Indeed, she always liked to study the words of this author. At the Lyceum, in addition to the repetition of Olivia, she played his Queen Henrietta Maria in the revivals of "Charles I."; his Ruth Meadows in "The Fate of Eugene Aram," and his Margaret in "Faust."
Concerning "Charles I.," she wrote to him (this letter was published by Mr. Freeman Wills in his highly interesting memoir of his brother):—
"I'm just returned from our last rehearsal of 'Charles I.,' and, coming home in my carriage, have been reading the last act, and I can't help writing to thank you and bless you for having written those five last pages. Never, never has anything more beautiful been written in English—I know no other language. They are perfection; and I—often as I've acted with Henry Irving in the play—am all melted at reading it again. An immortality for you for this alone."
She greatly grieved over her well-loved author's death, and concerning it wrote to her friend, Alfred C. Calmour:—
"22 Barkston Gardens, Earl's Court, S.W.,
December 15, 1891.
"Thank you for writing. Wretched news, is it not? A genius and a dear fellow. I know how much you will miss him, and I'm very sorry for you and for myself too.
"I hope he was conscious and had folk he cared for by him.—Yours ever, Ellen Terry."
She is indeed the most charming of letter writers, and, if it were permissible, it would be pleasant to fill a chapter with her lively, as well as sympathetic, correspondence with the famous men and women of her day; but she very strongly, as well as very rightly, holds the opinion that to publish private letters intended for one person only is like asking an audience to put their ears to a keyhole and listen to a private conversation.
But to return to "Olivia." The beautiful play was produced at the Court Theatre on 30th March 1878, and at once won its well deserved victory. The first-night audience having watched the course of the story with that breathless silence which is the highest form of applause, having been over and over again moved to tears, became, at the fall of the curtain, a demonstrative one, and the unrestrained enthusiasm of the plaudits could be heard without Sloane Square. The critics were in their appreciation and praises as loud as the audience, and Ellen Terry's triumph was complete. She was the idolised heroine of a memorable evening.