How To Travel Incognito

Embark on a delightfully absurd vacation with the author of the Madeline books and Hotel Splendide as he blunders his way through 1950s France!

“A man of wit, taste and talent, Ludwig Bemelmans has earned a grateful public.” –The New York Times

In this madcap fictionalized memoir, Ludwig Bemelmans blends picaresque fantasy with his trademark sparkling humor to create an enchanting travelogue that armchair travelers everywhere will enjoy!

When Bemelmans meets the dashing but destitute Comte de St. Cucuface on a Paris train, he is swept into a deliciously absurd adventure across postwar France. Under the Count’s tutelage, Bemelmans learns to hoodwink strangers with immaculate manners and effortless charm, adopting the persona of a German prince and joining his new companion on a series of outlandish escapades.

Together, the unlikely pair travel in extravagant style, living lavishly on nothing at all. They dine in grand hotels, schmooze millionaires and outwit restaurateurs, spinning elaborate tales of faded aristocracy and glorious pasts for the brash nouveaux riches eager to believe them.

Brimming with Bemelmans’ quick wit and whimsical black and white illustrations, this beautifully rendered, fictionalized romp from the beloved creator of Madeline captures a France poised between eras, where the old-world elegance of a vanishing class lingers amid the glitter of the new.

A mischievous ode to self-invention and appetite, How to Travel in Incognito is an outlandishly funny how-to guide to holidaying without a first-class ticket, but with ample gumption for a life of deluxe adventure.INTRODUCTION by ROBERT WERNICK
1. In a First-Class Compartment
2. How to Be a Prince
3. Madame l’Ambassadrice
4. The Perfect Marriage
5. The Curé de St. Cucugnan
6. The Château de Plaisir
7. The Postponed Wedding
8. Consuelo
9. Escapade
10. Masquerade
11. The Calendar Man
12. A Good Morning, a Quiet EveningLudwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) was a writer and illustrator. He emigrated from Germany to America in 1914, at the age of sixteen, and initially worked in the New York hotel industry before becoming a full-time cartoonist and writer. As an illustrator, he made frequent contributions to the New Yorker and Town and Country and also worked as a screenwriter for MGM. He published many books for both children and adults, including the beloved Madeline children's books.In the first-class compartment of the train from Blois to Paris, sitting next to the window and facing the direction in which it was going, was an American woman, a tourist, a refugee from a conducted tour of the Châteaux de la Loire. She dismissed the historic safari with the words: “Nothing but thick walls and running comment.” Opposite her and pressed into the corner sat a man in deep sleep. He had pulled the curtain forward and the air was whipping it back and forth. He was tall, and had immense hands which were folded in his lap over the top of a cane. The conductor entered our compartment and punched my ticket and that of the lady tourist; he carefully did not disturb the sleeping passenger and when he left he very quietly closed the door. The man reminded me of a marsh bird such as I had seen in Flanders, for even in his sleep he seemed conscious of the length of his legs, and had stretched one diagonally into the corner, the other was thrown over it and relaxed. He wore elegant and polished boots, but appeared to have no socks on his feet. His suit was the color of a marsh bird’s egg, a dark green speckle on an earth-brown ground, with black lines woven irregularly into the material.

In a land of individuals, he stood out even in his sleep. He was apparently without luggage.

The train was several kilometers out of Blois, when the dining-room steward entered and whispered that he had places left if anyone wished to go to the second sitting. The man in the corner continued peacefully sleeping, the American woman shook her head and suddenly, to my astonishment, burst into tears. She was a nice-looking woman of about forty, as could be seen by the reflection of her face in the window. When I asked her if there was anything I could do she said, “No, thank you.” A moment later, staring at the landscape, she said apologetically: “That always sets me back, the mere mention of food. That’s why I finally left him, all on account of a steak. It just seems that he can’t be happy unless he is making somebody else unhappy. We went to this château and that château; he always wants to do everything in a systematic way like his stamp collection – he cared more for that stamp collection of his than he ever did for me. I tell you, if he knew there was a two-cent stamp lying in Central Park somewhere, he’d grab his hat and run out for it.

“Well, anyway, we stayed overnight in this hotel that was a château. Nothing was the way he liked it, and that poor manager – he’s going to have the manager fired – he always writes letters to the management and tries to have everybody fired. Well, I looked in the mirror yesterday morning and I took the hairpins out of my mouth and I said to myself: ‘I’ve had enough.’ I just packed up and left, and you know, last night I had the first good night’s sleep since I married him. And I bought myself a hat, this hat, the first hat that I bought for myself in fourteen years. I bought it in Blois. And it started to rain, and a man, the nicest man, offered me his umbrella. He spoke English with a cleft palate and complimented me on the new hat. I could hardly understand him but it made me feel real good.” I looked at the telegraph poles slanting past. “I should have known better,” she said. “The day before we got married, he says to me: ‘I like Schrafft’s.’

“So there we are in Schrafft’s and he orders a steak and he tells the lady captain just exactly how he wants it done. I order the chef’s salad. When the steak comes, he looks at it; he sniffs at it like a dog and then he snaps his fingers at the lady captain.

“ ‘I want to see the manager,’ he says, ‘immediately.’

“ ‘Yes, sir.’

“She goes and gets a man. ‘Ready for the complaint,’ he says.

“ ‘Are you the manager here?’ he says.

“ ‘No, I’m the assistant manager.’

“ ‘Then go away and get me the manager of this place.’

“ ‘I’m very sorry, sir, but the manager has just stepped out. Is there something I can do for you?’

“ ‘Stepped out at the peak of business?’

“ ‘Well, to tell you the truth, sir, he has been absent for some time; he is indisposed, sir; he is at home in bed. Is there anything I can do, sir?’

“ ‘Well, yes. You can get me one of those small boxes that you people put your cupcakes into.’

“ ‘Yes, sir.’

“ ‘And then you can bring me some wax paper.’

“ ‘Yes, sir – anything else, sir?’

“ ‘No, that’s all.’

“Well, when the assistant manager brings the stuff to the table, my husband wraps up the steak in the wax paper – and mind you there wasn’t a thing wrong with it – and he says to the poor man:

“ ‘You know what I am going to do now? I’m going to the Hôtel Pierre, to the thirty-second floor, where the owner of this restaurant lives’ – he always seems to know things like that – ‘and I’m going to walk right in and show him this and ask him to explain to me how it is possible that an inedible piece of meat like this is put in front of a customer at Schrafft’s.’

“So the poor man starts to beg:

“ ‘Oh, please sir, don’t do that. Please excuse us, sir. Please let us get you another steak.’

“Well, I couldn’t stand it any longer and I took the box and I told him what I thought of him. He got another steak and ate it, and I moved to another table so that people wouldn’t think I was with him. Well, something just like that happened day before yesterday in Blois, when we went to visit the castle. Thank God, I’ll never have to look at another castle in my life; that’s another thing that makes me feel just dandy.

“You take a castle like Blois, with all those empty rooms you have to walk through. So because he speaks French, we have a French guide who speaks so fast that I only get a word now and then like Renaissance – and ‘Glorious pages of our history,’ which he said every few rooms. Well, we had a longer tour than anybody. Phil – that’s my husband – kept asking a lot of questions. This happened with every door, picture, chimney, and tapestry. So when we’re finally through the castle, the guide says that by the grace of God none of the churches in Blois were destroyed, so we have to visit them. And then, the guide says that religious architecture, interesting as it is, cannot rival the civilian edifices of Blois, and so we have to visit the house of Pierre du Blois, and the Hôtel Sardini. I thought we might get something to eat at the Hôtel Sardini, but I found out that ‘Hôtel’ can mean a private house in France as well as a regular hotel, and from there we go to the house of Robert the Magnificent. As we come out of the last house he says, ‘We have just time to visit the museum’ – so we go to the museum and by that time I am dead on my feet and hungry. The guide knows a good restaurant, he says, and next to this was the place. There were a lot of tourists and a waiter came with a menu, on it is a picture of Brillat-Savarin the Great Gourmet.” She laughed bitterly at this point of her story, and explained, “Phil taught me to appreciate life. The waiter recommended all the specialties of the house: a hot goose-liver paste with raisins, and then a pork sausage cooked in carrot soup. Phil made a face at the goose-liver and the pork sausage, and when the next dish came he got real mad, and called the waiter, and barked at him. But these Frenchmen are not like the people at Schrafft’s. Phil asked for the proprietor. So the chef comes out of the kitchen and makes a terrible row. So Phil says he doesn’t want to talk to the cook, he wants the proprietor, so the chef tells him that he is the proprietor. He called Phil a lot of names, and then ordered him out of the restaurant. He even followed us halfway up the street with quite a crowd following. Phil was stunned; he wouldn’t go to another place, so we just quietly walked home and we had some tea at the hotel. After a while he began to complain. I guess he thought he could take it out on me. Well, I had heard the last complaint I was going to listen to, and for once I yelled right back at him, just like the chef. You should have seen the surprise on his face, when the worm finally turned.”

All during this recital, the man opposite had slept peacefully without changing position. When the train stopped, however, he came to life with great suddenness. I had an old umbrella which got in his way and he stepped on it, breaking the ferrule. He seemed not to have noticed it and was out of the car in a great hurry, running with long, springy steps until he disappeared in the crowd of people heading for the exit.

The lady liberated from the château country and Phil said, “You know where I’m going now? I’m going to the American Express Company – he always hated it – he said it was only for tourists. Well, that’s where I am going. I’ll let them get me a room, and the next ship home, an American ship, I don’t care if I have to travel steerage.”

In many ways Paris is a large village. A week later, I saw her again in the Place de la Concorde. She still wore her liberty hat, but I was introduced to Phil, who, it seems, had traced her through the American Express Company. They were on their way to the Louvre.