Mrs. Andrew Fitzpatrick, who looped the loop last Friday at Hendon with
her son Hector, is certainly one of the youngest-looking women in the
world of her age--for she is put down in black and white as forty-four
in more than one book of reference. Her miraculous _Lady Macbeth_, which
she impersonated at the age of seven, is still a happy memory to many
middle-aged playgoers, though the miracle was eclipsed by the nine days'
wonder of her elopement and marriage to Mr. Fitzpatrick, the famous
Ballarat millionaire, on her thirteenth birthday. Her daughter Gemma,
who made her _debut_ in Grand Opera at the Scala in 1895, is already a
grandmother; and her son Hector, who fought in the Russo-Turkish war of
1878, is the youngest Field-Marshal in the British Army.
M. Atichewsky, the famous Russian pianist, who gives his first recital
in the Bluethstein Hall next Wednesday, is no stranger to London
audiences, though he is only just twenty years of age. In the year of
QUEEN VICTORIA'S Diamond Jubilee he visited England as a _Wunderkind_,
being then only thirteen years of age, and created a _furore_ by his
precocious virtuosity. About eleven years later, while he was still in
his teens, he appeared at the Philharmonic Concerts with his second
wife, a soprano singer of remarkable attainments. The present Madame
Atichewsky, it should be noted, has a wonderful contralto voice, which
is inherited by her second daughter, Ladoga, who recently made her
_debut_ at the Theatre de la Monnaie, in Brussels.
* * * * *
The Poetry of the Ring.