by Luke Barr
Last House was being built without a hitch, M.F. said. Bouverie had told her with cautious astonishment that he’d never seen a house go up with fewer complications—and he’d built a number of them on his ranch already. M.F. might be in by Easter.
And so she was: in the spring of 1971, M.F. moved into Last House. It was beautiful, set back a long distance from the country road that ran through Sonoma’s Valley of the Moon and surrounded by pasture land. The cows took some getting used to, roaming in lumbering fashion across the land, the calves stopping in the shade of the house to lick the stucco walls. M.F. wondered if they would walk in through one of the open doorways to her terrace, but they never did. There were wildflowers growing in the fields, and stands of live oak and walnut trees. Across the valley in the distance were rolling hills planted with wine grapes.
The house had thick walls and high, vaulted ceilings, built-in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and black tile floors. There were two large, spacious rooms, each with a Franklin stove, and a luxuriously large bathroom with a claw-foot tub. One of the walls and the ceiling of the bathroom were painted a dark, rich Pompeian red, and the same color backed the bookshelves and cupboards throughout the house.
M.F. unpacked her thousands of books and arranged them according to subject. She put down her slightly threadbare but newly cleaned Persian carpets. On the walls were numerous paintings by Dillwyn Parrish and a few hand-painted posters advertising an agricultural fair, which she’d bought in Dijon in the 1930s, when she was living there with Al Fisher. She hung small paintings and reproductions in the bathroom, too. The simple kitchen lined one wall of the living room; the cabinets were white—she’d fended off the currently fashionable avocado and harvest gold colors. Facing west was a large covered veranda with wicker furniture and some old wicker trunks from Provence.
Her sister Norah came to visit frequently—she had bought a house on the Sonoma coast a few years earlier, in Jenner, just over an hour’s drive away. Her daughter Anna, who was living in Oregon, called and wrote; her daughter Kennedy and her family came to visit from Oakland now and then. And in June, Arnold Gingrich flew in from New York for a weekend. She met him in San Francisco for a crab lunch, and then they drove to Glen Ellen, where he admired her new house and the views of the Bouverie ranch from her windows.
M.F. was home.
She wrote at her desk in her bedroom, and drank vermouth and gin cocktails on the terrace, with one of her two cats at her feet.
The reviews of her various books later that year were good: in the Times, Raymond Sokolov, the young one-time foreign correspondent who had taken over Craig Claiborne’s food editor position, described her translation of The Physiology of Taste as “a work of skill and devotion. Mrs. Fisher, the doyenne of American food writers, has not only translated well but has also contributed extensive notes on the text that will be valued for themselves as well as for the contemporary counterpoint they add to Brillat-Savarin’s august yet flippant ‘meditations.’ ” In Vogue, the eminent—and in this case rather florid—Jean Stafford reviewed Among Friends: “This memoir of M. F. K. Fisher is a needle in the arm filled with nectar and ichor, and distillations of irony and wondrous corn and sassy razzmatazz and tempered temper tantrums and tolerance.” The New Yorker highlighted the book’s thematic connection with the contemporary civil rights movement, calling the religious divisions M.F. observed as a child in Quaker-dominated Whittier an “almost impalpable Jim Crow arrangement,” and concluding: “Her account of her family’s evolution and her own growing up is, in one sense, proof that ‘belonging’ is not everything, and, in another, an indictment of every form of exclusiveness that has ever been attempted in this country.”
Most important to M.F. was her sister’s reaction.
The trip to France had brought them closer than ever: “At this stage in our lives as sisters we enjoy many of the same things,” M.F. wrote of Norah.
M.F.’s success as a writer was one of the things seldom discussed in the family—her parents, when they were alive, had never felt it necessary to comment on any of her books. “Any publication of mine was treated as if I had just developed a recurrence of my old syphilis,” M.F. wrote, only half-jokingly, to Gingrich. But now Norah chose to speak out: she had read Among Friends, she wrote M.F., “and at the grave risk of breaking the long tradition of utter silence will indicate to you that I like it very much—it is a very warm, genial record.”
M.F. was much gratified to hear that. “Dearest N.,” she wrote, “… yes, it was pretty reckless of you to break the Embarrassed Family Hush! Thank you, though … what you think and do not think matters very much to me … perhaps even more than it should … or is that possible?”
In the same letter in which Norah commented on M.F.’s memoir, she told her that she had begun to contemplate retirement from her counseling position in the Berkeley schools. Norah, then in her early fifties, wrote:
I suppose that I really believe I will fall into a delightful useful way to spend the next 10 or 15 years, which is not very realistic. I too would prefer not to be so well-cushioned, but every alternative I think of seems goody-goody and/or sanctimonious. I love the water and the garden and Jenner but am far from ready to sit and snooze forever—well Doc?
M.F. responded that “it does seem strange to me that you are getting out of a ‘career’ you have devoted yourself to, at a really young age … I like to think of you as a vigorous and eminently sane (Mens sano etc) woman well into the 70s and still stamping about life … But doing what?” She didn’t have an answer, but she was encouraging. “Only you can know that, and I feel absolutely sure that you do know.”
M.F. had begun a new chapter in Glen Ellen, a relaxed and sociable one. David Bouverie entertained a stream of visitors, and she found herself in the role of hostess at many of these gatherings. He called M.F. his “writer-in-residence” or sometimes his “resident recluse”—“R.R.” for short. She, in turn, referred to him as “Squire Bouverie” or, in letters to him while he was traveling, as her “absentee landlord.” She mockingly addressed one envelope with a numbered list of names:
1. David P. Bouverie
2. David Pleydell Bouverie
3. David Pleydell-Bouverie
He returned it with annotations in red ink—an “Explanation for Mary Frances!” “This I reject whenever possible,” he wrote of number 1. “This is the ‘take it or leave it’ compromise,” he wrote of number 2. “This is mandatory for social columns and at the Knickerbocker Club and in England. It is also incomprehensible to genealogical illiterates and I am tired of explaining something so irrelevant,” he wrote of number 3. “Q.E.D., D.P-B.” he wrote at the bottom of the envelope.
They had developed an affectionate, teasing repartee, something like a flirtation. Gingrich jealously wondered if she had “turned into Madame Butterfly,” to which M.F. scoffingly replied that she and Bouverie were “as amiably sexless as two bulbs in a flower-bed, two potatoes in a bin.” In any event, Bouverie’s sexuality was a veiled affair. It was understood but unspoken that he was gay.
They talked about art, news, and gossip; when he was away, M.F. sent amusing reports about local goings-on, how the trees and plantings were holding up, what she was working on at the moment—she had an assignment from Travel + Leisure to write about oysters, and Playboy might send her off to explore the restaurants of New Orleans. Bouverie sent notes describing his glamorous travels, taking evident delight in his good fortune while also winking at the madness of it all. Scrawled on the back of a postcard from Hotel Las Brisas in Acapulco: “Flew direct from New York in a fast private jet. Ann & Edgar Bronfman have two larger houses further along from the little ones shown on this card. Edgar quite rightly tries to prevent [the staff] from dropping hibiscus buds in the swimming pools every morning!”
Bouverie and M.F. shared an American sense of humor and irreverence about society, taste, and the inflexible certitudes of European snobbery. Her recent trip to France had only reinforced the
sentiment.
From London that fall, on letterhead bearing the address 45 Park Lane, Bouverie wrote:
My dear RR,
The above address is a pseudonym for the London Playboy Club apartments. The Ritz was full … The lobby is a riot, for the girls come simpering in and go whimpering out day and night. The rooms (which are as costly as the Ritz) are five or six feet wide and twelve feet long. If there were not a kitchenette (two feet from the bed and in the room), radio, TV, and suggestive paintings, one would consider it, in old fashioned parlance, a servant’s room!
With the top of my head I admire English fortitude and England’s “cultural heritage,” but with my solar plexus I detest it all, and the horrors of my youth well up in me and fester. At least I have achieved enough detachment to come here, do a little Samaritan “turn,” and split.
Bouverie had found liberation of sorts in comparatively freewheeling California. And at Last House, M.F., too, felt rejuvenated. “I am no longer the woman whose children have grown up and whose husbands have died, dusting the corners now and then and trying to write,” she wrote. She had settled into a “new pattern of life.” She was happy, serene—and more productive than she’d been in a long time.
In December 1971, the Childs came to visit M.F. at Last House. They stayed for the weekend, sleeping in the Bouverie ranch guesthouse. Bouverie was away for the season, in New York.
Julia and Paul adored M.F.’s small house, and the open, rural Sonoma landscape. At the end of her long, unpaved driveway, they had stopped to admire the tongue-in-cheek sign on the fence: TRESPASSERS WILL BE VIOLATED.
“I hope you won’t collapse like balloons in the quiet,” M.F. said, laughing. “Sometimes people turn and toss the first night here, because the air is so sweet and the silence so silent.”
Last House was charming, cozy, Provençal, Julia declared—it suited M.F. perfectly. They had brought her a gift: a large wreath made of herbs and fruits. M.F. served bread and cheese and vermouth cocktails, and they sat in her book-filled living room and talked. Beard had recently suffered a heart attack, which sent him to the hospital for nearly a month. But now he was doing well, Julia reported—so well, in fact, that he was planning to go to France for the holidays. The Childs had lent him La Pitchoune; they were staying home.
They marveled at Beard’s fortitude. M.F. had last seen him in New York the previous spring—they’d had tea and croissants in his town house on West Tenth Street, and he’d been in great form. He planned to visit M.F. soon in California, he said, and tour the local vineyards.
The next day, M.F. took the Childs to the nearby town of Sonoma. It was a pleasantly sleepy place, set around a tree-filled plaza and home to the Sonoma Mission, a whitewashed adobe complex built by the Spanish in the 1820s and now a historic site. The buildings had a somber, mysterious beauty about them, and the walls were decorated with Native American patterns.
Everywhere Julia went, people stopped her. “Juuuulia,” they would say, delighted to see the French Chef in person, their dear friend from television. It wasn’t just that she was famous: Child’s TV persona was sui generis, combining passionate instruction; a theatrical, at times comic sensibility; and real human warmth. It all served to make her both supremely fascinating and supremely approachable. Indeed, the Child on television and the Child in person were one and the same.
“She is unfailingly gentle and warm,” M.F. observed, as three different fans in downtown Sonoma expressed their admiration, “and always knows somebody’s maiden aunt or something.” Child connected with people, embracing her role as a pop culture icon.
Just around the corner from the mission was the Swiss Hotel, where they went for a midday drink after touring the mission. The restaurant and bar at the Swiss were regular stops for M.F.—she’d taken Judith and Evan Jones there a few weeks earlier when they had come to visit. It was a family-run place, unchanged for generations. They ordered Bear Hair sherry, the house label, as Child greeted yet more well-wishers. The sherry was delicious, they all agreed. They ordered another round.
That afternoon, after the Childs retreated to the guesthouse for a nap, M.F. blanched pieces of a cauliflower, small zucchini, tiny rosy potatoes in their skins, and green, stringless beans. She cooled the vegetables briefly in a bowl of ice water and then arranged them in piles on a long, narrow fish platter. The beans she placed in an orderly stack, followed by the cauliflowerets, the potatoes, and a row of zucchini. She put the platter in the refrigerator. Then she minced a clove of garlic and anchovies from a tin, with which she made a strongly flavored vinaigrette. She stewed plums with water and sugar to make a sauce for the dessert, pureeing it afterward. In the refrigerator were two boxes of ravioli she had bought for the occasion. The simple dinner was more or less ready to serve, as soon as her guests arrived.
FRESH RAVIOLI
BLANCHED, CHILLED VEGETABLES WITH AN ANCHOVY SAUCE
ICE CREAM WITH PUREED PLUMS
M.F. had invited her neighbors, Genie and Ranieri di San Faustino, to join them. The San Faustinos were a genial San Francisco couple—she was American; he was an Italian prince—and they stayed in one of Bouverie’s houses on many weekends.
They drank cocktails and set the table. They talked about Sonoma—how much the Childs had liked the mission—and about news of the food world. Elizabeth David was having a sad, difficult time in London, M.F. had heard in a letter from Lord—David’s sister had committed suicide, leaving her to care for the orphaned children. They discussed the sudden death of Michael Field, earlier in the year. “We last saw him at a party when our Vol. II came out,” Julia said, “and he was like a wild man. Pale, greenish gray, thin to emaciation, eyes darting. It was as though he was driving himself to breakdown and death.” Field had personified the sped-up, big-money metabolism of the modern food world, and now he was gone. “He seems to have dropped into a well—boom-plop, and that was the end of him,” Julia continued. “I somehow thought there would be more talk, or writings, or something. But no. Silence.” It was strange when people died, how quickly they were forgotten.
On a happier note, Beck was as robust and forceful as ever, Child reported; she was already nearly done with her book.
M.F. served the ravioli with butter and sage, and Paul opened a bottle of wine. The cold vegetables were set in the middle of the table, accompanied by the vinaigrette. They raised their glasses and toasted M.F. and her new house.
As they ate, they talked about southern France. The Childs had been back at La Pitchoune in the spring—“enjoying life and being totally relaxed, even incognito,” Julia said. She relished her anonymity there. She loved the fact that the phone never rang. Paul said the old olive trees had survived the winter well, but the darling, scrawny tree he’d planted on the terrace had looked as scrawny as ever.
The dishwasher had finally been installed.
M.F. loved hearing about Provence, and La Pitchoune. “I cannot even think of Plascassier,” she said, “without a strange twinge, and kind of generalized pinggg that goes from just above my heart down to my pelvis. I suppose it is incurable.” Still, she no longer had any doubt that this was where she belonged, at Last House. She felt settled.
They ended the evening with ice cream and the still-warm plum sauce, happy to be in Sonoma, among friends.
The Childs left the next morning before dawn. M.F., still in bed, heard their car creeping away and had a sudden, childish urge to rush to the window and wave. She adored them both.
The following week they sent a letter of thanks, and it captured all the beauty of her new house, and her new life in Glen Ellen.
Dec 12, 1971
Dear M*F*
This cannot be construed as a “bread and butter letter” because so much more than B&B runneth over from your generous cup: The food had to be splendid and interesting, naturally. But only you have Charlie-the-cat, a cow-barrier at your front door which, happily, allows people to pass in, an extravagant dressing table mirror facing a Queen-of-Egypt
tub, a view into the embracing arms of a live oak growing up from a baroque pedestal of moss-covered boulders, thousands of readable books, a black and white fresco of grapes framed in an arch, a very special vermouth, a four-painting-decorated skylight, a tile floor glittering like black ice, the odor of wet eucalyptus trees hovering over the house … in short, your special personal creation, satisfying, filled with delights and beauties, a pleasure to know.
While writing this letter, I see you there, like the Tibetan “jewel in the center of the lotus”—a memory full of pleasure for us both.
Paul & Julia
17
NEW BEGINNINGS
IN THE SPRING OF 1971, BEARD FINALLY FINISHED American Cookery, his magnum opus. It had taken six years. Little, Brown planned to publish the book the following year.
Beard was soon back to his relentless schedule—writing his column, teaching classes, consulting for restaurants, appearing in commercials for Spice Islands and Heckers Flour. He remained somewhat hobbled by his various ailments, but forged ahead anyway. He wore long compression stockings to prevent swelling, and his doctors outfitted him with special shoes. They were enormously comfortable, Beard declared. He thought they looked like eighteenth-century boots—quite dashing.
His friends continued to worry about his health, but he was in good spirits. One reason was his latest acolyte, Felipe Rojas-Lombardi, a beautiful young Peruvian chef working as an assistant for Beard’s cooking classes. He had wavy hair and a beard and an angelic smile. It was not a sexual relationship, but it was romantic in its way—the eager young student flattered and enlivened Beard.
Beard began losing weight. At Rojas-Lombardi’s urging, he had stopped drinking liquor, and bought some new clothes.
Jones had been taking Beard to lunch with some regularity, trying to convince him to write a book about bread. Bread was having its countercultural moment: everyone, it seemed, was baking “hearth bread.” And Beard had been complaining for years about the poor quality of American bread. Jones figured the iconic Beard could write the definitive book on the topic. Beard on Bread, they would call it.