To the One I Love Best, Signed by Ludwig Bemelmans
[Signed] Bemelmans, Ludwig. To the One I Love Best, Episodes from the Life of Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe). First Edition. 1955. Book is in very good condition; dust jacket is in very good minus condition—jacket shows chipping and fraying to the spine ends. Book is signed “Ludwig Bemelmans” on the half title page. The previous owner has neatly written her name on the upper corner of the blank page preceding the title page.
Of the books on Elsie de Wolfe, grand dame of American decoration, this may be the most personal and the most idiosyncratic. Ludwig Bemelmans was practically adopted by Elsie and her marriage blanc husband, Sir Charles Mendl, during their Hollywood glamour years, when he was writing screenplays for MGM and the Mendls, refugees from occupied France, were waiting out the war in Beverly Hills. De Wolfe was then in her eighties. Her health had begun to falter, but her appetite for pleasure, company, and performance remained gloriously intact. Written as a series of affectionate, sharply observed vignettes, the memoir captures Bemelmans gradually discovering the discipline, loneliness, and resilience beneath Elsie’s celebrated frivolity. A charming and unusually intimate portrait of a woman who made lightness into a very serious art.
“Now [America] is a young country, and you can’t expect Louis Fourteenth to come overnight.”
--Elsie de Wolfe