The Story of My Life: Recollections and ReflectionsTerry, Ellen
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The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections
Terry, Ellen
Actresses -- Great Britain -- Biography; Terry, Ellen, Dame, 1847-1928
He took it so very quietly that I was frightened, and said to his son
Laurence who was on that tour:
"Do let's go to his hotel and see how he is."
We drove there and found him sitting eating his supper with the poor
dead Fussie, who would never eat supper any more, curled up in his rug
on the sofa. Henry was talking to the dog exactly as if it were alive.
The next day he took Fussie back in the train with him to London,
covered with a coat. He is buried in the dogs' cemetery, Hyde Park.
His death made an enormous difference to Henry. Fussie was his constant
companion. When he died, Henry was really alone. He never spoke of what
he felt about it, but it was easy to know.
We used to get hints how to get this and that from watching Fussie! His
look, his way of walking! He _sang_, whispered eloquently and low--then
barked suddenly and whispered again! Such a lesson in the law of
contrasts!
The first time that Henry went to the Lyceum after Fussie's death, every
one was anxious and distressed, knowing how he would miss the dog in his
dressing-room. Then an odd thing happened. The wardrobe cat, who had
never been near the room in Fussie's lifetime, came down and sat on
Fussie's cushion! No one knew how the "Governor" would take it. But when
Walter was sent out to buy some meat for it, we saw that Henry was not
going to resent it! From that night onwards the cat always sat night
after night in the same place, and Henry liked its companionship. In
1902, when he left the theater for good, he wrote to me:
"The place is now given up to the rats--all light cut off, and only
Barry[1] and a foreman left. Everything of mine I've moved away,
including the Cat!"
[Footnote 1: The stage-door keeper.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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