PARS ABOUT NOTABILITIES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 154, 29 June 1907, Page 11

PARS ABOUT NOTABILITIES.

The Dowager Lady Crawford's Villa Palmieri, Florence, where the scene of Boccaccio's "Decamerone" was laid, and in which the late Queen Victoria sojourned, has been sold to a Mr. Ellsworth, of New York. To escape the ostentations life he now finds distasteful Mr. Charles M. Schwab, the ex-president of the Steel Trust, is willing to sell for £500,000, £200,000 less than it cost him, his mansion in Riverside Drive, New York. The realisation of his dreams has depressed him, and his spirits have been seriouly affected by his own illness and by the poor health of his wife. Mr. Schwab is said to have told Mr. Carnegie months ago that he was tired of living in a palace, and wished to escape the burdens which such a life entailed.

Mr. Hall Came was 54 years of age in May, having first seen the light of day on the 14th May, 1853. His parents intended him to follow the profession of an architect, and he spent a five years' apprenticeship to this calling in Liverpool. Indeed, we believe that we are correct in saying that Mr. Hall Caine's first essays in journalism were in the nature of architectural criticisms. He later learnt the art of using his pen on the staff of a Liverpool newspaper, on which he was engaged as a leader-writer.

Dr. R. Wardlaw Thompson, foreign secretary of the London Missionary Society, who has been elected chairman of the Congregational Union for next year, is at present engaged on an extensive missionary tour in the East. Of Scottish blood, he was born in India, educated partly in South Africa, and has held charges both in England and Scotland. He entered the ministry in 1865, and has been foreign secretary of the L.M.S. ever since 1880.

Lord Cadogan, who has just entered his 67th year, is one of those great noblemen who render valuable public service to their fellow-countrymen in so characteristically retired and modest a fashion that we "almost forget to thank them for it. Yet the Earl was Lord-Lieuten-ant of Ireland for an exceptionally long period of time while Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister. He is one of the richest peers in Englaaid, being the fortunate owner of the greater part of Chelsea, from which place his eldest son, who is a contemporary of Mr. Victor Cavendish, the heir to another great ground landlord of London, the Duke of Devonshire, takes his courtesy title.

Admiral Fournier saw his sixty-fifth I birthday in May, and that means that i that month saw this distinguished officer put upon the retired list. He entered the service under the Second Empire, and made his name ashore in the Terrible Year, when he and his bluejackets held out against annihilation at Le Bouro-et. He w-as an intimate of Li-Hung-Chan<*'s, and, thanks to this, he was mainly instrumental in bringing about the treaty of Pe-chi-li, which put an end to the Franco-Chinese war. And he is one of those who Lave crossed swords with Henri Rochefort, and have by no means had the worst of the encounter. "-- The Emperor of Austria is said to have the finest collection of orchids in the world at his palace at Sehoenorunn There are 13,000 plants. A well knvwr. American bishop tells a story of a visis to a small town in one ,0$ the Southern StatgSj "where- fe* SvasJ

awakened one morning by a clear soprano voice singing a famous hymn, (s Hje bishop was dressing, he could not help meditating on the piety of his hostess. Speaking to her at breakfast of the pleasure it had given him, he was met by an unexpected answer "Oh law!" she replied, "that's the h'vmn J boil the eggs by; three verses for soft, and five for hard."

Thus the "Pall Mall Gazette": Sir Alexander Swettenhani, who, it is, perhaps, rather irresponsibly assumed, is going to settle down in Jamaica, would, no doubt, find a precedent for doin<* so in tne late Sir George Grey. The cases are, at any rate, so far on all-fours that both parties were equally badly-' treated by the Government of the day7'The Colonial Office sent Grey, for the 'fourth time, to fill a post of exceptional difficulty, when, in 1861, they sent him to New Zealand. However, he did the job for them. When General Cameron declined to attack a strong Wereroa pa, the old 83rd man went and took the pa himself; and so on. The rebels were beaten. And, then, the Duke of Buckingham curtly informed Gre X» that "the name of his successor would be communicated to him." He lived on his New Zealand-' property for some 20 odd years; but he died in London. He was the New Zealand Premier who invented the term: "One man one vote."

_ The Kaiser, who seems to have considered that Dr. Curtius, as editor of the " Hohenlohe Memoirs," was not quite up to his name, retaliated by striking the Doctor's name out of the list of guests at his Strasburg banquet. Whereupon the Protestant party in the Reichstag complained .that it is tli* Kaiser who "is discourteous in sli.ohr.ing the "Head of their Church" for the political views of the editorial individual; and it is hinted, moreover, that in doing so the Kaiser is playing up to the Roman Catholic Bishops, who were all invited to the function. The result is that Dr. Curtius has been told he had better resign, and his friends are sorry they spoke.

Osborne was the scene of one of the Prine?. of Wales' wildest freaks. He was always the "pickle"' of the family, and not even the solemn grandeur of his grandmother's (Queen Victoria) diningroom could repress his tremendous spirits. He was dining with her one day at Osborne, and frisked so riotously at table that at last her dignity could endure it no longer, and she bade him leave the table. He disappeared, and lor a few minutes was preternaturally quiet. Then with a whOop of delight he shot out from teneath the table, arrayed not according to the costume of the navy, but merely in that which nature provided. The silent interlude had been devoted to a quick change beneath the table, under which he had left the' whole of his portable wardrobe.

One of the forces in the financial world out West is visiting Europe this summer. Mr. H. H. Rogers has been prominent in connection with the Standard Oil Trust. To his native town of Fairhaven he has been a u-nevolent genius, laying out at his own cost several miles of macadamised roads (all the while acting as local superintendent of streets), and has also made a present to the town of the waterworks, of which lie was the proprietor. The water-income go?s in support of the £20,000 library which he gave in memory of his daughter Millicent. Among his other gifts is a Town Hall. They speak respectfully of Standard Oil at F-airbaven,'.. Dr. Glendinning, who was selected to assist the Madrid Court physician ut the recent auspicious event, is a Guy's man, and a New Zealander whose Durham degrees of M.B. and B.S. are only some three or four years old. He would thus seem to be one of the youngest practitioners who have figured at an important occasion of this kind, as he i% probably, the first English practitioner who has attended a Queen of Spain in similar circumstances. General Kuroki has been received at, Washington with honours so unusual that they are very seldom accorded to a President U.S.A. himself. The distinguished visitor was met at San Francisco by the highest military officer in America, Lieutenant-General McArthur, who conveyed the national guest across the continent. But when General Bell, the Chief of the Staff, met General Kuroki at the Washington station, it was with an escort of cavalry; and so rarely is this mirk of the highest distinction accorded that, unless he is going anywhere in his capacity of Commander-inChief, the head of the State, even, never gets it.

Sir Himilton Goold-Adams, the Governor of Orangia, is the grandson of Elizabeth the beautiful Irish girl whose njime still has an honoured place in the (raditions of the London stage as a brilliant Shakespearian actress. Between 81 and 00 years ago she was the great popular favourite of London, and in the midst of her fame—which was as high in private life as it was on the stage —she quitted it for ever to marry Sir William jiVrixon-Becher, who s*at in Parliament for the town of Mallow. A daughter 'pf this ha.ppy marriage was the mother (if Sir Hamilton Goold-Adams.