PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3114, 19 November 1913, Page 77

PERSONAL NOTES.

£10 ; 000 to the Ulster Indemnity Fund, has during the last few years made more money at the Bar than any other man. His income for five years cannot been less than £30,000, which was wJkLt Sir Rufus Isaacs earned before he took office with the Government. The two are easily the richest King’s Counsel,” says the Daily Sketch.

"Mr F. E. Smith is earning something like £15,000 a year, and bids fair in time to equal the records established by Carson and Isaacs,” adds the Sketch. “There are practically only Mr Duke and Sir John Simon in competition with him, and as politics now absorb the time add energies of the Solicitor-general, the clever young man who represents the Walton division of Liverpool in the House of Commons has a clear run before him.”

When Sir Alfred East, R.A., the famous 'painter, who died recently, wont to London, a young married man, he had little more than a paint-box and a portfolio full of sketches. These he took to a dealer, who looked through them and then shook his head. “I am sorry,” he said, “but, you see, you don’t belong to any of the Royal Societies connected with art.” “ I thought,” Mr East replied, " you bought pictures on their merit, not because of the organisation to which the people who painted them belong.” Boldness always tells, and though the dealer did not buy any of the young artist's pictures, ho straightway gave him a commission. Unhappily, one commission makes neither a reputation nor a fortune, and, though the Royal Academy hung his canvases, yeaie went by without his selling one. Hundreds of people witnessed an unusual funeral off Portland, Maine, when a yacht belonging to the late Mr James Bush, a millionaire manufacturer, was sunk in the Atlantic, having on board the remains of its former owner. Mr Bush was passionately fond of yachting, and when he realised that the end was near, he expressed a wish that his body should be cremated,' and his ashes sunk with his favourite yacht. Accordingly, the yacht, with her strange burden, and escorted by another vessel conveying members of the family, left Portland Harbour, and hove to just outside the three-mile limit. There a short funeral service was conducted by a clergyman, and, the plugs in the yacht's Hold having been removed, the crew pulled off to tlio other vessel, which stood by until she disappeared beneath the waves The death of Patrick Ford, the founder and editor of the Irish World, was announced recently. Ford, who was born in Galway, but (migrated in early youth* to America, persistently advocated the use of dynamite, extolled the Phoenix Park murderers, and, though after 1686 he mainly confined his advocacy to the constitutional agitation for Home Rule, declared as late ns 1905 that he had nothing to apologise for or to regret, and called the assassin of Sir Cnrzon Wyllie a “ martyr.” To the end of h ; s life ho remained on terms of the closest intimacy . with the Irish parliamentary leaders. Mr Redmond described him in 1902 as “a grand old veteran ” who had “ done more for the last 30 or. 40 years for Ireland than almost any man alive,” and for a great many years bis paper was the chief agency in the United States for raising funds in aid .of the Nationalist party.

The year 1913 has been a somewhat unlucky one for the British Peerage, as the death-rate among the Peers has been heavy. From January to September, 27 Peers have died. AH classes of the Peerage, from dukes to barons, are included in the obituary list Six years ago 28 Peers died in 12 months, but that total will probably be exceeded tire year. In 1900 there wore 33 deaths among the Peerage, but several of the Peers in the list were killed in the South African war. Of the 27 Peers who have died this year only two left estates valued at over £1.000.000. These were the Marquis of Northampton and the Duke of Sutherland. The latter, whose family estates are in the North of Scotland, was the largest, land-owner in the world with the exception of the Czar of Rueeia. —An interesting, appointment is that of Earl Granville to be Councillor of Embassy at Paris, in view of the connections of his family with the French capital. The first Earl, brother of the second Marquis of Stafford, began the diplomatic traditions of hjs branch of the Lcveson Gower family when he was sent as Ambassador Extraordinary to St. Petersburg in 1804, and it may be noted that it was against him rather than Perceval that Bellingham’s thirst for revenge was directed. After a period at Brussels he was appointed Ambassador in Paris in 1824. In those days it was the English Ambassador in Paris rather than the French Ambassador in London who transacted all the business between the two countries, and Granville’s friendship with De Broglie and with the King made his position a commanding one, while his exploits at play earned him the title of “ I,e Wellington des Jouenrs.” His son. the second Earl, began his diplomatic career as an attache in Paris in 1840, and became Foreign Minister 11 years later. He also was a favourite in France, and the growth of the entente eordiale in the fifties was largely duo to hie personal influence.