"When are you getting married?" It was a question that brought a variety of answers. We just did: Actor Laurence Harvey and Fashion Model Pauline Stone, he for the third time, she for the second, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Next May: Olympic Swimming Champion Mark Spitz and U.C.L.A. Senior Susan Weiner. Sometime this summer: Boston Bruins Defenseman Bobby Orr and Schoolteacher Peggy Wood. Before the baby is born: Actor Michael Caine and Shakira Baksh, a former Miss Guyana, who said that they expect their child in June or July. As for Actress Jane Fonda and Antiwar Activist Tom Hayden, who had called a press conference in Manhattan to decry President Nixon's Viet Nam policy, when a reporter asked about their personal plans, both of them silently walked out.

In the World War I trenches, the major wrote a letter to be sent to his wife in case of his death: "Do not grieve for me too much. I am a spirit confident of my rights. Death is only an incident, and not the most important..." The letter never needed to be sent, but it will be published next week, along with 99 others that the major did send his wife, as part of the newest installment of his official biography. He often waxed emotional: "Oh, my darling, do not write of 'friendship' to me--I love you more each month that passes and feel the need of you and your beauty." In the meantime, Winston Churchill wrote to Clemmie, would she please send "my hotwater bottle."

It was New Year's Eve in St. Petersburg, Fla., but "neither of us had been drinking," said Actor King Donovan. "Suddenly there was a crash." The automobile accident left Donovan's wife, Comedienne Imogene Coca, with a ruptured eyeball that Florida doctors insisted had to be removed. "I didn't want to go along with that decision," said Donovan. He chartered a plane, and flew Imogene to Manhattan. After doctors there performed corneal surgery, reconstructed the right side of her face and put her fractured leg in a cast, Donovan announced the results: "She's fine. The eye is saved."

"Monstrous, painful, agonizing, a bottomless abyss of malice, deceit, fraud and greed," said Novelist Taylor Caldwell (Dear and Glorious Physician) of her 72 years on earth. She hoped there was no such thing as reincarnation, she told Occultologist Jess Steam (Edgar Cayce--The Sleeping Prophet), so she wouldn't have to go all through it again. Just to see if it hadn't happened once or twice before, though, they agreed to have her hypnotized. According to Stearn, who has just published a book about the phenomenon (The Search for a Soul), Miss Caldwell began recalling no less than 37 former lifetimes. She spoke of the days when she was a scullery maid to George Eliot, a transvestite surgeon in ancient Greece, even the mother of Mary Magdalene (Jesus Christ, she recalled, had golden red hair and "when he speaks it is as if an angel speaks"). After reading Steam's book, Miss Caldwell sounded a little puzzled. "I do not believe in reincarnation. However, I am grateful for the experience. If nothing else, it has given me material for a new novel."

When sad-eyed Yale Coed Joyce Maynard began pouring out magazine articles on the student view of life (her most recent pronouncement: "We're all in search of sages--my generation in particular"), she soon became one of the most notable Explainers of Youth since J.D. Salinger created Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. In the wind tunnels of literary New York, the latest rumor is that Joyce, at 19, has taken a leave of absence from Yale and found her sage--none other than J.D. Salinger himself, now 54, divorced and living a hermitic existence in New Hampshire. Romance? Marriage? A telephone call to Salinger brought an angry response: "It's a personal matter." Another call to Joyce, at the same telephone number, brought another one: "I don't think you have any business going into that."

To wrap up the old year, it was time for that list of the world's most elegantly wrapped people, picked by 2,000 fashion experts who know all about such things. Society Columnist Suzy offered some salty comments: Actress Marisa Berenson ("innovated those hideous platform soles and six-inch heels--she doesn't sink into the woodwork"); Princess Salima ("She had to marry Karim [the Aga Khan] and wrap herself up in a sari before anyone said any thing about being best dressed"); Mrs. Henry Ford II ("She has long legs. Her husband makes automobiles"); Mrs. Ronald Reagan ("Not too conservative to wear halter-neck dresses that dip to about six inches above the coccyx"); and Mrs. Mick Jagger ("Well, now, Bianca!"). The best-dressed men included Mr. Mick Jagger, as well as John V. Lind say, Robert Redford and David Susskind.

Suzy concluded: "Six of [the ten] gents should stay in the closet--with their clothes. You guess which six."

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