The Victorian Ballet-Girl in London

The Ballet-girl's day was a long one.  It began with a rehearsal at ten or eleven o'clock in the morning on a bare, uninviting stage with the flats and the wings drawn away and a few rays of sunshine penetrating the mass of ropes, pulleys and bridges in the flies.  To the accompaniment of a solitary violinist, the Ballet-master drilled the dancers, 'pretty trim-built girls, with sallow faces and large eyes -- the pallor that overspreads their features from cosmetics and late hours'.  Perhaps there was a general rehearsal, with orchestra and scenery, to follow.  Practice-costume was by no means the rule in those days of long, wide skirts.  'It is curious to see them rehearsing their grand pas in their walking dresses.  they divest themselves of their bonnets and shawls; and sometimes tie a handkerchief, gipsy fashion, over their heads.  Then they begin -- sinking down and crossing their hands on their breast; bending back almost to vertebral dislocation; wreathing their arms; and the like. . . .  You will observe, too, that they have all kept their gloves on: it appears to be a point of etiquette amongst them to do so.'

After the rehearsal, the Ballet-girl had two or three hours to herself before returning to the theatre by six o'clock to prepare for the evening performance.  With a nod to the stage-door keeper and a quick glance at the letter-rack, she ran up the stairway to the dressing-room, which she shared with five other girls, and where she had a compartment to herself on one of the dressing-tables, with her own looking-glass and wash-basin, powder-dabbers and pots of rouge.  When the call-boy's voice was heard through the door, there was a hurried rush to take up their positions.  Some climbed the staircase to be attached to the hooks of the 'travellers', some descended below the stage to make their entrances through trap-doors, some collected in groups in the wings, while others, not required until the next act, made their way leisurely to the Green Room.

Usually they were all dressed exactly alike, but if one were singled out to wear some additional decoration on her costume, or to perform slightly different steps, with what rapture was this mark of favour received!  For it was a sign of progress in a career that was a ceaseless struggle.  'If the management permits her to wear a wreath of her own purchasing whilst her sister fays go without one, she has achieved another great position, and dreams of one day equalling Carlotta Grisi.  For upon enquiry you will find that Carlotta is the real pet of the ballet.'

Between the acts, there was a great flurry and bustling, a swarm of scene-shifters coming on with the wings and the flats for the next scene, the stage-manager giving his last-minute instructions ('with the addition of a little swearing'), the property-man busily seeing that all was in order, and a few privileged well-dressed gentlemen lounging in the wings and flirting with the coryphées.

When the performance was over, if no watchful mother or attentive sweetheart was waiting for her, the Ballet-girl stole quietly out of the stage-door and, her shawl drawn closely about her, made her way quickly homeward, stopping perhaps at the late shop for a bottle of ginger beer and one of those tempting pies that lay steaming in the open window.  And once home, she undressed quickly and climbed into her bed, for the day had been long and exacting and there was another rehearsal the next morning.  'With the music, the stage, and the lights still haunting her senses, she falls asleep; and perhaps dreams that she is a second Taglioni, and that foreign gentlemen, the likes of which have never been seen in Leicester Square, are dragging her from the theatre to the hotel, in her own carriage.'

Victorian Ballet Girl: the Tragic Story of Clara Webster by Ivor Guest.  1957.  Pages 35-7. [With quotes from Albert Smith's The Natural History of the Ballet-Girl. 1847.]