Una Cockerell (1875-1944) – ill-fated Actress…

Wilfred Blunt wrote of Una “the youngest of the family (an actress) was a very rare creature with the finest perceptions, but fate was steadily against her”.

Her mother Alice was “great friends” with Ellen Robinson (Nelly Ternan) who had been an actress and long-term mistress of Dickens…maybe she inspired encouraged Una to go into acting (?)….

In 1895 Una toured America with Beerbohm Tree’s company; Max Beerbohm (the caricaturist), Tree’s brother, toured with the company and was fond of Una. Max - famous for his sarcasm - described her as sweet and very pretty, but very stupid. There are several references to Una in books by and about Max Beerbohm –

More Theatres (by Max Beerbohm) writes about a performance of the Midsummer’s Night Dream by the Oxford University Dramatic Society * (18th of Feb 1899):

“…even those members of the cast whom I should be sorry to see plunging into a profession sadly overcrowded, fraught with many difficulties and disappointments, seemed to me to be acting far better than the ordinary non-academic amateur….Miss Una Cockerell had been engaged for the part of Titania, and she played it with all her own charm and intelligence....”

Max Beerbohm, in A Kind of Life, by N. John Hall, Max writes to a friend from Chicago about his love life in 1895:

“I have seen Miss Cockerell, a good deal. She is very stupid and sweet – I fear I shall never be in love with her but I like very much…”

The company performed…with mixed reviews...

She acted on and off with Tree until she married Captain Charles Low in 1900 and left the stage.

Why "fate was steadily against her" I haven't fully  discovered, but the hardship and high emotions of the acting profession, the burden of caring for her melancholic mother, and losing her sister fairly young can't have made life easy...tbc!

References:

Max and the Americans By Mix, Katherine Lyon.
Max Beerbohm letters to Reggie Turner.
Conversations with Max
The History of the New York Stage

 *Women were not admitted to membership of Oxford University until 1920, although they had been allowed to sit some University examinations and attend lectures for over forty years by that date.