THE BALLET GIRL'S NEATNESS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2014, 18 June 1875, Page 2

THE BALLET GIRL'S NEATNESS.

A writer say*,of the ballet girl:—Like every other inhabitant of the' Realms of Joy she is wonderfully serious-and uniformly grumbles. The smile you see at night is just stereotyped fo the occasion, and one warranted to~ appear before the public- only. Watch the stage-door at night and you will see her go in the earliest and come out one of the last. The dressing accommodation is a long narrow room like a loft, furnished with broken lookingglasses and, ledges adorned with rouge and powder puffs—rwretched enough. 'In not a few theatres during the late severe cold, not a vestige of fire was 'allowed,' and the sufferings of this thinly-clad girl must have been, intense. r Her cleanliness is proverbial. Nobody can compete with theballei girl in the matter of putting on a stage dress. From Lady Macbeth with her pasteboard coronet to the chambermaid there is not one actress who is not glad to get a wrinkle from the ballet girl as to the folding of a scarf, adjusting a rose, pinning a ribbon or making up a face; and, to do her justice,'nobody knows this fact better than she. This is her especial pride—everything is done by herself. She : would as soon think of allowing .anybody to wash' her face as wash, darn or pink her stockings, iron her skirts or trim her wreaths. Most of these .odds and ends she has to find out of her scanty earnings, exclusive of fines for absence at" rehearsal or stage waits at night. - So she is "wonderfully economic." She seems invulnerable to fatigue. A change of dress "from a fairy to an Amazon, to a ' sailor, to a mald-seryaht.—five, six, seven or even eight times; in a pantomine is she metamorphosed, and not more.than a few minu'es" is allowed for/achange^inclusive of some four or five sfone'flights of slairg. On these occasions she rates.everybody, but notwithstanding, few eV^rsee-'her really out of temper. Out of the whole of the members of the company sheis.the most obliging. If Othello .wants a-pm, or his Desdeniona has forgotten to put a button on his shirt, if Pauline* bursts a .staylaco, or. Jack^th'e i ,Gianti..siirer\wfiepß. over .the loss; of.toffee, to thejballetfirl theyrespectivelyjftyfpr succour.' _Inact, ■from the.'star' who patronizingly addres"ses.lier. as my ' dear,' to the:carpenter;;wfco winds her "up through, the trap-door,into eternal joy in the "crystalized waters, the ballet girl is a favourite-«*lways bright and beaming.