CLARISSA CHURCHILL EDEN

Lineage: Born June 28, 1920, third child, only daughter of Major John Strange Spencer-Churchill, Winston's younger brother. Father won a D.S.O. in the Boer War, died in 1947; mother, an Edwardian beauty, died in 1941. "True blue-blood," descended on her father's side from John Churchill, first Duke to Marlborough (1650-1722); on her mother's from the Earls of Abingdon (the present eighth earl is Clarissa's cousin).

Childhood & Education: Precociously intelligent, and a listener-in almost since cradle days to political talk, Clarissa has early memories of Uncle Winnie building brick walls at Chartwell. "He was always in overalls," she says. "He liked to talk at long, long dinners." Packed off to boarding school at 14, sent to Paris for "finishing," went to Oxford to read philosophy. Introduced to London society in 1938, unofficially named "most beautiful debutante of the year."

Social Position: Managed to make her mark in the circles in which she wandered, always a little frail and aloof, making herself liked by the people she wanted to be liked by, and often unpopular with the rest. Friend of writers and critics like Cyril (Enemies of Promise) Connolly and Peter Quennell, able to talk to them in their own jargon, yet without convincing anyone of her profundity. As flip, smartly turned out professional journalist, got to know Orson Welles, Greta Garbo, Cecil Beaton (who lent her a cottage on his Wiltshire grounds). Although needing no introduction to high society, she was befriended by the Duff Coopers, Lord David Cecil and Lord Salisbury, good friend of Eden.

Physical Appearance: Five feet seven, weighing about 112 Ibs., has a willowy, finely boned handsomeness, like the echo of a Burne-Jones painting.

Career: Not rich, left with an income of about -L-200 ($560) a year, Clarissa worked in the wartime Ministry of Information on Britansky Soyuznik, an English-language propaganda newspaper edited in London and published in Russia. Later switched to the Foreign Office. Postwar jobs: feature editor (books, art, travel) of the London edition of Vogue; publicity woman at -L-1,000 a year (a good salary for a woman in Britain) for Moviemaker Sir Alexander Korda.

Personality: Quick, remote, dilettanteish, easily bored and chronically unpunctual. Has the clipped, chilled voice of many girls of her class. Says one friend: "She constantly surprised you--often she was very businesslike; at other times, she seemed to be wandering through life like a beautiful dream." Designs her own dresses but has them made up by a "little woman around the corner," loves rose gardening (as does Eden), but dislikes sport, refuses to cook or keep house. "A person of decided views and individual tastes," said an Oxford don who knows her well. "Always a firsthand person." Women are apt to be reserved if not openly critical of her. Men, though, find her charming; she has had more than her share of suitors, but took none seriously until Eden.

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