THE CHORUS GIRL.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 35, 30 August 1890, Page 3

THE CHORUS GIRL.

«HE London chorus girl is tall and slender. Her waist suggests the very attenuated proportions of the common, ordinary or garden wasp. Her gait is rather jerky. You comprehend the reason of this when you catch sight of her high narrow boot heels, which are built rather far under on the shoe. In a Chinese lady’s shoe this does not surprise you, but in a Cockney girl’s footgear it impresses you ’as singular. For she is a London Cockney, this chorus girl, and was born within hearing of * Bow Bells,’ in the city proper. Her hair is very golden, a hue that ‘ never was on land or sea.’ Convenient hue, it goes on with a bit of sponge at regular intervals. Sometimes it is erratic and turns purple in streaks, leaving the rest of the hair ash-coloured. This, however, is a mere incident. The eyes not being coloured from a bottle are almost always dark eyes, accentuated by darker circles, which latter go on from a burnt cork. The eyelashes being ornamented with cut ions bits of ebony stalactite, movable like the circles, and such pinky cheeks and unknown outside of the dolls on view in the Lowther Arcade, carmine lips and a dab of star-shaped black courtplaster on the chin and the facial make-up is complete. Our chorus girl may be named Vlary Ann Jones by right of baptism ami birth. The chances are she calls herself Gwendoline Montgomery. She is employed in one of the Gaiety burlesques, hence is a Gaiety chorus girl. She thinks, that Nelly Farren is awfully overrated. The truthis, save to pass the time of day with her gifted principal, she does not know her. Miss Gwendoline speaks of ‘ our piofession ’ in the same breath with Miss Terry, Mrs Kendall and the rest, and never dreams that she is an outsider. She gets thirty shillings a week if she is in the front row, and her wardrobe (such as it is), from the limited requirements of the burlesque stage, is found her by the management. Out of her thirty shillings, she lives, dresses, payscar and bus fares, and buys cosmetics and slippers and stage hose. Her short skirts and ‘ tights ’ are part of the wardrobe with which she is provided in the theatre. How did she come to go on the stage? Well, it is a strange story, though commonplace enough in its way. Her mother was a nursery governess in her youth. She married a curate in an out-of-the-way parish. The youngsters in the family waxed numerous and Gwenda drifted. Her education being of the superficial boardingschool order, an order infinitely below the poorest public school, the girl hail little practical value from it as a bread-winner. A ‘ longing for higher society,’ such as her mother had before her, led her to dreaming dreams. Finally she ran away from home to join some provincial pantomime company merely for ‘ her keep,’ and by lucky stages she got to London in the spring, and after many brief seasons here and there, secured a position in the present burlesque company. She sings in a marionette voice, which has capacities for music-hall development. Her feet, from her earliest childhood, have dancing capacity. Why, did she not in those days, which were days of old youth, those wizened gutter-playing days, dance to the gay tunes of some street piano organ in perfect time and with a wild abandon of method which would have driven a Fanny Essler mad with envy. Like Topsy, * she growed ’ to it. She is a Bohemian, is Gwendoline, down deep in her heart. Gwendoline Montgomery is not a bad young woman. Hei vices are very mild ones. She smokes a cigarette occasionally and indulges in a little slang, but beyond that and her glass of bitter beer she goes to no reckless lengths. She is a deft needlewoman, and can fashion her frocks tastefully in imitation of her betters, who have more elaboiate materials, and lady’s maids in the bargain. If she has an off evening she promptly devotes it to some rival theatre. She lives in the small whirl of her curious life, enjoys her late suppers, humble though they be, and believes she ‘ is going the pace, don’t you know. ’ Her home is in the third story back room of a lodging house, which is sure to be a long bus ride from the theatre. If she has a masculine admirer she manages to strain her purse to compass the front room; or luxury run riot she may for a time have the parlour or street suit of rooms. These are about sixteen shillings a week, with attendance, the food as she orders.

Sunday she goes visiting. Sometimes her young man, who is probably in a broker’s office ‘ in the city ’ —he is sure to do ‘ something in the city ’ —takes her to Epping Forest or Hampstead Heath, or on the Thames to some riverside town. They ruralize and dine to their hearts’ content. Or she goes to see some friend at her home for dinner. Anyway, Sunday is usually her one ‘ white day,’ and she makes the most of it.

If she does not marry and does not sue that possible lord whom she has got to know at the theatre somehow, poor Gwendoline will go on, often out of an engagement, or worse still, put back row after row, from failing charms of face and rotundity of figure, until she stands quite at the back of the scores of amazons in shimmeiing armour or fairies in diaphanous draperies. At the back of the stage is an ugly draught from the flies and the stage wings. She gets a little cold. It grows worse. The fogs are heavy in London town. Her flannels are thin, or more likely still, she has none. In a few days the brave little cockney says with a pitiful smile and in her old-time slang, * I fancy I’m going to croak,’ and then she turns her face to the wall. A weary little sigh escapes her, the vain little heart flutters for the last time and the Gaiety chorus girl is no more. On the coffin plate we read, ‘ Mary Ann Jones, aged 23.’ And so the farce ends, her gruesome life farce, as a London chorus girl.