To the One I Love the Best

Description

Ludwig Bemelmans came to the California home of famed interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl, for cocktails. By the end of the night, he was firmly established as a member of the family: given a bedroom in their sumptuous house, invitations to the most outrageous parties in Hollywood, and the friendship of the larger-than-life woman known to her closest friends simply as 'Mother'. With hilarity and mischief, Bemelmans lifts the curtain on a bygone world of extravagance and eccentricity, where the parties are held in circus tents and populated by ravishing movie stars. To the One I Love the Best is a luminous painting of life's oddities and a touching tribute to a fabulously funny woman.

Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) was an Austrian-born American writer and illustrator of books for children and adults. He travelled from Austria to American in 1914, at the age of sixteen, and worked for three years in the dining halls of what he called, in his autobiographical works, the Hotel Splendide. In 1926, he quit working in hotels to become a full-time cartoonist and made frequent contributions to the New Yorker, Vogue and Town and Country. He is perhaps most well-known at the author of the beloved Madeline books.

'The charm of To the One I Love the Best lies in the peerless combination of author and subject' - Lucy Scholes 'One reads Bemelmans not as one reads a serious novelist but for the sheer momentary pleasure given by his evocation of atmosphere and mood' - Punch 'An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein' - Kirkus Reviews (1953)