The Story of My Life: Recollections and ReflectionsTerry, Ellen
General
The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections
Terry, Ellen
Actresses -- Great Britain -- Biography; Terry, Ellen, Dame, 1847-1928
the air was worse up there and that the _lower_ you went the _more airy_
it became. Hence he always called those little yards, below the
pavement, outside the kitchen windows, '_the kitchen airier_,' a name
that is still in use.
"All this information you are most welcome to use, the next time you are
in want of something to talk about. You may say you learned it from 'a
distinguished etymologist,' which is perfectly true, since any one who
knows me by sight can easily distinguish me from all other etymologists.
"What parts are you and Polly now playing?
"Believe me to be (conventionally)
"Yours affectionately,
"L. DODGSON."
No two men could be more unlike than Mr. Dodgson and Mr. J.M. Barrie,
yet there are more points of resemblance than "because there's a 'b' in
both!"
If "Alice in Wonderland" is the children's classic of the library, and
one perhaps even more loved by the grown up children than by the others,
"Peter Pan" is the children's stage classic, and here again elderly
children are the most devoted admirers. I am a very old child, nearly
old enough to be a "beautiful great-grandmother" (a part that I have
entreated Mr. Barrie to write for me), and I go and see "Peter" year
after year and love him more each time. There is one advantage in being
a grown-up child--you are not afraid of the pirates or the crocodile.
I first became an ardent lover of Mr. Barrie through "Sentimental
Tommy," and I simply had to write and tell him how hugely I had enjoyed
it. In reply I had a letter from Tommy himself!
"Dear Miss Ellen Terry,--
"I just wonder at you. I noticed that Mr. Barrie the author (so-called)
and his masterful wife had a letter they wanted to conceal from me, so I
got hold of it, and it turned out to be from you, and _not a line to me
in it_! If you like the book, it is _me_ you like, not him, and it is to
me you should send your love, not to him. Corp thinks, however, that you
did not like to make the first overtures, and if that is the
explanation, I beg herewith to send you my warm love (don't mention this
to Elspeth) and to say that I wish you would come and have a game with
us in the Den (don't let on to Grizel that I invited you). The first
moment I saw you, I said to myself, 'This is the kind I like,' and while
the people round about me were only thinking of your acting, I was
wondering which would be the best way of making you my willing slave,
and I beg to say that I believe I have 'found a way,' for most happily
the very ones I want most to lord it over, are the ones who are least
able to resist me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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