Kate Terry

The elder sister of the actress Ellen Terry, she was born into a theatrical family, made her debut when still a child, became a leading lady in her own right, and left the stage in 1867 to marry.

[6] Terry began her career as a child actress in Bristol and then with the company of Charles Kean in Shakespeare productions at London's Princess's Theatre, where in 1851 she made her London debut playing Robin in a juvenile production of The Merry Wives of Windsor,[7] and in 1852 she played the juvenile role of Prince Arthur in King John.

The historian and poet Lord Macaulay was present and wrote in his diary that it was "worth having passed middle age to have seen little Kate Terry as Prince Arthur.

In 1863 Charles Dickens said of her performance in The Lady of Lyons, "That is the very best piece of womanly tenderness I have ever seen on the stage, and you'll find that no audience can miss it.

"[9] In 1866 she appeared in Dion Boucicault's Hunted Down alongside Henry Irving, who later formed a famous partnership with her sister Ellen.

There, in 1866, she appeared in A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing, followed in the same season by Ethel; or, Only a Life, an adaptation by Benjamin Webster, Jr., of Une Pauvre Fille.

Of her performance in the latter piece, The Times wrote that "what would be utterly ineffective and wearisome in the keeping of an ordinary actress, she renders effective and interesting by the natural interpretation of the character.

After that, in Gielgud's words, "my grandmother lived very simply and rather resentfully in an ugly little house in West Cromwell Road, and she had no grand clothes and did not give parties any more.