People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 23 March 1911, Page 537

People We Hear About

Madame Curie, the joint discoverer of radium, who has just been narrowly defeated in a contest for raemtidship of the French Academy, was attacked during her candidature with being a Jewess. Madame Curie replied that she is a Catholic, and, being of Polish birth, has always been a member of the Catholic Church

It will interest many to know (says an exchange) that among living descendants of great men of letters, the following Catholic:—A daughter each of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Nathaniel Parker "Willis, and Canon Kingsley* grandchildren of Charles Dickens and Bulwer Lytton; all the direct descendants of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott and nephews and nieces of Thackeray, Dallam, and Fronde! , • Hie T> u ke of Norfolk is a man of the moment, as in ns hands are many of the preparation for the coming Coronation. His place Derwent Dali, is not far from Slieili. (I, and in that district he has long been famed tor his business-like qualities and homely practical characteristics. An amusing story is told in this connection. Some time ago he was invited to turn the first sod of the Sheffield District Railway. As usual on such occasions, a piece or turf had been loosened beforehand at the snot where the ceremony was to take place, and the officials handed the Duke a smart spade with an ebony shaft and a blade of silver wherewith to lift the sod into an equally splendid wheelbarrow. But that was not his Grace’s style of sod-cutting. He did things in a more practical manner; he inserted the costly spade into the hard earth and proceeded to drive it well home with his foot so as to bring up a good spadeful of soil. Naturally the blade of the spade doubled up under this treatment; but the Duke finished his task, and, looking ruefully at the toy, said: I will have it put to rights again!’. But it was an object-lesson for the spectators.

Lady Herbert of Lea, AA'hose illness is occasioning much anxiety to her many friends (says the Catholic Herald), is perhaps one of the most notable of English Catholics and yet one of the humblest, so far as personal manner and self-esteem are concerned. Born in 1822, the daugh-rQr<eotiGeT>e-railC-f!arleS,,A’Court, Lady Herbert married in 1846 the Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, who was Secretary foi Mai in 1809-61. Lett a widow in the latter year, she was then the mother of four sons, the eldest of whom is now Earl of 1 embroke, and three daughters, one of whom is the present Marchioness of Ripon. In 1866 Lady Herbert became a convert to the Catholic Church, and since then sue has worked with unceasing assiduity in connection with works of Catholic chanty and Catholic piety She is president of the Association of Perpetual Adoration and of the General Council of the Needlework Guild. In addition to that, she has been a somewhat voluminous writer of hagiology, biography, and fiction. Her piety is heroic. On one occasion she is credited with having taken up the broom of a London crossing-sweeper and re-lieA-ed him of his duties in that occupation while he went to Mass on a Holiday of Obligation. Your sympathetic article on Lady Herbert of Lea contains an anecdote (writes .Dorn O. Hunter-Blair in the Catholic Herald). which is fathered —or rather mothered — on entirely the long person; 1 mean the incident of the crossing-sweeper who was relieved of his broom in order that ho might be able to hear Mass. The protagonist of this little episode was not Lady Herbert, but Lady Georgiana Fullerton, another member of a remarkable group of great ladies many of them Scotswomen, and nearly all converts to the Catholic Church —of whom the venerable chatelaine of Herbert House is the last survivor. The group included, besides the two already mentioned, the Dowager Duchess of Bucc euch and Argyll, the Marchioness of Lothian and Londonderry, the Countess of Newburgh, and one or tivo more 'r. Intellectually the most notable of them all was Lady Georgiana Fullerton, who was a sister of the eminent Liberal statesman the late Earl Granville, and was a AA-oman of remarkable literary gifts, evidenced by the striking series of religious novels—' Grantley Manor Ladybird, and published by her a generation ago. Lady Georgiana was at once a great lady of the old school and a model of Christian simplicity and humil--1 'j . Hei.diess Avas invariably plain almost to meanness, and her kindness and charity Avere inexhaustible. There is nothing inherently impossible, or even improbable, >'u the story of the crossing-sweeper as applied to her, though I cannot guarantee its genuineness. AnyhoAv, it has a A\a,ys been told of her; Avhereas there are good and sufficient reasons Avhy Lady Herbert could not possibly have been the heroine of it. Falmam quos meruit feral. It is a worn-out broom, not a palm-branch, which is in question here; still, the principle is the same.’