GREAT BRITAIN: Missions Accomplished

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Lord Inverchapel, Britain's suave Ambassador to the U.S. (who looks like a cigar-store Indian with a Valspar finish), went to Britain last month for his first vacation in ten years. In the midst of Britain's crisis, the Foreign Office ordered him back to the U.S. immediately. But he had come to Britain, protested Inverchapel, on important personal business: to acquire a wife and to exorcise a witch. The Foreign Office thought this a sample of the celebrated Inverchapel wit. It had hardly stopped chuckling before Inverchapel had accomplished both missions.

In an Edinburgh registry office, Inverchapel (65) remarried fortyish Chilean beauty Maria Teresa Diaz Salas, whom he had first married in 1929 when he was envoy to Chile. His wife was known to her Santiago friends as "Sweet Candy." Inverchapel divorced her in 1945 (for desertion, in 1941, when he was Ambassador to China).

After the wedding he repaired to his beloved estate of Loch Eck in Argyllshire. His housekeeper there had complained that a local witch was slowly destroying a stone wall that obstructed a path used by witches northward bound to sabbat revels. Inverchapel ordered the wall repaired. Then he solemnly exorcised the witch. Among the paraphernalia of exorcism: a fire on the house terrace, burning brandy, and champagne (taken internally by those in attendance). The housekeeper was satisfied. After all, she said, it was probably only a "wee witch."

Lord and Lady Inverchapel were then free to obey the Foreign Office, returned to the U.S.