In contrast, Quindlen sees the grown-up Madeline as "the French Minister of Culture or the owner of a stupendous couture house, sending her children off to Miss Clavel's to be educated." I see the adult Eloise scrawling obscenities in lipstick Chez Madeline and perhaps swatting madame with a feather boa.

"Eloise" "Eloise in Paris" "The Absolutely Essential Eloise"

Quindlen is right: Eloise is not Madeline. Both are versions of '50s upper-middle-class girlhood and we adore them for their naughtiness. But Eloise -- who writes on walls, slonks down hallways in her skates while dragging a stick along the walls and pours water (champagne in the Paris version) down the mail chute -- would never consent to being one of 12 girls in two straight lines.

I have more hope for the grown-up Eloise. When I think of Eloise as an adult, I think of her as a writer. She has an eye for social manners and mores that would make Jane Austen quiver. When Madeline and her cohorts smile at the good (a person in regal garb feeding a horse), frown at the bad (a jewel thief) and sometimes are very sad (when they see a disabled soldier), it gives me the distinct impression that they will grow up to be women who attend charity balls in couture gowns, nibbling caviar in the name of the poor.

Eloise is not a saint -- she is more interesting. Her musings on the adults around her are perfect thumbnail sketches with a shrewd eye for class, character and general human foible. Consider her take on Lily, the night maid: "She married the conductor of the subway and cut her hair but I think she's sorry." Of the Palm Court maitre d' she says: "Thomas has a son in the Marines who got married on a shoestring / Thomas has a Corvette." Or this description from "Eloise in Paris," of Mrs. Fifield, the nouveau-riche Texan on Parisian holiday who "smokes 3 packs a day" and "laughs rawther loud:

she was absolutely breathing
and had spent all of her Travelers Checks at Pierre Balmain...
She speaks no French
so you can imagine."

When my daughter was 6, I took her to New York for the first time. She wore a pleated skirt and puffed sleeves. I covered my college-student clothes in an enormous fake-fur coat worthy of any 1950s society matron (but purchased in a thrift store in Brooklyn for $7). For three hours, we wreaked quiet havoc on the Plaza. We called on the house phones, she scrawled her name in crimson lipstick on the powder room mirror, we called my mother. In the Plaza gift shop, we asked for anything Eloise. But this was not the 1950s nor was it 1999; there was nothing Eloise to be found. Finally, I put a child-size Plaza Hotel bathrobe on my credit card.

Now that Kay Thompson is no longer around to censor Eloise, we will all be able to own her, and she won't just be living at the Plaza either. Simon and Schuster will reissue the three Eloise books and a feature film is in negotiation. There will be an exclusive Eloise lipstick and Eloise, like Barbie, will have a proprietary Christmas line of dolls, furniture and plush toys through FAO Schwarz. The Plaza will hold a "Black and Pink Ball" in honor of Eloise and, once again, the Plaza gift shop will sell Eloise dolls, books, and videos. They will even sell Eloise bathrobes. I'll be damned if I won't buy one of each and every item.

While I am as happy as anyone that Eloise in all her glory is once again alive and well and living in New York, Paris and Moscow, I am nostalgic for the time when it seemed Eloise could belong only to me.

If you happen to spot a 26-year-old city child skibbling down the hallway at the Plaza in an Eloise bathrobe wearing Eloise lipstick, you will know that it's me, Eloise.
salon.com | June 1, 1999

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