''Eloise'' has just been repackaged as ''Eloise: The Absolutely Essential Edition,'' in which the original story and illustrations are augmented by a scrapbook and appreciation by Marie Brenner and Hilary Knight'sīrief autobiography, delightfully illustrated with what amounts to Eloise's family tree. And gets away with it - another cause for Eloise envy is that no matter how badly she behaves, she is never, ever punished.
Her mother's lawyer comes to call, she feeds him rubber chocolates. (''Charge it, please'' may have been Eloise's first words.) When The Plaza and other important people, is somewhere else, although she has supplied Eloise and Nanny with useful lines of credit. Her mother, who knows Coco Chanel as well as the Owner of Far from a neglected child, Eloise is a gleefully liberated one. With ''Eloise,'' Thompson turns the pathetic ''poor little rich girl'' legend on its ear. As she says, ''Gettingīored is not allowed.'' Eloise's inventiveness is as unbounded as her energy (although she does occasionally sneak a nap in a storeroom). She also gets to help, as a not necessarily welcome volunteer, in the running of the hotel, adjusting thermostats, assisting the busboys and waiters and switchboard operators and generally thrusting herself underfoot. While low on family, she gets to meetĪ lot of new people as she careers through the corridors (as noisily as possible) and gate-crashes weddings and receptions and what appear to be, in Hilary Knight's brilliant illustrations, diplomatic functions.
Girls - and aspiring rotten little girls - have provided me with some new ideas for torturing grown-ups, but she would also, much worse, have given me notions far above my small-town, middle-class station.Įloise (born circa 1949, first published in 1955) is the 6-year-old hellion who lives in the Plaza Hotel, together with her nameless and infinitely patient English nanny, her pug, Weenie, and her turtle, Skipperdee.
Not only would that role model for rotten little Hank God no one ever gave me Kay Thompson's ''Eloise'' when I was a child. Kay Thompson's heroine offers timeless lessons on how to have fun and torture grown-ups.
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