ELLEN TERRY AND HER SISTERS

BY

T. EDGAR PEMBERTON

AUTHOR OF "THE KENDALS;" "A MEMOIR OF E. A. SOTHERN;" "THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF T. W. ROBERTSON;" "CHARLES DICKENS AND THE STAGE;" "JOHN HARE, COMEDIAN;" "BRET HARTE: A TREATISE AND A TRIBUTE;" ETC. ETC.

WITH TWENTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON C. ARTHUR PEARSON, LIMITED HENRIETTA STREET 1902

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

"THE KENDALS"

Demy 8vo, with Portraits and numerous Illustrations.

Price 16s.

"One of the most interesting theatrical records that has been penned for some time."—Outlook. "A charming work.... Pithy and well arranged. Turned out with infinite credit to the publishers."—Morning Advertiser. "It leaves an impression like that of a piece in which the Kendals have played, an impression of pleasure, refinement, refreshment, and of the value of cherishing sweet and kindly feelings in art as in life. Few books can do that, and so this work has every prospect of being widely read."—Scotsman.

LONDON: C. ARTHUR PEARSON, LIMITED

April 11, 1901.

My dear Friend,—

You tell me that if I give you leave you can weave a story about me that will interest your readers. If that be so, you have my full permission to tell it, and it will please me to do anything in my power to assist you in your work. Whilst writing about me you will, I am sure, speak of those with whom I have been closely associated in my acting life, and make mention of the affectionate regard in which I hold them. Your intimate knowledge of all that concerns the stage will at least keep you right as to the facts of your pages. I suppose I must leave the fancy of them in your hands.

Yours cordially, ELLEN TERRY.

To T. EDGAR PEMBERTON.

Label designed for his sister by Gordon Craig

Ellen Terry's book-label designed by Gordon Craig

VINE COTTAGE, KINGSTON VALE.

Ellen Terry's "Kingston Vale" letter-card heading designed by Gordon Craig

Ellen Terry's Monogram. Ellen Terry fecit

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Ellen Terry's "Winchelsea" book-plate designed by Gordon Craig

[1]

CHAPTER I

BEGINNINGS

I know that to the majority of people who merely regard the theatre as a place for occasional recreation, it is a subject for amazement that others can exist who, not belonging to the theatrical profession, take an absorbing and lasting interest in the stage, and in those actors and actresses who have made its past history glorious, as well as in the artists who adorn and make it a delight in the present. I wonder how many of us truly realise the weight of Charles Dickens's words: "If any man were to tell me that he denied his acknowledgments to the stage, I would simply put to him one question—whether he remembered his first play?"

Not only freely, but with gratitude, I acknowledge my indebtedness to the theatre, and it is certain that from that magic night when for the first time I saw the glitter of the footlights and watched the rise of the curtain, I entered upon a[2] new and most fascinating life. Of course I was called "stage struck," and those who controlled me shook their heads, thought it a great pity, and did their best to thwart my inclinations. Concerning the stage and its attractions the parents of the "fifties" were less liberal-minded than those of to-day, and they had an unhappy knack of talking over the tendencies of their children with uncles and aunts who, without meaning to do the least kindly thing for them, seemed to regard their nephews and nieces as so many ready-made reprobates open to their interfering condemnation. Oh! those terrible uncles and aunts! In his pages the grand old novelist, Richardson, reflecting the manners of his time, made (apparently well meaning) ogres of them; the good and ever interesting Jane Austen only contrived to soften them down; and I hope

my "fifties" saw the fag-end of them, for to-day they prove themselves to be reasonable and generous beings.

But, as I say, I was set down as "stage struck," and I had to grow accustomed to the shoulder-shrug greeting of relatives, and the admonition that my first duty was to consider my father and mother. Never was anything so unfair. I was not in the ordinary sense of the word "stage struck." I was not fool enough to think that I could shine either as tragedian or comedian. I knew that a more prosaic life had been planned out for me, and I was prepared to enter into it; but, for a lurking fear[3] that I should "take to the stage" (neither I nor my parents, nor my uncles and aunts, knew how this was to be done), I found myself compelled to read my beloved play-books and chronicles of great actors in private. When it was accidentally discovered that I had attempted to write a play there was real family trouble, and I am afraid that some of those who pretended to take interest in me wrote me down as "no good."

No! It never could be understood that I really wanted to make a study of an art that appealed to me more strongly than its sisters, music and painting. Yet the three are so closely allied that in devotedly following my first love I learnt to appreciate her kith and kin. I pen these lines because I am certain that many others must have felt as I did, and do; and, while doing justice to other claims upon their life energies, have taken their keenest delight in the story of the stage.

Yes; I am sure that to many of us the theatre has formed a little world of its own—a little world that we can enjoy and grasp—while the great world outside it is so apt to torture us with its perplexities, and half kill us with its seeming cruelties.

And I think that the little world in which I and my brother enthusiasts delight is all the more appreciated when we understand that it, too, is beset with its anxieties and grievous disappointments, and is far from the dazzling, soul-soothing[4] elysium we pictured in the halcyon days of our boyhood. Our hearts go out all the more freely to the actors and actresses who warm them when we realise that they, too, have their trials as well as their triumphs. Our admiration is redoubled when it is leavened with sympathy. It is all the more important, then, that our entertainers should know that this feeling exists among those for whom they devote the work of their lives.

The artistic temperament is always more or less self-tormenting, and it is to be feared that my "little world," which shines so brightly over our great one, where sorrow has daily to be met and borne, is in itself a sorely troubled one.

In that strange French play which has our great English tragedian, Edmund Kean, for its central figure, Alexandre Dumas, who knew everything that could be known about the theatre, caused his actor-hero to respond bitterly to the woman who loved him, and who opined that all his troubles must vanish when he reflects that he is recognised as the King of the Stage. "King! Yes, three times a week! King with a tinselled sceptre, paste diamonds, and a pinchbeck crown. I rule a kingdom of thirty-five feet, and subjects who are jealous of my power." Then, when she asks, "Why do you not give it up?" he replies with indignation, "Give up the stage? Ah! you don't realise that he who has once donned the robe of Nessus cannot take it[5] off without lacerating his flesh. I give up the stage?—renounce its excitement?—its glitter?—its triumphs? I give up my throne to another? Never! while I've health and strength to walk the boards, and brains to interpret the poetry I love. Remember, an actor cannot leave his work behind him. He lives only in his own lifetime—his memory fades with the

generation to which he belongs, he must finish as he has begun, die as he has lived—die, if fortune favours him, with the delicious sound of applause in his ears. But those who have not set foot upon a dangerous path do well to avoid it."

The actor's complaint that his fame, however great, cannot be recollected many years beyond the time in which he lived is a very old one, and it must have been with this mournful view in his mind that David Garrick wrote:—

The volumes of theatrical history and biography that have been written and become popular since Garrick's day, prove that this is not wholly true, that we are not ungrateful to those who have instructed and amused us on the stage, and that we shall not willingly let their honoured memories die.[6] The fact that the depressing feeling that they and their work will "soon be forgotten" still exists among members of the theatrical profession is, I venture to believe, some excuse for records such as this being issued during the lifetime of the artist, while memory is green, and appreciation can be written at first hand. Even if such works give little or no pleasure to their living subjects, it may be borne in mind that they will probably be of service to those future stage historians who will permanently inscribe their names on the tablets of fame.

The passionate declaration of Dumas's Kean that, despite his troubles and torments, he would never while life was in him leave the stage, is an old tale. Actors, as a rule, love to die in harness, and it was in the full knowledge of this that T. W. Robertson caused his stage David Garrick to reply to Alderman Ingot, when he offered to double or treble his income if he would abandon his profession, "Leave the stage? Impossible!" Poor Sothern, who created the part, was staying with me when his physician wrote saying that if he wished to prolong his life he must give up all work. After a moment's depression the actor with a sudden impulse snatched a portrait of himself as Garrick from my wall, tore it from its frame, and in a large, firm hand, wrote beneath it: "Leave the stage? Impossible!"

I have no doubt that Charles Wyndham, who, after Sothern's death, took up the part, and made it[7] one of the greatest successes of the modern stage, feels the full import of the words every time he speaks them.

And if the actors suffer so do the dramatists, or at all events the would-be dramatists. In an admirable little book called "Play Writing," the author gives sound advice to the ever-growing, ever-complaining army of the unacted.

"Dramatic authorship," he says, "is to the profession of literature as reversing is to waltzing—an agony within a misery. A man who means to be a dramatist must be prepared for a life of never-ending strife and fret—a brain and heart-exhausting struggle from the hour when, full of hope, he starts off with his first farce in his pocket to the days when, involuntarily taking the advice of one of the early masters of his own craft—to wit, old rare Ben Jonson—he leaves 'the loathed stage and the more loathsome age.'"

And again, this anonymous but evidently experienced writer (I quote from him freely) declares that any dramatist could tales unfold of disappointments and delays, of hopes deferred, of chances dashed from the grasp at the very moment they seemed clutched, of weary waitings rewarded by failure, of enterprise and effort leading only to defeat, of hard work winning only loss. It has been suggested, too, in this connection, that any one sufficiently interested in such matters should make a list of the plays that in[8] "preliminary paragraphs" are spoken of as "about to be produced," and which are never heard of again,—and that it should then be remembered that each of these unborn plays represents a very heavy heart being carried about for many a long day under somebody or other's waistcoat,—and means that somebody or other feels very sick and hopeless as he moves about his little world, trying to appear careless and to laugh it off,—that somebody or other grows very tired and weary of the struggle, and almost wishes now and then that it was over.

But to the young playgoer who sits in front these troubles are unknown, and to him the theatre may well appear as the realisation of Fairyland, and a veritable Palace of Fancy.

I believe there is another reason why men, if they would own it, have come to be grateful to the stage. Has it not to many been the scene in which they have first learned what it is to love? They may never have spoken to the divinities who inspired their boyish ardour, but they have been better and purer for it, and cherish the sweet recollection of it to their old age.

Cannot we all enter into the feelings of young virgin-hearted Arthur Pendennis when he first saw the lovely Miss Fotheringay on the boards? Cannot we all understand how he followed the woman about and about, and when she was off the stage the house became a blank? and how, when the play was over,[9] the curtain fell upon him like a pall? Poor Pendennis! He hardly knew what he felt that night. "It was something overwhelming, maddening, delicious; a fever of wild joy and undefined longing."

And then how he woke the next morning, when, at an early hour, the rooks began to caw from the little wood beyond his bedroom windows; and at that very instant, and as his eyes started open, the beloved image was in his mind. "My dear boy," he heard her say, "you were in a sound sleep, and I would not disturb you: but I have been close by your pillow all this while; and I don't intend that you shall leave me. I am Love! I bring with me fever and passion; wild longing, maddening desire; restless craving and seeking. Many a long day ere this I heard you calling out for me; and behold now I am come."

Yes, I am convinced that most of us have felt, rejoiced, and suffered as Arthur Pendennis did, and that we first caught the fever from the footlights. The attack may have been acute, and, in its apparent hopelessness, painful. But recovery brought with it the sweet knowledge that we had been permitted to understand the meaning of Heaven's greatest gift to mankind—Love.

I know that there are many who only go to the theatre to carp and cavil, and impotently point out that if the management of the playhouse and the acting of all the parts had been placed in their hands[10] a much better performance would have been provided; but I believe that even these would love to recall the dreamy illusions of their youth. Perhaps, in the hours of their solitude (and silence!), they do so. Why, in their soured maturity, these unhappy, self-imposed, and absolutely unconvincing critics go to the theatre to be (on their own declaration) bored and disgusted is to me a mystery. It is all the more a mystery when I know that they can thoroughly enjoy a variety hall.

Of course, everything depends on the spirit in which we go to the theatre.

Do you remember the difference of opinion expressed between Steerforth and David Copperfield on the night when they renewed the acquaintance of their boyhood at the Golden Cross Hotel? David had been to Covent Garden Theatre, and had there seen "Julius Cæsar." "To have," he says, "all those noble Romans alive before me, and walking in and out for my entertainment, instead of being the stern task-masters they had been at school, was a most novel and delightful effect. But the mingled reality and mystery of the whole show, the influence upon me of the poetry, the lights, the music, the company; the smooth, stupendous changes of glittering and brilliant scenery were so dazzling, and opened up such illimitable regions of delight, that when I came out into the rainy street I felt as if I had come from the clouds, where I had been leading a romantic[11] life for ages, to a bawling, splashing, link-lighted, umbrella-struggling, hackney-coach jostling, patten-clicking, muddy, miserable world."

And when he told the superior Steerforth of his innocent enjoyment, he had to listen to the laughing reply:—

"My dear young Davy—you are a very daisy. The daisy of the field, at sunrise, is not fresher than you are! I have been at Covent Garden, too, and there never was a more miserable business."

In my own mind I am convinced that if we will we can always, to our great advantage and delight, keep up the enthusiasm of David Copperfield;—that to some of us the theatre, even when we know all about the fret and turmoil of the actor's life together with the tricks of the stage, may from boyhood to old age remain a Palace of Fancy.

And have we not in the heroine of these pages—Ellen Terry—the very embodiment of Fancy,—the true Princess of our Palace, one of the Queens of our little stage world? Other great artists have delighted us with the perfection of their impersonations, but there is in the method or inspiration of Ellen Terry something so ethereal that in many of her characters she stands alone.

If the drama is indeed the Cinderella of the arts, then Ellen Terry must have been touched by the magic wand of a Fairy Godmother so that she might dazzle the Prince's ballroom with her beauty, radiance,[12] and ever fragrant sweetness, and win the admiration of his guests.

But those who thoughtlessly and even contemptuously call the drama "Cinderella" probably do not know the origin of the familiar fairy-tale—how the little kitchen maid is Ushas, the Dawn Maiden of the Aryans, and the Aurora of the Greeks; and how the Prince is the Sun, ever seeking to make the Dawn his bride; and how the envious stepmother and sisters are the Clouds and the Night, which vainly strive to keep the Sun and the Dawn apart. It is pleasant to think of Cinderella as the Dawn Maiden. Poor little lady! She has suffered considerably in her transplantation to English soil.

To me the magic word "Fancy" has ever been associated with the pure art of Ellen Terry, and whenever I see her on the stage the lines of John Keats comes rippling through my mind:—

But it must be recorded that Fancy, as let loose and impersonated by Ellen Terry, is taken from the theatre in thousands of hearts, and that it enters into many a home circle where the memory of it gives unbounded and enduring pleasure. Into the simple homes of those who elbow each other in the gallery, as well as into the luxurious mansions of the wealthy folk who sit at their ease in the stalls. In many a workman's dwelling I have come across a carefully framed photograph of Ellen Terry, and a treasured play-bill kept in commemoration of a never-to-be-forgotten evening enjoyed in her realms of Fancy.

But she did not drop from cloudland to delight us. Her great achievements have been won—as all great achievements are won—by early training, deep and constant study, hard work, and possibly, above all, by family tradition.

In theatrical lore the name of Terry is, indeed, an[14] old and honoured one. In Lockhart's beautiful biography of Sir Walter Scott, and again in the happily published Diary of the Magician of the North, we read much of the energetic Daniel Terry who was for many years connected with the Edinburgh stage, and who subsequently joined Yates in a memorable management of the Adelphi Theatre. Daniel Terry, with the appreciative eye of the true actor, set his heart upon making stage versions of the Waverley Novels, and though at first Scott (in common with all great novelists) objected to this process, it was subsequently allowed, and adapter and author became friends. It was in the spring of 1816 that Terry produced a dramatic piece entitled "Guy Mannering," which met with great success, and is still from time to time seen. "What share," says Lockhart, "the novelist had in this first specimen of what he used to call the art of 'Terryfying,' I cannot exactly say; but his correspondence shows that the pretty song of the Lullaby was not his only contribution to it; and I infer that

he had taken the trouble to modify the plot, and rearrange, for stage purposes, a considerable part of the original dialogue."

Of the intimacy that commenced and grew between the poet and the playwright, Lockhart records:—