Cuckoo!

HOW TO TRAVEL INCOGNITO (244 pp.) -- Ludwig Bemelmans -- Little, Brown ($3).

Some authors try to make each new book as different as possible from the one before. Author Ludwig Bemelmans works passionately in the opposite direction: he has grown prosperous and popular by writing the same book over & over again. It was gay and lively stuff 15 years ago when it was appearing in Story and The New Yorker; it still seems gay and lively today.

Push, Don't Pay. What gives the changeless Bemelmans world its hard-wearing longevity is that it belongs neither to pure fact nor pure fiction. Its borders extend to Palm Beach and Hollywood, but its heartland is Europe--not the Europe of Gide or Aneurin Bevan, but a continent whose inhabitants behave as if Strauss operettas and books by Bemelmans were their sole guides to everyday life. In Bemelmans' Europe, all is eternally prewar, in mood if not in time: the Rolls-Royces glide forever down the poplar-lined avenues to the magic chateaux of mysterious princesses: the penniless dukes and counts sponge delicately on the newly rich; back of every exquisite dinner stands a temperamental chef with handlebar mustaches. It has been Bemelmans' art to convince his U.S. public not only that such a dream world exists, but that Bemelmans himself carries the skeleton key to its secret closets.

In How to Travel Incognito, Bemelmans adopts the cognomen of Ludwig, Prince of Bavaria. The title is pressed on him by his good friend, the Comte de St. Cucuface. "You must take full advantage of your title," Cucuface tells Prince Bemelmans. "You are now no longer a tourist to be pushed about. You are the one to do the pushing. You will give bad tips and be better served than anyone else. You must not pay your bills and shopkeepers will swear that you are indeed a real prince."

And Nod to Rita. Prince and Cucuface set off on a cheerful pilgrim's progress from Paris to the Riviera. Their delicate palates and foxy noses are proof against phony vintage wines; their false humility endears them to the wealthy, and their aristocratic hauteur terrifies the bandits who lurk in ambush about their tables, i.e., "doorman, door-opener, coat-hander, coat-taker, inside-door opener, up-the-stairs-pointer, director, headwaiter, assistant headwaiter . . . captain, waiter and bus boy." Lounging on luxurious hotel terraces, they nod to "Ali, Rita and Schiaparelli"; sunk in sofas "soft as a mudbath," they regale each other with romantic anecdotes of beautiful American heiresses, great dukes and greater maharajahs, heartbroken countesses and billionaires with huge cigars.

Prince Ludwig's account of his travels is not exactly a realistic portrait of contemporary Europe. It is Bemelmans at his old trick of exposing and glamorizing his dream continent simultaneously.

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