Personalities.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 440, 8 September 1904, Page 2

Personalities.

DOWAGER EXPRESS Of RUSSIA. AWQMAN/oflnobl* mstintti and* of fine presence is the Dowager-Empress of Russia;'*' a sister of Queen Alexandra. Full of sorrows her life has' been. path to the throne was oleared by an appalling crime. Her own life and -that T of the' late Emperor were continually menaced. Everywhere they went*- were blood-ourdling letters—in their sleeping apartments,, on their tables, in their carjiages—threatening - the /horrors that Awaited' them and their ' None knew when the missives came. While they were still building a church over the spot where Alexander 11. foil, and sealing tne little chamber in which his shattered remains were laid while yet life was in them, a mine was discovered beneath the route over which the Czar and Czaritsa were to pass, and another in the cathedral then preparing for their Coronation. A simple gentlewoman at heart, the DowagerEmpress enjoys celebrity for her scholarship, and, in a less awe-inspiring Court than that of the Russia of her days would have left her impress upon its history. BAROJ* AJ<D BARONESS DE STERJ<. The Baron and Baroness, who are at present among the busiest of London hosts and hostesses, and the owners of historic Strawberry Hill, the residence of Horace Walpole, afterwards Earl of Oxford, of Colley ,Cibber, Dr Talbot, Bishop of Durham, Henry Bridges, and the Marquis of Carnarvon, son of James, Duke of Chandos.' Another famous house, too, belongs to Baron de Stern—the quaint and picturesque old country seat known as Imber Count —which figures in Doomsday Book, and was a manor in the days of the third Henry, and was rebuilt by Inigo Jones. Baron de Stern is well known in London as a very rich man, an owner of horses, and an excellent whip. -His sister is Lady Sherborne, Baroness de Stern, whose son was born last January, is a pretty and beautifully-dressed woman, who is the possessor of some magnificent jewels. MRS LANGTRY. Mrs Langtry, who has been receiving extraordinary gifts from American admirers, knows: her way about the world, and her experiences are many and varied. She had. a memorable one on her debut upon the stage. Fifteen minutes after she had left the theatre where she had had her final rehearsal, the building caught fire. From her apartments in the Albemarle Hotel she was able to watch the progress of her fire. High up was a board bearing her name. 'Now,' she said, 'if my name there escapes the fire I shall be successful; if not ——' and the board toppled into the flames as she spoke—'well, I'll succeed anyhow.' Her latest gifts can hardly surprise her ; she has had so many and curious. One of the strangest Was a poor crippled old pony. 'I know you love horses,' wrote its owner. 'I am too poor to keep this, and too fond to risk selling it to one who may prove a cruel master. Will you keep it for me?'■ Mrs Langtry is of the tenderest disposition, and her friendships are very close. LORD AND LADY BARNARD. Both have romance in their line. Lord Barnard; who has ,now attained his halfcentury, is a De Vere Vane, and the barony which he successfully claimed under a grant to the Duke of Cleveland's family, of which he is a remote cousin, was only made good twelve years ago. It is from a brother of the first Earl of Darlington that the present Lord Barnard is descended. Thi& was Morgan Vane, who was a barrister of the Middle Temple in 1823, and British Ambassador to Spain six years later. Lord Barnard married in 1881 Lady Catherine Cecil, third daughter of the third Marquis of Exeter, and has three sons. It was a love match, for he was at that date plain Mr Harry Vane and comparatively a poor man—a barrister to whom briefs came rargly, but for whom, a place- was found on the Charity Commission. For ten years Mr and Mrs Harry Vane lived in a little house in Chester-square, and then came the death of the last Duke of. Cleveland, by whose will it was provided that the magnificent Raby estates should come to any kinsman who within five years proyed his claim to any of the late Duke's titles. The trial of Harry Vane's claim in tne House of Lords was perhaps one of'the most remarkable which that august tribunal has adjudicated upon in recent years:; but step by step Mr Vane proved his case from that remote ancestry which claimed kinship with Howell ap Vane of Monmouthshire circa William the Conqueror, down through Sir Henry Vane, knighted by the Black Prince at Poitiers, and ancester of the Earls of Westmorland, past that later Henry described by Milton as ' Vane, young, in years, but in sage counsel old,' and so the father of the Vane whose eldest son became Earl of Darlington. Romance was on Lady Barnard's side, too, for an ancestor of hers was the lady whom the lord of Burleigh wooed and won ' a simple landscape painter he' —and who pined away and died from ' the burden of an honour into which she was not born.' GERMANY'S STRONG MANCount Bernhard von Bulow, the strong man of Germany, who is now fifty-five, is 1 a soldier, diplomatist and politician. Von Bulow's career has been a very remarkable one. He was born at Kleinflottbeck, in Holstein, in 1849, and after a brilliant university career, entered the Army just in time to take part in the Franco-Prussian War. Alert, fluent, amiable, . and optimistic, Count Bulow has been as fortunate a Minister as he was a' diplomatist. He it is who .acquired Kiao-chau for Germany, who purchased the Caroline, Marianne, and Palaos Islands, and who settled the Samoan question by the simple expedient of obtaining possession of the chief islands in the group. He and his charming wife, who was the Princess Camporeali, step-daughter of the Italian statesman Minghetti, and widow of the late Count Donhoff, are seen at all the brilliant social functions of the German capital, and the Countess, who is as learned in politics as her husband, is also one of the most accomplished musicians of the day, a pupil of Liszt's, and worthy of that famous master.