The queen of English Victorian theatre, Ellen Terry, was a child star under the tutelage of Charles Kean, a key member of a burgeoning dynasty of actors, and a romantic.
Ellen Terry had two children, called Edith (Edy) and Edward (Teddy) Godwin, though in time both adopted the stage surname of 'Craig' in preference to either the well-known theatrical surname Terry or that of their accomplished father, the architect and designer Edward Godwin. Edy would act as Ailsa Craig and Ted as Gordon Craig.
Theatre was in her children's blood, yet before they were born, Ellen Terry, aged 17, had retired from the stage, supposedly permanently. By her 20s she was striving to become a model of enlightened domesticity. After their births, she devoted herself to caring for her little ones, with no intention of acting again. "They absorbed all my time, all my interest", she explained.
For Ellen, motherhood was an ointment that soothed any hereditary itch to act, but the ointment had a big, buzzing fly in it, which estranged Ellen from her Terry family and from respectability... She was married at the time of the children's birth, but not to their father.
Married in London
Ellen had left her legal husband, the painter G.F. Watts, after about a year. During her married months she had been "removed from the temptations and abominations of the stage", as her husband put it. She and Watts, who was 30 years Ellen's senior, and evidently of the sexually-repressed type, lived as permanent houseguests at the commodious 'Little Holland House', in leafy Kensington. The house was a 'salon' visited by many artists of the day. Ellen found the reality of fitting into a supporting role with her eminent husband and his middle-aged friends less fun than she had imagined.
Putting this disappointing flirtation with marriage behind her, Ellen went home to her actor parents. In 1867 she was back in their profession, and for the first time worked with the greatest actor of the day, Henry Irving. Ellen, however, was still not eager for a stage career. The star of the Terry family then was her older sister, Kate (who herself retired that year).
Nest in Hertfordshire
Ellen had met Edward Godwin as a young girl, when acting in his home town, and they had stayed in touch. By 1865, as her marriage was crumbling, Godwin's own was also ending, by dint of his wife's early death. Two years later, he and Ellen made a compact to risk the censure of society and 'elope' together. By 1872, they had two babies in their love-nest. Watts neglected to divorce Ellen all the time she lived with Godwin.
The Godwin children's early days were spent in relatively rural and secluded Harpenden, where Godwin and Ellen sank all their funds into building and furnishing a family home. Neither was good at managing finances, but both adored beautiful things. Like a good wife, Ellen allowed her man to impose his stamp on the household's lifestyle, even though, as a leading member of the Aesthetic Movement, his views were decidedly eccentric. He disapproved, for example, of constricting famale uderclothing, and designed free-flowing dresses for Ellen and later young Edy to wear, styled after the costumes of ancient Greece or the Japanese kimono.
Godwin was determined to instill good taste and develop his children's artistic spirits from the start, which had the endorsement of their doting mother. According to the anecdotes that Ellen repeated about her darlings' early development, they sound horribly spoilt. Little Edy was allowed nothing in her room which her father judged to be tasteless or common. Reputedly, when she was three someone made the mistake of giving her a wax doll dressed in gaudy pink. Taking an instant dislike to to it, the child exclaimed, "Vulgar!", and smashed it up.
Ellen goes back to the boards
When the children were two and four, Ellen was enticed out of her early retirement by an unexpected offer from an old friend, the playwright-producer Charles Reade. He promised her £40 a week to lead in his new play. Ellen and Godwin were broke. With her Harpenden home mortgaged and creditors sending round the bailiffs, Ellen agreed, still protesting her reluctance to act.
Her comeback was brief, and was followed by another spell of unemployment and financial woe. In 1875, Ellen was rescued again, on the strength of her own charm and the Terry family's reputation, this time to play Portia for the managers Mr and Mrs Bancoft. It would be with the Bancrofts that Ellen enjoyed her first triumphs as a mature actress. That particular Merchant of Venice was lacklustre overall, but above its uninspired performances, Ellen Terry's shone out.
Awed and thrilled by her huge success as Portia, Ellen's passion for acting was rekindled.
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