TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LI, Issue 8738, 9 March 1894, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

j With the present rage for A Gaiety biographies it was hardly to I Actor. be supposed that we should escape a life of the late Fred Leslie, the famous burlesque actor, who formed with Miss Nellie Farren the chief attraction of the Gaiety Theatre for upwards of seven years. Fred Leslie—his real name by the way was Hobson—was born at Woolwich in 1855, his father being | a military outfitter. He early showed the j bent of his mind, seeingthat his schoolfellows, we ars told, have vivid recollections of his theatrical propensities, and it is recorded that white yet a boy he improvised an entertainment at Charlton House Fair, and on goiog round with his cap he collected the then by no means despicable sum of t eighteenpeoce. His mother speaks of him with true maternal partiality. " A more affectionate child, a more lovely youth, a more gentlemauly son," she writes, " no mother could desire. I was proud of my boy when he took mc to church, and he never missed going twice on Sunday while he lived with mc." Leslie was apprenticed to a firm of army contractors, bub at the age of twenty-three threw them over, and took to the stage. Miss Kate Santley gave him his fitfst part—that of Colonel Hardy in "Paul Pry." He knew nothing of it, although lis was really engaged on the strength of his representation that he knew the part well. On his first appearance he was soundly hissed. The next night he had learned his part perfectly, and the third night he was the best Colonel Hardy Miss Santley had ever seen. He subsequently confessed that he had never played the part before, but told a fib for fear of losing the chance of getting on the stage, ilis salary to start with was a pound a week, but it advanced by leaps and bounds. Next year (1879) io was eight guineas; in 1880, £12 ; in 1881 (while on tour in America), £25; in 1882, £25; in 1883, 1884, 1835. £40 ; in 1885, £50; in 1887, £55 ; in 1888, £50 ; in 1889 and 1891, £100; and in the prospective engagement for the past year, £120. He made it a rule to put by half of what he earned, and was, therefore, able when he died to leave his children the handsome fortune of £16,113 163 lOd. He was exceedingly popular off as well as on the stage, one of his most amiable qualities being a great fondnss3 for children aud animals. . It is said that bearing in mind the maxim that I the greatest reverence is due to boys and girls, he used to omit from his part the "big, big D" when ha saw a bevy of children in the theatre, "and that," adds his biographer, gravely, " for an actor who could use the worH so effectively and so inoffensively was a sacrifice." I The British domestic is i English still far from happy. I Servants' Masters and mistresses are Grievances, never tired of complaining that servants are not what they ought to be, or indeed what they used ! to be, but there is reason to believe that the much-abused domestics have genuine grievances on their side. Archdeacon Farrar, who recently presided over a meeting of the London and Provincial Domestic Servants' Union, eaid that thousands of employers were good, considerate, Christian people who recognised their duty towards their employees. But thousands also were not considerate, and their servants -were badly fed, badly housed, and badly paid, and subjected to extraordinary exactions of toil and service. Two members of the Commiotee who were interviewed by a representative of the Pall Mall gave a harrowing account of the woes of their class. To begin with, they are fleeced by the registry office keepers, who insert bogus advertisements in the provincial papers of tempting situations which do not exist, the object being to delude the servants into coming up to town in order that , they should lodge at the registry office at a fine margin of profit to the keeper. Servants fortunate enough to get situations find their work enormously increased of late years, chiefly owing to the growing practice in Loudon society of giving receptions aud even balls on Sunday evening. Then the sleeping accommodation given to servants in many "swell" houses is disgracefully inadequate. In seme places, we are told, it is vile, not fit for human beings. " In most fashionable houses," says Mr Lee, a member of the Committee, and himself a servant, " footmen have to sleep on the pot-board, below the kitchen dresser; while I myself, in a former place, neac Hyde Park, h_d to j sieep in a pantry, with the dustbin just I outside my window, and a sink connected ! with a drain outside within nose-range. This meant keeping the window shut; and, considering the gas had been alight all day, you can imagine the condition of the atmosphere. But personal experiences like these are nothing compared to those which have sometimes come before the Society. They are too disgusting to publish." We can hardly expect this sort of thing to produce efficient service. If employers want their servants to do their work properly, they should at least treat them like human beings. The practice of using a English foreign word or phrase for where an English one Englishmen, would do, is very rally condemned. Yet it is astonishing how difficult it appears to be to avoid falling into this little temptation. Even the leader writers of The Times are by no means free from blame. An industrious person has plodded through the tiles of The Times for the three years 1891-2-3, and extracted from the leading articles the italicised foreign and classical expressions. It is amusing to note what stale, old hackneyed words and phrases are trotted out in the leading articles of the great journal, but it is consoling to observe that the objectionable practice is on the wane. In 1891, for example, there were 319 foreign expressions used in The Times leading articles as compared with 186 in 1895. In 1891 only 66 issues of The Times were published in which no foreign expressions appeared in the leaders ; in 1893 the number had risen to 130. The favourite word in 1891 was vwdus vivendi, which cropped np twenty-seven times in the leaders ; in 1893 it was only used once. Papprochement i 3 a word in great demand, having been used sixteen times. Status quo also looms up largely, having been employed thirty-three times. Then, of course, the attractions of arriere-pensie, impasse, nuances, reductio adabsurdum, regime, vilravires, and a number of other old friends proved irresistible, these expressions being used regularly during each of the three years over which the researches c&tend. It may be interesting to add those which were em-

ployed in 18&5 for the first time. They are as .follow, the figures giviug the number jst times they were osetl:— Dreikaiserbund 2, ex post facto 7, fons et origo 3, grand Frawjais 2, hinterland 2, modus operandi 2, plus 4, xtniiu quo ante, 2. It must be admitted that there is nothing strikingly novel about any of these, the Drsikaiserbund and Hinterland being, in fact, the only expressions which are not hackneyed to the point of nausea. One reflaction naturally occurs to the reader : If the leader-writers of The Times offend in this manner, who shall venture hereafter to throw stones at the poor penny-a-liner or the typical lady novelist of the polyglot school?