Photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron
Ellen Terry
Terrys linked to the Gielguds through marriage (see family tree)
Dame Ellen Alice Terry GBE (February 27, 1847 – July 21, 1928) was an English stage actress. She was born in Coventry, England in 1847 into a theatrical family headed by actors. Of Benjamin Terry and Sarah Ballard's eleven children, five inlcuding Ellen, became actors: Florence, Fred, Kate and Marion. Two other children, George and Charles, were connected with theatre management. Charles was the father of two daughters who would also appear on the stage, Minnie and Beatrice.
Photograph by Lewis Carroll of Ellen with her mother
Ellen Terry married three times, and was involved in numerous relationships during her lifetime. In London, during an engagement with the Haymarket Theatre, Ellen and Kate had their portrait painted by the eminent artist, George Frederick Watts, and was impressed with the music, art and elegance of his lifestyle. She married him on February 20, 1864, shortly before her 16th birthday, when Watts was 46. Ellen gave up acting during her marriage to Watts but neither she nor her husband were faithful, and they separated after 10 months of marriage.
The birth of her son, Edward Gordon Craig, in 1872, was the result of a liaison with the progressive architect-designer Edward William Godwin, with whom she retreated to Hertfordshire, again temporarily retiring from acting. The liaison cooled in 1874, and she returned to her acting career.
Ellen as Imogen
Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema, R.A
From 1874 she became the leading Shakespearean actress in London, and in partnership with Henry Irving became successful in England and the USA. She married 21st December 1877 Charles Clavering Wardell, an actor/journalist. In 1903 she formed a theatre management business with her son, abandoning her business partner Irving. She struck up a friendship and a famous correspondence with George Bernard Shaw during this time, and divorced from Wardell. On the 22nd March 1907 she married American actor James Carew.
Late in her life Ellen Terry appeared in several films. Her Greatest Performance(1917), The Invasion of Britain (1918), Pillars of Society (1918), Potter's Clay (1922), The Bohemian Girl (1922).
Illustration from Drury Lane programme, 1906
On June 12th 1906 a gala performance celebrating Ellen Terry and her work, was put on at Theatre Royal Drury Lane. The cast of the Much Ado number was entirely made up of members of the Terry family, and the dance was arranged by her son Gordon Craig. Click here to see the original programme.
Dame Ellen inspired many of the celebrated artists of that time to capture her on canvas, including the most successful portrait painter of that era, John Singer Sargent.
As Lady Macbeth by John Singer Sargent, R.A.
She became a Dame Grand Cross of the British Empire (GBE) in 1925.
Her son, Edward Gordon Craig, became an important actor, designer, and director. He was married to May Gibson and had four children but his long term lover was the dancing legend Isadora Duncan. They had a daughter together, Deirdre who was tragically killed aged 7 by drowning in the Seine. Ellen’s daughter Edith Craig became a theatre director, producer, and early pioneer of the women's suffrage movement in England; her grand nephew, Sir John Gielgud, also became an actor. The singer Helen Terry, and illustrator Helen Craig are also descendants of hers.
Her ashes rest at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London.
