Excursions

Dwight Eisenhower, General of the Army, and his four brothers (Milton, Earl, Arthur and Edgar), looking alike as five fish in a fry, hit out for Wisconsin's lakelands and their first vacation together since 1926. Governor Goodland wired a welcome, assigned the party two guides. Ike landed the first fish -- a muskellunge --after a 15-minute fight. Then each of his brothers hauled in one. Six, they said, got away.

Maude Byrnes and Catherine Nimitz, wives of the Secretary of State and Chief of Naval Operations, showed up at a community canning center in Washington, helped put up peaches. It was "National Home Food Preservation Week."

Ilya Ehrenburg, back in Russia after a ten-week journalistic junket through the U.S. and Canada, gave Izvestia readers an outsize report on America and Americans. Highlights: "Everything . . . is different -- cities, trees and customs. . . . I have been to dinners and meetings. First every body hurriedly chews chicken, then orators make long speeches, then singers sing sentimental songs, then a priest collects money for some benevolent fund. . . ." Ehrenburg said that he ran into one group of "provincial dummies . . . convinced that with the help of Esperanto they could make the atomic bomb harmless." But he had great admiration for America's "astonishing technique" of manufacturing: "I do not agree with European esthetes. . . . Let all suits look like one an other; all the same, they are obtainable for all."

Alarums

Gertrude Stein, whose expatriate thoughts at 72 have been turning homeward, had a couple about G.I.s: "You know, those G.I.s kept pinup girls all over the walls of their barracks--like religious icons. They idealized women, but, when they walked the streets of Paris, many of them would be drunk and would leer at and insult almost every woman they met. American boys are virginal, for only virgins would act that way. They liked the German women. When they made love to German women, the German women did all the work, like cows they did all the work."

King Gustaf of Sweden, history's most interminable tennist, finally had to give up. While prepping for a tournament, the 88-year-old monarch collapsed. His physician said that the royal heart had suffered a "certain weakening."

A. P. Herbert, Britain's playwrighting M.P., just couldn't miss. His new musical comedy Big Ben opened in London, and was a solid hit. Earlier the same night Herbert had told his family: "I think we're going to be burgled tonight." Another hit. Home from the theater, the Herberts found their apartment rifled of ration books, gas coupons, radio, clock, Mrs. Herbert's jewels, her leopard coat.

Hiram W. Evans, big-time Georgia contractor and onetime Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, got a bill from the Treasury for $257,763.27 in back taxes.

Fits & Starts

Drew Pearson, brash breathless Washington columnist, starred in the publicity trick of the week. In the New York Times his radio sponsor (the Frank H. Lee Co.) ran a full-page ad (cost: $4,800) announcing that "Pearson has attacked [the Ku Klux Klan] in radio broadcasts and newspaper columns. He was immediately . . . threatened with injury to life and limb should he set foot in [Georgia]. . . Mr. Pearson will deliver this Sunday's broadcast from the steps of the State capitol in Atlanta. . . . Mr. Pearson's life [has been insured] for One Million Dollars for the benefit of his family." Pearson kept his Rendezvous With Death, denounced the Klan before some 2,000 Georgians, who booed, heckled, sometimes cheered--and showed no interest whatsoever in Pearson's well-protected person.

Gloria Vanderbilt, three months after Daughter Gloria cut off her $21,000 a year competence (TIME, March 25), carried out her threat to open a simply devastating Manhattan parfumerie. The gentlemen of the press outdid themselves in describing the new chateau of smell. Sample: "eggplant purple . . . with things like carved mirrors, Degas drawings, velvet divans . . . and tooled red leather desks, but simply teeming." Mother Gloria herself designed the coat of arms. Its blazon: 1) a turquoise horseshoe on a field royal blue; 2) two royal blue hearts pierced with a gilt arrow on a field turquoise; 3) a royal blue dancing girl rampant on a field turquoise; 4) a turquoise sailboat floating among gilt stars. The motto: Pourquoi pas? Cheapest perfume: $30 an ounce. Its original formula, confided Mother Gloria, was discovered by Partner Maurice Chalom in his French chateau, hidden in an old bust.

Helen Hayes & Daughter Mary MacArthur made believe together at the Bucks County Playhouse. It was 16-year-old Mary's first big part--Amy in J. M. Barrie's Alice Sit-by-the-Fire.

Buildups

Winston Churchill, it appeared, might have yet another blaze of glory. A citizen of Margate proposed a skyscraping statue of Britain's great war leader on the white cliffs of Dover, "illuminated day and night." Its beacon: Churchill's cigar.

Clare Boothe Luce took a breather in her fight for civilian control of atomic energy, gave her House colleagues a peek at the shape of things to come. Minnesota's Representative Walter H. Judd started it all by observing that radioactive elements might be used to transmute the human species. While they were about it, suggested Mrs. Luce, let's transmute all women into Lana Turners. As for the male prototype: "a very large head, one eye, an ear bent permanently to receive a telephone call, one hand with only a thumb and forefinger so it can sign checks and documents, no legs, and a very large bottom to sit in a swivel chair."

Viacheslav Molotov got a nice friendly pat on his pudgy face. Said Rosane Taillefere, a beauteous blonde secretary at the recent Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers: "Mr. Bevin was too stout . . . Mr. Byrnes . . . seemed just a small man . . . but Mr. Molotov--ah! He had such lovely blue eyes."

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