People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 28 July 1910, Page 1190

People We Hear About

Mr. Davitt’s son, Mr. M. M. Davitt, who has been taking his University studies at University College, Dublin, has had quite a distinguished course. He has now been elected chairman of the University College Literary and Historical Society. This year he obtained the gold medal for oratory. Lady Butler, widow of General Sir William Butler, is, perhaps, the greatest woman painter living. ‘ The Roll Call,’ which is in Windsor Castle, is a wonderful canvas, and one of the most pathetic pictures of war ever painted. Similarly,' ‘ Scotland for Ever ’ —a Scottish cavalry regiment charging—is the greatest picture of the kind ever done by an English-speaking person, and is only equalled by some of the French, battle pictures.

Mrs. R. J. Page, second daughter of John Mitchell, the Irish patriot leader of the ’4B movement, who died at Lebanon, Pa., recently, was born in Dublin sixty-four years ago, and after her father’s escape, in 1853, from Australian exile, lived with him in the United States and France. She was the widow of Roger J. Page, of Richmond, Ya. Two of Mitchell’s daughters, it will be remembered, became Catholics in Paris, at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and the eldest entered the community. The family of his son, the late Captain James Mitchell, of New York, are all Catholics. Mitchell’s father was the Unitarian pastor of the old church near the ‘ little green ’ at Newry.

Some interesting particulars are given in the Bookman concerning Mr. Percy Fitzgerald, who has 200 volumes of biographies, novels, essays, travels, and miscellaneous literature standing to his credit in the British Museum catalogues. Mr. Fitzgerald enjoys the distinction of having both written a Life of Boswell and made the bronze statue of him that was set up at Lichfield a little while ago; and he has just completed a statue of Dr. Johnson, whose Life he has edited three times. Mr. Fitzgerald is the only author now living whose stories were revised by Charles Dickens; when he was in difficulties with his plots he frequently went to Dickens, who also helped him with most of his proofs and added to them ‘ large slices of his own long sentences.’

Mr. Henry Donnelly, of Glasgow, had the distinction of being the only representative present from Great Britain, so far as can be ascertained, at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Pontifical Zouaves. The gathering -was held in Paris recently, under the presidency of General Baron Charrette, and was attended by about four hundred Catholics from all parts of Europe, chiefly from France and Belgium. These survivors of the Papal Army, who fought for the Pope in the campaign of 1860-70, when the dominions of the Pope were wrested from the Holy Father by the Piedmontese invaders, assembled on Saturday, June 4, at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Montmartre, Paris, where after a commemorative Mass a discourse was delivered by Monsignor De Cabriers, Bishop of Montpellier. Following the Mass, a reunion, which was really a banquet, was given at the Avenue Hoche, under the presidency of the General. Mr. Donnelly was one of a party who went out from Glasgow and the neighborhood in 1867, under the command of Mr. Charles Gordon, as he then was, who afterwards became Father Gordon, Rector of the Jesuits in Garnethill, and still later Bishop of Jamaica.

On Sunday, June 5 (says the Catholic Times) the French Government and the Municipality of Paris united in doing honor to two men of whom France is justly proud. In the morning a public statue to Louis Pasteur was unveiled, and in the afternoon there was the unveiling of a similar monument to Francis Coppee. Pasteur’s name is best known in England in connection with his researches on hydrophobia. But this was the least part of his life work. His researches on fermentation and on micro-organisms enabled him to improve the wine industry of France, and to save the silk manufacture from destruction by his discovery of the nature of the silk worm disease. Another of his discoveries opened the way to the stamping out of splenic fever in the cattle of the French farms. His name represents the science of France. Coppee belongs to her literature. He was a great poet and a master of criticism. But the chief point of interest for us in Sunday’s double celebration is that both these eminent men were not representatives of the creedless ‘ progress ’ that the present rulers of France are trying to promote, but they were practical Catholics, representatives of the ideas that the French Government is persecuting. Pasteur protested against the attempts to represent science and religion as antagonistic, and declared that his faith was that of the Breton peasant,’ as simple and as unhesitating in his acceptance of the Church’s teaching. Coppee flung himself into the agitation against the persecuting policy of the Government, and at more than one great gathering proclaimed that it was treason to France to attempt to rob her people of their religion. His death was a heavy loss ,to the Church in. France. These are the men whom even the unbelievers are compelled to honor.