Fascinating Women of the Past: Ellen Terry

Women from the 1700s, 1800s and early 1900s fascinate me, with histories full of both day-to-day life and larger-than-life events that these ladies participated in, affecting others by their leadership in fashion, the arts, education, good works, politics--but above all, how they put themselves forward in times when it was not considered "proper" for a woman to do so.

Ellen Terry was one such woman.  She was born in 1847 into a family of actors, and started her stage career as a child, including Shakespearean works.  She married fairly young to a man almost 30 years older (sounds doomed from the start, doesn't it?), the famous Victorian artist, Frederic Watts.  His fame, however, did allow her to gain associations with many fascinating people, including Oscar Wilde,  Robert Browning, Tennyson, Gladstone, Disraeli, and many of the Pre-Raphaelite artists.  She separated from Watts in less than a year.

Returning successfully to the stage, she became involved with the architect/essayist/Aesthetic Movement designer Edwin William Godwin, and scandalously, moved into a home with him when her divorce with Watts, which took years, was not yet completed.  She had two children with Godwin but eventually their relationship faded and she went back to acting, and Godwin designed costumes for her, so they must have remained friendly.

She married again, briefly, but her acting career was soaring and seems to have taken all her attention by the time she was approaching 30.  She became the leading actress at Henry Irving's Lyceum Theatre in London, and was considered Britain's leading Shakespearean actress.  She toured America and developed a close relationship over the years with Irving.  

I came to know about Terry, however, when I was doing graduate studies of the works of George Bernard Shaw.  Her correspondence with Shaw was amazing, so much correspondence in fact, that it was published in a book after her death.  A love affair on paper only, they wrote for years without ever actually meeting and when they finally did meet, she was a bit surprised--not finding him quite as she had hoped or expected.  Nonetheless, they stayed friends and continued writing back and forth all her life and Terry worked with him in the theater, even trying to start a theatrical venture featuring Shaw and Ibsen plays.

I was reminded about Terry when my friend Heidi alerted me to this fascinating article about the restoration of one of her costumes.  Go have a look:
http://www.pasthorizons.com/index.php/archives/03/2011/the-archaeology-of-a-dress

The letters between Shaw and Terry are found in  Ellen Terry & Bernard Shaw: A Correspondence, 

http://www.amazon.com/Ellen-Terry-Bernard-Shaw-Correspondence/dp/B000IOK7SS

 

Read more about Ellen Terry: 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Terry

http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/terry.html