PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2527, 20 August 1902, Page 66

PERSONAL NOTES.

— Lord Halifax is one of the peers who are deeply interested in church work. H© is president of the English Church Union, and in. 1886 he was on tho Ecclesiastical Commission for England. In his younger days he was Groom of the Bedchamber to the King when Prince of Wales, an office he occupied from 1862 till 1870. He was 63 on June 7.

—Mr Milvain, K.C., Recorder of Bradford, and Chancellor of the County Palatine of Durham, is one of tho mo>*t athletic men at the bar. In his days as a Cambridge undergraduate he- won the amateur boxing championship <>f England, and today there are few who can stand against him with the gloves. Put in more sedate years boxing has given place to golf, varied by fishing and shooting, in all of which he is expert.

— The Archbishop of York was an officer in the Indian Army bcfore'he entered Holy Orders. He joined when he was in his twenty-first year, and ifter btudying the native languages secured tho post of interpreter to his regiment, and in 1852 he retired on a pension. It is certainly unique to find an English. Archbishop with a salary of £10,000 a year drawing a pension for military Bervices.

— Lord Stourton is in the remarkable position of being the twenty-fifth Baron Segrave, the twenty-fourth Baron Jkiowbray, and the twenty-first Baron Siourtoß.^ a possession of ancient dignities which js without a rival in our peerage. Of his predecessors in the Mowbray Barony no fewer than four wore executed, and the- twelfth Baron fell on Bosworth Field ; while the eighth Baron Stourton was hanged for murder in a halter of silk.

— Mr Charles M. Schwab, the manager of the American Steel Trust, whose salary ot £180,000 i& said to be the greatest paid to the sen ant of any firm, was the son of a poor woollen manufacture!:, and lus first ocupation was the driving of a coach which crossed the Alleghanies wilh mails and stores. It was gome Franciscan friars who gave him his first real education, and' thus, in a way, started him on his wonderful career.

— Prince Eugene, the fourth son of King Oscar of §wcden and Norway, who, it is rrported, is to marry an American lady, Miss Helen Gorman Wild, of Baltimore, is so given to religious thought that he has become a recluse from aocie<\- He is 37 years old, well educated, with =ome talent in music, and a Lutheran by religion The Prince i» said to Lave renounced all rights to the throne of Sweden and Norway, but his mother, v. ho has favoured the uuion, will give him a fortune, -while the bmle-elect is herself possessed of much wealth. • — Lord de Ros who is the twenty fourth lord of his line, and premier Baron of England, is the holder of a peerage created in the far-away days of Henry 111. Although he was an officer in the army 57 yeArs ago, and retired as lieutenant-general in 1881, Lord do Rua in still remarkably youthful and active, and promises to live as many years as his aunt, Lady Ix>iut,a Tighe, who almost fj'ialified as a centenarian. His successor in thp Baroijy will bo his daughter, the Hon Mri Anthony Dawsnn.

— S ; r ClnrliM Mark Palmer, tho gieafc nnrifhorn shipbuilder and ironmaster and tho makor of Jarrow, is a \vlntr> tnoustaohed, diviiii^'uibliL'i! looking man of 79 with filv^ry L.iir fruiting a bald, dome-shaped head. Bit" Pharles it- among tl.e few In ing men v.ho ii uc-iiibt'i tiie £.udau.ain,ii cf I£iUii Viili&W

IV ; and veterans of to-day were boys when he opened the small 6hip-building yard ott the site which is now one of the busiest hives of human industry. It is 56 years since Sir Charles married Miss Robson, and more than 30 years later ho led his third wife to the altar.

—On May 30 the Poet Laureate— that much-abused and long-enduring versifier — attained his sixty-seventh year. He waa born of "eminently respectable" parents, and has always beon eminently respectable himself. Like- a good mnny other litterateurs, he was originally a barrister, but the sordid atmosphere of the courts did not please him at nil, and he soon devoted himself entirely to foreign travel and literature. Mr Austin, by the way, was one of the pioneers of those who write of gardens flowers in a light and airy vein. Gardening is oiic of his hobbies, fishing another, and it is said that many of his finest poema have been threshed out while sitting on a river bank and holding a rod. The gardens at Swinforcl Old Manor, at Ashford, whore he lives when not travelling, are marvellously beautiful in a quaint, old-world fashion.

— Sir Donald Currie, who, it is reported, will probably bo raised to tho peerage this year, rendered invaluable services during the earlier stages of the war, as principal of tho Union-Castle lino, by his personal oversight of the despatch of troops to the front. He represented Perthshire as a Liberal front 1881 till 1885, and the Western Division from? 1885 till 1900 aa a Liberal-Unionist. Eike his shipping business in London and -at; Southampton, his Highland estate at Garth, in Perthshire, is managed on the best principles ~ r its farm buildings, hotels, schools, and churches being all reconstructed by hjani on tho most improved modern plans. At his London home in Hydo Park place Sir Donald has got together a iinique collection of pictures by eminent artists of the modern British schools.

— Sir Francis Knollys's peerage is the re* ward of Rome 30 years or moro faithful servica to tho King, but it is also singularly appropriate, for the creation forms a "happyending" .to a cause celebre which lasted over several centuries The question, m fact, was whether the son of a Counters of Banbnry of Charles I's time was sufficiently legitimate to inherit ihe title. As a matter of fact lie and his heirs were styled Earl of Banbirry and Viscount Wallingford for nearly two centuries without, howe\er, being admitted to the House of Lords. Early in the last century tho existing representative, Sir Francis's grandfather, moved tho Houso to settle £ie case definitely, and ?^ on their adverse decjsion, he finally renounced the titular dignity. It is a great joy to Sir Francis 1o have earned the right to revive the family honours