"Ophelia, then, is an image or personification of innocent, delicious, feminine youth and beauty, and she passes before us in the two phases of sanity and delirium. Ellen Terry presented her in this way. The embodiment is fully within her reach, and it is one of the few unmistakably perfect creations with which dramatic art has illumined literature and adorned the stage. Ellen Terry was born to play such a part, and she is perfect in it. There is no other word for such an achievement."
In speaking of her sister artistes she is always generous, and often enthusiastic. She holds that as a pathetic actress there is no one equal to Mrs. Kendal, and she declares that in purely poetic characters her sister Marion is not to be excelled.
Indeed, her sympathy with her fellow-workers is unbounded. In this connection a pretty little story has been told by the Baroness von Zedlitz concerning a conversation she had with Ellen Terry with regard to Signora Duse. "Although," said the eager English actress of the great Italian actress, "we cannot talk fluently to each other, we became fast friends on the evening of our first meeting. I had seen her in the 'Dame aux Camélias,' and was so overpowered that I sobbed aloud. She heard that I was present, and asked me after the performance to come and see her on the stage. Our meeting was in accordance with our emotional temperaments. She rushed to me across the stage, and I fell weeping into her arms. The tears were a great relief. I could not have expressed my admiration better than by my tears. Later on we spent many a pleasant hour together, and I came to love her as a sister." But much as she loves her art, and her companions in art, I believe her chief delight exists in the quiet of the country. Every one must have a hobby, and her pleasant pastime is to possess picturesque rural homes that she can call her own. Thus she is the happy proprietress of Tower Cottage, Winchelsea; of Smallhythe Farm, Tenterden; and of Vine Cottage, Kingston Vale. To one or other of these sweet spots, surrounded by fragrant country gardens, she loves to hie herself as often as may be from her beautiful London home in more prosaic Barkston Gardens, and in all her houses her chief aim is to make her friends happy.
For what most people would call the luxuries of life she seems to care little, but with regard to its niceties she is pleasingly fastidious. Her furniture must be in the best of taste, her pictures must be truly good, and the books that she cherishes must not only be delicately bound, but "extra illustrated" by her own hand, and adorned with quaint book-plates, for which her clever son Gordon Craig is responsible. Indeed, and as might have been anticipated, refinement is the essence of her existence.
So far I have said little of Ellen Terry's successes in America, and, indeed, they have been a repetition of her triumphs in England, but, anxious to be certain of the impression she really created there, I asked my kind friend, William Winter, the distinguished doyen of American critics, to give me his frank opinion. He replies as follows:—
"My dear Mr. Pemberton,—Your story of Miss Ellen Terry's life, and your estimate of her acting, have not left anything for any one else to say, and yet your kind wish for a tribute from the present writer must not be denied. Observation on this subject has extended over a period of twenty-five years, and first impressions have only been deepened in the lapse of time. The actress is great, but the woman is greater than the actress, and in the final analysis of Miss Terry's acting, it will be found that her enchantment is that of a unique personality. Only to name the characters that she has made her own—the characters in which she is not only unrivalled but unapproachable—is to point directly to this conclusion. Those characters are Ophelia, Portia, Beatrice, Wills' Olivia, and Goethe's Margaret. She has played many other parts, and given great pleasure by the playing of them, and revealed rare qualities of nature and fine faculties of art: in each and every one of these, and in others of slighter fabric and narrower import, her acting has often afforded, if not invariably the ground for unqualified applause, at least the means of enjoyment and always the occasion of thoughtful study; but her revelation of personality, in a natural embodiment of ideal womanhood, has never been so ample as in those five characters just mentioned. She possesses a marvellously blithe spirit, and, in some of her moods, she revels in the exuberance of frivolous humour. With persons of extreme sensibility that trait—an almost hysterical propensity for mirth, as a relief to the strain of serious feeling—is not unusual; but ultimately, she is a woman of passionate heart, of profound tenderness, and of a most ardently poetic imagination. Nature has been more kind to her—more profuse in the liberality of good gifts—than to any other woman on the stage in our time; for it has endowed her with a commanding yet winsome figure; a stately head, mantled with golden hair; a countenance of piquant charm and exquisite mobility; the grey eyes of genius, through which a brave, pure and noble soul looks frankly into the face of all the world; vocal organs of exceptional power; a voice of delicious cadences and melting sweetness; symmetry of person and natural grace of action; and, within the external equipment it has placed a woman's heart to feel; a woman's unerring intuition to perceive; the gipsy's freedom of spirit, that breaks away from all convention; and the poet's kinship with nature, in everything that is grand and beautiful. Her acting has revealed her as more a spirit than a mind; as one who reaches conclusions instantly, by divination and not by analysis; as a wonderful, complex creature of nerves and impulses; wayward in fancy, strange and erratic, yet lovely with simplicity; and always, at last—surviving every vicissitude—the authentic image of goodness and truth. Not improbably the actress believes that she has carefully and deftly reasoned her way to every effect of inspiration that she produced in the mad scene of Ophelia, in Margaret's ecstasy of love, and in Olivia's unspeakably pathetic surrender; but such effects as those are not planned, they happen; like some of Shakespeare's own happiest lines, they rise out of 'Thought's interior sphere' (as Emerson calls it), and they leap, full-statured, into an immortality of beauty. Her embodiments of Beatrice and Portia were more the creatures of design, yet into them also the unpremeditated allurement of her enchanting womanhood found its way, and the wild heart of Beatrice evoked a tender sympathy, and the moral grandeur of Portia—warmed with human passion—entranced the feelings as much as it impressed the mind. Portia, on the stage, had always been didactic and oratorical until Miss Ellen Terry played the part, liberating all its piquant sweetness, alluring loveliness, and passionate ardour; since which time it has been acted as a lover, not as a preacher. More to her than to any one else the stage of to-day owes the benefits accruing from the growth of a natural style in acting—a style which yet does not sacrifice the ideal, nor degrade poetry to the level of prose. This style has been caught up and imitated in every direction—a thing, however intrinsically desirable, that never would have happened but for the magical achievement of her personality, affecting actors no less than auditors, and making her—to use a line from an old poet—'Mistress of Arts, and Hearts, and Everything.' This view might be enforced by particular examination of each of Miss Terry's representative embodiments, but that process—which would require a volume—is impracticable here. Her acting is, of course, irregular and uneven—the under-woods, full of bramble-roses, not the trim garden, with its rows of tulips and beds of moss, but it is all the more potent for that reason. Her first performance in America (October 30, 1883) was that of Queen Henrietta Maria, in Wills' beautiful play of 'Charles I.,' and the dominion that she then established over the public mind in this country has ever since remained unbroken. Her later visits to America were made in 1884, 1886—when she came as a traveller, not to act-1887, 1893, 1895, and 1899; and now, as these words are written—in fervent admiration of rare genius consistently and continually devoted to great subjects and the welfare of society as affected by the arts—she is once more speeding to these shores, where her presence will always be honoured and her memory always cherished.—Faithfully yours,
"William Winter.
"New Brighton,
Staten Island, New York,
October 11, 1901."
To this it is my great privilege to add a letter from that charming lady who, coming to us from America, fascinated us all under her maiden name of Mary Anderson.
"The Court Farm,
Broadway, Worcestershire,
September 11, 1901."Dear Mr. Pemberton,—It is delightful to hear you are writing a life of Ellen Terry. I congratulate you upon having such a subject for your next book, and I congratulate her on having you to tell her story, so replete with success—more, with triumph.
"My first meeting with her was about eighteen years ago; I had come to England to act, and I was very young and retiring, and I felt strange and very home sick. I went to the Lyceum one night when Sir Henry Irving, then Mr. Irving, was acting in 'The Merchant of Venice.' I thought the Lyceum, like most of the London theatres, did not compare favourably with those of America, either in size, decoration, or comfort; but when the curtain arose on that performance, it was a revelation to me, not only in perfect acting, but in showing me how a play could be staged. I had seen photographs of Ellen Terry (none of which really do her justice), but when she came upon the stage—floating rather than walking—I was enslaved by her grace, her beauty, and her magnetic influence. She seemed to me like a radiant creature from some other sphere; but even she, like everything and everybody during those few weeks in England, seemed far away and very strange. There was a knock at the box door, and there stood the lovely lady herself, with her graceful white hands held out in cordial welcome. Many and dear were her phrases; and her good wishes for my success when I should take possession of the stage upon which she was then acting, rang true, and came from a really generous good will.
"In an instant I felt she had drawn aside that sad veil of strangeness. She was indeed the ideal sister artist. I mention this act of hers as it illustrates the kind of kind acts she is ever doing. Her heart is of gold. She has, on the stage as well as off, a fascination for men; but she has more—a power of enkindling real affection and enthusiasm in the hearts of women. No woman has perhaps more loyal and devoted women friends, and this, as far as character and disposition are concerned, is in my estimation the longest and finest feather in her beautifully plumed cap.
"Warm greetings to all your home circle from us both. Ever sincerely yours,
"Mary Anderson de Navarro."
Can I add anything to this? I think not. I know that in dealing with books of this description conscientious censors sometimes say they are replete with eulogy, and offer little or no criticism. If I extol Ellen Terry I do so with a clear conscience and a full heart. I can never forget the happy hours and enlightenment she has given me, and I believe that all my fellow-playgoers will think that I have treated my subject from the right point of view. Why should not our great geniuses of art and literature know, whilst they are amongst us, that we appreciate their work, and love them for the sweet lessons that they teach us?