Julia Child_ A Life - Laura Shapiro [11]
Meanwhile, there was Julia, who impressed him chiefly by virtue of her good nature and great legs. Three months after they met, he sent a photo of her to Charlie, devoting more of the letter to a description of the bunk room than to the woman in it. Lying on a cot, stretched out to her full, dramatic length, Julia wore a dress and pearls, lipstick, and nail polish. She was leaning on an elbow, with one long leg angled over the other in a manner that suggests she was trying, somewhat against nature, to look coy. “The enclosed photo is of Julia, the 6'2" bien-jambée from Pasadena,” wrote Paul. “The room is a typical 10' x 18' with its coir matting, woven cadjan walls, wooden shutters and army bed with folded-up mosquito net above.” He added, “Save the photo for me please,” but it’s not clear whether it was Julia he hoped to preserve or his careful documentation of the room. Later he wrote out a detailed analysis of his new friend, making it clear why she would never qualify as the woman of his dreams. “Her mind is potentially good, but she is an extremely sloppy thinker,” he told Charlie, blaming Julia’s well-cushioned background for her inability to observe life in any depth or nuance. “She says things like this, ‘I don’t see why the Indians don’t just throw out the British,’ and ‘I can’t understand what they see in that horrid little old Gandhi.’” It’s easy even now to imagine Julia voicing these comments. Bluntness was a trait she would retain for the rest of her life; and whether or not she knew what she was talking about, her inclination was to speak out and accept the consequences. What saved her from being narrow-minded was an ingrained habit of trying out new ideas and perspectives. She was always eager to learn and rarely clung to a belief just because it was familiar. Paul’s take on her thinking was incomplete, but it was accurate for 1944; and he would be the one responsible for igniting her intellect.
For Julia, falling in love with Paul was a cinch, in part because she had already fallen in love, headlong and forever, with the whole OSS team and what it stood for in the way of civilized living. Paul was the very emblem of these new values. His sophistication dazzled her, easily outweighing the fact that he was ten years older, considerably shorter, and sported a mustache that suited him poorly. Just as important, Paul liked women a lot, and he was completely comfortable with strong, capable females—even strong, capable females who towered over him. Julia was sexually shy, but she was hardly unwilling, and she found Paul’s experience a very desirable asset. Here was a man who plainly relished all his physical appetites, and she responded as if the power had been switched on inside her. To be hungry for food was a state she knew well. To be hungry all over was a revelation. Nothing and nobody in her wondrous new environment resembled her stodgy past, Paul least of all. She had to have this.
It took a good eighteen months. Paul found Julia “extremely likeable and pleasant to have around,” but he had no intention of pursuing her romantically. She was a virgin, he reported to Charlie, and probably afraid of sex—a state that did not appeal to Paul at all. Here, he decided, was “the traditional old maid of song and story,” subconsciously obsessed with sex but unable to handle the reality. “I feel very sorry for her because while I see clearly what the cure is, I do not see clearly who will apply it,” he wrote. “I have considered the matter carefully, as obviously there would be compensations and pleasures, but I believe the lack of worldly knowledge, the sloppy thinking, the wild emotionalism, the conventional framework, would be too much for Dr. Paulski to risk attempting to cure.” What’s more, he was irritated by her most prominent speech mannerisms. “She has a slight atmosphere of hysteria which gets on my nerves, being given to overstress in conversation and to gasping when she talks excitedly,” he told Charlie—habits he would come to love as her public did. But at the time, they simply contributed to the many