The wretch had quite forgotten that he had killed her!
He was the only person who ever ventured to "cheek" Henry, yet he never gave offense, not even when he wrote a letter of this kind:
"My dear Guv.,—
"I hope you are enjoying yourself, and in the best of health. I very much want to play 'Othello' with you next year (don't laugh). Shall I study it up, and will you do it with me on tour if possible? Say yes, and lighten the drooping heart of yours sincerely,
"WILL TERRISS."
I have never seen any one at all like Terriss, and my father said the same. The only actor of my father's day, he used to tell me, who had a touch of the same insouciance and lawlessness was [Leigh Murray], a famous jeune premier.
One night he came into the theater soaked from head to foot.
"Is it raining, Terriss?" said some one who noticed that he was wet.
"Looks like it, doesn't it?" said Terriss carelessly.
Later it came out that he had jumped off a penny steamboat into the Thames and saved a little girl's life. It was pretty brave, I think.
[Mr. Pinero], who was no longer a member of the Lyceum company when "[Much Ado]" was produced, wrote to Henry after the first night that it was "as perfect a representation of a Shakespearean play as I conceive to be possible. I think," he added, "that the work at your theater does so much to create new playgoers—which is what we want, far more I fancy than we want new theaters and perhaps new plays."
A playgoer whose knowledge of the English stage extended over a period of fifty-five years, wrote another nice letter about "Much Ado" which was passed on to me because it had some ridiculously nice things about me in it.