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
Long afterwards, in the same city, I saw a man sitting calmly in a
_fiacre_, a man of the "gentlemanly" class, and ordering the _cocher_ to
drive on, although a woman was clinging to the side of the carriage and
refusing to let go. She was a strong, splendid creature of the peasant
type, bareheaded, with a fine open brow, and she was obviously consumed
by resentment of some injustice--mad with it. She was dragged along in
one of the busiest streets in Paris, the little Frenchman sitting there
smiling, easy. How she escaped death I don't know. Then he became
conscious that people were looking, and he stopped the cab and let her
get in. Oh, men!
Paris! Paris! Young as I was, I fell under the spell, of your elegance,
your cleanness, your well-designed streets, your nonchalant gaiety. I
drank coffee at Tortoni's. I visited the studio of Meissonier. I stood
in the crowd that collected round Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair," which was
in the Salon that year. I grew dead sick of the endless galleries of the
Louvre. I went to the Madeleine at Easter time, all purple and white
lilies, and fainted from trying to imagine ecstasy when the Host was
raised.... I never fainted again in my life, except once from _anger_,
when I heard some friends whom I loved slandering another friend whom I
loved more.
Good-bye to Paris and back to London, where I began acting again with
only half my heart. I did very well, they said, as Helen in "The
Hunchback," the first part I played after my return; but I cared nothing
about my success. I was feeling wretchedly ill, and angry too, because
they insisted on putting my married name on the bills.
After playing with Kate at Bristol and at the Adelphi in London, I
accepted an engagement to appear in a new play by Tom Taylor, called
"The Antipodes." It was a bad play, and I had a bad part, but Telbin's
scenery was lovely. Telbin was a poet, and he has handed on much of his
talent to his son, who is alive now, and painted most of our Faust
scenery at the Lyceum--he and dear Mr. Hawes Craven, who so loved his
garden and could paint the flicker of golden sunshine for the stage
better than any one. I have always been friendly with the
scene-painters, perhaps because I have always taken pains about my
dresses, and consulted them beforehand about the color, so that I should
not look wrong in their scenes, nor their scenes wrong with my dresses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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