Thanks to Sothern, I was in those days quite at home at the Haymarket Theatre, and in "Walter Gordon" I found a true friend and adviser when, later on, I tried to write on things theatrical. He did much admirable work with his own pen, and was full of good stories of famous actors and actresses with whom he had played. I remember how he told me of an ephemeral entertainment by Sterling Coyne, entitled "Buckstone at Home," in which Ellen Terry, being then in a frolicsome mood, made an unexpected effect and sensation. In this wild production she had to appear as Britannia, and she was surrounded by the Knights of the Round Table. These stalwarts were supposed to be unable to remove a certain "property" stone, concerning which there was much superstition to the effect that it was so heavy that mortal could not stir it. The situation was meant to be taken seriously, but the light-hearted Britannia--possibly annoyed with the absurdity of the production and the poverty of her part in it, came forward, took the mock boulder in her hands, "played ball" with the flimsy thing, at the same time gleefully crying out--"Why, a child could toss it!" [Illustration: BUST OF ELLEN TERRY, BY W. BRODIE, R.S.A. _Presented to The Shakespeare Memorial, Stratford-on-Avon, by Sir Henry Irving._ [_To face page 88._ ] I wonder what she would have said if the recreant Sothern had thus committed himself! But in spite of occasional fits of joyousness this Haymarket engagement seems to have been a disappointment to her. She regarded it as one of her "lost opportunities,"--and in later days she would have given much to "find it again." By her own wish, however, it came to an early end. No doubt the ordeal was a severe one. She was exceedingly young, and she was called upon to vie with the picked comedians of her day. She acquitted herself not only bravely but with distinction, but no doubt her ever supersensitive nature (the inevitable if undesirable nature of the true artist) often whispered to her that she had blundered where she had really made a marked impression. Mrs. Siddons was wont to say that the player's nerves must be "made of cart ropes." Ellen Terry's highly-strung organisation seems to move on the slenderest of silken threads, and no doubt in those early days the strain of her public appearances were often a torment to her. In the June of 1863 Edward Leman Blanchard records her appearance at the Princess's Theatre, and her performance of Desdemona to the Othello of Walter Montgomery. This was an interesting event, for it witnessed the return of the little Mamillius and Prince Arthur of former days to the scene of her early successes, and this in a Shakespearean part in which she subsequently won great renown at the Lyceum.