A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families by Michael Holroyd

Michael Holroyd thinks that if Edwardian theatre-goers could read his biography of Ellen Terry and Henry Irving they’d be astonished. These were the two great figures of the stage, who sprang to fame in the last Victorian age and became glamorous figures like the Hollywood stars of the next century. They were a devoted couple – certainly lovers, Michael Holroyd concludes – but never married. And, although their relationship was known in the social circles in which they moved, their devoted audiences knew little of the truth.

A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families tells their story, and carries it on through the next generation, up to the 1960s (Gordon Craig, Terry’s son, being an absorbing but dislikeable character – as our group of readers attested).

The couple themselves had a hypnotic effect on stage. Irving, who brought lustre to the theatre, was dark and dramatic, turning his physical awkwardness to dramatic effect. We found an early recording of the opening of Richard III – so scratchy we could only include a few seconds in the programme – but there’s enough to catch the power of his voice, not to mention the over-the-top delivery which he applied to Shakespeare (having edited the text beforehand, to a degree that some of us might think shocking). Ellen Terry was the perfect partner, beautiful, with a gift for making people feel happy, on and off the stage.

‘She had a way of moving – it was interesting - when she put her foot forward, she’d bring it back a bit before it hit the ground so it would slide across it. Her voice was particular. It was veiled, it was intimate. You wanted more of it. She had this genius for making people happy – men and women - and I think in whatever time, whatever age, she used that voice, it would still work.’

He began the biography intending it to be a miniature. Ten years later he was still finishing it. As a master literary biographer – Lytton Strachey, Augustus John, George Bernard Shaw – he simply couldn’t abandon a story that brought to life late 19th Century theatre and revealed the drama in two interlocking families. Above all, A Strange Eventful History captures the power of a relationship that mirrored the deep emotions that they created on the stage. The death of Irving is so moving to Michael Holroyd – and so sad – that he finds he can’t read it aloud when he’s appearing in front of readers. This is a story that deals with the heart.

I had forgotten until I read this book that Irving’s theatrical manager was Bram Stoker, Irish author of Dracula, and who was so fond of him that he never recovered from Irving’s death, suffering a stroke soon afterwards. When people criticized him for not managing the actor’s finances in a better fashion – Irving had the actor’s traditional attitude to money, always living through feast and famine – Stoker would say that he was merely chancellor of the exchequer to Irving’s absolute monarch.

It’s that grandeur that gives this story its appeal, and its force. Irving the dark dominating hero, and Terry the seductive temptress – together holding their audiences under their spell.

I do hope you enjoy this month’s biographical excursion.

Next month, we return to fiction. The American author Elizabeth Strout will be talking about her book Olive Kitteridge, which is a collection of 13 stories linked by one character so that they become, in effect, a novel. If you haven’t read Elizabeth Strout, you’re in for a treat. That programme will be broadcast on Sunday 3 April, repeated on 7 April.

And if you’d like to take part in one of our Bookclubs, the next recordings are with the poet Tony Harrison at the Hexham Literary Festival, and with Evie Wyld - whose first two novels have garnered both fans and multiple awards - in London. All details at the Bookclub webpage.

Happy reading,

Jim