PERSONAL ITEMS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11854, 4 January 1902, Page 4 (Supplement)

PERSONAL ITEMS.

Me, Hall Caike is a man of forty, slim in build, and of the middle height, with a slight stoop. Intensely nervous and sensitive ,himself, he is replete with kindly feeling for others. In speech he is gentle and refined. His voice is low but clear, with a vibrant note of appeal. He is simple in his ways., and dresses very quietly. His writing reflects his temperament, being small and fine, with a nervous touch. It is quite as beautiful as the ; caligraphy of the. late Mr. George Augustus Sala. • His play, "The Christian," from 1 start to finish, was written on elaborate notepaper, measuring six inches by four the writing being so infinitely diminutive that it almost required a magnifying glass to decipher it, and it covered no more than two-thirds of a page, with the names ■ of the characters set out more boldly, and - occupying the whole breadth of the paper. ; - ' — : '. ■-■. ! Some of the most charming love songs . ever written have histories as romantic as ! any dream story. Do many of us know, I ■;., wonder, that the "pretty Jane" of "The c Bloom is on the Rye" was a lovely country l girl with blue-black hair and pink cheeks, like Hardy's heroines, who used to come tripping every morning through the rye- ? fields on business in the village from her father's farm? Or that she used to flash a pair of dewy blue eyes and drop a curtsey to a grave-young man whom she met daily taking his walks in the opposite direction, and who afterwards immortalised her in his famous song? Yet all this is true; only it has a sad ending. Pretty Jane faded away in consumption ere ever her ryefields bloom- > ed another year, and never knew that her ■ praises, to Bishop's music, had set Vauxhall on fire and filled all London with the name of the grave young man, Edmund Pitzßall. " Think of -vociferous Vauxhall shouting v itself hoarse with encores, and far away in the rye country the quiet poppies waving t over the grave of one Jane, unknown! Sir Thomas Lipton, who is unmarried, ; lives at Osidge, a pleasant, rambling, old- > fashioned house, standing in a well-wooded < ' park, near Southgate, Middlesex. Osidge ';' mciently formed part of the estates of the ) ibbots of St. Albans, which old-fashioned ! town, with its venerable cathedral, lies :i1 inly a few miles distant. The house: is J; comparatively modern, boasting an anti- 1; piity of only about a hundred years. The 1' gardens and grounds are delightful, and in 1! :<he park Sir Thomas has a. well laid out }! jolf course, over which he amuses himself i; with his friends occasionally."■ There, is 1! lothing pretentious about the . house, 2( idiich is designed for comfort and conveni- |J :nce, and not as a" show place for the eyes & if strangers.: Some excellent pictures by 2' Lely, Canaletti, Constable, Landsecr, I Mar- 2J sus Stone, Charles Leslie, MacNeil, and Sid- | ley Cooper, and innumerable curios, gather- %_ id from all parts of the world, are to: be V-. ound in. the interior. Sir Thomas Lipton 3E hares with Mr. Chamberlain a taste for 3, irchids, and in his houses are to be found 33 nany : splendid examples of these exotics 34 mong which a new and beautiful species, Liptonia," is noticeable. An orangery. ", ,nd a collection of tea; plants are items of ■ nterest sure to arrest the attention of the r isitor. Smooth lawns, gay beds of flowers, ine old* cedars, pollard oaks,., and magni- to cent rhododendrons add not a little to the st harm of the grounds. From the windows 01 f this typical English home a fine prospect & fleets the eye. \ In the foreground lies a 1 v deasant, undulating : country, .while y far i ° way stretches the gigantic weii of London, be nth its pall of smoke.: On'a clear day the hi ilded cross of St. Paul's Cathedral can be :'° escried shimmering in the sunlight.—Dou- f* ;ald Stewart in Outing. - " • 149