where only beautiful things were allowed to come. All the women were
graceful, and all the men were gifted. The trio of sisters--Mrs.
Prinsep--(mother of the painter), Lady Somers, and Mrs. Cameron, who was
the pioneer in artistic photography as we know it to-day--were known as
Beauty, Dash, and Talent. There were two more beautiful sisters, Mrs.
Jackson and Mrs. Dalrymple. Gladstone, Disraeli and Browning were among
Mr. Watts' visitors. At Freshwater, where I went soon after my marriage,
I first saw Tennyson.
As I write down these great names I feel almost guilty of an imposture!
Such names are bound to raise high anticipations, and my recollections
of the men to whom some of the names belong are so very humble.
I sat, shrinking and timid, in a corner--the girl-wife of a famous
painter. I was, if I was anything at all, more of a curiosity, of a
side-show, than hostess to these distinguished visitors. Mr. Gladstone
seemed to me like a suppressed volcano. His face was pale and calm, but
the calm was the calm of the gray crust of Etna. To look into the
piercing dark eyes was like having a glimpse into the red-hot crater
beneath. Years later, when I met him again at the Lyceum and became
better acquainted with him, this impression of a volcano at rest again
struck me. Of Disraeli I carried away even a scantier impression. I
remember that he wore a blue tie, a brighter blue tie than most men
would dare to wear, and that his straggling curls shook as he walked. He
looked the great Jew before everything. But "there is the noble Jew," as
George Meredith writes somewhere, "as well as the bestial Gentile." When
I first saw Henry Irving made up as Shylock, my thoughts flew back to
the garden-party at Little Holland House, and Disraeli. I know I must
have admired him greatly, for the only other time I ever saw him he was
walking in Piccadilly, and I crossed the road, just to get a good look
at him. I even went the length of bumping into him on purpose. It was a
_very little_ bump! My elbow just touched his, and I trembled. He took
off his hat, muttered, "I beg your pardon," and passed on, not
recognizing me, of course; but I had had my look into his eyes. They
were very quiet eyes, and didn't open wide.
I love Disraeli's novels--like his tie, brighter in color than any one
else's. It was "Venetia" which first made me see the real Lord Byron,
the real Lady Byron, too. In "Tancred" I recall a description of a
family of strolling players which seems to me more like the real thing
than anything else of the kind in fiction. It is strange that Dizzy's
novels should be neglected. Can any one with a pictorial sense fail to
be delighted by their pageantry? Disraeli was a heaven-born artist, who,
like so many of his race, on the stage, in music, and elsewhere, seems
to have had an unerring instinct for the things which the Gentile only
acquires by labor and training. The world he shows us in his novels is
big and swelling, but only to a hasty judgment is it hollow.
Tennyson was more to me than a magic-lantern shape, flitting across the
blank of my young experience, never to return. The first time I saw him
he was sitting at the table in his library, and Mrs. Tennyson, her very
slender hands hidden by thick gloves, was standing on a step-ladder
handing him down some heavy books. She was very frail, and looked like a
faint tea-rose. After that one time I only remember her lying on a sofa.
In the evenings I went walking with Tennyson over the fields, and he
would point out to me the differences in the flight of different birds,
and tell me to watch their solid phalanxes turning against the sunset,
the compact wedge suddenly narrowing sharply into a thin line. He taught
me to recognize the barks of trees and to call wild flowers by their
names. He picked me the first bit of pimpernel I ever noticed. Always I
was quite at ease with him. He was so wonderfully simple.
A hat that I wore at Freshwater suddenly comes to my remembrance. It was
a brown straw mushroom with a dull red feather round it. It was tied
under my chin, and I still had my hair down.
It was easy enough to me to believe that Tennyson was a poet. He showed
it in everything, although he was entirely free from any assumption of
the poetical r™le. That Browning, with his carefully brushed hat, smart
coat, and fine society manners was a poet, always seemed to me far more
incomprehensible than his poetry, which I think most people would have
taken straightforwardly and read with a fair amount of ease, if certain
enthusiasts had not founded societies for making his crooked places
plain, and (to me) his plain places very crooked. These societies have
terrorized the ordinary reader into leaving Browning alone. The same
thing has been tried with Shakespeare, but fortunately the experiment in
this case has proved less successful. Coroners' inquests by learned
societies can't make Shakespeare a dead man.
At the time of my first marriage, when I met these great men, I had
never had the advantage--I assume that it _is_ an advantage!--of a
single day's schooling in a _real school_. What I have learned outside
my own profession I have learned from my environment. Perhaps it is this
which makes me think environment more valuable than a set education, and
a stronger agent in forming character even than heredity. I should have
written the _externals_ of character, for primal, inner feelings are, I
suppose, always inherited.
Still, my want of education may be partly responsible for the
unsatisfactory blankness of my early impressions. As it takes two to
make a good talker, so it takes two to make a good hero--in print, at
any rate. I was meeting distinguished people at every turn, and taking
no notice of them. At Freshwater I was still so young that I preferred
playing Indians and Knights of the Round Table with Tennyson's sons,
Hallam and Lionel, and the young Camerons, to sitting indoors noticing
what the poet did and said. I was mighty proud when I learned how to
prepare his daily pipe for him. It was a long churchwarden, and he liked
the stem to be steeped in a solution of sal volatile, or something of
that kind, so that it did not stick to his lips. But he and all the
others seemed to me very old. There were my young knights waiting for
me; and jumping gates, climbing trees, and running paper-chases are
pleasant when one is young.
It was not to inattentive ears that Tennyson read his poems. His reading
was most impressive, but I think he read Browning's "Ride from Ghent to
Aix" better than anything of his own, except, perhaps, "The Northern
Farmer." He used to preserve the monotonous rhythm of the galloping
horses in Browning's poem, and made the words come out sharply like
hoofs upon a road. It was a little comic until one got used to it, but
that fault lay in the ear of the hearer. It was the right way and the
fine way to read this particular poem, and I have never forgotten it.
In after years I met Tennyson again, when with Henry Irving I acted in
two of his plays at the Lyceum. When I come to those plays, I shall have
more to say of him. Gladstone, too, came into my later life. Browning I
saw once or twice at dinner-parties, but knew him no better than in this
early period, when I was Nelly Watts, and heedless of the greatness of
great men. "To meet an angel and not to be afraid is to be impudent." I
don't like to confess to it, but I think I must have been, according to
this definition, _very_ impudent!
One charming domestic arrangement at Freshwater was the serving of the
dessert in a separate room from the rest of the dinner. And such a
dessert it always was!--fruit piled high on great dishes in Veronese
fashion, not the few nuts and an orange of some English households.
It must have been some years after the Freshwater days, yet before the
production of "The Cup," that I saw Tennyson in his carriage outside a
jeweler's shop in Bond Street.
"How very nice you look in the daytime," he said. "Not like an actress!"
I disclaimed my singularity, and said I thought actresses looked _very_
nice in the daytime.
To him and to the others my early romance was always the most
interesting thing about me. When I saw them in later times, it seemed as
if months, not years, had passed since I was Nelly Watts.
Once, at the dictates of a conscience perhaps over fastidious, I made a
bonfire of my letters. But a few were saved from the burning, more by
accident than design. Among them I found yesterday a kind little note
from Sir William Vernon Harcourt, which shows me that I must have known
him, too, at the time of my first marriage and met him later on when I
returned to the stage.
"You cannot tell how much pleased I am to hear that you have been
as happy as you deserve to be. The longer one lives, the more one
learns not to despair, and to believe that nothing is impossible to
those who have courage and hope and youth--I was going to add
beauty and genius." (_This is the sort of thing that made me
blush--and burn my letters before they shamed me!_)
"My little boy is still the charm and consolation of my life. He is
now twelve years old, and though I say it that should not, is a
perfect child, and wins the hearts of all who know him."
That little boy, now in His Majesty's Government, is known as the Right
Honorable Lewis Harcourt. He married an American lady, Miss Burns of New
York.
Many inaccurate stories have been told of my brief married life, and I
have never contradicted them--they were so manifestly absurd. Those who
can imagine the surroundings into which I, a raw girl, undeveloped in
all except my training as an actress, was thrown, can imagine the
situation.
Of one thing I am certain. While I was with Signor--the name by which
Mr. Watts was known among his friends--I never had one single pang of
regret for the theater. This may do me no credit, but it is _true_.
I wondered at the new life, and worshiped it because of its beauty. When
it suddenly came to an end, I was thunderstruck; and refused at first to
consent to the separation, which was arranged for me in much the same
way as my marriage had been.
The whole thing was managed by those kind friends whose chief business
in life seems to be the care of others. I don't blame them. There are
cases where no one is to blame. "There do exist such things as honest
misunderstandings," as Charles Reade was always impressing on me at a
later time. There were no vulgar accusations on either side, and the
words I read in the deed of separation, "incompatibility of temper"--a
mere legal phrase--_more_ than covered the ground. Truer still would
have been "incompatibility of _occupation_," and the interference of
well-meaning friends. We all suffer from that sort of thing. Pray God
one be not a well-meaning friend one's self!
"The marriage was not a happy one," they will probably say after my
death, and I forestall them by saying that it in many ways was very
happy indeed. What bitterness there was effaced itself in a very
remarkable way.
I saw Mr. Watts but once face to face after the separation. We met in
the street at Brighton, and he told me that I had grown! I was never to
speak to him again. But years later, after I had appeared at the Lyceum
and had made some success in the world, I was in the garden of a house
which adjoined Mr. Watt's new Little Holland House, and he, in his
garden, saw me through the hedge. It was then that I received from him
the first letter that I had had for years. In this letter he told me
that he had watched my success with eager interest, and asked me to
shake hands with him in spirit. "What success I may have," he wrote,
"will be very incomplete and unsatisfactory if you cannot do what I have
long been hesitating to ask. If you cannot, keep silence. If you can,
one word, 'Yes,' will be enough."
I answered simply, "Yes."
After that he wrote to me again, and for two or three years we
corresponded, but I never came into personal contact with him.
As the past is now to me like a story in a book that I once read, I can
speak of it easily. But if by doing so I thought that I might give pain
or embarrassment to any one else, I should be silent about this
long-forgotten time. After careful consideration it does not seem to me
that it can be either indiscreet or injurious to let it be known that
this great artist honored and appreciated my efforts and strife in my
art; that this great man could not rid himself of the pain of feeling
that he "had spoiled my life" (a chivalrous assumption of blame for what
was, I think, a natural, almost inevitable, catastrophe), and that long
after all personal relation had been broken off, he wrote to me gently,
kindly,--as sympathetically ignoring the strangeness of the position, as
if, to use his own expression, "we stood face to face on the brink of an
universal grave."
When this tender kindness was established between us, he sent me a
portrait-head that he had done of me when I was his wife. I think it a
very beautiful picture. He did not touch it except to mend the edges,
thinking it better not to try to improve it by the work of another time.
In one of these letters he writes that "there is nothing in all this
that the world might not know." Surely the world is always the better
for having a little truth instead of a great deal of idle inaccuracy and
falsehood. That is my justification for publishing this, if
justification be needed.
If I did not fulfill his too high prophecy that "in addition to your
artistic eminence, I feel that you will achieve a solid social position,
make yourself a great woman, and take a noble place in the history of
your time," I was the better for his having made it.
If I had been able to look into the future, I should have been less
rebellious at the termination of my first marriage. Was I so rebellious,
after all? I am afraid I _showed_ about as much rebellion as a sheep.
But I was miserable, indignant, unable to understand that there could be
any justice in what had happened. In a little more than two years I
returned to the stage. I was practically _driven_ back by those who
meant to be kind--Tom Taylor, my father and mother, and others. _They_
looked ahead and saw clearly it was for my good.
It _was_ a good thing, but at the time I hated it. And I hated going
back to live at home. Mother furnished a room for me, and I thought the
furniture hideous. Poor mother!
For years Beethoven always reminded me of mending stockings, because I
used to struggle with the large holes in my brothers' stockings upstairs
in that ugly room, while downstairs Kate played the "Moonlight Sonata."
I caught up the stitches in time to the notes! This was the period when,
though every one was kind, I hated my life, hated every one and
everything in the world more than at any time before or since.
III
ROSSETTI, BERNHARDT, IRVING
1865-1867
Most people know that Tom Taylor was one of the leading playwrights of
the 'sixties as well as the dramatic critic of _The Times_, editor of
_Punch_, and a distinguished Civil Servant, but to us he was more than
this--he was an institution! I simply cannot remember when I did not
know him. It is the Tom Taylors of the world who give children on the
stage their splendid education. We never had any education in the strict
sense of the word, yet, through the Taylors and others, we _were_
educated. Their house in Lavender Sweep was lovely. I can hardly bear to
go near that part of London now, it is so horribly changed. Where are
its green fields and its chestnut-trees? We were always welcome at the
Taylors', and every Sunday we heard music and met interesting
people--Charles Reade among them. Mrs. Taylor had rather a hard
outside--she was like Mrs. Charles Kean in that respect--and I was often
frightened out of my life by her; yet I adored her. She was in reality
the most tender-hearted, sympathetic woman, and what an admirable
musician! She composed nearly all the music for her husband's plays.
Every Sunday there was music at Lavender Sweep--quartet playing with
Madame Schumann at the piano.
Tom Taylor was one of the most benign and gentle of men, a good and a
loyal friend. At first he was more interested in my sister Kate's career
than in mine, as was only natural; for, up to the time of my first
marriage, Kate had a present, I only a future. Before we went to Bristol
and played with the stock company, she had made her name. At the St.
James's Theater, in 1862, she was playing a small part in a version of
Sardou's "Nos Intimes," known then as "Friends and Foes," and in a later
day and in another version as "Peril."
Miss Herbert--the beautiful Miss Herbert, as she was appropriately
called--had the chief part in the play (Mrs. Union), and Kate, although
not the understudy, was called upon to play it at a few hours' notice.
She had from childhood acquired a habit of studying every part in every
play in which she was concerned, so she was as ready as though she had
been the understudy. Miss Herbert was not a remarkable actress, but her
appearance was wonderful indeed. She was very tall, with pale gold hair
and the spiritual, ethereal look which the aesthetic movement loved.
When mother wanted to flatter me very highly, she said that I looked
like Miss Herbert! Rossetti founded many of his pictures on her, and she
and Mrs. "Janie" Morris were his favorite types. When any one was the
object of Rossetti's devotion, there was no extravagant length to which
he would not go in demonstrating it. He bought a white bull because it
had "eyes like Janie Morris," and tethered it on the lawn of his home in
Chelsea. Soon there was no lawn left--only the bull! He invited people
to meet it, and heaped favors on it until it kicked everything to
pieces, when he reluctantly got rid of it.
His next purchase was a white peacock, which, very soon after its
arrival, disappeared under the sofa. In vain did Rossetti "shoo" it out.
It refused to budge. This went on for days.
"The lovely creature won't respond to me," said Rossetti pathetically to
a friend.
The friend dragged out the bird.
"No wonder! It's _dead_!"
"Bulls don't like me," said Rossetti a few days later, "and peacocks
aren't homely."
It preyed on his mind so much that he tried to repair the failure by
buying some white dormice. He sat them up on tiny bamboo chairs, and
they looked sweet. When the winter was over, he invited a party to meet
them and congratulate them upon waking up from their long sleep.
"They are awake now," he said, "but how quiet they are! How full of
repose!"
One of the guests went to inspect the dormice more closely, and a
peculiar expression came over his face. It might almost have been
thought that he was holding his nose.
"Wake up, little dormice," said Rossetti, prodding them gently with a
quill pen.
"They'll never do _that_," said the guest. "They're _dead_. I believe
they have been dead some days!"
Do you think Rossetti gave up live stock after this? Not a bit of it. He
tried armadillos and tortoises.
"How are the tortoises?" he asked his man one day, after a long spell of
forgetfulness that he had any.
"Pretty well, sir, thank you.... That's to say, sir, there ain't no
tortoises!"
The tortoises, bought to eat the beetles, had been eaten themselves. At
least, the shells were found full of beetles.
And the armadillos? "The air of Chelsea don't suit them," said
Rossetti's servant. They had certainly left Rossetti's house, but they
had not left Chelsea. All the neighbors had dozens of them! They had
burrowed, and came up smiling in houses where they were far from
welcome.
This by the way. Miss Herbert, who looked like the Blessed Damosel
leaning out "across the bar of heaven," was not very well suited to the
line of parts that she was playing at the St. James's, but she was very
much admired. During the run of "Friends and Foes" she fell ill. Her
illness was Kate's opportunity. From the night that Kate played Mrs.
Union, her reputation was made.
It was a splendid chance, no doubt, but of what use would it have been
to any one who was not ready to use it? Kate, though only about nineteen
at this time, was a finished actress. She had been a perfect Ariel, a
beautiful Cordelia, and had played at least forty other parts of
importance since she had appeared as a tiny Robin in the Keans'
production of "The Merry Wives of Windsor." She had not had her head
turned by big salaries, and she had never ceased working since she was
four years old. No wonder that she was capable of bearing the burden of
a piece at a moment's notice. The Americans cleverly say that "the lucky
cat _watches_." _I_ should add that the lucky cat _works_. Reputations
on the stage--at any rate, enduring reputations--are not made by chance,
and to an actress who has not worked hard the finest opportunity in the
world will be utterly useless.
My own opinion of my sister's acting must be taken for what it is
worth--and that is very little. I remember how she looked on the
stage--like a frail white azalea--and that her acting, unlike that of
Adelaide Neilson, who was the great popular favorite before Kate came to
the front, was scientific. She knew what she was about. There was more
ideality than passionate womanliness in her interpretations. For this
reason, perhaps, her Cordelia was finer than her Portia or her Beatrice.
She was engaged at one time to a young actor, called Montagu. If the
course of that love had run smooth, where should I have been? Kate would
have been the Terry of the age. But Mr. Montagu went to America, and,
after five years of life as a matinŽe idol, died there. Before that,
Arthur Lewis had come along. I was glad because he was rich, and during
his courtship I had some riding, of which in my girlhood I was
passionately fond.
Tom Taylor had an enormous admiration for Kate, and during her second
season as a "star" at Bristol he came down to see her play Juliet and
Beatrice and Portia. This second Bristol season came in the middle of my
time at the Haymarket, but I went back, too, and played Nerissa and
Hero. Before that I had played my first leading Shakespeare part, but
only at one matinŽe.
An actor named Walter Montgomery was giving a matinŽe of "Othello" at
the Princess's (the theater where I made my first appearance) in the
June of 1863, and he wanted a Desdemona. The agents sent for me. It was
Saturday, and I had to play it on Monday! But for my training, how could
I have done it? At this time I knew the words and had _studied_ the
words--a very different thing--of every woman's part in Shakespeare. I
don't know what kind of performance I gave on that memorable afternoon,
but I think it was not so bad. And Walter Montgomery's Othello? Why
can't I remember something about it? I only remember that the
unfortunate actor shot himself on his wedding-day!
Any one who has come with me so far in my life will realize that Kate
Terry was much better known than Ellen at the time of Ellen's first
retirement from the stage. From Bristol my sister had gone to London to
become Fechter's "leading lady," and from that time until she made her
last appearance in 1867 as Juliet at the Adelphi, her career was a blaze
of triumph.
Before I came back to take part in her farewell tour (she became engaged
to Mr. Arthur Lewis in 1866), I paid my first visit to Paris. I saw the
Empress EugŽnie driving in the Bois, looking like an exquisite waxwork.
Oh, the beautiful _slope_ of women at this period! They sat like lovely
half-moons, lying back in their carriages. It was an age of elegance--in
France particularly--an age of luxury. They had just laid down asphalt
for the first time in the streets of Paris, and the quiet of the
boulevards was wonderful after the rattling London streets. I often went
to three parties a night; but I was in a difficult position, as I could
not speak a word of the language. I met Tissot and Gambard, who had just
built Rosa Bonheur's house at Nice.
I liked the Frenchmen because they liked me, but I didn't admire them.
I tried to learn to smoke, but I never took kindly to it and soon gave
it up.
What was the thing that made me homesick for London? _Household Words._
The excitement in the 'sixties over each new Dickens can be understood
only by people who experienced it at the time. Boys used to sell
_Household Words_ in the streets, and they were often pursued by an
eager crowd, for all the world as if they were carrying news of the
"latest winner."