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BOOK REVIEW

Ellen Terry, The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry. 2 vols., ed. by Katharine Cockin. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2010, 2011. Vol.1: 288 pp., ISBN 9781851961450, hbk. $180.00; Vol.2: 232 pp., ISBN 9781851961467, hbk. $180.00.

Reviewed by Christine A. Anderson.

In taking on the ambitious project of collecting and editing the letters of Ellen Terry, the renowned actress of the Victorian stage, Katharine Cockin has produced the most complete collection of letters from the actress’s life to date.  Cockin performs this painstaking undertaking extraordinarily well, and Pickering & Chatto plan to continue the project by publishing a new volume each year as more letters become available and are edited by Cockin for inclusion.  Cockin organizes the letters for the scholar, not the amateur reader, and presumably for a scholar and fan of Ellen Terry.  Those without prior knowledge of Victorian society and the stage, or with little exposure to Terry’s life, could be a bit lost or perhaps even disappointed at times in the information that can be gleaned solely from this collection, and are well advised to consult relevant works of criticism. 1

Ellen Terry (1847-1928) was born into a theatrical family and spent her life on the stage.  She rose to great national and international fame, raised two children as a single mother, had many highly public relationships with prominent men, and within a society governed by a strict Victorian morality that confined women to the private domestic sphere of the home.  At a time when working on the stage put a woman at risk of being regarded as a prostitute, and having children out of wedlock affected a woman’s social standing like a scarlet letter, Ellen Terry boldly transcended the typical middle-class Victorian expectations about morality and femininity.  Her many admirers, some of whom became friends and even counselors, provided what Cockin describes as “the kind of support and fidelity which she was not to find with the men with whom she was most intimate” (xiii).  Ellen Terry’s life, therefore, provides a lens with which to view England in its transition between the more conventional, Victorian world and a progressive, modern world. 

Cockin asserts that The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry illustrate “the dynamics of the theatre as a field of employment, the mechanisms of patronage and affiliation and the impact on the health of the performer of a rigorous schedule” (xv).  But how much of Ellen Terry’s life -- her ambitions, her drive, her thoughts and feelings -- do the letters in  these volumes actually reveal?  Volume one, which spans the years from 1865 to 1888,  traces Ellen Terry’s return to the stage after her 1865 separation from her first husband,  the distinguished artist G.F. Watts, follows her six-year public relationship with architect and designer Edward Godwin (the father of her daughter Edith and her son Edward Gordon, and whom she never married), her 1877 marriage and eventual separation from her second husband, the actor Charles Wardell, and her two Lyceum Theatre Company tours to the United States and Canada.  While the reader gains a sense of the profession’s hustle and bustle, the theater’s great popularity as entertainment at the time, and the extreme physical and emotional toll this work took on the actress, Terry’s reflections about her intimate life and personal or political convictions seem muted.  Her letters provide little introspection about her personal relationships or even contemporary political or social events.  In addition, Cockin writes that there are very few surviving letters that document and describe in detail her personal relationships (xxix). This gap is certainly frustrating and only adds to the stoicism – in Terry’s tone, her persona – that the letters in this collection produce.  Even her request for counsel from her friend and confidant Stephen Coleridge 2 on her 1881 separation from Wardell seems motivated more by an “all business” attitude, rather than anguish or anxiety about the nature of the marriage itself, leading the reader to wonder what prompted the separation.  For example, in a letter to Coleridge on 26 October 1881, Terry writes, “If you remember, Mr. F said, there was no need for Mr. K’s signature—Smith says there is—ask F to settle it quickly—he has the papers=I fear I shall have to give up the hope of Mrs. W. the first being alive—for New Zealand wd be a wild goose chase=It’s shameful troubling you so in this business=Now h’done with ‘Business!’ …” ( 3

Is this emotional muteness a product of the Victorian sensibility that cautioned against a passionate display of emotions (which, in women, could be viewed as hysteria 4 )?  Or was Terry simply passionate about nothing other than her own career and the wellbeing of her children?  The non-traditional life Terry led defied Victorian notions of femininity, but in contrast to Cockin’s claims, the letters do not provide much insight into the meticulously fine line Terry balanced between her public image as a well-respected actress and her private roles as a mother, a mistress, and a wife.  Cockin suggests these letters have been purged, and others (that could explain more) remain anonymous or in private collections.  Regardless, the reader’s curiosity about this remarkable woman remains largely unsatisfied. Although Cockin does a thorough job in providing a solid introduction of Ellen Terry and the canon of works about her life, she offers little discussion about the Victorian ideas of separate spheres for men and women that Terry so successfully defied.

Volume two, however, comprising correspondence from 1889 to 1893, allows the reader a better understanding of Terry’s thoughts and feelings on a variety of more personal issues, such as providing financial and emotional support for her children as they finish school and begin their own careers.  Although Edith Craig (Edy) seems to have been with her mother during much of the time when Terry embarked upon her stage career with the Lyceum Theatre Company, the letters provide little sense of their personal familial relationship.  This gap is quite puzzling because, in contrast, Terry writes more devotedly, almost quite obsessively to her son, Edward Gordon Craig (Ted), giving him advice about everything:  what to wear, how to behave, how to perform as an actor;  on his choice of friends and on his marriage.  For example, in a letter to Edward on 23 July 1889, she writes, “…You must take upon yrself to go to bed *every* night as *near* *10* as can be….Sell the Tricycle?!!! Certainly *not*…You really must not have such a valuable thing, & then not be able to take the commonest care of it….Try & keep up your Piano during the holidays, & ask your present music master, with my kind regards, if he will recommend me a Master for you in London…” (Vol. 2, Letter 325, 27).  In response to her son’s desire to pursue a career in acting on the stage, as his mother, she offers the following counsel:  “Now remember, I have the highest hopes for you, & the fullest trust in you, that you will now aim high, & always endeavour to do your best in your new calling=You’ll find many temptations, but with help & determination to go right instead of wrong, you will go right—will succeed—will remain a gentleman….Be simple—truthful--& industrious & as straight as a die & you’ll never get into trouble….” (Vol. 2, Letter 334, 36).  She is stern and slightly irate when she hears that Ted will not go on tour to America, knowing he has a new wife to provide for, until she hears that his wife, May Gibson, is pregnant, leading her to write a mea culpa with her approval and relief about his decision.  Cockin states that the letters in this volume show Terry’s concern for her children’s education, but the letters suggest an uneven involvement in her children’s lives, with much more attention being directed to her son.  Perhaps the great number of letters to her son was because he was away at school, whereas her older daughter was part of Terry’s life as a member of the Lyceum Theatre Company, ensuring more direct communication and interaction.  Unfortunately, Cockin does not provide any insight into this matter in her commentary, however.

In further contrast to Volume one’s contents, Terry’s letters in the second volume also reflect her pride in the tremendous respect and celebrity she had attained, and show her interest and engagement in various cultural trends and affairs of the late nineteenth century.  Terry performed for Queen Victoria and the royal family at Sandringham and Windsor on April 26, 1889.  In a letter to her friend, Amy Ward, she exclaims with delight at her performance for the royal family:  “...Everything went off splendidly…=All the royalties were most gracious—of course--& I like my little brooch very much—I think the Queen liked us--&I’m sure I liked the Queen!! (& no doubt it wd give her confidence if she knew it!” (Vol. 2, Letter 309, 14-15).  She tells her friend, Elizabeth Lewis not to visit John Singer Sargent to look at his recently completed portrait of her on a day when Terry planned to be occupied at the courts for the criminal allegations brought against Irish politician Charles Stewart Parnell. 5 Throughout this volume Terry’s correspondence links her to the period’s leading musicians, artists, and actors, such as composer Arthur Sullivan of the famous operatic team Gilbert & Sullivan, the English actress Audrey Campbell, and Americans like the drama critic William Winter and artist Joe Evans. Other letters illustrate Terry’s thoughts about late-century inventions and technological developments such as tricycles, electric light, and the new photography provided by Kodak.  Overall, these letters provide a fascinating lens to view Terry’s personal and professional circles, and help gauge her involvement with, and influence on, the popular culture of late Victorian England.

Katherine Cockin clearly lays out her editorial principles at the end of her general introduction   Her attention to detail and commitment to reproducing the idiosyncratic nature of Ellen Terry’s handwriting in legible, typed format is commendable, as are the printer’s efforts in making the page layouts reflect the original documents as closely as possible (xxiii).  The approach certainly gives the reader the sense she might have of actually reading the letters in the archives.  However, although replicating Terry’s underlining, dashes, and abbreviations provides an immediacy and authenticity in voice and intention, the page layouts themselves can make for cumbersome and often distracting reading.  Double spaces that indicate a new page of a letter (when perhaps the original document’s entire four-page handwritten letter could have fit on a single typed page) break up the reader’s visual line, an awkward effect even if, in the long run, this textual arrangement does not hinder us from gathering the meaning or intention in Terry’s words.  Cockin’s overall contextualization of the letters, however, which she provides in her general introduction, in her outline of each volume’s chapters, in her chronologies, and in her impeccable footnotes, add a formidable authority to the subject matter and a wealth of information for the reader to understand Ellen Terry’s life within the dynamics of the theatre, expectations of womanhood, and the impending change of modernity within Victorian England. 

While Ellen Terry’s life can only be appreciated fully by researching all of the collections of letters and biographical works together, The Collected Letters of Ellen Terry nonetheless provide a significant foundation for scholars to understand this fascinating woman and a fascinating time in English theatre and history.  Katherine Cockin includes Ellen Terry’s letters to Stephen Coleridge, but it is unclear whether Cockin will also reproduce letters of correspondence with George Bernard Shaw in a future volume of this collection. Since there is a gap in the letters from Terry’s early adult life, particularly those years of her first marriage to G.F. Watts and of her relationship with Edward Godwin who fathered her children, this correspondence with Shaw about her intimate relationships with other men (not to mention her relationship with Shaw himself) would be an important contribution to the collection and balance the stoic persona the first volume gives the reader.  I am eager for Pickering & Chatto’s subsequent volumes which will build upon this solid foundation and continue to answer the questions (if they can ever fully be answered) around this extraordinary woman’s ability to rise to such astonishing prestige in the public world of the stage, to flout Victorian conventions about womanhood and femininity, and to do both with such ease.  Katherine Cockin’s impressive editorial work in this ample collection allows literary, dramatic, and historical scholars a sound entry to these questions and lets Ellen Terry’s life become the means to explore English culture in its transition between the Victorian and modern worlds.

Notes