"Bravo! C'est magnifique!" cheered Conductor Pierre Monteux, 88, but it was not for a flawless interpretation of Beethoven's Ninth. In Britain to conduct the London Symphony, the former leader of the San Francisco Symphony took time out to realize a boyhood dream--donning a dandy fireman's hat and watching a ding-dong drill put on by the London Fire Brigade. The maestro loves to boast: "In my home town, Hancock, Maine, I built them a depot and bought an engine, and the population is only 400, so I guess I'm chief of the smallest fire department in America."

A crowd of 500,000 welcomed Mexico's President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, 52, home from his twelve-day "goodwill journey" to Europe, the first official visit ever made by a Mexican President. On a five-nation swing "in the cause of peace," Lopez Mateos adroitly balanced cordial visits to Yugoslavia and Poland with an abrazo for De Gaulle and a nice chat with old friends Prince Bernhard and Princess Irene of The Netherlands. West Berlin was on the agenda too, and there Mexico's "independent" foreign policy made sightseeing a drag. Lopez Mateos had no time for Checkpoint Charlie, the Wall, or the memorial to 18-year-old Peter Fechter, killed last year by Red Grepos. Instead, Mexico's leader zoomed off to lay a wreath on the statue of the German naturalist Baron Alexander von Humboldt--onetime resident of Mexico and safely dead since 1859.

Next year's crop of Radcliffe College juniors will include one fetchingly regal transfer student, Sweden's Princess Christina, 19, accepted by the women's college affiliated with Harvard. The sports-minded princess enjoys ice skating and skiing, though her great interests are music, literature and theater. Christina's yen to be a "Cliffie" took shape last December after chats in Stockholm with Harvard's Nobel Prizewinning biochemist, J. D. Watson. "She will be a real asset," said Watson. "I think she's going to be a very beautiful woman."

Freewheeling was the word for a U.C.L.A. conference to discuss, of all things, culture in California. First, Beatnik Chronicler Lawrence Lipton needled the Kennedys as a "press-made image of America's royal family." That went nowhere, man, so Author Aldous Huxley, 68, posed a quaint 20th century dilemma: "What should poets do about nightingales"--now that ornithologists have shown that the nightingale sings mainly to assert that he has "staked out his territory"? This seemed strictly for the birds, which left Movie Actor Jack Lemmon, 38, to bring everyone back to earth with a few well-chosen words on Los Angeles architecture: "The fact is, 80 to 90% of it is terrible. It's the ugliest city in the world. It's like sitting in a garbage pail."

Added to the staff of the Moreland Commission, reappraising state liquor laws in the wake of New York's recent licensing scandals: John M. Dewey, 27, Harvard Law '62, youngest son of former Governor Thomas E. Dewey. Will he follow in Dad's racket-busting footsteps to a political career? "Of course, I have thought about it, but I have no interest in politics right now."

"This is like Kafka," muttered tried-and-blue Comedian Lenny Bruce, 37, hung up at Idlewild Airport by customs officials after a fast round trip to Britain, where the Home Office denied him entry. His London nightclub booking set off a parliamentary furor--"If we want four-letter words," sniffed a Tory M.P., "we can train our own people"--but that was the least of Lenny's worries. Back home, he was booked solid. Appealing a one-year jail sentence for an obscenity conviction in Chicago, he faced a similar charge in California, plus two narcotics raps. Wherever he roamed, Lenny seemed to be in sick transit.

Rudolf Bing, 61, and the Metropolitan renewed his contract as general manager for another four years, giving him 17 seasons at the Met, a tenure second only to that of Giulio Gatti-Casazza, the Italian-born maestro who ruled from 1908 to 1935. "I thought it was a big job when I came, and it has grown even bigger," said Bing, looking forward to the Met's 1965 move into sumptuous new quarters in Lincoln Center: "It's going to be beautiful, absolutely beautiful, and acoustically perfect. These next few years are going to be unbelievably busy for everyone--if we all live through them."

"Please don't," said the gentle old humanitarian as the boy moved to brush an insect off his sleeve. "That's my private ant. You're liable to break its legs." Thus, at his jungle hospital near Lambarene, in Gabon, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, 88, showed that the years have not dimmed his credo of reverence for life. His visitors were St. Louis Ad Executive Lisle M. Ramsey and Ramsey's ten-year-old son Max. Representing a citizens' committee affiliated with Religious Heritage of America, Inc., Ramsey had trekked to Lambarene to urge Schweitzer to undertake an eight-week tour of the U.S. "to inspire Americans." But Schweitzer, who this week observes his soth year in Africa and still works up to 18 hours a day ministering to the sick, politely declined. "Time," he said, "is running out."

Separated from her husband since autumn, blonde Mercedes Douglas, 46, finally declared that she will divorce Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, 64, when she goes to their home in Washington State this summer. No dissenting opinion came from the judge, who cryptically advised: "Just put me down as no comment." In 1953 he became the first Supreme Court Justice divorced while serving on the bench, when his first wife Mildred charged desertion. The second Mrs. Douglas, a onetime research assistant on the Justice's staff, will specify grounds of "mental cruelty."

Signed to a long-term pact were Singing TV Star Ricky Nelson, 22, and his slick chick Kristin Harmon, 17, applying for a marriage license in Santa Monica, Calif., all set to wed on April 20. "I don't think 22 is too young to get married, if you have found the right girl," said Rick, and Kristin, daughter of former football great Tommy Harmon, looked right as rain. Whether she will join Rick in The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet remained to be seen, but with those clannish Nelsons gaining such a pretty new face, it seemed a safe bet.

His racing career began on the day of Grover Cleveland's first inauguration, more than 78 years ago, and now Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, dean of American horse trainers, has decided to call it quits. Bent with spinal arthritis, he explained to friends and reporters at New York's Aqueduct race track that "I can't do things any more. People I should be hollering at, I walk right by them like they're not there."

On their annual four-day protest march to London, Britain's ban-the-bomb Aldermaston Marchers were snugly camped out at Reading when down swooped Scotland Yard, looking terribly grim. Wot's this? demanded the sleuths, and went around seizing a curious little pamphlet entitled R.S.G.-6 from the marchers. It outlined British plans in the event of a nuclear attack, even pinpointed emergency centers of government in case London is destroyed--along with hints that the marchers might want to picket one such site along their route. Publisher: an outfit calling itself "Spies for Peace."

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