"If my memory serves me right, Ellen was the Dictys of the other burlesque, Miss Hodson and Miss Kate Terry playing the two rôles of the title. In one of these pieces Arthur Wood had to speak a line in which occurs the phrase, "such a mystery here." He made much nightly capital—for these burlesques had long runs considering they were played by a stock company in a provincial theatre—by emphasising the syllables of 'mystery,' so as to make the sentence sound 'such a Miss Terry here.'
"I was only a general utility actor in that company, and I had to play one of the crowd in 'Perseus and Andromeda,' whose duty it was to be suddenly turned to stone, after the fashion of Lot's wife—only with a more studied artistic pose—at the sight of Medusa's head. In order to give vraisemblance to the illusion, we of the populace were costumed in a parti-coloured fashion, one half white, the other half of some strong colour, and our faces were made up on one side only with a sort of whitewash. When, at the given signal, we turned round our white sides with the precision of soldiers at drill to the full stream of the limelight, striking simultaneously more or less statuesque attitudes, the situation was, for those days, effective, and nightly brought down the house and evoked a call for the manager. I recollect that before the production, in order to ascertain the effect of the whitewash, one or two of us, true to our profession of 'general utility,' had to put it on at a midnight rehearsal, after we had resumed our ordinary dress. Many years have elapsed since the incident, yet I can still hear the peals of musical laughter with which Ellen Terry greeted our intensely comical appearance, and I can still see the mischief and good-natured ridicule sparkling in her merry eyes.
"If I had to describe her acting in those days, I should say its chief characteristic was a vivacious sauciness. Her voice already had some of the rich sympathetic quality which has since been one of her most distinctive charms. Although only in the first flush of a joyous girlhood, she was yet familiar enough with the stage to be absolutely at home on it, and in such complete touch with her audiences that she could afford to discard the serious spirit altogether, even when the situation demanded a less frivolous mood. That she made these little subordinate parts in the burlesques not only dominate the stage at the time, but also caused them to live in the memory all these years, is evidence enough of the compelling force and infection of her irrepressible mirthfulness. At rehearsals, even more than when acting, she was brimful of merriment, taking nothing gravely;—a gay, mercurial child, flitting about hither and thither with ever the same exuberant insouciance, the same defiant spirit of laughter, as if life and all its possibilities of tangle and tragedy had only a holiday meeting for her. As I look back on those bright and too brief 'salad' days, it seems to me that Ellen Terry might have been regarded as the epitome of that 'golden age' in which people 'fleeted the time carelessly.'
"Mrs. Terry always accompanied her daughters to and from the theatre every night, and watched them from the wings during the whole time they were on the stage. They lodged during the season in Queen Square, then the recognised quarter for theatrical folks. The theatre itself was situated in King Street; I believe it still exists, but its glory, like that of Ichabod, has long since departed. A theatre in Park Row has superseded the famous old house where so many great actors and actresses were trained; and the whole neighbourhood round that building, once throbbing with artistic interest, has become sordid and neglected, and redolent of ship chandlery. But in the old times, outside the little narrow stage-door, crowds of dazzled Lotharios and stage-struck worshippers used to throng to see the 'Terrys' go home after the performance. Mrs. Terry played her part of duenna with uncommon vigilance, and it was little more than a snap-shot vision of three hurrying and well-wrapped up figures that rewarded the admirers for their patience.
"I recollect one poor lad who was an assistant in a large drapery establishment in Wine Street, Bristol. He was infatuated with the beautiful Kate Terry, though he had never spoken to her, and probably he never even saw her off the stage. But he left bouquets and other gifts addressed to her at the stage-door, and as there was nothing to indicate who the donor was, or where he lived, she could not send them back. Sometime after this young fellow was arrested for embezzlement. He had taken his employer's money, partly in order to gratify a passion for the theatre, and partly to enable him to buy presents for the divinity whom he worshipped from afar. It was a painful little drama of real life; and I know that no one was more distressed than Miss Terry herself when she read the account of the magisterial proceedings in the paper.
"I could tell you a lot about the 'Old Duke' tavern, the famous theatrical rendezvous of those days; but the 'Terrys,' of course, did not come on in that convivial scene. I am reminded, however, that one of its regular habitués was Charley Adams, the theatre prompter, about whom many diverting stories might be told. Whenever there was a stage wait or anything went wrong, Charley lost his head entirely, and rushed about with 'language' on his lips and tears streaming down his cheeks. On one occasion the stage was kept waiting for George Rignold, the audience began to be impatient, and Charley was distracted. Ellen Terry happened to be standing in the prompt wing, and, rendered desperate by the growing delay, Charley, with forcible if florid eloquence, expressed in the true Bristol vernacular, pushed her on to the stage. 'Go on! go on!' he screamed, making the objective of his imperative mood fairly totter with adjectives. Miss Terry was, however, by no means embarrassed. She quietly took in the situation: her always welcome presence elicited a hearty cheer, and by the time she had crossed the stage and disappeared on the O.P. side, the missing actor had turned up and proceeded to 'smooth out the creases.'
"Poor old Charley was often a butt for Ellen Terry's pleasant banter. He was a rather illiterate man, and made mistakes of speech which were an irresistible theme of ridicule with this mirthful maiden. How she laughed when he spoke of the 'Jorgon's' head, and called the statues 'statties,' and performed other amazing feats of verbal metamorphosis.
"Charley was always at his best in the 'Old Duke' smoking-room with his long clay pipe, after his sixth 'small jug' of eleemosynary beer. Then he was confidential, impressive, sententious, and 'dear boy'd' every one with a friendship which was none the less sincere because its fount was somewhat alcoholic. It is many a year since the earth closed over thee, thou poor, excitable, and sometimes self-indulgent disciple of Thespis, but none who knew thee can ever have any but kindly memories of thy simple undisguised obsequiousness to the 'star,' and thy majestically patronising mien to the super.
"I have used the name Ellen Terry throughout the above notes, but at that time she was always and to every one, 'Nelly.' She was announced as 'Miss Nelly Terry' in the play-bills, and I have an old friendly letter from her, written only a few months after she left Bristol, in which she signs herself 'Nelly.' The handwriting is angular and 'school-missish,' with no indication of the soundness and flexible strength which have since become its characteristics.
"Perhaps I have laid too much stress on the two burlesque parts which have the deepest roots in my memory. 'Miss Nelly' played other parts; she was the 'walking lady' of the company, and I have (rather hazy) recollections of her in a crinolined dress in that fine old melodrama 'The Angel of Midnight; or, The Duel in the Snow'; as a fashionable dame in the glittering but immoral coterie which forms the personal background in 'The Marble Heart'; and as the ingenue in a once popular comedietta entitled 'The Little Treasure.'