WILLIAM TERRISS
In the course of the years that have passed, Time, the merciful, has
softened the pain, and at last I feel myself able to set down as simply
as possible an account of the terrible crime which deprived me of my
friend and comrade, and the stage of a personality which was endeared
to thousands.
I feel impelled to write this sad chapter for at least three reasons.
No account of my life could pretend to truth which ignored the tragedy
which has coloured it; but this reason is a small one, it is eclipsed
by the others. I not only wish to pay a tribute to the memory of the
dead, but to record the infinite kindness and love I received from
those who, though bowed by their own sorrow, yet found time to think
of and console me, and to lay a tiny laurel on the grave of that
great-hearted, kindly gentleman, Henry Irving.
In this sad chapter I confine myself to facts; I do not attempt to
explain the incidents which I am about to relate preceding the murder;
I merely record them. I did not, and do not understand them, but they
exercised such a powerful influence on me at the time that I cannot
ignore them.
One night, three months before my comrade’s death, I woke in a panic,
calling for my maid. My dream had been a horrible one. I had heard a
cry: “Sis! Sis!” in a well-known voice, and, bursting open a door, I
had rushed into a room with bare boards in time to catch the falling
form of Mr. Terriss.
So upset was I that in the early morning I telegraphed to Mr. Terriss,
who was living at Bedford Park, to come to me at my flat in Hanover
Square. I told him the reason for my telegram, expecting to be laughed
at, but he saw my distress. Later in the afternoon his brother, Bob
Lewin, called; the three of us dined together, and over dinner I told
Bob of my dream.
Six weeks later I dreamt that identical dream again, and once again, on
the Sunday before the crime, I dreamt it.
Can it be that it was a case of “coming events casting their shadows
before them?” And if so, to what purpose, for in what way could the
warning have been turned to use?
But so depressed and haunted by a fear of some vague impending ill had
I become, that on the Wednesday I went to Mr. Terriss’s dressing-room
before the evening performance.
“What is the matter?” he asked, as he saw me.
“I have a horrible feeling that something awful is going to happen,”
I told him. “I can’t explain it. But I’ve nothing of yours for
remembrance, nothing personal. I feel I _must_ have something.”
He saw that I was thoroughly over-wrought, and, smiling, he laid his
watch and chain on the dressing-table.
“Take that,” he said. “Your picture is inside the lid.”
The next evening, December 16, 1897, at exactly the same
hour--7-40--Seymour Hicks came to my room.
“Here are father Will’s watch and chain, Jessie,” he said.
Long afterwards I gave them to Tom Terriss, who still wears his
father’s watch and chain.
On the day of the murder, Thursday, December 16, 1897, Mr. Terriss and
his old friend Mr. Harry Greaves dined with me at my flat in Princes
Street, Hanover Square, at the usual hour of four o’clock, having spent
the early part of the afternoon at the Green Room Club, playing poker
with Fred Terry. When seven o’clock came I rose:
“I must get down to the theatre,” I said. “I hate being rushed,” and
left them finishing their game of chess.
I drove up in my hansom to the pass door in Maiden Lane, which
opened near my dressing-room. At the pass door I saw standing the
man Prince, whom I recognized as a former super. Only a night or two
previously I had heard a man speaking in a loud voice in Mr. Terriss’s
dressing-room, and as I came out of my room I met him in the passage
with Prince.
I had asked him: “What is the matter?”
“This man is becoming a nuisance,” he had told me, and I had guessed
that it was a case of begging.
Just as I reached the pass door Prince came towards me, and I half
thought of giving him some money so that he should not delay Mr.
Terriss when he arrived, but as he came towards me there was something
in the man’s face that frightened me, and instead of waiting to
open the pass door I rushed to the stage door, and on entering my
dressing-room I told my maid, Lottie, of my encounter with Prince.
In the midst of my dressing I heard Mr. Terriss put his key in the pass
door, and then there was a strange silence.
“Something has happened!” I cried suddenly to Lottie, and she rushed
down the stairs, I following her.
Mr. Terriss was leaning against the wall, near the door.
“Here are my keys, Lottie,” he said, quite calmly. “Catch that man!”
I had just reached him when he swayed.
“Sis,” he said faintly, “Sis, I am stabbed.”
I put my arms round him to support him, when we both fell to the
ground on the bare boards at the foot of the staircase leading to our
dressing-rooms.
“Mr. Terriss has met with an accident!” I remember calling wildly.
“Send for a doctor!”
We seemed surrounded with people, doctors came running from Charing
Cross Hospital, the world was full of whispers--and I felt that all was
hopeless.
He was lying on my right arm, and I held his hand in my left hand.
We were now alone.
He opened his eyes, and faintly squeezed my hand.
“Sis! Sis!” he whispered.
And that was all.
* * * * *
Someone led me to my room.
I remember every moment of that time. Soon George Edwardes, Seymour
Hicks, and other friends had come to me, and in their own great sorrow
were trying to comfort me.
“Cry, my dear, cry,” begged dear old Mrs. Pateman, but there were no
tears.
Meanwhile the murderer had rushed into Maiden Lane, flourishing a long
knife, my faithful Lottie clinging to him until the police seized him.
When he was told Mr. Terriss was dead: “Yes,” he said; “and I meant to
kill Miss Millward, too.”
Mr. Terriss had never been threatened or I should have known of it. It
was the act of a madman.
The murderer was a short, thin, dark man, with a pronounced squint,
whom, when he was employed as a super, I had often seen posing about
the stage, and whom Mr. Terriss had assisted with money when he lost
his position. I was told afterwards that for a week before his crime
he had been strutting about the Strand boasting that in a few days his
name would be on everybody’s lips.
At about half-past nine Lottie and I left the theatre. I would not
drive, so we walked together back to Hanover Square, and as we passed
up Regent Street the newsboys ran by crying: “Murder of William
Terriss! Murder of William Terriss!”
“Don’t listen, Miss Jessie,” pleaded Lottie; “don’t listen.”
“I must, I know,” I said.
There were no tears.
I reached the flat, and sat up all night, thinking, thinking.
Everything seemed so quiet; I wanted to be alone.
In the morning my mother, my brother and my sisters came to me.
“No one is thinking of me now,” I half sobbed, and, taking my hand, my
mother led me into the dining-room. The room was one mass of flowers
with cards. It was strange I could not bear the sight of the flowers.
In the afternoon Tom Terriss came and took me to see his father in the
mortuary at St. Martin’s Church, and I laid a bunch of lilies of the
valley in his folden hands. They were the flowers he always gave me.
Somehow or other the wonderful and majestic peace in my dear comrade’s
face soothed me. Never shall I forget the kind friends who tried so
hard to comfort me. The first telegram I opened was from Mr. Terriss’s
daughter Ella; she was ill at Eastbourne, and Seymour had gone to
break the news to her, yet in spite of her own great sorrow her first
thought was of me. But how good and kind were all the Terriss family.
His sisters, Mrs. Tomlin and Mrs. Stevenson, and his brothers, Colonel
Lewin and Dr. Lewin, did all they could to comfort me in the midst of
their own dreadful trouble, and Mrs. Tomlin took me to see my friend
for the last time.
As I gazed my last on my comrade, my friend, I thought of the last
lines he spoke on the stage in “Secret Service” the night before his
death:
“... Until we meet again.”
And then came into my mind those glorious lines:
“Death is the beginning of eternity.”
One afternoon my sister came to me.
“Sir Henry Irving is here to see you,” she said. “Please don’t refuse;
he has a message for you.”
“I will see him,” I replied, and he came into my room.
“My dear,” he said, “I have just come from Bedford Park. I was asked to
convey to the Terriss family a message of condolence from the Queen,
and I felt that I must come to you to tell you how we all sympathize
with you.” Then he went on to tell me that the Prince of Wales had sent
his equerry with a message of sympathy to me.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked gently.
“Yes,” I answered; “I should like you to be with me at the funeral.”
“Of course, my dear,” he replied.
Every night after his performance of “Peter the Great” he came to
sit an hour with me, talking of the theatre, of art, and work, and
endeavouring, as I afterwards realized, to keep alive in me some
interest in my profession and my life-work.
All the Monday night my brother Frank and Seymour Hicks sat by my
bedside, and next morning, punctually at half-past ten, Sir Henry
Irving called, bearing in his hands a large bunch of violets. He,
Seymour and I drove to Brompton together, and never can I forget the
sea of faces as we entered the cemetery.
The crowd was enormous, almost terrifying; one paper estimated it at
ten thousand. I quote from an old, faded, yellow cutting I have kept:
“Miss Millward, clothed in deepest black and leaning on the arm of Sir
Henry Irving, was the most conspicuous figure at the funeral of William
Terriss at Brompton Cemetery to-day. She was one of the dead actor’s
oldest and closest friends, and her parting kiss was the last thing he
felt before he lost consciousness. She has neither slept nor cried, and
has hardly eaten or spoken.... Her friends are afraid she may lose her
reason. Amongst the immense number of floral tributes hers was the most
regarded. It was a cushion of white chrysanthemums bearing in purple
violets the words, ‘To My Dear Comrade,’ and in the corner was a spray
of lilies of the valley. It is believed that the death of Mr. Terriss
will mark the retirement of Miss Millward from the stage. In any event,
she will not appear again for a long time.
“Sir Henry looked pale and careworn in the raw December air. He was
dressed in the deepest black, and looked slightly bent as he supported
Miss Millward.
“Brompton Cemetery is essentially the theatrical one. Here Sothern was
buried, with Sir Augustus Harris, Henry Pettitt, the beautiful Adelaide
Neilson, and many other distinguished lights of the English stage. It
is as much the custom for the London actors to be buried in Brompton
Cemetery as for the New York actors to be buried from the Little Church
Around the Corner. But never has Brompton Cemetery witnessed a more
representative stage gathering than to-day. Every London theatre was
represented, and there were floral mementoes from all the leading
companies travelling in the provinces. The most prominent London
critics were present, with many members of the nobility, and a great
number of persons prominent in the theatrical profession. Among the
mourners who followed the coffin were Tom Terriss and William Terriss,
junior, the sons of the dead actor; Dr. Lewin, his brother; Colonel
Lewin, Clement Scott, George R. Sims, Sims Reeves, Gilbert Tate, Arthur
Roberts, George Alexander, and twenty-four members of the Green Room
Club. The grave is near the east wall of the cemetery, and close to the
grave of Henry Pettitt, the playwright, whose success, like that of
Terriss, was closely identified with the Adelphi.
“Sir Henry Irving drove away with Miss Millward. Irving, it is said,
has been greatly affected by the tragic death of Terriss, who supported
him during his first tour in America and was one of his best friends.
To-day he looked older and more careworn than ever before. Many persons
said that he had aged ten years since Terriss’s assassination.
“Among those present, or who sent wreaths, crosses or cut flowers, were
Lady Clarke, Lord and Lady Londesborough, the Dowager Lady Freake,
Leopold Rothschild, Alfred Rothschild, Mr. McCalmont, Charles Wyndham,
Mr. Pinero, Mr. and Mrs. Kendal, J. Comyns Carr, Charles Hawtrey, Mr.
and Mrs. George Grossmith, Harry Nichols, Lily Hanbury, Mrs. Langtry,
Mr. and Mrs. Cyril Maude, Lady Meux, B. L. Farjeon, Lady Harris,
Antoinette Sterling, E. S. Willard, Forbes Robertson, John Hare, Sir
Edward Lawson, George Edwardes, Lady Jeune, Sir Henry Hawkins, Marie
Tempest, Beerbohm Tree, Max Beerbohm, Haddon Chambers, Miss Fortescue,
Weedon Grossmith. A floral tribute was received from Charles Frohman,
inscribed: ‘In affectionate remembrance from one of the audience.’
Augustin Daly also sent flowers.”
When I saw the coffin borne to the graveside, “I will go home now,” I
said to Sir Henry; “my brother and my maid will take me back.”
“My dear,” he replied, with the grave and gentle courtesy which was a
part of his nature, “I had the honour of bringing you here, I will have
the honour of escorting you home.”
That same night he paid his usual visit.
“You must go abroad, child,” he said. “You must go away for a long
holiday, in fresh scenes, and then you must return to the stage, and
work.”
“I can never do that,” I cried. “I can never return to the stage.”
“You must,” he said, simply; “it is your work, and in work lies relief.”
He was right. And in work Henry Irving had ever found his own relief.
“I sincerely hope the entire change of scene and the vivifying air of
the Riviera may give you some rest and peace after the fearful strain
you have had to go through,” wrote Colonel Lewin, when he heard that
I had at last decided to go away; “for amid all my sorrow and sense
of ever-abiding loss, I thought always it was you in truth who were
most to be pitied--it was your life that would be most affected. Most
sincerely I grieve with you and for you; and if at any time I can do
anything to befriend or assist you I beg you will count on me to do
whatever lies in my power for the sake of him whom I loved and who
certainly loved you more than anyone else on this earth. When that is
said, then all is said.--TOM LEWIN.”
No one has had kinder, more loyal friends than I have had, and the
kindness and loyalty have endured throughout the years. Long, long
after the terrible blow, on its anniversary there came a little note I
have always treasured:
“My dearest Jessie,--My thoughts will be with you on Christmas Day,
and I shall say a prayer for you at Brompton to-morrow. I wish it were
in my power to make you happier, but I fear it is not. However, you
may always feel _I love you_.--Ella.”
In the course of a few weeks, the murderer’s trial took place, and one
of the witnesses was my maid, Lottie. She gave her evidence with her
usual calm, but on her return to the flat the poor thing collapsed, and
was very ill. Poor girl, all through that hideous time she had been so
brave and so self-sacrificing.
Prince was, of course, found insane, and sent to Broadmoor Asylum
for life. Some time later I heard that he had been appointed to the
position of gardener, and from Broadmoor he frequently wrote to actors
at the Adelphi begging their influence to get him released and to
secure him a part in the Adelphi play.
At Broadmoor, for all I know, he still remains. Only recently did
I hear of him, through the visit of an ex-Cabinet Minister to the
asylum. In the visitor’s honour a performance was given by the asylum
band, the members of which were prisoners found insane. The conductor
mounted to his desk, turned to the ex-Minister and gave him a majestic
bow, then, tapping on his desk in manner of the professional _chef
d’orchestre_, proceeded to conduct the performance.
That conductor was Prince, the murderer of my friend.
Shortly after his death there was a noble memorial to my friend which
was strangely appropriate, and which is unique in the history of
memorials to members of his profession.
A little time before his murder there had been a terrible lifeboat
disaster off the Nayland Rock at Margate, and Terriss, who from a
boy had spent his holidays at Margate and knew every boatman by his
Christian name, suggested a subscription in the “Daily Telegraph” for
a memorial to the brave men who had lost their lives. The proprietor
of the paper, who afterwards became Lord Burnham, one of his greatest
friends, supported the scheme warmly, and a figure now stands on
the Margate beach of a lifeboatman looking out to sea, in lasting
remembrance of the dead.
With a tragic appropriateness, a little later another “Daily Telegraph”
Fund was opened for a William Terriss Memorial Lifeboat House at
Eastbourne, and subscriptions poured in for this memorial to the
murdered friend of the dead heroes. The foundation stone was laid by
the Duchess of Devonshire, and in his address Sir Charles Wyndham paid
a splendid tribute to the memory of his fellow actor.
“Life, vigour, courage and devotion characterized Terriss the actor,
as well as Terriss the man. Within the building of which this stone is
the foundation, life, vigour, courage and devotion will be typified by
the staunch little craft which soon here will be housed--a craft which
can never be used without calling forth those noble qualities which
can never be seen or even named without perpetuating their memory and
that of him in whom they were all so happily conjoined; for the fame
of William Terriss is not the mere creature of public fancy, distorted
by the glamour of the footlights, nor was it built up only on his
artistic presentments. His own personality must be taken into account.
What he was before the public he was to his friends in private. Every
heroic deed of his upon the stage was just such as we could imagine
him performing off the boards--nay, as on more than one occasion he
did perform. It is impossible to conceive a grander parallel between
the artist and the man. He lived a life as worthy and died a death as
tragic as any man he had represented on the stage. But we must not
dwell too long on mournful memories. When the soldier escorts his dead
comrade to the grave he plays the funeral march, but when he turns his
face back to life’s work and battle he plays the most inspiriting music
at his command. So it is our part with head erect to face the storm and
stress of life, emulating the merits, not vainly lamenting the loss,
of our departed friends. We must remember with satisfaction that the
boat which this house will cover will, whenever she goes forth on her
noble mission, immortalize the name and vitalize the spirit of William
Terriss far more effectively than a mere appeal to the passer-by set in
stately phrases and sculptured in monumental marble. On her prow should
be inscribed those watchwords of his career: Life, Vigour, Courage and
Devotion.”
And a beautiful tribute was that paid by “Punch,” “Punch” in his
serious mood, reflecting public opinion as at times only “Punch” can:
“Shadows we are, and shadows we pursue!”
That was the motto dearest far to you.
Old friend and comrade, having grasped my hand,
I mourn you lost to me in Shadow Land.
Brave Sailor Lad! and best of pals on earth,
Whose triumph at your death proclaimed your worth;
They bore you down an avenue of woe,
Where men and women sobbed: “We loved him so!”
Why did they love him? The assassin’s knife,
With one fell blow, mangled a loyal life,
They loved him for his honour! Splendid Will!
That made a hero of our “Breezy Bill!”