Gull" in the bill at the Royalty for more than a few nights, I continued
to play under Madame de Rhona's management until February 1862. During
these few months new plays were being constantly put on, for Madame was
somehow not very fortunate in gauging the taste of the public. It was in
the fourth production--"The Governor's Wife," that, as Letty Briggs, I
had my first experience of what is called "stage fright." I had been on
the stage more than five years, and had played at least sixteen parts,
so there was really no excuse for me. I suspect now that I had not taken
enough pains to get word-perfect. I know I had five new parts to study
between November 21 and December 26.
Stage fright is like nothing else in the world. You are standing on the
stage apparently quite well and in your right mind, when suddenly you
feel as if your tongue had been dislocated and was lying powerless in
your mouth. Cold shivers begin to creep downwards from the nape of your
neck and all up you at the same time, until they seem to meet in the
small of your back. About this time you feel as if a centipede, all of
whose feet have been carefully iced, has begun to run about in the roots
of your hair. The next agreeable sensation is the breaking out of a cold
sweat all over. Then you are certain that some one has cut the muscles
at the back of your knees. Your mouth begins to open slowly, without
giving utterance to a single sound, and your eyes seem inclined to jump
out of your head over the footlights. At this point it is as well to get
off the stage as quickly as you can, for you are far beyond human help.
Whether everybody suffers in this way or not I cannot say, but it
exactly describes the torture I went through in "The Governor's Wife." I
had just enough strength and sense to drag myself off the stage and
seize a book, with which, after a few minutes, I reappeared and
ignominiously read my part. Whether Madame de Rhona boxed my ears or
not, I can't remember, but I think it is very likely she did, for she
was very quick-tempered. In later years I have not suffered from the
fearsome malady, but even now, after fifty years of stage-life, I never
play a new part without being overcome by a terrible nervousness and a
torturing dread of forgetting my lines. Every nerve in my body seems to
be dancing an independent jig on its own account.
It was at the Royalty that I first acted with Mr. Kendal. He and I
played together in a comedietta called "A Nice Quiet Day." Soon after,
my engagement came to an end, and I went to Bristol, where I gained the
experience of my life with a stock company.
LIFE IN A STOCK COMPANY
1862-1863
"I think anything, naturally written, ought to be in everybody's way
that pretends to be an actor." This remark of Colley Cibber's long ago
struck me as an excellent motto for beginning on the stage. The
ambitious boy thinks of Hamlet, the ambitious girl of Lady Macbeth or
Rosalind, but where shall we find the young actor and actress whose
heart is set on being useful?
_Usefulness!_ It is not a fascinating word, and the quality is not one
of which the aspiring spirit can dream o' nights, yet on the stage it is
the first thing to aim at. Not until we have learned to be useful can we
afford to do what we like. The tragedian will always be a limited
tragedian if he has not learned how to laugh. The comedian who cannot
weep will never touch the highest levels of mirth.
It was in the stock companies that we learned the great lesson of
usefulness; we played everything--tragedy, comedy, farce, and burlesque.
There was no question of parts "suiting" us; we had to take what we were
given.
The first time I was cast for a part in a burlesque I told the stage
manager I couldn't sing and I couldn't dance. His reply was short and to
the point. "You've got to do it," and so I did it in a way--a very funny
way at first, no doubt. It was admirable training, for it took all the
self-consciousness out of me to start with. To end with, I thought it
capital fun, and enjoyed burlesque as much as Shakespeare.
What was a stock company? I forget that in these days the question may
be asked in all good faith, and that it is necessary to answer it. Well,
then, a stock company was a company of actors and actresses brought
together by the manager of a provincial theater to support a leading
actor or actress--"a star"--from London. When Edmund Kean, the Kembles,
Macready, or Mrs. Siddons visited provincial towns, these companies were
ready to support them in Shakespeare. They were also ready to play
burlesque, farce, and comedy to fill out the bill. Sometimes the "stars"
would come for a whole season; if their magnitude were of the first
order, for only one night. Sometimes they would rehearse with the stock
company, sometimes they wouldn't. There is a story of a manager visiting
Edmund Kean at his hotel on his arrival in a small provincial town, and
asking the great actor when he would rehearse.
"Rehearse! I'm not going to rehearse--I'm going to sleep!"
"Have you any instructions?"
"Instructions! No! Tell 'em to keep at a long arm's length away from me
and do their d----d worst!"
At Bristol, where I joined Mr. J.H. Chute's stock company in 1861, we
had no experience of that kind, perhaps because there was no Kean alive
to give it to us. And I don't think that our "worst" would have been so
very bad. Mr. Chute, who had married Macready's half-sister, was a
splendid manager, and he contrived to gather round him a company which
was something more than "sound."
Several of its members distinguished themselves greatly in after years.
Among these I may mention Miss Marie Wilton (now Lady Bancroft) and
Miss Madge Robertson (now Mrs. Kendal).
Lady Bancroft had left the company before I joined it, but Mrs. Kendal
was there, and so was Miss Henrietta Hodson (afterwards Mrs.
Labouchere). I was much struck at that time by Mrs. Kendal's singing.
Her voice was beautiful. As an example of how anything can be twisted to
make mischief, I may quote here an absurd tarradiddle about Mrs. Kendal
never forgetting in after years that in the Bristol stock company she
had to play the singing fairy to my Titania in "A Midsummer Night's
Dream." The simple fact, of course, was that she had the best voice in
the company, and was of such infinite value in singing parts that no
manager in his senses would have taken her out of them. There was no
question of my taking precedence of her, or of her playing second fiddle
to me.
Miss Hodson was a brilliant burlesque actress, a good singer, and a
capital dancer. She had great personal charm, too, and was an enormous
favorite with the Bristol public. I cannot exactly call her a "rival" of
my sister Kate's, for Kate was the "principal lady" or "star," and
Henrietta Hodson the "soubrette," and, in burlesque, the "principal
boy." Nevertheless, there were certainly rival factions of admirers, and
the friendly antagonism between the Hodsonites and the Terryites used to
amuse us all greatly.
We were petted, spoiled, and applauded to our heart's content, but I
don't think it did us any harm. We all had scores of admirers, but their
youthful ardor seemed to be satisfied by tracking us when we went to
rehearsal in the morning and waiting for us outside the stage-door at
night.
When Kate and I had a "benefit" night, they had an opportunity of coming
to rather closer quarters, for on these occasions tickets could be
bought from members of the company, as well as at the box-office of the
theater.
Our lodgings in Queen Square were besieged by Bristol youths who were
anxious to get a glimpse of the Terrys. The Terrys demurely chatted with
them and sold them tickets. My mother was most vigilant in her r™le of
duenna, and from the time I first went on the stage until I was a grown
woman I can never remember going home unaccompanied by either her or my
father.
The leading male members of Mr. Chute's stock company were Arthur Wood
(an admirable comedian), William George Rignold, W.H. Vernon, and
Charles Coghlan. At this time Charles Coghlan was acting magnificently,
and dressing each of his characters so correctly and so perfectly that
most of the audience did not understand it. For instance, as Glavis, in
"The Lady of Lyons," he looked a picture of the Directoire fop. He did
not compromise in any single detail, but wore the long straggling hair,
the high cravat, the eye-glass, bows, jags, and tags, to the infinite
amusement of some members of the audience, who could not imagine what
his quaint dress meant. Coghlan's clothes were not more perfect than his
manner, but both were a little in advance of the appreciation of Bristol
playgoers in the 'sixties.
At the Princess's Theater I had gained my experience of long rehearsals.
When I arrived in Bristol I was to learn the value of short ones. Mr.
Chute took me in hand, and I had to wake up and be alert with brains
and body. The first part I played was Cupid in "Endymion." To this day I
can remember my lines. I entered as a blind old woman in what is known
in theatrical parlance as a "disguise cloak." Then, throwing it off, I
said:
"Pity the poor blind--what no one here?
Nay then, I'm not so blind as I appear,
And so to throw off all disguise and sham,
Let me at once inform you who I am!
I'm Cupid!"
Henrietta Hodson as Endymion and Kate as Diana had a dance with me which
used to bring down the house. I wore a short tunic which in those days
was considered too scanty to be quite nice, and carried the conventional
bow and quiver.
In another burlesque, "Perseus and Andromeda," I played Dictys; it was
in this piece that Arthur Wood used to make people laugh by punning on
the line: "Such a mystery (Miss Terry) here!" It was an absurd little
joke, but the people used to cheer and applaud.
At the end of my first season at Bristol I returned to London for a time
to play at the Haymarket under Mr. Buckstone, but I had another season
at Bristol in the following year. While my stage education was
progressing apace, I was, through the influence of a very wonderful
family whose acquaintance we made, having my eyes opened to beautiful
things in art and literature. Mr. Godwin, the architect and
archaeologist, was living in Bristol when Kate and I were at the Theater
Royal, and we used to go to his house for some of the Shakespeare
readings in which our Bristol friends asked us to take part. This house,
with its Persian rugs, beautiful furniture, its organ, which for the
first time I learned to love, its sense of design in every detail, was a
revelation to me, and the talk of its master and mistress made me
_think_. At the theater I was living in an atmosphere which was
developing my powers as an actress and teaching me what work meant, but
my mind had begun to grasp dimly and almost unconsciously that I must do
something for myself--something that all the education and training I
was receiving in my profession could not do for me. I was fourteen years
old at Bristol, but I now felt that I had never really lived at all
before. For the first time I began to appreciate beauty, to observe, to
feel the splendor of things, to _aspire_!
I remember that in one of the local papers there had appeared under the
headline "Jottings" some very wonderful criticisms of the performances
at the theater. The writer, whoever he was, did not indulge in flattery,
and in particular he attacked our classical burlesques on the ground
that they were ugly. They were discussing "Jottings" one day at the
Godwins' house, and Kate said it was absurd to take a burlesque so
seriously. "Jottings" was all wrong.
"I don't know," said our host. "Even a burlesque can be beautiful."
Afterwards he asked me what I thought of "Jottings," and I confessed
that there seemed to me a good deal of truth in what had been said. I
had cut out all that he had written about us, read it several times, and
thought it all very clever, most amusing--and generally right. Later on
I found that Mr. Godwin and "Jottings" were one and the same!
At the Godwins' I met Mr. Barclay, Mr. Hine, William Burges the
architect, and many other people who made an impression on my young
mind. I accepted their lessons eagerly, and found them of the greatest
value later on.
In March 1863 Mr. Chute opened the Theater Royal, Bath, when, besides a
specially written play symbolic of the event, his stock company
performed "A Midsummer Night's Dream." Titania was the first Shakespeare
part I had played since I left Charles Kean, but I think even in those
early days I was more at home in Shakespeare than anything else. Mr.
Godwin designed my dress, and we made it at his house in Bristol. He
showed me how to damp it and "wring" it while it was wet, tying up the
material as the Orientals do in their "tie and dry" process, so that
when it was dry and untied, it was all crinkled and clinging. This was
the first lovely dress that I ever wore, and I learned a great deal from
it.
Almost directly after that appearance at Bath I went to London to
fulfill an engagement at the Haymarket Theater, of which Mr. Buckstone
was still the manager and Sothern the great attraction. I had played
Gertrude Howard in "The Little Treasure" during the stock season at
Bristol, and when Mr. Buckstone wanted to do the piece at the Haymarket,
he was told about me. I was fifteen at this time, and my sense of humor
was as yet ill-developed. I was fond of "larking" and merry enough, but
I hated being laughed _at_! At any rate, I could see no humor in Mr.
Sothern's jokes at my expense. He played my lover in "The Little
Treasure," and he was always teasing me--pulling my hair, making me
forget my part and look like an idiot. But for dear old Mr. Howe, who
was my "father" in the same piece, I should not have enjoyed acting in
it at all, but he made amends for everything. We had a scene together in
which he used to cry, and I used to cry--oh, it was lovely!
Why I should never have liked Sothern, with his wonderful hands and blue
eyes, Sothern, whom every one found so fascinating and delightful, I
cannot say, and I record it as discreditable to me, not to him. It was
just a case of "I do not like thee, Dr. Fell." I admired him--I could
not help doing that--but I dreaded his jokes, and thought some of them
very cruel.
Another thing I thought cruel at this time was the scandal which was
talked in the theater. A change for the better has taken place in this
respect--at any rate, in conduct. People behave better now, and in our
profession, carried on as it is in the public eye, behavior is
everything. At the Haymarket there were simply no bounds to what was
said in the greenroom. One night I remember gathering up my skirts (we
were, I think, playing "The Rivals" at the time), making a curtsey, as
Mr. Chippendale, one of the best actors in old comedy I ever knew, had
taught me, and sweeping out of the room with the famous line from
another Sheridan play: "Ladies and gentlemen, I leave my character
behind me!"
I see now that this was very priggish of me, but I am quite as
uncompromising in my hatred of scandal now as I was then. Quite recently
I had a line to say in "Captain Brassbound's Conversion," which is a
very helpful reply to any tale-bearing. "As if any one ever knew the
whole truth about anything!" That is just the point. It is only the
whole truth which is informing and fair in the long run, and the whole
truth is never known.
I regard my engagement at the Haymarket as one of my lost opportunities,
which in after years I would have given much to have over again. I might
have learned so much more than I did. I was preoccupied by events
outside the theater. Tom Taylor, who had for some time been a good
friend to both Kate and me, had introduced us to Mr. Watts, the great
painter, and to me the stage seemed a poor place when compared with the
wonderful studio where Kate and I were painted as "The Sisters." At the
Taylors' house, too, the friends, the arts, the refinements had an
enormous influence on me, and for a time the theater became almost
distasteful. Never at any time in my life have I been ambitious, but at
the Haymarket I was not even passionately anxious to do my best with
every part that came in my way--a quality which with me has been a good
substitute for ambition. I was just dreaming of and aspiring after
another world, a world full of pictures and music and gentle, artistic
people with quiet voices and elegant manners. The reality of such a
world was Little Holland House, the home of Mr. Watts.
So I confess quite frankly that I did not appreciate until it was too
late, my advantages in serving at the Haymarket with comrades who were
the most surpassingly fine actors and actresses in old comedy that I
have ever known. There were Mr. Buckstone, the Chippendales, Mr.
Compton, Mr. Farren. They one and all thoroughly understood Sheridan.
Their bows, their curtseys, their grand manner, the indefinable _style_
which they brought to their task were something to see. We shall never
know their like again, and the smoothest old-comedy acting of this age
seems rough in comparison. Of course, we suffer more with every fresh
decade that separates us from Sheridan. As he gets farther and farther
away, the traditions of the performances which he conducted become paler
and paler. Mr. Chippendale knew these traditions backwards. He might
even have known Sheridan himself. Charles Reade's mother did know him,
and sat on the stage with him while he rehearsed "The School for
Scandal" with Mrs. Abingdon, the original Lady Teazle in the part.
Mrs. Abingdon, according to Charles Reade, who told the story, had just
delivered the line, "How dare you abuse my relations?" when Sheridan
stopped the rehearsal.
"No, no, that won't do at all! It mustn't be _pettish_. That's
shallow--shallow. You must go up stage with, 'You are just what my
cousin Sophy said you would be,' and then turn and sweep down on him
like a volcano. 'You are a great bear to abuse my relations! How _dare_
you abuse my relations!'"
I want to refrain, in telling the story of my life, from praising the
past at the expense of the present. It is at best the act of a fogey and
always an easy thing to do, as there are so few people who can
contradict one. Yet even the fear of joining hands with the people who
like every country but their own, and every age except that in which
they live, shall not deter me from saying that although I have seen
many improvements in actors and acting since I was at the Haymarket, I
have never seen artificial comedy acted as it was acted there.
Not that I was much good at it myself. I played Julia in "The Rivals"
very ill; it was too difficult and subtle for me--ungrateful into the
bargain--and I even made a blunder in bringing down the curtain on the
first night. It fell to my lot to finish the play--in players' language,
to speak the "tag." Now, it has been a superstition among actors for
centuries that it is unlucky to speak the "tag" in full at rehearsal. So
during the rehearsals of "The Rivals," I followed precedent and did not
say the last two or three words of my part and of the play, but just
"mum, mum, mum!" When the first night came, instead of dropping my voice
with the last word in the conventional and proper manner, I ended with
an upward inflection, which was right for the sense, but wrong for the
curtain.
This unexpected innovation produced utter consternation all round me.
The prompter was so much astounded that he thought there was something
more coming and did not give the "pull" for the curtain to come down.
There was a horrid pause while it remained up, and then Mr. Buckstone,
the Bob Acres of the cast, who was very deaf and had not heard the
upward inflection, exclaimed loudly and irritably: "Eh! eh! What does
this mean? Why the devil don't you bring down the curtain?" And he went
on cursing until it did come down. This experience made me think more
than ever of the advice of an old actor: "Never leave your stage effects
to _chance_, my child, but _rehearse_, and find out all about it!"
How I wished I had rehearsed that "tag" and taken the risk of being
unlucky!
For the credit of my intelligence I should add that the mistake was a
technical one, not a stupid one. The line was a question. It _demanded_
an upward inflection; but no play can end like that.
It was not all old comedy at the Haymarket. "Much Ado About Nothing" was
put on during my engagement, and I played Hero to Miss Louisa Angell's
Beatrice. Miss Angell was a very modern Beatrice, but I, though I say it
"as shouldn't," played Hero beautifully! I remember wondering if I
should ever play Beatrice. I just _wondered_, that was all. It was the
same when Miss Angell played Letitia Hardy in "The Belle's Stratagem,"
and I was Lady Touchwood. I just wondered! I never felt jealous of other
people having bigger parts; I never looked forward consciously to a day
when I should have them myself. There was no virtue in it. It was just
because I wasn't ambitious.
Louise Keeley, a pretty little woman and clever, took my fancy more than
any one else in the company. She was always merry and kind, and I
admired her dainty, vivacious acting. In a burlesque called "Buckstone
at Home" (in which I played Britannia and came up a trap in a huge
pearl, which opened and disclosed me) Miss Keeley was delightful. One
evening the Prince and Princess of Wales (now our King and Queen) came
to see "Buckstone at Home." I believe it was the very first time they
had appeared at a theater since their marriage. They sat far back in the
royal box, the ladies and gentlemen of their suite occupying the front
seats. Miss Keeley, dressed as a youth, had a song in which she brought
forward by the hand some well-known characters in fairy tales and
nursery rhymes--Cinderella, Little Boy Blue, Jack and Jill, and so on,
and introduced them to the audience in a topical verse. One verse ran:
"Here's the Prince of Happyland,
Once he dwelt at the Lyceum;
Here's another Prince at hand,
But being _invisible_, you can't see him!"
Probably the Prince of Wales must have wished the singer at--well, not
at the Haymarket Theater; but the next minute he must have been touched
by the loyal greeting that he received. When the audience grasped the
situation, every one--stalls, boxes, circle, pit, gallery--stood up and
cheered and cheered again. Never was there a more extraordinary scene in
a playhouse--such excitement, such enthusiasm! The action of the play
came to a full stop, but not the cheers. They grew louder and louder,
until the Prince came forward and bowed his acknowledgments. I doubt if
any royal personage has ever been so popular in England as he was. Of
course he is popular as King too, but as Prince of Wales he came nearer
the people. They had more opportunities of seeing him, and they
appreciated his untiring efforts to make up by his many public
appearances for the seclusion in which the Queen lived.
1864
In the middle of the run of "The American Cousin" I left the stage and
married. Mary Meredith was the part, and I played it vilely. I was not
quite sixteen years old, too young to be married even in those days,
when every one married early. But I was delighted, and my parents were
delighted, although the disparity of age between my husband and me was
very great. It all seems now like a dream--not a clear dream, but a
fitful one which in the morning one tries in vain to tell. And even if I
could tell it, I would not. I was happy, because my face was the type
which the great artist who had married me loved to paint. I remember
sitting to him in armor for hours and never realizing that it was heavy
until I fainted!
The day of my wedding it was very cold. Like most women, I always
remember what I was wearing on the important occasions of my life. On
that day I wore a brown silk gown which had been designed by Holman
Hunt, and a quilted white bonnet with a sprig of orange-blossom, and I
was wrapped in a beautiful Indian shawl. I "went away" in a sealskin
jacket with coral buttons, and a little sealskin cap. I cried a great
deal, and Mr. Watts said, "Don't cry. It makes your nose swell." The day
I left home to be married, I "tubbed" all my little brothers and sisters
and washed their fair hair.