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Draft Press Release for the Ragged Ragtime Girls
[Undated: circa May 1913]
A very interesting item in the programme of the [ . . . ] for next week is the Ragged Ragtime Girls, seven beautiful and graceful maidens who dance and play the violin simultaneously. The strange exotic beauty of the leader, Miss Leila Bathurst [Leila Waddell] as she weaves her dances in the Labyrinth of her attendant nymphs thrills every heart with a sense alike of the bizarre and the rococo. Miss Hobbs thinks the show bizarre—a terrible word to use, so find another if you agree.
Mr. [ . . . ] the enterprising manager of the [ . . . ] has scored in their tremendous successes. The Ragged Ragtime Girls is one of the best turns we have ever seen in [ . . . ]. The weirdly fascinating appearance of the leader, Miss Leila Bathurst first stupefied the house and then roused it to frenzy. Exotic and bizarre as her beauty is, it is yet of that royal kind which goes straight to every heart. Her paces suggest the tiger and the snake and her violin contains in itself all the music alike of nature and of art. The house could not wait for the fall of the curtain to rise to its feet in urging enthusiasm, and the last bars were drowned in the roars of applause that greeted the march past the stalls. Women shrieked and strong men wept, babes at the press fainted with emotion. The very unborn emulated the execution of John the Baptist recorded in the first chapter of the Gospel according to St. Mark.
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