THEME ROYAL

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4338, 7 February 1893, Page 3

THEME ROYAL

MaxO'Rell,

It is indoed seldom that such celebrities as 11. Paul Blouet (Max O'Rell) visit Now Zealand, and when they do, it is not often they find their way to Masterton, On this occasion, however, we aro not to be left out, and on Friday oveuing next the great lecturer willgivo "John Bull and Sandy" at the Theatro Eoyal. The Post, Bpeaking of his first lecture in Wellington, says:-" From tho opening sentence the entertainer had his audience with him, and salvos of applauso followod him off the stage nt tho close, A tall, well-knit man, of commanding figure and military bearing, wearing r short, cropped moustache tmipince-hes, he unites to a voice which is pitched in a key and of a quality that lends itself to every degree of inflection and dry humour, an extremely mobile countenance, and the power of conveying in a smile, a shrug, a gesture, a queer movement of that neat, prehensilo moustache, wholo volumes of mirthful suggestion or ironical meaning which sond the nudienoe into convulsions, Especially is ho a master of the anti-climax. A story is told, in itself humorous, and tho audience laughs, But tho end is not yet, As soon as there is a lull in the oacchinationß, tho narrator interjects perhaps two words more with indescribable emphasis, and hearing those words, and seeiDg that eloquent accompany* ing gesture, the audience fairly explodes. Like a lightning flash they penetrate into every nook and cranny of that anecdote, lighting it up, giving to it a fresh significance and a now philosophy, And this man, who has amused two hemispheres and delighted tho whole English-speaking race, is certainly a philosopher, but with the Bpirit of the age his philosophy is double-distilled to subtle essenoes, and administered in pillules, There js as much truo philosophy in one of his crisp and sententious sentences as in the bulky tome of a more sombre sage, Readers of his books do not need to be told this, and bis lectures aro his books condensed, vitalised, and given new shades of meaning by the personality, vivacity, and dramatic poworof thoir author. The people smile, tho smile deepens, and then there comes the anti-climax and explosion, But they do not laugh only—they.think. It is a humour which leaves " a taste i' tho mouth," Benoath the sugarcoating of comicality there is tho pillulo of thought, It is as though tho searchlight of truth, playfully directed, had suddenly illumined and thrown into relief somo national peculiarity, which hod hithorto been taken as & mattor of course, but tho incongruity of which is now seen for tho first time. If tho operator prefers the flash-light of wit and tho rapier-thrust of irony to the sledgehammer of invectiyo and tho missile of abuse, his work is the more deft and effective therefore. Tako, for iostanco tho mauiior in which he treated that most notablo weakness of Englishmen—their calm assumption of all that is good in the Empire, and relegation to other component races ot all that is bad—the manner in which he told how whenever a Wclchman, or a Scotchman, or au Irishman succeeded, ho was at once referred to as " tho English author," " tho English inventor," tho English statesman, or " the English explorer," bullet him fall away from grace and commit somo crime, or oven the crime of failure, and ho at onco became " tho Welsh burglar," " the Scottish murderor," or " the Irish ruffian." The truth of tho picture, and tho semi-pathetic allusion to the "English" channol, went homo to everjono present, To sum up, M. Blouet unites in his own porson tho comedian, the thinkor, the teacher, the humourist, the keon obsorvor, and tho man of tho world, and possesses, moreover, the rare faculty of impelling this complex personality across tho footlights, Truly, a man eminently suited to be the guide, philosopher, and' friend of the English speaking raco. His methods are bright and his manner airy, but we cannot say to him with Gilbert's Ko-ko, " this is no timo for airy persiflage." Persiflage it often is, but in hie lightest badinage there is a residuum of thought, and in his keenest Batire an clement of good nature tlpt takes off the edge and

makes it good lo hear, and better still to profit by. Satirists may jibe at our olevating a Fronohrnen to the post of Chief Censor of tho English race, but that very calm and irri" tating assumption of superiority at which our censor laughs, and bids us laugh too, will enable us to put aside tho jiho, and rest satisfied that Max O'Rell, like the other good things of this world—and the next—wascreated for tho special behoof of Englishmen, and we will oven go so far (while he behaves himself) us recognising in him " a well know English author and lecturer." And to-night this" wellknown English author" will add one more lo tho joys of existence by tolling us of tho foibles of Brother Jonathan, tho gentleman of whose territory wo don't possess as much as wo used to, because, as our witty critic puts it, we suddenly found" wo didn't want it."