At the 52nd anniversary dinner of the Poetry Society of America, Honorary President Robert Frost, 87, was served up a bronze bust of himself done by Economist and Sunday Sculptor Leo Cherne (mused Frost: "It doesn't have to look like me; if it's a good bust, it's all right"). Then came the airy dessert: a morsel whipped up by Shelley Award Winner Theodore Roethke. A poetaste:

I like New England men,

Their women now and then.

Of poets they're the most--

But mostly Robert Frost.

Presidential Special Assistant Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 44, Pulitzer prize-winning historian of The Age of Jackson, was obviously relishing his closer-in vantage point on the Age of Jack. With his leave of absence expiring, Braintruster Schlesinger resigned his lifetime Harvard chair to cast his lot with Washington instead of Cambridge.

Hardly expected to survive 1957 when he took over the Tory Government in the rolling wake of Suez, Britain's Harold Macmillan was entering his sixth year as Prime Minister with a hankering for many happy returns. Chirped Macwonder, rattling off the records of Disraeli (stepping down age: 75), Churchill (80) and Gladstone (84): "There are some very respectable precedents for a stripling of not quite 68."

There was still much ado about the nothing worn (above the waist, anyhow) by frail Model Christina Paolozzi, 22, in a full-page Richard Avedon photograph published by Harper's Bazaar in the January issue. The clothes-horsing magazine identified Manhattan-born Christina as a "Contessa" (she insists she is not), proudly admired "the classic spirit, abhorring the demure and falsely modest." But the photo was agitating the female press corps to its foundations. Tartly advised Syndicated Columnist Inez Robb: "The excursion into overexposure has unwittingly proved that not diamonds but clothes are a girl's best friend."

When the money began to come in by the bags from his Room at the Top, British Novelist John Braine, now 39, became less interested in the Angry Young Mania of his compatriots, joined a Yorkshire branch of the Rotary Club. But by last week, he was once again ready "to retreat completely from a world which every day I find nastier and nastier." Anti-Bomb Activist Braine did not expect to be troubled by the big bad world for long. Reminded of his prophecy of last year that "there won't be a 1962," he alibied: "Perhaps I just slipped a digit. What is a year? At least when a writer makes a mistake, it doesn't do you any harm, but the politicians. . ."

Finding his career in banking somewhat "constricting," Britain's Viscount Eden of Royal Leamington Spa, 31, sportive bachelor son of the ex-Prime Minister, bounded off into a new enterprise--a London tourist agency. For fees ranging up to $300 weekly, the former swain of Princess Alexandra was Cooking up services ranging from auto renting to ticket broking, and an added come-on for visiting Yanks: "Introductions to the right people."

The cinema set's interminable State of Their Union messages were as bearish as ever. Out of the Manhattan apartment he shared with Actress Rita Gam, 33, stormed Second Husband (and Viking Press President) Thomas Guinzburg, 35-Miss Gam sighed that the trouble "all seemed to date from the time Tom stopped smoking," hoped that the separation would be "only temporary." At the same time, evergreen Joan Bennett, 51, had gotten so used to her longtime on-and-off separation from Producer Walter Wanger, 67, that she decided to file for divorce. "It will all be very agreeable." said she of the fade of a 22-year marriage, which was interrupted once before--in 1952. when Wanger served 15 weeks in jail after jealously shooting Miss Bennett's agent in the groin.

Life was becoming increasingly litigious for privacy-seeking Poet e. e. cummings, 67, ("i use capitals ONLY for emphasis"), who last fall went to court for resisting plumbing improvements to his Greenwich Village digs. Latest cause celebre was a complaint that his printer and a book dealer had peddled a number of his original manuscripts without authorization. Cummings was so agitated that he signed the lawsuit with upper-case initials.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.