NEWS OF THE WORLD

Evening Star, Issue 22442, 12 September 1936, Page 7

NEWS OF THE WORLD

ZULUS PLAY WILDE COMEDY A 17-year-old Zulu girl playing the title part in a smart Oscar Wilde society comedy! This is what Johannesburg has just had the novel experience of seeing (says the ‘ South African News-Letter ’). The play produced was ‘ Lady Windermere’s Fan,’ and the cast consisted entirely of African natives, most of whom are in domestic service and some of whom are teachers. The natives’ own dramatic society chose the play, picked the cast, and when the actors had learned their parts called in a European producer, Miss Elsie Salomon. “ Producing natives in a smart English society comedy has been an interesting experience,” Miss Salomon says. “ There were certain difficulties of intonation and gait which it seemed almost impossible to overcome. Not all of them understood the text, and they had a habit of running their sentences together. That meant that .we had to rehearse whole- scenes almost phrase by phrase.” “ CANNED ” MUSIC COPYRIGHT

In an age of “ canned music ” elaborate machinery has become necessary in calculating the fees due to composers ■ and publishers, which not so long ago were mainly derived from the sale of the homely music score. The Performing Right Society has just installed in its London headquarters a battery of Hollerith machines able to analyse the 'millions of musical programmes given all over Great Britain and the Empire, be they song, dance, or symphony. They allot the shares of everyone with financial interests in the music, and finally draw up detailed statements of accounts for a given period, even down to showing that ‘ God Send You Back to Me,’ sung perhaps in some village hall, had earned exactly one penny for its author. The society (explains the ‘ Observer ’) allots points, each representing a fraction of a penny, in accordance with 'the ■ character and duration of each composition. ‘ The Isle of Capri,’ as a dance tune, for instance, gets one point; at the other end of the scale one of Elgar’s symphonies receives as many as 240. A ballad like ‘ I Passed By Your Window ’ or one of the Indian love lyrics, be it never so languishingly sung at a local concert, passes inhumanly through the society’s machines 'and someone comes out with, four •’‘points. The copyright of music, like • that of literature, applies "to the lifetime of the composer and 50 years after his death. Thus tho great classical works of Beethoven, Mozart, and Wagner may be played for nothing in their original form. THE CHILTERN HUNDREDS

. The filling of the stewardslup of the Clultern Hundreds and of the Manor of Northstead by Mr J. H, Thomas and Sir Alfred Butt was one of those events which must always puzzle the foreign observer of British customs. Yet but for that polite fiction it would be hard indeed for members of the House of Commons to vacate their seats unless actually expelled (says the ‘ Manchester Guardian’). The only excuse accepted before the eighteenth century was a genuine plea of incurable illness. Obviously such a thing, could not serve all needs indefinitely, and when the Place Bill of 1707 was passed new possibilities opened. By 1740 ingenious lawyers had decided that there was an expedient.- Sir W. Wynn had succeeded his father, as hereditary holder of the stewardship of the township and manor of Bromfield and Yale, and it was held that this automatically vacated his seat. -That, as Gladstone would have said, “ opened a door,” and eight Crown stewardships were discovered as affording a means of escape, being “ places of profit ” under the Crown. Only two arc left now. In 1846 a Chancellor of the Exchequer held that the stewardships could not be granted twice in the same day, but there have been several such grants since then. The grantee gets a highsounding warrant from ■ the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and formerly the “ Chilterns ” carried a fee of 20s. But that is gone in this cheeseparing age. The recipient holds till the next grant is made.

FROM STAGE FAVOURITE TO MATCH-SELLER “ Old Kate,” a match seller in Aldwych, or Kate Lucille Foote, as she was once known, has died in an L.C.C. institution. She was familiar to thousands who every day passed her pitch, just where the omnibuses halt at the corner of Aldwych and the Strand. She sat there in sunshine or rain, swathed in clothes, with a red flannel scarf about her neck, her face towards the Gaiety Theatre, the successor of that where once lights had flashed her name, for she had been an actress, and she had also travelled extensively, entertained lavishly, and been well known in Continental casinos. Kate was the daughter of an American colonel. She first went on the stage when she was 20, and from parts in an American three-shows-a-day circuit was soon playing leading roles in well-known theatres. She was married three times, and' each of, her husbands left her a fortune. Her last husband left her £25,000. Some time afterwards she went to the Monte Carlo Casino with a party of friends, won thousands of pounds, lost them again, and returned to London with little money but bare fare. She sought work in vain, and at last, already greyhaired, she became one of London’s match sellers. “ I have been a fool.” was how she summed up her life. She was about 70 years of age. _ Old Kate left about £2, with instructions that on. her death it should be sent to a friend of hers. Other pathetic relics included several boxes of matches and her snuff box. but there was nothing in ! icr possessions relating to her I ga-jjer days.—i Xhg lipies..’

FAMOUS STATUE’S JUBILEE ,

This is jubilee year for the Statue of Liberty- in New York Harbour, the fiftieth anniversary of. the bestowal of the famous statue on , the American people -by the. French nation. In a dismantled- condition, it arrived in New York Harbour on a French man-o’-war on June 19, 1886. Throughout the present year- special observances are scheduled -in connection with the jubilee, among them being commemoration of the birth of Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the sculptor ■ the issuance of a new stamp; and a grand culminating celebration on October 28, re-enacting the dedication of the statue, when President Cleveland accepted the gift from France. It is therefore of more than passing interest to be reminded that Paris, too, has her “ Liberty Enlightening the World ” —a smaller but nevertheless true copy, of the great bronze figure in New York .Harbour (says a ■ writer in the ‘Christian Science Monitor’). Where the silver Seine slips quietly out of residential Paris into the industrial suburbs of the capital its waters flow for nearly half a mile along either side of the slender “ Isle of the Swans.” At the lower end of i this picturesque tree-lined strip of i typical French perspective stands i France’s Statue of Liberty. Rising i undramatically to the modest height of | a score of feet, the bronze figure on its | simple stone pedestal nevertheless achieves a quiet impressiveness, a i peaceful strength and permanence, which fits well the purpose of the monument—to seal the steady friendship of the American colony in Paris ‘ for France and its capital.