Appetite for Life

by Noel Riley Fitch

  Julia particularly enjoyed Chinese restaurants in Boston, or the upscale La Grenouille and Le Cygne in New York City, but she wrote Simca, “Food is getting too much publicity, and is becoming too much of a status symbol and ‘in’ business, and the fancy restaurant types are getting too commercial—all with their own wines for sale everywhere.” Later, after hearing for the third time that an American food person played tennis with the Troisgros brothers in France, she told Anne Willan (then at the Washington Star, one of the few non-“home economist” food editors), “I find I’m getting tired of all this foodie one-upmanship.”

  When President Ford made dismaying comments on his food preferences in 1974, Julia wrote to chef Henri Haller with her regrets and sympathy. They could share private criticism about various Presidents’ bad taste in food: Nixon’s preference for catsup on cottage cheese and Ford’s remarks about eating being a “waste of time” and his preference for instant coffee, instant tea, and instant oatmeal (“I happen to be the nation’s first instant Vice President”).

  After Beard met Graham Kerr, who had just moved to the United States, he called Julia for a long conversation about his seriousness. Julia suggested that he not leave his television program, The Galloping Gourmet, as he planned, because he had “a good TV personality.” What he needed, she told Beard, was “the right kind of program, and not a silly one,” because he could be “good and useful for the good cause of la bonne cuisine.”

  Julia supported the development of several cooking schools, particularly La Varenne. When it looked like Madame Brassart was going to retire and sell her Cordon Bleu, Julia and several friends decided to see if they could influence the sale to ensure a strong school for teaching French cooking to English speakers in Paris. Several were involved in the summer of 1972, including Odette Kahn, editor-in-chief of Vins de France and Cuisine et Vins de France, Marie Blanche (Princesse de Broglie), and Anne Willan with her husband, Mark Cherniavsky, whom Julia had met in Cambridge earlier that year. The Cherniavskys (Mark was at the World Bank) wished to move to Europe, where he had earlier lived for twenty years with his cellist father. Because Anne, who was a British food journalist and author, had studied at the Cordon Bleu in Paris and taught at the Cordon Bleu in London, they wished to own a cooking school, either by buying the Cordon Bleu (which turned out to be too expensive) or by founding their own. Julia and Paul saw their own partnership echoed in the marriage of this “civilized and charming” couple and kept involved over the years in the planning for their school (La Varenne). “Julia was very much responsible for the germ of the idea and for keeping us on track,” says Anne Willan.

  On January 2, 1974, Paul and Jim Beard accompanied Julia past klieg lights and cameras to a celebrated dinner at the Four Seasons restaurant in New York, but the men stayed at the bar and drank wine, waiting for morsels of the meal to be brought to them. This was a dinner for women only, indeed for twelve leading women, a meal cooked by notorious male chauvinist Paul Bocuse and his fellow Frenchmen Jean Troisgros and Gaston Lenôtre “in response to criticism that no women had been invited to [an earlier] Bocuse dinner.” Gael Greene of New York magazine planned the promotion for these three French chefs and the press was crawling about hoping to taste samples along with Paul and Jim. Julia did not think the food was exceptionally good, and she seemed to resent the fact that the men tried to bring all the ingredients with them (some, including the foie gras, were confiscated at immigration). But she was excited to meet the other guests, who included Lillian Hellman, Pauline Trigère, Bess Myerson, Naomi Barry, Sally Quinn, and Louise Nevelson. Nevelson told a friend she attended just so she could meet Julia Child. Kay Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, had to back out at the last minute. Lillian Hellman, Julia told Simca (who had had le lifting), had a “wonderfully raddled face (no saquépage!).” Julia thought it was soon boring without men and, she told Simca, these women had “nothing whatsoever to do with serious gastronomy.” She “wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” however. Paul concluded that this “Dinner of the Century” was a “vulgar affair,” but an amusing “publicity stunt.”

  In the spring, the “magnificent quadrumvir,” as Paul called “Rosie and Lizzie” and themselves, gave thirteen demonstrations for local charities in Seattle, San Francisco, and Honolulu, netting an additional $10,000 for WGBH. At the Kabuki Theater in San Francisco, Julia’s trouble with a caramel cage to cover a dessert was one she would talk about for years. “It was during the Patty Hearst kidnapping in San Francisco and everyone was nervous and thinking about killers walking the streets. I was doing a dessert in a caramel cage in which I had to get the caramel just right and dribble it over a bowl to harden. I buttered the stainless-steel bowl, but the cage broke. It broke again during the evening demonstration. It was not pretty. Why am I doing this? I thought.” She later figured out that the caramel was too hot, thus melting the butter and sticking to the pan. “We learn so much through mistakes!”

  Calvin Tomkins had joined them in San Francisco to write a profile of Julia for The New Yorker, which was published at the end of the year. He described her “unique blend of … earthy humor and European sophistication” and quoted Beard (“She has the kind of bigness that all great artists have. Singers especially … she just sweeps everyone up and carries them away”) and Merce Cunningham (“She moves like a dancer. Everything is direct and clear”). Another journalist remarked on her “sense of control, a feeling that everything has been organized.”

  Two weeks later they flew to Provence (for the first time, her passport read “television and writer”) to spend as many months as they needed to complete the manuscript for her book based on the color version of The French Chef. Julia set her deadline for September 1. This second book on her own, again to be published by Knopf, was handled by her lawyer, Bob Johnson, who took over her account in 1969 after the death of Brooks Beck and suggested that Knopf was taking Julia’s books for granted.

  A tough but dapper man of only thirty years who escorted various grand ladies to the Childs’ house and to official functions, Bob Johnson was gay but chose to keep his sexual preferences to himself. Because he came from a humble background and worked at a Brahmin firm, he had what one colleague called a “grandiosity and manner that could be [mis]interpreted as arrogant.” He was soon caught up in Julia’s business and celebrity.

  The Bantam paperback paid her handsomely (it had a printing of four million) and their sales promotion was better than Knopf’s. Johnson threatened to take her next book elsewhere, giving Judith Jones the impression that Knopf was cheap and ungrateful for not offering a higher advance. Relations with Judith and Knopf became strained in the late summer of 1971. Eventually Knopf countered an offer from Little, Brown and Julia remained with Knopf. Julia would call it “my one little fling” of unfaithfulness to Knopf.

  Before they settled in to complete the manuscript for Julia Child’s Kitchen, they took a trip to Italy with Herb and Pat Pratt. In Venice, Paul suffered what Julia called a “dreadful case of shell-fish poisoning.” His letters to his brother detailed a number of small physical problems; Julia says he is “cross and touchy” and he does “not know why! Must hold on to self.” Back at La Pitchoune he was particularly irritated by Jean and Simca’s bossy ways, and by the parties for nine (including Beard and Olney) and the foodies’ visits to three-star restaurants such as L’Oasis (“pretentious … too rich food”).

  Julia, Paul, and James Beard were sitting on the terrace enjoying their last cup of morning tea, Jim sitting under the olive tree in what Julia called “his big blue Chinese kimono.” Whenever Jim was around, Julia’s letters were full of more foodie news and Paul was amused by his wit. Paul was working to prepare more illustrations for Julia’s new book and correcting the first proofs of his own book of verses a friend was printing. He did not tell Julia he was suffering from chest pains. He soon stopped writing in his diary, explaining to Julia that the Empirin he was taking gave him a rash.

  When she was n
ot interrupted, Julia worked from 9 A.M. to 7 P.M. on the manuscript. In a philosophical letter to Charlie and Freddie in May, she declared, “Paul and I shall certainly go on about our work well into our 90s and 100s … we are fortunate to be so tough and healthy.” Still, she was worried about signs of aging in Paul, though the doctor had pronounced him in perfect health before they left Cambridge. She completed her manuscript by August 31, and they stopped off at the Willan/Cherniavsky home in Paris to celebrate. Anne and Mark remember that Paul was irritable, distracted, and probably not feeling well when they were dining at L’Ami Louis.

  Finished with The French Chef and the two books based on it, and freed of her collaboration with Simca, Julia was looking forward to a new challenge. A year before, she told Simca that if she ever did another television program, she wanted “all kinds of chefs and cooks.” But by January she told Simca she wanted to do “only demonstrations.” Whatever the next phase of her professional life, she would “work for the good cause of la bonne cuisine by finding good young people to carry on.” Instead, this next stage of her career would be inaugurated by personal crisis. It was in Paris that Paul finally revealed to Julia the severe chest pain that signaled a possible heart attack.

  Chapter 22

  A TIME OF LOSS

  (1974 – 1977)

  “I am making no future plans.”

  JULIA CHILD, March 20, 1975

  ON SEPTEMBER 27, 1974, immediately upon their return, Dr. Julian Snyder put Paul in Beth Israel Hospital in Boston. For two weeks they administered angiography, anticoagulant treatment, and medication to slow his heart, trying to determine the extent of his infarction and artery blockage. His heart attack had “crept up on tiny, padded feet, like a field mouse,” he later informed Charlie. Five years before, he had had mild pain, which he attributed to gas and which stopped if he rested. Since 1970 the pains recurred almost daily, relieved temporarily by Empirin. Yet at every semiannual examination, doctors told him he had the “heart of an athlete of thirty.” On August 4 at La Pitchoune, Paul had a series of nosebleeds in the night, perhaps a result of the amount of blood-thinning aspirin he was taking. When he finally told Julia the extent of his pain, she insisted they see the doctor. Now she informed Louisette (who was working on a new cookbook) and others that he was hospitalized “with a slight heart condition.” For Paul, the long hospitalization was traumatic and unsettling:

  There’s a phrase in Nabokov’s new book Look at the Harlequins [he wrote Charlie]. It goes like this: “As she opened the door of the hospital room I emitted a bellow of joy, and Reality entered.” This describes exactly my sense of pleasure (and nightmares passing) when Julia comes into my room at Beth Israel.

  When the doctor asked if they wanted to test a new surgical procedure, Paul and Julia said yes, anything to save his life. Only 5,000 heart bypasses had been done since the first one in 1967, and only 64 patients, or 1.3 percent, had died. The odds looked good. The surgery was scheduled for October 18, 1974.

  “LUCKY TO BE ALIVE”

  During the surgery, while veins were taken from his left leg to graft three bypasses around clogged arteries to his heart and clean out other entrances and exits, Paul had several small strokes. They would only learn this months later, so at the time Julia’s spirits were high as she told everyone that “the surgery is a miracle. He is lucky to be alive. If he had not had this operation, he would have been dead.”

  As the weeks went by and he remained “weak and groggy”—or, as she admitted later, “in a vegetable state”—she kept thinking it was just a slow recovery. She canceled a heavy schedule of fall and winter demonstrations, which also allowed her the time to complete the manuscript for From Julia Child’s Kitchen. When Paul came home on November 24, he was clearly frustrated by his inability to process information. Surprisingly, the doctor gave him no dietary restrictions or any prescribed therapy, saying (according to Julia), “You don’t have cholesterol blockages, you obviously diet sensibly.” There was no known cause for coronary arteriosclerosis, the doctor informed them. The presence of Abe and Rosie Manell for Thanksgiving cheered them both. But by Christmas, Paul still could not read, and when he tried to write, the words came out scrambled. Neither food nor wine tasted good. And his French was gone.

  At the suggestion of her sister Dort, Julia began taking Paul to a speech clinic in February. She described his aphasia to M. F. K. Fisher as comparable to dyslexia. But it was more than reversing letters or words: he was having trouble processing what he heard. For the first time in her letters she mentioned arteriosclerosis and the strokes that caused brain damage during the surgery. He has “scrambled brain trouble,” she told her closest friends.

  Ever the activist, Julia took charge, installing a costly elevator on the back side of the house to allow Paul to move easily between the bedroom and office floor, the first-floor kitchen, and the basement, where his carpentry tools and wine cellar were located. In May she took him for a week of sun in Bermuda. By April he was able to write a coherent letter to Charlie, but only after several drafts and several hours. At Paul’s request, Charlie and Freddie had waited five months to come for their first visit. Paul’s pride was hurt (by the devastating results of his strokes), his masculinity and perfectionism frustrated (“I am only half a man,” he said). But his willpower was strong and he struggled on, applying those powers of deduction he had assiduously honed all his life. The recovery was slow, and never full. His spark was gone, Julia confided to a few friends.

  During all the months of his illness and recovery, Julia worked full days completing her manuscript, which grew beyond the inclusion of her seventy-two recipes from the new French Chef television series. From June 1974 until February 1975, she added reminiscences and cooking tips accumulated over twenty-five years. Narrative sections spoke about her neighborhood shops, her French cooking teacher, chef Max Bugnard, her neighbor “Jean [deSola Pool]” and her English friends “Peter and Mari [Bicknell].” She also hired Judith Jones to help her with editing above and beyond her usual editorial duties. During the summer of 1975, Julia redid the index after receiving the version done by someone who was not a cook. Because Paul could not work his camera or construct any more drawings, she and Judith conferred on using what was already on hand and hiring a photographer to complete a few more.

  Coincidentally, during this first year of Paul’s recuperation, Julia revealed to the world she had had a mastectomy six years before. In a serious article about the frequency of this cancer in women, Julia, Betty Ford (the President’s wife), Happy Rockefeller (the Vice President’s wife), and Shirley Temple Black (the movie star turned diplomat), among others, testified that they were still alive and wished other women would carefully examine themselves. Julia’s desire to save “even one life” and her natural frankness overcame her Yankee sense of privacy. For the same reason, in October 1977, she would appear in a National Cancer Society fashion show in New York City.

  She could not easily retreat from the public arena as Paul would have preferred (“It is very important for Julia,” Paul said about the presence of other people). Though she kept the groups small for Paul’s sake, the entertaining of friends and reporters continued. Rosemary Manell came to cook, “with her unfailing good humor;” Olney visited on his book tour for Simple French Food (Rosie helped him with his television appearances). Julia remained matter-of-fact about Paul’s illness, neither apologetic nor embarrassed. Jim Beard visited with young Carl Jerome (Julia called him James’s “acolyte” and was grateful that someone was looking after her dear overweight friend). Beard was as inquisitive and restless as Julia, though Paul had described his arrival at Cannes that previous summer as “ponderous, sweating, panting, walking in short steps on those swollen legs.”

  For the national bicentennial year, Julia and Jim made a pilot television program together in February on American food of the Revolutionary War period, which they hoped would include other cooks in its thirteen segments (they were never able to sell the serie
s). Julia also was deeply involved in the Paris cooking school plans of Anne Willan and her husband, Mark Cherniavsky; upon the advice of their lawyer, Julia and Paul privately agreed to invest $10,000 in their friends’ new school, the future La Varenne. Jim and Simca soon followed with $5,000 each.

  The frenzied cooking world rushed on around them, with Julia staying close to Paul and planning their book tour. Simca was teaching for two weeks in Rutherford, California; James Beard gave Simca a party in his Greenwich Village home; Julia saw Simca cooking on NBC; Simca’s student Peter Kump opened his own cooking school in New York City; Poppy Cannon jumped to her death from her twenty-third-floor apartment in New York City (in 1980, the chronically depressed José Wilson would jump to her death into a deep quarry); and Paul’s beloved friend Samuel Chamberlain died in Marblehead. Julia kept in touch with triumphs and tragedies by telephone with Jim and by letter to Simca, who since the completion of La Campanette had moved herself and her school from Paris to Bramafam. Julia got caught up momentarily in investigating the issue of nitrates in swordfish and considered teaching with Simca and Anne Willan the following year at the Gritti Palace Hotel in Venice. Plans for the release of her book in the fall continued. It would be a year after Paul’s surgery, and he was able to face the inevitable book tour if it had built-in rest and free days. Julia would not consider leaving him to travel alone. He had always expressed disdain for what he called the “geriatric-living syndrome.” First she took him for a holiday at the Child cabin in Maine, driving in tandem with the Kublers.