Diana & Julia: A Friendship Through Correspondence

This post celebrates the 101st birthday of Diana Kennedy on March 3rd.

In 2019, Special Collections began acquiring materials from British food journalist Diana Kennedy. Over the last five years, what started with eleven 19th-century published cookbooks has grown to include the Diana Kennedy Papers as well as her research library. While processing these materials, staff have come across letters and cards from friends, fans, and colleagues. Kennedy kept many of her personal favorites in her “Happy File”.

Within the Happy File are three letters from Julia Child written in the spring of 1975 that provide a glimpse into the friendship between these two larger-than-life authors. The two initially connected after Kennedy visited France in 1974. She had met Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking co-author Simone Beck who was unable to reach Child at the time due to a mail strike. Beck asked Kennedy to phone Child upon her return to the states and when she did, Child invited her to Boston (Bohlin 1975). Kennedy took her up on that offer at the end of January 1975.

The letters in our Happy File follow this visit:

• On March 18th, Child offers sympathy to Kennedy over the latter’s recent “nasty operation” and commiserates sharing some of her husband Paul Child’s recent operation and recovery. She also vents about working on her latest book, dreading doing her taxes, and confirms it was one of Child’s knives was brought to Kennedy in the hospital along with her last letter.
• On April 4th, Child shares her excitement over Kennedy’s upcoming visit to to Cambridge, Massachusetts, but she mentions in a postscript that she may be in New York City that week to work on her new book. Kennedy appears to have recovered from her previously mentioned operation, not without difficulty due to her drinking water being contaminated with detergents. Child encourages Kennedy to “forget about the knife” that had gone missing while Kennedy was in the hospital. In response to Kennedy mentioning making her huevos en rabo de mestiza recipe from her Cuisines of Mexico book for a Channel 5 segment, Child asks in her first postscript if huevos rancheros might be easier and invited Kennedy to borrow their tortilla machine to demonstrate making tortillas.
• On May 20th, Child confirmed she received a cheese book sent by Kennedy and complained about store-bought cheese being too “sticky”. She then reiterated that she and Paul enjoyed Kennedy’s most recent visit saying “we feel we’ve known you for years–and that is comfortable, at our ages, to fall into a really kindred friend.”

Though the Happy File contains merely a snapshot of this friendship, the Papers of Julia Child, housed at Harvard’s Schlesinger Library, contain more extensive correspondence from both parties from 1975-1981. Indeed, the letters in the Kennedy file of the Child papers provided additional background information to the letters in the Kennedy papers. What is evident from this correspondence is that Diana Kennedy and Julia Child were kindred spirits with mutual respect and fondness for each other.

Sources

Bohlin, Virginia. “The French Chef Picks Up a Few Mexican Cooking Tips.” Boston Herald American. February 3, 1975.

Happy File, Diana Kennedy Papers, MS 512, University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections. https://txarchives.org/utsa/finding_aids/00437.xml

Kennedy, Diana, 1975-1981, Papers of Julia Child, 1925-1993, MC 644, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute Repository at Harvard University. https://hollisarchives.lib.harvard.edu/repositories/8/resources/9746

Kennedy, Diana. The Cuisines of Mexico. [1st ed.]. New York: Harper & Row, 1972.

Perrin, Gail. “Diana — the Kennedy up on Mexican food.” The Boston Globe. February 6, 1975.