Eleanor Roosevelt, tireless globetrotter, was the guest who mattered in England last week. "She is welcome not only for the great name she bears," observed the London News Chronicle, speaking for a great many people, "but for her own endearing qualities of heart and mind."

She spent her first weekend at Windsor Castle with the royal family. In London she shook 300 hands at a daytime reception (she wore a black hat, scattered with daisies), dined with the U.S. Ambassador, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister. She went to Covent Garden (in a black lace dress) to hear La Traviata, and got a thundering ovation as she entered the royal box. She visited the House of Lords, was entertained by the Lord Chancellor, had tea with the Prime Minister. Once as she was entering a London hotel all the men in the crowd outside respectfully took off their hats.

The morning she achieved the purpose of her visit was warm and golden with spring sunshine. In budding Grosvenor Square, in her black dress and coat among the pastel dresses of royalty, she walked with George VI to the towering bronze statue of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and pulled down the Union Jack that had veiled it. It was the third anniversary of her husband's death.

"We must ascribe to her the marvelous fact," said one of the speakers, Winston Churchill, "that a crippled man, victim of a cruel affliction, was able for more than ten years to ride the storms of peace and war at the summit of the U.S. The debt we owe to President Roosevelt is owed also to her."

In the London Times appeared a tribute to the late President by Poet Laureate John Masefield:

Honor this man, so stricken in his prime, So shattered in his life's most kindling years,

That, had his spirit not been strong as

Time,

He could have won no tribute more

than tears.

Honor a dauntless soul and golden voice;

None sweeter ever spoke in Christian

lands.

Through him, the horror passed, and we

rejoice,

Our countries are released, and Freedom

stands.

The Literary Life

Edgar Rice Burroughs, biographer of Tarzan, drove his Buick convertible out of the driveway of his home in Tarzana, Calif., was thereupon struck by another Buick convertible which had just been struck by yet another Buick convertible. The autos were injured; 72-year-old Burroughs was not scratched.

In Paris, Sacha Guitry, 63, had a slight collision. A court assessed the famed Jack-of-all-theatrics and a friend 700,000 francs (about $2,300) for causing "grave prejudice" to the Goncourt Academy. Each year the academy hands some novelist a Goncourt Prize, but Guitry and the academy have been on the outs. So this year Guitry awarded his own "Goncourt Prize" to a novel of his own choice. The book was labeled Prix Goncourt in big letters, and Le Goncourt Hors de Goncourt in little ones.

Also fined was Britain's bearded Philosopher C. E. M. Joad, who had twice failed to appear in court to answer a charge of having ridden on a train without paying his fare (from Waterloo to Salisbury, 83 1/2 miles). In London, he was finally found guilty and soaked a maximum 40 shillings ($8), plus court costs of 25 guineas ($106).

Eugene O'Neill got a soaking in London too. The Times Literary Supplement seized the occasion of The Iceman Cometh's publication there to beat him black & blue. The characters in his plays were described as generally "ineffectual egotists," his philosophy was "jejune," Strange Interlude "badly bungled," Beyond the Horizon's leading man "a peevish Hamlet who whines and snivels," and the O'Neill dramaturgy generally "the sort of stuff that might be written by an earnest sophomore."

In Philadelphia, James T. Farrell resented the fact that his dogged Studs Lonigan novels were among the books seized by police-department moralists (TIME, April 5). He and his publisher sued three department officials for illegal seizure, figured the damage done him was about $100,000 worth.

The Strenuous Life

Robbed: Mae West. Somebody got into her dressing room at London's Prince of Wales theater (where she is packing them in with Diamond Lil), and made off with $16,000 worth of diamond jewelry.

Robbed: Archbishop Francis Patrick Keough of Baltimore. Out of his house vanished some $1,250 worth of silverware which had belonged to the late James Cardinal Gibbons and bore the Cardinal's coat of arms and initials. Presently police found the swag in a bushel basket in a church, and a chauffeur pleaded guilty.

Robbed: Hirohito & family. Somebody got into the palace grounds and made away with 15 white Leghorns that had been protegees of the Empress herself.

Hearts & Thistles

Actress Margaret Sullavan (The Voice of the Turtle) sued Agent Leland Hayward for divorce after nearly twelve years, three children.

Walter WincheH's son-in-law, Bostonian William Lawless, son of a retired streetcar motorman, had his marriage to daughter Waldo annulled after nearly three years of no-marriage.

Comedian Danny Kaye and Writer Wife Sylvia, who started trying a trial separation last fall, stopped trying and rejoined each other. (She had kept on writing his comedy routines through it all.)

Actress Gene Tierney and Designer Oleg Cassini, separated more than a year, got back together. (He had kept on designing her dresses through thick & thin.)

In Washington, 67-year-old Senator Charles W. Tobey of New Hampshire announced his engagement to Mrs. Loretta C. Rabenhorst, fiftyish, who used to teach school but lately has clerked in the Senator's hotel. She was divorced two years ago; his wife died last August. "It was a whirlwind romance," said the bride-to-be, who described the balding chairman of the Senate Banking and Currency Committee as "a very romantic person." Mrs. Rabenhorst, who dabbles in poetry, let the press have some:

Snow came down in April,

Blowing willy-nilly,

Made the startled robin

Seem positively silly.

Royal Families

Ex-King Michael of Rumania and his mother, Queen Helen, flew to London, after a month in the U.S., said they were not sure where they were going next. Michael on Americans: "You kind of see freedom coming out all over them."

Michael's father-in-law-to-be, Prince Rene of Bourbon-Parma, fell down stairs in Copenhagen and broke his leg.

Princess Margaret* had a busy week among the gossipists. First they had her about to be engaged to Prince George of Denmark, 28-year-old military attache at the Danish Embassy. (He flatly denied it.) Two days later the Sunday Pictorial declared that the No. 1 man in the picture was really the 30-year-old Earl of Derby, "Britain's most eligible bachelor."

The Duke & Duchess of Windsor finally had a U.S. summer home all to themselves--a French provincial-chateau-style affair in Locust Valley, L.I., right next to a golf course. They sublet it for two months. Up from the South, they moved in, then packed their bags for a week in Washington and a houseparty with Railroader Robert R. Young at White Sulphur Springs, W.Va.

* According to the list of royal preferences sent to Australia in anticipation of the royal visit in 1949: Princess Margaret strongly objects to being called Princess Margaret Rose, the name by which she was known as a child.

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