Not so long ago, Britain's Harold Wilson, 48, was barking "I'm not a performing seal!" at lensmen who tried to photograph him drinking tea. But times do change, and in Hampstead the Prime Minister obligingly teed off to cozy up his image. It was billed as a pause in the day's grind. "I unwind quickly in the fresh air," Wilson offered, adding, in case the photographers couldn't tell: "I'm not very good at golf." Feet too close together, knee locked, arms carefully flexed, he poised to driver, ah, maybe it was supposed to be the other way around. Well, anyway, there wasn't a ball in sight, and as the columnist in the London Daily Mail observed, "I've never heard of a golfer shoving the stem of his pipe into the roof of his mouth during a swing!" Harry S. Truman and Dwight D.

Eisenhower haven't been in agreement on too many topics. But some subjects clearly transcend old animosities. This week the Planned Parenthood-World Population federation announces in Manhattan that the two ex-Presidents will become co-chairmen of its Honorary Sponsors Council.

"I do not collect," said Washington's Gwen Cafritz. She meant paintings, since she was a guest, not a hostess, at the Manhattan society opening of 32 landscapes and still lifes by French Artist Bernard Buffet, 36. The gallery was filled with art inexperts. "Buffet paints a variety of styles!" remarked one black tie, eying some Picassos hanging near by. But Peter Duchin's band was playing, the buffets were laden with filet mignon and champagne, and even the upper-case Buffet felt decidedly a la mode. Already 20 of his oils-which he simply dashed off-were sold at Dom Perignon prices ($7,000 to $12,000).

And his chef-d'oeuvre was his wife Annabel, 36, a former mannequin whose Balenciaga he had selected, and whose black hair he had cut in the style of a Spanish toreador.

When a Russian thinks of an American novelist, he thinks of serious types, social historians like Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair. But the Wapshots' chronicler, John Cheever, 52, having updated the U.S. picture, was busy catching up on the Soviets too. In Moscow, at the end of a month-long tour of the Soviet Union, Cheever heard Poet Evgeny Evtushenlco, 31, recite his verse, after which Evtushenko took Cheever, another visitor, Novelist John Updike, and several pretty comrades off to a country dacha for some tonic research into suburban Soviet vodka parties. Cheever concluded that Evtushenko's lyric performance was "the most exciting thing I've ever heard," but he admired even more how Soviet writers have accepted their role as "leaders in life and love and art."

In 1939, Bernice ("Bunny") Miller joined the secretarial staff of Herbert Hoover "on a temporary basis." Last week, when the will of the former President, who died on Oct. 20 at 90, was filed in Manhattan, she learned that her employer of 25 years had left her a $50,000 trust fund, while five other secretaries inherited from $10,000 to $30,000 apiece. Before his death he had transferred much of his wealth to trust funds set up for his two sons. And to his elder son, Herbert Jr., like his father a successful mining engineer and from 1954 to 1957 Under Secretary of State, Hoover bequeathed another $5,000 "as evidence of my affection." The balance of the estate, estimated at more than $5,000,000 in diversified stocks, bonds and real estate, will go to trust funds set up for the three children of Hoover's younger son, Allan.

Rod Steiger, 39, has played Al Capone, as well as a thug in On the Waterfront. But a sterling personality belies that base exterior, as Italian Producer Ermanno Olmi knew, and so he cast Steiger as Pope John XXIII, in the Vatican-approved screen version of the late Pope's diary. And There Came a Man, as it will be called, is now being filmed in John's native Sotto il Monte and, says Olmi firmly, "there will be no mixing of the sacred and profane." Says Steiger, who was raised a Lutheran: "I consider this part a regeneration" Why was Greece's King Constantine, 24, who as a bachelor did his bit for the scrapyards, driving so slowly along the twisting roads of Macedonia on a state tour with his bride of six weeks, Queen Anne-Marie? "We believe we are expecting a happy event," he explained-say along about next June.

There will never be enough orchestras to suit Conductor Leopold Stolcowslci, 82. And plans to tear down Carnegie Hall when the New York Philharmonic moved out distressed him because that meant one less stage big enough to seat 96 musicians. So he, Violinist Isaac Stern and some others blew the whistle on the wreckers, and Stokowski founded the American Symphony as Carnegie's new tenant-whereupon the U.S. Government designated the hall a national landmark. Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, 44, went up to affix the plaque on the wall outside, but Stokowski took the Arizonian up to the podium, to show him where all the wide open space was.

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