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Dea Birkett's Destination of the Month: New York

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Sometimes one small thing can make a holiday. Something that lingers in our family memory and is talked about over, and over, and over again. Madeline is one such small thing. Well, a small person really.

For those few families who haven’t met Madeline yet, she’s a very small girl with a very huge following. She’s the mischievous heroine of Ludwig Bemelmans’ fabulous illustrated books. And, like us, she travels a great deal. Although she’s usually to be found at her French boarding school, 'an old house in Paris, covered with vines,'’ where ‘lived 12 little girls in two straight lines.' My kids know the words off by heart.

But we didn’t realise she’d made it to New York, until we discovered her at the Carlyle hotel, an Upper East Side institution, after we’d wandered in from Central Park looking for an oasis of calm and a familiar cup of tea. The hotel bar, Bemelmans, looked like a traditional old-fashioned joint – too dark carpet, heavy leather banquettes and an Irish bartender, Tommy Rowles, who’s been there for over half a century and served bourbon on the rocks to President Truman. But when we looked carefully at the paintings on the walls, we saw the distinctive diminutive shape of Madeline.

Her maverick author’s life is so crazy that we now tell it to the kids as a bedtime story. Ludwig Benelmans came here to New York from Austria when he was just 16, fleeing after he’d had an argument with a fellow waiter and shot him in the head. He arrived carrying two pistols to fend off hostile Indians. He tried again, disastrously, to become a waiter, losing his job for wearing one yellow and one white shoe. He paid his Carlyle hotel bill (it’s a very fancy place and he had a family with him too) by smothering the walls of the bar with Madeline murals.

We found the subversive author’s character all over them. There’s city bankers in cages with smartly dressed monkeys gawping in at them and rabbits grandly picnicking in Central Park. We discovered that the next day, as every Saturday and Sunday, there’s a special Madeline tea. The staid bar is invaded by babies, with a kids’ buffet of Madeline shaped food and sing-a-long to songs from the Madeline Song Book.

Of course, we’ve done everything else we’re supposed to do in New York, from the major museums to wandering through Central Park. But it’s singing along with Madeline we’ll remember.

Dea Birkett
January 2008