years.” The book would surprise those who thought all French food was overelaborate, according to Beard, and had recipes ranging from “the simplest kind of Provençal luncheon of fresh sardines cooked in vine leaves, lamb tripe à la marseillaise, salad, cheese, and strawberries in orange juice to a fairly formal dinner of sole fillets with fine herbs and stewed cucumbers followed by a spit-roasted leg of lamb with buttered green beans, cheese, and peach melba.”
Organized around seasonal menus in different styles—“Two Formal Spring Dinners,” “Three Simple Winter Menus,” “Four Simple Summer Luncheons à la Provençale,” and so on—the book was the first of its kind. The emphasis on fresh, seasonal ingredients was groundbreaking, as was Olney’s careful attention to wine selection. The book offered recipes that were highly detailed, authoritative, and opinionated. “If rare or medium-rare meat is looked upon with displeasure,” he wrote, “roast venison may as well be discarded from one’s repertoire.” The recipes were also superbly well written: sensuous and evocative but always absolutely clear.
Olney’s editor had word that the coming book review in the Times would be “a rave,” and his friend Eda Lord had intimated that her old friend M. F. K. Fisher, who would be arriving in Provence soon, might possibly write an article about him for The New Yorker. (M.F. had no such intention, a fact that was bound to cause trouble soon enough.) “Things seem to be stirring,” Olney wrote of the anticipated publicity in a letter to his brother. “I pray that a public explosion occurs before the Christmas shopping period.”
Olney returned from his meeting with Claiborne in Paris to his house in Solliès-Toucas and planned his holiday calendar. He had invited Eda, Sybille, and their friend M.F. to dinner at his house in late November, and planned to visit them in turn in December. He would also have the opportunity then to visit Julia and Paul Child and James Beard, who were staying close by. He would pay his respects, somewhat grudgingly. Despite their warm embrace, he was already wary of joining the American food clique.
He wasn’t sure he really liked any of these people. Of course he had yet to meet James Beard and M.F., but that didn’t stop him from being skeptical.
James Beard was six foot three, three hundred pounds, and bald. He occupied the kitchen in his downtown Manhattan brownstone like a friendly bear, wearing an apron and cooking and teaching in an easygoing and precise way. In his plaid suits and brightly colored bow ties, he was a flamboyant figure. But these days he was not well. His legs were swollen, and his heart was weak. Doctors said his circulation was poor, and that it had all started with his weight.
He did need to lose weight, and slow down, take it easy for a while. He needed to get out of the city. He was teaching a full load of cooking classes to small groups in his brownstone, trying to finish his latest book, making appearances, giving demonstrations, and writing his column. It was too much.
And so he’d conscripted himself at the Clinique Médicale et Diététique in Grasse, with the renowned Dr. Georges Pathé. Pathé had a high-profile clientele (including Norodom Sihanouk, the king of Cambodia), and his methods were straightforward: you checked in and ate exactly what he told you to eat. Beard was expected to arrive in early December.
Needless to say, the irony of attempting a weight loss regimen in France was not lost on Beard. There was a certain contradiction in place and purpose.
Indeed, the clinic in Grasse was only a few minutes from the Childs’ house in Plascassier, and Beard knew they’d be there for Christmas. They would be cooking. And he was happy to hear that M. F. K. Fisher would also be in the neighborhood. He had been introduced to M.F. by Child a few years ago and shared her expansive view of the significance of food. Beard had recently written a brief appreciation to introduce a new edition of M.F.’s The Art of Eating, the omnibus volume comprising her first five books, in which he described the “wicked thrill in following her uninhibited track through the glories of the good life,” while als
o noting that she wrote about simple cooking and eating with a “pure, primitive enjoyment.”
M.F. captured the drama of food, its emotional context. Beard, meanwhile, intuitively understood the theatrical nature not only of restaurants (with their romantic lighting and careful choreography) but of food itself, as it was presented on a plate. He had gotten his start in New York in the late 1930s, catering parties. He made cherry tomatoes (a novelty in those days) stuffed with jellied tomato aspic and deviled egg, and smoked salmon with horseradish cream. “Designing hors d’oeuvre is not different from designing sets and costumes,” he said. “Food is very much theater. Especially cocktail parties per se.”
Beard was the original modern American food icon. He’d been a public figure since the 1940s—a relentless popularizer, author, and columnist; a one-time actor and lifelong opera aficionado; a man about town and dinner party host extraordinaire. The beloved and lovable Jim was always at the center of things, bringing people together, well served by his essentially gregarious nature. He knew everyone in the business and used his connections (and his magazine stories and newspaper column) to bring attention to new restaurants, cookbooks, chefs, recipes, kitchen equipment—whatever he came across. Of course, Beard also unapologetically called himself the “biggest whore” in the food business (he was a consultant for major companies such as Pillsbury and Green Giant), but it didn’t matter to his friends; his warm embrace and mentorship was what counted.
For the past few years, Beard had been working on what he hoped would be his magnum opus: American Cookery. It was to be the definitive compendium of the national cuisine—an American Mastering the Art. It was long overdue to his publisher, but he was now almost done, and hoping to use some of his quiet time at the clinic to do more work on it. And like the Childs, he was looking forward to his time in France not only to escape his hectic, over-scheduled life, but also as a chance to catch up with old friends. Perhaps he would make new ones, too: Although he liked her, he didn’t know M.F. very well, and he hoped to spend some time with her. And there was Richard Olney, whom he’d never met, but who lived nearby and had sent him a letter in early October: