People We Hear About.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXIX, Issue 3, 17 January 1901, Page 7

People We Hear About.

Dr. Chadwick, the Protestant Bishop of OBSory, told an amusing election story at the inaugural meeting of the Philosophical Society. He was congratulating his auditors upon having Buch a peaceful gathering, and recalled an experience of his own in referenoe to a hotly-contested Galway election Borne years ago. Feeling ran very high, and blows were as plentifnl, if not more so. than arguments during the progress of the contest. A little before the polling day he met a voter aud aaketl him . ' Who do you think will win ?' ' Begor sir,' was the answer, ' I suppose the survivor.' Mr. George Wyndham was for several years before he entered the House of Commons in '89 as member for Dover, Private Secretary to Mr. Arthur Balfour, whom he accompanied to Ireland during hii Irish Chief-Secretaryship. Letters frequently appeared in the newspapers, very smartly written, conveying the opinions of Mr. Balfour, and signed ' George Wyndham,' which was generally supposed to be a norn de plume. Mr. Wyndham has, however, Irish connections. He is a great-grandson of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, the leader of the Irißh Insurrection in 1798, to whom he is said to bear a striking resemblance. He is a nephew of the late Lord Leconfield, who held large ' English-managed ' estates in Ireland. Among the many dissatisfied sitters to artists the Duke of Norfolk has no place, says the Daily Chronicle. The statue of him executed by Mr. Onslow Ford, R A., and put up in Sheffield last week to commemorate his bygone periods of office as mayor, has hia entire approval. ' I trust that if you feel any misgivings concerning me you will turn from me and look at my statue, because I am certain that you will be inspired with a feeling 1 of awe and reverence.' That is the Duke'B message to the subscribers to the effigy, for which the sculptor has received the noble sum of £2075. Mr. Eugene Kelly, of New York, is the tenant of mansionsone in England, and the other in Ireland — associated with historic memories. He has rented Drayton Manor, near Tamworth, the seat of the Peel family. In 1843 the Queen and the Prince Consort visited Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister, and Lady Peel at Drayton Manor. Sir Robert Peel, who was then advanced in life, and a person of austere manners and visage, whose smile O'Connell once compared to a sunbeam reflected from a coffin-plate, danced a jig for the amusement of the Royal party. This statement, whioh gave pain in the highest quarters, was authoritatively contradicted. Then Mr. Eugene Kelly is also the tenant of Caetetown, County Kildare, the seat of the Conolly family, whose founder was Speaker of the House of Commons, at whose funeral the custom of wearing linen scarves as mourning emblems was introduced to encourage the linen trade. Lady Louisa Conolly, the wife of the Mr. Conolly of the day, who was a member both of the English and the Irish House of Commons, was a sister of the Duchess of Leinster, and an aunt of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, whom she was permitted to visit in 1798 when dying in a cell at Newgate.