PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8222, 5 April 1890, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Lord Tennyson has given his autograph to onlv 500 people since he became famous. He has had at least 100,000 applications. Mrs. Oliphant, the novelist, is now- on her way to the Holy Land. She intends to make a book about her experiences there. The death scene enacted by Salvini in " The Outlaw" is said, on his authority, to be a carefully studied reproduction of one that he witnessed in an Italian hospital. Colonel North, the nitrate king of London, has a dog-house which is a perfect canino palace, filled with costly animals. Tho best dog cost £1500. There are a dressingroom and cloak-room filled with dogs' coats. Mrs. Humphrey Ward's eldest son, Arnold, is said to be a literary prodigy. He is only fourteen years of age. He recently sent an essay to a magazine and received a cheque for £10 and a letter of thanks.

Mrs. Kendal, the English actress, wears on her chatelaine five little bells, one to represent each of her children. _ These bells are curiously wrought and inlaid with tiny gems, and bear on their margins the monogram and date of the birth of tho child thus kept in memory. What a delightful old humbug Mr. Barnum is, and how ho must have chuckled internally as he stood beside tho Earl of Aberdeen in Grosvenor Square recontly and advised young men to " acquire a character for strict honesty any truthfulness." The great showman is doubtless anxious to cut oil rivalry at the fountain heath Count Herbert Bismarck has strongly chiselled features, a heavy cavalry moustache, and the bumptious bearing of the son of his father. He has never succeeded in startling anyone by any especial brilliance, buthc is Minister of Foreign Affairs of the German Empire; and though he once eloped with a friend's wife, he is still a bachelor. Sir William Pearce, who sold his father's well-known yacht lastyear to a member of the Russian Imperial family, has buil tfor himself another and even finer vessel of 540 tons, which has just completed her fittingout at Gourock, in the Firth of Clyde, and in a few days she leaves Southampton tor the Mediterranean, with her owner and a party of friends on board. This new yacht is named the Lady Torfrida.

An exchange telegram says that the Duo tie Montpensier leaves a fortune estimated to be four millions sterling. In accordance with the custom of King Louis Philippe, who insisted upon all his children learning a trade, the Due de Montpensier chose bootmaking, and up to the last made his own boots and slippers. He was one of the handsomest men of his day, but during late years grew stout. He was a crack sportsman and horseman. The Empress of Austria is said to be the best royal housekeeper in Europe. She superintends the household affairs of the big palace at Vienna with the greatest care. She receives personally, reads and acts upon reports from cooks, butlers, keepers of the plate, and keepers of the linen. Cooking devices which have becomo inconvenient or antiquated are abolished only at her command. Now methods of preparing or serving food are adopted only at her suggestion. Just as the King of Spain was born into the purple, so possibly may we have an English earl whose baby brows immediately on entering existence will be wreathed with a coronet. Truth tells us that this is the reason why Mr. Herbert Cairns does not assume the title of the vacant earldom which ho has inherited. The Countess Cairns, his sister-in-law, is enceinte, and, if a boy is born to her, of course Mr. Herbert Cairns will still only be Mr. Herbert Cairns, while the baby boy will be a peer of the realm in long clothes. In the course of a " character sketch" of Mr. Parnell, an anonymous writer in the New Review indicates that the Irish leader is eminently superstitious in trivial matters. He refuses to remain in a room where three candles are burning, and he regards green as a peculiarly unlucky colour, so much so that when the freedom of the city of Dublin was to be conferred upon him he requested that the lining of the casket should not be green but purple, the latter being his favourite colour and considered by him as very auspicious. His chief relaxation is machine-making, and, if he reads at all, he is a. student of specialist journals, of the class of Engineering.