OBITUARY.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1625, 17 December 1912, Page 7

OBITUARY.

ME. WHITELAW EEID. By TcletcraDh—Prees Association—OoDrrleht London, December 15. Mr. Whitelaw Beid, United States Ambassador to England since 1905, is dead; aged 75; MESSAGE PEOM KING GEOEGE. (Eec. December 16, 9.5 p.m.) London, December IG. His Majesty the King has cabled Mr.. Taft deploring Mr. Whitelaw Eeid's death, whom Britain will mourn as an old friend. Tho newspapers pay a.warm tribute to the late Mr. Whitelaw Eeid. _ Whitelaw Ecid, the famous American journalist and diplomatist, was purely of Scottish descent.- His fathor was the ■Eon of a Covenanter who emigrated from Scotland to America, his mother, Marion Whitelaw Ronalds, enme of an old Highland family. Mr. Eeid's career was a steady progression from narrower to wider spheres. It began in a little town of the Middle West, whore he graduated at college, and became editor of tho local newspaper. In 1868, after some years' experience as a reporter, he became a leading editorial writer for the New York Tribune, in the following year was made managing editor, and in 1872, upon the death of Horace Grecly, became the principal /proprietor and editor-in-chief." -In 1905 Mr. Reid relinquished his active editorship of the "Tribune" but retained financial control. Ho declined an appointment as United States Minister to Germany in 1877, and- aeain in 1831, but served as Minister to Prance in 1889-92, and in 1892 was the unsuccessful Republican candidate for Vice-President on the ticket with Benjamiii Harrison. In 1897 he was Special Ambassador of the United States on tho occasion of Queen Victoria,'s Jubilee; in 1898_ vras a member of tho commission whioh arranged the terms of peaco between the United States and Spain; in 1902 was Special Ambassador of the United States at the Coronation of King Edward VII, and in 1905 beenme Ambassador to Great Britain. In-1904 he was Chancellor of the University of the State of New York. Ho married an heiress, Miss. Elizabeth' Mills, the only daughter of Dennis Ogden Mills, a prominent financer.

MR. GEORGE RIGNOLD, 'ACTOR. (Reo. December 16, 9.5 p.m.) Sydney, December 16. Mr. George Rignold, the actor, is dead. The news of the death of Mr. George Rignold will bo very widely regretted. Not only was he the beau ideal of our fathers' notions of what an actor should be, but he was, in his prime, one of the finest heroic aotors on the-English stage, and even to-day in London and New York the sensation he made as "Henry V" in Shakespeare's historical plar of that name is not forgotten, and in Henry Glassford Bell's illustrated edition of Shakespeare (edited by Mr. Austin Brereton), published in 1899, the actor chosen to illustrate the gallant King Henry was George Rignold, whose regal pose and noble bearing are kingly indeed. The deceased actor came originally before the public in the early 'OO's, where in tlio Theatres Royal at Bath and Bristol he played Theseus to the Titania of Miss Ellen- Terry, the Singing Fairy of Madge Robertson and the Lysander of William Rignold. In the '70's he was at the Queen's Theatre, London, where he made a hit as Caliban in "Tlio Tempest." He wos the first Romeo to Adelaide Neilson's Juliet at the Haymarket, and in 1875 first played "Henry V" at Booth's Theatre, the part in which ho appeared at the opening of the Drury Lane Theatre under, the management of Sir Augustus Harris in 1879. In 1880 he came to Australia, and barring occasional visits to England, nas remained there ever since. He had some fine performances to his credit, notably Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," "Othello," Maro Antony in "Julius Caesar," Paola Macari in "Called Back," nnd was extremely popular in the heroic parts of such plays as "Youth," "In the Ranks," "Hoochmnn Blind," "The Romany Rye," and "Tlio Lights o' London." He made his reappearance in London at tho benefit performance to his brother, Mr. Wm. Rignold, in 1902. Since then ho has retired from the stage and has lived tho simple life at his quiet picturesque homo down Middle Harbour, Sydney. His wife, who shared his varying fortunes, died about four or five years ago.