There followed a year in London, in the company, headed by the older Sothern, which was playing at the Haymarket. She was but fifteen, yet the Times said: “She is now matured into one of the happiest specimens of what the French call the ingénue.” She played Gertrude in The Little Treasure, Hero in Much Ado about Nothing, Lady Touchwood in The Belle’s Stratagem, Julia in The Rivals, and also Mary Meredith in a revival of Our American Cousin, in which Sothern was his famous other self, Lord Dundreary;—not bad for fifteen!
At sixteen came one of those sudden and complete absences from the stage that have strangely marked the career of one born to act. She was married in 1864 to George Frederick Watts, the famous artist. He was thirty-one years her senior. Watts was a man of great nobility of character, he cared for her deeply, and the brief period of her life with him she herself declared not wholly unhappy. Yet the marriage was a mistake. Though she responded to the beauty and peace of her new surroundings, and for a while at least was contented to forget the theatre, she was little more than a child—exuberant, unused to the restraint of a quiet country home; and she had tasted success. The artist himself was oppressed with a feeling that he had spoiled her life. In any event they soon separated, and she met him only once thereafter, though years later they exchanged friendly letters.
When she was nearing twenty Ellen Terry returned to the stage, more or less under the direction of Charles Reade, the famous novelist, then part manager of the Queen’s. One of the best of English novelists of the second degree, his main artistic interest was the theatre, and he was, mistakenly, more ambitious of fame as a dramatist than as a novelist. His play The Double Marriage was founded on his novel White Lies. It was well acted (Ellen Terry playing the heroine), and well mounted, but a failure. Charles Reade’s oft-quoted description of Ellen Terry in a way characterizes them both, the charming actress and the brusque, facile writer: “Her eyes are pale, her nose rather long, her mouth nothing particular, complexion a delicate brick-dust, her hair rather like tow. Yet somehow she is beautiful. Her expression kills any pretty face you see beside her. Her figure is lean and bony; her hands masculine in size and form. Yet she is a pattern of fawn-like grace. Whether in movement or repose, grace pervades the hussy.” The two were to be excellent, even affectionate, friends.
The most noteworthy event of this brief engagement at the Queen’s was her first appearance with Henry Irving, then of course a rising actor, not yet the distinguished manager of later days. The play was Garrick’s “mutilation” of The Taming of the Shrew which he called Katherine and Petruchio. Of this foreshadowing of what was to be, Miss Terry writes: “There is an old story told of Mr. Irving being ‘struck with my talent at this time and promising that if he ever had a theatre of his own he’d give me an engagement!’ But that is all moonshine. As a matter of fact I’m sure he never thought of me at all at that time. I was just then acting very badly, and feeling ill, caring scarcely at all for my work or a theatre, or anybody belonging to a theatre.” And again: “From the first I noticed that Mr. Irving worked more concentratedly than all the other actors put together, and the most important lesson of my working life I learnt from him, that to do one’s work well one must work continually, live a life of constant self-denial for that purpose, and, in short, keep one’s nose upon the grindstone.” Of her performance in the pseudo-Shakespearean piece the critics varied. “I have not much recollection of the performance,” wrote Clement Scott, “save that Ellen Terry was the sweetest shrew ever seen and that it seemed barbaric to crack a whip in her presence.”
After acting for about a year at the Queen’s, Miss Terry again retired from the stage, this time for six years. She disappeared from London and the stage and wholeheartedly gave herself up to a tranquil domestic life in the country. This was the period of her union with Charles Wardell, her second husband, an excellent actor known to playgoers as Charles Kelly. Of this union there have been two children, Ailsa Craig, who played small parts at the Lyceum with her mother and Henry Irving, and Gordon Craig, who, first an actor, is today recognized as one of the most important and fertile workers toward a new art of stage setting.
“I led a most unconventional life,” writes Miss Terry, “and experienced exquisite delight from the mere fact of being in the country. No one knows what ‘the country’ means until he or she has lived in it. ‘Then, if ever, come perfect days.’... For the first time I was able to put all my energies into living.... I began gardening, ‘the purest of human pleasures’; I learned to cook, and in time cooked very well, though my first essay in that difficult art was rewarded with dire and complete failure.[77]
“My hour of rising at this pleasant place near Mackery End in Hertfordshire was six. Then I washed the babies. I had a perfect mania for washing everything and everybody. We had one little servant, and I insisted on washing her head. Her mother came up from the village to protest. ‘Never washed her head in my life. Never washed any of my children’s heads.’
“After the washing I fed the animals. There were two hundred ducks and fowls to feed, as well as the children. By the time I had done this, and cooked the dinner, the morning had flown away. After the midday meal I sewed. Sometimes I drove out in the pony-cart. And in the evening I walked across the common to fetch the milk. The babies used to roam where they liked on this common in charge of a bulldog, while I sat and read. I studied cookery-books instead of parts—Mrs. Beeton instead of Shakespeare!
“Oh, blissful quiet days! How soon they came to an end! Already the shadow of financial trouble fell across my peace. Yet still I never thought of returning to the stage.
“One day I was driving in a narrow lane, when the wheel of the pony-cart came off. I was standing there, thinking what I should do next, when a whole crowd of horsemen in ‘pink’ came leaping over the hedge into the lane. One of them stopped and asked if he could do anything. Then he looked hard at me and exclaimed: ‘Good God! It’s Nelly!’ The man was Charles Reade.