I bought a second-hand copy of Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking when I was in my early twenties, and one hot summer Sunday I sweated and stressed as I created a tarte aux fraises using sweet shortcrust pastry, patisserie cream and the ‘handsome strawberries’ the recipe insisted on. It was tricky but it was a triumph, and I became a Julia Child fangirl immediately.
Then when I watched Julie and Julia, back in 2007, I learnt that she had bequeathed her kitchen to the Smithsonian Museum of American History. So when I planned a trip to Washington DC, top of my list was a pilgrimage to the museum. And I was a pilgrim, according to the dictionary, as I was undertaking a physical journey of special significance. I didn’t go barefoot, but then it was rather chilly the day we visited.
Her TV shows were all filmed in her kitchen, using her own equipment, and to get the cameras in they had to remove all the cupboards along the back wall every time they filmed a series. But she wanted to give her viewers an authentic experience – no hiring a fake kitchen for Julia – so she gritted her teeth and got on, despite the inconvenience.
Her husband designed the hanging wall for all the pots and pans. He drew around the outline of each pan on the wall so it would always be put back in the same place … genius! She had an eclectic mix of beautiful copper pans from France, American cast-iron pots, a doughnut hole punch and even a meat branding iron where the initials JC could be branded onto steaks … or onto people who annoyed her.
And I bonded with her all over again when I saw she had a KitchenAid mixer, and the design has hardly changed over the past seventy years.
I was thrilled to discover, on a walk through Georgetown, that Julia had once lived there – in the prettiest house ever – before she moved to Paris and had her culinary epiphany. And when I got up close I saw that it’s now a B and B, so I’m definitely booking a room for my next visit!
This was my first trip to DC and I arrived with one hero, and then left a week later with a whole pantheon of other heros. I felt that I had spent those seven days in the company of giants, not necessarily standing on their shoulders, but definitely hovering around their feet and looking up at them with admiration.
Now added to my list of heroes are:
Henry and Emily Folger – who collected Shakespeareana and then built a museum and theatre dedicated to their collection. The museum has over 250,000 books including 82 First Folios from 1623 (out of a total of 235 surviving copies) and the only complete Titus Andronicus from 1594 … an astonishing collection and all open to the public.
David M Rubenstein – a philanthropist who spent $21 million on a copy of the Magna Carta and another $6 million on a special case for it, and then donated it to the National Archive. He bought the 6 July 1776 edition of The Pennsylvania Evening Post which was the first to print the Declaration of Independence, so that it could be put on public display, and the same for The Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln. He was also a major donor to the Kennedy Center, which has a fascinating exhibition about JFK.
And whoever designed the Jefferson Library carpet … I want one!
