[Gutenberg 12326] • The Story of My Life: Recollections and Reflections

An excerpt from the book:

This is the first thing I remember.

In the corner of a lean-to whitewashed attic stood a fine, plain, solid

oak bureau. By climbing up on to this bureau I could see from the window

the glories of the sunset. My attic was on a hill in a large and busy

town, and the smoke of a thousand chimneys hung like a gray veil between

me and the fires in the sky. When the sun had set, and the scarlet and

gold, violet and primrose, and all those magic colors that have no

names, had faded into the dark, there were other fires for me to see.

The flaming forges came out, and terrified while they fascinated my

childish imagination.

What did it matter to me that I was locked in and that my father and

mother, with my elder sister Kate, were all at the theater? I had the

sunset, the forges, and the oak bureau.

I cannot say how old I was at this time, but I am sure that it wasn't

long after my birth (which I can't remember, although I have often been

asked to decide in which house at Coventry I was born!). At any rate, I

had not then seen a theater, and I took to the stage before many years

had passed over my head.

Putting together what I remembered, and such authentic history as there

is of my parents' movements, I gather that this attic was in theatrical

lodgings in Glasgow. My father was an actor, my mother an actress, and

they were at this time on tour in Scotland. Perhaps this is the place to

say that father was the son of an Irish builder, and that he eloped in a

chaise with mother, who was the daughter of a Scottish minister. I am

afraid I know no details of their romance. As for my less immediate

ancestry, it is "wropt in mystery." Were we all people of the stage?

There was a Daniel Terry who was not only a famous actor in his day, but