While this ditty was the vogue, the Great Macdermott firmly believed that he and Lord Beaconsfield were the two principal Conservative forces of the day. With the capital he made out of his patriotism he retired from the music-hall stage. Unkind rivals declared that his patriotic howling had cracked his voice. He set up a “Music-Hail Agency” in the Waterloo Bridge Road, and joined the redoubtable Jack Coney in “making a book.” History holds no further record of him and his deeds. About the same time James Fawn, Herbert Campbell, and Charles Coborn, began to demonstrate to the public—and this fixes their place in the elusive story of the evolution of the music-hall—that it is possible to have a song in which there shall be real humour, the nice delineation, a “taking” tune, without any appeal to that which is lowest and most bestial in the minds of the public. Then followed Chevalier, Dan Leno, and the comic singers of the present day, with whom, of course, these reminiscences have nothing to do. Perhaps the most deplorable feature in the entertainments given by music-hall managers in the early days of my acquaintanceship with those places of entertainment was the lady performer. Those terrible young (or middle-aged) persons who were announced as the “Sisters” So-and-So, and were inevitable on every stage, always succeeded in putting a portion of the audience into a bad temper. Their short coloured skirts, their fixed smirk, the mechanical steps of their dance, their metallic voices—these things have left an impression not pleasant to recall. They couldn’t sing. They couldn’t dance. And their “make-up” proved that they couldn’t even paint. Still, there were women appearing before the patrons of the “’alls” who possessed the authentic gift. One of the earliest of these was Jenny Hill. “The Vital Spark” they used to call her on the bills.