At first glance, it seemed a scene from a latter-day Dutch master painting --at least that's what Dame Margot Fonteyn said it was. "I feel like the Laughing Cavalier," Margot said, and, Frans Hals notwithstanding, she looked something like him, too, as she happily showed off her Yves St. Laurent jet-black velvet pants suit to a gaggle of photographers and admirers at the opening of Artist Keith Lancey's watercolor exhibit at London's Mayfair Hotel. Her outfit all but stole the show from the paintings, which was O.K. with the artist because she'll wear those same duds again for her new film, Dame Margot the Dancer, produced by, of all people, Keith Lancey.

"Here I am at the end of a long misspent life," said British Novelist Lawrence Durrell, 56, in the U.S. for his first visit. And what better way to make up for it than a visit to Disneyland ("I don't remember when I had such fun!") with his old pal Henry Miller? Then he flew back to Manhattan for a week of receptions and sightseeing ("The enormous crispness! You're all so busy! Rather exciting!"). Durrell confided that he found the two coasts so fascinating that he's coming back next spring for a three-month bus tour of all the land in between. "There hasn't been a good travel book about America since Dick ens," said he. "Maybe Henry and I can write one."

Shades of the gold rush. In Virginia City, Nev., prospectors jammed the land office to stake out claims near the old Comstock Lode. New find? No. Old sharpie. Word was out that Mystery Zillionaire Howard Hughes, 62, had just paid $225,000 for a 480-acre claim in the area, and one of Hughes's advisers speculated that perhaps $12 billion in gold remained buried in the nearby Sierra Nevada Mountains. The investment was peanuts compared with the gold mines Hughes has already picked up. In 15 months he has spent $125 million in the state, last month closed deals for Las Vegas' Stardust Hotel ($30.7 million) and Silver Slipper Saloon ($5,400,000) and their gambling casinos, giving him six hotels and 15% of all the action in Nevada.

The sealed bids have been arriving for a year, and more than 30 universities, foundations and museums anxiously waited to see who will get one of the most sought-after collections of private papers ever placed on the market. The decision caught everyone by surprise: McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont. (5,227 students), successfully purchased the vast array of letters and papers of BeHrand Russell, 95. There is enough of the stuff (150,000 items) to fill dozens of trunks--work sheets of Russell's milestone thought in philosophy and mathematics, his voluminous correspondence with such pen pals as Joseph Conrad, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Albert Einstein and Ho Chi Minh. Record price: $600,000.

Barnabv Conrad, 46, raconteur, painter, film maker and bullfight aficionado, has just published what has got to be the ultimate in do-it-yourself books. Title: How to Fight a Bull.

Sheila MacRae was in the running; so were Lisa Kirk, June Allyson and half a dozen others. Rarely had so many of Broadway's grandes dames hankered after one leading role--and a replacement part at that. Yet when Angela Lansbury stepped down from her brassy, jazzy, sassy lead in Mame after 775 performances, the plum was passed to a long shot--Janis Paiqe, 44, one of the leggiest of World War II pinups and famed as Babe Williams in 1954's The Pajama Game. "This is the show I've been waiting for all my life!" said Janis, and the first performance proved her right. "I never realized what an ovation meant until I heard what happens at Mame," she sighed.

Those rumors were buzzing again about Jackie Kennedy and Britain's Lord Harlech, now that he will presumably be coming to the U.S. more often. Harlech announced that he will send his 15-year-old daughter, Alice Ormsby-Gore, to Manhattan's Dalton School for the coming spring term. Alice will stay at the East Side apartment of a family friend, John Hay Whitney, former U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St. James's--nice enough digs, but quite a switch for Alice, who will have to leave behind her 175-cc. B.S.A. motorcycle and all her swinging siblings: Julian, 27, a London film maker and male fashion model; Jane, 25, wife of a Carnaby Street boutique owner; Victoria, 21, granny-style dresser and folk-rock fan; and Francis, 14, who rides his own 350-cc. bike.

Movie buffs flip when they pass him on Manhattan streets, squealing "That face! It's C.W.! Hey there, C. W. Moss!" In fact, so many people remember Michael J. Pollard's wild hair and potato face in Bonnie and Clyde that the 28-year-old actor has become the center of a pop cult. One bunch is running him for President, and a clothing manufacturer wants to put his pixyish grimace on dresses. "Can you imagine wearing my face out in public?" giggles Pollard. "Making money off my face?" He's already swamped with new scripts, has signed on for another movie, and this week opens on Broadway in Leda Had a Little Swan. In a dou ble role, he plays a doddering prep school headmaster and, more in character, an ultra-hippie student leader.

One said, "If you do it, I will." The other said, "If you do it, I will," and before anyone could say nay, Rex Harrison and Richard Burton had agreed to play the unlikely roles of two homosexuals in the film version of Charles Dyer's play, Staircase. "I'm really thrilled about it and I think Richard is too," said Harrison, who will appear as Charles the transvestite. Quite a shift for the fellow the gals call Sexy Rexy. "But it's one of those things one has to take a chance on," said Harrison. "I don't think it will be offensive."

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