Edmund Burke Fisher

Edmund Burke Fisher

Journalists/Writers

Relationships--Networks

Fisher works as an editor and writer, for the New Yorker among others. He regularly presents himself as an admirer and suitor of Cushman. He actively shapes her career by facilitating business contacts and expanding Cushman social capital.

Person

Reference

US-American

journalist

writer

editor

"Whether or not Charlotte reciprocated his personal admiration is unknown, but undoubtedly she recognized that E. Burke Fisher's regard for her could serve her career well. For, as Charlotte became more professional, she became increasingly aware of her need to negotiate her career and offstage activities very carefully, to have some say in the public persona she was presenting. Governing the pen of one of the New York's leading critics was bound to be advantageous for her career; however, Charlotte's self-fashioning was displayed on the pages of other New York papers as well. […] The press was an important platform for creating as well as reporting public opinion. And theatrical careers, which depended on public support and sanction, were made and broken in the press." (Merrill 30)

"Whether or not Cushman was actually hurt by Fisher's rejection, it provided her and her later biographers with a convenient narrative to 'explain' her decision to remain unmarried and unattached emotionally to any other future male suitors. After her death, when Charlotte Cushman's choice to live in passionate relationships with women came to be regarded with suspicion, the suggestion that Cushman had been 'jilted' by an unnamed suitor with dishonorable intentions – a story Charlotte repeated to her friend, the novelist Geraldine Jewsbury – was frequently reprinted as a justification for Charlotte's avoidance of relationships with men. Although the 'young man' in the incident Jewsbury recounted was not identified, the time and relationship described correspond with this incident with Fisher. Charlotte Cushman's 'dishonorable suitor' story unmasked most powerfully the myth of male chivalry and protection." (Merrill 37)

"Her reputation was enhanced, also, by her well-known solicitude for her family and the probity of her private life. Although her fondness for masculine roles (she appeared in more than thirty) caused some comment, no breath of scandal ever touched her name. A brief girlhood engagement and a short-lived love affair in 1836 exhaust her romantic history. Reared as a Unitarian, she was a person of deep, nondoctrinaire religious feeling. A great actress who also abided by the Vistorian code of womanly behavior inevitably appealed to a wide public" (Kleinfield, "Charlotte Cushman" 424)