Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child

by Bob Spitz

  In fact, Paul’s own art had progressed to the point where it gave him a new sense of untapped potential. What he lacked in training, he made up for in confidence, and the quality of his work showed great improvement across the board. His paintings were “damn good,” as one observer summed them up, darkly sensual landscapes, demonstrating enormous reserves of raw artistic promise. His photographs, “gorgeously composed, beautifully made,” drew even higher praise. Photography intrigued Paul the way the universe intrigued a scientist. He studied it exhaustively, combining the collaborative aspects of technology and art, subject matter and technique, arrangement and spontaneity. He’d begun working seriously with a reflex camera in Paris, where he’d befriended Edward Steichen and Henri Cartier-Bresson. From them, he learned the secrets of perspective; he learned how to capture energy and expression through composition. He became absorbed in it, almost to the point of obsession.

  But for all the steam it created, for all his dazzling facility, Paul’s art remained a hobby, nothing more. No matter how Edith encouraged him, no matter the embarrassment of praise friends heaped on his striking work, Paul refused to put it on the line. He couldn’t bring himself to show it in public. He didn’t have either the confidence—or the courage—necessary to withstand critical response. Which was sad, because it kept him from making a career leap, the way Edith had—or Charlie.

  Charlie was painting, painting, painting, pulling down hefty commissions for illustrations and portraits. “My father was very skilled at portraiture,” says Rachel Child, Charlie’s daughter. He’d studied it in Paris in the twenties, on a Guggenheim fellowship, and parlayed it into a flourishing career. One of his more promising commissions, in fact, was the college roommate of their sister, Meeda, a bookish, crimson-haired beauty who’d studied business at the London School of Economics. Fredericka Boyles was possessed of great poise and pragmatism, “an emotional anchor”—and an oil heiress—both of which suited Charlie Child to a tee. Her pragmatism gave him grounding and her money gave him freedom—freedom, at least, from money issues, because not long after their meeting, Charlie and Freddie were married.

  Paul, on the other hand, was very single and very frustrated. Edith persisted in her refusal to marry him, and his job at Avon continued to perplex. He loved teaching there, more so than ever. But teaching subverted his art, pushed it into the margins—or perhaps it served as a convenient excuse. In any case, Paul waived what he had once dreamed of: supporting himself through artistic self-expression. He failed to pursue a career in the arts in any substantive way. Instead, the center of his life became his students, to whom he was “beloved” and “heroic”—and, of course, Edith, “who spoiled” him and “made [their] relationship so valid and rich.”

  But in the spring of 1942, that relationship would start to unravel—not suddenly or carelessly, but steadily and involuntarily—while Paul stood by helplessly. Edith’s insatiable hunger for culture and knowledge had begun to take a visible toll as she endeavored to have it all at once. Weeks went by when every waking hour was occupied by a full load of the arts, with just enough left over to tend her family. She whirled from one salon to the next, from concert to exhibition to lecture to performance, as if some personal demon was hot on her trail. No matter how hard she pressed, how much she savored, a creeping strain chipped away at her irrepressible spirit.

  Whether or not Paul knew Edith had a history of heart disease, he could see the residual effects. She tired quickly, looked haggard and ghostly. Her breathing became labored, so much so that it was described as “a horrid fish-out-of-water gasping” that was painful to nearby ears. By June 1942, Edith’s condition turned even more serious. “She can’t read,” Paul wrote his new sister-in-law. “She can’t listen to music. She can’t write. She just lies in bed and suffers.” The diagnosis was edema—a swelling of the tissues with water, which pressed on the lungs and had to be drawn off every few days. Worse perhaps, her heart didn’t pump enough blood to the organs—and she hallucinated, which Paul described as “waking nightmares.” Best-case scenario: she had to remain in bed for six months, get plenty of rest, recuperate.

  Paul did his best to make Edith comfortable. He waited on her hand and foot, day and night, during “that dreadful summer in Cambridge.” He never left her room. To distract her, he even took up mechanical drawing, drafting his textbook studies on a shaky card table in the corner of the bedroom, and then offering them to Edith for a pithy critique. But her breathing and hallucinations only grew worse. At Edith’s urging, Paul spent a week in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, where his brother, Charlie, and his wife, Freddie, had just bought a house. It would be good to get away, good to see Charlie again, if only to recharge so that he could return with renewed strength to devote to Edith’s care. Admittedly, Paul needed some breathing room, but he worried about Edith, who assured him, all too convincingly, she’d be fine while he was away.

  Sometime in early August, Rachel Child remembers looking out the window and noticing her father and Paul sitting in the family station wagon out by the garage. “It was strange,” Rachel recalls. “It looked to me like Paul was crying, and I wanted to go out there and see what was going on.” Her mother restrained her, explaining that Paul had a “very good friend named Edith, and that she had died.” Charlie was in the process of breaking the news.

  As one might expect, Paul was distraught, shattered. Edith had been only fifty years old. Gone. Emptiness took hold, the kind of emptiness and heartache he’d never experienced before. Edith had been his beloved in every respect of the word. “I suppose I shall never again have the kind of companion,” he wrote, “who … knew and appreciated both the latest jazz and the opus numbers of Beethoven quartets, who could talk lovingly about the art of writing, who was a master cook and gourmet, who could manage a household of complicated people with a sincere artistry, who enjoyed a wrestling match or the shape of a flower, who knew the vagaries and depths of the human heart, who could be completely objective, who had infinite courage, energy to expend, complete self-mastery, magnificent wit, an ironic yet understanding outlook … an Ali Baba’s cave of the best human qualities.”

  Mourning Edith, Paul concluded that a love like hers only came around once in a lifetime. That was it for him as far as romance went. No woman alive could measure up to her standards. Just as his art could no longer ignite any sparks, all comparisons to Edith, after ten years of bliss, fell agonizingly short.

  Two years later, not that much had changed. When he met Julia McWilliams, she might have been a fly on a drape for all he cared.

  WHILE EDITH CONTINUED to haunt Paul’s memory, the war provided a modest distraction. Every able-bodied man was signing up to do his part, and the Child brothers were no exception. They made a beeline for Washington, D.C., “out of a sense of patriotism,” sharing a fetid basement apartment where they scratched out a plan. Neither Paul nor Charlie was eager to see action. Nevertheless, they attempted to enlist in the armed services, knowing full well they’d be rejected because of their age. Still, they conspired to find suitable civilian roles. Charlie struck first. He turned to an old Harvard buddy, Paul Nitze, who set Charlie up at the National Planning Association, a forum for business, labor, agricultural, and academic leaders to solve issues of national significance. Paul, whose bad eye precluded his working in a rigorous physical role, fell willingly into the hands of the OSS.

  By December 1942, Paul was engaged in its Visual Presentation (VP) branch, in a job that seemed tailor-made for his talents. VP consisted of a small band of “creative misfits”—among them film director John Ford, screenwriters Budd Shulberg and Garson Kanin, architect Eero Saarinen, and journalist Theodore White, all of whom brought imagination and artistry to an otherwise brutal war. Instead of weapons and battles, they made maps, charts, diagrams, illustrations for manuals, and designs for “super-secret war devices” in early stages of production. Unlike Charlie, whose expertise came gift-wrapped in a college degree, Paul relied on uneducated instinct
. He had a natural gift for the technical and the concise, along with a good eye—well, one good eye—for aesthetic appeal that often eluded trained draftsmen. Predictably, Paul flourished in VP, and spent a productive year there, producing graphics for various government agencies, as well as animation for wartime instructional films.

  He and Charlie thrived in D.C., where a community of intellectuals and artists drew strength from their common refugee status. It seemed the whole of academia was involved in some aspect of the war, along with the leading cultural luminaries: writers, journalists, filmmakers, painters, broadcasters, publishers, a melting pot of the clever and the articulate. These were people eager to talk, eager to rub shoulders and exchange ideas outside the confines of their war work. There wasn’t a night when the Child brothers weren’t engaged in some intense social interaction—a dinner party or embassy soirée, a mixer, a full-on intellectual conversation. And the conversation was meaty and well-cooked. One entry in Paul’s Washington journal provides an example of the nightly dialogue: “This highlights the ideas we were discussing the other night … [how] context and relationship are what create moral structure.” A bit highfalutin perhaps, but Paul feasted on this kind of chin fare.

  Weekends were free. Each Friday afternoon, Paul and Charlie would hop on a northbound train headed for Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where they aired out their tired brains at Charlie’s house in Lumberville. Freddie would cook, while the brothers painted and read and generally argued, butting heads over some trivial philosophical point. There was still a lot of tension in their relationship, still plenty of twin-related differences they needed to work out.

  In Washington, they’d already taken a semi-serious first step in that direction. Together, they’d been consulting a noted astrologer, Jane Bartleman, who made a series of “startlingly accurate predictions” that appealed to their inner unrest. One, in particular, caught Paul off guard. Months earlier, in the summer of 1943, Bartleman had told him that a new opportunity would soon reveal itself, “something unexpected and terrific, that it would involve a secret mission, [and] that it would require a very lengthy journey to the Far East.” In any event, she assured Paul, “it would switch the whole course of [his] life.”

  At the time, he dismissed her prophecy as pure guesswork, the crystal-ball musings of a fortune-teller, nothing more. But on November 5, 1943, he had an epiphany. Earlier in the day, Paul had taken a call from General Donovan’s office, asking if he’d consider a position as the OSS representative to the staff of Lord Louis Mountbatten, in New Delhi. Mountbatten—the Supremo! Paul could hardly believe his ears. No one was more crucial to this entire world war. He immediately reflected on Jane Bartleman’s prediction. “This could be it,” he concluded. “I am gasping and unbelieving. I feel shaken at this turn of affairs.”

  Bartleman had been languishing in his crackpot file. But the next morning, bright and early, he was seated in her office, wondering “if she could add anything to [his] general state of nervous anticipation.” In character, she consoled him with all kinds of assurances. Yes, of course, he’d get the job. His work would be of a highly secret nature. He would make many invaluable friends. All sorts of obstacles would be thrown in his path, but not to worry. There would be adventure, excitement, and profit on a tremendous scale. She knew this because he was coming, she said, into wonderful planetary positions. “And, by the way, you’ll fall heavily in love in about a year.”

  He was smart enough to realize that “none of it may happen,” that he had been right from the get-go, that she was a soothsayer, a quack. But … You’ll fall heavily in love in about a year. “That was worth paying for,” Paul concluded.

  In fact, Paul couldn’t pack his bags fast enough. He was desperate to leave D.C., desperate to be overseas, desperate to put some distance between him and Charlie, desperate for adventure, desperate to forget, desperate to turn a page. As far as falling in love went: not so desperate. It was a long shot, considering the memories that lingered of Edith. They weren’t to be forgotten anytime soon. But he was intrigued, all the same. Love was a powerful drug. If it came his way, if it materialized as Bartleman had said, he’d stand up to it, he’d “look it in the eye.”

  To do that, however, he’d need a step stool.

  Julia and Paul reading proofs of her recipes  © The Julia Child Foundation for Gastronomy and the Culinary Arts (Photo credit 6.2)

  Seven

  A Diamond in the Rough

  Despite the intensifying warfare in Southeast Asia, still the focus of Allied commanders, and critical to the resistance against Japan, Ceylon remained an oasis of calm. It existed almost by oversight, “far removed from reality,” as one of the “Kandy Kids” wrote, “where everyone had an academic interest in the war but found life far too pleasant to do anything too drastic about it.” Distractions were plentiful at the OSS outpost. Between the sightseeing excursions, the steamy social scene, and fertile romantic plunder, there was hardly enough time to attend to the war. For Julia McWilliams, however, the spring and summer of 1944 had been a total grind. Her responsibilities at the Registry overwhelmed. So much classified information was processed by her office that, at times, she seemed to be the sole conduit for the entire South East Asia Command. Her schedule was tedious, brutal; in addition to the daily chores, which were mind-numbing, she worked most nights and half days on Sunday, filing, filing, filing. The paperwork was endless. “Why did I come over as Registry?” she complained in her diary. “I hate this work.”

  Despite that, the reason Julia came over, and not only came over but adored the overall experience, was her colleagues. She was in a swoon over them. They were everything she wanted to be in life—they were smart, sophisticated, opinionated, imaginative, adventurous, and witty; they were free spirits, highly competitive but in a challenging way, so that one’s probing question stimulated another’s thoughtful response. And what minds she encountered in Kandy! Professors, engineers, artists, anthropologists, ornithologists, biologists, cryptologists—why, every kind of ologist one could think of was there. Julia loved the way they approached life, loved the way they expressed themselves, their insights and outlooks. Eager to quench her thirst for knowledge, she drank in everything they said, guzzled it like a rummy with a wooden leg. “I was a playgirl looking for the light,” she proclaimed—in jest, yet with a telling note of candor.

  In fact, the light hardly registered as a glow when it came to Paul Child. “It wasn’t like lightning striking the barn on fire,” he recalled of their meeting in May 1944. Neither he nor Julia felt the proverbial thunderbolt. When she first encountered him at headquarters in Kandy, she wrote, “I thought not at all nice looking.” He was too old for her, already past forty-two, rather balding—and short—with “an unbecoming blond moustache and a long, unbecoming nose.” His first impressions of her were even less positive. But later that month, on a steamy Sunday afternoon, Julia and Paul, along with a small group of friends, crammed into a mud-caked jeep and drove north, through jungle roads, to Dambulla, to explore the ancient cave temples. The exhibit, a circuitous stroll through five well-preserved shrines, made a huge impression on Julia and the others. She could not have been prepared for such a lavish display of artistry, a riot of murals and statues—more than 150 of Buddha alone. Her response was a breathy chorus of astonishment and bluntness, and that enthusiasm, however unpolished, attracted Paul. Afterward, he weighed in with an opinion that showed intrigue. “She has a somewhat ragged, but pleasantly crazy sense of humor,” he observed in a letter to Charlie in early July. Still, he wasn’t knocked out by Julia McWilliams, and it would be safe to say the feeling was mutual.

  While Julia was unrepentantly “fun … always the most personable” member of any group at Kandy, Paul was what some people refer to as a difficult man. He was precise and uncompromising, “a bit of a know-it-all,” whose body language expressed a weatherproof rightness that often passed for arrogance or imperiousness. A man of distinct physical appearance, he carrie
d himself with the upright authority and thin-lipped skepticism of the teacher he had once been. He scorned indecisiveness, demanded perfection, and made no effort to disguise his displeasure with those who didn’t measure up. Already he believed that “I am one of the few really mature people around here” when contrasted with “the adolescent confusions” of his colleagues on the base, “men of forty who avoid responsibility, are emotionally unhinged by non-essentials,” and, in general, lack common sense.

  He considered himself cultured and a sophisticate and he behaved like one, with all the pretensions that accompanied such an image. He had a temperament, an edge; it was one of the first things people sensed when they met him. And so there was always a little tension in the way he comported himself with others. But, my—that man had charm. He was debonair, unashamedly romantic, with the luxurious appetites of a bon vivant. Women captivated him, and so did food, both of which he held in the same sensual esteem. His use of language, the way the words flowed out of his mouth, the range of topics he spoke about with undisguised passion, all were like music to Julia’s untrained ears. He expressed himself clearly and with great perception, both on subjects that related to his expertise and those that caught his fancy. Every observation came studded with gems. Though he never went to college, Paul was dazzlingly well read and he spun what he learned into fascinating threads of conversations. Listening to him enthralled Julia, not just because what he said was new and thought provoking, but because he brought so much of himself to it.

  Their encounters, at first, were casual, innocent—a picnic, a concert, or a meal in the company of several OSS friends. They traveled as a group, not as a couple, nor were there any outward signs of attraction between them. In fact, Paul had designs on several other women—many other women, including the wife of a British officer—although none that he’d acted on, either out of inhibition or reluctance. He was still grieving over the death of Edith Kennedy, but slowly, unwaveringly, emerging from a self-imposed hibernation. “What I want, I miss, I need more than anything,” he acknowledged in a letter to Charlie, “—an intimate, intelligent, and understanding companion (female gender).”