MRS O’SHEA.

Temuka Leader, Issue 2149, 13 January 1891, Page 3

MRS O’SHEA.

The following is from an old number of St. Stephen’# Review: — “ J’ew people are aware that the wife of Captain O’Shea, M.P., the redoubtable member for Galway, is the sister of that man of mark, the gallant and indomitable Sir Evelyn Wood, Y. 0., the only stain on whose scutcheon —and which must ever, alas! remain a stain —is that he signed the ignoble and humiliating peace of Majuba Hill, Mrs O’Shea, or Kitty O’Shea, as she is now called by those who have the pleasure of her friendship and acquaintance, possesses in a rare degree the three splendid attributes of ‘ blood, beauty, and bravery.’ Who that ever had the privilege of visiting \ Hiverhall Place, the house and home of her father, Sir John Wood, will ever forget the lovely apparition that threw an air of enchantment around in the shape of Kate Wood, the third and youngest daughter, whose bluegroy eyes were like embodied poetry, and fascinated all that came under their influence P Her mother, Lady Wood, commenced novel-writing at an age when most women consider them* selves utterly shelved and done for, and her novels would have been considered sufficient to secure fame for the family, had she not been far outstripped in this respect by her second daughter, Mrs. Steele, whose‘Gardenhurst’— to mention one book of many sbe.bas written —has become one of our classics, being in every way so exceptionally good that it stands alone on a par wi'th Jane Eyre or Adam Bede. The elder sister, Lady Thomas Barret-Leonard, in her own way is not less distinguished, for as an amateur actress she will long be remembered, more especially as she has transmitted her rare taleut in that respect to more than one of her children. Mrs. O’Shea used to take a prominent part in the theatricals of Belhus and Eivenhall place. The lovely contour of her exquisite figure, the beautiful brown tresses, worn I without a single artifice and restraint, through which ran a golden glimmer —which in the Highlands ia said to bring luck all combined to make Mrs O’Shea's impersonations more than usually striking and attractive, in addition to which she possessed the softest of voices, cast with such a rich, deep, sonorous tone of musicial sympathy, that she was the very ideal of a heroine of romance,”