Worldly Goods

Lord Rothschild was having trouble giving away Rushbrooke Hall, the family home near Bury St. Edmunds, England. Two neighborhood councils had already turned down the gift of the 60-room mansion, which has 365 windows in need of washing, would require one ton of coal daily to be heated properly for a school or hospital.

Former Vice President John Nance Garner had no time for dawdling on his 81st birthday in Uvalde, Texas. He spent the day shelling pecans gathered from his own grove, figured the work would net him around $1.50.

In Manhattan, Playwright-Author Robert Sherwood (Idiot's Delight, Roosevelt and Hopkins) drew the top price--$600--at a charity auction sale of amateur art. His oil painting, Lion Couchant and Worried, was bought by his wife. Path of Investigation, an item whipped up for the occasion by White House Aide Harry H. Vaughan, went for $75.

Women at Work

Sharman Douglas, 21-year-old daughter of the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James's, and close friend of Princess Margaret, has just finished a secretarial course at a Kensington business college, is a speedy, accurate typist, and can take dictation at 120 words a minute, an official press release from the U.S. embassy in London announced.

Kathleen Winsor, whose sensational pen has been quiet since it scratched out her sexy, best-selling Forever Amber in 1944, has switched from plumed-hat romantics to life in the modern world, her publishers said. The second Winsor novel, due in

April 1950, is a story about a successful young woman novelist.

The women of Hollywood continued to talk back to Lady Astor, who recently criticized "this modern striptease age." Said Dorothy Lamour: "A pretty girl tastefully posed in a scanty costume is a thing of beauty. It is even a sort of cultural achievement. Why, I donated several of my sarongs to museums who said they wanted them to add to the cultural level of their community." Virginia Mayo agreed: "We admire beautiful sculpture or the sight of a splendid tree. I think a striking presentation of the body hurts no one."

Words & Music

Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt got around to the opening of the Metropolitan Opera (see Music) even though it meant her first public appearance in a wheelchair. When 30 photographers swooped down on her and let go with flashbulbs, she brandished her cane and cried: "I ought to take this to you." Carleton Smith, director of the National Arts Foundation, who escorted Mrs. Vanderbilt to the opening, said she had decided to attend only after he told her that Queen Mary, who recently gave him an audience in England, had remarked sadly that "so few were left to uphold tradition."

All but about 15% of Franklin D. Roosevelt's papers will be made available to researchers next March, U.S. Archivist

Wayne C. Grover announced. Sealed for another 25 years: papers that might embarrass the living, or prejudice U.S. relations with friendly foreign powers.

In honor of Scientist Dr. Hidelci Yukawa, Nobel Prizewinner in physics who is now teaching at Columbia University, Emperor Hirohito whittled out a bit of Japanese verse: / am very pleased to see The news in this morning's paper.

Dr. Yukawa Has received the Nobel Prize.

Thorns & Roses Vice President Alben Berkley celebrated his 72nd birthday while honeymooning in Sea Island, Ga. To well-wishers who phoned, the hotel desk clerk said that Barkley had left a message: "Barring the untimely death of the President or a declaration of war, not to be contacted, much less disturbed." Craig Rice, 41, popular whodunit writ er (Home Sweet Homicide), was committed as a chronic alcoholic to Camarillo State Hospital in California.

Friends of Winston Churchill, on the eve of his 75th birthday, recalled a recent Churchillism on the subject of old age: "I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." In the first issue of the Italian magazine Insieme (Together), which the publishers had promised would stress "the exaltation of family life," Co-Editor Countess Edda Ciano wrote unashamedly that she had been born out of wedlock to Benito Mus solini and Rachele Guidi, who was later his wife. "For many years, unaware of being a bastard, I was happy," she wrote.

"I was born of a long diet of salad and love . . . The fact that [my parents] had not married before a mayor or priest did not bother them."

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