People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 39, 24 September 1903, Page 10

People We Hear About

Mr Henry J. Cloran, K.C., one of the best-known young Irish Catholics of Montreal, has been appointed to the vacancy in the Canadian Senate by the death of the late Hon. James O'Brien. Before leaving Queenstown the King summoned the § v on> Horace Plunkett on board the Royal yacht, and having expressed his personal appreciation of the services which Mr. Plunkett had rendered to Ireland conferred upon him the honor of knighthood, and presented him with the Knight Commandership of the Royal Victorian Order. Sir H. A. Blake (Governor of Hong Kong since 1896) has just been appointed to the Governorship of Ceylon. Queensland, it will be remembered, declined his appointment so strongly in the eighties, in consequence of his drastic police administration in Ireland, that Downing street took the hint and sent him to the West Indies. Mr. John Gubbins, the popular and wealthy racehorse owner, of Bruree, County Limerick, has the luck of a seventh son of the seventh son. His great horse, patriotically named Ard Patrick, winner, like its owner's Galtee More, of the Derby, has just been sold to a German for £20,000, the same sum as was given by the Russian Government for Galtee More. But even here Mr. Gubbins' good fortune with Ard Patrick was not gone for in winning the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown some weeks ago he credited his old master with another ten thousand. The late Pontiff, writes Mr. George R. Sims, in ' Men and Women,' was possessed of a considerable fund of humor, and a characteristic story of his wit is worth telling. When a Nuncio he was dining at a certain Monarch's table, and an imprudent foreign ambassador produced a rather immodest photograph of a lady prominent in society. To annoy the Nuncio, he inquired of him what he thought of it. At once Joachim Pecci seized the picture, glanced at it, and in a loud voice observed, ' Capital ! Is it the portrait of your wife ? ' Few men were gifted with a readier tongue than the genial veteran who has just passed away. The recent celebration of Sir Stephen de Vere's 91st birthday at Foynes, County Limerick, was a unique function, as the poet-baronet, by way of evidence of his undimmed powers of versification, had neatly turned off some exquisite translations from the Latin in commemoration of the event. Though overshadowed as a poet by the greater powers of his deceased brother (Aubrey de Vejre), the Lord of Curragh Chase, born on July 26th, 1812, has given the world perhaps the finest English translation of the Odes of Horace. The Walter Scott Publishing Co. have issued a revised edition of his ' Horace 'in the ' Canterbury Poets.' Sir Stephen de Vere succeeded to the title and property in 1880, but his father, Sir Aubrey de Vere (whose real name was Hunt), died as far back as July 28th, 1846. Colonel Ross-of-Bladensburg, who as Chief Commissioner of the Dublin Metropolitan Police was responsible for the safety of the King while in the Irish capital, is the grandson of General Ross, who captured Washington in 1814 and burnt the White House. The right to use ' of Bladensburg ' as an addition to the surname was conferred by the liegent on the widow and descendants of General Ross in memory of the victory at Bladensburg before Washington was taken. Colonel Ross-of-Bladensburg, the present head of the family, succeeded his brother, who was a barrister of Lincoln's Inn and afterwards a Jesuit priest. As an officer of the Coldstream Guards he saw service in the Suakin campaign in 1885, and has been on the military staff of Earl Spencer and Elarl Carnarvon when Viceroys of Ireland.^ His mother was a daughter of Viscountess Masserene" in her own right, and his great-grandfather on the maternal side was the Right Hon. John Foster, Baron Oriel, the last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons' and a stern anti-Unionist.