We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
14 William Terriss
and the Adelphi
The Bells Of Haslemere
FASHIONABLE theatres like the Hay market could have their drawing-rooms, and family theatres like Drury Lane their Turf, but the Adelphi wanted nothing better than fore-ordained triumphs for virtue. Falsely-accused innocence was fresh enough for every new plot. It was the staple of the Adelphi drama even before that theatre engaged the perfect hero for such plays, perfect because he made it seem a matter of such urgency for us to have faith in him. That hero was William Terriss. Like the stuff he acted, he was middle-aged with the looks and the spirit of youth. He was born in 1847. His father, George Lewin, was a barrister, and his mother was the niece of Grote, then a famous historian. Several schools, hundreds of miles apart, are supposed to have had a share in William Lewin's education, though at fourteen years of age, when his father died, he became a midshipman.
At seventeen he came in for a little money and retired from the Service to spend it. He went in for tea-planting at Chittagong but it was too monotonous. He suffered shipwreck with ten days of terrible exposure on the inhospitable shore of Holy Gunga before being taken off by a ship bound for England. He refused the chance to go on the stage; that was unthinkable. Instead, he tried the wine trade but as that was too monotonous he apprenticed himself to an engineer's shop at Greenwich, and found that too monotonous too. Next he took a berth on his uncle's yacht for a Mediterranean cruise, and on the way was cheered by a crowd who mistook him for a prince of the royal blood. In the autumn of 1 867 he at last consented to act. As Chouser in The Flying Scud at the Prince of Wales's, Birmingham, he had a speech but forgot it. When asked for the words he said, " It's all gone ", and was afterwards known to the rest of the company as " All gone ".
He left for London, where his tale is continued by Squire Bancroft. " I had been constantly told by a maid-servant that a ' very young
96