GIFT BOOKS IN BRIEF : ELSIE DE WOLFE: A Decorative Life, <i> By Nina Campbell and Caroline Seebohm (Clarkson Potter: $35; 152 pp.).</i>

We have Elsie de Wolfe, “founding mother of interior decoration,” to thank for clearing out all that Victorian clutter and the suffocating dark rooms our great-grandmothers spent their lives in. Elsie brought in clarity, lightness, and chintz.

Nina Cambell and Caroline Seebohm have written a dandy bonbon of a book--fun to read, exquisite to leaf through, as beautifully packaged, endpapers and all, as a room decorated by De Wolfe.

Elsie, born in New York in 1865, moved to England and, through the right social connections, discovered the beauty of the great English country houses. She spent years in a relationship with theatrical agent Bessie Marbury, moved to France with her, and found fame and fortune in decorating. She also won the Croix de Guerre and Legion of Honor for her courage as a nurse on the front lines in World War I. In her 60s she left Bessie to marry the 55-year-old playboy, Sir Charles Mendl, who rather cheerfully commented, “For all I know, the old girl is still a virgin.”