Ellen Terry – from Ellen Terry’s Memoirs
Henry Irving is the monument, the great mark set up to show the genius of will. For years he worked to overcome the dragging leg … he toiled, and he overcame this defect, just as he overcame his difficulty with vowels, and the self-consciousness which in the early stages o fhis career used to hamper and incommode him.
Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor’s art infinite. Even up to the last five years of his life, Henry Irving was striving, striving. He never rested on old triumphs, never found a part in which there was no more to do. Once when I was touring with him in America, at the time when he was at the highest point of his fame, I watched him one day in the train – always a delightful occupation, for his face provided many pictures a minute – and being struck by a curious look, half puzzled, half despairing, asked him what he was thinking about.
“I was thinking,” he answered slowly, “how strange it is that I should have made the reputation I have as an actor, with nothing to help me – with no equipment. My legs, my voice, everything has been against me. For an actor who can’t walk, can’t talk, and has no face to speak of, I’ve done pretty well.”
And I, looking at that splendid head, those wonderful hands, the whole strange beauty of him, thought, “Ah, you little know!”
Ellen Terry and Henry Irving in Abelard and Heloise – by Henrietta Rae
Henry Irving and Ellen Terry
The great Ellen Terry
