Materfamilias

Less than two weeks after Cairo had reported his promotion from captain, Major Elliott Roosevelt turned up in the White House. Columned Mother Eleanor: "I walked into the White House from the hairdresser's a few minutes ago and noticed a group of bags in the Lincoln room. My curiosity got the better of me and I looked farther. Lo and behold, there was our son Elliott and a civilian friend who had come with him from Africa." She reported further that he had "picked up some sort of germ" and was probably "in for a spell in the hospital."

Anatomy

Ex-Ambassador William C. Bullitt, 51, limped off a plane in Seattle with firm-gaited Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, 68. Friends' explanation: Bullitt had pulled a tendon showing Knox how to keep fit.

To the Right Reverend Christopher Maude Chavasse, Bishop of Rochester (England), who lost a leg in an auto accident, his diocese sent nearly $3,000 for the purchase of a new leg. To the diocese the Bishop sent a note: "By the time you read this letter, I ought to be experimenting with my diocesan leg. It is a miracle of contrivance, complete with ball bearings and the latest gadgets. More than Saint Paul with his Churches, I ought to bear you in my heart now that I shall be borne on your leg."

Cinebucko Errol Flynn went to Johns Hopkins for a physical checkup.

Cinemactress Jinx Falkenburg started a drive, Lips for Liberty, at Columbia University, to promote the sale of war stamps. Her price to professors and students alike: 50-c- a lip.

Private Billy Conn, ex-light-heavyweight champion slated to fight Joe Jouis in June for the title, paid a call on father-in-law Jimmy Smith in Pittsburgh. A friend, Conn said later, had told him Smith wanted to bury the hatchet. Instead, the fur flew. Conn left his father-in-law's house with a broken hand. "Smith asked me if I was afraid of him," he explained. "I told him I wasn't afraid of anybody. Then it started." Conn went back to camp with his hand in a cast, his face scratched, his bout with Louis postponed at least until September.

Britain's Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose sent five of their royal dolls to Washington to be auctioned by British War Relief for the benefit of European child refugees in England. Couturiers for the doll clothes: Molyneux and Norman Hartnell. Models for the dolls: Queen Elizabeth and the Princesses (see cut).

Statesmen

Pennsylvania's Congressman John Edward Sheridan accused a Washington cabbie of overcharging him 30-c-, and did not stop there: he saw the thing through to a finish. The cabbie claimed it had taken Sheridan 14 minutes to bid a lady friend goodby; Sheridan clocked himself at approximately three minutes. While the Hacker's Board of Review deliberated the matter, a Philadelphia "Democratic Fellowship Club" sent Sheridan 20-c- "in sympathy . . . and [to] save Strickland, the taxi driver, from losing his license." The Board of Review's finding: the cabbie had overcharged, whether Sheridan had taken 14 minutes or not. Penalty: ten-day suspension of his license.

An Oklahoma farmer entered the race for the job of Senator Josh Lee. The candidate's name: Josh Lee.

Stolen: Manhattan's most famed hat--the big, black, platter-brimmed fedora worn by Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia. He left it on a table while he spoke at a defense rally, and when he got there the table was bare.

Sons

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., son of the ex-Ambassador to the Court of St. James's got his wings at Jacksonville's Naval Air Station, was commissioned an ensign in the Naval Reserve.

Christy Mathewson Jr., son of the late great pitcher, won a long fight to be put on active duty and was promoted to captain in the Army Air Corps. He had been trying to get back into the air since 1932 -- when he lost a leg in a plane crash.

Hawthorne Aired

Poet-Critic Mark Van Doren started reading The Scarlet Letter aloud in daily quarter-hour doses over WABC, figured he could get through it in six or seven five-day weeks. Of the stunt (his own idea) he observed: "There's something appallingly simple about it."

To a widowed daughter-in-law of the late Joseph Pulitzer went a Pulitzer prize, with no hint of nepotism. The history prizewinner: Margaret Leech, widow of Ralph Pulitzer, for her Reveille in Washington (TIME, Sept. 1), which had been generally acclaimed by critics. Other awards on a dullish prize list: to dullish Poet William Rose Benet (for The Dust Which Is God); to persistent Novelist Ellen Glasgow (for In This Our Life). (In deference to an outstandingly bad Broadway season, no award was made to a playwright.)

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