"I've gone a mash on Terriss."
There was much laughter. When it had subsided, the child said gravely:
"Oh, you can laugh, but it's true. I wish I was hammered to him!"
Perhaps if he had lived longer, Terriss would have lost his throne. He died as a beautiful youth, a kind of Adonis, although he was fifty years old when he was stabbed at the stage-door of the Adelphi Theater.
Terriss had a beautiful mouth. That predisposed me in his favor at once! I have always been "cracked" on pretty mouths! I remember that I used to say "Naughty [Teddy]!" to my own little boy just for the pleasure of seeing him put out his under-lip, when his mouth looked lovely!
At the Court Terriss was still under thirty, but doing the best work of his life. He never did anything finer than Squire Thornhill, although he was clever as Henry VIII. His gravity as Flutter in "The Belle's Stratagem" was very fetching; as Bucklaw in "Ravenswood" he looked magnificent, and, of course, as the sailor hero in Adelphi melodrama he was as good as could be. But it is as Thornhill that I like best to remember him. He was precisely the handsome, reckless, unworthy creature that good women are fools enough to love.
In the Court production of "[Olivia]," both my children walked on to the stage for the first time. Teddy had such red cheeks that they made all the rouged cheeks look quite pale! Little Edy gave me a bunch of real flowers that she had picked in the country the day before.
Young [Norman Forbes-Robertson] was the Moses of the original cast. He played the part again at the [Lyceum]. How charming he was! And how very, very young! He at once gave promise of being a good actor and of having done the right thing in following his brother on to the stage. At the present day I consider him the only actor on the stage who can play Shakespeare's fools as they should be played.
Among the girls "walking on" was [Kate Rorke]. This made me take a special interest in watching what she did later on. No one who saw her fine performance in "The Profligate" could easily forget it, and I shall never understand why the London public ever let her go.
It was during the run of "Olivia" that [Henry Irving] became sole lessee of the Lyceum Theater. For a long time he had been contemplating the step, but it was one of such magnitude that it could not be done in a hurry. I daresay he found it difficult to separate from [Mrs. Bateman] and from her daughter, who had for such a long time been his "leading lady." He had to be a little cruel, not for the last time, in a career devoted unremittingly and unrelentingly to his art and his ambition.