The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections - Ellen Terry

Personally, I always got on well with my new manager, and I ought to be grateful to him, if only because he gave me the second great opportunity of my career—the part of Olivia in [Wills]'s play from "The Vicar of Wakefield." During this engagement at the Court I married again. I had met [Charles Wardell], whose stage name was Kelly, when he was acting in "Rachael the Reaper" for Charles Reade. At the Court we played together in several pieces. He had not been bred an actor, but a soldier. He was in the 66th Regiment, and had fought in the Crimean War; been wounded, too—no carpet knight. His father was a clergyman, vicar of Winlaton, Northumberland—a charming type of the old-fashioned parson, a friendship with [Sir Walter Scott] in the background, and many little possessions of the great Sir Walter's in the foreground to remind one of what had been.

Charlie Kelly, owing to his lack of training, had to be very carefully suited with a part before he shone as an actor. But when he was suited—his line was the bluff, hearty, kindly, soldier-like Englishman—he was better than many people who had twenty years' start of him in experience. This is absurdly faint praise. In such parts as Mr. Brown in "[New Men and Old Acres]," the farmer father in "Dora," Diogenes in "Iris," no one could have bettered him. His most ambitious attempt was [Benedick], which he played with me when I first appeared as Beatrice at Leeds. It was in many respects a splendid performance, and perhaps better for the play than the more polished, thoughtful, and deliberate Benedick of Henry Irving.

Physically a manly, bulldog sort of a man, Charles Kelly possessed as an actor great tenderness and humor. It was foolish of him to refuse the part of Burchell in "[Olivia]," in which he would have made a success equal to that achieved by [Terriss] as the Squire. But he was piqued at not being cast for the Vicar, which he could not have played well, and stubbornly refused to play Burchell.

Alas! many actors are just as blind to their true interests.

We were married in 1876; and after I left the [Court Theater] for the Lyceum, we continued to tour together in the provinces during vacation time when the Lyceum was closed. These tours were very successful, but I never worked harder in my life! When we played "[Dora]" at Liverpool, Charles Reade, who had adapted the play from [Tennyson]'s poem, wrote:

"Nincompoop!
"What have you to fear from me for such a masterly performance! Be assured nobody can appreciate your value and Mr. Kelley's as I do. It is well played all round."

VII

[EARLY DAYS AT THE LYCEUM]

It is humiliating to me to confess that I have not the faintest recollection of "[Brothers]," the play by [Coghlan], in which I see by the evidence of an old play-bill that I made my first appearance under Mr. Hare's management. I remember another play by Coghlan, in which [Henry Kemble] made one of his early appearances in the part of a butler, and how funny he was, even in those days, in a struggle to get rid of a pet monkey—a "property" monkey made of brown wool with no "devil" in it, except that supplied by the comedian's imagination. We trusted to our acting, not to real monkeys and real dogs to bring us through, and when the acting was Henry Kemble's, it was good enough to rely upon!