Appetite for Life

by Noel Riley Fitch

  From the windows and balcony of Apartment A at 28, Quai de Rive Neuve, the street that ran along the south side of the old port, Julia looked out on the vertical masts of the fishing boats and the seagulls circling against the blue sky. They were subletting from a Swedish consul home on leave for six months. Her view was “heavenly” as she typed, she told Simca. Looking seaward, she saw Fort St.-Nicolas to the left and Fort St.-Jean to the right, their stone breakwaters guarding the wide outer bay. Every vista was intersected by the vertical masts of the colorful boats. When she wrote to her sister Dorothy, who was expecting another baby and was now living in Sausalito near San Francisco, she would think of San Francisco Bay as well as their summers in Santa Barbara—both waters so different from this teeming gateway to Africa and the centuries-old quais at her feet.

  “Sometimes at night we’d hear hearty shouting, and slapping of wet fish on the pavement at the edge of the water … where the boats were unloading their tuna under our window,” Julia wrote M. F. K. Fisher twenty years later. La Criée aux Poissons, the wholesale fish market, was on their quai, just steps from the front door.

  Happily nestled in a new building in the row of tight old houses ringing the port, she could hear the seagulls. Some mornings she and Paul were awakened by arriving fishing boats beneath their windows. They could also hear the construction behind their building. A decade before, the Germans, under the pretext of public health, forced 40,000 inhabitants from the old quarter and razed the densely populated buildings and narrow streets, leaving only the houses along the quais. Ill-famed, this district was picturesque. Even in 1953, the consulate staff remarked about the danger of the Childs’ neighborhood. Though the year before Le Corbusier was making a name for himself in Marseilles with modern buildings known for their audacious and original designs, time would judge them ugly intrusions on the landscape.

  The summer of 1953 brought with it the smell of wild lavender. After parsley (the only winter herb), thyme, and bay, Julia was enjoying the season of tarragon, chervil, and chives. In Provence, she learned, they added fennel and basil to their dishes. The French do not use many herbs, she informed one friend, and they never use wooden salad bowls! Such fine distinctions were irrelevant on the Fourth of July when she had to help turn inferior Navy canned food (sardines, salmon, liverwurst) into something edible for five hundred cocktail party guests of the consulate. After visitors from three U.S. Navy destroyers one week and an aircraft carrier the next, Julia and Paul relaxed on their balcony with friends on July 14, watching their adopted homeland celebrate its independence day with fireworks and “The Marseillaise.”

  Of course, Julia and Paul frequently ate out, savoring the best restaurants in Marseilles and along the coast (their disappointment at La Baumanière in Les Baux was duly reported to Simca). They both loved the smell of fish and garlic in the restaurants along the waterfront, Julia always observing the presentations of the dishes and varieties of ingredients. “I loved the sea scallops in wine sauce baked in a seashell.” After one such meal she exclaimed, “I would happily die with a bottle of white Burgundy in my mouth.”

  She soon struck up an important friendship with Monsieur Guido, whose restaurant by that name was located nearby on the rue de la Paix. It had been open eight months, and Julia believed it was the best fish restaurant in the city. Unrated when she discovered it, it received its second Michelin star by 1956 (“excellent cuisine, worth a detour”). Not surprisingly, the Michelin lists Guido’s first specialty as bouillabaisse des pêcheurs à la rouille. Occasionally during the coming months, Julia would ask him about the ingredients and techniques that he used, and he would recommend wine sources to Paul. His name came up frequently in their letters—even to Charlie, who bought holsters, a belt, and two “six-shooters” for Guido’s son, who was crazy about American cowboys. Guido was “a Mangelotte type,” Julia told Simca, “absolute perfection and care in everything he does.” “Thank god I can talk French,” she wrote to Avis. She did not care about her accent as long as she could “talk and talk and talk.”

  “IS THERE A RED UNDER YOUR BED?”:

  MCCARTHY WITCH HUNTS

  The major topic of conversation among the U.S. Information Agency personnel was Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. They heard from friends at the embassy in Paris that Roy Cohn and David Shine, McCarthy’s assistants, came through the capital city to check the library and the correctness of the staff. Theodore White would say that they “moved through Europe examining the books and shelves of the USI[S].” They were apparently dismayed that they could not find the American Legion Weekly. When Larry Morris, head of the Paris cultural section of the USIS, came into his office and found two young men with their feet on his desk, he demanded that they remove themselves and give their names. McCarthy’s two henchmen immediately complied, but called a staff meeting for Easter Sunday. Afraid for their careers, everyone showed up and waited at length until someone checked Cohn and Shine’s hotel at four-thirty and learned that they had slept in after a late night. “Most people were scared to do anything,” Julia later explained. News of the harassment spread through the American diplomatic community. When Cohn and Shine got to Berlin they found White’s Thunder Out of China in the USIS library, burned it, and reported the purge to the New York Times.

  Theodore White, located not far away on the Riviera in the fishing village of Le Lavandou since 1952, was writing books, fearing the blacklist, and hoping to redeem himself. White’s brother Robert (removed from his security clearance at MIT) and others from the China theater were threatened. On a number of occasions, Julia and Paul visited with Theodore and Nancy White in Les Mandariniers, their huge old whitewashed villa with its orange tiled roof. They had bouillabaisse and talked of the great Chinese food they had shared in Kunming. Nancy White later said that Julia “devoured every morsel” that her excellent cook Marie produced. Talk always turned to McCarthy and the general distrust they all had of Chiang in China. “Since when was China ours to lose?” asked Julia. “Chiang and [Tai Li] did the trick, helped on by the China lobby and Henry Luce.” Political tides ended White’s comfortable French life when, on June 17, workers rose in East Berlin and Russian tanks mowed them down. White and anyone who had appeared sympathetic to Mao or the communists were soon out of work. Later, in his book In Search of History, White recalled this period, saying there were many as yet unknown Americans in the south of France—he included Julia’s name here—who were “all there doing things.”

  The growing power of Senator McCarthy was reported in the newspapers and magazines. His denunciations of communist sympathizers and traitors in every branch of government made his name symbolic of an era in American history that would see Julius and Ethel Rosenberg put to death for treason and anti-American demonstrations in Paris. Allen Dulles (formerly of the OSS, then the head of the CIA) stood up to McCarthy, Julia noted, but “[Secretary of State John] Foster Dulles did not stand up to anyone.”

  Julia held strong opinions about the rise of political intimidation in her homeland and shared White’s views of China and the botched American policy there. Their friend Dick Heppner was now Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs under Eisenhower, but several other OSS friends lost their jobs, including John Carter Vincent and John Stewart Service. (The latter was reinstated after six years of litigation, directed by Heppner when he was still in Donovan’s law firm.) Duncan Lee (China-born Assistant General Counsel of the OSS) was accused but not charged. Charles E. (Chip) Bohlen was smeared by McCarthy, who questioned his sexual persuasion. Not surprisingly, Julia and Paul considered the possibility that the paranoia could touch them. Paul remembered signing a petition in the 1930s; Julia recalled putting one of her own books on China (written by a woman later identified as communist) in the USIS library. But neither thought seriously about their friendship with former OSS colleague Jane Foster. “She was lots of fun, and every time we went to Paris we would see her,” Julia informed her OSS correspondent
s.

  “I’m terribly worried about McCarthyism,” Julia confided to Avis DeVoto on February 28: “What can I do as an individual? It is frightening. I am ready to bare my breasts (small size though they be), stick out my neck, won’t turn my back on anybody, will sacrifice cat, cookbook, husband and finally self … please advise. I’m serious.” Avis warned her to be careful because of Paul’s job. The DeVotos (in Cambridge, Massachusetts) could have told her stories of faculty opening student mail at Harvard for the FBI the year before and Princeton professors taping their lectures to avoid being misquoted by student moles. Bernard DeVoto had stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee in September 1949.

  By March 1954, Julia was so worked up over McCarthyism in America (and Foster Dulles’s capitulation) that she was determined to prove she and Paul would not be intimidated. The event triggering this decision was news that an anonymous “Committee for Discrimination in Giving” fingered five faculty members as “communists” at Smith College and wrote to the alumnae. Julia’s March 14 letter is a classic of reason and fortitude, saying, in part:

  According to proper democratic methods, charges of this grave nature should first be brought to the attention of the President and the Trustees. You have assumed a responsibility for which you were not appointed. It is clear that you do not trust your elected officers, and that you do not have confidence in democratic procedures…. In Russia today, as a method for getting rid of opposition, an unsubstantiated implication of treason, such as yours, is often used. But it should never be used in the United States.

  With a check doubling her annual contribution to the Alumnae Fund, she adds, “In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for.” Unwisely, she sent a copy to her father (only later understanding that it was directed in part at him), who informed Julia and Paul that they were playing into the hands of the communists.

  Paul was hurt and depressed by his father-in-law’s letter and took to his bed. He reported to his brother that “since the USIS has been under attack by Sen. McCarthy, the monthly book-buying has been cut from 20,000 to 1,592.” That summer Paul was asked to compile a list of every book in order that they be cleared, destroyed, or refiled. Though Paul continued to be worried about the growth of communism in Europe, he believed McCarthy made the situation worse. McCarthy, he added, “is a dirty and astute demagogue, advancing himself, like a surf board rider, on a wave of fear.” The French may have a “deep-seated national neurosis” that toppled each new government, but “we have McCarthy.”

  Julia’s professional work provided an outlet for dealing with the tension and connected her both to her homeland, through her interpretation to Simca of American tastes and products, and to her new French home, with its hundreds of varieties of fish and fresh produce. She would explain which beans or fish were not available in the United States or that Americans had an aversion to too much butter, and she could clarify the language for their readers. Occasionally she sent Simca copies from American cookbooks, but she was reading Gourmet more skeptically since Narcissa Chamberlain had warned her about its unreliability. Though she left the final judgment of French recipe titles to Simca and Louisette, who were continuing their school in Louisette’s big blue kitchen, she did not hesitate to say that something was not “Frenchy” enough or that the French cooking authorities she consulted said this or that. Julia missed their cooking classes and the appearances of Thillmont and Bugnard at the blue kitchen at 171, avenue Victor Hugo.

  Entertaining combined her professional work and Paul’s diplomatic responsibilities. It was immediately evident to the consulate that a meal at the Childs’ apartment was both a personal pleasure and a diplomatic advantage in entertaining guests. Three months after their arrival, Julia had the British consul general and the head of the French Chamber of Commerce to dinner.

  Whether she served fish in wine sauce or a shoulder of lamb, each dish was an experiment reported to Simca. Officer Roland Jacobs (number two man in the U.S. Consulate), and his wife, Janine, remember a superb boeuf bourguignon and the Childs’ “neat sense of humor.” Howard B. Crotinger, in the Department of State foreign service, remembers that he and his bride, Annelie, were treated to “delicious” meals. Lee Crotinger was impressed by Julia’s height and her command of the French language. Crotinger, who was a Signal Corps photographer during the war, admired Paul’s photographs hanging in the foyer. American diplomats, most of whom were not fluent in French, were in awe of the Childs’ command of French, their popularity with the French, their sense of humor, and their “courage” in living in this “dangerous neighborhood,” where no other foreigners rented. Their avant-garde reputation was confirmed when Julia showed the Crotingers a jar of absinthe, wormwood included, that she was preserving in the back of her dark closet. She found an old recipe for this lethal, now outlawed, drink and shared a taste of her brew with adventurous friends.

  Despite the demoralizing effects of McCarthyism, Paul maintained the Cultural Center and its library, exhibited the work of American artists, and entertained lecturers and visitors. During this first year in Marseilles, the USIS became the USIA, an independent agency of the government, and Paul was put in charge. He organized fifteen French departments along the Mediterranean between the Italian and Spanish borders and supervised one assistant and eight staff members. In addition to publicity and visiting celebrities, he oversaw sections on management and administration, an information center, press and radio services, motion pictures (including the Cannes film festival), and exchange of persons. Paul’s staff “adored the Childs,” Crotinger remembers.

  Julia was learning to balance her demanding professional standards with her role as wife to Paul, who wanted her to travel with him when she could. She confided to Simca in early December that if she were able to give as much time as she wanted to her work, “we would soon be having a divorce, I fear. Luckily, however, now that he has his studio, [Paul] is well-occupied during the weekends!”

  Their marriage seemed to be happier than ever, perhaps in part because the demands of the book kept Julia’s social life less frantic than in Paris. “We just love living together,” Paul told Charlie, and when apart missed each other “terrifically [for] we clearly have developed a sort of emotional interdependence.” In December he told Charlie, “Julie … is now and then … an unconscious therapeutic agent for me.” She calmed his nerves. Twice this year Paul commented on their like-mindedness: “Julia and I are such twinnies in our reactions and tastes,” and “We are pretty twinnyfied that way, reflecting each other’s atmospheres like two mirrors.”

  Paul was keenly aware of the charm that Julia had both on him (“I hate to think what a sour old reprobate I might have been without that face to look at”) and on the French (“I watched with fascination [one] night at Lipp’s as she turned a fat, tired, old waiter into a responsive, gay, flirtatious, pleasure-filled man. [She is an] electric-energizer and responder…. I am continuously conscious of my good fortune in living with her.”

  He specifically credited her sensitivity to “emotional atmospheres.” When she was excited, “Julia’s eyes begin to glow like emeralds”:

  Her eyes are as sensitive to emotional atmospheres as a coal-mine canary is to fire-damp. If there’s the slightest wonder or sentiment or excitement in the air those curious green orbs develop a phosphorescent sparkle; and that mobile mug takes on a look of pleasurable anticipation—and the first thing you know she’s imbued the atmosphere with her own aurora-borealis.

  MASTERING THE ART

  Julia’s horizon was the future publication of their book. She was convinced that they were writing a precedent-setting work: “What a book this will be, if we ever finish it.” And she was convinced that they must keep their work secret, especially their experimentation with high technology. The letters were often labeled “Top Secret” or “never seen in print before.” Simca must never show the blender to Bugnard, because he had many American students. She w
as especially concerned that they be the first to incorporate the use of the Waring blender in cooking classic French recipes. “Love that Waring Mixer,” she told Avis. Simca went to a demonstration at a kitchen fair in Paris, and Julia wrote to the American companies who manufactured blenders, just as she had written to the Wine Advisory Board of California the previous year.

  A second innovation they hoped to pioneer was directions for cooking some dishes ahead of time (a dimension never introduced by their teachers, who were chefs de cuisine). The women would inform their readers where in the recipe they could stop and how they could reheat. These ahead-of-time tips were uniquely Julia’s contribution, for she did not have a live-in maid or cook and understood the pressure of being both cook and hostess.

  Julia was working on soups and then testing Simca’s recipes for sauces. She consulted the authorities (remembering Bugnard’s method or Thillmont’s method or looking up Escoffier); experimented with the ingredients (butter versus oil), with procedures (mixing at the table, cooking a dish ahead of time, cutting down on the milk in Simca’s recipe for sauce à l’ail); fine-tuned the language, what Louisette called the “blah-blah” (“holding pan of boiling butter in left hand, wire whip in right hand, pour …”); and tested equipment (the pressure cooker did not prove satisfactory for soups). “What minute checking we must do!” she informed Simca. “We must always remember that we are writing for an audience that knows nothing about French cooking.”