To the One I Love the Best: Episodes from the Life of Lady Mendl

by Ludwig Bemelmans

A witty and charming account of the wildly entertaining Elsie de Wolfe in 1950s Hollywood, recounted by her dear friend, the beloved creator of Madeline

Ludwig Bemelmans’ charming intergenerational friendship with the late-in-life “First Lady of Interior Decoration” provides an enormously enjoyable nostalgia trip to the sun-soaked glamour of Los Angeles, where de Wolfe surrounded herself with classic movie stars and a luminous parade of life's oddities.
 
With hilarity and mischief that de Wolfe would no doubt approve, To the One I Love the Best lifts the curtain on 1950s Hollywood--a bygone world of extravagance and eccentricity, where the parties are held in circus tents and populated by ravishing movie stars.

Bemelmans, who was working at MGM, had originally come to the California home of de Wolfe just for cocktails but 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'.

To the One I Love the Best (which refers to de Wolfe’s dog) is a touching tribute to a fabulously funny woman and an American icon.
 
Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you.  - Elsie de Wolfe

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, History

255 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Ludwig Bemelmans, Austrian-American illustrator, wrote books, such as Madeline in 1939, for children, and his experiences in the restaurant business based Hotel Splendide , adult fiction in 1940.

People internationally knew Ludwig Bemelmans, an author and a gourmand. People today most note his six publications to 1961. After his death, people discovered and posthumously published a seventh in 1999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_...

Reviews

[Sandra T. · Rating 3 out of 5]

To the One I Love the Best by Ludwig Bemelmans
Publication date: 7 March 2023
⭐️⭐️⭐️ 3.5 stars
Thank you to NetGalley and Pushkin Press for providing me with an e-copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
~~~~~
Ludwig Bemelmans’ charming intergenerational friendship with Elsie de Wolfe, the late-in-life “First Lady of Interior Decoration,” provides an enjoyable nostalgia trip to the sun-soaked glamour of Los Angeles, where de Wolfe surrounded herself with classic movie stars and a luminous parade of life's oddities.
~~~~~
I went into this book knowing nothing about nothing, but the description caught my eye. Originally published in 1955, this is a somewhat fictionalised account of Bemelmans' friendship with the doyenne of Interior Design, Elsie Lady Mendl de Wolfe.
It was charming, nostalgic and witty, a really loving snapshot of a time and a place and the people within it.
Elsie, despite being a 90 year old lady described as weighing "about ninety pounds without her jewels," is a force of nature, wants to be known as "Mother," larger than life and somewhat overbearing. She commands a room and she commands the page. She's quite the terror to her poor husband, Sir Charles, but theirs is still a loving relationship and they absolutely steal the show.
However, as I said, this was written in a time and a place and there are several instances of language and stereotypes used to describe black people and people of certain nationalities that are very much of their time, but nonetheless unpleasant to come across and I thought that needed to be mentioned.
~~~~~

[Vanessa (V.C.) · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was totally lost on this one, in that while it definitely exuded Ludwig's charm, wit, and humor, and while some aspects of his life were interesting to know and from his own words, overall, the subject of this memoir wasn't interesting, I just didn't much care for Lady Mendl/Elsie de Wolfe and their relationship. Life's is just too short to read books you don't enjoy, and especially when it's too long for what it is. He's written way better works than this. To the One I Love The Best is sadly not a highlight of his impressive bibliography and is pretty dull and forgettable.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Main character didn't seem likeable at first. Grew on me as I continued, glad I persevered. Her husband was a hoot throughout.

Also loved the visit to San Simeon. Nice semi voyeuristic read on Hollywood lifestyles.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ludwig Bemelmans sketches the most enchanting portrait of his old friend & mentor, Elsie de Wolfe. A perfect delight of a book.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the writing style. There were some very funny scenes and characters, but unfortunately I did not like Elsie, as portrayed here, very much, which put a damper on my enjoyment of the book.
2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge: A book from your TBR list chosen at random
To make this truly random I printed out my want-to-read list cut it into strips and had a friend pick one and this was the result and (even more random) I cannot remember why this book was even on my list.

[Daisy Barone · Rating 4 out of 5]

this is a cool way to see into golden age hollywood & what some people experienced, also interesting to read about hearst & the hearst castle. elsie was sweet but could be annoying but good that the author acknowledges it. she’s a very intriguing woman! bemelmans is charming and i enjoy his silly little book very much

[Merie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I want to state a few factors that might have made me appreciate less reading this book: 1) I do not have much exposure to Elsie de Wolfe and I feel like this is making me miss a point 2) I leafed the first page knowing merely about Bemelman as the author of Madeleine.

It took me more than a month to finish reading this. The first few pages was fun but then I find myself not relating to and sometimes getting lost in the scenes. I understand that this memoir is about friendship but I found it hard to grasp that relationship -- finding it hard to see the better in 'Mother'. There were chapters that bored me but there are also chapters that amused me mainly because of the eccentric scenes and witty retelling.

I might have expected more out of this but I'm just glad to have gone through this book as a person who disliked DNF-ing.

ps. That title got me.

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An often entertaining but ultimately unsatisfying memoir of Ludwig Bemelmans's time in the orbit of Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl, a famous interior decorator. I enjoyed the book, but wouldn't recommend it to someone just starting out with Bemelmans, for a few reasons. First, Bemelmans is never an anodyne writer, but he can be downright nasty, and unfair, in this book. The chapter on William Randolph Hearst and Xanadu (sorry, Hearst Castle) is a pleasure to read, mixing Bemelmans's rich emotional experience with sharp observation and a disdain for the entire gauche Hearst project. Not so pleasurable are the ways he consistently jabs at Sir Charles Mendl for his wandering eye and general disinterest in Lady Mendl's personality and world. Mendl certainly seems like he was an odd duck, but his relationship with Lady Mendl makes much more sense when one understands that Elsie de Wolfe was in a longterm lesbian relationship and that her marriage to Sir Charles was purely one of convenience on both parts. Due to the morals of the time (and perhaps Bemelmans's own, who knows), this piece of Lady Mendl's life is completely cut from Bemelmans's portrait of her, leaving a gaping whole where any human kindness or connection might live. Instead, we get a portrait of a beautifully-appointed society version of the Lockhorns, sniping at each other and generally making everyone else's life miserable into the bargain. Bemelmans seems unsure of what kind of book he's writing, as well -- is it a personal memoir of his development as an artist? a gossipy tell-all about a famous decorator? a hit piece? a classic Bemelmans portrait of pompous people and the servants, companions, waiters, etc. who (willingly and unwillingly) surround them? This was certainly an interesting read, but I found myself wishing I was reading real biographies of Sir Charles and Lady Mendl instead, or simply one of Bemelmans's other books.

[KT · Rating 5 out of 5]

During my second visit to Powell’s Book Store in Portland, Oregon, I chose to pursue the stacks in the Blue Room, which contain literature and poetry. The name Ludwig Bemelmans caught my eye. How could it not? Immediately I silently recited the first lines of the children’s classic in my mind.
In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines
Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines
In two straight lines they broke their bread, and brushed their teeth and went to bed
They smiled at the good and frowned at the bad,
and sometimes they were very sad
They left the house at half past nine in rain or shine
The smallest one was Madeline

But this was adult fiction-how intriguing! I snapped it up.
In this “memoir” Bemelmans has detailed his friendship with the designer Elsie de Wolfe, who was an actress and interior designer. She was an eccentric who dyed her hair blue, entertained lavishly, and had a dog cemetery where every tombstone declared “To the One I Loved Best”. Many chapters describe the antics they got up to with their wealthy friends, including one visit Bemelmans made to San Simeon, which is a spot on description and analysis of Hearst and his castle.
I happen to enjoy reading about socialite parties, proclivities and perversities and this book more than fits the bill.

[Sophia Tseng · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was sometimes difficult to read this book about a spirited woman who was apparently the world’s first interior designer. It’s a portrait of bygone era when champagne flowed, parties were lavish, and costs be damned.

The muse that this book does its best to capture has personality, but given that it’s set in the backdrop of the end of the 1st world war, the lavishness of the society described within seems out of touch with the suffering outside of the bubble that the book encapsulates. So, it’s a self portrait of a slice
of society whose main concern is the sight and preservation of beauty when the rest of civilization’s main concern was the rudiments of survival. Interestingly, there is a chapter towards the end of the book where the author visits the home of William Randolph Hearst and recognizes the frivolity of it all. He is briefly filled with self-loathing, but it’s quickly glossed over. On the other hand, your own loathing of the characters persists.

It’s only after finishing the book that I thought to research whether this was in fact a real person and learned more about Elsie de Wolfe’s life. I think if I had done that first it might have improved my reading experience.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I received a digital ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I have loved Madeline since the age of three, so I was very excited to find out that Bemelmans wrote for adults, too. I didn't enjoy this memoir as much as I had hoped, but that is not entirely Bemelmans' fault. His writing was beautiful and it was fun to hear about his personal life. I really disliked everyone else he came into contact with, though, including Lady and Sir Charles Mendl. I don't mind eccentricity, but to me Lady Mendl's eccentric monologues were hard to follow in this memoir. Any of the guests that the Mendls had to dinner were portrayed as one-dimensional, which made it hard to like them, either, especially when casual racial slurs escape their lips later on. I was also disappointed that none of Bemelmans' drawings decorated these escapades, but they may be included in the finished copy. Overall, Bemelmans is a talented writer, but I didn't care for the subject of this piece.

[Mary Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a huge Bemelmans fan. I could recite Madeleine books to my daughters by heart and had to make a pilgrimage to Bemelman’s Bar at the Hotel Carlyle to see his murals.. This memoir about his friendship with Elsie de Wolfe is written in his typically charming manner. However, I found myself skimming the chapters. I longed for some concrete answers to my questions. Why does Elsie de Wolfe, AKA, Lady Mendl, initially invite Bemelmans, a Hollywood writer at the time, to her home? Why does she refer to herself as Mother? I have many other questions too, but the memoir consists of episodes in their friendship (always entertaining) and de Wolfe’s pronouncements, Still, lines such as “She weighed about ninety pounds without her jewels…” make this memoir worth reading.

[Mandy · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unfortunately this just didn’t work for me, and although I found it mildly interesting at the beginning, the relentless narrating of anecdotes meant to be amusing but which weren’t, and the parade of one-dimensional characters soon palled. Ludwig Bemelmans arrived in Hollywood as a script writer and was taken under her wing by socialite and interior decorator Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendl. Eccentric and self-willed, she seemed to be a magnet for the great and the good, but I found her irritating in the extreme and couldn’t understand Bemelmans’s infatuation with her. He soon becomes very much a member of the family, but it was no family I would want to be adopted into. I found the book singularly lacking in wit or charm and gave up before the end.

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am delighted that this will be republished for a new audience. I have been a fan of Bemelmans since I read Hotel Splendide a good few years ago now. I enjoy his memoirs far more than his work for children. He is witty and has a great ear for dialogue and the eccentricities of people which I love. He moved in some rather exalted circles and I love his gentle lampooning of the upper classes, while all the time you can feel his affinity and love for the people he is ribbing. This is delightful. It tells in lightly fictionalised terms of the time he spent in Hollywood and Paris in the Fifties with acclaimed aristocratic interior designer, Elise Mendl. It's an absolute joy.

[Katy Wheatley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am delighted that this will be republished for a new audience. I have been a fan of Bemelmans since I read Hotel Splendide a good few years ago now. I enjoy his memoirs far more than his work for children. He is witty and has a great ear for dialogue and the eccentricities of people which I love. He moved in some rather exalted circles and I love his gentle lampooning of the upper classes, while all the time you can feel his affinity and love for the people he is ribbing. This is delightful. It tells in lightly fictionalised terms of the time he spent in Hollywood and Paris in the Fifties with acclaimed aristocratic interior designer, Elise Mendl. It's an absolute joy.

[Carolina Charrua · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to say I’m quite disappointed with this. It looked so promessing from the first page but it fell short. To the point that I was just reading words, not a story. I was not absorbing it. And it’s a huge problem. The writing was nice and easy. The Elsie’s life had some little interesting features, but overall I did not understand why make a story out of her. On top of not seeing the point of the story, the chapters felt to me like loose stories. There was nothing - almost - linking them to each other.
At the end of the day, it was just another read, one that took a bit of willpower to read. And that sums up what I think about it (difference and not a lot of interest).

[Evelyn Ann · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was not what I thought it was about when I started and was slow at parts...put it down in July and did not pick it up until a few days before the new year, so that is why it's rating is a 2 (okay). There were aspects I did like about it and I learned about the real people (i.e. the author and Elsie de Wolfe) and got a glimpse into the glamour side of the time period. If you have any interest in the book after reading the synopsis, I would definitely say go for it, but I would recommend knowing the premise of the book and that it's a story about life and not a lot of conflict/arcs/etc.

[E · Rating 3 out of 5]

A loosely connected collection of stories revolving around 1950s Hollywood and the eccentric Elsie de Wolfe (the Lady Mendl mentioned in Cole Porter's "Anything Goes"). Some of the stories hold one's interest better than others. Bemelmans is hardly a character in his own sketches. The book flags a bit until the entourage sails to Europe and decamps to Paris and Versailles for a while.

Definitely worthwhile, but definitely inferior to Hotel Splendide.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

To The One I Love The Best is a clever and endearing book about Elsie de Wolf, the First Lady decorator. The author, Ludwig Bemelmans, writes about his time spent with de Wolf in her later years. De Wolf, also known as mother to those close to her, was an eccentric queen bee who dominated a room but had the respect and admiration of all who crossed her path. From the wealthy socialites in New York, Hollywood and Paris and all places in between she knew and decorated for all the “who’s who” of that time. This was a delightful read I will be thinking about for some time.

[Alvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bemelmans writes wittily, but alas, not pithily. He serves up scene after scene of high society eccentricity and excess, most of which are rather amusing, but over-long. The characters (one is tempted to write, caricatures, because that's what they are) are keenly observed, but not particularly endearing: extremely shallow and a tad snobby and bigoted. Readers of a certain age may feel as if they've been transported into the world of Mr.and Mrs. Thurston Howell III. Ultimately, this novel is rather like Pink Cotton Candy: fun, but best taken in short quantities spaced rather far apart.

[False · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never connected Ludwig Bemelmans to Elsie de Wolfe, or to his Madeleine books or to his decor in The Carlyle Hotel in New York City. This past month has been a scooping up of everything I can get on not only de Wolfe, aka Lady Mendl, or Bemelmans. It was truly a different world, but one that I still remember of parties and entertaining and weekend guests and dressing for the occasion--all deader than the dodo in terms of personal taste and style viz what you see on Tik Tok, and just in the past few weeks, those social media sites flooding, and I do mean flooded with AI imagery, which I find so creepy.

Beautiful environments, lovely clothes, knowing when you keep your mouth shut and not overshare, good manners, thank you notes, hostess gifts, decorative soaps, and discipline--so much discipline to keep it all afloat. As hard as it was to acquire these books (chiefly through interlibrary loans) it has been worth it to turn the browned pages and remember that it wasn't that long ago where there were rules that gave structure to society--and to humanity.

[Lorraine Tosiello · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a witty, urbane, breezy memoir of 1940’s Hollywood and Paris that it utterly and totally irrelevant. The writing is good, the stories are forgettable. It would have been fun, perhaps, if I had found an old first edition in a used book store, but this was a new edition from Pushkin Press, attractive, with French flaps and a few of Bemelman’s characteristic line drawings. One wonders why a press would reissue this book. I feel stupider for having read it.
(Rounded up from 2.5 because of the flawless dialogue)

[Adrienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book about Elsie De Wolfe, it's a snapshot of glamour and and a time gone by. But it also reveals the remarkable temperament of Mr. Bemelmans. At a certain moment, when he is on a horse that is out of control, (not unlike what life can sometimes serve us) his lack of panic and awareness of what the various possibilities are for action, his and the horse's, well, I aspire to that presence of mind.

[Glae R. Egoville · Rating 4 out of 5]

Charming

Bemelmans was a respected artist and writer whose friends happily became his subjects He writes of the redoubtable
Elsie di Wolff the famed decorator with an insider's affectionate knowledge of his subject.
He was a gentleman and I personally enjoy his humorous and elegant writing style.
A charming book.

[Emma Franken · Rating 2 out of 5]

It took me a month to read it because it was hard to follow. The book was written in 1955 which should have been an indicator. The stories and content was cool, but there was so many characters, all with multiple names, and it was hard for me to get the gumption to finish this book.
I love the cover art though.

[Audrey Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like being at the last dinner party when you know the party is about to be over. During this dark time, I loved losing myself in this much like Lady Mendl lost herself during her time of darkness. This has what Wes Anderson wants, and also my partners and I are definitely going as Lady, Charles and "Stevie" for next Halloween. I needed this!

[Leslie Hill · Rating 5 out of 5]

A look behind the high walls of the wealthy

I’ve just discovered L Bemelman’s art and writing. He maintains a distance and sensitivity, without envy or avarice, for those who have. With patience and insight he sees through the idiosyncrasies used to hide vulnerable humanity. This was thoroughly enjoyable.

[Caroline Bartels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bemelmans is just pure fun to read. And this chatty account of his friendship with Elsie de Wolfe, Lady Mendle, is delightful. She sounds like a complete character, and Bemelmans clearly cherished their friendship.

[ruby barone · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book was so fun and cute to read, i read it right after finishing Women Talking which was really heavy so this was a nice contrast. just fun sparkly stories about the golden age of hollywood and this slay old lady who was a famous interior designer, it was the perfect beach read

[Pollypollack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Has some lags, but still an amusing read.