AS I SAT in a pew at Old St. Paul's Church at Saratoga and Charles streets and glanced at the exquisite English-made stained-glass windows her family had donated there in the 1880s, I couldn't help but think what an exceptional Baltimore life Eleanor Miles led in the 96 years that ended last week.

It was fitting that her funeral was at this venerable altar. She had been the friend of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. She had entertained Richard and Pat Nixon in Baltimore; she could tell a story about the city with the best of them.

It was 1977 that I got a call from this remarkable woman. She wanted me to help her husband, Clarence, research and write his memoirs. He was the lawyer (the Miles and Stockbridge firm) who brought the St. Louis Browns franchise to Baltimore and gave Baltimore its major-league Orioles. His health was failing; she thought his life story -- certainly not hers -- should get written down. Events moved all too quickly. Mr. Miles died within seven months. Only a fraction of the project was finished. Eleanor, ever the woman who believed in her husband's life work, was determined that this book would continue.

I was more than a little apprehensive about ghost writing for a man who had done as much as anyone in this century to make Baltimore a better place. Eleanor gave me confidence, then suggested we meet, as we did over the next few months. She ordered up a sunny room at the Mount Vernon Club and converted it into an impromptu editorial office. There, overlooking the fountain at West Mount Vernon Place, not far from the St. Paul Street home where she lived as a child, we worked.

Eleanor witnessed the best kind of Baltimore history, the kind that dealt with people. Though she never traded in gossip, and flawlessly edited many a story, her recollections were colorful, accurate, delightful, witty -- a joy to hear.

I knew we were going to hit it off when she launched into a verbal account of a 1920s dinner party she was asked to host. At the time, she was a young bride, Mrs. William Wallace Lanahan, with a gracious home, Long Crandon in Dulaney Valley. It fell to her to entertain a dozen or so Roman Catholic cardinals headed for Chicago and the Eucharistic Congress. It was a Friday -- and she served frogs' legs. Though there was Prohibition in the United States, many of these international princes of the Church were used to being served more than iced tea.

The Lanahans owned a Maryland rye distillery that sold under the brand name of Hunter. She decided mint juleps would be in order. When served this drink, the Moroccan cardinal inquired, in French, "What is this? A cup of weeds?" He enjoyed several.

She thought it a successful dinner party. Indeed, for many years following, whenever she was in Paris, the abbe of the Church of the Madeleine received her, as she had entertained him.

This was Eleanor's greatest gift -- extending herself to others in the most thoughtful, personal ways. She possessed the rare gift of putting you at ease, then directing her charm and intellect toward you. It was flattering -- you became the most important person in the world -- and she carried it off with humor, ease and grace. And I loved the fact she slipped up to New York and had designer Hattie Carnegie make her an Opening Day 1954 Orioles hat with dyed black and orange feathers.

One day her driver arrived for me with quite a large car, striped with a custom paint job and initialed EAM on the doors.

We crossed the Bay Bridge and headed down country lanes bordered by holly and loblolly pine. Then we turned into White Banks, the house she'd had built.

There we worked on the book until it was completed, then she summoned the layout designer and the printer to the Mount Vernon Club. She selected paper stock, stampings and bindings. She instructed that a small English bulldog -- her favorite breed -- be reproduced on the spine.

After the book was all printed, a box arrived at my house. It was from New York, from the John Sheepers horticultural firm and contained dozens of daffodil bulbs. They were all of the same variety -- February Gold, an early and long blooming type that does well in Baltimore. They bloomed profusely the first year and have never stopped. They've now spread all over the garden. And they were at their best when I got the call this past weekend that my friend Eleanor had died at home.

Pub Date: 3/27/99