Later on, when we were older and mother could leave us at home, there was a fire one night at our lodgings, and she rushed out of the theater and up the street in an agony of terror. She got us out of the house all right, took us to the theater, and went on with the next act as if nothing had happened. Such fortitude is commoner in our profession, I think, than in any other. We "go on with the next act" whatever happens, and if we know our business, no one in the audience will ever guess that anything is wrong—that since the curtain last went down some dear friend has died, or our children in the theatrical lodgings up the street have run the risk of being burnt to death.
[My mother] had eleven children altogether, but only nine survived their infancy, and of these nine, my eldest brother, [Ben], and my sister Florence have since died. My sister Kate, who left the stage at an age when most of the young women of the present day take to it for the first time, and made an enduring reputation in a few brilliant years, was the eldest of the family. Then came a sister, who died, and I was the third. After us came Ben, George, Marion, Flossie, [Charles], Tom, and Fred. Six out of the nine have been on the stage, but only Marion, Fred, and I are there still.
Two or three members of this large family, at the most, were in existence when I first entered a theater in a professional capacity, so I will leave them all alone for the present. I had better confess at once that I don't remember this great event, and my sister Kate is unkind enough to say that it never happened—to me! The story, she asserts, was told of her. But without damning proofs she is not going to make me believe it! Shall I be robbed of the only experience of my first eight years of life? Never!
During the rehearsals of a pantomime in a Scottish town ([Glasgow], I think. Glasgow has always been an eventful place to me!), a child was wanted for the Spirit of the [Mustard-pot]. What more natural than that [my father] should offer my services? I had a shock of pale yellow hair, I was small enough to be put into the property mustard-pot, and the Glasgow stage manager would easily assume that I had inherited talent. My father had acted with [Macready] in the stock seasons both at [Edinburgh] and Glasgow, and bore a very high reputation with Scottish audiences. But the stage manager and father alike reckoned without their actress! When they tried to put me into the mustard-pot, I yelled lustily and showed more lung-power than aptitude for the stage.
"Pit your child into the mustard-pot, Mr. Terry," said the stage manager.
"D—n you and your mustard-pot, sir!" said my mortified father. "I won't frighten my child for you or anyone else!"
But all the same he was bitterly disappointed at my first dramatic failure, and when we reached home he put me in the corner to chasten me. "You'll never make an actress!" he said, shaking a reproachful finger at me.
It is my mustard-pot, and why Kate should want it, I can't think! She hadn't yellow hair, and she couldn't possibly have behaved so badly. I have often heard my parents say significantly that they had no trouble with Kate! Before she was four, she was dancing a hornpipe in a sailor's jumper, a rakish little hat, and a diminutive pair of white ducks! Those ducks, marked "Kate Terry," were kept by mother for years as a precious relic, and are, I hope, still in the family archives!
I stick to the mustard-pot, but I entirely disclaim the little Duke of York in [Richard III]., which some one with a good memory stoutly insists he saw me play before I made my first appearance as Mamilius. Except for this abortive attempt at Glasgow, I was never on any stage even for a rehearsal until 1856, at the [Princess's Theater], when I appeared with [Charles Kean] in "[A Winter's Tale]."
The man with the memory may have seen Kate as one of the Princes in the Tower, but he never saw me with her. Kate was called up to London in 1852 to play Prince Arthur in Charles Kean's production of "[King John]," and after that she acted in all his plays, until he gave up management in 1859. She had played Arthur during a stock season at Edinburgh, and so well that some one sang her praises to Kean and advised him to engage her. [My mother] took Kate to London, and I was left with my father in the provinces for two years. I can't recall much about those two years except sunsets and a great mass of shipping looming up against the sky. The sunsets followed me about everywhere; the shipping was in [Liverpool], where father was engaged for a considerable time. He never ceased teaching me to be useful, alert, and quick. Sometimes he hastened my perceptive powers with a slipper, and always he corrected me if I pronounced any word in a slipshod fashion. He himself was a beautiful elocutionist, and if I now speak my language well it is in no small degree due to my early training.