We had the curious experience of being “booed” on the first night.  It was not a comedy audience, and I think the rollickings of Toby Belch and his fellows were thought “low.”  Then people were put out by Henry’s attempt to reserve the pit.  He thought that the public wanted it.  When he found that it was against their wishes he immediately gave in.  His pride was the service of the public.

His speech after the hostile reception of “Twelfth Night” was the only mistake that I ever knew him make.  He was furious, and showed it.  Instead of accepting the verdict, he trounced the first-night audience for giving it.  He simply could not understand it!

My old friend Rose Leclercq, who was in Charles Kean’s company at the Princess’s when I made my first appearance upon the stage, joined the Lyceum company to play Olivia.  Strangely enough she had lost the touch for the kind of part.  She, who had made one of her early successes as the spirit of Astarte in “Manfred,” was known to a later generation of playgoers as the aristocratic dowager of stately presence and incisive repartee.  Her son, Fuller Mellish, was also in the cast as Curio, and when we played “Twelfth Night” in America was promoted to the part of Sebastian, my double.  In London my brother Fred played it.  Directly he walked on to the stage, looking as like me as possible, yet a man all over, he was a success.  I don’t think that I have ever seen anything so unmistakable and instantaneous.

In America “Twelfth Night” was liked far better than in London, but I never liked it.  I thought our production dull, lumpy and heavy.  Henry’s Malvolio was fine and dignified, but not good for the play, and I never could help associating my Viola with physical pain.  On the first night I had a bad thumb—­I thought it was a whitlow—­and had to carry my arm in a sling.  It grew worse every night, and I felt so sick and faint from pain that I played most of my scenes sitting in a chair.  One night Dr. Stoker, Bram Stoker’s brother, came round between the scenes, and, after looking at my thumb, said: 

“Oh, that’ll be all right.  I’ll cut it for you.”

He lanced it then and there, and I went on with my part for that night.  George Stoker, who was just going off to Ireland, could not see the job through, but the next day I was in for the worst illness I ever had in my life.  It was blood-poisoning, and the doctors were in doubt for a little as to whether they would not have to amputate my arm.  They said that if George Stoker had not lanced the thumb that minute, I should have lost my arm.

A disagreeable incident in connection with my illness was that a member of my profession made it the occasion of an unkind allusion (in a speech at the Social Science Congress) to “actresses who feign illness and have straw laid down before their houses, while behind the drawn blinds they are having riotous supper-parties, dancing the can-can and drinking champagne.”  Upon being asked for “name,” the speaker would neither assert nor deny that it was Ellen Terry (whose poor arm at the time was as big as her waist, and that has never been very small!) that she meant.