Unmuzzling himself in a London speech, Britain's General Sir Hugh Stockwell, Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, brusquely denounced the idea of building NATO into the world's fourth nuclear power--a project dear to the heart of his U.S. chief, Air Force General Lauris Norstad. Snapped Sir Hugh: "I don't believe we should extend this nuclear weapon. Don't let every Tom, Dick and Harry go mucking about with the bloody thing." Then, in a sort of bow to the boss, he came to an abrupt halt: "I am speaking here as Hugh Stockwell. I may be Mr. Hugh Stockwell after this . . ."

A fabulist of magnolia and metropolis transplanted from New Orleans to New York and now nurturing his rarefied sensitivities "way high up on a splendid Alp in Switzerland," Truman (Breakfast at Tiffany's) Capote, 37, came down from the mountain with a personal Baedeker for a British newsman. "Venice," he began, "is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go. Too, too rich. London is delicious, soggy steak and kidney pie. If I stay here too long, I become physically ill." But even the merest aroma of Paris turned Capote's delicate tummy. "I hate it. Last year I drove 150 miles to avoid even the outskirts. The Parisians didn't like me, and I didn't like the Parisians. Then I discovered the Parisians hate everybody, including each other. All the nice people you meet in Paris want to kill themselves, and the rest ought to."

Last September, 13 days after she became the sixth wife of Singer Sewing Machine Scion Alfred Corning Clark, Alicja Kopczynska Purdom, 32, became his widow. Last week came news that the Polish-born playgirl painter, whose previous marriage to Cinemactor Edmund Purdom was highlighted by clamorous clashes on two continents, had her future sewed up. Ten weeks before he died in his sleep at the family barony of Cooperstown, N.Y., Clark redrew his will to leave to Alicja the bulk of his $10 million estate.

Marking his 93rd birthday, Texas' John Nance Garner bit off the end of the first cigar he had smoked since his 90th, and reported himself right pleased that his 47 years of private life finally outnumbered the 46 he had spent serving the public in jobs ranging from Uvalde County judge to Speaker of the House to Vice President. ("I am the only man," he once noted, "who ever walked from the most important office to one that doesn't amount to a hill of beans.") But this year the still spiny "Cactus Jack" gaveled down the traditional birthday shivaree that in years past has drawn such guests as Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman and the late Sam Rayburn. Said Garner: "I don't want any fuss or anybody raising a ruckus. I feel good some of the time, but I don't feel so good at other times."

Shortly after World War II, Jean-Paul Sartre, France's latter-day prophet of existentialism, took under his wing a callow university student from rural Languedoc named Jean Cau. Sartre, recalled Cau gratefully years later, even "invented the post of secretary for me ... Provincial as I was, it allowed me to enter the intellectual life of Paris." Last week Jean Cau, now 36, spurted to the front rank of the French intelligentsia by winning the prestigious Prix Goncourt with his fifth novel, God's Pity. A study of four "lifers" in a prison cell, Cau's book had an ironic humor as foreign to Sartre as was its theme--that man is imprisoned by his conscience. But for all his philosophic differences with his patron, Cau had no intention of denouncing existentialism in the cafes of St.-Germain-des-Pres. Said he: "Existentialism has never existed. It is the invention of the popular press."

"I'm not foreclosing the idea of marriage by a long shot," once remarked Washington's Democratic Senator Henry M. ("Scoop") Jackson, "but I find it easy to postpone." Last week at 49, Capitol Hill's most eligible bachelor finally stopped procrastinating. The girl who: Helen Eugenia Hardin, 28, decorative blonde daughter of American Gypsum Co. President Marion Hardin.

Two hundred and ninety-two years after his death, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn had suddenly become as modish as Mauldin. From London to Louisville, political cartoonists were parodying the Dutch master's Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (TIME Cover, Nov. 24), which fortnight ago was knocked down for $2,300,000, highest price ever paid for a painting. Among the "busts" contemplated in the cartoons: a skeleton in Nikita Khrushchev's closet, an old antagonist of John F. Kennedy.

Caught in a cold war between his father, Spanish Pretender Don Juan de Borbon, and Generalissimo Francisco Franco was Prince Juan Carlos, 23. The issue: where the handsome young graduate of all three Spanish military academies was to settle down after his honeymoon with Princess Sophie of Greece (tentative wedding date: next May). Franco, who has yet to commit himself unequivocally to restoration of the monarchy, sought to rusticate the prince and his prospective bride outside Madrid. But this was unacceptable to proud Don Juan, who insisted: "Once my son is married, he cannot go on living in Spain with no function to perform. He will risk becoming an appendage of the regime--a sort of puppet."

As they rushed to finish Phaedra, their fourth movie together, Producer Jules Dassin, 49, and Actress Melina Mercouri, 36, made sufficient progress at unknotting their tangled marital affairs to feel justified in announcing their engagement. "We're on the best of terms with Melina's husband," proclaimed Dassin. He was not quite so sure of his own wife (who charged: "He spends every day with Melina--Sundays included"). But once Mrs. Dassin gets her divorce, Dassin felt confident that Miss Mercouri's divorce would be in the bag ("Greek proceedings are rapid")--after which their marriage "should just be a question of a week or two."

Up once again went the shingle of Britain's Dr. John Bodkin Adams, 62, whose 1957 acquittal on charges of murdering an 81-year-old patient who had remembered him in her will was followed by his expulsion from Britain's Medical Register for 14 violations of prescription, dangerous-drug and cremation regulations. Reinstated after being rebuffed in two previous petitions, the portly Pickwickian physician will not resume his fashionable private practice, plans instead to do research in anesthesiology.

After he had gracefully toasted his sister-in-law, Princess Lee Radziwill, at a recent White House bash in her honor, the President yielded to Guest Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr., who launched into a rambling salute to her husband, Prince Stanislaus ("Stash") Radziwill--who just happened to be home in London at the time. Locking his gaze on Jacqueline Kennedy's fashion mentor, Oleg Cassini, Roosevelt droned relentlessly on, undeterred by the President's prompting interjections (". . . Stash, wherever you are"), committing a pas almost anyone might have fauxed (see cuts).

Surrounded by a robed retinue of 20 that included four sword-and-pistol-toting bodyguards and one of his four current wives (lifetime total: at least two score), Saudi Arabia's King Saud, 59, descended from a chartered TWA jet at Boston's Logan International Airport and turned himself in to the nearby Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Immediate prospect for Saud: six weeks of treatment for what was reported to be a gastric ulcer.

Though 35 years had passed since her swooning body draped the bier of Cinema Idol Rudolph Valentino, Polish-born Pola Negri, 63, still held some aspects of her fabled romance with Valentino too sacred to reveal. Interviewed by Columnist Bob Considine at her San Antonio home, the onetime goddess of the silent screen wistfully recalled that "Rudolph loved to make spaghetti and meatballs. He had his own special recipe. I never tire of it, and I will never share with anyone else the secret of his meat sauce."

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