People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 37, 12 September 1907, Page 28

People We Hear About

One of a thousand good stories of Coquelin, the great French actor, relates • that . while listening to the reading of a new play he fell asleep. The author, much piqued, stopped and awoke him, asking : ' How can a man who is asleep form an opinion ? ' 'My dear sir,' said Ooquelin, with a yawn, ' sleep is an opinion,.' • " Sir Arthur James Herbert, his Majesty's Minister at Christiania, who has just bjeen in a somewhat serious .carriage accident in Norway, is -a brother of* Colonel Sir Ivor Herbert, the Liberal ' member for Monmouthshire, and one of the Birthday Baronets. Sir Arthur is a Catholic, and it was the confounding of nan-.es, perhaps, which led to the belief that Sir Michael Herbert, when he was appointed Minister at Washington, belonged to the faith.- Sir Michael had to contradict the statement. Sainte-Beuve got an excellent advertisement out of a duel, fought on a wet day, by insisting on holding his umbrella up, with one hand while he fired his pistol with the other. He was willing, he courageously, said, to take the risk of being shot ; but he must' be excused from taking the greater risk of catching cold. The duel which Benjamin Constant, who suffered from . gout, fought, sitting in a Bath, chair, may have been of gomewhat similar character. Honor in that case was declared to be satisfied when the Bath chair was hit. There are six women in the United States whose united wealth is more than £60,000,000. They are all • widows. William Henry Smith— or ' Silent Smith,' as he was more familiarly called— who died a few months ago in Japan, has left estate estimated at £14,000,000. Mrs. Hetty Green is cstremely discreet when the subject of 'her fortune •is 'touched on, but it has -been placed at Mrs. Russell Sage came into £17,000,000, but has lately distributed £3,000,000 in charity, and this in less than a year. Then there is Mrs. Anne Weightman Walker, who is worth £12,000;000. Mrs. Marshall Field is ' comfy ' on £3,000,000, and her daughteivin-law just keeps in the circle of millionairedom with £1,000,000. Lord 'Killanin, whose fortieth birthday was on July 22, is the elder surviving son of the late Lord Morris, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, who was granted a life peerage in 1889 and the United Kingdom Barony of Killanin a year before his death. Heir to a good share of his father's ability and wit, as well as to his title and estate in Galway, Lord Killanin has not yet clone much in public life to win a name for himself. He is an eloquent and persuasive speaker, and has written for the reviews ; but almost the only public work he has done so far is to serve on' the House of* Lords Committee on the Ch'a-ntrey beq»uest. Lord Killanin is still a bachelor, and his brother, a major in the Irish Guards, is his heir. His eldest sister is married, and another sister is a Carmelite nun. Sir Thomas Esmonde, Bart., has long been identified witfi the Nationalist movement. The eleventh baronet, he is a considerable landowner in Wexford, and a considerate and popular landlord. He is descended from 1 Sir Geoffrey de Estmonte, who accompanied Strongbow in his invasion^ of Ireland in 1172, and whose descendant, Lawrence Esmonde, Major-Gen-eral of the King's Forces in Ireland, was raised to the peerage in 1622 as. Baron Esmonde. of Limerick. That Sir Thomas is not also a peer is due to the wickedness of the first Baron. He married a sister of O'Flaherty, Dynast of lar Connaught, who had one son. Lady Esmonde, being a devout Catholic, and fearing that the child might be brought up as a Protestant, carried it off by stealth, and returned to her family in Connaught. ( Lord Esirbnde, so far from complaining,, married another lady, and when this b-igamous baron died Ireland was in so disturbed a state that nobody 'took,* the trouble to press his only son's claim to the title. He nevertheless made a name for, himself as a general in the armies of Charles 1., and in 1628 was created first baronet of. the present line. On his mother's side, Sir Thomas Esmonde is a great-grand-son of that famous Home Ruler of a former time, Henry Grattan., The laughing young urchin whose play Inclined to bannister-sliding , s Who came on a tack by the way, ' * Was sad and he ceased his deriding. When the tack is a cough we endure, We still may continue our scoffing For Woods' Great Peppermint • Cure Drives a nail in the coffin of coughing.