From the collection of Robert Coster
MARY ANDERSON
I never saw Mary Anderson act. That seems a strange admission, but during her wonderful reign at the Lyceum Theatre, which she rented from Henry Irving, I was in America, and another time when I might have seen her act, I was very ill and ordered abroad. I have, however, had the great pleasure of meeting her and she has done me many little kindnesses. Hearing her praises sung on all sides, and her beauties spoken of everywhere, I was particularly struck by her modest evasion of publicity off the stage. I personally only knew her as a most beautiful woman—as kind as beautiful—constantly working for her religion—always kind, a good daughter, a good wife, a good woman.
She cheered me before I sailed for America by saying that her people would like me.
"Since seeing you in Portia and Letitia," she wrote, "I am convinced you will take America by storm." Certainly she took England by storm! But she abandoned her triumphs almost as soon as they were gained. They never made her happy, she once told me, and I could understand her better than most, since I had had success too, and knew that it did not mean happiness.
Henry and I were so fortunate as to gain the friendship and approval of Dr. Horace Howard Furness, perhaps the finest Shakespearean scholar in America, and editor of the Variorum Shakespeare, which Henry considered the best of all editions—"the one which counts." It was in Boston, I think, that I disgraced myself at one of Dr. Furness' lectures. He was discussing "As You Like It" and Rosalind, and proving with much elaboration that English in Shakespeare's time was pronounced like a broad country dialect, and that Rosalind spoke Warwickshire! A little girl who was sitting in the front of me had lent me her copy of the play a moment before, and now, absorbed in Dr. Furness' argument, I forgot the book wasn't mine and began scrawling controversial notes in it with my very thick and blotty fountain pen.
"Give me back my book! Give me my book!" cried the little girl. "How dare you write in my book!" she cried with rage.
Her mother tried to hush her up: "It's Miss Ellen Terry."