Personalities.

Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette, Issue 445, 27 October 1904, Page 2

Personalities.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. AMONG his many interests the Duke . of Argyll is very earnest in promoting

the welfare of King's College, for which institution he is making a strong appeal. The Duke was for some years a member, and a very eloquent one, of the House of Commons. He passed from the floor of the Lower Chamber to the proud honour of the ancient dukedom, but earlier to the still prouder one of being the husband of a Royal Princess and the brother-in-law of the King of England and Emperor of India. The Duke was M.P. for Argyllshire from 1868 to 1878, and three years after taking his seat married Her Royal Highness the Princess Louise, Queen Victoria's fourth daughter. He was private secretary to his father, the eighth Duke, at the India Office from 1868 to 1871, Governor-General of Canada from 1878 to 1883, and twice sought subsequent „ re-admission to the House of Commons without success. He is the owner of nearly 200,000 acres,, with a rent-roll of £60,00.0 a year, and is the author of many delightful books, including the famous ' Life and Times of Queen Victoria.'

LORD BLYTHSWOOD. Courage is one of the characteristics of Lord Blythswood, who has celebrated his appointment as Lord-Lieutenant for the county of Renfrew in the place of the late Sir Michael R. Shaw-Stewart, Bart., by personally chasing two burglars from his bedroom at Blythswood House. He is the head of one branch of the great clan Campbell, and as Mr Campbell Campbell Lord Salisbury made him successively a baronet and first baron. He married Miss Augusto Carrington, one of the sisters of the present Lord Carrington. They have no children, but by special remainder the title passes to his brother, the Rev. Sholto CampbellDouglas, who was formerly rector of All Souls', Marylebone. Lord Blythswood, who was born in 1835, served with the Scots Guards in the Crimea, where he was severely wounded. As ground-landlord of a great part of the city of Glasgow he is immensely rich. Queen Victoria once visited Blythswood.

A GARDENING EARL. Lord Redesdale is a great gardener, and has a remarkable taste for arboriculture. He was a notable diplomatist in his earlier days, and knows most of the important chancelleries of the world. His keenness for artistic culture to which in later years he has given bis time, admirably accords with that of his wife. She is an Ogilvy, and as a girl saw her home, the domain of the Earls of Airlie, converted into a paradise. The late Lord Airlie, that "gallant soldier who died in South Africa during the war, was her brother. He and his sister were sworn ' chums,' and during the few Weeks in the year that he allowed himself from his military duties they used to drive to the house of every tenant on the estate, friends of them all, beloved and admired .by each one. On one such trip they came within an ace of death. The Earl was driving a fractious horse, which took it into his wicked head to turn awkward just at the gateway of Airlie Castle, which looks down a sheer precipice. ' Make your peace with God,' said the young earl. 'ln another instant we shall be over.' When all seemed lost, and Airlie could no longer restrain the horse, a man sprang out from somewhere, seized the animal's head, and dragged him back. As he did so the wheels were half-way over the abyss. It was a terrible moment, but they soon got over it. ' I am so tired, £>r John Brown once said to her, when she was quite young. ' Are you not tired, too, dear?' 'No,' she answered. ' I have a box of laughter inside me, and the key that unlocks it is ' fun.'' And she has laughed her way through life. There are few happier couples than Lord and Lady Redesdale.

CAPTAIJ* TYRWMITT. Captain the Hon. Hugh Tyrwhitt, who joined the King's suite for the Royal visit to Kiel, is the second surviving son of the Baroness Berners, seventh in line, of succession as the niece of the sixth baron, and widow of the late Sir Henry Thomas Tyrwhitt. Captain Tyrwhitt, who is fortyeight, served with the Naval Brigade landed for service in the Soudan, and was with the Nile Expedition for the relief of Gordon at Khartoum in ISB4-85, for his services on which tragic occasion he received a medal and clasp and the Khedive Star. He gained his captaincy in 1889, and since 1902 has been private secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty. He is a brother-in-law of Lord Knollys, to whom his sister, the Hon. Ardyn Mary, was married in 1887. The Berners peerage has undergone some curious vicissitudes. The earliest creation to 1-155, when Sir John Bourchier—son of the Count of Eu, in Normandy, by Anne, daughter of Thomas Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester—who had married the.heiress of Sir Richard Berners, of Horsley, in Surrey, was summoned to Parliament as John Bourchier de Berners, Chevalier. , When the Chevalier's grandson, second, Lord Berners, died in 1532, the barony became dormant. His second daughter had married one Edmund Knyvet, sergeant-porter to Harry the Eighth, and a descendant of hers, Sir Thomas Knyvet, Knight, petitioned James the First for the restoration of the title, but died before he gained the King's confirmation. It was not until 1832 that the abeyance was terminated, and by that time a failure in the male line of the Knyvets had converted the head of the family into a Wilson, It was Robert Wilson, of Didlington, who thus became fourth Baron Berners, and, as Fate would have it, he died unmarried. His brother was summoned to Parliament by writ as Baron Berners in 1838, but with the death of his son without issue the title went to the lady who now holds it.