The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry, Volume Three, 1894–1898 ed. by Katharine Cockin (review)

The third of the anticipated twelve volumes of Katharine Cockin’s edition of Ellen Terry’s letters brings Terry’s career into the last half-decade of the heyday of Henry Irving’s management of the Lyceum Theatre. The punishing British and American tours are taking their toll on the health of the actor-manager and his leading actress, and although their relationship can still be described as one of loving professionalism, Irving remains a more aloof and mysterious personality. Terry assures George Bernard Shaw that the actor “can do everything – except be fond of people – (I don’t mean me -) but that’s his great misfortune = (- Will you put this in the fire if you please -) & I wish you knew him to admire him & love him = Love him and be sorry for him” (Letter 701). As with all the letters, Cockin has heroically transcribed their idiosyncratic punctuation.

The volume includes many letters published by Christopher St John in Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence (London: Constable, 1931): passages and some letters omitted by their first editor are restored, so that (for example) we learn for the first time what Terry thought privately of some contemporaries (notably Mrs Madge Kendal – “She is my idea of Hell”). Intriguingly, the sixteen-year-old Terry thought that a kiss from George Frederick Watts meant that she would have to marry him because she was going to have a baby (Letter 761). The Terry-Shaw correspondence, an epistolatory love affair, loses much of its heat when Shaw courts and then becomes engaged to Charlotte Payne-Townsend. (For Shaw’s side of the relationship, the reader must refer to Dan H. Laurence’s 1985 edition of his letters).

One narrative thread of this volume, continued from its predecessors, is Terry’s continuing struggle to bring her son Edward Gordon Craig to his senses. She admonishes him about unprofessional behaviour – turning up late for rehearsal costs him a place in Augustin Daly’s company – and provides financial support for a young actor whose sense of entitlement makes him turn up his nose at work that would support the wife and children that by the end of the volume he has deserted. Craig thinks he can borrow costumes from the Lyceum whenever he likes (Letters 612, 649); has to be convinced that he must cultivate West End managers; and is ticked off very mildly for failing to write often enough – and then not putting a stamp on his letters. In one letter we get a sudden insight into the personality of Craig’s father, E.W. Godwin, regarding whom Terry was almost invariably discreet. In July 1898 she writes to her confidant and financial intermediary Stephen Coleridge: “ Ted [Craig] is going to shift for himself, & if he gets into debt, he’ll have to get out of it the best way he can = Like his Father he has plenty of talents, & plenty of———madness, I fancy sometimes =” (Letter 992). Coleridge appended a note to this: “Dear Nellie’s threats to let Ted ’shift for himself’ always ended in her paying up whatever he demanded”.

Notable figures in the world of the arts are glimpsed, though none in such a surprising light as Henry James: “he is a perfect Dear = As gentle & silly – simple and sweet as his looks!” (Letter 738). There are occasional notes on Shakespearean roles: Craig is given advice on playing Silvius in As You Like It – “Above all keep still , & don’t take yr eyes off Phoebe – not so much eager eyes as sad and devoted eyes” (Letter 604). As for Terry herself, in August 1895 she is studying Volumnia in Coriolanus, “& don’t care for it”, and (warning Craig against overacting as Charles Surface) she remarks that in The Merchant of Venice her first Portia scene “(on the sofa – with Nerissa) is charming comedy, & when I force it, it goes for nothing but when one is...