People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 43, 22 October 1903, Page 10

People We Hear About

An Irish artist, Mr. H. J. Thaddeus-, of Cork, has been granted the privilege of painting the first portrait of Pope Pius X. _ The DuJce of Norfolk, Mayor of A-rundel, was recently presented with a life-size portrait of himself in his mayoral robes, pauited in oil by Tennyson Cole, and subscribed to by 500 of the inhabitants of Airundel. The presentation was made in the presence of some three thousand people. The veteran baritone, Mr. Charles Santley, K.S.G., and conductor of the Pro-Cathedral, Kensington, has sailed for South Africa on a concert tour. The wonderful endurance of his vocal powers is conclusively shown by the fact that Mr. Santley is making his second tour in Sauth Africa in the year of his jubilee as a public singer, when he is bordering upon his seventieth year. Pius X., in order to show his appreciation of the services Prof, Lapponi\ rendered tq the\,lajte Ponitflf? during his last illness, has conferred on him the title of Cammendatore. His Holiness accompanied the announcement of the honor with a very flattering letter to the doctor, and insisted on personally bestowing the title, saying to Dr. Lappom :' My predecessor had many peaceful years to thank you for.' ' May your Holiness have as many,' replied the doctor. ' Well, I do not know that I would echo that wish, said Pope Pius with a smile. Lord Clonbrock, who took a prominent part in the Land BU\ debate in the Lords,, represents the Dillon family from the extreme landlord point of view in the House of Lords, as Mr. John Dillon represents it from the most advanced point of view of the farmers in the Lmveir House. The Dillons wont to Ireland with King John, and three branches of the family ultimately reached the peerage. Clonbrock, from which the Viscount takes his title, is the estate m the West of Ireland which an ancestor who was a iudge of the Court of Common Pleas in Dublin purchased long ago. The Hon. Gerald Fitzgerald, who recently had the experience on Monte Rosa of breaking his leg and hanging on a rope for seven hours over a precipice 10,500 ft high, is an Irish King's Counsel and a Land Commissioner for Ireland. From 1886 to 1890 he was a County Court Judge, though it was not until 1892 that he took silk. The hero of this accident must not be confounded with Mr. E A Fit/gerald, who climbed with Sir Martin Conway ' the Alps from end to end,' discovered the ' Fitzgerald Pass,' and explored and described the New ZealEfcW Alps and the highest Andes. He was born iln Connecticut in 1871, is a Second Lieutenant in the sth Dragoon Guards, and ADC. to the Governor of the Crold Coast. Count TaaiTe, whose claim as an Austrian subject 'to vote as Viscount Taaffe in the election of the representative peers for Ireland, will soon occupy the attention of the House of Loids, is the son of a distinguished Austrian nobleman of the same name, who was Prime Minister of Austria fiom 1879 to 1893. The title of the Irish peerage dates from 1628. Curiously enough, although the family axe strong Catholics, the father of the first Viscount was a warm advocate of English rule in Ireland, strongly supporting Queen Elizabeth in the time of Tyrone's rebellion, and subsequently defeating, the Spanish force that landed at Kinsale. The second Viscount, an ardent cavalier, was created Earl of Carlingford at the Restoration. His son espoused the cause of James 11., and fell at the Battle of the Boyne. This peer's brother was the distinguished Marshal of the Holy Roman Empire, and was 'so deeply respected throughout Europe that his .Irish titles were specially exempted from the attainder that fell on most titled supporters of the Jacobite cause On the death of his nephew, who succeeded to his honors, the Earldom of Carlingford became extinct, but the .title of Viscount Taaffe passed to the representative of the third son of the first Viscount, who was chamberlain to the Emperor Charles VI., and defeated the Turks at the great battle of Belgrade. Successhe members of the family have played a great part m Austrian politics. They are Counts of the Holy Roman Empire, and possess two castles and laree estates in Bohemia. Their right to the Irish .title was recognise*! by the Cdmmitteei fftor privileges of the House of Liords in 1860. The question at issue now, however, is whether a foreign subject can vote in the election of Irish representative peers.