The Book of Daniel

MOST KIDS know the feeling that from walking into a candy shop and being taken by the multitude of sweets. The immediate impulse is to scurry out and tell your friends all about it. One gets much the same feeling from reading Lords Ladies and Gentlemen, the memoirs of Clifton Daniel. Daniel acts the adult equivalent of the kid in the candy shop as a name dropper of the first order.

As the one time foreign correspondent and then managing editor of the New York Times not to mention the husband of Margaret Truman Daniel. Harry S. Truman's daughter Daniel appears to have known, or at least met, multitudes of VIP's from around the world. And he spends nearly 250 pages relaying anecdotes and recollections of almost all of them. What Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands wore or what King Farouk said is about as serious as this book becomes. It would be downright irritating if it weren't so enjoyable.

Most of the anecdotes are quite interesting even fascinating and there is hardly a person more qualified than Daniel to write such a book. Through both his personal life (especially as Truman's son-in-law) and his professional he covered events ranging from World War II to Watergate he has met more dignitaries than most people care even to hear about. He capitalizes on this background, going out to his way to avoid writing the type of book you would expect from the former managing editor of the Times. He writes not of the inner-workings of the great crises he covered, nor of the interior powerplays of the Times wich he evidently feels have been overcovered.

Instead he concentrates on the frilly, social side of a serious business. He starts with his recollections of kings, queens and other royals. Much of it reads like a gossip column, but some of the tidbits, which would never make it into a newspaper column, are often quite revealing of cultures and attitudes of the rich. He described, for instance, a feast given for the King of Saudi Arabia.

There was the usual display of roast sheep that the guests are with their fingers. I make my dinner of canned peaches.

All around the tent was a through of villagers men, women and children, hungrily watching the notables cat. When the party was over they scurried into the tent and ravenously consumed the leftover. An easy wasy to clear the table.

Daniel goes on, in the most entertaining portion of the book to describe all the American presidents he has known. He helpfully points out that he has known a fourth of all the American presidents, humbly adding that "that doesn't necessarily mean that they knew me."

From Roosevelt to Reagan, he touches on some personal experience with each president pausing only to drop a few more names along the way Johnson, he writes, was once invited to lunch at the Times.

When it was time for the President to leave he seemed reluctant to go. Twice he asked if there were any more questions and stayed past three o'clock. Instead of heading for the front door, the President turned into the pantry and shook hands with everybody including his own secret service man who was standing with the dining room stall.

Daniel has equally humorous stories to tell about Winston Churchill, British lords and ladies, Khrushchev, Castro, the CIA, and even some movie stars. The last few pages are devoted to Margaret Truman, for whom Daniel appears to have great respect. Daniel even manages to take a shot at Harvard in the midst; on Aga Khan IV '59--who is revered as a god by his subjects--he writes: "You might say he is the only divinity with a degree from Harvard, at though some other Harvard graduates have intimations of immortality.

Daniel's unmistakable prediction for aristocracy gets nauseating at times, and his adamant refusal to probe beneath the surface of the personalities he meets can get frustrating. At certain points--for instance when describing the Times' coverage of the Bay of Pigs--he hints at greater depth, only to pull back to describe an encounter with yet another celebrity. Still, only perhaps a Talmudic scholar could fail to enjoy the breezy gossip about the rich and famous that Daniel serves up throughout Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen. As he has forthrightly stated, "I'm not trying to prove anything, but just trying to give people a bit of pleasure."