Henry Irving had lost his theatre to what Ellen terry called a ‘cheap and nasty Company’. It was no longer Henry Irving at the Lyceum, but he had to go on. He had no resources except his will, and the talent he had started with so many years before. In front of him still were years of acting and touring in special trains at strange hours. Ellen wanted to leave the company, but Irving was already proposing yet another tour in America. Unfortunately ‘this beastly Robespierre is what they call a boom over, and one can carry it on for a long time,’ she wrote. She longed to retire to her little farm, at Smallhythe in Kent, but the security was a lure to her, and Henry was set on another tour of America.