I must depend now on hearsay for certain facts.  The first fact is my birth, which should, perhaps, have been mentioned before anything else.  To speak by the certificate, I was born on the 27th of February, 1848, at Coventry.  Many years afterwards, when people were kind enough to think that the house in which I was born deserved to be discovered, there was a dispute as to which house in Market Street could claim me.  The dispute was left unsettled in rather a curious way.  On one side of the narrow street a haberdasher’s shop bore the inscription, “Birthplace of Ellen Terry.”  On the other, an eating-house declared itself to be “the original birthplace”!  I have never been able to arbitrate in the matter, my statement that my mother had always said that the house was “on the right-hand side, coming from the market-place,” being apparently of no use.  I have heard lately that one of the birthplaces has retired from the competition, and that the haberdasher has the field to himself.  I am glad, for the sake of those friends of mine who have bought his handkerchiefs and ties as souvenirs.  There is, however, nothing very attractive about the house itself.  It is better built than a house of the same size would be built now, and it has a certain old-fashioned respectability, but that is the end of its praises.  Coventry itself makes up for the deficiency.  It is a delightful town, and it was a happy chance that made me a native of Warwickshire, Shakespeare’s own county.  Sarah Kemble married Mr. Siddons at Coventry too—­another happy omen.

I have acted twice in my native town in old days, but never in recent years.  In 1904 I planned to act there again, but unfortunately I was taken ill at Cambridge, and the doctors would not allow me to go to Coventry.  The morning my company left Cambridge without me, I was very miserable.  It is always hateful to disappoint the public, and on this occasion I was compelled to break faith where I most wished to keep it.  I heard afterwards from my daughter (who played some of my parts instead of me) that many of the Coventry people thought I had never meant to come at all.  If this should meet their eyes, I hope they will believe that this was not so.  My ambition to play at Coventry again shall be realized yet.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Since I wrote this, I have again visited my native town—­this time to receive its civic congratulations on the occasion of my jubilee, and as recently as March of the present year I acted at the new Empire Theater.]

At one time nothing seemed more unlikely than that I should be able to act in another Warwickshire town, a town whose name is known all over the world.  But time and chance and my own great wish succeeded in bringing about my appearance at Stratford-on-Avon.