Knight, at 90, was very much alive and active - more so than many half his age - and after the homework of watching a 2015 Matt Wolf documentary about him with my delighted daughter (who had herself dog-eared the “Eloise” books in grade school), I asked if he would give me a personal tour of both exhibitions. Thompson died in 1998, but I knew that Mr. Piggle-Wiggle,” “I Hate to Cook Book” and many other midcentury favorites) and had a “rawther” complicated relationship with the writer who gave voice to the character: an eccentric dynamo named Kay Thompson. Knight illustrated the “Eloise” books (along with “Mrs. Then I remembered that the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where I’ve been intermittently conducting research for a biography of the actress Elaine Stritch, had in its lobby posters and other intriguing items crafted by Hilary Knight. So when the Books desk asked me to review an exhibition on “Eloise” that was opening at the New-York Historical Society, I “skibbled” at the chance. At a time when New York was somewhat down in the dumps, Eloise made it seem highly desirable to be “a city child.” That she lived at the Plaza Hotel, a place I associated with tourists and an old Walter Matthau movie (then in grainy reruns on Channel 9), mattered not at all. I am a native Manhattanite, therefore Eloise was a particular heroine of mine growing up.
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