Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (86 page)

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ulia (almost thirty-two) on an Army cot (with folded mosquito net above) in Kandy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), July 19, 1944. The photograph was taken by Paul Child, whom she had met during the last days of April.

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few of the China OSS gang, including Julia McWilliams and Paul Child on the far right, in Kunming, the mountain headquarters for Chennault’s Flying Tigers and the OSS in southern China at the end of the Burma Road.

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ulia and Paul with his twin brother, Charlie, and his family: Fredericka, Erica, Jonathan, Charlie, Julia, Paul, and Rachel in the late 1940s. When they were not living near each other, the twins wrote to each other daily.

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wins Charles and Paul Child, born January 15, 1902, six months before their father’s death, were reared in Boston by their artistic mother, Bertha May Cushing Child. “Mrs. Child and Her Children” performed together (Paul on violin, Charlie on cello).
(Right)
Child twins at work in Maine, clearing the land for Charlie’s cabin at Lopaus Point on Mount Desert Island, where the family holidayed for years. “Paul and I were like two old horses,” Charlie wrote in his memoirs,
Roots in the Rock
(1964).

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ulia Child working on the cabin in Maine. Paul had written Charlie from China that Julia was “a wonderful ‘good scout’ in the sense of being able to take physical discomfort, such as mud, leeches, tropic rains, or lousy food.”
(PAUL CHILD)

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ulia in the Childs’ apartment in Paris, where Paul worked for the U.S. Information Service (he was in charge of exhibits). She is wearing a suit made from tweed purchased in London and holding their first of many cats, January 1950.

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ulia looking out of their bedroom window toward the gardens of the French Ministry of Defense. The Childs rented the top apartment at 81, rue de l’Université, in the 7th Arrondissement, not far from the Concorde Bridge across the Seine.
(PAUL CHILD)

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aul with Hélène Baltrusaitis, Julia’s best friend in France, during one of their many picnics from 1948 to 1953. The women would study English and French together by meeting at the Closerie des Lilas each week.

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he Cordon Bleu cooking school, Paris, 1949 or 1950. Julia’s mentor, chef Max Bugnard, is the second from the left. Julia, the only woman, attended a class for future professionals studying under the GI Bill.

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ooking in her Paris apartment kitchen, built out from the maid’s quarters under the roof and reached by a narrow, steep stair. The ovens are to her right.
(PAUL CHILD)

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atron of honor Julia Child and best man Lt. Jack Kelly witness the marriage of Jack Hemingway and Puck Whitlock at the American Church in Paris, June 25, 1949.
(COURTESY JACK HEMINGWAY)

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he McWilliams sisters in Paris. Dorothy, left, lived with Julia and Paul from April 8, 1949, until she got her own apartment nearly a year later, after falling in love with Ivan Cousins, a former U.S. Navy man living in Paris.
(PAUL CHILD)

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photograph of one of Paul Child’s paintings of the Paris rooftops. Painted in the summer of 1952, it shows the view from the balcony of the apartment of Rosemary and Abe Manell on the Ile St.-Louis.

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edding reception of Dorothy McWilliams and Ivan Cousins, June 23, 1951, in New York City. From the left: Paul Child, sister-in-law Josephine McWilliams, Julia, Ivan beside his mother (Pearl Marie Cousins), Dorothy (standing behind Ivan), John McWilliams III, stepmother Phila, and father John McWilliams, Jr. In the front row are John and Jo’s first two children, John IV (Jay) and Carol.

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ulia and Simca visiting Chinon for the weekend, April 2, 1952. They were personal and professional “sisters,” both animal lovers with boundless energy.
(PAUL CHILD)

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’Ecole des Trois Gourmandes in 1953: Louisette Bertholle, Simone (Simca) Beck, and Julia Child. In the Childs’ kitchen at 81, rue de l’Université, where they taught American students. They were also hard at work on their book
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
, published eight years later.
(PAUL CHILD)

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ulia in 1953 in the window of the Childs’ apartment in Marseilles, where they lived in the Old Port. Julia loved the sea, experimented with bouillabaisse, and typed thousands of pages of recipes and letters to send back to Paris.
(PAUL CHILD)

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he Childs’ 1956 Valentine’s card from their home near Bonn, Germany. “This little photo illustrates your old CBI [China-Burma-India] companions in one of their more formal diplomatic moments,” Julia wrote to friends.
(PAUL CHILD)

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vis DeVoto, “the godmother” of
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
, here with Paul Child.
(COURTESY MARK DEVOTO)

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ust back from two years in Oslo, Norway, Julia and Paul correct proofs on the index of
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
(published October 1961) at Lopaus Point, Mount Desert Island, Maine.