Daughter of a Cuban marqués, she wrote a book of gourmet recipes for babies.
Elena de Apezteguía Gildersleeve (1882-1954)
In 1937, Elena Gildersleeve published Baby Epicure, a cookbook of inventive recipes filled with international flavors. Her aim, she wrote, was to “make every child critical and particular about its food and capable of enjoying a sane and varied diet.”
In the book, Elena reflected on her culinary education, learning French cooking from housekeepers, Cuban cuisine from her godmother, and New England dishes from her mother. She also exhorted her readers to serve new dishes “as a matter of course” to encourage “cosmopolitan taste” in their children. She suggested babies feast on freshly squeeze juice, meringue of fish and souffles, cold roast beef in aspic, chicken pudding, and freshly baked whole-grain bread.
In his review for the Associated Press, John Selby called it “a book of attractive-sounding recipes, each group preceded by a brief statement of its value and place in child-feeding. Hints are scattered in between, some gently humorous, many very helpful.” The 60-page, illustrated cookbook was a success; copies today sell for up to $150.
Elena was born in San Sebastian, in northern Spain, on September 5, 1882. Her mother, Helen Seagrave Vincent, was the daughter of Rev. Marvin R. Vincent, minister of the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant on East 42nd Street in Manhattan and author of Word Series in the New Testament.
Elena’s father, Julio José de Apezteguía y Tarafa, a nobleman born in Trinidad, Cuba, was an engineer and conservative politician. The two met in New York City, where Julio’s business, Constancia Sugar Company, was headquartered.
The couple took Elena and her siblings—Emilia, Mónica, Hilda Catalina, and Julio José Junior—on annual visits to their sugar plantation in Cienfuegos, Cuba. When revolutionaries surrounded it in 1898, Helen and the children fled to Madrid, leaving Julio to sort out his business interests. Helen contracted pneumonia and died shortly after her arrival, at age 40. Elena and her siblings chose to become American citizens, opting out of their father’s Cuban title (the marqués de Apezteguía).
In 1905, at age 23, Elena married John Izard Middleton, who was an oculist, a Princeton University graduate, and a descendant of Arthur Middleton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Elena and John had a son, John Izard Middleton Jr. They divorced and both remarried.
In 1915, at age 33, she married Raleigh Colston Gildersleeve, an architect who later got into the rail business in New York. He designed McCosh Hall (1905-1907), the Upper and Lower Pyne dormitories, and several of Princeton’s eating clubs (the Cap and Gown, the Campus, and the Elm). Lower Pyne was converted into shops in 1950, and Upper Pyne was demolished in 1963. He also designed Connecticut’s Ridgefield Library (1903) and remodeled 12 East 53rd Street in Manhattan for Walter G. Oakman, chairman of the board of the Guaranty Trust Co.
Elena and Raleigh married on April 29, 1915, in Marble Collegiate Church in Manhattan. Their first home was in Cedarhurst, Long Island, and later they moved to Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue.
Elena died on July 16, 1954, 10 years after Raleigh. She was buried in his family’s plot in the cemetery at the University of Virginia, where her father-in-law was a classics professor.
Elena’s son, John Middleton, created a fund in The Trust to memorialize her.