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By Root 243 0

a series of strokes. For some fifteen years he gradually lost stamina and mental functioning, as well as much of his personality. It was the end of the team as a working enterprise, but Julia honored what remained as long as she possibly could. Wherever she went—to a television rehearsal or taping, a business meeting, a reception in her honor, a dinner party—Paul accompanied her just as he always had. On a trip to Washington in 1976, he participated in all the publicity events including radio programs. “Even if he answered quite other things than the questions posed, it made little difference,” Julia reported. “So we shall just go on as usual, as long as he is happy.” He still looked over the mail and jotted comments on it, but his once-graceful handwriting was shaky, and his notes in the margins were plaintive: “I find this impossible to understand.” “What is this about!” Sometimes he dozed off at the dinner table or became confused or angry because he couldn’t follow the conversation; often the two of them left social events early. Julia never made apologies for her silent, sometimes difficult companion, though she used to poke him when he dropped off at dinner. “He is generally happy and says people just don’t think or talk clearly and no wonder nobody understands what’s going on!” she told Simca in 1985. “As long as he feels that way, we’re saved.”

Two years later his condition had worsened so markedly that Julia was forced to admit he was “truly on the downhill grade,” but even then she was incapable of dwelling on the dark side. “Fortunately he does not know the state he is in, and remains in good humor with, so far, good enough appetite,” she told Simca. “And thank heaven I have plenty of work to do.” France dropped away from their life during these years, and they traded in the long Cambridge winters for Santa Barbara, where Julia bought an apartment by the sea. Finally, in 1989, she was forced to put him in a nursing home, where she visited several times a day and called between visits. He died five years later.

Julia cried readily, when life warranted it, but she never felt sorry for herself. Her own death was an event she rarely contemplated—“May we all go out like rockets, rather than delayed fuses!”—though she thought it was sensible to plan for old age. Long before she needed it, she made sure she had a place reserved at a retirement complex in Santa Barbara for what she called “the final days.” She knew she would outlive Paul, and she had no intention of being “old Mrs. Non-compos in a big Cantabridgian mansion.” As Paul faded from her, however, she found she was increasingly aware of what it meant to grow old without children. She had never poured a great deal of regret into the fact that she couldn’t have children; she simply accepted it. But now, as she told Simca, she could see the difference between childless women like themselves, and someone like Avis, who had children and grandchildren around her in her last years. “Eh bien, we shall take care of ourselves,” was the characteristic way Julia wound up this train of thought. As it turned out, her last years overflowed with family, friends, and colleagues, including—to her delight—a tall, engaging widower named John McJannet, with whom she kept company for several years in the 1990s.

Reporters frequently asked what she would eat if she were sitting down to her last meal. Oysters, she often said, and roast duck. A delicious salad, a perfectly ripe pear, a taste of chocolate. Once an interviewer wanted to know what she would prepare if she were cooking a meal for God. Julia was a devout atheist, but not where food was concerned. She was happy to contemplate a meal so exquisite the creator of the world would be very glad he had gone to all the trouble. “To show him the wonders of the earth?” she asked. “Well, we did a lovely dish of poached fresh artichoke bottoms filled with oysters in a white butter sauce and that was awfully nice. You could add some truffles, too. Then, I would make one of my duck recipes, some lovely fresh asparagus, and some braised