Julia, page 32
“We have three people at Knopf cooking from your book already?” Paul asked.
“It looks that way.”
He perused the letter, then said, “This is impressive. Avis says that Judith goes home for lunch and blanches the vegetables as outlined in your book, then finishes cooking at night.”
“She does.” Julia paused. “Read the last paragraph.”
Paul did, his smile growing. “I really like Judith Jones,” he declared. “She told Avis that your book is revolutionary and that it not only changes the language of cooking but makes the difference between ordinary cooking and cooking with finesse.”
“I like Judith, too, but I don’t know if my heart can take all this back-and-forth.”
Paul set the letter down and pulled Julia into his arms. “You’ve done all the hard work already. You can feel peace about that. So now we wait.”
Waiting was ever so hard.
The day that Avis called their phone in their Oslo home, Julia at first thought something terrible had happened. Avis always wrote letters. The only other time she had called was to tell them her husband had died.
“Are you sitting down?” Avis asked.
Julia couldn’t read the mood of her friend long distance, and she waved Paul over. He sat next to her, possibly hearing some of the conversation but not all.
“Angus Cameron loves the book,” Avis said, her voice tinny over the phone. “He told me it’s remarkable and the best working French cookbook he’s ever looked at.”
Julia gasped. “That’s a good sign, right?”
Avis laughed. “There’s more, my dear friend. Blanche has been snippy about another cookbook being published that might overshadow her own authors. She also doesn’t know why Judith is aspiring to this project when Blanche is the unofficial cookbook editor. Basically, Blanche has already complained to Bill Koshland.”
Julia reached for Paul’s hand.
“Bill, of course, knows that the pitch has to come from Angus—he has the most influence out of the three—and he’s in your corner.” Avis paused. “Angus waited to pitch the manuscript at their weekly editorial meeting when it was nearly lunchtime. So everyone was tired and wanted the break. Angus gave his presentation, lauding it as an astonishing achievement and saying nothing like this has been done before, etc., etc.”
Julia’s hand tightened on Paul’s, and he squeezed back. She wanted to shout at Avis to get to the point. What was the outcome?
“Judith Jones added in her own accolades, and really, with two such heavy endorsements, Alfred had no choice but to agree.”
“Agree?” Julia whispered.
“I believe the exact words were, ‘Well, let’s let Mrs. Jones have her chance,’” Avis said. “And then Blanche bolted out of the room, obviously not pleased that she’d been basically steamrollered.”
Julia closed her eyes, hardly daring to believe. “So, the book was accepted? You must be very clear, Avis, because I can hardly hear you over my pounding heart.”
“Yes, my dear friend,” Avis crooned. “You have a deal. Judith will be sending everything over posthaste, but from what Bill told me, they are looking at an advance of fifteen hundred dollars, and the final version needs to be turned in by August 31.”
Julia felt Paul’s arm go around her. It was May—May 5, to be exact. They could do it though. She and Simca, and maybe Louisette would jump in too. Do the final testing and proofreading of everything.
“Thank you,” Julia said, her voice a scratch. “Thank you so much.”
“I told you we wouldn’t give up.”
Julia could only nod and whisper, “Thank you,” again because her throat was too tight to speak. After hanging up with Avis, Julia fell into Paul’s arms.
“I can’t believe it,” she said over and over, and Paul just stroked her back, not seeming surprised at all.
Chapter 31
Oslo, Norway
July 1960–May 1961
“My loves: This about an hour after I talked to you on the telephone, I find I am somewhat limp and stunned, and not much to say except deep, deep pleasure and great gratitude to House of Knopf. Wow. . . . It was lovely just hearing your calm voices and I just wish we were all together so we could dance around the maypole, emitting loud cries of joy and relief.”
—Letter from Avis to Julia and Paul
Julia didn’t know if it was a combination of getting a cookbook deal, its royalties being completely unpredictable, and Paul’s approaching sixty years old, but Paul opened the discussion about officially retiring from government service. They were coming up on two years in Oslo, and he’d already heard that his reassignment would be just around the corner. Julia was fully supportive of his retirement because neither of them wanted to chance being assigned to yet another country when she had a cookbook to promote.
How she’d promote it, she wasn’t sure, but she knew she had to not only prove to her publisher that she could exceed their sales expectations, but she also needed to realize the fruits of nine years of work. That would require her to actually be in America. Maybe offering cooking demonstrations, doing interviews, and submitting articles to magazines? Starting another cooking school?
The contract with Knopf had been a bit sticky since they’d wanted to contract with only one author—Julia Child. So she’d had to work out her own terms with Simca and Louisette.
Unfortunately, Louisette was still expecting 18 percent of the royalties. But now, it was much too generous for someone who hadn’t done any of the revising work or testing the past few years, so Julia sent a letter to Louisette, offering her 10 percent of the shared royalties. Which was still generous, in Julia’s opinion.
The final contract stated that the cookbook would be released in fall 1961, soon after Julia’s forty-ninth birthday. The fifteen-hundred-dollar advance would go against the shared royalties of 17 percent for the first 10,000 copies. Their royalties would jump to 20 percent on the next 10,000–20,000 sold, and then another jump to 23 percent thereafter. Julia had sent the contract to their nephew Paul Sheeline to review.
Meanwhile, Avis, Julia, and Simca all cooked their way through the cookbook one more time. Avis sent back her edits, including one that said the boeuf bourguignon recipe needed to be adjusted because the two-and-a-half pounds of meat that was supposed to serve six to eight, in fact, only served about four people. Edits like that, though, Julia was willing to make. She also found some grievous errors where a recipe calling for one-fourth cup should have been one-fourth teaspoon. Another catch was when she discovered that she’d listed the baking temperature of 530 degrees when it should have been 350 degrees.
Not only did she spend her days fine-tuning, but she also brainstormed with Paul on titles for the cookbook. Apparently, now that Knopf had officially contracted the cookbook, no one at the publishing house liked the title.
They needed something snappy, something that would appeal to a broad audience, and something that would sell books. She and Paul made endless lists, crossing out names and making more lists.
“What about La Bonne Cuisine Française?” Julia asked during one of their brainstorming sessions at the kitchen table.
“It’s a bit . . . pretentious?” Paul said, and that was saying something from a lover of all things French. “How about Love and French Cooking?”
Julia wrote it on her list. “It’s charming, but people might expect poetry on love.”
He shrugged. “Would that be such a bad thing? I could whip something up.”
“Be serious. I’m about to pull out my hair.”
Paul’s expression sobered but only a tad. “French Magicians in the Kitchen?”
This made Julia laugh. “We’re hardly magicians. Cooking is science, not magic.”
“You could have fooled me.” He nudged her foot with his. “You’ve made cooking magic.”
Julia refrained from rolling her eyes. “We’re not putting magic in the title, but I’ll add it to the list so that you feel like your ideas are valued.”
“Then add You, Too, Can Be a French Chef.”
Julia’s brows shot up. “I think that’s worse than the magic one.” She wrote it down anyway, if only to rule out coming up with it again.
They ended up with forty-five different titles, but none of them were standouts. They even challenged their friends at the US Embassy to come up with a title. Julia’s favorite out of the lot was La Bonne Cuisine Française, but Knopf readily turned that down.
Judith Jones’s letters included the suggestions of The Master French Cookbook and How to Master French Cooking. They were getting closer. Then, in a letter dated November 18, 1960, Judith said that they’d landed on a title, although they still needed to pass it by Alfred Knopf himself—which would take a bit of luck. But what did Julia and her gourmands think of: Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Frankly, Julia loved it, but maybe it was because she’d exhausted all other ideas. And if everyone at Knopf agreed, she’d be happy. The next letter from Judith stated that the title had been approved but only barely. In fact, Alfred hadn’t been impressed at all and had said that if a book with that title sold, he’d eat his hat.
Judith had said not to worry—Alfred rarely liked anyone’s title ideas. And Julia was determined that the book would sell. She hadn’t put so many years into the thing to have it flop. As the August 31 final-manuscript-submission deadline approached, Julia was stewing—quite literally—over Judith’s request to add more hearty peasant dishes, like cassoulet and other meat dishes.
“I don’t know what she’s talking about,” Julia vented to Paul. “I’m sending her a list of the recipes that are already in the book—all hearty peasant dishes.”
Paul lifted his gaze from where he was sorting through recently developed photographs. “Right. You have braised lamb with beans, veal sauté, and beef daube all included. Why hasn’t Judith said anything until now? Your deadline is in a matter of weeks.”
Julia shrugged. “Maybe it’s coming from one of the other editors—Judith said that four of them are cooking through the book.” She rose from the table and paced the room. “I don’t know who she thinks the ‘peasants’ are, but they’re blue-collar and middle-class cooks like everyone else—with traditional French refinement.” She stopped at the counter, where she had a copy of the manuscript, and leafed through the meats section.
“What are you thinking?” Paul asked after a long moment.
She turned to him. “I could add in a few to appease the editors, I suppose. Recipes that I took out when we did the big revision.”
“Your cassoulet is excellent,” Paul said.
She joined him at the table, now making a different list. The cassoulet Paul referred to was made of French baked beans with sausage and goose. They would have to leave out the goose since it was difficult to find in American supermarkets. She also wrote down carbonnade à la flamande, pièce de boeuf, and paupiettes de boeuf. “There, that should satisfy her. Now to write to Simca about it.”
Simca’s reply came back almost immediately, saying that a cassoulet wouldn’t be a cassoulet without goose.
Julia wrote back that they had to provide options for American cooks—a point she’d belabored over and over. Simca was just as stubborn, though, pushing back to include the goose as mandatory.
“Simca won’t back down, and we’re at an en passant,” Julia told Paul when he found her typing up a recipe revision of cassoulet. “Not surprising. I think we both want to throw the cookbook out the window. But we don’t have time for continued debating, so we’ll add our usual caveats to the instructions.”
“Let me guess,” Paul said. “Add goose if you want to cook authentically French, or use preserved goose in a variation of the recipe.”
“Exactly.” Julia continued to type, then pulled out the page from the typewriter. “There.” She handed it to Paul. “Revision done and complete, forever and ever.”
Paul read through the entire recipe aloud, and Julia nodded along. She’d been over it so many times, she practically had it memorized.
“Now I’m hungry, my dear.” He bent to kiss the top of her head. “Let’s get this mailed, and then we’ll celebrate.”
With the cookbook officially turned in and even more officially out of her hands, and the title finally agreed upon, there was nothing more to do but enjoy their final months in Oslo.
On December 19, Paul sent in his resignation letter. They had enough savings to retire on—modestly. Julia’s inheritance continued to do well with the investments her brother had made, and Paul had saved every bit of their renters fees, first at their Olive Street house and now at 103 Irving Street.
“It’s time we focus on you, Julie,” Paul told her as they made their way to the post office, keeping to the snow-cleared sidewalks. “I’ve turned into an old man, and I’ve been moving every few years since 1932.”
Julia looped her arm through his. “Well, if the cookbook doesn’t sell, I can always teach cooking classes.”
“We’ll make our kitchen grand,” Paul said with a smile. “It will be the envy of all of Cambridge.”
“I expect nothing less,” she teased.
When Paul’s resignation was accepted, their departure date for the States was set for the following year in early June. Julia felt peace about moving on to another chapter in their lives, with or without the upcoming cookbook release. Paul continued to have stomach issues—which he’d suffered from occasionally as far back as Ceylon—and Julia knew that her own health had been neglected. Retirement for Paul meant that they could slow down a little and figure out some of their pesky physical issues.
The new year of 1961 began with John F. Kennedy’s presidential inauguration and Julia’s receiving a final galley deadline of May 18—which meant the book would go to press soon after. She hadn’t sent either of her coauthors the galleys—had just written letters with final questions —because she thought if they saw the galleys, they’d want too many changes. And Julia wanted to be on speaking terms with them when the book launched. Her days and weeks were taken up with reviewing the copyedit of the manuscript, looking up minute details, and writing back and forth to Simca and Louisette.
Her coauthors didn’t seem too invested in the final details, although Louisette requested that her name be changed on the cover of the book since she’d gone through a divorce. But the publisher said it was too late, the contracts had been signed, and the cover and galleys created.
“What about changing the word cooking in the title to cuisine?” Louisette had also suggested.
Julia couldn’t even entertain making such a request to her publisher; besides cuisine was already used in so many other cookbook titles.
Then Avis suddenly decided that her friend Benjamin Fairbank should cook through the recipes, too, and he sent along some picky corrections, so Julia added those in. And one of the copyeditors discovered that there was inconsistent typography throughout the book. These were all great catches, but they also made Julia feel more worried that with so many eyes and hands on the book, new errors might be made.
And the index . . . oh, the index. Julia labored over checking and rechecking the index against the page numbers and adding in some lines she thought were missing. She knew the index would be crucial to the cookbook, but her eyes seemed to cross every time she sat down to go over the next section.
In another letter from Judith, Julia was told that any advance publicity they could rouse would be great for sales when the cookbook finally released. Julia wrote to Simca and Louisette immediately, and Simca was able to secure a series of articles that would include some of their recipes in Cuisine et Vins de France. Judith was pleased with that effort, and Julia scrabbled around and was offered an interview in a Norwegian women’s magazine.
“What do we know about marketing?” Julia asked her husband when they were cleaning up dinner one evening.
“Nothing?” Paul said. “Oh, wait, I’ve been marketing exhibits for years.”
Julia looped her arms about his neck. “It’s time to direct some of your skills toward the cooking world.”
“Are we talking about Oslo? Paris? Bonn?”
“New York, of course.”
Paul grimaced. “We’re going to have to start from the ground up, then. Who do we know in New York? More specifically, journalists who can crow about the amazing Julia Child?”
“We’ll make a list of people we know, and hopefully, they’ll know people too.”
“Another list,” Paul deadpanned. “And what is the publisher doing for marketing?”
“I’m not entirely sure yet.” Julia waved a hand. “I’m sure they’ll do something.”
“Such a mystery,” Paul teased. “We’d better get started on that list. We’re going to need all the favors out there.”
“Just think of the many people we’ve fed at our dinner table over the years,” Julia said, releasing him and settling at the table to write a few names to start. “They’ll all know someone, who will know someone else. And Avis will work through her network too. I’m happy to do private demonstration classes, but I don’t want to do anything too public.”
Paul watched her scrawl names for a few minutes, then he added several of his own.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you.” Julia lifted her gaze. “Simca will be traveling to America for the launch of the book.”
“Good news,” Paul said. “The two of you will be excellent promoting together. An American who everyone can relate to and a Frenchwoman who everyone will find fascinating.”
Chapter 32
Cambridge, Massachusetts
