People: May 22, 1964

He is an old man, and could be excused for not making the effort. But for Joseph Kennedy, 75, effort has always been worthwhile. Last week the former Ambassador to Britain had recovered sufficiently from his 1961 stroke to walk slowly under his own power into Manhattan's Caravelle restaurant for dinner. A wooden cane helped, and so did his niece and constant companion, Ann Gargan, but the fact remained that he can walk across a room. He can also rise from a chair using just the cane, and his speech is showing improvement. Now in Hyannis Port, he has spent the last three weeks at Philadelphia's Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential doing a carefully mapped-out regimen of exercises. In the end, though, it was a question of not giving up hope.

Among the 800 items, there are first editions of Homer, Aristotle, Petrarch, The Faerie Queene, Don Quixote, Divine Comedy, Alice in Wonderland, and Uncle Tom's Cabin, just to mention a few. It took Chicago Lawyer Louis Silver a lifetime to compile his rare-book collection, and by the time he died last October at 61, he had spent $1,500,000. Now it belongs to Chicago's private Newberry Library, which shelled out $2,750,000 to get it from his estate. That upsets the rare-book-hungry University of Texas, which had agreed to buy the collection for the same price five months ago. But Texas' lawyers had been haggling over details, and interest on that kind of money mounts up. That's when the Newberry came along. Crowed Library Vice President Hermon Dunlap Smith, who engineered the coup: "It's the greatest collection ever acquired by an institution."

He was on his way to be introduced to the Church of England and to get a name. The Most Rev. Arthur Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, was preparing to do the honors; seven godparents, starting with his Queen, were waiting; water from the River Jordan was sent for the occasion; and the christening robe made for Queen Victoria's children was dug out of the attic for him to wear. But none of that made the slightest impression on the son of Princess Alexandra and Angus Ogilvy. Just like any other healthy ten-week-old, he let out a sharp little yip as he was baptized James Robert Bruce Ogilvy.

Carefully the honeymoon couple peeked out. Nope, nobody around. Out came chairs, mats and other sunbathing essentials. A photographer poised across the street from the hotel near Naples briefly eyed Spain's Prince Hugo Carlos. But when Dutch Princess Irene, 24, came out, he clicked away, for her bikini was as brief as her form was royal.