PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2006, 4 August 1892, Page 45

PERSONAL NOTES.

Sims Reeves is an expert steel engraver, having in his youth been regularly apprenticed to the business by bid father, so that he might have this resource to fall back upon if bis voice should have failed.

Count Patrick MacMahon, . oapitane dcs chasseurs * %>Ud, and eldest son of Marshal MdcMahon and the Duchew of Magenta, v about to marry Mdlle de Fromessant, daughter of the Vicomtesse de Fromeasant, nee Villiers de la Noue.

Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria is little renowned for anything save his huge collection of dressing gowns. He has a perfect mania for this kind of uselul garment, and has paid as much as 100 guineas for an embroidered robe made up for him in Paris. We are not always able to agree with Mr Froude as an historian ; but as a writer of modern English he has few equal?, and a tale told as he can tell it ought to be read, if only to let younger readers more clearly understand the capabilities of their mother tongue. — Athena3um.

M. Zola is a great lover of curios. His home in Paris and his country seat at Medan are filled with artistic treasures, and he spends much of his spare time in the auction rooms. He only remains three hours at his desk, and those in the morning. He cannot, therefore, complain of being overworked.

The Prince of Wales' good humour is proverbial. On one occasion he was sitting in tho Peers' Gallery in the Hou3e of Commons when an officious M.P. •• spied strangers," and the Pnuce, with several peers and foreign ambassadors, were politely but firmly informed that they must leave. The Prince complied with unruffled good humour. Mr Labouchere, the brilliant freelance of politics, whese name, if it had been mentioned in connection with any office in 188G, would have been received with laughter en the one side, with horrified protests ou tho other, has at last condescend* d to take himself seriously. He has hid his reward in being i&kcn Boricusly by other peojJo as well Men have begu:, to realibo that under hit thin veneer of ng^ressivu cynicism aiiy be found one of the warmest of hearts, and one of the soundest of political intellects. It will rest with Mr Labouchere himself to decide whether he will sit on the Treasury Bench in the next Parliament, and his friends incline to the belief that, he will not turn aside from the new duties to which he is so clearly called. — Nicetei-nth Centuiy. Mr Ulaik Ku-sill, the novelist, entered the realms of fiction, like many another famous wiiter of to-d.iy, through the portals of journalism. But the penchant for novel wiiting was strong upon him, and after a brief experience of journal sin, he turned aside into the paths of fiction. Mr lluss 1 . 11, having been a sailor himself, does not wri<e of tho sea secondhand. He has sailed round the worH, and was so good a sailor tha% before his career ended, he held a mate's certificate. Mr Eussell produces copy with indefatigable industry under the most painful conditions. He is a chronic invalid, and is almost continuously in pain. Yet he holds out like a hero, and works far harder than many men in the. flash of health and vigour would care to do.

It will surprise many to hear that the poet Byron's son-in-la ir is still alive in the person of the Earl of Lovelace, who has just completed his 87th year. He was married to Ada, the only daughter of Lord and Lady Byron, so long ago as 1834. Two of his children, and therefore grandchildren of the poet, are still living. The eldest is Lord Wentworth, who inherits his present title from his grandmother, Lady Byron, who was Lady Wentworth in her own right. That title descended first to an elder brother of the present peer, who was remarkable for the fact that he [refused to make any use either of his peerage or the estates that came to him with it. He was a practical socialist, holding that no man should enjoy honouis or wealth that he had not personally deserved. He only lived two years after coming to the title, but he was true to bis unueual social ideas for that time.

Mr Harry Kumiss, the famous caricaturist, has recently been telling seme interesting things about himself. He says that he is self-taught, and never took a lesson in drawing in his life. " I have no politics," Mr Furniss continued, "and although I pitched into several old-esiablisbed institutions like the Royal Academy, I am not a socialist or anything of the sort. Everyone connected with Ponch is expected to be present each Wednesday night, when, in addition to di«•cussing the dinner which is held in the office, the next week's paper is blocked out, the cartoons are settled on, and so forth. At one of these dinners not long ago Mr Gladstone wai present. I have always caricatured him as wearing an enormous collar. That night he wore a little turn-down collar, and enjoyed the laugh at my expense as well as the others. He is a charming man, and I admir« him immensely."