People We Hear About

New Zealand Tablet, 27 March 1913, Page 41

People We Hear About

The Duchess of Norfolk, in spite of her great wealth and position, is a believer in simplicity, and practises it (says a London daily). Her entertainments, though in every way successful, are never occasions for lavish decorations or needless expense. In a special article, 'America's Three Cardinals,' the New York Herald says of his Eminence Cardinal O'Connell, of Boston:—' Cardinal O'Connell, the third of America's Cardinals, although a man of astonishing versatility, a lover and patron of all the arts, an orator of distinction, and an accomplished musician, is fitted to shine in the most cultivated society, but he has devoted a very large part of his time since his elevation to his present office to the. study of such social questions as particularly affect the poor. He is extremely charitable and gives largely of his ov/n income to those in need. Unflagging energy in the interest of the Church and of all its children characterises the Cardinal's daily life.' . _ J Mr. T. C. Brennan, a Melbourne barrister, who took a prominent part in the establishment of the Australian Catholic Federation, who contested the Warrenheip seat, just outside Ballarat, in the Liberal interest recently, is a brother of Mr. Frank Brennan, Labor M.H.R. for Batman. It is not often (remarks . the Southern Cross) that one finds brothers in opposite political camps. Mr. Thos. Brennan is also a journalist, and at the present time is editor of the Melbourne Advocate. He comes of a family which seems naturally to turn to law and journalism. Mr. W. Brennan is on the Parliamentary staff of the Melbourne Argus, and Mr. H. P. Brennan is sub-editor of the Weekly Times, Melbourne, and one sister, Miss Anna Brennan, is a barrister practising in the Melbourne Courts. The part taken by Lord Dunraven in the Home Rule debate in the House of Lords and his tribute to the tolerance of Catholics, recall memories of his father as a convert to the Church. Edwin, third Earl of Dun raven, who sat as Lord Adare in the House of Commons from 1837 to 1851, belonged to that group of friends and neighbors, the De Veres, of Curragh Chase, Monsell, of Tervoe (afterwards Lord Emly), and Mr. Heffernan Considine, of Derk, whom County Limerick" contributed to the ranks of. Rome's recruits. His family, though Protestant for generations, were distinguished for a liberality all too rare in their time and place; and it was the first Earl who restored the Trinitarian, or White Abbey, of Adare to Catholics —its rightful possessors— a parish church. Especially from the time of his conversion, he took a keen interest in the progress of religious education in Ireland. He brought the Christian Brothers and the Sisters of Mercy to Adare, while his benefactions to the poor are still gratefully remembered by the country side. -. ; . - . J . When a boy is descended at on ft and the same time from a Girondin of Nantes who only just escaped the guillotine at the end of the. Terror, from an Irishman who was one of Napoleon's colonels, and from 'Dr. Priestly, the eminent Unitarian, divine' and discoverer of oxygen when he is born by chance on French soil, but passes his childhood on the great slope of the South Down; when he is educated at Edgbaston under Cardinal Newman; when he serves his apprenticeship to journalism under W. T. Stead, and then rushes off and serves his apprenticeship to arms in an artillery barrack full of French conscripts, and when, after a hasty rush across America and back again and some mathematical studies in Paris, he turns up at Balliol College, Oxford, as an undergraduate and takes the University History Scholarship and a double first in history, it is probable that one who has had so variegated a 'youth will have passed through some interesting experiences. And if he happens to possess a specific talent for selfexpression, what he says or writes is pretty certain to be worth hearing or reading. Fresh from such a combination of environments, Hilaire Belloc appeared upon the literary horizon of London some ten or twelve years ago. - . - ',,..•/= '