PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3115, 26 November 1913, Page 72

PERSONAL NOTES.

Lord Rosebery is building a magnificent chapel and a mausoleum for himself and his descendants at Ualmeny. his Midloth.an seat. Lord Roberts, it is pointed out, ha-s a claim to Royal blood. Through the marriage of his great-grandfather, the Rev. Abraham Sandys with Miss Eyre, of a wellknown Galway family, the great soldier can trace back his ancestry by three different lines to Edward I and Edward 111. —“ Tay Pay” is no longer one of the young men of the Irish party; he has just turned 65. Me went to London with £4 in his pocket—not half a crown, —and found his feet when he had spent it all. The Horne Rule controversy of 1885 gave him an excuse for inventing the Star, and then ho invented iho Sun. An Irishman by birth and persuasion, Mr O’Connor sits for an English constituency, the Scotland Division of Liverpool. The Hon. Rupert Carington, who is paying a visit just at present to his brother, the Marquis of Lincolnshire, in England, has his permanent home in Australia. He came out to the Antipodes while his brother was the most popular of Governors at Sydney, and there married Miss Edith Horsfall, a daughter of one of the wealthy Australian wool kings, and settled down as a squatter in New South Wales, with his sheep and cattle on 100 hills. He commanded the Sixth Australian Light Horse, and received the D.S.O. for services during the South African war. Canon Arnott, row and for 28 years rector of Beckenham, was at one time on the staff of the Middlesex Hospital as assistant surgeon. Canon Arnott is a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, and, as the author of a work on cancer, he anticipated the special attention which his old school and hospital now nays to that disease. Canon Arnott has absolutely abandoned surgery, and abstains even from giving advice about medical matters. As pastor of a big parish with four churches, he has no time to keep in touch with modern developments., The death of Canon Sheehan, author of “My New Curate,” breaks the quartet of popular novelists who arc priests of the Roman Catholic Church—the surviving throe being, of course, Mgr. Benson, Dr Edward Barry, and Mgr. Bickerstaffe-Drew —better known to the reading public as “ John Ayscough.” The Established Church has not many clerical novelists —though, of course, there is the Rev. S. Baring-Gould and “ Morioe Gerard ”, —but a goodly number of Free Church ministers have tried their hand at fiction, though few have attained such popularity as Mr S. R. Crockett (formerly United Free Church minister of Penicuik) and the brothers Silas K. and Joseph Hocking. The King of Sweden, whose health is again unsatisfactory, is an interesting figure from his descent from Napoleon’s marshal and as representing the last link in high places with the Napoleonic ascendency. It is true that the Emperor was not entirelypleased when the Swedes chose Bernadotte as their Crown Prince in default of male heirs, and that Bernadette’s policy was little to his old master’s liking; but the connection remains. Bernadotte was related to the Emperor by his marriage with Desiree Clary, sister of Joseph Bonaparte’s wife, while in the next generation Oscar I married a granddaughter of the Empress Josephine. King Gustavus comes of a race which has usually boon long-lived. His great-grandfather, Marshal Bernadotte, who, as Charles XIV, was one of the best rulers Sweden ever had, lived to be well .over 80, and retained the energy which made him famous for a longer period than almost any of the other brilliant French soldiers and statesmen who were the children of the, Revolution. The members of the Swedish Royal Family have always been distinguished for culture, an inheritance from their French ancestors. The richest of German rulers is undoubtedly Kaiser Wilhelm, as King of Prussia. ' For as German Emperor he receives no civil list. His fortune is computed at seven millions sterling, his annual income at £1,100,000. But he is by no means the richest man in his dominions. With regard to incomes, the first largest in Germany are: The Emperor, £1,100,000; Frau Bertha Krupp, over £900,000; Prince Honckol, £600,000; the Duke von Ujest, £300,000; and Herr Zieso, shipbuilder and landowner, about the same. The Kaiser’s wealth consists largely of land in town and country. He owns forests and lands to the value of £3,500,000. 40 castles and country houses valued at £2,000,000, and various property in Berlin approximately worth £1,000,000. In seven different provinces he’ owns 74 estates, comprising close on half a million acres. With trifling exceptions, all the Kaiser’s landed propeity is entailed. His eldest son, the Gorman Crown Prince, has property valued at £750,000, and an income of £50,000 annually. The Kaiser’s brother, Prince Henry, owns property valued at £400,000, and has an income of at least £25,000. The Kaiser and his relatives own property to the value of about 11 millions sterling. Lord Newton, whoso biography of Lord Lyons is one of the books of the season, was obviously well qualified to undertake this particular piece of work in view of the fact that he was himself for some years under Lord Lyons in the British Embassy at Paris. Afterwards ho represented NoVvtori for a dozen years in the House of Commons until the death of his father in 1898 made him a peer, and thereby afforded him opportunities for disulaying his talents in the Upper House. To-day Lord Newton’s reputation in the Upper House as an amusing speaker stands second to none; ho is, indeed, by common consent the champion humourist of that usually sedate Assembly. In this connection ho himself once touched humorously on the difference between his stylo and the traditional House of Lords manner. A friend of his, he explained, standing at the Bar one day while be was addressing the House, was joined by a Labour member from the Commons, who, after listening to him for a few minutes, inquired, “Who is this follow, any way? Ho talks like an ordinary man instead ot like a landlord addressing his tenants.” Needless to say, their lordships were much amused. President Wilson is blessed with simple tastes. He is also the happy possessor of that quality called “naturalness." Here is an instance, given in the New York papers, of both those traits. Being desirous of enjoying an evening at a theatre with two of ms friends, ho presented himself at the box office and, with nonchalant directness, asked for three half-dollar (2s) tickets for the balcony. Leaving the detectives (who

of coarse always guard the President) to watch the official and gorgeous box dedicated to the use of the chief dignitary of the United States, the President ard his friends took their scats among other members of the public in the balcony, and joined heartily in the merriment evoked by the entertainment. Meanwhile the detectives, at the resplendent box, waited, watched, and wondered. They wondered still more when the President, at the end of the performance, was seen among the throng descending the stairs from the balcony. When he drove away, like hundreds of others, in a taxicab “hailed” by himself, they concluded that their evening had been wasted, and decided to keep an eye on the pit the next time Mr Wilson goes to a theatre. •