Who Was Dracula? by Jim Steinmeyer Page A

quickly married a character actor, Charles Kelly, but they soon separated.
    Irving never went to see her Olivia; he didn’t need to. He heard that she was wonderful. As a young actress, she had interpreted her parts with a tomboy swagger, but after her return to the stage she played her roles as a woman. Terry had a lovely voice, perfect profile, and luminous gray eyes. She was always magnificent in Shakespeare or with sentimental parts. She filled her scripts with scribbled notes, explaining reaction or emotion that she wanted to convey with individual lines, or the quicksilver changes of focus that she discerned in her characters.
    Irving visited Ellen Terry at her home to discuss her engagement at the Lyceum, but that first discussion was so amiable, Terry so innocent, and Irving so politely indistinct that she didn’t understand she was being offered a job until he followed up with a letter. By the time he introduced her to Bram Stoker, the deal had been arranged. Stoker always remembered that first meeting, in the winter of 1878, as Irving brought her through the dark passageway that led to the Lyceum offices. “Not even the darkness of that December day could shut out the radiant beauty,” Stoker wrote. “Her face was full of color and animation, either of which would have made her beautiful. In addition was the fine form, the easy rhythmic swing, the large, graceful, goddess-like way in which she moved. . . . She moved through the world of the theatre like embodied sunshine. Her personal triumphs were a source of joy to all; of envy to none.”
    Stoker and Terry became like a big brother and sister (he was just a year older), laughing and teasing each other. She relied on him for advice about every element of the shows and her career, devotedly calling him “Mama.” The Lyceum company adored her and indulged her at every opportunity. In
Hamlet
, the first Lyceum production to feature her with Irving, she played Ophelia and created a dazzling image when she entered in the fourth act cradling an armful of white lilies. Stoker recalled:
    Ellen Terry loves flowers, and in her playing likes to have them on the stage with her when suitable. Irving was always most particular with regard to her having exactly what she wanted. The property master had strict orders to have the necessary flowers, no matter what the cost. Other players could, and had to, put up with clever imitations; but Ellen Terry always had real flowers.
    Years later, when the Lyceum company played in New York and encountered a blizzard, Stoker was determined to secure her roses for Terry’s appearance in
Faust
. He located them “at famine price,” five dollars for each bloom, personally bought a bouquet, and carried them back to the theater through the snow.
    â€”
    When she joined the company for
Hamlet
, Terry was surprised to find that Irving refused to rehearse her scenes. He left the characterization of Ophelia to her. She went to him and registered her complaint, but he brushed it off. “We shall be all right, but we are not going to run the risk of being bottled up by a gasman or a fiddler.” That was Irving: imperious, diffident, and aching to trust the people around him.
    Perhaps, too, he was trying to keep her just slightly off balance. Terry’s neurosis was intact on opening night. As the curtain fell on the first performance, she had already left the theater confused and disappointed. She feared that she had done a poor job and, in turn, made Henry Irving look bad. She dashed into a cab without taking her bows. Irving received the cheers alone and then went to Terry’s home to find her. They began an affair, insiders said, on that opening night of
Hamlet
.
    â€”
    Bram Stoker recalled Irving’s relationship to Terry, officially, as “brotherly affection,” which was a neat understatement. When traveling, they silenced gossip by staying in separate hotels, and for