ABOUT NOTABILITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIII, Issue 149, 22 June 1912, Page 15

ABOUT NOTABILITIES.

A curious fatality seems to have attended the proposed marriage of the Gaekwar of Baroda's daughter to the Maharajah of Gwalior. It was originally intended that the wedding should take place on December 5 last. It was then postponed for nearly two months, and was Ultimately settled for January 25. Now it has been put off again. This is really owing to the outburst of public opinion at Home and in India against the match, the Maharajah being already a married man. But it has been given out that the horoscope cast for the two dates mentioned was not propitious, and this explanation gains full credence in the East, every P.oyal wedding being timed by the stars.

I The Prince of Wales, who completes j his eighteenth year on tiie 23rd of this j month, will in the near future attain to j the dignity of a household of his own. He and King Edward are the only Princes oi Wales for nearly a century and a half :to have borne that title while still "in statu pupillari." The young Prince will have waited two years longer than did his grandfather for a separate Household. As a lad of sixteen King Kdward was given White Lodge, Richmond, as a residence, with a governor, a chaplain, and three equerries, who waited in monthly rotation. Of these, the only survivor is Lord Mount Edgcumbe, who as Lord Valletort, was one of the equerries. One of young Valletort's qualifications which weighed with the Prince Consort was that he had never been to a public school.

If rumour is to be trusted King Alfonso and King Manoel are not nearly the good' friends they were before the rising in Portugal which brought about a Republic. The Spanish monarch is said to have blamed the other young monarch for "running away" instead of facing tha situation at all costs. His Majesty, it may be assumed, doe 3 not think that "discretion is the better part of valour." Letters just received from English people in Portugal by friends in London seem to bear out the view that if King Manoel had remained in his country the people would have rallied around him as soon as they had realised what had happened. A good deal may be said on both sides, though most people will probably agree that, in spite of King Alfonso, discretion is generally more advantageous than valour.

Mr. I. P. Benson, who has for so long been associated with the Shakespearean festivities at Stratford-on-Avon, is not merely a clever actor, but a fine all-round man. First and foremost he is a keen athlete, and has won prizes on the running path and in the swimming bath, and by contrast, he has occupied the pulpit at Glasgow and preached a sermon that brought in a big collection. Mr. Benson began his stage career as an amateur at Oxford, and it was during the production of "Agamemnon" there that the late Sir Henry Irving was attracted by his ability. Miss Ellen Terry, who was among the audience, writes of the incident thus: "A young woman, draped in black, with bowed head, was brought in on a chariot. Suddenly she lifted her head and looked round revealing a face of such pure, classic beauty and a glance of such pathos that I called out, 'What a supremely beautiful girl!' Then I remembered that there were no women in the cast." The player was Benson, and he was" the guiding spirit of the whole undertaking. -i - . . . __■ - ■« ■ -I

It is understood that the sale of tbe English estates of the Due d'Orleans is I the preliminary to their owner leaving England, which has been his principal home since his boyhood, for good. The Due d'Orleans possesses vast estates ili Sicily, which .ere left him, lik. 'Wood Norton, by his great uncle, the Due d'Aumale. ' The latter was by far the richest of all the sons of Loui3 Philippe, having inherited the huge fortune of his kinsman, the old Prince de Conde, round whose death still lingers a mystery which has never been elucidated. He was found one morning hanging to the window-sill of his palace at Chantilly, with his feet on the ground, and although a verdict of suicide was brought in, strong suspicions rested on his companion, an Englishwoman of low birth. The Due d'Orleans is a mighty hunter, as his wonderful museum full of stuffed animals which at one time or another have fallen to his gun testifies. Visitors to Wood Norton were always taken through the museum by the Due himself, who could tell, down to the n_nutest_detail, when, where, and how he had procured each specimen.

The tragedy of the Titanic has changed things very considerably for Mr. Vincent Astor. No Astor has before succeeded to the headship at so young an age as this boy, who will not be twenty-one until November 15 next. Vincent Astor was born five months before his grandfather died and his father became head of the house. He was so frail a baby that only unremitting care kept him alive. He lived the loneliest of little boyhoods because of this, and when other children romped in the open air he sat over a toy piano in a nursery to which no playmates ever came. Servants saved him every exertion: nurses were always with him: physicians awaited calls to hini that had precedence over ail others. When he was twelve he almost died from appendicitis. In less than a year he was saved from death by another surgical operation, this time for a growth in the throat following an attack of mumps. He was taken every year then to the Riviera because of bronchial trouble, and his education was being directed by a tutor. Yet he is now a most daring motorist, who lately narrowly missed losing his life in a mad race.

Mr. Mark Hambourg. the famous pianist, has just purchased a fine house in Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London, where he is settling down with his family. Mr. Hambourg can thus at last find a resting place for the many treasures that he has collected upon his tours abroad, and which, besides antiques of every description, include some very fine Chinese embroideries —which have been a special hobby with him for some years past. Mr. Hambourg is never so_ happy as when making a good bargain over some curio or article of vertu. Only quite recently, when playing in Paris, he happened to look into an auction room, where some effects were being sold, and where he noticed some very beautiful Louis XVI. wall-brackets that had been converted for use with electric-light. Although those present were mostly dealers, Mr. Hambourg contrived to put in a quiet and unnoticed bid of £4, which was not observed to come from an outsider, and the lot was knocked down to him. Almost immediately afterwards he was offered £1G for the brackets, which have since been valued at twice this sum. From the door knocker to the Persian rugs upon his study floor, the house is full of acquisitions reminiscent of sound judgment and good bargains.