PERSONAL NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3338, 6 March 1918, Page 57

PERSONAL NOTES.

—Mr James W. Gerard, former United States Amoassador to Germany, is to return to Jaw practice in tiio firm of Bower and Sands, 46 Cedar street, New York, his former partners. It is nine years smoo Mr Gerard left the firm to become a Justice of the Supreme Court of .Now York State. He remained on the bench until his appointment as Ambassador to Germany. Since his return from Germany he has boon kept busy with his book, his lectures, and speeches before various societies and organisations. Mr Gerard is 50 years old. —Once the owner of large landed estates at Colchester, England, George Arthur Coulson has died there in poverty in his seventy-ninth year. The son of a, prosper ous farmer, he inherited early in life & number of farms from his wife's uncle an<J celebrated the legacy by festivities which extended for months. He is said to have frequently lighted his pipe with bank notes, and to have scrambled sovereigns among 4 crowd on public occasions. He had been A well-known figure with the Essex and Suffolk Hunt and in the Yeomanry. Having squandered his fortune, he became an ostler at a Colchester hotel.

Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy of India, who has been made a Knight Grand Oross of the Order of the British Empire, is th* head of a famous family, of whom the most distinguished member perhaps was the Lord Chancellor of former days. His father was the General Lord Chelmsford whose name was so prominently before the; public at the 'time of the Zulu war in 1879 and the disasters at Rorke's Drift and Isandlwhana. These misfortunes, howevery were retrieved at the battle of Ulundl, The present earl was well known for his prowess at sports, the then Mr F. "J. Thesiger being captain of the Oxford Unl* versity cricket eleven. Lady Chelmsford is the eldest of Lord and Lady Wimborne's daughters. Sir David Hunter-Blair, who has resigned through ill-health the post of Abbot of Fort Augustus, comes of an ancient Scottish family long settled at Dunskey. In early fife he left Magdalen College, and "went over to Rome" in a double seiise, for he became Chamberlain to two Popes. He returned eventually to Oxford, where he founded Hunter-Blair'e Hall for Benediotine" students, thus securing a privilege which had been denied to Newman. Dom Hunter-Blair is the historian of the Roman Church in • Scotland, and has also written a charming little book, hignly topical at the present moment, entitled ''Jerusalem of To-day." The Abbey of Fort Augustus, from which he retires, bears "the unsavoury name of the "Butcher" Duke of Cumberland. It was purchased from the Crown by the Lovat family, and was presented to the Benedictine community about 40 years ago. by the then Lord Lovat. I met the other evening (writes Clubman in the Pall Mall Gazette) a wellknown Russian journalist, who gave me some interesting particulars of the past life of Trotsky, Lenin's chief lieutenant and Minister of . Foreign Affairs. He was born in Southern Russia, and when only 19 was deported to Siberia, where he met Lenin. Like the latter, he escaped from captivity and made his way to Austria. In 1805 he had the audacity to go to Petrograd and preside at a Workers' Congress, but, learning the police were after him, fled to Germany. He passed into France at the beginning of the war, becoming the editor of a pacifist journal, the I\ache Slovo, which speedily led to his expulsion. It is believed that he was allowed to leave Germany with the connivance of the Hun Government, and furnished with funds to carry out a peace propaganda. Spain was his next place of refuge, where he soon found himself in prison. On his release he sailed for the States. But with the outbreak of the Russian revolution he returned to Russia. It was on his way back that he was detained by the British authorities. The death took place recently at Cheltenham, England, of Miss Margaret Constance Burns Hutchinson, a great-grand-daughter of Robert Burns, Scotland a national poet. She needed no genealogical tree to testify to her descent. Her resemblance to her poet ancestor as he appears in the Nasmyth portrait, admittedly the best, was striking. She had a pair of dark, gleaming eyes, and a vivacity that was his.- Miss' Hutchinson's mother was Sarah Burns Hutchinson, younger daughter of James Glencairn Burns, third son of the Scottish poet. One of the descendants of Robert Burns wrote some years ago that "Margaret, or, as she is generally called, 'Daisy,' strikingly resembles her greatgrandfather, or, rather, any of the likenesses I have seen." The only lineal mala descendants of Burns bear the name Hutchinson. Robert Burns Hutchinson, a brother of the lady who. has just died, hae resided in America for a number of years. He has one son and two daughters; and the son, a great-great-grandson of the poet, was reported some time ago to be serving with the Canadian forces. The "Very Rev. Herbert Hensley Henson. Dean of Durham since 1912, who has been appointed to succeed the aged Dr Percival as Bishop of Hereford, is one of the outstanding figures in the Church. He is a keen debater, much addicted to newspaper controversy, an able writer, and 4 good speaker.- A" protege of the late Lord Salisbury, h©'was educated at Oxford, where he distinguished himself. Born 54 years ago, he was, in 1900. appointed rector of the historic church of St. Margaret's Westminister—the House of Commons church as it is called—and received the honour of a canonry at Westminster Abbey. Of his appointment to the canonry an amusing story is told. "My dear, it is really too bod?' said an old lady when she hoard the news. "Why, his father was Lord .Salisbury's coachman !" What she meant to say was that the now bishop's father was Lord Salisbury's coach; hut it took a long time to make hor understand the d^fforonoo. Although Lleutenant-gencm,! Sir Henry Wilson, D. 5.0.. who has been appointed to represent Great Britain 'on the Allied War Council, has not figured in the limelijrht of war eorresnondont-*' telegrams and official despatches, ho has played a part in thj war of inestimable importance. His ronutation is almost unrivalled, and he is possessed of a genius for strategy and & foresight of coming events that is regarded as prophetical. Sir Henry began his military career as a rifleman, and was always unorthodox. • Early in the century he was positive that the great Prussian menaco would materialise, and doubtless this conviction was the foundation of all his efforts. He knew every inch of the FrencTi frontier. Each year ho made a 'tour of it on a bioyclo.' When war broke out he went to France with the Expeditionary Force as one of the leading members of tha General Staff.