The Story of My Life | Page 3

did it matter to me that I was locked in and that my father and
mother, with my elder sister Kate, were all at the theater? I had the
sunset, the forges, and the oak bureau.
I cannot say how old I was at this time, but I am sure that it wasn't long
after my birth (which I can't remember, although I have often been
asked to decide in which house at Coventry I was born!). At any rate, I
had not then seen a theater, and I took to the stage before many years
had passed over my head.
Putting together what I remembered, and such authentic history as there
is of my parents' movements, I gather that this attic was in theatrical
lodgings in Glasgow. My father was an actor, my mother an actress,

and they were at this time on tour in Scotland. Perhaps this is the place
to say that father was the son of an Irish builder, and that he eloped in a
chaise with mother, who was the daughter of a Scottish minister. I am
afraid I know no details of their romance. As for my less immediate
ancestry, it is "wropt in mystery." Were we all people of the stage?
There was a Daniel Terry who was not only a famous actor in his day,
but a friend of Sir Walter Scott's. There was an Eliza Terry, an actress
whose portrait appears in The Dramatic Mirror in 1847. But so far as I
know I cannot claim kinship with either Eliza or Daniel.
I have a very dim recollection of anything that happened in the attic,
beyond the fact that when my father and mother went to the theater
every night, they used to put me to bed and that directly their backs
were turned and the door locked, I used to jump up and go to the
window. My "bed" consisted of the mattress pulled off their bed and
laid on the floor--on father's side. Both my father and my mother were
very kind and devoted parents (though severe at times, as all good
parents are), but while mother loved all her children too well to make
favorites, I was, I believe, my father's particular pet. I used to sleep all
night holding his hand.
One night I remember waking up to find a beautiful face bending over
me. Father was holding a candle so that the visitor might see me better,
and gradually I realized that the face belonged to some one in a brown
silk dress--the first silk dress that I had ever seen. This being from
another world had brown eyes and brown hair, which looked to me
very dark, because we were a white lot, very fair indeed. I shall never
forget that beautiful vision of this well-dressed woman with her lovely
complexion and her gold chain round her neck. It was my Aunt Lizzie.
I hold very strongly that a child's earliest impressions mould its
character perhaps more than either heredity or education. I am sure it is
true in my case. What first impressed me? An attic, an oak bureau, a
lovely face, a bed on the floor. Things have come and gone in my life
since then, but they have been powerless to efface those early
impressions. I adore pretty faces. I can't keep away from shops where
they sell good old furniture like my bureau. I like plain rooms with low

ceilings better than any other rooms; and for my afternoon siesta, which
is one of my institutions, I often choose the floor in preference to bed
or sofa.
What we remember in our childhood and what we are told afterwards
often become inextricably confused in our minds, and after the bureau
and Aunt Lizzie, my memory is a blank for some years. I can't even tell
you when it was first decided that I was to go on the stage, but I expect
it was when I was born, for in those days theatrical folk did not imagine
that their children could do anything but follow their parents'
profession.
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"!