The most noteworthy event of this brief engagement at the Queen’s was her first appearance with Henry Irving, then of course a rising actor, not yet the distinguished manager of later days. The play was Garrick’s “mutilation” of _The Taming of the Shrew_ which he called _Katherine and Petruchio_. Of this foreshadowing of what was to be, Miss Terry writes: “There is an old story told of Mr. Irving being ‘struck with my talent at this time and promising that if he ever had a theatre of his own he’d give me an engagement!’ But that is all moonshine. As a matter of fact I’m sure he never thought of me at all at that time. I was just then acting very badly, and feeling ill, caring scarcely at all for my work or a theatre, or anybody belonging to a theatre.” And again: “From the first I noticed that Mr. Irving worked more concentratedly than all the other actors put together, and the most important lesson of my working life I learnt from him, that to do one’s work well one must _work continually_, live a life of constant self-denial for that purpose, and, in short, keep one’s nose upon the grindstone.” Of her performance in the pseudo-Shakespearean piece the critics varied. “I have not much recollection of the performance,” wrote Clement Scott, “save that Ellen Terry was the sweetest shrew ever seen and that it seemed barbaric to crack a whip in her presence.” After acting for about a year at the Queen’s, Miss Terry again retired from the stage, this time for six years. She disappeared from London and the stage and wholeheartedly gave herself up to a tranquil domestic life in the country. This was the period of her union with Charles Wardell, her second husband, an excellent actor known to playgoers as Charles Kelly. Of this union there have been two children, Ailsa Craig, who played small parts at the Lyceum with her mother and Henry Irving, and Gordon Craig, who, first an actor, is today recognized as one of the most important and fertile workers toward a new art of stage setting. “I led a most unconventional life,” writes Miss Terry, “and experienced exquisite delight from the mere fact of being in the country. No one knows what ‘the country’ means until he or she has lived in it. ‘Then, if ever, come perfect days.’... For the first time I was able to put all my energies into living.... I began gardening, ‘the purest of human pleasures’; I learned to cook, and in time cooked very well, though my first essay in that difficult art was rewarded with dire and complete failure.[77] “My hour of rising at this pleasant place near Mackery End in Hertfordshire was six. Then I washed the babies. I had a perfect mania for _washing_ everything and everybody. We had one little servant, and I insisted on washing her head. Her mother came up from the village to protest. ‘Never washed her head in my life. Never washed any of my children’s heads.’