PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2179, 28 November 1895, Page 53

PERSONAL NOTES.

• . • Sir Arthur Bigge, the new private secretary to the Queen, is an ex-colonel of the Royal Artillery who distinguished himself in the Zulu campaign in 1879. He is a man of groat tact. • . • Miss Adeline Sergeant, the novelist., is the daughter of a Wealeyan minister. Her first story, " The History of a Oat and Her Kittens," was written at eight years of sge. Miss Sergean^ baa a massive, intellectual head, and wears eye-glasses. •.• Mr Mansergh, the well-known English hydrostatic engineer, is to receive from the city council of Toronto a fee of £3000 for his report on the waterworks system of the city, which will take him a month to complete. • . • It is premature to say that Mr Rudyard Kipling is engaged upon a play for the Haymarkat. When he was in Washington, Mr Tree met Mr Kipling, and asked him for a play. Mr Kipling went so far as to sketch an Anglo-Indian plot, but added wistfully, " Plays are vory difficult to do." • . • Dr Max Nordau, the much-talked-of author of " Degeneration," is personally acquainted with nearly all the European countries. Starting lifo as a surgeon, Dr Nordau Boon turned to journalism, and lie has been writing for over 25 jears. la all, ha has published eight books, " Degeneration " being the first to attract much attention outside Germany. Dr Nordau was born of Jewish parents In Buda-Pestb, in 1819, but for many years he has made Paris his home. •.' When the Prince of Monaco began his scientific explorations, the wiseacres of Europe shrugged their shoulders, and said that hs was crazy oa the subject of the Gulf Stream. But his writings on deep-sea discoveries and ocean currents soon attracted general attention, and to-day he is reccgnised as an authority on tho subjects mentioned. Prince Albert travels in his yacht with a' staff of scientific men of renown, and is generally accompanied on his expeditions by his wife. ■•• Sir Algernon Borthwick's selection of the title of Lord Glencorse Is explained by the fact that Glencorse, near Edinburgh, was for several centuries the home of the Borfchwick family. It is not their home now, the present, or twenty-first, Lord Borthwick residing at Bavenstone, in Wigtonßbire. But it still possesses a souvenir of the family in Borthwick Oastle, which is well worth a visit from those who desire accurate information as to the power of Odver Cromwell's guns. • . • M. Paul dv Chaillu, the original discoverer of the pigmies of Equatorial Africa and one of tha very few liviDg white men who have met a gorilla face to face, is a square - built, medium-sized man, with a heavy grey moustache. When in Africa ho lived much of the time among the Pahouins, Fans, and other cannibals. He escaped beipg eaten by them because he was considered an Oginzior Moginzl — that is, a sort of guardian angel, whose presence brought good fortune to the people he dwelt among. This belief he fostered with the aid of the electric battery, magnet, and musical boxes, as well as with the firearms he carried. * . * Striding along the busy streets at midday, in the full glare of the sun, says St. Paul's, goes a gentleman clad in black, gloveless, swinging a short stick, " padding the hoof " all the way from St. James's square to St. Martin's-le-Grand. Few of the passers-by recognise in this swarthy-faoed, keen-eyed personage the Earl-Marshal of England, the unconventional Duke of Norfolk, whom the Marquis-Premier induced to I " take the Post Office." Few men care less for society than the Duke; none is more lavish of his wealth. • . • A general favourite amongst Home Rulers and Unionists alike, in Ireland and out of it, ia Major-general Luke O'Connor, whose long series of deed of daring in the Crimea and the Indian Mutiny won him the Victoria Crosss, and gradually lifted him from the ranks — he entered the Royal Welsh FusiI liers as a private — to the high position he now fills. " Luke," as his friends call him, was one of the first to scale the heights of the Alma, and though wounded several times, and pressed to go to the rear, stuck resolutely to the colours during the entire day. He is a man of simple habits, lives, when in town, at the Naval and Military Club, and is well known and liked at Marlborough House. Ths Prinoe of Wales is a special admirer of this distinguished soldier. • . •Mr Quiller Couch, better known an " Q," has been tracked to his secluded retreat at Fowey by an emissary of the Young Man. " Q," who is natiye to the West Country, is passionately devoted to yachting, and to this enthusiasm he ascribes hia escape from the temptation to overwork to which so many literary men succumb. " You see, lam fond of the water ; I keep two or three boats, and we have a good yacht club, in whose affairs lam much interested. I keep in excellent health— partly because I have this constant counter-attraction to my work. ' That's why I like Fowey— with my sedentary occupation I can oombine a fairly active life. In London one lives too exclusively In au Atmosphere of books j nearly all the f rlends

j"""" '" ' ' i ' T 1 one meets do nothing bat talk about liters* ture. Here I ' -\va only to go a few yard! and I can etc r e from It all — from book?, manuscripts, and all one's stock-in-trade, ana in a few minutes realise that, after all, literature is not of Bnpreme importance In the world— that the publication of a book, however much it may be talked about, is not one of the most important of ovents."