Ellen Terry was the best actress in half a dozen of Shakespeare's plays that I have ever seen. She even made Ophelia interesting.
Very early in her career I noticed that she talked on the stage, now giving directions to some other actress, now criticizing even Irving. She was the acme of naturalness even on the stage, or rather the stage was the true scene of her life and triumphs. Now she is eighty-odd years old and just as charming and attractive as ever.
Her first marriage with the great painter, Watts, took place when she was sixteen. Watts was thirty years older. She sat for him in a dozen characters and he painted her magnificently, but what caused the rupture between them he never told. She was almost as reticent, though once she admitted that she “never loved Watts,” which perhaps was confession enough. “He was charming,” she said, “and I loved the pictures he made of me, but I never cared for him.”
The first time I saw Sarah was in 1878, I think, in the Comedie-Francaise. After the play I went backstage with Marguerite Durand and she introduced me to Sarah. Sarah treated me with very mild interest, but it was destined that I should know her better, though that need not concern us here. I mention it by way of explaining ensuing events.
I had met the Damalas in Athens; they were all staying at the Hotel d'Athenes just opposite the Royal Palace where I also had a room. The son was in the Corps des Pages; his sister had married a Scot and, deserted by him, was living with her mother. They had all come from Marseilles and were as good-looking a trio as one could meet in a day's walk. The unhappy events surrounding the sister had happy results for me. We came to know each other intimately. I can't forget our first private meeting. She was so eager to feel the hardness of a man between her thighs due to the deprivation she'd recently suffered.
She came to my room one afternoon while I sat on the balcony admiring the view of the distant Acropolis. It was sunny and hot and I had discarded my shirt. The girl, Ariane, had knocked and entered unbidden, and stood before me wordlessly. She was a beautytall and willowy with dark hair that fell to her shoulders, rounded hips, and lush breasts that thrust against the thin cloth of her dress. I was anxious to see what she would do next as she swayed in front of me, and she didn't disappoint. She slipped the straps of her garment over her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. She was naked underneath. I stiffened instantly. Her breasts were full and pale and capped expansively with dark nipples that sprang erect under my smoldering gaze. Her thin waist flared into the swell of enticing hips and the sweeping lines of luscious thighs. Between her legs nestled a mossy treasure that I wished to explore.
I fell to my knees and dove at her tasty fruit, licking and sucking at it like a man dying of thirst in the desert. Ariane threw her head back as my tongue separated the lips of her pussy and probed her depths.
“I want you to fuck me,” she whispered heatedly.
Who was I to deny her that which she so eagerly sought? I pulled her to the floor of the terrace with one hand; with the other I loosened my trousers and let them fall. I shuffled forward, leaving them tangled in her dress, and moved between her opened legs. She was exquisite. Her pussy was a smile that was so enticing that I dispensed with further preparation and simply brought my cock to its target. I levered it down and put the head against the pouting lips. Then I thrust forward until that swollen cap was just inside her slit. She gasped and begged me to let her have more, more, more. I reared back and rammed into her, driving the entire length of my ramrod into her lovebox. She immediately clamped her legs around me as if afraid that I would leave her before the final act of our play.
I began to fuck her forcefully, driving all the way in and pulling nearly all the way out. My hands were clamped onto her heaving tits, crushing them and pinching the enormous nipples that I found so delectable. “Yes, yes,” she moaned, “fuck me like you mean it. Fuck me hard. Ohhh, I had almost forgotten”
I drove into her with a fury that surprised me. Every fiber of my body, every sense, seemed centered in my cock at that moment. I could feel the pressure building, and knew she was experiencing much the same thing if her writhings were a fair indication. Her breathing came in staccato gasps when she flooded my rod with her pearly nectar. At the same time I shot a copious amount of sperm into her thirsting pussy.
Sadly, I didn't see Ariane again once I left Athens, but it was not the end of my association with her family.
The son eventually threw up the page business and went to Paris. Six months later we met in that city, where he soon became the accredited admirer of Sarah Bernhardt. He was one of the handsomest men I have ever seen and Sarah fell for him to a degree that was almost incredible. She got him to act on her stage and took him on one of her journeys through Eastern Europe. In Trieste, I think it was, she noticed that he was deceiving her with a young actress in her company and at once accused him before the whole troop. Damalas heard her to the end in silence, and then said simply, “Madame, you will never again have the opportunity of calling me names.” His ideal was always the perfect gentleman. He left that same evening for Paris. Without him, she could not continue her tour and returned to Paris disconsolate and begged me to bring about a meeting with the only man she had ever loved. I did as she wished, but Damalas would not go back to her. “A great talent,” he said to me, “but a small nature and a foul tongue.”
It was almost her epitaph: I never thought her as great an actress as Ellen Terry.
In these years in London between the beginning of the century and the Great War, there were many men of ability that one ought to write about. First and foremost of course, Sir Edward Grey, and then Abe Bailey and Barney Barnato, and J. B. Robinson. Grey, of course, was an English aristocrat, whereas the other three were South African millionaires. The first time I met Grey was at dinner at Sir Charles Dilke's. Dilke had a high opinion of him; Grey was good-looking, above medium height, slightly but well built, with a mind that seemed very receptive. In reality, he had no measure of those that talked to him. He accepted Dilke's opinions of South Africa as readily as mine, and when Harold Frederic talked to him of the United States, he accepted some things and rejected others according to his original conceptions. Consequently, he learned nothing valuable. He listened most pleasantly but I soon found out that he had learned nothing except an argument or two to defend his original view. Grey had one of the closed minds of the world and that is almost as bad as to have no mind at all. I rate him now below almost any of his contemporaries.
Abe Bailey was a Transvaal millionaire, and Barney Barnato had not only made one fortune in Kimberley, but another and larger one in Johannesburg. He lost a million or so bucking against Rhodes and Beit, and he finally threw himself overboard on the steamer returning to England and perished miserably. But Abe Bailey was better balanced, if not so rich; he resolved to make a second home in London, and now for more than 25 years has been an important figure there.
J. B. Robinson, too, pursued the same course, though for one reason or another he was disliked by most of his fellows. Since the beginning of the century he has been a resident in Park Lane, and is strong and well, though he was over fifty years of age in 1900, a slight weakness of hearing being his chief physical defect. Robinson, curiously enough, was the first man to find and buy diamonds in Kimberley and also was the first to discover and exploit the gold mines of the Rand. He can tell the romantic story of South Africa's wealth better than any other man.