NOTES BY PASQUIN.

Otago Witness, Issue 1777, 12 December 1885, Page 23

NOTES BY PASQUIN.

(Contributions fronutlie Profession chronicling their movements and doings are invited. Allcomtnunications to be addresed to "Pasquin," Otago Witness Office.) Mr George Clutsam, who left Dunedin with the Radcliff-Rita combination, has permanently settled in Auckland. He has lately composed a waltz, which was kindly received in the northern city. The Majeroni and Wilson Opera Company are just concluding their Wellington season. Mr and Mrs Boucicault left by the Mararoa for San Francisco on Tuesday. Their Auckland season was very successful. Mr Litherland Cunard, who is piloting the Emerson Minstrels, is. already in Dunedin preparing for their opening on Boxing Night. The Hugo Buffalo Minstrels concluded their Dunedin season on Saturday last with a benefit to Mr Chas. Hugo, and they left on the following Monday morning with exceedingly cordial feelings towards the theatregoers of this city. The minstrels, it is worthy of remark, endeavoured to make some return for the liberal ' patronage accorded them by playing for the benefit of the South Dunedin Fire Brigade one night, and going out the next afternoon to Caversham to amuse the youngsters at the Industrial School. This is as it should be.

It is whispered that Mr Chas. Hugo, by his New Zealand tour at popular prices, has netted just about £1000, showing that the public will still dance if cunningly piped to. If this goes "on, New Zealand will come to be regarded as a ' happy hunting ground for burnt corkists. We ' are , promised two more companies already ; Emerson's, to open here on boxing-night, and Leon' and Cushman's possibly shortly afterwards. But it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and company No. 3 would do well to hold off for a time.

To Mr Harold Ashton, who travels with the ' Hugo's, belongs the credit of being the youngest manager upon the road. He celebrated his twenty-first birthday last week in Dunedin, and has been married for six months. George Lee, with Sharman and Stoodley's Circus, is also in the flush of youth, but Ashton can give him points.

The elocution contest arranged for Thursday night last at the Princess Theatre did not prove quite so deliriously exciting as was expected. Great preparations were made, and the services of two poets and a pressman were retained to judge the conflict, while a plentiful supply of sal volatile and " pick-me-ups " was kept handy to restore any of the audience who might succumb during the proceedings. The poets and the pressman, dressed in their best clothes and with nicely combed hair, punctual to a moment marched to the seat of judgment in the dress circle, and were much admired during then? progress. But their labours were very light. Mr H. Norman recited "The Dream of Eugene Aram " in very fair amateur form, but only one other competitor appeared, a youth, who struggled ineffectually for some ten minutes with "The Lay of Horatius." Mr Ashton in a measure made up for this fiasco by himself reciting " The Old Actor's Story" exceedingly well a night or two later. f

The Hugo Minstrels played at Milton on Monday evening and Balclutha on Tuesday, and have since commenced a week's season at Invercargill, after which they are off to Launceston.

Sharman and Stoodley's Circus is doing some of the southern townships. Mr H. N. Abbott, of Auckland, is in treaty with Mr W. E. Sheridan and Miss Louise Davenport for a tour of New Zealand, commencing in April or May next. Mr Sheridan is a American tragedian, whose Lear and Louis XI are really remarkable ' performances. He made an artistic success only in Australia lately, but deserved better things. This makes it doubtful whether he will trouble himself to face. Colonial audiences again so soon. The latest news of Donald Dinnie is that he is intending to enter the hotel business in Melbourne. It is a useful quality in a landlord to be able to do his own "chucking out" upon occasion.

Messrs Olark and Ryman have dissolved partnership.

Mr Duncan M'Callum, who has been lately piloting Mr Fairclough and Miss Elsa May, is endeavouring to secure an attraction for another tour of New Zealand.

Mrs Weldon seems likely to make money by her play "Not Alone," now running at the Grand Theatre, Islington, notwithstanding that, in an artistic 'sense, it is ridiculous rubbish. Still, the theatre for the opening performances was crammed from floor to ceiling by playgoers simply from curiosity to see the notorious Mrs W. after her release from'Holloway Gaol. Ttie piece is of course an attack upon the lunacy lawß, and portrays a wicked husband, evidently meant for Mr' Weldon, who sends his wife to a madhouse in order that he may make her ungrateful protege his mistress. The ill-used and virtuous heroine, Hester Stanhope, is unmistakably Mrs Weldon herself; and there are three venal doctors — Pounceonem, Feese, and Fubbs. All the circumstances considered, the Examiner of Plays is blamed for licensing such a production, but I must confess that the reason's for this are not very patent to a reader at a distance. "Rapier," in the Sporting and Dramatic News, who accuses the Examiner of having '{.shamefully abused his office," says: — ■ "Supposing someone who has seen this piece should hereafter be on a jury in a case in which Mrs Weldon is plaintiff and Mr Weldon, either nominally or practically, defendant?" Well, what then ? If hypothetical influences of this kind had to be considered it is probable that we should have to discontinue either plays or juries shortly. A" benefit is being organised by Messrs Wilson Barrett and Augustus Harris for the widow of Harry Jackson, whose savings were all swept away by his luckless venture with Lottaatthe Opera Comique last year. Joseph Jefftirson hae lately given his four-

thousandth repetition of the part of Rip Van Winkle. Had these performances been given successively it would mean a run of more than twelve years, and there seems no reason why the American actor should not greatly increase the record. He puts all other much played parts completely in the shade. Shiel Barry's Gaspard in " Les Cloches " has been repeated considerably more than a thousand times, and David James' Butterman in /(l Our Boys " must stand about equal, but they are both a long way behind Jefferson.

Miss Ada Ward intends to revisit Australia early next year.

An actor who has for years been considered worthy of nothing better than animal parts in a pantomime has been pouring out his sorrows to an American reporter : — " I've had to be birds and brute beasts, and heaven knows what," he said. "It makes a man mad to be in such company and be talked to as that kind. Once I was a roc, which is a big bird in ' Sinbad the Sailor,' and I had to be let down from the flies and carry S ; nbad away. The first roc they had got drunk and dropped Sinbad on his head, so that he cursed awful and bounced the roc. On that account I was careful like, and grabbed Sinbad under the arms. He was crank, Sinbad was, and he says. ' That's a funny sort of a way for a roc to catch hold of a man !' With that I says, ' If you don't like this roc, blowed if you haven't got to fly away yourself,' and I dropped him plumb down on the stage, and got even for his sassin' me that may. A feller has to stand a good deal when he makes a menagerie of himself."

It is stated that Miss Minnie Palmer, the American burlesque actress, has had a good offer for an Australian campaign, and is likely to accept it at the close of her London season next year.

Arthur Rpberts, the well-known comedian and music-hall lion, the immortal hero, of " More or Less " and other ditties,' has just painfully experienced what it is to be run in by a policeman in the King's Cross Road at 9 a.m., and fined f.ve shillings for being drunk and disorderly. There is now running in London " The Casting Vote," a "musical electioneering squib in one bang," which shows how a Tory viscount, made up to look like Mr Gladstone, wishes his daughter to marry a Conservative, whose face ' is a very fine imitation of the face of Mr Chamberlain. The girl, however, loves a Radical, whose countenance is a counterfeit presentment l of Lord Randolph Churchill's, and, after several disappointments, she succeeds in having her own way, while her Conservative admirer settles down with the under governess of the school which the heroine has just left. Election business pervades the proceedings, and after the polling has taken plape, and several schoolgirls have persuaded several British working men to vote for the Tory, the Mayor reserves his "casting vote" until another night. In the course of the piece a trio, made up as Parnell, Bradlaugh, and a Scotchman, sing a chorus, concluding — " Oh, let us a Republic have, and I will be the king." This bears a striking family likeness to H. J. Byron's couplet : —

Down with despotism, that's the thing ; Let's all be equals, and I'll be your king.

The following are the ages of some of the best-known heroines of the footlights, as carefully compiled from a recently-published biographical dictionary : — Mary Anderson, -20 ; Sara Bernhardt, 41 ; Jenny Lind (Mdme. Goldschmidt), 64 ; Pauline Lucca, 45 ; Helen Modjeska, 41 ; Christine Nilsson, 42 ; Adeliua Patti, 42 ; Ellen Terry, 37 ; Mrs Weldon, 48.

Mr Charles Turner and his wife (Miss Annis Montague) have just signed an agreememt for a two years' engagement in the States, at a joint salary of £600 a month. A strong opera company is to be formed, with principals imported from Paris and Berlin.

Mdme Marie Roze, Mr Carl Rosa's •prima donna, is ill in England from over exertion, and Mdme Gerster has been forced to delay commencing her American tour with Mr Abbey for the same reason. The following paragraph is from a San Francisco paper: — "There is a funny little complication among four talented women. They are Genevieve Ward, the actress; Clara Louise Kellogg, the singer; Jennie June Croly, the writer; and Janet Gilder, editor of the Critic. There has long existed a close intimacy between Miss Ward and Mrs Croly, while the friendship between Misses Gilder and Kellogg is phenomenal in its ardour. Miss Ward contemplates a professional tour of this country. Mrs Croly has lately been with her in Europe. Nobody familiar with their relations, and the old-time methods of advertising by recourse to startling fiction, was at all astonished by the story which came across the ocean about Miss Ward enrapturing the Maori King, who thereupon wished to marry her, and offered to kill all his present wives if she would but smile on him. Considering that Miss Ward is something like — or — years old, the taste of the monarch may well be criticised, but the tale was in itself admirable as a striking example of that kind of work. About the same time there came from the opposite direction a fabulous account of Miss Kellogg singing to audiences of cowboys, ranchman, and scouts, away out West, aud so delighting them that their antics of adulation were stranger than those of N.Z.s king. Miss Gilder is now ridiculing Mrs Croly's story. Mrs Croly retaliates by asldng if the narrative of the veteran prima donna's adventure is intended for Wild Western humour, and all we lack to turn the iarce into a tragedy is to let Miss Ward and Miss Kellogg get their hands into each other's hair. The four women possess so much and diversified talent that any conflict of theirs is bound to be unique."