Adding yet another cause to a roster that already includes spiritualism and antivivisectionism, Britain's Air Chief Marshal Lord Dowding, 79, plumped for a legal ban on animal poisons that inflict suffering, confided to the House of Lords that he and his wife kept their home free of rodents entirely through friendly persuasion. The technique, Lady Dowding later explained to newsmen, involves stealing up on the beasts after dark and cooing: "I am glad to have you as unseen pets, but you are causing me some difficulty." Then, "after I have said this, they understand the situation and leave of their own accord." The one hazard, conceded Lady Dowding, "is that anyone listening would think I was crazy."

Checking into the quietly flossy Donner Trail Guest Ranch outside Reno, Mary Todhunter Clark Rockefeller, 54, began waiting out the six weeks' residence period required before she could sue for a Nevada divorce from New York's Republican Governor Nelson Rockefeller. Though Mrs. Rockefeller refused to see reporters, and her attorney, former Nevada Democratic National Committeeman William Woodburn, was scarcely more communicative, the presumption was that the grounds for the action would be the familiar Nevada catchall: mental cruelty.

Slated to go on the auction block at London's Sotheby's in April were 34 impressionist and post-impressionist paintings (among the best known: Picasso's Death of a Harlequin) from the collection of Multimillionaire Storyteller Somerset Maugham, 88. Anticipated proceeds: upwards of $1,400,000, which, along with most of the rest of his estate, Maugham has earmarked for Britain's Incorporated Society of Authors, Playwrights and Composers to spare "needy authors from doing hack work."

Out of Foggy Bottom seeped belated intelligence of a night of indiscretion in the State Department-U.S. Information Agency bowling league: a challenge match last month between the league and a pickup cabal headed by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and rounded out by Under Secretaries George Ball and George McGhee. Which way did the pins fall? "Well," blurted a DOS spokesman, "I am not at liberty to divulge the score, of course, but Rusk's team got creamed."

Reigning over this spring's Ninth International Azalea Festival at Norfolk, Va., will be Margaret Ann Goldwater, 17, beauteous debutante daughter of the Arizona Senator. A captivating campaigner in her own right--she has twice been elected president of her class at suburban Phoenix's Judson School--Queen Peggy will be crowned by her father, who may or may not see political portent in passing on a title held last year by Lynda Bird Johnson.

Addressing the Oxford University Conservative Association, Oxford's Chancellor (and Britain's Prime Minister) Harold Macmillan encountered a bit of disloyal, not to say disorderly, opposition. Greeted outside the Oxford Union Debating Hall by a jeering mob of 300 flourishing Ban-the-Bomb signs, Supermac followed a phalanx of rugby-hardened supporters to the back door only to find it bolted. Beating his way back to the front door again, Macmillan found that it, too, was locked, was obliged to hammer away on it for three minutes before unnerved officials inside the building accepted his repeated assurances: "It's the P.M. I am the P.M." But at evening's end, despite continuous heckling shouts of "What about Suez?" and "Who wrote this speech?", Macmillan was as unflappable as ever. "A splendid evening," he purred. "I enjoyed every minute of it."

From horsy Middleburg, Va., leaked news that Jacqueline Kennedy had quietly got rid of Bit of Irish, the bay gelding that tossed her over a split-rail fence last November. Though the indefatigable First Lady has been expertly following the Piedmont Foxhounds all winter on two other steeds, she never hunted Bit of Irish again after her spill, and five weeks ago sold the unchivalrous thoroughbred for some $3,000 to Russell Arundel, chairman of the Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. of Long Island, Inc.

Even the chairman of the Civil War Centennial Commission, himself the author of a series of massive volumes on the subject, was beginning to weary of the seemingly endless conCattonation of recreated battles and retrospective books. "The sigh of relief that went up over the real Appomattox in 1865," suggested Historian Allan Nevins, 71, "may conceivably be nothing to the national sigh of relief that will go up over the commemorated Appomattox of 1965."

Wintering at a rented $175,000 California "cottage," Former First Lady Mamie Eisenhower, 65, who preferred aspirin-sized pillboxes long before the Age of Jackie, was coaxed by a local boutique keeper into an unlikely flopper model. Especially designed for the midday desert sun, the cotton-eyelet chapeau is peddled to the carriage trade by the Palm Springs Racquet Club's "Glady's Shop" under the fetching tag of "chambermaid cap."

Flanked as usual by small-bore mobsters and tailed by the customary bevy of cops (including half a dozen U.S. narcotics agents who unsentimentally filmed the mourners), Charles ("Lucky") Luciano made his last appearance in his Naples parish church. The late vice lord was encased in a mahogany casket. Following a eulogyless Requiem Mass and a brief bout of fisticuffs between a Luciano pal and a photographer who tried to snap "Charlie Lucky's" last girl friend, a gaudy and gargantuan funeral carriage drawn by eight beplumed horses carried the corpse to temporary rest at the English Cemetery in suburban Poggioreale. Next stop, in compliance with the deported hoodlum's often-expressed wish: the Luciano family mausoleum at St. John's Cemetery in Queens, N.Y.

In a career studded with firsts--she was the first Negro principal to sing at La Scala and the first Negro romantic lead at the Metropolitan Opera--dazzling Coloratura Mattiwilda Dobbs, 36, achieved another breakthrough: a desegregated concert in the Municipal Auditorium of her native Atlanta, Ga. Winning exultant plaudits from an audience of 3,000 with a repertory ranging from Brahms lieder to spirituals, the former First Congregational Church soloist beamingly accepted a basket of roses from Atlanta's Mayor Ivan Allen, who told her: "You have brought honor to Atlanta.'' Responded Mattiwilda: "My heart is so full ... I just can't say it.''

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