The Story of My Life | Page 5

sister Kate is unkind
enough to say that it never happened--to me! The story, she asserts, was
told of her. But without damning proofs she is not going to make me
believe it! Shall I be robbed of the only experience of my first eight
years of life? Never!
During the rehearsals of a pantomime in a Scottish town (Glasgow, I
think. Glasgow has always been an eventful place to me!), a child was
wanted for the Spirit of the Mustard-pot. What more natural than that
my father should offer my services? I had a shock of pale yellow hair, I
was small enough to be put into the property mustard-pot, and the
Glasgow stage manager would easily assume that I had inherited talent.
My father had acted with Macready in the stock seasons both at
Edinburgh and Glasgow, and bore a very high reputation with Scottish
audiences. But the stage manager and father alike reckoned without
their actress! When they tried to put me into the mustard-pot, I yelled
lustily and showed more lung-power than aptitude for the stage.
"Pit your child into the mustard-pot, Mr. Terry," said the stage
manager.

"D--n you and your mustard-pot, sir!" said my mortified father. "I won't
frighten my child for you or anyone else!"
But all the same he was bitterly disappointed at my first dramatic
failure, and when we reached home he put me in the corner to chasten
me. "You'll never make an actress!" he said, shaking a reproachful
finger at me.
It is my mustard-pot, and why Kate should want it, I can't think! She
hadn't yellow hair, and she couldn't possibly have behaved so badly. I
have often heard my parents say significantly that they had no trouble
with Kate! Before she was four, she was dancing a hornpipe in a
sailor's jumper, a rakish little hat, and a diminutive pair of white ducks!
Those ducks, marked "Kate Terry," were kept by mother for years as a
precious relic, and are, I hope, still in the family archives!
I stick to the mustard-pot, but I entirely disclaim the little Duke of York
in Richard III., which some one with a good memory stoutly insists he
saw me play before I made my first appearance as Mamilius. Except for
this abortive attempt at Glasgow, I was never on any stage even for a
rehearsal until 1856, at the Princess's Theater, when I appeared with
Charles Kean in "A Winter's Tale."
The man with the memory may have seen Kate as one of the Princes in
the Tower, but he never saw me with her. Kate was called up to
London in 1852 to play Prince Arthur in Charles Kean's production of
"King John," and after that she acted in all his plays, until he gave up
management in 1859. She had played Arthur during a stock season at
Edinburgh, and so well that some one sang her praises to Kean and
advised him to engage her. My mother took Kate to London, and I was
left with my father in the provinces for two years. I can't recall much
about those two years except sunsets and a great mass of shipping
looming up against the sky. The sunsets followed me about everywhere;
the shipping was in Liverpool, where father was engaged for a
considerable time. He never ceased teaching me to be useful, alert, and
quick. Sometimes he hastened my perceptive powers with a slipper,
and always he corrected me if I pronounced any word in a slipshod
fashion. He himself was a beautiful elocutionist, and if I now speak my

language well it is in no small degree due to my early training.
It was to his elocution that father owed his engagement with Macready,
of whom he always spoke in terms of the most affectionate admiration
in after years, and probably it did him a good turn again with Charles
Kean. An actor who had supported Macready with credit was just the
actor likely to be useful to a manager who was producing a series of
plays by Shakespeare. Kate had been a success at the Princess's, too, in
child parts, and this may have reminded Mr. Kean to send for Kate's
father! At any rate he was sent for towards the end of the year 1853 and
left Liverpool for London. I know I cooked his breakfasts for him in
Liverpool, but I haven't the slightest recollection of the next two years
in London. As I am determined not to fill up the early blanks with
stories of my own invention, I must go straight on to 1856, when
rehearsals were called at the Princess's Theater for Shakespeare's
"Winter's Tale."
THE CHARLES KEANS
1856
The Charles Keans from whom I received my first engagement, were
both remarkable people,