Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

by Bob Spitz

  The diligence needed to maintain his thriving career left Charles Child little time for his wife, who was starved for cultural and social stimulation. “He was a driven man,” said his grandniece, Rachel, given to bouts where he shut out everything—and everyone—to focus exclusively on his research. He missed much of his daughter, Mary’s, early childhood while off streamlining the complex circuitry for an ultramodern telephone company in Richmond, Virginia. But as Bertha must have sensed, her husband’s professional curiosity was piqued when his boys were born. Charles took a vigorous interest in the infants’ development, drawn to them more perhaps by their sameness than any paternal connection. The idiosyncrasies of twins were irresistible, catnip for a scientist. Innocently, Paul and Robert fed their father’s inquisitive mind.

  Nevertheless, Charles became more available, much to everyone’s delight, and then, suddenly, without forewarning, he was gone: dead at age thirty-five. The official cause was “a combination of malaria and typhoid,” but apparently that was so much officialese. In various interviews for this book several subjects contributed, on condition of anonymity, their own addition to the lore. According to a “family witness,” Charles died of thyroidism, a disease associated with the thyroid gland. Another family member insisted it was “the surfeit rum.” And still another confided: “It was syphilis.” Erica Prud’homme, Charles’s grandniece, believes it may have been a combination of symptoms. “All told,” she says, “his death was a shock. It was very mysterious.”

  Mysterious—and with devastating repercussions. Bertha was left with three young children—two of whom, the twins, were only six months old—and no means of financial support. Charles, in his electrically induced myopia, had left her near-destitute. In New Jersey.

  By the summer of 1902, Bertha Child moved what was left of her family to a more culturally promising address. She found a rooming house in Newton, Massachusetts, that was close enough to Boston, where, with reasonable access to the arts, she could pursue her dreams. The family moved around quite a bit in the years between 1902 and 1916—to Brookline, Wellesley, Worcester, Cambridge, even Boston proper—wherever Bertha suspected she could gain entry to the right circles. Effortlessly, she threw herself into the swirl of artistic and cultural salons and, with her extreme New England beauty and natural charm, quickly became a fixture of the Boston social scene.

  “Their life became very insular,” says a niece with a direct pipeline to the Child ancestry. Bertha was “esoteric, in the style of Isadora Duncan, very bohemian, which people found difficult to identify with.” She also became a disciple of Theosophy (meaning “divine wisdom”), a kooky movement with roots in Eastern mysticism that preached evolution through various levels of spirituality and the divinity of Nature. This left her alienated from all but the pithiest of social circles. No doubt her family bore the brunt of this unconventional lifestyle. Mary, nicknamed Meeda, grew up petulant and withdrawn. The boys, with their uniqueness, became especially codependent. In place of fatherly influence, they depended on their own resources, their own inventive devices to navigate their world. They supported and compensated for each other’s particularities—Paul reserved and introverted, some who knew him going as far as saying “dark”; Robert (who was now called Charles after his father) easygoing, gregarious to extremes. Both, however, developed strong streaks of independence. Even as tots, the boys were left by themselves quite a bit while their mother carved out her niche in the arts.

  As a result, Paul and Charlie became inseparable, almost indistinguishable. They shadowed each other “like two halves of one person,” according to a relative. “The twins,” as everyone called them, existed as a single entity. Paul’s shadow, however, was fractionally longer, owing to his status as the “older” twin. “If he went anywhere,” says Rachel Child, “even around the block, two steps ahead of his brother, Charlie would come around screaming, ‘Don’t go away!’ ” Charlie looked to Paul for everything growing up, and, in turn, Paul gave him the attention he craved.

  They loved each other, that much was clear, but they also fought like gladiators. It seems almost unnecessary to note that they both studied ju-jitsu. “They beat the crap out of each other,” says Charlie’s son, Jon. “My father had a cauliflower ear he got from Paul, and, in turn, he did a number on Paul’s eye.” A number makes the mishap sound more willful than it actually was; as far as anyone can tell, the number in question was an accident, nothing more. According to family lore, during an afternoon of play when they were horsing around, Charlie stumbled and banged into Paul, who happened to be holding a needle in the vicinity of his face. It isn’t entirely clear what happened next, but the needle punctured Paul’s left eyeball, thus limiting his sight forever. Later, on a different occasion in a reenactment of a tale from Arthurian legend, Charlie wound up with a hatchet wound to the forehead. Still, even in play, or swordplay, or whatever it was rightfully called, they remained, always, two halves of one person.

  Although they were happy in their own rough-and-tumble world, Bertha steered the twins toward her ideas of refinement. From an early age, she took to molding them in her high-toned image—intellectually as well as physically. She read to them every chance she got, and not just children’s books but avant-garde poetry, essays, commentary, and philosophy. She let their hair grow long and dressed them in matching Little Lord Fauntleroy outfits. “They were brought up as sort of a couple and shown off as a couple because they were so good-looking,” says a niece. Noticing that her boys enjoyed drawing and singing, Bertha fanned every faint spark of artistic talent with private instruction—singing lessons, music lessons, drawing lessons, languages. Never mind that Bertha had no money for these extravagances. Because of her beauty and charisma, because she was “one of those women who attracted interesting people” wherever she went, she had cultivated a group of “sponsors” who supported her conceits and were willing, at her behest, to underwrite the training of her sons.

  These lessons, while mostly modest, often came at a dear physical cost. Invariably, the twins were sent off through Boston Common, clutching their musical instruments dutifully to their chests. Their teacher’s studio was only a short distance from home, but that grassy span of the park was as treacherous as crossing a minefield. Dressed preciously, Paul and Charlie were sitting ducks for the roving band of Irish toughs who patrolled that turf like sentries. Paul would keep his eyes peeled as he led the way along the paths until, at a certain strategic spot, he’d yell, “Run, Cha, Run!” The twins were fast and clever and often eluded their assailants, but sometimes they didn’t and were punished on account.

  “It didn’t matter,” Paul later wrote of the experience, “we were talented, undeniably so,” a development that did not escape their mother’s notice. Eager to show off their artistry and help make ends meet, she formed a musical group—Mrs. Child and the Children. It was a classic piano trio, with Meeda at the keyboard, Paul on violin, and Charlie the cello. Bertha, “who had a lovely voice [and] could work the charm,” sang bel canto—hymns and arias—that showcased the novel ensemble with the help of Master Bach. “They went around New England,” says Rachel Child, “playing in nice locations wherever they could get a gig—at ladies’ groups, for weddings, in tea houses, and certainly in other people’s homes. Boston society gave them ample opportunity to perform.”

  Bertha was a natural when it came to the spotlight and apparently she had the vocal chops to back it up. No less an authority than The New York Times referred to her as “the well-known Boston contralto.” In addition to a rather well-trained voice, she had presence, a real allure, none of which was lost on her coterie of sponsors, all gentlemen of a certain age and means. One, in particular, developed a special enchantment with Bertha that guaranteed her a place in the society she dearly courted. Edward Filene was the general manager and president of the women’s fashion store that bore his family’s name and quite a fixture on the Boston social scene. He was well into his fifties when he met Bertha Child and wa
s, outwardly at least, everything she longed for in a man: fabulously rich, debonair, well-connected, and unmarried. They became lovers, and in the parlance of the day Bertha gained notoriety as a kept woman. Not known for his generosity, Filene made sure she was provided for, and he took an earnest interest in the twins, as well. He may have been “penny-pinching … troubled … obnoxious … heedless … insecure” or any of the other traits attributed to him by a biographer; still, he had a soft spot for children and enjoyed their company “in a way that he could never do with adults.”

  For Uncle Ed’s favor, the twins competed on a level playing field. From the outset, Paul and Charlie felt a mutual, albeit unspoken, acknowledgment that they were on the same indeterminate path, each gambling on the outside chance that Uncle Ed might endow their uncertain futures. Their talent as serious artists was emerging as an undeniable strength. Paul had an eye for the atmospheric and the romantic; his paintings, exquisitely rendered, captured the expressive power of landscape. Charlie, less affected and more practical—his son, Jon, calls it “slapdash”—was developing a real flair for illustration. Together, they mined a vein of gifted ambition that struck pay dirt in all aspects of the arts. Each boy could draw, paint, take gorgeous photographs, write poetry, play classical music, and express himself beautifully on the printed page and in conversation. It didn’t take a genius to see they had talent in spades. An investment in their future was sure to yield favorable returns.

  Beneath their similarities, however, lay a contrast of personalities that weighed disproportionately on Edward Filene’s largesse. Paul was shy, cool, pessimistic, precise, qualities that, at times, made him seem condescending and smug. Especially when juxtaposed against Charlie’s animated nature. In those cases, Charlie was a breath of fresh air—“eternally optimistic,” exuberant, undisciplined, outspoken. You could always count on him to brighten up a room.

  This must have been how Edward Filene sized them up, too. Still, it seemed cruel when he agreed to send Charlie to Harvard to study painting, without so much as a nod in Paul’s direction. Whatever the reasons for Filene’s rejection of him, Paul was crushed. He became demoralized, insecure. He considered himself “the real artist” in the family, the real intellect, the brother whose promise was infinitely greater. He was smarter than Charlie, cleverer than Charlie, more levelheaded, more focused. But Charlie managed to shine in school, Paul noted, “where his marks were better than mine; in amateur theatricals where he memorized with more facility.” And he was likable—Goodtime Charlie, eager to please—whereas Paul’s finchy nature kept people off-stride.

  Whether out of resentment or envy or defensive backlash, over the next few years Paul’s efforts to cultivate his own identity—and, in the process, to displace Charlie—proved useful, if only to break from their codependence. But it came at a price. Paul developed “a sense of inferiority and injustice” that compelled him to prove himself in ways, overcompensating and defiant. And it altered things forever with Charlie—“loving him on the one hand,” as he explained to a therapist, “and hating him on the other.”

  In any case, while they were still young teenagers, Charlie went to college, to Harvard no less, and Paul went to work. He bragged to a biographer that he “joined the Canadian Army at 16,” but that was just an effort to create a mystique. Instead, he “floundered from one piddling job to another,” initially trying his hand in retail work before bouncing around New York, New England, and Europe for the next twenty years. His résumé reads like a fractured mosaic. He dug ditches in California; made reproductions of furniture in Cambridge; ran training courses on a three-masted schooner from Nova Scotia to Bermuda; served as in-house photographer for an advertising agency in New York; handled stained-glass production for the American Church in Paris; tutored a family’s privileged children in Asolo, Italy; taught public school in the Dordogne; all before serving two long terms teaching at private schools in New England. If anyone had embraced all that life had to offer—and had little to show for it—it was Paul Child.

  During one of his assignments, teaching art and French at the Shady Hill School, an ultraprogressive, back-to-nature academy in Avon, Connecticut, Paul’s life was pulled off the track he was laying for himself. One of his students was a boy named Robert Woods Kennedy. The Childs and the Kennedys had been friends in Boston and had seen each other on and off over the years. Paul was especially enamored of Robert’s mother, Edith, an accomplished writer, painter, and musician who was ten years his senior. He’d recently bumped into her in Paris, where she’d gone to recover from a divorce and a subsequent heartbreak with the Irish writer Seán Ó Faoláin. She and Paul were reunited during her son’s tenure at Shady Hill, and in no time she and Paul became lovers.

  Although Edith Kennedy had the bearing and personality of a Boston Brahmin—an extremely sophisticated and socially superior Brahmin—those closest to her knew she was anything but that.

  “She was cool, ironic, self-sufficient, and insanely independent,” said her grandson, Duncan. “She had impeccable taste—art and taste to her were the supreme criteria of all accomplishment—but more than anything, she was riveting in some complex way,” an attraction not lost on Paul Child. In an era when women weren’t quick to call attention to their brainier qualities, Edith did not try to hide the fact that she was whip-smart and talented—easily as intelligent as the company she kept. And the company she kept was world-class. She was a Mozart fanatic, but developed an appreciation for modern music, first from Nadia Boulanger in Paris and later from her friend composer Elliot Carter in the States. May Sarton was in love with Edith and wrote extensively about her in poetry and stories. And she loved brilliant talk, promoted it, participated with gusto. Regularly, Edith hosted salons with some of Harvard’s leading lights: F. O. Matthiessen, the renowned historian and literary critic; the modernist academic scholar Harry Levin; and Perry Miller, whom Alfred Kazin called “the master of American intellectual history.” These were the kinds of brilliant people with whom Edith routinely filled her house—and Paul’s greedy hunger for enlightenment.

  At first, Paul had seemed out of his depth. Edith had more experience with the creative arts, was so sophisticated in ideas and expressiveness, knew more highbrow people from the academic fold, and held her own when it came to conversing on their level. Paul was mostly self-educated and a gadabout—but he had potential, loads of potential, and he was a quick study. He may not have gone to Harvard, but he was a top-notch student, able to absorb and interpret big, elaborate ideas. It was all there in front of him, too, laid out like a smorgasbord—the recitals, readings, lectures, exhibits, debates. A king’s banquet of information and knowledge! He gorged himself on everything this university-without-walls had to offer. Gorged himself! He couldn’t get enough. It enriched him in ways that he’d never before experienced. And with a woman whom he would describe to others as “life-affirming.” Life-affirming! Edith’s world, he discovered, was the utopia he’d been searching for all his life, a world of intellect, sophistication, attitude, and exploration.

  And love. Paul adored Edith. There was little doubt that he was in love with her world, but he loved Edith more. Their passion was grand, intense. And Paul wasn’t discreet about expressing his feelings. He was magnanimous in every display of his heart. And what he couldn’t express with physical affection he put into words, writing sonnets to Edith, like the one he composed in 1938:

  If swamp mire nurtures golden flowers,

  And butterflies can grow

  Like folded blossoms in a web,

  And diamonds made of snow

  glint lovely through the bitter wind,

  I think perhaps I know

  the miracle that lets you walk

  Where other women go.

  A lesser man might have kept such feelings to himself, but Paul was comfortable with his softer romantic side. And Edith enabled him to bring it out with no inhibition. They rented a cozy little house together, on Shepard Street, in Cambridge, for
about twenty dollars a month and built a life together filled with music, art, and love. Paul had real affection for Edith’s three sons, Edmond, Fitzroy, and Robert, with whom he formed strong relationships that lasted his entire life. The only thing missing was marriage, which Edith refused to discuss. It was one thing for her to have a much younger lover—but another thing altogether to marry him. She wouldn’t hear of it. Was it an unnecessary formality? Edith’s answer was to point to her ex-husband, Arthur, a man, it was said, whom marriage had transformed from “an extremely sophisticated soul” into “an abusive taskmaster, a brute.” She wasn’t about to put herself in a situation like that again. And it made sense to Paul. He didn’t need marriage to have Edith to himself. She’d given him her word—and her heart—and that was good enough for him.

  They were a twosome.

  And for a while, Paul and Edith had everything they needed. They had the house on Shepard Street filled with people and love. Edith wrote short stories for magazines and painted. Paul got a better teaching job, at the Avon Old Farms School, just west of Hartford in Connecticut. They traveled cross-country with Charlie. Edith taught Paul about food, serious food, the kind he’d eaten rapturously in France. And they spent summers at New Boston in New Hampshire, “a kind of hyper-arty universe” inhabited by musicians, painters, and writers who shared their creative interests.