People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 19 November 1908, Page 28

People We Hear About

Mr. Henry Blount was the intermediary through whom the Catholics of France sent their gift of flowers for the Westminster Congress. The son of Sir Edward Blount, X.C.8., one of the pioneers of French railways, and his wife, Gertrude, daughter <f William Charles Jerningham A Ji& was born sixty-four years ago. An old Oscotian, he is one of the directors of the West of France Railway, a chevalier of the Legion of Honor, and a Deputy-Lieutenant for Sussex. He married, in 1869, Marguerite, a daughter of M. le Baron de la Rochette. • ' Mr. Percy Fitzgerald has more than 200 volumes to his cfedit, amongst them ' Fifty Years of Catholic Life and Progress ' and ' Eucharistic Jewels.* He was a close personal friend of Charles Dickens, in whose correspondence there are many kindly references to him. Mr. Fitzgerald was born in 1834 in County Louth, Ireland, and was educated at Stonyhurst, of which famous college he has published an interesting volume of 'Memories.' He was called to the Irish Bar in 1855, but his bent was towards literature. He owns large estates in Ireland, but his heart is in Fleet street. Sir Horace Plunkett, with whom Father Bernard Vaughan was recently staying on a visit at Foxrock, County Dublin, had a large house-party to meet the eminent Jesuit, including the Earl and Countess of Fingal and many of the Irish, gentry of the district. Sir Horace, who is a son of the sixteenth Lord Dunsany, derives his pedigree from the same ancestor as Lord Fingall. In early life, he was engaged for some years in cattle-ranching in America. For more than a quarter of a century he has taken great interest in all agricultural' questions in Ireland, on which he is recognised as an authority; and some fifteen years ago he founded the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society. For some years he sat as M.P. for Dublin. He has a charming abode—' Kilteragh '— at Foxrock, near Dublin, and spends some portion of, each year in London. Lord Walter Talbot Kerr, G.C.B. (son of the seventh Marquis of Lothian), who has just entered his seventieth year, joined the Royal Navy, of which he is now Fleet- Admiral, in 1853. HV saw active service as a cadet of the Neptune and the Cornwallis in the Baltic during the- Crimean war, and asf midshipman with the Naval Brigade at the Relief of Lucknow by Sir Colin Camobell, receiving for both operations two medals and the clasp for Lucknow. Close on forty years ago, on the second anniversary of his attainment of the rank of Commander, he gained the silver medal of the Royal Humane Society by heroically saving life in the River Tagus. He has been thrice a Lord of the Admiralty, has held command in the Channel and Mediterranean Squadrons, and was an A.D.C. to the late Queen Victoria. Lord Walter is president of the Nottingham Diocesan Schools Association, and is a member of the Catholic Education Council. The late Lady Amabel Kerr, whose name will ever be held in benediction in the Catholic Church in England, was his wife; and Fattier Ralph F. Kerr, of the London Oratory, is his eldest son. The Earl of Granard, who, rumor asserts, is about to choose as his future- wife one of the fairest and wealthiest of American heiresses (says the Catholic Weekly), has recently been staying in New York on a visit to the" home of the young lady and her mother. Lord Granard, who of late years has been a well-known-figure in the Londpn social world, is a high and greatlyesteemed official of the Court. Appointed a Lord-in-Waiting to King Edward in 1905, he holds at present the important posi- .. tion of Master of the Horse in the Royal household, and is, it is stated, an especial favorite with his Majesty, who has entrusted him with many missions of an important character. Lo'd Granard, who is of commanding height and strikingly handsome appearance, and who is much admired for his geniality and urbane disposition, was formerly in the Scots Guards, and served "with his regiment in the late South African war. He is a Privy Councillor and a Grand Cross of the Order of Isabella and of Charles 111. of Spain. On his mother's side he is a descendant of'the Petres, a noble family who hold a pre-eminent place among - the Catholic aristocracy of England for their unswerving fidelity to the faith through the long era of persecution, and who have supplied an honorable roll of ecclesiastics to the Church for four fenturies The founder of his race was Sir Alexander de Forbes chief of his clan, who was made a peer of Scotland by King James 11. in 1448. A later ancestor, the first Earl, who was a devoted adherent to the Royal cause in Scotland, received that dignity as a recognition "of his services under- Montrose, and was appointed Marsha of the Army in Ireland in 1^670, and the famil^have been settled in the country since that period.