The week brought a high concentration of notable high-number birthdays. In Bonn, West Germany's Chancellor Konrad Adenauer turned 84, talked and looked 20 years younger. In his Palais Schaumburg office, der Alte got congratulations and gifts, sipped German wine and, as one admiring newsman neatly put it, stood through four hours of the celebration "straight as the No. 1." In Washington, both sides of the House of Representatives gushingly vied to pay tribute to Speaker Sam Rayburn, turning 78 and rolling into his 47th year in Congress, his 15th as Speaker. Before taking the annual flattery with a practiced shrug, Mr. Sam observed: "I've never been sick in my life. I never did feel bad. I feel good now. If I keep feeling like I do, I guess I'll stay around a long time." Down on his North Carolina farm. Poet Carl Sandburg turned 82, allowed that he is hard at work on some stories, more poetry and a second volume of his autobiography. At his home in the English village of Fordingbridge, famed Sculptor-Painter Augustus John, looking slightly like a Dickensian rascal, contentedly chomped a cigar on his 82nd birthday, had great expectations of celebrating many more.

The New York Couture Group announced the supreme fashion leaders in its annual international poll to uncover the world's best-dressed women. Among the past year's chosen few: Britain's Princess Alexandra, Nicole Alphand (wife of France's ambassador to the U.S.), Manhattan Social Lioness Peggy Bancroft, Elizinha Moreira Salles (wife of Brazil's ambassador to the U.S.), Monaco's Princess Grace, Paris-Palm Beach Hostess Gloria Guinness, Cinemactresses Audrey Hepburn and Merle Oberon. Four other ladies rustled their way into permanent niches in the stratospheric Fashion Hall of Fame in recognition of their "faultless taste in dress without ostentation or extravagance." The quartet with tenure, who will no longer have to fret about crashing the list: Rome's Countess Consuelo Crespi, Detroit's Mrs. Henry Ford II, Manhattan-Palm Beach Socialite Mrs. Winston Guest, Manhattan's Mrs. William Randolph Hearst Jr.*

When Marine General David M. Shoup, 55, took over as commandant of the corps at year's start, he announced: "My way of doing things is bound to be different. It's good to feel the grip of the plow in my hands!" To some marines who had merely anticipated a new broom, Plowman Shoup last week tossed some real earth cleavers. His general conclusion about the corps: "A worm has gotten into our apple." Example: "Some young lieutenants spend endless hours scheming and planning their future promotion progress . . . If you're scheming right now how to get to Paris for your next tour, it's time to retire!" He also uncorked an opinion that any right-thinking marine would regard as tantamount to an order. It seems that swagger sticks are a pet peeve of General Shoup, who believes that "a clean, neat, well-fitted uniform with the Marine Corps emblem is tops ... no need for gimmicks or gadgets." As for the swagger stick itself--in the corps a sort of sawed-off billiard cue (length: 2 ft.) that came into vogue during the commandancy (1952-56) of retired General Lemuel C. Shepherd Jr.--Shoup snapped: "It shall remain an optional item of interference. If you feel the need of it, carry it!" Thus was the alarum sounded for more spit, less polish. Around Washington and Quantico last week, few gadget-bearing marines ventured abroad.

Anxious to prove his talent for influencing people while not winning friends, peevish young (34) Novelist (Messiah) Playwright (Visit to a Small Planet) Scenarist (Suddenly, Last Summer) Gore VIdal voiced some searing opinions for the benefit of a New York Postman. Of fellow Playwright Arthur (Death of a Salesman) Miller: "A writer-cripple" who combines "pomposity and solemnity" with the "cult of feeling" to produce solutions abounding in "love and togetherness." Of fellow Playwright Archibald MacLeish and his Broadway hit, J.B.: "That portentous magnum of chloroform [Director] Elia Kazan so accurately broke across our collective brows, launching us upon a glum sea of anodyne." Of Dwight D. Eisenhower: "The Great Golfer--a latter-day Robert Benchley, constantly fumbling out the apology, 'I'm no expert, but--' . . . Eight more years of boredom like the last eight years and I may very well take out Honduran citizenship." At London Airport a colonial undersecretary turned to Britain's former Tory Colonial Secretary, Alan Lennox-Boyd, patted his shoulder reassuringly and said: "Have you heard about the Maori chief who claimed he was Scottish by absorption? Who knows, you may find some of your relatives out there!" Soon Sir Alan was winging off with Lady Patricia to the South Seas and, he hoped, the solution of a 108-year-old family mystery. In 1851 Lennox-Boyd's great uncle, Benjamin Boyd, a wealthy London broker turned sea rover, rowed off from his yacht Wanderer for a spot of hunting on one of the Solomon Islands. He never returned to his ship, which at length sailed without him. Recalled Sir Alan: "One report said he was popped into a cooking pot by cannibals on the island." He shuddered. "A somewhat sticky end." But another old tale hints that Uncle Ben may have met a less sticky end much later. About 20 years after he vanished, some Australian sailors saw a red-haired white man, happy as a kookaburra, scampering along the beach with a party of gleeful natives.

* The previously elevated Hall of Fame fashionables: Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, the Duchess of Windsor, Mrs. William S. Paley (wife of CBS's board chairman), Countess Mona Bismarck (the ex-Mrs. Harrison Williams), Mme.

Jacques Balsan (the former Consuelo Vanderbilt), Actresses Mary Martin, Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert.

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