People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 13 October 1910, Page 1674

People We Hear About

P„J death is announced of Mrs. Thomas, a daughter of Captain Marryat, the novelist, who passed away recently at Bruges Both Mrs. Thomas and her sister, the late Florence Marryat (Mrs Ross Church), became converts to the Catholic Church thus adding another to the many literary footprints which mark the road of Home recruits. Mrs. Jhomas was very popular among the English colony at Bruges, where her hospitable house stood near to the Jesuit Church. Her many social gifts were assisted by an excellent memory which she retained to her last year—which was her eighty-eighth. Of Mrs. Thomas's daughters one is a nun in Belgium. fa ' The Westminster Gazette writes: —While Signor Caruso remains, of course, a shining vocal example of 'Eclipse first, nothing could be more significant or flattering than the popular interest evoked by the announcement of Mr John McCormack s only concert appearance in London during the approaching season. This will be, by permission u 11 e i. o J? e , a Syndicate, at the opening concert of the Albert Mall ballad series. Certainly there has been nothing more remarkable than the advance in his art by the brilliant young Irish tenor during the past season at Covent Garden and particularly in his appearances,with Madame Melba. -, . A military engineer named Joseph Cugnot, born in Void France, is said to have made the first automobile nearly one hundred and fifty years ago. He devised a little motor car driven by steam, to transport cannon. Its speed limit was three miles an hour. The French Minister of War encouraged the inventor to try again, and he made a three-wheeled car, which proved so refractory in its movements that it was relegated to the museum as a curiosity. Thirty. years ago a movement was started in Void to honor Cugnot by erecting a memorial, but the plan was abandoned. Now it has been revived, and a statue will be erected m his native place. The Lady Mayoress of London, Lady Knill. is a woman or very religious and charitable sympathies. She is one of the three women m the world who possess the Order of the Holy Sepulchre, given to her for charitable work in the Diocese of Southwark, where she is known as ' Queen of the Poor. In connection with her charitable work Lady Knill is rather fond of telling the story of a man to whom she gave a pair of boots. Some clays later she met the man again wearing his old ragged pair. 'What have you done with the pair I gave you she asked him. 'Oh,' replied the old rascal, unblushingly, ' I left them off. These I am wearing are worth ten shilling a day to me.' Mr. Bernard Partridge, who now becomes the chief cartoonist on the staff of Punch, was educated at the Jesuit College at Stonyhurst. He is the youngest son of the late Professor Richard Partridge, F.K.S., President of the Loyal College of Surgeons of England and Professor of Anatomy to the Royal Academy. Mr. Bernard Partridge got no systematic art training. He began life as an assistant to a stained-glass designer, was afterwards an actor in Benson Company, and happening to illustrate one of Anstey s humorous stories, was noted by Du Maurier as worthy to be one of Mr. Punch's young men. Within six months, through Du Maimer's influence, he was called to a place on the inner staff of Punch. Mr. Joseph M. Swynnerton, the sculptor, who died last month, had been ill for some time, both in Rome and in London— two capitals in which he had studios and the end came to him, at the age of 62, at Port St. Mary, in his native Isle of Man. The works due to his chisel' include the statue of St. Winefride at St. Winefride's Well, Holywell (winch was blessed by Leo XIII. in a special audience granted to the sculptor in 1896); a memorial bust of Lord Russell of Killowen ; a public fountain in Rome winch earned the medal given by the Minister for Public Instruction; and a fountain in the Camberwell Art Gallery. For a number of years Mr. Swynnerton was a convert to the Catholic Church, to which he gave all his love, and j°v , c ll lstr , atlon of whose saints and devotions he most delightfully dedicated his art. He leaves as widow a lady famous among contemporary painters. In an article on the late Lord Spencer in Reynolds' Newspaper, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, referring to the time when the Earl became a friend of Home Rule, says no greater conquest was ever made by the Irish cause. His courage in adversity, his honesty, his readiness to fight, made everybody respect this candid admission of the errors of the policy of which he had been so brave and almost relentless an exponent. No man brought greater hope and encouragement to Mr. Gladstone in the desperate enterprise on which that wonderful old man had entered the winter of his long political day. To the Irish cause Lord Spencer gave his unwavering aid for the rest of his career. I see the statement in some Tory papers that Lord Spencer's attachment to Home Rule became lukewarm. Nothing could be less true or more unjust. In season and out of season in stormy and in fine weather, Lord Spencer never ceased to be one of the most ardent and most convinced and most outspoken of Home Rulers,'