Paris, Texas
Once upon a recent time, a plucky girl named Madeline traveled to the Lone Star State, bringing along her eleven mates. They saw all the sights, up hill and down dale, had thrilling adventures—and thereby hangs this tale.
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Madeline and her companions drive around in a Texas-size convertible, ride horses, survive a stampede, and eat chili out on the range. Not only are Madeline’s Texas roots revealed, but we also learn her last name, Fogg—which was chosen, Marciano says, because it was easy to rhyme with. The text is made up of characteristically winsome couplets such as “Yippiyay! We’re just in time to usher/ In a million barrel gusher.” During the 1955 holiday season, the story, with its dose of Texas bravado, was serialized in Neiman Marcus ads in Houston and Dallas papers, accompanied by pen-and-ink drawings by Bemelmans. In the store there were Madeline windows and merchandise tie-ins. “We sold Madeline’s hat and Madeline’s coat,” says Marcus, remembering the orchestrated synergy. “We managed to sell books and clothes at the same time.” The text and the sketches were bound into a small book that was given away to customers.
Madeline’s Texas adventure was later published in Good Housekeeping without the references to Neiman Marcus. Marciano, who discovered a slew of sketches and dummy books among his grandfather’s possessions, believes Bemelmans was planning a whole book about her Lone Star State escapade but never got around to publishing it.
A few years ago Marciano was working in computer graphics and trying to think of a way to get some of his grandfather’s lesser-known books back in circulation. “He did dozens of other picture books that did well at the time, but none had the lasting impact that Madeline did,” he says. When Marciano found the Texas material, he decided to use it as an opener for two other Bemelmans stories: “The Count and the Cobbler,” about a baby who engineers a happy Christmas for his poor family, and “Sunshine,” which is based on a treatment Bemelmans wrote for a Frank Sinatra movie about a music teacher who staves off a greedy landlord who wants to evict her on Christmas Eve. (The movie was never made.) The two stories, along with a short memoir by Bemelmans’ daughter, Barbara, are the “Other Holiday Tales” of the new book’s title.
An abridged version of the book, called Madeline in Texas, is being sold exclusively through the store that started it all. In the foreword, Stanley Marcus writes that he is earmarking the dividends of one share of Neiman Marcus stock for a Madeline college scholarship fund “because I love Madeline and the memory of my friend Ludwig Bemelmans.…It will be a constant reminder of Madeline and her curiosity.” The scholarship, which will be available only to students at Dallas’ Hockaday School, is for study in the U.S., France, or England.
The illustrations for the Texas story were drawings in pencil or pen-and-ink, so Marciano realized that new pictures would have to be done for the book. Bravely, he decided to step into his grandfather’s shoes. “It was incredibly daunting,” he says. “I’m still worried whether I did him justice.” Marciano began his task by going through all the Madeline books and copying his grandfather’s work. “It was just an exercise,” he says. “When I began the real illustrations, I closed the books.” He also took his own Texas tour, accumulating trinkets and postcards of the major landmarks—such as the Alamo, the state capitol, and the Texas Star Ferris wheel, all of which make an appearance in the book. It helped as well that he was in the process of writing another book, Bemelmans: The Life and Art of Madeline’s Creator (Viking), which is also being released this month. The final section documents how his grandfather put a Madeline book together. “Doing that really helped give me insight,” Marciano says. “He had hundreds of working sketches for each book.”
Most of the illustrations for the Texas story are based on original Bemelmans sketches. “The gestures are very much my grandfather’s,” says Marciano, whose full-color drawings are clever enough to approximate the real thing. Bemelmans, however, once said that a drawing should “sit on paper as if you smacked a spoon of whipped cream on a plate.…It has to be instantaneous, a flash.” Unfortunately, Marciano’s illustrations don’t have this brilliantly haphazard quality. They seem a bit belabored; the lines don’t sing. But that shouldn’t ruin the fun for Madeline fans, especially Madeline fans in Texas, and anyway, the new setting discourages direct comparisons.
As for the text, Marciano cobbled it together from drafts and notes that his grandfather left. “We stuck to his text as much as we could,” he says. “We did have to cut some.” For instance, Marciano eliminated a section in which store detectives use their guns, believing it to be not quite appropriate today. The legendary Texas Rangers still make it into the book, however, and with Genevieve’s help, save the day. As the story says, “In Texas, when anyone’s in danger/You call upon the Texas Ranger.”
By the end of the tale, it’s clear that any symmetry I imagined with Madeline was just an illusion. After all, she’s an heiress now, and the charms of the state aren’t enough to keep her here. Nevertheless, I’ve had an enchanting visit with an old friend, and I’m sure that the images of twelve little girls on horseback in two straight lines will resonate with my small Texans—with any small Texans, for that matter—the way Madeline in Paris has always resonated with me.
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