ABSTRACT
The public partnership of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving shines in the full glare of gaslight. Their private life has been successfully hidden. Most of Ellen’s biographers, with one exception, deny that Ellen and Irving were lovers. Their letters to one another when they were still in love are destroyed. It is impossible to read the criticisms of Ellen without being made to realise the unacceptability of her name being openly linked with that of Irving except as a stage partner. The women she played were identified with her, and her personality dominated the parts she played. She charmed and she disarmed. Actors transform themselves. They put on the persona which best fits the age in which they live. Ellen had to be womanly, pure and beautiful. There is a tendency to contrast the charming, outgoing nature of Ellen with the strange, inhibited and ambitious Irving.
