For years the subject of prophecy had occupied much of his thoughts, and his belief in the near approach of the second advent had received such wonderful corroboration by the perusal of the work of a Jesuit priest, writing under the assumed Jewish name of Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, that in 1827 he published a translation of it, accompanied with an eloquent preface. Probably the religious opinions of Irving, originally in some respects more catholic and truer to human nature than generally prevailed in ecclesiastical circles, had gained breadth and comprehensiveness from his intercourse with Coleridge, but gradually his chief interest in Coleridge’s philosophy centred round that which was mystical and obscure, and to it in all likelihood may be traced his initiation into the doctrine of millenarianism. The first stage of his later development, which resulted in the establishment of the “Irvingite” or “Holy Catholic Apostolic Church,” in 1832, was associated with conferences at his friend Henry Drummond’s seat at Albury concerning unfulfilled prophecy, followed by an almost exclusive study of the prophetical books and especially of the Apocalypse, and by several series of sermons on prophecy both in London and the provinces, his apocalyptic lectures in 1828 more than crowding the largest churches of Edinburgh in the early summer mornings. In 1830, however, there was opened up to his ardent imagination a new vista into spiritual things, a new hope for the age in which he lived, by the seeming actual revival in a remote corner of Scotland of those apostolic gifts of prophecy and healing which he had already in 1828 persuaded himself had only been kept in abeyance by the absence of faith. At once he welcomed the new “power” with an unquestioning evidence which could be shaken by neither the remonstrances or desertion of his dearest friends, the recantation of some of the principal agents of the “gifts,” his own declension into a comparatively subordinate position, the meagre and barren results of the manifestations, nor their general rejection both by the church and the world. His excommunication by the presbytery of London, in 1830, for publishing his doctrines regarding the humanity of Jesus Christ, and the condemnation of these opinions by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the following year, were secondary episodes which only affected the main issue of his career in so far as they tended still further to isolate him from the sympathy of the church; but the “irregularities” connected with the manifestation of the “gifts” gradually estranged the majority of his own congregation, and on the complaint of the trustees to the presbytery of London, whose authority they had formerly rejected, he was declared unfit to remain the minister of the National Scotch Church of Regent Square. After he and those who adhered to him (describing themselves as of the Holy Catholic Apostolic Church) had in 1832 removed to a new building in Newman Street, he was in March 1833 deposed from the ministry of the Church of Scotland by the presbytery of Annan on the original charge of heresy. With the sanction of the “power” he was now after some delay reordained “chief pastor of the church assembled in Newman Street,” but unremitting labours and ceaseless spiritual excitement soon completely exhausted the springs of his vital energy. He died, worn out and wasted with labour and absorbing care, while still in the prime of life, on the 7th of December 1834.
The writings of Edward Irving published during his lifetime were For the Oracles of God, Four Orations (1823); For Judgment to come (1823); Babylon and Infidelity foredoomed (1826); Sermons, &c. (3 vols., 1828); Exposition of the Book of Revelation (1831); an introduction to a translation of Ben-Ezra; and an introduction to Horne’s Commentary on the Psalms. His collected works were published in 5 volumes, edited by Gavin Carlyle. See also the article [Catholic Apostolic Church].
The Life of Edward Irving, by Mrs Oliphant, appeared in 1862 in 2 vols. Among a large number of biographies published previously, that by Washington Wilks (1854) has some merit. See also Hazlitt’s Spirit of the Age; Coleridge’s Notes on English Divines; Carlyle’s Miscellanies, and Carlyle’s Reminiscences, vol. i. (1881).
IRVING, SIR HENRY (1838-1905), English actor, whose original name was John Brodribb, was born at Keinton-Mandeville, Somerset, on the 6th of February 1838. After a few years’ schooling he became a clerk to a firm of East India merchants in London, but he soon gave up a commercial career and started as an actor. On the 29th of September 1856 he made his first appearance at Sunderland as Gaston, duke of Orleans, in Bulwer Lytton’s Richelieu, billed as Henry Irving. This name he eventually assumed by royal licence. For ten years he went through an arduous training in various provincial stock companies, acting in more than five hundred parts. By degrees his ability gained recognition, and in 1866 he obtained an engagement at the St James’s Theatre, London, to play Doricourt in The Belle’s Stratagem. A year later he joined the company of the newly-opened Queen’s Theatre, where he acted with Charles Wyndham, J. L. Toole, Lionel Brough, John Clayton, Mr and Mrs Alfred Wigan, Ellen Terry and Nelly Farren. This was followed by short engagements at the Haymarket, Drury Lane and Gaiety. At last he made his first conspicuous success as Digby Grant in James Albery’s The Two Roses, which was produced at the Vaudeville on the 4th of June 1870 and ran for 300 nights. In 1871 he began his association with the Lyceum Theatre by an engagement under Bateman’s management. The fortunes of the house were at a low ebb when the tide was turned by Irving’s immediate success as Mathias in The Bells, a version of Erckmann-Chatrian’s Le Juif Polonais by Leopold Lewis. The play ran for 150 nights. With Miss Bateman, Irving was seen in W. G. Wills’s Charles I. and Eugene Aram, in Richelieu, and in 1874 in Hamlet. The unconventionality of this last performance, during a run of 200 nights, aroused keen discussion, and singled him out as the most interesting English actor of his day. In 1875, still with Miss Bateman, he was seen as Macbeth; in 1876 as Othello, and as Philip in Tennyson’s Queen Mary; in 1877 in Richard III. and The Lyons Mail.
In 1878 Irving opened the Lyceum under his own management. With Ellen Terry as Ophelia and Portia, he revived Hamlet and produced The Merchant of Venice (1879). His Shylock was as much discussed as his Hamlet had been, the dignity with which he invested the Jew marking a departure from the traditional interpretation of the rôle, and pleasing some as much as it offended others. After the production of Tennyson’s The Cup, a revival of Othello (in which Irving played Iago to the Othello of Edwin Booth) and of Romeo and Juliet, there began a period at the Lyceum which had a potent effect on the English stage. The Lyceum stage management, and the brilliancy of its productions in scenery, dressing and accessories, were revelations in the art of mise-en-scène. Much Ado about Nothing (1882) was followed by Twelfth Night (1884), Olivia—an adaptation of Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield by W. G. Wills (1885); Faust (1886); Macbeth (1888): The Dead Heart, by Watts Phillips (1889); and Ravenswood—Herman Merivale’s dramatic version of Scott’s Bride of Lammermoor (1890). Fine assumptions in 1892 of the characters of Wolsey in Henry VIII. and of King Lear were followed in 1893 by a striking and dignified performance of Becket in Tennyson’s play of that name. During these years too, Irving, with the whole Lyceum company, paid several visits to America, which met with conspicuous success, and were repeated in succeeding years. The chief remaining novelties at the Lyceum during Irving’s sole managership (the theatre passed, at the beginning of 1899, into the hands of a limited liability company) were Comyns Carr’s King Arthur in 1895; Cymbeline, in which Irving played Iachimo, in 1896; Sardou’s Madame Sans-Gêne in 1897; Peter the Great, a play by Laurence Irving, the actor’s second son, in 1898; and Conan Doyle’s Waterloo (1894). The new régime at the Lyceum was signalized by the production of Sardou’s Robespierre in 1899, in which Irving reappeared after a serious illness, and in 1901 by an elaborate revival of Coriolanus. Irving’s only subsequent production in London was Sardou’s Dante (1903), a vast spectacular drama, staged at Drury Lane. He died “on tour” at Bradford on the 13th of October 1905, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Both on and off the stage Irving always maintained a high ideal of his profession, and in 1895 he received the honour of knighthood, the first ever accorded an actor. He was also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Dublin, Cambridge and Glasgow. His acting, apart from his genius as a presenter of plays, divided criticism, opinions differing as to the extent to which his mannerisms of voice and deportment interfered with or assisted the expression of his ideas. So strongly marked a personality as his could not help giving its own colouring to whatever part he might assume, but the richness and originality of this colouring at its best cannot be denied, any more than the spirit and intellect which characterized his renderings. At the least, extraordinary versatility must be conceded to an actor who could satisfy exacting audiences in rôles so widely different as Digby Grant and Louis XI., Richard III. and Becket, Benedick and Shylock, Mathias and Dr Primrose.
Sir Henry Irving had two sons, Harry Brodribb (b. 1870) and Laurence (b. 1872). They were educated for other walks of life, the former for the bar, and the latter for the diplomatic service; but both turned to the stage, and the elder, who had already established himself as the most prominent of the younger English actors at the time of his father’s death, went into management on his own account.
IRVING, WASHINGTON (1783-1859), American man of letters, was born at New York on the 3rd of April 1783. Both his parents were immigrants from Great Britain, his father, originally an officer in the merchant service, but at the time of Irving’s birth a considerable merchant, having come from the Orkneys, and his mother from Falmouth. Irving was intended for the legal profession, but his studies were interrupted by an illness necessitating a voyage to Europe, in the course of which he proceeded as far as Rome, and made the acquaintance of Washington Allston. He was called to the bar upon his return, but made little effort to practise, preferring to amuse himself with literary ventures. The first of these of any importance, a satirical miscellany entitled Salmagundi, or the Whim-Whams and Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff and others, written in conjunction with his brother William and J. K. Paulding, gave ample proof of his talents as a humorist. These were still more conspicuously displayed in his next attempt, A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty, by “Diedrich Knickerbocker” (2 vols., New York, 1809). The satire of Salmagundi had been principally local, and the original design of “Knickerbocker’s” History was only to burlesque a pretentious disquisition on the history of the city in a guidebook by Dr Samuel Mitchell. The idea expanded as Irving proceeded, and he ended by not merely satirizing the pedantry of local antiquaries, but by creating a distinct literary type out of the solid Dutch burgher whose phlegm had long been an object of ridicule to the mercurial Americans. Though far from the most finished of Irving’s productions, “Knickerbocker” manifests the most original power, and is the most genuinely national in its quaintness and drollery. The very tardiness and prolixity of the story are skilfully made to heighten the humorous effect.