PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 9010, 15 October 1892, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

The Queen has conferred the Order of Victoria on the Marchioness of Salisbury. Mr. W. D. Howell* told an interviewer the other day that he makes at the outside from £2000 to £3000 a year by his pen. Dr. George Macdonald is staying for the summer at Arth, on the lake of Zug. He has just completed a new novel, to which he has given the title of "Heather and Snow." Apropos of the rumoured possible elevation of Lord Ashbourne to an earldom, it is interesting to learn that the eldest son of the ultra Protestant Irish Lord Chancellor seceded to Rome a short time since. The statement that the marriage of the Prince Marie of Edinburgh to the Crown Prince of Roumania will take place in August is incorrect. The ceremony will take place in January next, in England. Francis Coppee, the Tennyson of France, is unmarried, and leads a quiet life of study in a quant old house in the Latin quarter of Paris. He works very slowly, producing comparatively little in the course of a year. Mr. Rider Haggard has been working hard all the year, and has just started for a holiday at Homburg. The novelist has given up his house at Karl's Court, finding London life unfavourable to his literary work. With the exception of his holidays Mr, Haggard intends to spend all his time at Ditchinghatn House, a very pleasant residence on the borders of Norfolk and Suffolk.

Lord Salisbury wishes to decline the dukedom again offered him by the Queen. Lady Salisbury, however, wishes her husband to accept the coronet of strawberry leaves, and she is likely to have her way. The retiring Premier will, in any case, not be begrudged his well-earned promotion. It is rumoured that Lord Ashbourne, the Irish Lord Chancellor, will also receive a step in the peerage. Mrs. Ricks, the Libertan negress who recently visited England, has left a number of quaint sayings behind her, and we are threatened with a book of ** Aunt Martha's" comments. " Man's religion,'' in the opinion of the old coloured lady, "shouldn't be worn like a cloak — ail on de outside. It orter be mo' like a porous plaster. De world may not see it, but de man knows it's dar, an' bis family knows it's dar an' adoin' of him good.'' Sir Joseph Fayrer is the latest addition to the small list of officials in favour of whom the rule enforcing retirement at G."> ha* been suspended, and he will be retained at the India Office until the age of 70. Sir Joseph Fayrer was resident surgeon at Luckuow during the siege, -and later he held several important posts in India. He also acted as medical attendant to the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince of Wales during their Indian tours. Mr. Sims Reeves, in accepting a professorship of singing at the Guildhall School of Music, stipulated (observes the Daily News) that his fees should be '.VH per hour. This, of course, is a far higher sura than is paid to any other teacher, and the consent of the Court of Common Council to the appointment had to be obtained. So far as the school finances are concerned, however, they will not be affected by the increase, which will be paid by the pupils. Those pupils who desire to study under Mr. Sims Reeves will therefore have to pay at a proportionate!}* higher rate. On the several occasions (writes a correspondent) that I have had audience of the Sultan of Morocco I found him gracious and pleasant and very ready to talk, for he is a man of great intelligence and shrewd sense. His life seems to be a simple one so far as bis personal habits are concerned— it is very complicated in a political sense. Rising at dawn, he has the appointed prayers, for he is now a devout Mahominedan, and then holds his Court, after which he receives the State officials and officers of the Army. The remainder of the day is usually spent in his house and pari*. He is more married than the Sultan of Turkey, who is abstemious in this matter ; his wives number, it is believed, some hundreds, and they are disposed of in open market when past the flower of their beauty.