People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5, 4 February 1909, Page 188

People We Hear About

The late Sir James Mathew, a former Lord Justice of Appeal, left estate valued at over £60,000 gross. The death of Mr; Nicholas Benziger, sen., is announced from Einsiedeln, Switzerland. Mr. Benziger was bom in 1830, and had "been actively .engaged in the Catholic publishing business for more than half a century. His sterling Christian character endeared him to all who knew 'him. His widow passed away a few days after his death. The Right Hon. Sir Frederick Darley, Chief Justice of New South "Wales, who has just retired, is in his seventynintli year. _He was born in County Wicklow, and, after completing his education at Trinity College, was called xo the Irish Bar fifty-six ' years ago. Nine years later he was admitted to the Now- South Wales' Bar, was' appointed to the Supreme Court Bench in 1886, and was knighted the following year. - . - - . In a new book of good stories Mr. Lionel Tollemache has an interesting anecdote of Mr. Gladstone. He says: ' One stormy day he walked from his hotel at Biarritz to" ■ visit me in the room where I" am now writing; "arid I was amazed to see that he had come without an umbrella. On my venturing to remonstrate, he laughingly explained that, if the high -wind "had happened to turn his' umbrella insvle out, a picture of Mm in that forlorn plight "would, have ; found its way into half the comic papers I I could not help thinking how little we know of the small -worries of great men !' _ _ -" Sir Gerald Strickland, K.C.M.G., Count della Catena, the Catholic Govoraor of Tasmania, who, according to the Daily Mail, is to succeed Sir H. Rawson as Governor of New South Wales, wasJiorn in Malta in 1861. His father was Captain Walter Strickland, R.N., and his mother the only child of Chevalier Bonici Mompalas. He is a 8.A., of Cambridge. . He succeeded his maternal grand uncle as sixth Count della Catena in 1875, and was knighted in 1897. He was Governor of the Leeward Islands from -1902 to 1904, and was- appointed to Tasmania in the latter year.Lady Strickland is a daughter of Earl De La Warr. Baron Clement' von Schorlemer-Lieger, who was chosen by the German Emperor to bear his Majesty's congratulations to the Holy Father on the occasion of the Jubilee of> his Holiness, is the son of one of the founders and foremost parliamentarians of the Centre Party and of the organiser of the powerful Peasants' League of Westphalia. He was born in 1856; in 1889. he was Councillor of Neuss, in 1897 Superior Councillor at Breslau, and in 1899 he became President of the Board of Agriculture of the "Rhenish Province. In 1905-he was appointed Governor of the Rhenish Provinces, an office which he still holds and which he was the first Catholic to hold. In connection -with the death of Lord Petre, to which reference was made in our last issue, it is worthy of note that the fourth Baion Petre was committed to the Tower, -with other Catholic peers, on the sworn testimony of the notorious perjurer, Titus Oates, and there he died five years afterwards. Thorndon Hall, the home of the Petres,' was burned down some thirty years ago, but was rebuilt by the twelfth Baron in the Elizabethan style, of which it was originally a good example. But much more interesting was the still older house on the estate at Ingatestone, which during past years has had various residents, including Miss Braddon, the novelist, %hb is supposed 4p have made it the scene of her well-known romance, ( Lady Audley's Secret.' Within its walls was a genuine priest's hole, or hiding-place, a relic of the days of persecution. ' His Holiness the Pope has conferred the Order of Knighthood of St. Sylvester and the Golden Spur upon Mr. Melville, ex-superintendent, Scotland Yard, for services rendered during his professional career in the safeguarding of sovereigns and rulers in many countries of" the world. The Order of St. Sylvester is one of the oldest and most prized of Papal distinctions, and was 'founded by Pope Sylvester in the reign of.. Constantino. The decoration is in the shape of an eight-pointed cross in gold on a white enamel ground, and carries with it a gorgeous uniform, cocked hat, and mother-o'-pearl sword. Mr. Melville is an Irishman, and was born in Kenmare, County Kerry. He is an officer of the IJegion of Honor of France, and has -also the Order of Danebrog of Denmark, the Order of Christ of Portugal, founded in. 1317 by Dionysius 1., and, the Italian Cross of Francis Joseph of Austria.