Edited sentence: "  Whatever the nature of Terry's personal relationship with Irving, it never marred their work or, astonishingly, their reputation.' But at earlier periods in her life, when there were more people around to be offended, she said contradictory things.(Most of their correspondence was burned by her descendants).According to Michael Holroyd's book about Irving and Terry, "A Strange Eventful History": "Years later, when Irving was dead, Marguerite Steen asked Ellen whether she really had been Irving's lover, and she promptly answered: 'Of course I was.Craig later wrote an especially vivid, book-length tribute to the unique, haunting, autocratic charisma that was Henry Irving.Craig, spent much of his childhood indulged by Sir Henry Irving backstage at the Lyceum Theatre, where his mother was the much-beloved leading lady.Even through Ellen Terry's first marriage and subsequent running off with bohemian artist Godwin to conceive her two technically illegitimate children, all of which had happened before she joined the Lyceum company, Ellen's charm seemed invulnerable.She was somehow able to maintain an exalted position in the hearts of her Victorian audiences, regardless of how much and how often her behavior defied their strict moralities.We were terribly in love for a while.Whether Irving's spectacularly successful relationship with Ellen Terry was romantic as well as professional has been the subject of much historical speculation