by Bob Spitz
Occasionally, Julia just let it rip. In one anecdote, she recalled meeting “a quite nutty woman” in the fruitcake section of her supermarket who explained how she cooked green beans according to Julia’s technique only on weekends, while the rest of the week she used another chef’s recipe (Julia deleted the culprit’s name), boiling them for fifteen minutes so she could “be sure of getting all my vitamins.” Rather than dismissing the woman as a crackpot, Julia, ever the empiricist, went home and put the process through the paces, ending up with “gray, color-bleached, taste-leached, miserable beans.” She was disgusted, and characteristically blunt. “Anyone … who cons the public into acceptance of such culinary balderdash deserves to be disposed of, bit by bit, in an electric super-blender-food-processor.”
The manuscript quickly developed into a more accessible tool—to teach, of course, but also to entertain. It was another way for Julia to engage people who were still scared off by the complexity of French cuisine. And as a result, she said close to the end of her career, “it was my most personal book,” as well as her favorite.
She was working almost single-mindedly on the manuscript in September 1974, after she and Paul returned from Europe. Paris and Provence had been lovely, but too distracting. Jim Beard showed up, overweight and broken down, a sad figure, necessitating more hand-holding than usual. And their daily routine was interrupted by a steady stream of visitors.
Among the increasingly frequent guests who came to dinner at both Le Mas Vieux and La Pitchoune was Richard Olney, the forty-seven-year-old ex-pat artist and food writer, who lived hermit-like in a nearby mountaintop aerie. Julia had first met Olney in 1972, shortly after the publication of The French Menu Cookbook, his inspired collection of seasonal recipes and the first, perhaps, to introduce wine pairings with each dish. Julia said later: “He writes brilliantly, not a misplaced word.” And his cooking, she felt, was “entirely honest, entirely serious.” They had sampled it at his place in the village of Solliès-Toucas, which was no easy feat for aging adults. Their visit necessitated a steep trip up a rock-laden sheep trail on the edge of an abandoned quarry. But the setting was magical: a picture-perfect garden, a gorgeous arbor with grapes hanging overhead among the wisteria, a picnic table set impeccably with hand-pressed linens. Olney always received visitors in the same eccentric attire, wearing nothing but an unbuttoned shirt over Speedo bathing trunks and frayed espadrilles, which defined him.
He was a man who wore his odd identity oddly. In the fifties in Paris, where he hung out with James Baldwin, John Ashbery, and Kenneth Anger, Olney had been a promising protégé, neither conspicuous nor acclaimed; alone, in Solliès, he was a “genius,” a badge he wore with conceit. In any milieu, he was a complex, difficult man—“a purist, a perfectionist, a sensualist,” says Paul Grimes, who assisted Olney in Solliès, “but also cynical, bitter about people with pretensions toward food.” He referred incessantly to the art of cooking—the art—which only the true artist was capable of understanding, and very few practitioners fit his idea of that archetype. Not M. F. K. Fisher, whom he found “sweet but essentially empty-headed with no palate … and her writing silly, pretentious drivel.” And not James Beard, whom he liked personally but considered “irrelevant” as a cook. With regard to Julia, Olney was treacherous. Socially, he was outgoing toward her when their paths crossed in Provence, but there was little about her that he liked or tolerated. He described her in his diary as “very bitchy” and considered the Childs “bitter,” “destructive,” and “irrationally anti-French.”
At the outset, Julia had been “dying to meet him,” having heard from Simca and others about Olney’s exquisite culinary skills. She’d also read the manuscript for his new book, Simple French Food, which she found, like most others who came to admire it, “a remarkable achievement.” But he brushed off several of her invitations to dinner with curt, almost dismissive replies. Bowing at last to overtures from his friend Simca, Olney could no longer resist without offending Julia, but the encounter, at La Pitchoune, left much to be desired. While most Americans were deferential, even reverent, toward Julia, Olney remained standoffish, if not insolent. He smoked Gauloises ceaselessly, drank scotch compulsively, both of which advanced his “nervous, high-strung” state. Neither Julia nor Paul found they could warm to him. “He is so self-engrossed, self-protective, self-laudatory that he has almost no outgoingness,” Paul observed. Paul grew tired of listening to Olney “run down almost everything”—people, music, places, weather, architecture, there seemed to be nothing this poor guy found rewarding or desirable. Nor was Paul impressed by Olney’s scene-making exploits in Paris; he’d been there himself thirty years before, often in more stimulating company.
Even so, Paul and Julia kept any resentment to themselves. Olney’s prowess as a cook—and Simca’s high regard for him—counted more than first impressions. They were willing to maintain cordial relations out of recognition for his growing influence and his importance in the community. Casting personal misgivings aside, in a particularly gracious gesture they invited him to stay chez Child in Cambridge, when his upcoming book tour took him through Boston.
Little did they know at the time that he’d accept—or that his visit, in the fall of 1974, would coincide with a cataclysmic event.
IN GENERAL, PAUL CHILD was a pretty cranky guy. Having spent a good chunk of his life babysitting schoolboys and bureaucratic drones, he had always been impatient, short-tempered, and caustic with those he considered vulgarians. He didn’t suffer fools gladly or otherwise, a trait that earned him a good deal of antipathy. There was also an element of frustration to his nature that could best be illustrated by an encounter with a journalist.
The writer, on assignment from TV Guide, had been wandering around the Irving Street house, when she paused to admire the array of wood-carvings, etchings, woodcuts, and oil paintings that covered most of the living room walls. She lingered in front of a brooding forest landscape of slender tress submerged in pools of water. “All are by a painter who is a master of his craft,” she noted. “Whose are they?” Hesitantly, Paul admitted they were his. “Why has no one written about you?” she asked. He smiled ruefully. “They don’t see me. They only see Julia.”
“You could tell upon meeting him that he’d once been the center of attention,” says Sheryl Julian, the longtime food editor of the Boston Globe, “and he didn’t quite know how to grab it back.” Not that Paul really tried to the extent that it became an issue. But Julian was convinced it made him “ornery, grumpy.”
It also still rankled that he got short-changed after high school, when Charlie got sent to Harvard. “Paul was really the intellectual of the two, he had a wonderful mind, but was forced to educate himself,” says Pat Pratt. “And Charlie became a professional artist, while Paul, who was really much better, had to work a desk job. And I think it really got to him.”
His irascibility seemed to build that summer. Pratt noticed it during a trip to Venice, where she and her husband, Herb, shared a suite with the Childs. The couples often traveled together; they knew each other inside and out. The Pratts were neighbors in Cambridge: Pat was another tall Smith alumna close to Julia; Paul had known Herb’s brother, Davis, in Paris, and enjoyed the fact that they were twins, like him and Charlie. “So I could tell right away that he was out-of-sorts,” Pratt says.
The nosebleeds were another sign that something was wrong. Paul had a series of them in July, in Provence, which Julia knew was “not normal.” His left arm hurt constantly, which he attributed to lifting suitcases so often. And his sleep cycle was a mess, a turbulent nighttime grind in which he would “struggle awake to fight for air, heart pounding from adrenaline.” Because they had separate bedrooms, Paul could hide this phenomenon from Julia, but she knew he was “cross and touchy” in the morning and had her suspicions.
She was completely in the dark, however, about Paul’s persistent chest pains. He’d been having them since 1967, infrequent tingles at first, then more botherso
me and more painful spasms, until, that April, they graduated to an everyday occurrence. When they returned to the States in October 1974, Paul finally fessed up and found himself, “at once, without delay,” in the intensive care unit of Beth Israel Hospital.
It wasn’t a classic heart attack, with sudden wrenching symptoms, but rather one that “crept up on tiny padded feet”—two blocked blood vessels that needed immediate repair. Years later, that would be a relatively routine procedure, but in 1974 a bypass was revolutionary, rare. In any case, Julia explained, the operation was essential—Paul couldn’t live without it. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder how it would affect him post-op. “What changes in life and other habits this will entail—who can know,” she mused.
Over the next month or so, she had a better idea. When Paul was discharged from the hospital on November 24, he was “still weak and groggy,” which didn’t bode well; so much time had elapsed and he’d made no strides. Still, Julia remained optimistic. “I think we shall see more definite progress from now on,” she wrote to M. F. K. Fisher. But other, more alarming, symptoms became apparent once he got home. “He looked diminished,” said Paul’s nephew Jon, who was staying with his aunt and uncle. “He was bent over, he couldn’t speak properly; it got tricky to understand what he was trying to say. And his frustration was terrible. He was angry about it.” Paul’s ability to speak French, in which he was fluent, had disappeared, as well as his taste for red wine. And reading became a problem. He said later, “Words seem to get stuck in my memory-box,” slowing his ability to process information.
Julia told Pat Pratt he had “scrambled brain trouble,” but she feared something else, something more insidious going on in Paul’s head. Brain damage, perhaps, which might account for Paul’s memory loss, and also explain his diminishing motor skills. It seemed incomprehensible that he couldn’t operate his beloved Rolleiflex camera, turning it over in his hands like a Chinese puzzle box. His drawings, once museum quality, looked like a preschooler’s doodles.
Anne Willan, the highly regarded cooking teacher who had dined at L’Ami Louis in Paris with Julia and Paul just prior to his surgery, visited after Christmas and was taken aback by his behavior. “He had no short-term memory and was having trouble speaking,” she recalls. “My husband Mark knew right away. ‘He’s had a stroke,’ he said.”
In fact, they learned later, he’d had several, most likely during the bypass operation. According to Julia’s niece, Phila Cousins, “After the surgery, a blood clot went to his brain and gave him aphasia,” the loss of ability to understand or express speech. Any improvement he might make would take months, maybe years.
The recovery process took its toll on Julia, who split her waking hours evenly between finishing From Julia Child’s Kitchen and caring for her disabled husband. “She spent most of her time just trying to calm Paul down,” recalls Jon Child. “And I think it got to her somewhat; she was a bit of a mess for a while.” Paul was demanding during the day, needing her for every little function. She couldn’t cook, couldn’t concentrate on her work. But Julia wasn’t one to let the walls come tumbling down. At a point right after New Year’s, she shifted into damage control. “Okay, we’ve got to get speech therapy,” she decided. “We’ve got to figure out a way to get Paul up and down the stairs.” To start, she reorganized the house from top to bottom and had an elevator installed for easy upstairs–downstairs access. She accepted her friend Rosie Manell’s offer to help test recipes and hired Judith Jones to edit early drafts. Avis DeVoto was enlisted to type the manuscript. “Julia just bulled through everything,” her nephew remembered. “There was no way she’d let this personal situation defeat her.”
Besides, suffering and self-pity didn’t pay the bills.
For Julia, who hadn’t published a book in four years or appeared on TV in three, From Julia Child’s Kitchen brought financial as well as popular success. The book, released in October 1975, was a huge hit with an American audience that had started cooking seriously when The French Chef debuted in 1964 and was hungry, starving, for new recipes from its guru. From Julia Child’s Kitchen gave readers everything they wanted—a delicious new repertoire of dishes with a light touch and enough personal stories to entertain away from the kitchen. There was plenty to chew on in it for the serious cook, but also a feast of information for the newcomer or novice, plus pizza and hamburgers and coleslaw and even ideas for leftovers. For anyone who believed Julia’s lessons were too complicated and unwieldy, the new book was a breath of fresh air.
Knopf flooded the market with the book and worked the press without mercy. “We knew the audience was there,” recalls Judith Jones, “but since Mastering II, there was plenty of competition.” Judith alone now edited cookbooks by Roy de Groot, Michael Field, Claudia Roden, Marcella Hazan, Madhur Jaffrey, Irene Kuo, Edna Lewis, James Beard, and of course, Simca. A full-out book tour was essential to making From Julia Child’s Kitchen a success. But what to do about Paul? He’d made some strides toward recovery with his speech and coordination, but “his mind was still scrambled.” There was a long, long way to go. He certainly couldn’t fend for himself. A marathon stretch on the road would be a strain for Paul, to say nothing of a distraction and burden for Julia.
“There was never any question about that tour,” says Pat Pratt, “or that Paul was going along with Julia.”
“The doctor says he is just fine physically,” she told Simca before they left, “but that his mental confusion will not get any better—alas.” In any case, she felt “lucky” that he was doing as well as could be expected.
“I was determined that nothing was going to be different from before,” she said years later, while reflecting on that period. “Paul loved the audiences and the travel. It just meant a little more work, making sure he was looked after properly.” In fact, she thought the trip would be therapeutic; it would do “him good to be doing things, as long as we don’t do too much, since it keeps him active.”
It wasn’t as easy as she thought it would be. Traveling with him was hard, different. Before, Paul had been her backbone, her enabler. He was always by Julia’s side, never too proud to wash the dishes or jump in the car and go get something she forgot. “He’d even get down and scrub the floor,” recalls Judith Jones. “But the operation had soured him in a funny way and during that book tour everything changed.” Where once he had been “fun and flirty,” full of fascinating stories, he’d become grumpy and antisocial—also occasionally irrational. You’d never know when he might say or do something inappropriate. At cocktail receptions in Julia’s honor, he was known to grumble: “What are we doing here?” Seated in the audience of her department-store demos, there were times Paul would bark out directions—“Go slower, Julia!” “We can’t see the chicken! Hold it up, dammit!”—or mumble criticism in a stage whisper that would carry several rows. Somewhere along the way, he’d picked up a stopwatch, and throughout the West Coast segment of the tour, he’d call out the time from his seat. Jones recalls how he would throw a tantrum during seating arrangements in restaurants if he wasn’t put in an important place. But Julia always handled it with such grace. “Oh, P’skie,” she’d say, “of course we’ll put you in the sun.” Except that moving him dictated where Julia would sit because he had difficulty using silverware and needed assistance. So there were times she’d be consumed with Paul’s care, unable to answer a journalist’s questions or cozy up to an important bookstore buyer.
The tour took everything out of him—and of Julia. She knew how important it was to promote her new book, and she loved those audiences—loved them! But being on the road wasn’t fun anymore. It was nerve-racking. Paul was a handful—her dear, darling Paul. No man had ever been more appreciated. No marriage had ever been closer, no husband had ever done more to give a wife confidence, to give her life meaning. Now Julia was basically out there on her own. Traveling with him had become a chore rather than a blessing. Besides, the book itself had drained her. She’d poured everything she
had into it, everything she’d learned and all her abilities as a writer. “This is the summation of my 25 years in the kitchen,” she wrote to M. F. K. Fisher. “I have little more to say about anything. I’m writ dry. NO MORE BOOKS!”
TELEVISION, HOWEVER, WAS a whole other enchilada. Julia hadn’t had a show of her own since The French Chef ended in 1972, and by the beginning of 1976 she’d sworn off TV as well. “It’s gotten much more expensive to do,” she told the National Observer, “and it involves a twelve-hour day and a seven-day week, and we’ve had it.” We’ve had it: over and done with. She mostly meant it, too—mostly. But there was one realization that kept tugging at her: “if you’re not on TV, people forget who you are.” The last thing she wanted was to lose her audience. Only a lucky few had such a faithful following and she was determined not to squander it.
That goal wasn’t as easy as she thought. Public television had grown exponentially over the last fifteen years, with a widespread impact and brutal competition. There were now two or three hundred program managers across the PBS spectrum, and if they didn’t want to run your show, they didn’t have to, simple as that. Which meant the underwriter disappeared and the show along with it. WGBH, in particular, held a prominent place of influence within the network, with its attention turned to mega-international programming, like Nova and Masterpiece Theater. In no time, they’d become a powerhouse, the largest producing station in the country, eclipsing even WNET in New York. Foodwise, the station had other things on its plate, in particular Italian cooking with a couple called the Romagnolis, Chinese cooking with Joyce Chen, and a smash hit called The Victory Garden. “And anyway, the people at the highest level there thought the how-to programs were passé,” says Donald Cutler, who handled the station’s literary rights. There didn’t seem to be a place for Julia Child on their roster.
