THE DUG DE PENTHIEVRE

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 11251, 1 July 1922, Page 12

THE DUG DE PENTHIEVRE

The Due de Penthievre, Prince of the House of Orleans, who, dying rich, has asked to be burled as a pauper, wae very good to the soldiers during the war. He gave up one of his shooting boxes in the Haute-Marae—the Chateau of Arc-en-Barrois—to he used as an Anglo-French hospital. The staff consisted of English nurses, the orderlies wore artists and literary men from London, and the patients were French soldiers. Dr Mackay, of Greymouth, was at one time medicin-chef in charge of the hospital, Lady Scott, widow of Sir R. F. Scott, was one of the V.A.D.’s, and John Masefield, the poet, was one of the orderlies. The prince’s bedroom was converted into an operating theatre, and he frequently visited the wounded men and showed an interest in them. The chateau wae picturesquely situated in the woods of Arc-en-Barrois. The patients were all received from the Clermont sector (if the Argonne front. When Clermont was destroyed by shell fire the only house left standing was one in which Bismarck Had slept in in 1870.

German companies of actors were permitted, in the seventeenth century, to call themselves “servants” of the reigning British sovereign. In Germany a good cook can he engaged for nine shillings a month, a footman for six shillings, and a general servant for four shillings. Tho Marquess of Zetland, a British peer, derives liis title from the old mmo of the Shetland Islands, formerly tho property of his family. Evan Owen, who Van retired after being postman at Whitland, Wales, for more than forty-six years, walked 171,450 miles during that period. A mosque has been opened in a private ■bouse in tiouththjlds. England,