"We all helped one another," she says. "We got along on what we grew ourselves, and whatever was left was canned or cured for another day. We didn't have a lot, but we didn't go hungry."
At that time, many other people did encounter extreme hardship, and Lewis recalls the day a man came riding up to their cluster of eight small houses. He climbed down from his horse and stepped up onto the porch of her mother's house, his hat in his hands. He was a white man. They all thought he was some kind of county official, or maybe a salesman, or worse. He knocked on the door, and Lewis's mother cautiously answered it. The man greeted her politely, and then he asked if he could have a little food. Lewis's mother came back inside, gathered a few things, and gave them to him. He quietly thanked her and rode away.
"I realized then how bad things had become," Lewis says. "For a white man to ask us for something to eat."
I wonder aloud how it was for her growing up black in rural Virginia in the 1920s and '30s. Whether there were difficult times or incidents. But Lewis just lowers her gaze, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly, in what I think of as a near-Buddhist lilt. Something has come, a sudden bloom of remembrance, though the only thing she mentions is her late husband's efforts on behalf of the Scottsboro Boys, the eight young black men who were sentenced to death for allegedly raping two white girls on a train near Scottsboro, Alabama, in 1931. Theirs was a national cause célèbre, and due to the organizing and fund-raising efforts of people like the Lewises, the death sentences were commuted. Eventually the guilty verdicts were overturned, and one by one—over many years—the men were freed.
"My husband, Steven, was always out marching, rallying for the Scottsboro Boys. At night we'd gather in somebody's apartment and debate how best to go about helping them."
"You must have been involved, too," I say.
"I was, but mostly I was helping my husband. I cooked a little for everybody sometimes. But Steven was out front. He did everything he could. He was a good man."
"Was he a lawyer?"
Lewis shakes her head. "He was a Communist. We all were."
"Are you still?"
She smiles. "I suppose so. Yes."
I ask her what it means to her to be a Communist (in spirit, if not formally affiliated), especially now, during these supercharged, moneyed times. Lewis doesn't really try to explain, except to say that her life has always been about work and people. With gentle pride she says that her days have consisted of simple efforts and that her lifelong political activism has been closely tied to her work with food.
It was a vocation that evolved naturally. She left Freetown at age 16 and, after a brief stay in Washington, D.C., moved to New York City. There, she supported herself with odd jobs in service positions and, later, landed work dressing windows at Bonwit Teller. Her circle of friends were artists and writers who would periodically crowd into each other's tiny apartments and hold raucous dinner parties. The hosting and cooking rotated, everyone doing a turn, though it soon became clear to all where the dinners should always be held. In Freetown it had been her mother and older sister who prepared all the meals, but Lewis had watched carefully. She cooked the same kinds of dishes for her friends that she herself had eaten all her life: spring chicken with watercress, scallions in cream, fruit cobbler, everything simple but deeply flavorful. When one of those friends, an antiques dealer named John Nicholson, decided to open a restaurant, he proclaimed that Lewis would be the chef and an equal partner. The year was 1948. She agreed, and Café Nicholson was born on East 57th Street, with Lewis (and only Lewis) manning the kitchen.
The first night, she recalls, took them by surprise. She ran out of food by 6 p.m., and had to send Nicholson out for more ingredients. But by the end of the week they were fully stocked and ready, and her on-the-job training as a professional chef began in full. The restaurant soon became known for such classics as broiled oysters, roast chicken, filet mignon, and a legendarily ethereal chocolate soufflé. It was a magnet for actors, writers, composers. Marlon Brando and Tennessee Williams would come by late, after a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire. There were regular visits from Truman Capote, the Ira Gershwins, Muriel Draper (wearing her signature wide-brim hat with little balls hanging all around), and Stella Adler, who'd step into the kitchen first thing and take down her own bottle of a favorite wine (the restaurant had no liquor license).
"We always had a fabulous room in the way of regulars," Lewis recalls. "It was a crazy scene, but, you know, people also came for the food. It wasn't fancy food, really. They would call ahead before driving back from the Hamptons to say they wanted me to save a couple of chickens for them. People loved that roast chicken."
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