But it seems, after all, rather futile and ungrateful, in the face of what has really been, to cavil about what might have been. Ellen Terry has actually been one of those rare spirits who confer a blessing on a gray world by their mere presence. As a woman she was lovable, simple, whole-heartedly human, generous, high spirited; as an actress, uniquely delightful and in many impersonations, by virtue of nature and instinct, of compelling power, even genius. Small wonder that we must reckon her as one of the great line of English women of the theatre, the last indeed of that small and scattered band, who, each in turn, were the queens of the stage; small wonder, too, that by thousands of hearts on both sides of the ocean she has been cherished as an idealized fellow creature.
When she had at last left Sir Henry she bade fair to enlarge the scope of her already well-rounded career by appearing in plays of a more modern type than any that fell within the Lyceum’s scope. “When her son, Mr. Gordon Craig, became a father,” wrote George Bernard Shaw, “she said that no one would ever write plays for a grandmother. I immediately wrote Captain Brassbound’s Conversion to prove the contrary. Once before I had tried to win her when I wrote The Man of Destiny in which the heroine is simply a delineation of Ellen Terry, imperfect, it is true, for who can describe the indescribable?”[86]
When in 1905 Miss Terry played James M. Barrie’s delightful Alice-Sit-By-The-Fire, it was felt, by those minded like Mr. Shaw, and not disturbed by seeing her appear in a play widely diverging from the Lyceum traditions, that at last she had come into her own—that she was doing what she should have done years before, in giving her talents to a modern play. And the next year she appeared as Lady Cecily in the play that Shaw had written for a grandmother, and that had waited for her seven years, Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.
She had been an actress fifty years. When the anniversary approached the English world of the theatre bestirred itself to mark the date fittingly. The celebration took the form of an astonishing entertainment at Drury Lane. The programme ranged from songs, recitations, tableaux vivants, through Trial by Jury and scenes from The School for Scandal, to an act from Much Ado, in which Miss Terry herself was Beatrice, supported by a cast including a score of the Terry family. The list of those who appeared on the stage of Drury Lane on the afternoon of June 12, 1906, is simply a roster of the pick of the actor’s profession in England; distinguished actors, if nothing more could be found for them to do, thought themselves honored to walk on as supernumeraries; Genée danced; Caruso sang; Signora Duse came all the way from Florence to pay homage; the audience, which had begun to gather for the great occasion as early as the previous day,[87] was overwhelming in its enthusiasm, and altogether the occasion was an unprecedented demonstration of loyalty and affection.
Early in the following year (1907) Miss Terry made her eighth and as an actress her last tour of the United States.[88] Three years later, and again in 1914, she came as a lecturer reading scenes from Shakespeare and commenting on his heroines. It was good to see and hear her again if only on the platform, even though, as William Winter said, it is one thing to act, another to expound. “To see her as an actress was to see a vital creature of beauty, passion, tenderness, and eloquence, a being, in Cleopatra’s fine phrase, all ‘fire and air.’” On the lecture platform she was not quite all that, but she was still Ellen Terry, imperial of figure, rich of voice, buoyant of mood.[89] As such her public in England and America saw its last of her.[90] She is now living quietly in one of those small country houses the “collection” of which has been one of her hobbies. She has given in generous measure pleasure to many, many thousands;—more than pleasure, inspiration indeed, to countless men and women. The realization of this must be a great reward, to make happy the twilight of her life.
GABRIELLE RÉJANE
A certain Frenchman once voiced the feeling of his fellow Parisians concerning Réjane by calling upon all good French provincials, who would learn the language of the Boulevards in a single lesson, and all children of other lands curious as to the pleasures, tastes, and manners of Paris, to harken while he gave them this advice: “Go and see Réjane. Don’t go to the Opéra, where the music is German; nor to the Opéra-Comique, where it is Italian; nor yet to the Comédie Française, where the sublime is made ridiculous, and the heroes and heroines of Racine take on the attitudes of bull-fighters and cigarette-makers; nor to the Odéon, nor to the Palais-Royal, nor here, nor there, nor elsewhere: go and see Réjane. Be she at London, Chicago, Brussels, St. Petersburg—Réjane is Paris. She carries the soul of Paris with her, wheresoever she listeth.”
GABRIELLE RÉJANE