PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 9497, 28 April 1894, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Mrs. Robert G. Ingersoll receives almosb as many letters as her husband, and most of the letters enclose religious tracts. Mrs. Gladstone is 81 years old. She possesses in a notable degree the vigour and vitality that are so remarkable in her husband, i Sir Arthur Sullivan is coming out as a racing man. His name figures among the list of subscribers to the Two Thousand Guineas of 1895.

Professor Huxley does not warm up to new acquaintances, nor do they to Mm. He is very cranky at times, and has an ungovernable temper. Josef Hoffman, the boy pianist, is studying at the Berlin Conservatory. He goes to Dresden once a week to receive instructions from Rubinstein.' Sir Henry Thompson, the eminent surgeon, has offered the sum of £5000 sterling to the nation, through the Astronomer Royal, for the purpose of buying a telescope for Greenwich Observatory. In the face of the absolutely stupendous number of pictures which represent Queen Victoria on any and every domestic occasion with her crown on, it is rather curious to learn that she has not, as a matter of fact, worn it more than twenty times duriDg her whole reign. Crewe can probably boast the youngest and tallest mayor in Britain. Councillor C. H. Pedley, the present mayor, has only recently completed his 30th year. Mr. Pedley stands a couple of inches over 6ft in height. He is a solicitor by profession, and in politics is an advanced Liberal. i Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, the new President of the Board of Trade, is one of the few men who have resigned a pension on finding that they did not require it. This he did soon after Lord Eversley's death, five years ago, when he was drawing a second class political pensiora of £1200 a year. Madame Belle Cole, the famous American contralto, is one of the most charming of hostesses. Her Monday afternoon "At Home'"' is usually thronged by the leaders of the artistic and fashionable world, all of whom testify to her happy knack of setting everybody at their ease afi once. It is not generally known that Madame Cole writes with her left hand. The Duchess of Hamilton, besides being a devotee to sport, is one of the great ladies who are fond of playing dairymaid in practical fashion. She has built herself a beautiful little private dairy at Easton Park. The walls are entirely of marble, the floors terra-cotta, and the tables pure white alabaster. In the centre there is a marble fountain of the purest spring water. Her Grace often gets up soon after daybreak, and makes dainty little pats of butter ready to appear at the breakfasttable. Sometimes she does the milking. A young Newcastle solicitor, Dr. George Duncan Grey, has just obtained the highest academic success in matters legal. At the recent examination at the University of London for the degree of Doctor of Laws, be not only obtained that degree, but, in addition, achieved the rare. distinction of winning the gold medal, which examiners have a discretionary power to bestow upon the best candidate of the year, should his papers show unusual merit. It has only been awarded sixteen times during the fifty-six years the University has been in existence, the previous occasion being in 1887. Among former recipients were Sir A. K. Rollit and Dr. Parkhurst. LordGrimthorpe, having spent £150,000 in restoring St. Albans Abbey, has undertaken a similar service for the church of St. Fetor in the same old town, at a cost of £30,000. This church-restoring peer owes much of his wealth to the old Leeds banking firm of Beckett and Co., but he also made a large income while practising at the Bar. His brother, Mr. Beckett, M.P., who was heir to his peerage, was killed on the railway under distressing circumstances a few years ago. Disagreements on architectural points between Lord Griuithoipe and Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs, M.P., are the standing enterfcainmeub of the people of St. Albans. .