Blithe Spirit

By Gerald Clarke

EVERY OTHER INCH A LADY by BEATRICE LILLIE, with JOHN PHILIP and

JAMES BROUGH 360 pages. Doubleday. $7.95.

There might be Dayak matrons in the forests of Borneo, Noel Coward once wrote, who would reduce you to helpless laughter. There might also be unspeakably hilarious female Pygmies in the jungles of the Congo. But in our civilization, he concluded, Bea Lillie must be the funniest woman alive.

Few who have seen her, offstage as well as on, are likely to disagree. When an errant pigeon flew in her apartment window, what could she do but ask, "Any messages?" When a waiter at Buckingham Palace spilled hot soup down her neck, her retort was, of course, "Never darken my Dior again." Miss Lillie, in fact, has long since passed into a sort of performers' nirvana and become a model for zany aunts and dowagers. She was, the various authors have told her, the inspiration for Mary Poppins, Auntie Mame and Madame Arcati in Blithe Spirit.

The lady's own life has often been less than blithe. Her one marriage, to Sir Robert Peel--a reckless spendthrift descended from the Prime Minister who gave his nickname "Bobby" to the English policeman--ended unhappily. Her one child, the last Sir Robert, died when his ship was hit by Japanese bombs in 1942. She apparently never considered remarrying and spurned no less a fig ure than Clark Gable. " 'You lost your son, I lost my wife,' " she quotes Gable as saying. " 'Why don't we get married?' I didn't see the logic, to be perfectly frank . . . Such a lovely man, too."

Beatrice Lillie is now 73. What is she like, personally? Unfortunately, the reader does not really know after fin ishing her autobiography, which tells too little too long. Unfortunately, too, her humorous style -- or is it her collab orators'? -- is only fitfully amusing in print. Beatrice Lillie is undoubtedly the funniest woman alive. But those who have not seen her will have to take it On faith. . Gerald Clarke

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