People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 19 March 1914, Page 41

People We Hear About

Miss Strickland, the eldest daughter of the State Governor '(says the Sydney Catholic I'hss), accom panied Mr. Hawker on one of his biplane inghts the other afternoon at the RandwicK Racecourse. Miss Strickland is a very young gin— seventeen at most—though the responsibilities of the position she holds in consequence of her mother's indnferent health make her appear older. She is a chafing girl, rather fraillookmg, but in reality perfectly robust, and apart from the assistance she gives Lady Edeline in social directions, leads a very active life. At their country home Sutton Forest, she attends to all the household accounts and writes the daily menu cards, besides taking charge of other domestic matters. The second daughter, who is fourteen years of" age, looks, after the bens and chickens. As a matter of fact, the whole family of girls have their separate duties, and are brought up on lines which might advantageously be adopted by a good many in less exalted positions. The baby, a year and a half old, finds her time fully occupied up to the present in ' bossing ' the rest of the household. Mr. John H. F. Bacon, A.R.A., M.V.0., the distinguished Catholic artist, passed away at his residence, Queen's Gate Terrace, London, on January 24. Mr. Bacon was the painter of two Coronation pictures ' Homage-Giving, Westminster Abbey, August 9 ' (1902), and the great work representing the Coronation of King George and Queen Mary. The son of a lithographer, John Henry Frederick Bacon was born in London in 1865. He showed an aptitude for painting long before he was ten, and at the age of seventeen was drawing for some of the best-known magazines in London. After a tour of Burmah and India, he returned to England, where at Broadway, Worcester, he rented a disused Congregational chapel and began the first of a series of pictures which was to make his name familiar to the art world. He was made an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1903. Mr. Bacon the same year exhibited the first of his famous Coronation pictures. Among the best pictures of the deceased artist are those inspired by the faith he professed. 1

Referring to the recent appointment of Cardinal Merry del Val as Archpriest of St. Peter's, the Waterford News says:—'The family of Merry, from which the Cardinal is descended, was connected with Waterford City from the first half of the seventeenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth centurv. Thomas Merry, of Callan, was married to Mary White, of Waterford, and some of his children settled in this city about the middle of the seventeenth century. In 1770 Joseph Merry left Waterford for Seville, and married there Manuela, daughter of Andrew Jayte, a merchant. He died in 1804. His fourth son, Raphael, was grandfather of the present Cardinal. "The oldest direct representative living of the Merry family i s Joseph Xavier, who resides in London, and is now in his 86th year. Some years ago he visited Waterford for the first time, in order to discover if any records of his ancestors existed here. He paid a visit to the almshouse on Convent Hill, founded by his grand-aunt, Mary, who married one Robert Power, a corn merchant in Waterford, and was the last of this branch of the Merrys residing in Waterford. This lady survived her husband. She died in 1804. She bequeathed £B7OO to the Catholic Bishop of Waterford to found an almshouse for twelve reduced gentlewomen of the City of Waterford. This charity is now administered by the Superior of the Christian Brothers.