Other Days

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 306, 17 March 1928, Page 24

Other Days

Dame Ellen Terry Writes of the Theatre

IRVING,' MEAD AND SHAW Dame Ellen Terri/. England's greatest actress, celebrated her 80th birthday on February 27. In the following article, which she wrote for "John o’ London’s Weekly,” she recalls some amusing incidents of her stage life. I always associate ‘ The Lyons Mail" i with old Mead, whose performance of j the father, Jerome Lesurques, was one [ of the most impressive things that this i fine actor ever did with us. Before I Henry Irving was ever heard of, Mead j had played “Hamlet” at Drury Lane’. : Indeed, when he “broke up,” Henry put j aside “The Lyons Mail” for many years j because he dreaded playing Lesurques’ I scene with his father without Mead. ; In the days just before the break-up. which came about because Mead was i old, and —I hope there is no harm in i saying of him what can be said of many men who have done finely in the world —too fond of “the wine when it is red,” Henry used to suiter great anxiety in the scene, because he never knew what Mead was going to do or i say next. When Jerome Lesurques is j forced to suspect his son of a crime, he i has a line: '‘Am I mad, or dreaming? Would I were.” Mead one night gave a less poetifc reading: “Am I mad, or drunk? Would I were!” It will be remembered by those who saw the play that Lesurques, an innocent man, will not commit the Roman suicide of honour at his father’s bidding, and refuses to take up his pistol from the table. “What! You refuse to die by your own hands, do you?” says the elder Lesurques. “Then die like a dog by mine!” (producing a pistol from his pocket). “PRETTY" LANGUAGE One night, after having delivered the line with his usual force and impressiveness, Mead, after prolonged fumb- j ling in his coat-tail pockets, added an- j other: