THE ENGLISH GENTLEMAN'S WIFE

The English Gentleman's Wife is of course a Lady--a species invented by Queen Victoria, threatened but not yet extinguished by today's premarital ""squalor"" and the general paucity of servants. In this companion volume to last year's look at the male breed, Sutherland has some amusing things to say about the Lady's propensity for string-saving (she ""finds the profligate ways of the lower classes quite shocking"") or her disturbing competence at sports (""Many and various are the excuses made by men for not playing mixed games with ladies""). But many of his sallies are shopworn, painfully obvious, or just plain dyspeptic. (True to form, he's especially il-liberal about women's libbers). Read this, if you will, for his comments on the Lady in her bygone heyday--though we will confess to smiling at the drawing of the irate grande dame confronted by her daughter's hippie suitor.