Mabel Gwynedd Terry-Lewis (born as Mabel Gwynedd Lewis) (October 28 1872 – November 28 1957) was a British actress and a member of the Terry-Gielgud dynasty of actors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The daughter of wealthy haberdasher Arthur James Lewis (1824 – 24 November 1901), co-owner of the firm of Lewis and Allenby, who was also a painter, illustrator and musician[1], and actor Kate Terry, she was the niece of the actors George, Charles, Fred, Marion, Florence and Ellen Terry. Her older sister, Kate Terry Lewis (1868 - 1958), was the mother of John Gielgud and Val Gielgud.[2]
Author Lewis Carroll was a friend of Arthur Lewis, and on 24 January 1883 Carroll visited the family home, Moray Lodge, for a performance of a comedietta entitled Lady Barbara's Bithday given by the Lewis' children and those of Ellen Terry. Also present on that occasion was W. S. Gilbert. Carroll wrote of the event:
"... Edith was clever (though not very articulate) and Katie [Terry-Lewis] distinctly good: then Teddie was very good, though a little given to rant: but Mabel [Terry-Lewis] was the gem of the whole thing. I never saw her equal among children, except Ellen Terry herself. She is a born actress."[3]
In 1897 Mabel Terry-Lewis played Bianca in The Taming of the Shrew for the Oxford University Dramatic Society at Oxford.[4] Terry-Lewis made her London stage debut as Lucy Lorimer in Sydney Grundy's A Pair of Spectacles at the Garrick Theatre in 1889.
In 1923 she toured America with Cyril Maude and Lydia Bilbrook in If Winter Comes, playing at Chicago in April and New York in the autumn[5], while 1926 saw her in The Constant Wife at the Ohio Theatre in Loudonville, Ohio with C. Aubrey Smith and Ethel Barrymore playing the title role. It ran on Broadway for 295 performances. In 1935 she appeared in The Distinguished Gathering at St. Martin's Theatre in London; whle in 1938 she appeared in an adaptation of Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel at the Embassy Theatre. Her film appearances include Love Maggy (1921), Shirley (1922), Caste (1930), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Third Clue (1934), Dishonour Bright (1936), Jamaica Inn (1939), The Adventures of Tartu (1943) and They Came to a City (1945).[2]
She married Captain Ralph C. Batley. Mabel Terry-Lewis died in London in 1957 aged 85 years.