TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 10997, 21 June 1901, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

The death of the celebrated "Jingo." • musk-hall singer known as

j "the great Macdermott" has re- ' called many reminiscences of the time when he was a really great political power in the Oid Country. "We don't want to fight, but, by Jingo, ii we do!" etc., was of material assristance to Lord- Beaconsfieid, who, backed by the Conservative party, and supported \>y the people, was then opposing tho Russian march on Constantinople. The song caught the passing mood of the man in the street, fixed it, and gave it a name which is apparently destined to last for many years to come. NowJdays one hears Jingo and Jingoism used mostly as terms of reproach or contempt by antiImperial k=t newspapers, who profess to see in every -action that does not- square with tbe gospel of the Little Englanders, the feverish, excited species of patriotism that finds its chief expression in music-hall songs and "Mafficking." But in 1878 no reproach attached to the term of "Jingo." The success of Macdermott"s song was immense, and a London correspondent relates .hat when the singer was nightly appearing at the Pavilion, and hurting defiance at the nations with orotund threats that nearly ahoofc the nails out of the roof of the old build-

ing, the audience' several times included tlabuiet M-nirtet*, which/ perhaps, partly •accoia-tedi for fe_« lyric being quoted ia the Httase of Commons. It w_w written by Mr G.*W. Hunt, a well-known composer of music-hair ditties, and be is said to have once, confessed that the. melody of he-* famous eong owed something to the harmonies in a passage {torn one .of Handel's oK-toi-os. The song was translated into several Continental languages, even, we believe,- into Russian, aad it is claimed for it that it is the one immortal among music-ha-I lyrics, and certainly the only one that went a long way towards checking Russian diplomacy. A London writer declares that the only song having political effects which can in any. way be compared with it was "Eta Rer'nant de la Revue," which, we believe, was the **_notii" of the celebrated "Boutaoger March,", prohibited by the French Government at the time when "le bray* General" was beginning to tread the path they feared might end in a military Dk-Atonship over France. Several other English music-hall songs have gone some way towards forming public opinion, or, at least, crystallising and emphasising it, and we have .only to remember the scenes which took place some eighteen months ago in our own theatre to recall how greatly then the. "Absent-minded Beggar" helped to inspire the burning patriotism of the people. Macdermott never found another song to fit him like "We Don't Want to Fight," and this was the reason of bis retirement from the stage a number of years ago. "I have made a name," he said on**, "I am known as the Great Macdermott. I could not be a failure, it would kill mc." So he fell back on the management and ownership of small musichalls, aad died, unlike many of his contemporaries, in comfortable circumstances.

It turns out that we were England's right in expressing the belief Smallest that the smallest parish in Parish. England was not that of El-

don, in Hampshire, as the "Daily _ Mail" stated, but one in London. The parish of St. Christopher-le-Stocks, in the' city of London, close by the Mansion House, has not only "no chnroh, but absolutely no population. It would be interesting if the correspondent who furnished these partipuliwa had l gone further, and explained what the parish really does consist of. Up to the present that is certainly' the smallest on record. Other correspondents, however, prove that Eldon, with its street eleven yards long, its church, and its ten inhabitants, is hopelessly wrong in claiming to be the most minute parish in England. There is St. Bartholomew's, in Suffolk, with seven inhabitants, occupants of a farmhouse and a cottage. There is no street, but A church is the third building in the parish, which occupies! a whole hailfi acre. Haocomb, in Devonshire, is another i parish with seven residents, a house, a cottage, and a church. The latter was built before the Conquest, and a service is held in it every Sunday. Ludlow Castle, it seems, is a- parish, but has only been one for some 200 years. Its population is five, and there has been no birth in the parish for upwards of sixty years. It has a good gas and water service, and a church, ' which is generally,' but not always, used once a year. Then we come to parishes with four inhabitants. One of these is Llancant, near Chepstow, on the banks of the Wye. It has one house, a church in ruins, no school, railway, shop, hotel, or anything else, except scenery. Martinsthorpe, in Rutlandshire, has a population of two childless married couples. The present population of Goldirag-on-the-Dee is two, a mother and her daughter." It was three at the last census, the lady's son being on a short visit there at the.time. There are two cottages, anl the remains of a church, but no road, a sheep track being the only means of getting to the place, which has been a parish for more than a century and has been occupied by the •leading resident for sixty-nine years. Southam, not far from Grinwibury, had one inhabitant when the census was taken in April last, but he has since died, so that the parisfo is in point of population equal to that of St. Christopher-le-Stocks. After this one may he excused for wondering what constitutes ;. parish in England. The dictionary defines it as (1) "The ecclesiastical district in charge of a pastor; (2) one of the civil districts into which a county is divided for administration of the Poor Laws, core of the higfhways, etc." It is obvious thut neither of these definitions fit the parishes we have mentioned very well.

In bringing to Australia Mr A Famous Bertram, a famous conjuror, Conjuror, Mr Brough has brok.n

fresh ground, but if Mr Bertram is half as clever as he is reputed to b9 the enterprise should b_ as profitable to Mr Brough as playing bigh-class comedies to a pub.c that only half appreciates them. TiiJs Mi' Bertram is, apparently, an habitu£ of h-ilf the of the world. He performed five times before the late Queen, and twenty-three times before the King, the jnona_rchs and potentates of Europe have been,frequently among his patrons, and as for the Princes of India, Bertram is a household word among them. He confines himself mainly-to private performances at great houses and before Crowned heads, and it was during his third tour of India that Mr Brough met- him, and induced him to come and show the rulers of Australia—tba people—what conjuring was like. Mr Bertram organ his career, as "leader" of the illusions by which Maskdyne and Cocke made the Egyptian Hall celebrated. After that- experience he has a very small opinion of Indian magicians and conjurors. He does the "mango" trick, of course, only he substitutes for the mango a rose tree, from which he cute r<_al roses and gives them to Indies in the audience. Everyone has heard of the Indian trick, in which a man throws one end of a long rope into the air, and then, tlie rope being apparently suspended from some invisible nail, proceeds to climb up and disappear into the clouds. "Well," said Mr Bertram, to an "Age" interviewer, "I went all over India in the hope of finding cut a man who could do it, but never found cnc. Lord Lonsdale offered £10,000 to anyone who could do it, but no one ever came forward to claim the money. It is simply a 'traveller's tale.' But Til tell you what I did find. I found ont one man at ..-last, at Hyderabad, who could throw the rop£ straight up and up until it stood on j end, and remained so for ten seconds or so, ! never climbed up it and disappeared, as it has been said Indian conjurors can do" On one occasion Mr Bertram gave a performances, before an absolutely unique audience—the forty wives of the Maharajah of Dholpur, who. besides the conjuror, was the only man present Evidently his Highness did not regard thp entertainer as a being altogether human, for he allowed his wives to appear unveiled, a thing unheard of before. ■*• The net result of that afternoon's performance was ten thousand rupees for the conjuror and a ruby necklace for his wife. In the course of his career, he says, he has taught Royalty many conjuring tricks, among his pupils being the Duchess of Cornwall and the King, asd he can count among those who have at'different times acted as his -tsristants, no less important personages than Mr Gladstone and Disraeli. It.was a_t a show he once gave at the House of Commons, and it must have been an impressive sight to see these .two redoubtable antago-.

niste "watching a sharper majrfHhan themselves. There was', however, a good deal of ths""c«nj__ror about both of them.