No. 1 Travel Guide

"If the Russian bear and the Wall Street bear behave, and if Abdullah Doe in the Middle East can keep his fez on, 1958 will be the dizziest, busiest merry-go-round in European travel history." Nearly 700,000 voyaging Americans are about to make this breezy prophecy come true. An impressive number of these U.S. tourists will carry a stowaway--Temple Hornaday Fielding. He conies handily packaged in a fact-and opinion-crammed, hard-cover container called Fielding's Travel Guide to Europe, 1958-59 (895 pp.; Sloane; $4.95). Annually revised since its '48 debut, Fielding's Guide has racked up growing sales (the publishers guard actual sales figures like a guilty secret) and established its author as the U.S. tourist's No. 1 travel guide, a modern Baedeker whom more people swear by than at.

The difference between the grand old German guidebook and Fielding is the difference between the portemanteau and the lightweight aluminum suitcase, the wary Culture-Vulture and the fun-loving American Skimmer. Where Baedeker led the reader to every last statue, Fielding is apt to dismiss monuments ("The place is practically crawling with history") in favor of menus. Where Baedeker might discreetly warn of dangers abroad (beware of bedbugs), Fielding's personal, pithy and frank approach would make old Herr Baedeker blush. Is the traveler enticed by a sexy blonde in a continental nightspot? Fielding's warnings: 1) chances are she can't leave the premises before closing time, and 2) even if she can, "she might leave you a souvenir. There's a new strain of gonorrhea so hardy that it eats sulfa and penicillin for breakfast."

Morality Play. Not that Fielding is a prude: "For the most rugged, down-to-bare-facts night life on the continent of Europe--at decent prices and under non-clip conditions, too--Hamburg wins the diamond-studded G-string by 6 bumps and 24 grinds." It is not raw flesh but raw deals that make Fielding's blood boil: "Of all the groups of surly, devious, tip-hungry ruffians we've met in our travels, the Venetian gondoliers take our personal booby prize." Fielding's Guide is fun because he writes a kind of frivolous morality play, pitting good hotels and restaurants against bad, good tourist buys against outrageous swindles, nice national characteristics against naughty ones.

A onetime psychology major at Princeton, Fielding cannot resist skim-deep analyses of national temperaments. The Spanish are sweet and mannerly but also stubborn and ornery. The Danes, far from being melancholy, are "the Bob Hopes of Europe." The French, they are a funny race, according to Fielding, with a schizophrenic "conflict between generosity and niggardliness, idealism and cynicism, fieriness and apathy, gaiety and shrewdness." Fielding can be rough on Americans, too. He lashes out at "hog-mannered U.S. drugstore-cowboys," warns U.S. matrons with chassis by Hokinson: "Don't take slacks or shorts, unless you have a figure like Gypsy Rose Lee's. On fat or plump women, Europeans hate 'em!"

Americans in Season. The Guide is chockablock with practical pointers ranging from Tourist Tummy remedies to discreet advice on how to hornswoggle customs officials. Some items are invaluable because previous travel writers found them unmentionable. What-to-pack sample: "One roll of good toilet paper, squashed flat. Most foreign paper is unlike anything you've ever seen before--or care to again." One Guide item that could stand unstreamlining is the hieroglyphically abbreviated "Tips on Highspots" thart. Sample: "Venice, *3$CLX." After bobbing back and forth to the footnotes, the reader finds the symbols to mean: especially recommended, costs comparatively high, stay at least three days, outstanding cultural interest, local color, Americans swarm in season.

How does the Guide itself rate? It might be put this way: *-c-cRDHJ. Translation: especially recommended, costs comparatively low for value received, cultural interests incidental or just plain nil, routine on places off the beaten tourist track but remarkably dependable on top-flight hotels and restaurants, especially hospitable to Americans, outstanding joie de vivre.

Only joie de vivre--plus a slightly patronizing conception of himself as a one-man rackets squad protecting the gullible American tourist--could keep urbane, 44-year-old Temp Fielding on his plush but grueling self-appointed round. Says Fielding: "All I want is a decent shake for the good-natured, well-meaning American traveler." (The Fieldings' solicitude for the Joneses goes quite a way back, for Temp's remote ancestor was 18th century Novelist Henry Fielding, author of Tom Jones.)

Temp Fielding and his trim, Massachusetts-born wife Nancy do all of what she calls "the leg and tummy work." To update the Guide annually. Temp and Nancy prowl the face of Europe during six off-season months (October through March), visit or revisit some 300 hotels, 350 restaurants and 150 nightclubs. In line of duty, Fielding has acquired a bad liver, relies increasingly on his wife's palate in the gourmet department. Says she: "Temp sends me home when my zippers won't close."

Sensitive Eggs. At hotels Fielding's passport gives away his identity, but at restaurants, he often makes reservations in another name, samples the house specialty or eggs Benedict ("a sensitive indicator") and jots under-the-table notes. His imperious recommendations or condemnations make headwaiters quake. Last year's Guide restored Paris' famed Tour d'Argent restaurant to the recommended list after five years of demerits. Says Restaurateur Claude Terrail: "We didn't feel any great increase in business, but we breathed a sigh of relief. This comes as somewhat of an Oscar."

The manager of Paris' George V Hotel, a longtime holder of Fielding's Mickey Finn award ("a poor value for the money"), calls Fielding "biased and pretentious," pooh-poohs the Guide's influence. But that is a minority view. Officials in Denmark once attributed 60% of its tourist trade to Fielding's rave notices.

A Rome shop once dangled $10,000 in bait for a recommendation. But everyone agrees that Temp Fielding is incorruptible. He has been slapped with some 21 libel suits, lost only one, for $3,800 on a $1,500,000 case (he had said a taxi company was constituted by "the biggest crooks and racketeers in Europe"). Temp insists that, unlike some freeloading travel writers, he picks up his own tabs. This is feasible partly because the Guide has spawned several lucrative offspring, e.g., Fielding's Currency Guide, The Temple Fieldings' Selective Shopping Guide, a syndicated Sunday column (23 newspapers), and the recently launched Epicure Club, designed to get VIP treatment for card-carrying Fieldingites.

Home base for the Fieldings these days is a seaside villa in Majorca (2HJLX). There, "behind the palmetto curtain," Temp will soon retreat for his annual 100,000-word revision chores on next year's Guide, a year that may be even dizzier and busier on the European travel-go-round--if the Russian bear, the Wall Street bear and Abdullah Doe will only be guided by Temple Hornaday Fielding.

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