Sometimes he let the theatre, and on that subject he was almost pathetic: "Whenever this theatre is to let," he wrote, "I am complimented by numerous persons with proposals which prove that I am regarded by them as the most credulous and confiding of human beings--hardly indeed a human being, but a simple, convenient lamb ... nothing that I can do convinces them that I am not a lamb covered with nice long wool and eager to be shorn. On these occasions I remember that the tempering of the wind to the shorn lamb is, after all, but a poetical figure, and therefore I take care to meet the tempest with a fleece on my back."[11] He had not a high opinion of dramatic artists, as men of business. "I confess," he said, "that for my own part I have never understood the meaning of high art in its dignified aspect. I never, in the course of my existence, came across one of its votaries--painter, sculptor, author, or architect--who was ready to sacrifice one farthing of his own at its shrine. I once was the owner of a theatre, and I was perpetually at war with authors and actors who wanted me to ruin myself on the altar of high art, but I soon found that this was a term which they used for their own fads. Once I produced a play by Charles Reade. It was a failure, and on the first night I was sitting with him in a box. 'They {102} seem to be hissing, Mr. Reade,' I said. 'What of that?' he replied; 'if you want to please such a public as this, you should not come to me for a play.'"[12] He had an amusing story too to relate of how he rode roughshod over Tom Taylor's artistic prejudices by insisting upon a chemical fire being lit upon the stage at his production of the latter's _Joan of Arc_, in the flames of which the heroine (Mrs. Rousby) was to perish realistically, instead of being wafted to Heaven in the arms of angels, as the author had planned she should be. But the story of his theatre-management days that he was fondest of telling was in connection with the late Sir Henry Irving. The latter, at a big banquet he gave to a party of his friends, was relating some of the events of his professional career. "And to think, Labby," he said, turning to his old friend, "that I was once receiving five pounds a week from you!" "Three pounds, Henry, my boy," retorted Labouchere quickly, "only three."