All the people he had cooked for bore famous names, from Queen Victoria to Diamond Jim Brady. He described them in a decor of crystal chandeliers, candlelight, lace tablecloths, attended by armies of assistants. He recalled the exact compliments he had received from kings, famous actors, society women, and later, from tycoons, gangsters and business dictators.
He had been a child prodigy in the kitchen, later a dictator ruling over his own culinary inventions.
His monumental figure and red face seemed composed of all the delicacies he had cooked, an attrition of sauces, flavors, spices and wines.
All the stories he served with the dishes were of ancient vintage. He had invented the Crepe Suzette for Prince Edward, the charcoal broiled steak for Diamond Jim Brady.
Dazzled by the past, he seemed near-sighted about present celebrities. Perhaps he felt that in the past he had played a major role, and that the visitors who came now were witnessing his aging. At one time his dinners could influence the atmosphere of a political discussion and affect history; they could decide the course of a love affair.
Perhaps he felt reluctant to admit that among today’s diners there might be one future celebrity who might usher in an equally brilliant era but an era he would not be there to feed.
As he was past eighty, many of his anecdotes ended in funeral orations. Some of his flambes, accompanied by a list of the missing, seemed like cremations.
He had two passions: one for the art of cooking, one for the celebrities who had enjoyed his cooking.
In the art of cooking he was a perfectionist. It would take him days to concoct a sauce. He did his own marketing and waged an unremitting war on all synthetic, frozen, or canned foods.
But in the matter of names he was not so snobbish. He did not question the composition of a famous name. He loved titles, decorations, prizewinners, publicity’s favorites.
In Europe he acquired an obsession for quality. In America he acquired gigantism. His dinners grew Gargantuan. His diners had to take walks or dance or swim between dishes.
He took his diners on an Elysian journey of high flavors. His stories poured out like the most suave of his sauces.
As he was as much interested in dishes as in personalities, he gave his dishes the names of people he met. Strawberry Pudding Carole Lombard, Naked Butterfly Irvin S. Cobb, Broiled Oysters George Eastman, Tutti Frutti Edna May Oliver.
Had these personalities flavors which he translated into delicacies? Was Greta Garbo like a flambee, and Julius Bloomfield like borsch? Was William Vanderbilt a creme de France? And Marlene Dietrich a Grenade d’Amour? Was Henry James only capable of evoking shirred eggs, and Sara Delano Roosevelt cinnamon apples, and did Charles Hackett deserve a panache?
But drinks he did not baptize with names of people. They deserved enduring abstractions such as Justice, Liberty, Courage, Democracy.
In the early days of his difficult start in New York he carried home every night some empty bottle of Chateau d’Yquem which retained its fragrance, and slept on a bench at Long Island station holding the bottle to his nose to make himself dream again of the days when he was serving royalty on the French Riviera. Whereupon he was arrested for alcoholism and vagrancy.
One night he sat in the Paradise Inn kitchen, like a souffle which had not succeeded. It was late and he was eating some of his own dinner. Renate saw him, and smiled at him through the open partition. He was talking to himself, grumbling.
“Anything troubling you?” asked Renate.
Henri said: “People have lost their palate. All they say is ‘More.’ It is all those fiery cocktails. They kill the taste. And then they never say the right thing, the kind of thing that puffs me up like a souffle, the kind of compliment which makes me cook each day better.”
“They haven’t lost their palate,” said Renate, “they have lost their tongue. They haven’t lost the power to appreciate your cooking; what they have lost is the power of words. They have never learned culinary language. We live in an Era of Basic English.”
“Basic, basic, what is more basic than excellent cooking. You console me, but I still need words, you know, as actors need applause.”
“Words have grown scarce. Is that why you so often think of the past? Was it better then?”
“Yes, people had a literary appreciation of cooking. They could describe their sensations and they were eloquent about them. Poor Henri. He does see too many empty chairs. The people who come now are of a different breed. They are sulky and half-mute. They say: ‘It is good Henri.’ But how good, how does it compare with other recipes, there are so many nuances!”
“It’s only language that has grown poor.”
“You may be right. Did I ever tell you about Diamond Jim Brady and the twelve oysters? He once ordered me to serve twelve oysters in each of which I was to place a pearl. He was giving a dinner for twelve Ziegfeld girls. He wanted me to do my very best. While I prepared the oysters I noticed I had only eleven pearls, and I got very worried. I called him up and he said: ‘Don’t worry, Henri. It was done on purpose. The girl who does not get the pearl in the oyster will get a marriage contract from me. You announce it. I can’t bring myself to make such a silly announcement as a marriage proposal. I just can’t bring myself to say the words.”’
VARDA LIVED ON A CONVERTED FERRY BOAT in Sausalito and sailed the bay in his own sail boat; so it was surprising to see him arrive at Paradise Inn in an old station wagon bringing his newest collages for an exhibition: “Collages are not sea-faring.”
He unloaded them at the entrance and stood them up against the rocky banks in the sunlight. They eclipsed the sun, the sea and the plants. The laminated blues dimmed the refractions of the ocean and made it seem ponderous and opaque. His treble greens vibrated and made the plants seem dead and the flowers artificial. His shafts of gold made the sunrays pale.
With small pieces of cotton and silks, scissors and glue and a dash of paint, he dressed his women in irradiations; his colors breathed like flesh and the fine spun lines pulsated like nerves.
In his landscapes of joy, women became staminated flowers, and flowers women. They were as fragrant as if he had painted them with thyme, saffron and curry. They were translucent and airy, carrying their Arabian Night’s cities like nebulous scarves around their lucite necks.
Sometimes they were masked like Venetian beauties at masquerades. They wore necklaces of solar meteorites, and earrings which sang like birds. Velvet petals covered their breasts and stared with enticing eyes. Orange tones played like the notes of a flute. Magenta had a sound of bells. The blues throbbed like the night.
After his scissors had touched them, his women became flowers, plants and sea shells.
He cut into all the legendary textiles of the world: damask of the Medicis, oyster white of Greek robes, the mixed gold and blue of Venetian brocades, the midnight blue wools of Peru, the sand colors of the African cottons, the transparent muslins of India, to give birth to women who only appear to men asleep. His women became comets, trailing long nebulous trains, erratic members of the solar system. He gave only the silver scale of their mermaid moods, the sea shell rose of their ear lobes, corollas, pistils, light as wings. He housed them in facades of tent shelters which could be put up for a moment and folded and vanished when desire expired.
“Nothing endures,” said Varda, “unless it has first been transposed into a myth, and the great advantage of myths is that they are ladies with portable roots.”
He often spoke of paradise. Paradise was a distillation of women panoplied with ephemeral qualities. His collages taught how to remain in a state of grace of love, extract only elixirs, transmute all life into lunisolar fiestas, and all women, by a process of cut-outs, to aphrodisiacs.