THE living room of Laurent de Brunhoff’s Upper East Side apartment is utterly monochromatic. There is a graphite velvet couch and a couple of Art Deco chairs from Lewis Mittman, but there’s nothing bright or colorful. It’s not exactly what you’d expect of a man who has written and illustrated more than 40 children’s books over the last 65 years. But that, according to his wife, Phyllis Rose, was precisely the point.
What I Love | Laurent de Brunhoff and Phyllis Rose
Babar and His Boswells
Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
JUNGLE BOOKS Laurent de Brunhoff, the author and illustrator of many “Babar” books, at home in Manhattan with his wife and collaborator, Phyllis Rose. Ever since an apartment swap with neighbors in the building, they have lived and worked on one floor.
By JACOB BERNSTEIN
Published: November 29, 2012
Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
The living room of Laurent de Brunhoff’s apartment is utterly monochromatic, not exactly what you’d expect of a man who has written and illustrated more than 40 children’s books.
Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
Mr. de Brunhoff, in his studio, is currently completing what he guesses is his 49th book, “Babar on Paradise Island.”
Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times
Their library holds Babar books and lots and lots of critical theory.
“We wanted to walk in and have it be calm,” Ms. Rose said. “He’s such a colorist he didn’t want any color in his living space.”
Mr. de Brunhoff’s story, in case you are unfamiliar with it, goes like this: When he was a boy in Paris, his mother began telling him and his younger brother, Mathieu, a bedtime story about an elephant named Babar who flees a hunter in Africa and goes traveling around the world, before returning and becoming the King of the Jungle.
“We loved it,” recalled Mr. de Brunhoff, 87. “And my father, Jean, who was a painter, was taken by the idea of doing some illustrations.”
The illustrations turned into a book, the book turned into a series, and translations turned it into practically the most popular French cultural export besides the Chanel jacket. (It celebrated its 80th anniversary in Paris this year with shows at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs and the Bibliothèque Nationale.)
Then, at the tender age of 21 (nine years after his father died of tuberculosis), Mr. de Brunhoff picked up the torch with his first book, “Babar’s Cousin: That Rascal Arthur.” He is currently completing what he guesses is his 49th book, “Babar on Paradise Island.”
Mr. de Brunhoff was actually a late transplant to New York. In 1985, living in France and married to another woman, he discovered Ms. Rose at a Paris dinner party.
“I was sitting next to a very funny man,” Ms. Rose said, “and he had me laughing and laughing. And Laurent, sitting at the other end of the table, loved my laugh. So we sat together after dinner and I said something like, ‘I hope you don’t mind if I tell you how much I love your work.’ And he said: ‘I don’t know your work. I hope you don’t mind if I tell you how much I love your eyes.’”
In short order, Ms. Rose took Mr. de Brunhoff back to the United States, living with him at Wesleyan University, where she was a professor of English. In 1990, when his divorce was finalized, they married, and expanded their real estate holdings with a home in New York. In 1996, they bought in Key West.
At first, the couple looked in downtown Manhattan, where Ms. Rose felt more at home, but they never found the right apartment.
After finally settling on an apartment building at Lexington Avenue and 82nd Street, Mr. de Brunhoff and Ms. Rose came to the conclusion that they’d made a good choice. For one, he loved how quiet it was on the back side of the building. For another, said his wife, “you don’t feel so old on the Upper East Side because you aren’t surrounded by the young and the beautiful.”
For a while, Mr. de Brunhoff shuttled between the second floor (where they lived) and the seventh floor (where he had his studio).
But as Ms. Rose became more and more involved with the Babar series, dreaming up ideas and helping to write the text, they decided it made more sense to consolidate.
So Ms. Rose approached their neighbors on the second floor about a swap.
The neighbors would get the seventh-floor apartment, which had city views, and Mr. de Brunhoff and Ms. Rose could expand downstairs.
The downside, of course, was cost and time. “We had a lot of work to do on this side, because it was derelict,” Mr. de Brunhoff said, standing in his studio.
For instance they added a library, which holds the Babar books and lots and lots of critical theory. In a new, larger kitchen, the couple put teak panels on the refrigerator and redid the floors in cork, which they liked because it’s warm. The style was meant to be minimalist, and apparently they succeeded. “It was so minimalist,” Ms. Rose said, “that the architect forgot to put drawers in.” (They are there now.)“Renovations are a lot like childbirth,” she said. “They’re always frustrating and then when it’s over, you forget what it was like.”
