Modern Living: A Guide to Temple Fielding

(10 of 10)

Says Correspondent Scott: "There is lots of cheek kissing. Temp is master of the toast, and he gives them in rapid-fire succession. Each new fill of the wine glasses, which are enormous crystal ballons of the sort normally seen only at the swankiest restaurants, brings an invocation of 'Hei, hei,' a friendly salutation which Fielding has borrowed from the hard-drinking Finns. Old anecdotes are dredged up and embellished until they sink again—about the day that Prince Albert and Princess Paola of Belgium visited the villa for skeet shooting and the time that a U.S. Navy admiral suddenly and inexplicably vanished in the middle of a Fielding party. It turned out that he had fallen from the rock garden, broken a leg, and painfully dragged himself half a mile to his waiting barge."

Like a sort of unheroic Hemingway, Fielding has created a charmed circle and a cult. It involves rituals about food, drink and living in which everything has to be just so. It divides the world into good guys and bad—or, as Fielding has it, "givers" and "takers." His friends must all be givers—although as soon as they become his friends, they must learn to take as well, since he loves to shower them with thoughtful gifts: a favorite delicacy, a dozen fine Majorcan handkerchiefs embroidered with their signatures, a monogrammed cigarette lighter. For a grown man, he is wildly sentimental; every reunion is a ceremonial occasion, every farewell a moment of mourning. In between, there are Temple's affectionate letters, punctuated, illustrated and signed with drawings of himself feeling stupid, say, or disgusted, or raffish. Thus:

Some people find all this hard to take. But most of Fielding's readers, who sense this atmosphere in the Guide, seem to like it because it gives them a feeling of clubbiness. Sophisticated travelers—or those who would like to seem sophisticated—would rather be caught in the Lido nightclub in Paris than be seen carrying Fielding's Guide (some leave it in the hotel room or carry it with a plain brown wrapper). As American tourists become more experienced, as travel becomes ever more natural and casual, Fielding will have to change or lose his popularity. But right now there seems to be no shortage of neophytes, for whom the Guide is essentially written. Long after the theme has ceased to pervade American literature, Fielding maintains it in his pages: the theme of American innocence abroad. Fielding himself remains an innocent.

In Brussels, L'Epaule de Mouton regularly lists Orange Sabayon Fielding on its menu, and in Madrid, Horcher's serves chicken salad a la Temple Fielding. He has been decorated three times by the Spanish government, belongs to a royal order in Sweden, and is an honorary citizen of Amsterdam. Yet Fielding is still the cartoon image of the American supertourist—relentlessly energetic about travel but worried about getting gypped, wary of being misdirected or slighted, and rather homesick for America. So last week, when the Italian government notified Fielding that it had awarded him the Grand Cross of the Ordina al Merito della Repubblica, and wanted to decorate him on June 11 in Barcelona, it was in character for Temple Fielding to send regrets. He will be too busy on June 11—getting together with the givers of his college days at his 30th Princeton reunion.