People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 8 November 1906, Page 28

People We Hear About

The, latest serisalibn in" Paris is' & lace* shop' "in the Rue St. Rodhe, .which has been organised and is being directed by or Queen.. The ex-Queen .Dowager Marie of Sicily has started the -shop in* Paris, where nothing but Calabrian » lace is being sold.- ; For many years' Mr. W. Redmond was the c baby ' of the House. He was only twenty-two * years of age when he was returned for Wexford' in 1883. The youth-/ fulness . of some members of the present^ Parliament recalls the, fact that a Frenchman cannot be a Deputy until he is twenty- five years of- age, while no Italian can legislate for his country before the age of thirty. The Earl of Denbigh, who is the colonel commanding the Honourable Artillery Company' of London, is one of the very few Englishmen who have been de^ corated with the Grand Cross -of the Spanish Order of Charles 111., which stands next in distinction to the celebrated Order of the Golden ■ Fleece. Another Service man who also wears the decoration is Admiral Lord Walter Kerr, of the Royal Navy. A Flemish priest of the village of ' Austruweep has found in the garret of the local church a, dusty painted canvas representing the- Assumption of the Blessed •Virgin, and several reputed critics of Antwerp . arid - Brussels have categorically attributed the painting to Rub-ens. The picture will be submitted to the investigation of the most prominent picture experts of Europe. It is a very fine piece of work, and is fortunately well preserved. Ugbrooke Park, in Devonshire, the seat of Lord.Clifford of Chudleigh, is described by M.A.P.' a s one of tine loveliest places in Devonshire. A towered "and battlemented mansion, it lies, in a park-like demesne,' seven miles in circumference, nestling amid wooded heights. Lady Clifford, who is- an excellent actress and very fond of theatricals, has had a delightful little theatre built in the house, in which various pieces have been produced. The mansion also possesses by way of contrast, a very handsome chapel, of noble classic design, and adorned with work" of art illustrative of Christ's Passion. A precious relic in the chapel is the head of an ancestor of the Cliffords, which was impaled on Temple Bar. King Edward can speak German and French as fluently as English, and has a fair knowledge of one or two other languages ; but as a linguist he is quite eclipsed by the Emperor of Austria. It is told of him that at one of the great military reviews he addressed live different regiments— German, Italian Hungarian, Bohemian, and Wallachian— each in its own tongue ; and Hungary will never forget how, fifty-five years ago, the youthful Archduke Francis Joseph when installing a certain Governor, electrified his audience by addressing it in purest Magyar,- a tongue no other Archduke had ever taken the trouble to learn They sprang from their seats, waved their swords in a frenzy of enthusiasm, and almost lifted the roof with thunderous shouts of ' Eljen. ' Once more Sir Antony MacDonnell has become the storm-centre of Irish politics (says ' M.A.P ') owing to the wordy warfare waged between him and Mr > Walter Long. Sir Antony is certainly a curious maii to have been appointed Permanent Under Secretary at Dublin Castle, and to have been kept there by successive Tory Chief Secretaries,, for he is known to be both a Roman Catholic and a Home Ruler. The son of a small landlord in County Mayo, he was educated at the old Queen's College, Galway, and, having entered the India Civil Service by open competition he" ' fought his way to the. very highest posts by 'sheer merit. It. is curious to loo'f on him and reflect that this official once ruled for six years over all the teeming- millions of the North-West Provinces and Oudh, with a sway more really despotic than that of all the - viziers of the Great Mogul. It" is significant, too, that land questions interested him most throughout his Indian career, for it is an open secret that he is the real author of Mr. "Wyndham's Irish Land Act. His Indian proteges, the talukhdars (land- - owners) of Oudh, in their gratitude set .up a" statute of him at Lucknow ; perhaps he-may, yet live to see his memory similarly perpetuated by grateful Irish ten-ant-farmers.