Irving Fisher

“ Imagine for one moment any American mother giving to her baby toys made by Germany while she thinks of tens of thousands of babies murdered by Germany in this war. Every toy made in Germany and every other piece of goods of every kind will for generations bear a bloody stain which all the waters of all the oceans can never wash out. ”

“ This illusion, that our own money is immovable while everything else moves, is like the illusion we often experience when the railway train in which we are sitting passes another train standing on a switch, or like the illusion that the sun rises and sets instead of the earth revolving. ”

“ Money is so much an accepted convenience in practice that it has become a great stumbling block in theory. Since we talk always in terms of money and live in a money atmosphere, as it were, we become as unconscious of it as we do of the air we breathe. ”

“ The spirits of millions of slaughtered youth who sleep in the fields of France and Flanders call out to us, for whom they died, to consecrate their sacrifice by a new and greater endeavor to safeguard the future peace of the world. ”

“ And, every nation, great and small, was overshadowed with the constant terror of Bolshevism,—that dread specter which seemed to be stalking, with long strides, from eastern Europe west towards the Atlantic. Unless peace were hastened that evil might overtake all the Allies. ”

“ When the intelligent public who can apply the remedy realize that our dollar is the great pickpocket, robbing first one set of people and then another,—robbing them of billions of dollars a year, confounding business calculations, convulsing trade, stirring up discontent, fanning the flames of class hatred, perverting politics and, withal, keeping its sinister operations out of sight and unsuspected,—when, I say, the public and legislators realize this, action will one day follow; and we shall have secured a boon for all future generations, a stable yardstick of contracts, a stabilized dollar. ”

“ I would let Germany understand now that her plan has dismally failed. I would let her understand now that no matter how long she fights, or what sacrifice she makes, or what price she pays, however much territory she may occupy, or whatever worlds she may conquer, there is one place which she will never soil again with the tramp of the marching legions of her industrial army. That is the United States of America. I would divorce utterly and forever all German capital from American industry'. ”

“ Said Senator Knox:
"The welfare and safety of the nation imperatively demands that we know we have peace. The whole world seethes with revolution. Our own nation is in ferment and turmoil. Force and strife are rampant and threaten the destruction not only of our property, but of our free institutions and even of our very lives. ”

“ I should scarce say this to you if I thought you had seen it; for you told me you thought Irving might have been even a great Actor, from what you saw of his Louis XI. I think. When he got to ‘Something too much of this,’ I called out from the Pit door where I stood, ‘A good deal too much,’ and not long after returned to my solitary inn. Here is a very long—and, I believe (as owls go) a rather pleasant Letter. ”

“ No man was ever more written of or talked about in America than Henry Irving; probably no man was ever more misrepresented as to his art and his life. A monster, according to his enemies; an angel, if you took the verdict of his friends; he was a mystery to untravelled American journalists, and an enigma to the great play-going public of the American cities. They were told that people either loved or hated him at first sight. American tourists even carried home contradictory reports of him, though the majority were enthusiastic in praise of him as an actor and as a man. ”

“ His great dinners on the stage of the Lyceum and his lunches at the Beefsteak Club are matters of history. His social engagements are as numerous as ever; often he does not retire until three or four o’clock in the morning, generally to arise in time to conduct a rehearsal at ten, so [235] his duties require an executive genius equal in degree to his artistic endowment.
It is strange to many people that a man of Mr. Irving’s business ability and personal popularity should be in comparatively poor circumstances instead of having acquired a fortune. ”

“ We pass and meet gigantic ferry-boats, as large as the Terrace at Harley-on-Thames would be if converted into a houseboat, but a thousand times brighter, with tier upon tier of illuminated windows. Irving, in his great Astrachan overcoat, contemplates the scene with deep interest.
“It is, indeed, very wonderful,” he says. “We could give an idea of the bridge at night on the Lyceum stage; but these ferry-boats would bother us, eh, Loveday?”
“Not more than they do now with their heat and cold. Don’t you think Miss Terry ought to go inside? It is very bitter here.” ”

“ Open by chance and read almost anywhere in his score of books,—it may be the "Tour on the Prairies," the familiar dream of the Alhambra, or the narratives of the brilliant exploits of New World explorers; surrender yourself to the flowing current of his transparent style, and you are conscious of a beguilement which is the crowning excellence of all lighter literature, for which we have no word but "charm."
The consensus of opinion about Irving in England and America for thirty years was very remarkable. He had a universal popularity rarely enjoyed by any writer. ”

“ The London stage has reached that pitch of mediocrity at which Mr. Henry Irving overtops his fellows—Mr. Henry Irving figuring as a great man—c'est tout dire." I hold that there is an essential truth in the proverb that there is no smoke without fire. No reputations are altogether hollow, and no valuable prizes have been easily won. Of course Mr. Irving has a good deal of intelligence and cleverness ”

“ Irving was an idealist, fearless of standing by his ideals in any company. He was a scholar in knowledge as in expression, and as an actor had already attained to a great height. His work, like the man himself, was always original. ”

“ Poor John Fiske was to have been one of the representatives of America. He was to have spoken, and when I had seen him last he told me that that was to be the crowning effort of his life.
160At the close of the Reading Irving received an ovation and was compelled to make a speech. In it he said:
“A thousand years of the memory of a great King, who loved his country and made her loved and respected and feared, is a mighty heritage for a nation; one of which not England alone but all Christendom may well be proud. ”

“ The reputation of the team for pettishness was well known in the neighborhood of the occurrence, and served as a plausible excuse, and really saved Fisher from prosecution, and probably consequent punishment, but all the Whigs of that neighborhood went to their graves under the solemn belief that Fisher “did it a purpose.” The following account of an accident, furnished by John Thompson, the old wagoner, no doubt relates to Fisher’s team previous to the date at which he took charge of it: In the month of October, 1843, a stage team started to run from the locust tree near Caldwell’s tavern. ”

“ He almost always wears eyeglasses, which somehow suit him as they rest comfortably on his aquiline nose. His features are clear-cut and clean-shaven, and the heavy jaw and slightly underhanging chin give strength to his face, which is always pale; the lips are thin and strangely pallid in colouring. Irving, though nearing seventy, has a wonderfully erect carriage, his shoulders are well thrust back and his chest forward, and somehow his movements always denote a man of strength and character. ”

“ Irving, when particularly moved, likes to tramp about. Whenever the situation allows it he does so upon the stage. Probably recalling the way in which pit and gallery rose at him—and stalls and dress-circle, too, for that matter—on his farewell night at the Lyceum, he paces about the deck, all the interviewers making rapid mental note of his gait, and watching for some startling peculiarity that does not manifest itself.
“He has not got it; why, the man is as natural and as straight and capable as a man can be,” says one to another. ”

“ Irving is honored with a few of these attendants upon fame. If the people who regard his reputation as a thing that has been “worked” could have visited New York a week before his arrival they could not have failed to be delighted to see how much was being done against him, and how little for him. An ingenious and hostile pamphleteer was in evidence in every bookseller’s window. Villainous cheap photographs of “actor and manager” were hawked in the streets. Copies of an untruthful sketch of his career, printed by a London weekly, were circulated through the mails. ”

“ He turned up, however, at the Lyceum stage door four days afterwards, and it remains a mystery to this day as to whether Fussie came by road or rail.
Henry Irving's room is a comfortable apartment. The floor is covered with oil-cloth, and a huge rug imparts a cosy appearance. Irving always uses the same chair to sit in when making up. It has broken down a score of times, but has been patched up again and again. In fact, the actor has almost a reverence for anything which is a connecting link with old associations. ”

“ The result is, that every play to which this student-actor lends his attention becomes correct and faithful, historically and artistically. He remains in Chicago for another week, and those of our citizens who love art in its highest sense have now an opportunity that is not likely to be offered again for studying the man whose name is a household word in England, and whose fame is world-renowned. Miss Terry likewise is winning well-earned laurels, while the entire company of English actors are Mr. Irving’s continuous and carefully chosen support, and rank high in their respective rôles. ”

“ Everybody laughs. Barrett and Florence look on curiously. Bram Stoker, Mr. Irving’s acting manager, cannot disguise his anxiety. Loveday, his stage-manager and old friend, is amused. He has heard many curious things about America from his brother George, who accompanied the famous English comedian, Mr. J. L. Toole (one of Irving’s oldest, and perhaps his most intimate, friend) , on his American tour. Neither Loveday nor Stoker has ever crossed the Atlantic before. They have talked of it, and pictured themselves steaming up the North river into New York many a time ”

“ Journeying in Europe during those years of war and of national upheaval was a dangerous matter. Irving was stopped more than once, and on one occasion was arrested at some place in France on the charge of being an English spy. He seems to have borne the troublesome interruptions with a full measure of equanimity, and he used each dealy to good purpose as an opportunity for a more leisurely study of the environment and of the persons with whom he came into touch. He returned to New York early in 1806, shortly after Europe had been shaken by the battle of Austerlitz. ”

“ Irving put a long string of questions of this kind, and thus obtained much detailed information regarding the spy and his family connections and home surroundings, also concerning the art school he attended in Toronto. He made copious notes of the answers, so that the process of questioning the confessed enemy agent was necessarily much slower than it otherwise would have been.
"I'm up against one difficulty that I'd like to clear away," the inquisitor mused in the course of his examination of the wounded "second looie"; "and that is the fact that this fellow is an artist and I am not. ”

“ The years from 1811 to 1815, when he went abroad for the second time, were passed by Irving in a sort of humble waiting on Providence. His letters to Brevoort during this period are full of the ennui of irresolute youth. He idled away weeks and months in indolent enjoyment in the country; he indulged his passion for the theater when opportunity offered; and he began to be weary of a society which offered little stimulus to his mind. His was the temperament of the artist, and America at that time had little to evoke or to satisfy the artistic feeling. ”

“ It seems idle to say of such a man that because he does not concern himself with "the mystery of existence," and "the solemn eternities," he has nothing to say. Surely the simple-souled artist may leave such matters for the philosophers and theologians to deal with. Surely his "message" is as significant as theirs. Irving is admirable not mainly because he "wrote beautifully," but [113] because he said something which no one else could say: he uttered the most meaning of all messages—himself. ”

“ It was in the midst of these social successes, and just after his admission to the bar, that Irving gave the first decided evidence of the choice of a career. This was his association with his eldest brother, William, and Paulding in the production of “Salmagundi,” a semimonthly periodical, in small duodecimo sheets, which ran with tolerable regularity through twenty numbers, and stopped in full tide of success, with the whimsical indifference to the public which had characterized its every issue. ”

“ It was, therefore, with great satisfaction, after having summoned the necessary attendance, and sent his young betrothed to rest, that Fisher walked home on a fine fresh morning.
It was true he had taken a step most people would call very imprudent, thus to encumber himself with a young wife at the very outset of his career; certainly, he had never intended any such thing. He had always resolved to be patient, and have a little store of money by him, before he persuaded any one to begin the world with him. ”