MR. HADDON CHAMBERS, MADAME MELBA, AND MR. BERTRAM MACKENNAL. regarding him as a sort of Wild Man of the Woods. This picture alone is sufficient refutation, for these three people hold all London by their art-Mr. Haddon No. 189. June 1899 281 Tyranny of Tears," comes of an Ulster family, and was born at Stanmore, Sydney, thirty-nine years ago. He began life, like Adam Lindsay Gordon, as a stockrider, X English mother, Louis Napoleon Parker probably got his Christian names because he was born in France in the very year when Citizen Bonaparte became Napoleon III. This Royalist start has appeared in him since, for did he not write "The Vagabond King" and illuminate. his house in Gunterstone Road, West Kensington, on Diamond Jubilee night, with the legend of light: "V.R. a Happy Family!"? From France he passed to Germany for his education-which accounts for the fact that he addressed the Wagnerians in London last year in French and German-and learned the art of music Since then he has written over twenty plays, some of them in collaboration with Mr. Murray Carson. A BILINGUAL ACTRESS. And now for a bilingual player. She is a rare bird on the English stage; but she occurs in the person of Miss Eleanor Calhoun, who would have made a great hit as Clorinda Wildairs in "A Lady of Quality," had the dramatised version of Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's novel not been so poor. Miss Calhoun is a Californian by birth and a Scoto Irish woman by descent. She led an outdoor life as a Cosmo Stuart, who is the only son of the late Lord Alexander Gordon Lennox and nephew of the present Duke of Richmond. Always fond of acting, he made his first professional appearance in 1893 in a provincial company of the late Grace Huntley curiously enough, the chief of his house is the Marquis of Huntly and tried London for the first time in 1894, fifteen months later. He is very well off, and dresses very smartly. Mr. and many qualifications for the difficult art she has undertaken. ACTOR AND AUTHOR TOO. The success of "The Man in the Iron Mask," written by Mr. Norman Forbes, at the Adelphi, proves how clever all the Forbes Robertsons are. The old gentleman, Mr. John ForbesRobertson, who is nearly blind now, came to London from Aberdeen half a century ago, and was, in his day, Photo. by H. Walter Barnett, Hyde Park Corner. MISS VYNOR. a great authority on art. All his four sons and three daughters have inherited his artistic instincts in different ways. Johnston, the eldest, is not merely an actor, but a first-rate artist; Ian acts well and stagemanages better; Norman acts and adapts; Leonard is a violinist; Mrs. Buchanan, the eldest daughter, can design stagecostumes very cleverly; Daisy, the youngest, is an artist and lives in Paris; while Frances, who married Mr. Henry Dawes Harrod the other week, is making her way as a novelist. Their mother, a charming white-haired old lady, is an Englishwoman. The old gentleman is a perfervid Scot, and loves to have a "crack" with his fellow-countrymen. His knowledge of the vernacular remains unimpaired after fifty years in Cockney-land. |