Ellen Terry and Her Sisters

by T. Edgar Pemberton

Yes, we all know the finely conceived and tenderly told story of love, anger, self-effacement, and forgiveness, but I do not think that any of us realised the manifold beauties of Dora's character until it was interpreted to us by Kate Terry. The portrait was painted in the most delicate tints, but beneath the surface of it the pure mind and devoted heart were ever apparent. The impersonation must have been truly satisfying to the poet who always had a longing to see the children of his fancy on the stage.

The critic of the Examiner was right when he spoke of Kate Terry's Dora as "still a thoroughly country girl, simple, yet shrewd, with depths of womanly feeling, and little feminine piquancies; meek as a mouse, but with something in her of the power of angels, she trips on her way of quiet loving-kindness in a shabby hat and cotton gloves, and morsel of silk cape over a dress with a narrow skirt. Her uncle gives her money for fine dress; but of that, and of all that she can call hers to give, the utmost toll is taken for the sustenance of the unhappy outcasts. How touching it all is, and true with the real poetry of life, we feel throughout; the interest in the character rises steadily as the play goes on, and culminates as it should in the last scene."

It would be very wrong to take leave of Dora without saying a word of praise with regard to the Farmer Allan of Henry Neville. It was a virile, as well as a pathetic, embodiment of a firmly drawn but not too sympathetic, and, consequently, very difficult character.

Soon after this, the rumour reached envious playgoers that Kate Terry was about to become the wife of Mr. Arthur Lewis—a gentleman very well known in literary and artistic circles—and that her marriage would involve her retirement from the stage.

Crowded were the houses that then assembled to see their favourite as Juliet, Beatrice, Julia, Pauline, and in other great characters. On the 2nd September, 1867, she gave her farewell performance, and the occasion was thus recorded in the Times:—

"It is seldom that the theatrical chronicler has to describe a scene like that at the Adelphi on Saturday, when Miss Kate Terry took her farewell of the stage as Juliet. Successes, demonstrations, and ovations of a kind may be made to order; but the scene of Saturday was one of those genuine, spontaneous, and irrepressible outbursts of public recognition which carry their credentials of sincerity along with them. The widespread feeling that the stage is losing one of its chosen ornaments had been manifested by the full houses, more and more crowded on each successive night, which, even at this deadest of the dead season, have been attracted to the Adelphi by Miss Terry's farewell performances. Their attraction came to its climax and its close on Saturday, when the theatre was crammed from the orchestra to the remotest nook in the gallery where a spectator could press or perch, with such an audience as we have never before seen gathered within its walls.

"At the conclusion of the tragedy, in the course of which Miss Terry was called for at the end of each act, except the fourth, when the good taste of the more intelligent part of the audience suppressed the demand, Miss Terry came on before the curtain in obedience to a thundering summons from every part of the house, and almost overcome with the combined excitement of the part and the occasion, stood for some moments curtseying and smiling under the showers of bouquets and the storm of kindly greeting. Nor when she had retired with her armful of flowers—looking in the white robe and dishevelled hair of Juliet's death scene, as she used to look in Ophelia—was the audience satisfied. Again Miss Terry was recalled, and again she appeared to receive the loud and long-continued plaudits of the crowd. Then the stalls began to clear. But the storm of voices and clapping of hands continued from pit, boxes, and gallery, through the overture of the farce, swelling till it threatened to grow into a tempest. The curtain rose for the farce; still the thunder roared. One of the actors, quite inaudible in the clamour, began the performance, but the roar grew louder and louder, till at last Mr. Phillips came on, in the dress of Friar Lawrence, and with a stolidity so well assumed that it seemed perfectly natural, asked, in the stereo-typed phrase of the theatre, the pleasure of the audience. 'Kate Terry!' was the reply from a chorus of a thousand stentorian voices; and then the fair favourite of the night appeared once more, pale, and dressed to leave the theatre, and when the renewed roar of recognition had subsided, in answer to her appealing dumb show, spoke, with pathetic effort, a few hesitating words, evidently the inspiration of the moment, but more telling than any set speech, to this effect:—'How I wish from my heart I could tell you how I feel your kindness, not to-night only, but through the many years of my professional life. What can I say to you but thanks, thanks and good-bye!' After this short and simple farewell, under a still louder salvo of acclamation, unmistakably proving itself popular by its hearty uproariousness, the young actress, almost overpowered by the feelings of the moment, retired with faltering steps, and the crowded audience poured out of the house, their sudden exit en masse being in itself one of the most flattering tributes to the actress whose last appearance had drawn them together.

"We have to turn over the pages of theatrical history in order to find a parallel to this demonstration of affection coupled to gratitude. And after the excitement of it was over, we, who had learnt to love her perfectly portrayed art and sweet presence, sighed to think that she would no longer grace the stage." Continuing, the Times critic said:—

"This remarkable manifestation of popular favour and regard is worth recording, not only as a striking theatrical incident, which those who were present can never forget, but because it proves that the frequenters of even the pit and gallery of a theatre where, till Miss Terry came, the finer springs of dramatic effect have very rarely been drawn on, can rapidly be brought to recognise and value acting of a singularly refined and delicate kind—so refined and delicate indeed that some of those who profess to guide the public taste have been apt to insist on its wanting physical power. On Saturday night it was made evident to demonstration, if other evidence had been wanting, that Miss Terry had wrought her spells over the frequenters of pit and gallery as well as of boxes and stalls. In the interests of refined dramatic art this is a cheering set-off to many indications that seem to make the other way. It shows that if the theatrical masses—those who are roughly lumped up as the 'British Public'—are unable to discriminate nicely between diamonds and paste, and so take a good deal of coarse glassware for real stones, they are nevertheless susceptible to the influence of refined, earnest, intelligent, and conscientious acting when they have the rare opportunity of seeing it. How well Miss Terry's acting merits all these epithets has been abundantly proved, not only through her recent course of farewell performances, in which she has filled a range of parts so widely different as to show a variety of power in itself as rare as the grace, refinement, intelligence, and feeling she has put into her acting from four years old to four-and-twenty."

Surely few actresses have won such heartfelt and well-merited words of praise as these? No wonder that the thousands to whom she had given endless delight grudged her her early won freedom from the perpetual anxieties of stage life.