People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 18 July 1912, Page 41

People We Hear About

■ . ex-Empress Eugenie attained her eighty-sixth birthday during the last week in May, and received telegrams and letters from every member of the British royal family, and a souvenir from the Queen of Spain. The wonderful woman has now spent forty-two years of hex life in exile, but still likes to retain in her home the royal etiquette she enjoyed at the height of her fame and beauty as the wife of Napoleon 111. Mr. Shane Leslie, who was married recently to Miss Ide, the daughter of the American Minister at Madrid, is a fust cousin of the first Lord of the Admiralty, his mother being a sister of Mrs. George Cornwallis-West. His grandfather, Sir John Leslie, is a head of a wellknown Ulster Protestant family. Mr. Leslie is a convert to the Catholic faith. - ' t # The recent appointment of Lord Edmund Talbot’s son, the Hon. Henry Edmund Talbot, to be aide-de-camp to the Royal Governor-General, of Canada, the Duke of Connaught, has given great satisfaction to the Catholics of the Dominion, who cannot forget that this is the first time a Catholic officer has been promoted to such a post. r Queen Amelia, of Portugal, has shown the kindliest readiness to give not only her patronage, but her personal service, in aid of Catholic enterprises of all kinds, and works really hard in the cause of many charities in and about London. The Queen spent the whole of a sultry afternooil recently selling at a bazaar for a new church at Kew. Another bazaar was opened by hex on behalf of the Benedictine mission at Ealing, and in the same week she assisted, at a concert for the Catholic Cripples’ Home, at Clapham, in which Lord and Lady Lovat and several members of their family are deeply interested. , J Mi. Bacon, A.R.A., is 47 years of age, and is one of the four Catholic Associates of the Royal Academy, his colleagues being Frank Brangwyn, Adrian Stokes, and John Lavery. Mr. Bacon’s talent for portiaituie had its full play in the large canvas showing a civic celebration of the coronation of Edward YU. He is a dweller in St. John’s Wood, London, and need not go further than his own home when he wants as sitters the most beautiful of children.; ’ He was commissioned to paint the Coronation of King George V m 191 having previously painted the -Coronation of Edward VII. Mrs. Louise Stacpoole-Kenny, who has contributed to the pages of . the N.Z. Tablet, and is the author of several works, which have been most .favorably reviewed, was born in Dublin, her father being a graduate of Trinity College, and Fellow of the Royal College: of Surgeons, Ireland. She was educated at Loreto Convent, Omagh, and later on at a private school in 1 ans. At the age of seventeen she married Mr. T. H. Kenny , a solicitor in the South of Ireland. On the death of her mother she inherited the family ’ estate in Clare, and has always kept on remarkably good terms with her tenantry. She has been a contributor for some years to various Catholic papers and magazines. In 1900, she published her first book, St. Francis de Sales, a work which was highly praised by the reviewers. • Later on .she wrote a life of St. Charles JJorromeo, which also met with a particularly good reception Within recent years she has devoted herself to fiction and historical romances, among these being Love is Life, Jacquetta, and The Knight of the Creen Shield the last-named being highly commended by Canon Sheehan, the well-known author As a literary journal aptly remarks, Mrs. Kenny has ‘a picturesque narrative style,’ aijd ‘possesses a sympamtuitive insight into the human heart and