INDIVIDUALITIES

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVII, Issue 8349, 8 February 1913, Page 9

INDIVIDUALITIES

'•All the -world’s a stage, Joul all the men and women merely players.”

Lord Hardingo, Viceroy of India, who is now recovering from injuries inflicted by a would-be assassin at Delhi, is one of several younger sons of peers who have attained to peerages on their own account—the title having been conferred in his case, of course, on his appointment as Viceroy. Xu the same way Lord Fitzinaurice is a younger son of a Marquis of Lonsdowno, the lato Lord StaJbridgo a younger son of a Marquis of Westminster, Lord Ratbmore, a younger _ sou of a Lord Plunkot, and the list of such peerage creations might be largely extended. Tho Duke of Wellington was a younger sou of an Irish peer, who, with two other younger brothers. Lord Maryborough and Lord Cowley, was raised to tho peerage. The third Marquis of Londonderry, the stepbrother of the second Marquis, better known as Viscount Castlorcagh, was raised to tho peerage in 1814 as Baron Stewart long before be, on tho death of his brother in 1522, succeeded to tho family honours. It is not, perhaps, generally known that three of the Governors-Gencral of India, - although Peers of tho Realm, wore not Xx>rds of Parliament. Clive, on his first return from India, was made an Irish peer, and the same course was adopted in the case of both Lord Mayo and Lord Curzon. Mr James McCalmont, whose death was reported by cable this week, was one of tho veterans of the House of Commons, for he had sat for East Antrim since 1883. Ho was bom in 1847, and was a younger brother of General Sir Hugh McCalmont. Before entering Parliament he served in the Bth Hussars, and was hon. colonel of the Royal Antrim Artillery. Ho had been A.D.C. to ttvo Viceroys,, the Duke of Marlborough and Lord Cowper. He was a very ardent golfer. The McCalmonts have been established at Abbeylands, Comity Antrim, for many generations, and there is a Pennsylvanian branch of the family, founded in tho eighteenth century. The death of Mr Alfred Hardwick Ivon aeroplane disaster recalls his asse elation with that mysterious Englishman known to the natives of Central Africa as El Hakim (the doctor). Who ho was or what has now become of him is not definitely known, hut Mr Hardwick was associated with him in a visit to tho mythical African Lake Lorian. This was said by tho natives to be a great sheet of water, hut the American explorer Chanler described it as a mere swamp. When El Hakim and Mr Hardwick visited the place they found neither lake nor swamp. It-is not generally - known that tho new FirSt Sea Lord, Prince Louis of Raltcnberg, is the grandson of the Polish statesman, Haucke, who, ns Minister of War at Warsaw, was murdered in the Polish rising of 1830. One of his sons, an uncle of the'First Sea Lord, took tho name of Bqjensky, espoused the popular cause, and fell in the Polish rising of 1863. The hundredth anniversary has just passed of the birth of Dr Samuel Smiles, tho author of “Self-Help,” a book that has played an important part in the life of many solf-mado men. A brother of the author is still living in London. Mr William Smiles, who is now in his eighty-ninth year, is a retired Income Tax Commissioner, and resides in Kensington . . The defence of old maids was qnite recently undertaken in the press by. Miss Helen Gould, whose romantic engagement at the age of forty was announced a few weeks ago from America. Miss Gould is one of the wealthiest single women in America, as aha is the most wisely charitable. She is understood to expend tho sum of £IOO.OOO annually in relieving the unfortunate and tho needy, and has organised a method of charity that is humane as well as systematic. Not long ago she was proclaimed the bestloved woman in America. Viscount Morley, who has just enterid his seventy-fifth year, had not reachid his half-century, when, as Irish Secsetary, ho assisted in framing and explaining tho first Home Rule Bill. Last week, when approaching tho end of the third quarter of a century, ho was one of the leading exponents of tho third measure, though only the second to roach the chamber in which he now sits. The Lord President of the Council is tho only member of the present Administration who has sat in all the three Gabineta which have brought forward Homo Rule proposals, though Mr Asquith sat with him in the last of Mr Gladstone’s Ministries. It is safe to say that no Christmas banquet this week equalled one which took place at tho Mansion House forty years ago (says tho “Westminster Gazette” of December 37th last). Sir Sydney Waterlow, of the great firm of printers, and the father of Mr D. S. Waterlow, who formerly sat in tho Libera] interest for North Islington, was Lord Mayor during 1872-3, and he signalised his Christmas in office by entertaining dose upon two hundred of his relations at his civic residence. The guest of honour was Sir Sydney’s father, Mr James Waterlow, who had been born in 1790, and who was then eighty-two years of age, a span which Sir Sydney exceeded by one year. The old gentleman was supported at tho City table by thirteen children, forty-nine grandchildren, and fourteen great-grandchildren. The Lord Mayor himself had around him, in addition to his father, four sons, four daughters, four brothers, six sisters, seventeen nephews, twenty-two nieces, twentynine cousins, and one grandson, while Lady Waterlow brought her stepmother, four brothers, three sisters, twelve nephews, twelve nieces, and forty-one cousins? It was Sir Sydney to whom North Londoners owo one of their finest “lungs''—Waterlow Park —which Sir Sydney presented to tho London County Council. Ho sat in Parliament for many years, ami during his Lord Mayoralty the famous visit to tho City of the Shah of Persia took place.