Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

ÆT 65

LIFE
OF
EDWIN FORREST,
THE AMERICAN TRAGEDIAN.

BY

WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.

“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players.”

VOLUME II.

PHILADELPHIA:

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.

1877.

Copyright, 1877, by J. B. Lippincott & Co.

CHAPTER XIV.
NEWSPAPER ESTIMATES.—ELEMENTS OF THE DRAMATIC ART, AND ITS TRUE STANDARD OF CRITICISM.

The newspaper in some countries has been a crime and in others a luxury. In all civilized countries it has now become a necessity. With us it is a duty. It is often corrupted and degraded into a nuisance. It ought to be cleansed and exalted into a pure benefaction, a circulating medium of intelligence and good will alone. Certainly it is far from being that at the present time. It is true that our newspapers are an invaluable and indispensable protection against all other tyrannies and social abuses; and their fierce vanity, self-interest, and hostile watchfulness of one another keep their common arrogance and encroachments pretty well in check. If they were of one mind and interest we should be helplessly in their power. From the great evils which so seriously alloy the immense benefits of the press, Forrest suffered much in the latter half of his life. The abuse he met irritated his temper, and left a chronic resentment in his mind. Two specimens of this abuse will show something of the nettling wrongs he encountered.

A Philadelphia newspaper stigmatized him in the most offensive terms as a drunkard. Now it was a moral glory of Forrest that, despite the temptations to which his professional career exposed him, he was never intoxicated in his life. The newspaper in question, threatened with a libel suit, withdrew its words with an abject apology,—a poor satisfaction for the pain and injury it had inflicted.

The other instance was on occasion of the driving of Macready from the stage of the Astor Place Opera House. A New York newspaper, in language of studied insolence, called Forrest the instigator and author of the outrage. “Mr. Forrest succeeded last night in doing what even his bad acting and unmanly conduct never did before: he inflicted a thorough and lasting disgrace upon the American character.” “To revenge himself on Mr. Macready he packed the house and paid rowdies for driving decent people away.” “With his peculiar tastes he will probably enjoy the infamy and deem it a triumph.” Forrest, instead of cowhiding the writer of this atrocious slander,—as some men of his high-spirited nature would have done,—sent a letter, through his legal friend Theodore Sedgwick, demanding immediate retraction and apology. The editor assented to the request, confessing that he had spoken with no knowledge of facts to justify him!

From the time of his first appearance on the stage, Forrest was a careful reader of the criticisms on his performances. He generally read them, too, with a just mind, discriminating the valuable from the worthless, quick to adopt a useful hint, indignant or contemptuous towards unfairness and imbecility. There were three classes of persons whose comments on his performances gave him pleasure and instruction. He paid earnest attention to their remarks, and was always generous in expressing his sense of indebtedness to them.

The first class consisted of those who had a personal friendship for him, combined with a strong taste for the drama, and who studied and criticised his efforts in a sympathetic spirit for the purpose of encouraging him and aiding him to improve. Such men as Duane and Chandler and Swift in Philadelphia, Dawson in Cincinnati, Holley at Louisville, Canonge in New Orleans, Leggett and Lawson in New York, and Oakes in Boston, gave him the full benefit of their varied knowledge of human nature, literary art, and dramatic expression. Their censure was unhesitating, their questionings frank, their praise unstinted. Among these friendly critics the name of James Hunter, of Albany, one of the editors of “The Daily Advertiser,” in the important period of young Forrest’s engagement there, deserves to be remembered. He was one of the best critics of that day. He used to sit close to the stage and watch the actor with the keenest scrutiny, not allowing the smallest particular to escape his notice. Then at the end of the play he would in a private interview submit to his protégé the results of his observation, carefully pointing out every fault and indicating the remedy. He lived to see the favorite, who profited so well from his instructions, reach the proudest pitch of success and fame. When Mr. Hunter died, Forrest interrupted an engagement he was filling in a distant city in order to attend the funeral, and followed the remains of his old benefactor to the tomb as one of the chief mourners.

The second class of commenters on the playing of Forrest from whose judgments he received satisfaction and help was composed of that portion of the writers of dramatic criticism for the press who were comparatively competent to the task they undertook. They were men who were neither his friends nor his foes, but impartial judges, who knew what they were writing about and who recorded their honest thoughts in an honorable spirit and a good style. Among the many thousands of articles written on the acting of Forrest during the fifty years of his career there are hundreds written in excellent style, revealing competent knowledge, insight, and sympathy, and marked by an unexceptionable moral tone. They suggest doubts, administer blame, and express admiration, not from caprice or prejudice, but from principle, and with lights and shades varying in accordance with the facts of the case and the truth of the subject. These articles have an interest and a value in the highest degree creditable to their authors, and they go far to redeem the dramatic criticism of our national press from the severe condemnation justly provoked by the greater portion of it. Did space allow, it would be a pleasure to cite full specimens of this better class of dramatic critiques from the collected portfolios left behind him by the departed actor. Enough that he profoundly appreciated them, and that in various directions they did good service in their day.

The third class whose words concerning his performances Forrest gladly heeded were men who simply gave truthful reports of the impressions made on themselves, not professing to sit in judgment or to dogmatize, but honestly declaring what they felt and what they thought. Free from prejudices and perversities, fair average representatives of human nature in its ordinary degrees of power and culture, their experiences under his impersonations, ingenuously expressed, were always interesting and instructive, throwing light on many secrets of cause and effect, on many points of conventional falsity and of natural sincerity, in histrionic portrayals. Often while the newspaper writer who pretends to know the most about the dramatic art is so full of conceit and biases that his verdict on any particular representation has neither weight nor justice, the instincts of the bright-minded and warm-hearted boy or girl, the native intelligence and sympathy of the unsophisticated man or woman, whose soul is all open to the living truth of things, are almost infallible. Nobody knew this better than our tragedian, or was readier to act on it.

The light and joy he drew from these three sets of critics found a heavy counterpoise in the unjust estimates, perverse, exaggerated, malignant, or absurd, of which he was constantly made the subject by five classes of censors. The first were his personal enemies. Among the meaner fry of men who came in contact with him, a multitude hated him from jealousy and envy, from resentment of his independent and uncompromising ways, his refusal to grant them his intimacy or to serve their purposes. They sought to gratify their animosity by backbiting at his reputation, and especially by trying to destroy his professional rank. Year after year they made the columns of many a newspaper groan and reek under the load of their abuse, ranging from envenomed invective to grotesque ridicule. For example, a jocose foe said, in parody of the great Moslem proclamation, “There is but one Bowery, and Hellitisplit is its profit.” And a serious foe said, “Mr. Forrest is an injury to the stage. He is a false leader, an oppression, a bad model, and a corrupter of the popular taste.” A great part of the hostile criticism he suffered may be traced to bitter personal enmity, which had but slight regard to truth or fairness in its attacks on him, whether as man or as player.

The next class of assailants of Forrest in his professional repute were not his personal enemies, but were the tools of the various cliques, cabals, or social castes who had an antipathy for him and for the party to which he belonged. The English interest was especially active and bitter against him after his quarrel with Macready. Some of these writers were wilfully corrupt in their attitude and consciously false in their written estimates. They expressed neither their own feelings nor their own convictions, but merely the passion and policy of their employers. For example, at the time of the death of the tragedian a well-known editor confessed to a friend that some twenty years previously, when he was a reporter, his employer sent him to the theatre to see Forrest play, and with explicit directions to write the severest condemnation he could of the actor. He went accordingly, and made notes for a savage satirical article, although at the moment of his making these notes the tears were streaming down his cheeks, so sincere and so powerful was the representation which he was, against his conscience, preparing to abuse. Much dishonorable work of this kind has been done, and still is done, by men disgracefully connected with the press.

Another set of critics who assailed the acting of Forrest were those whose tastes were repelled by his realistic method and robust energy. He was too vehemently genuine, his art not far enough removed from material reality, to suit their fancy. They demanded a style more graceful, delicate, and free. Under the impulse of their resentful prejudices they overlooked his great merits, depreciated everything he did, angrily denied him his just rank, magnified every fault beyond measure, and maliciously caricatured him. A volume might be filled with articles purely of this description, proceeding from writers whose want of native manliness unfitted them for appreciating the magnificent manliness of his impersonations, and whose offended fastidiousness expressed itself in terms which were an offence to justice.

The fourth class of abusers of Forrest were men who had an instinctive repugnance for the imposing grandeur of the types of character he represented, for the self-sufficing, autocratic power and stateliness of his impersonations. Mean and envious spirits dislike to look up to those higher and stronger than themselves. Those who either never had any romance and reverence or have been disenchanted, feel an especial enmity or incompetent contempt for every one whose character and bearing appeal to those qualities. This disinclination to admire, this wish to look on equals or inferiors alone, is the special vice of a democracy. Demagogues, whether in politics or in letters, are men of torpid imaginations and dry hearts,—slow to worship, quick to sneer. The style of man enacted by Forrest, full of an imperial personality, overswaying all who come near, massive in will, ponderous in movement, volcanic in passion, majestic in poise, was hateful to the cynical critic the petty proportions of whose soul were revealed and rebuked in its presence. He seized the weapon of ridicule to revenge himself on the actor whose grander portrayals angered him instead of aweing or shaming or delighting him. There seems to be among us in America a growing dislike for the contemplation on the stage of the grandest heroism and power, and an increasing fondness for seeing specimens of commonplace or inferiority promotive of amusement. Already in his life Forrest was a sufferer by this degradation of popular taste, and were he now to appear in our theatres he would feel it still more.

The fifth and largest class of writers who assumed to criticise the acting of Forrest was made up of persons professionally connected with the press, whose blundering or extravagant estimates arose rather from their ignorance and utter incompetency for the task they undertook than from a spirit of antipathy or partisanship. The censures and laudations in these notices were the cause of an immense amount of varied mortification, amusement, vexation, and anger, as they came under his eyes. No small portion of the criticisms in the American newspapers on actors, singers, lecturers, and other public characters have been written, and still continue to be written, by uneducated and inexperienced young men scarcely out of their teens, serving an apprenticeship in the art and trade of journalism. With low aims and views, slight literary culture, superficial knowledge of life, a vile contempt for sentiment, a cynical estimate of human nature, equally ready to extol and to denounce for pay, these writers are the nuisance and the scandal of their craft. Were their articles accompanied by their names they would be destitute of weight or mischief; but, published with apparent editorial sanction, they often assume a pernicious importance.

The art of a people expresses the character and aspiration of a people and reacts to develop them. To sit in judgment on it is a high and sacred office, for which none but the most intelligent, refined, and honorable are fit. The praise and blame given to artists play on the living sensibilities of that most sensitive class whose careers are a vital index of the moral state of the community. Yet this momentous office is frequently entrusted to beardless youths, whose chief experience is in dissipation, and who unblushingly sell their pens to the highest bidder. A severe article exposing this abuse appeared in the “Round Table” in 1864, written by the editor, and entitled “Dramatic Critics in New York.” Forrest put it in one of his scrap-books with the endorsement, “How true this is!” Mr. Sedley said, “What dramatic criticism in New York has been the public well know. Its low, egotistic, unfair, malicious character, its blind partialities and undying hates, its brazen ignorance and insulting familiarity, have given it wide notoriety and brought upon it equally wide contempt.”

There is no art which more needs to be criticised than that of criticism itself, because there is none which requires in its votary such varied knowledge and cultivation, and such integrity of mind and purity of motive; because, furthermore, no other art is exposed to such subtle temptations of prejudice and vanity. The critic, in assuming to be a judge, is no exception to other writers. Like them he reveals and betrays himself in what he writes. In dissecting others he lays his own soul bare. In consciously judging them he pronounces unconscious judgment on himself,—in the tenderness or the insensibility, the generosity and candor or the meanness and spite, the knowledge and beauty or the ignorance and foulness, which he expresses. The pen of a base, vindictive critic is a stiletto, a fang, or an anal gland. The pen of a competent and genial critic is the wand of an intellectual Midas turning everything it touches to gold. For such a critic has the true standard of judgment in his knowledge, and, whatever the merit or demerit of the work he estimates, as he points out its conformity with that standard or its departure from it his lucid illustration is always full of instruction and help.

But the great majority of those journalists who presume to print their estimates of histrionic performances are profoundly ignorant of the elements of the dramatic art. Thus, having no knowledge of the real standard of judgment by which all impersonations should be tested, they cannot fairly criticise the artists who appear before them for a verdict. Instead of criticising or even justly describing them they victimize them. They use them as the stalking-horses of their own presumption or caprice, prejudice or interest. Unable to write with intelligent candor on the subject which they profess to treat, they employ it only as a text whereon to append whatever they think they can make effective in displaying their own abilities or amusing their readers. The unfittedness of such critics for their task is sufficiently proved by the chief attributes of their writing, namely, prejudice, absurd extravagance, reckless caprice, ridiculous assumption of superiority, violent efforts to lug in every irrelevant matter which they can in any way associate with the topic to enhance the effect they wish to produce regardless of justice or propriety.

A few specimens of these various kinds of criticism will be found full of curious interest and suggestiveness, while they will illustrate something of what the proud and sensitive nature of Forrest had to undergo at the hands of his admirers and his contemners.

One enthusiastic worshipper, in the year 1826, overflowed in the following style: “In the Iron Chest, on Thursday evening last, Mr. Forrest established a name and a fame which, should he die to-morrow, would give him a niche in the temple of renown to endure uncrumbled in the decay of ages!” Another one wrote thus: “In his Richard, Macbeth, Lear, and Othello, Mr. Forrest displays abilities and accomplishments which, for power and finish, we do not believe have ever been at all approached by any other actor that ever stepped upon the stage. The range of his delicate and varied by-play and the terrific energy of his explosions of naked passion leave the very greatest of his predecessors far in the rear and deep in the shade!” Such slopping eulogy defeats its own purpose. For want of discrimination its exaggerations are unmeaning and powerless. To be thus bedaubed and plastered with praise mortifies the actor, and injures him with the judicious, though springing from a generous sensibility and most kindly meant. This style of praise, however, is quite exceptional. The general run of critics have altogether too much knowingness and vanity for it. Their cue is to depreciate and detract, to satirize and belittle, so as either directly or indirectly to imply the superiority of their own knowledge and taste. Your ordinary critic is nothing if not superior to the artist he assumes to estimate. The publicity and admiration enjoyed by the performer seem to taunt the critic with his own obscurity and neglect, and he seeks an ignoble gratification in denying the merit of what he really envies. This base animus of the baser members of a properly high and useful literary guild betrays itself in many ways. For example, one of this sort, sneering at the idea of applauding the genius of an actor, characterized dramatists as “the class of men who administer in the most humiliating of all forms to the amusement of a large and mixed assembly.” It needs no more than his own words to place Pecksniff before us in full life.

Through the whole dramatic life of Forrest one class of his assailants were found accusing him of tameness and dulness, while another class blamed him for extravagant energy and frenzied earnestness. Both classes spoke from personal bias or capricious whim, instead of judging by a fixed standard of truth and discerning where reserve and quietness were appropriate and where explosive vehemence was natural. One critic, in 1831, says, “He wants passion and force. He has no sincerity of feeling, no spontaneous and climacteric force. He often counterfeits well,—for the stage,—but nature is not there.” At the same time the critic attached to another journal wrote, “Mr. Forrest’s greatest fault is lack of self-control and repose. His feelings are so intense and mighty that they break through all bounds. With added years, no doubt, he will grow more reserved and artistic.” Thirty years later the same blunt contradiction, the same blind caprice or prejudice, are found in the two extracts that follow:

“For nearly three months the heavy tragedian has weighed like an incubus on the public, which now, that the oppression of this theatrical nightmare is removed, breathes freely. We part with Mr. Forrest without regret; he has taken his leave, and, as that slight acquaintance of his, William Shakspeare, remarks, he could ‘take nothing we would more willingly part withal.’ Those only who, like ourselves, have constantly attended his performances, have a true knowledge of their tedium and dulness. The occasional visitor may bear with Mr. Forrest for a night or two, but we are really nauseated. The stupid, solemn, melancholy evenings we have passed in watching his stupid, solemn, and melancholy personations will always be remembered with disgust. Nothing but a sense of duty compelled us to submit to this ineffable bore.”

“Mr. Forrest belongs to the robustious school of tragedy,—that class who ‘split the ears of the groundlings,’—and his eminent example has ruined the American stage. He is a dramatic tornado, and plucks up the author’s words by the roots and hurls them at the heads of the audience. He mistakes rant for earnestness, frenzy for vigor. The modulations of his voice are unnatural, and his pauses painful. A man in a furious passion does not measure his words like a pedagogue declaiming before his school, but speaks rapidly and fiercely, without taking time to hiss like a locomotive blowing off steam. Mr. Forrest was not so in his prime; and he has probably borrowed the habit from some antiquated actor who has been afflicted with asthma.”

There is no candid criticism in such effusions of obvious prepossession and satire. They show no reference to a fixed standard, no sincere devotion to the interests of truth and art; but a desire to awaken laughter, a purpose to make the player appear ridiculous and the writer appear witty. The same may be said of the following examples, wherein amusing or malignant ridicule takes the place of fair and intelligent judgment. Such writers care not what their victims suffer, or what justice suffers, so long as they can succeed in gaining attention and raising a laugh. They feel with the English critic who excoriated Payne for his Macbeth, “No matter if the labor we delight in physics Payne, it pays us.”

First. “Mr. Forrest’s personation of the Broker of Bogota is feeble and uninteresting. Contrasted with his Othello, it has the advantage which the Stupid has over the Outrageous. Febro may be compared to one of those intolerable bores who prose and prose, with sublime contempt of all that is interesting, for hours. Othello is like one of those social torments who destroy your peace of mind with incessant and furious attacks. The bore is the negative of Good; his opposite is the affirmative of Evil.”

Second. “We can account for the popularity which Forrest enjoys as the greatest master of the Epigastric School of Acting on no other hypothesis than that of the innate depravity of human taste. Like the vicious propensity in mankind to chew tobacco and drink whisky, the majority of men have a depraved appetite for this false and outrageous caricature of human nature which Mr. Forrest calls acting. Our strictures apply in a lesser degree to the stage delineations of all tragedians. They are all false, and Forrest is only a little more so. His particular excellence seems to lie in his extraordinary power of pumping up rage from his epigastrium, and expectorating it upon his audience, through the interstices of his set teeth. Other tragedians equal him in their facial contortions, and in the power of converting their chests into an immense bellows violently worked. His great rival, McKean Buchanan, excels Mr. Forrest in this department of high art, but fails in the epigastric power. Mr. Forrest may well claim to stand at the head of the Epigastric School. He does not underestimate the value of epilepsy in delineation, and ‘chaws,’ tears, rends, and foams at the mouth quite as artistically as the best of his rivals; but he especially cultivates his epigastrium. We do not want Mr. Forrest to die soon. But when he does pass away, we have a physiological and anatomical curiosity which we would be pleased to have gratified at the expense of a post mortem on the great tragedian. We have a grave suspicion that, deep down in his stomach, beneath the liver and other less important viscera, he has concealed additional vocal apparatus, by means of which he is enabled to produce those diabolical tremolo sounds which have so often thrilled and chilled his auditors. But in our opinion, with its two great exponents, Edwin Forrest and McKean Buchanan, the Epigastric and Epileptic School of Acting will pass away.”

Third. “We thought to have dropped Mr. Edwin Forrest as a subject of newspaper remark; but several of his friends, or persons who think themselves such, are very anxious that we should do him justice, as an actor, though that is just what they ought to fear for him. We will take his performance as Richard. In this part, in the first place, his gait is very bad, awkward, and ungraceful. Richard may, possibly, have halted a little, but he did not roll like a sailor just ashore from a three years’ cruise. A king does not walk so. Then, his features are totally devoid of expression; he can contort, but he can throw neither meaning nor feeling into them. When he attempts to look love, anger, hate, or fear, he resembles one of the ghouls and afrites in Harper’s new illustrated edition of the Arabian Nights. He wins Lady Anne with a smile that would frighten a fiend, and that varies not a single line from that with which he evinces his satisfaction at the prospect of gaining the crown, and his contempt for the weakness of his enemies. A more outrageous and hideous contortion still expresses his rage at Buckingham’s importunity, and at the reproaches of his mother. When he awakes in the tent-scene, he keeps his jaws at their utmost possible distension for about two minutes, and presents no bad emblem of an anaconda about to engorge a buffalo; one might fling in a pound of butter without greasing a tooth. At the same time, his whole frame writhes and shakes like a frog subjected to the action of a galvanic battery. We have seen folks frightened and convulsed before now, but we never saw one of them retain his senses in a convulsion. We like a deep, manly, powerful voice; but we dislike to hear it strained to the screech of a damned soul in hell-torment, like Mr. Forrest’s when he calls on his drums to strike up and his men to charge. Often he displays his tremendous physical energies where there is not the least occasion for them, and as often does he repress them where they are needed. For instance, Richard ought to work himself into a passion before he slays King Henry. Mr. Forrest kills him as coolly and as quietly as a butcher sticks a pig or knocks down a calf, and he repulses Buckingham with the voice and action of a raving maniac. But Mr. Forrest is not to blame for his face, which is as nature moulded it, neither because he has but three notes to his voice, nor because the only inflections he is capable of are their exaltation and depression. But he need not aggravate the slight deformity of Richard more than Shakspeare did, who greatly exaggerated it himself. Nor do we blame him for raving, ranting, roaring, and bellowing to houses who never applaud him but when he commits some gross outrage upon good taste and propriety. He adapts his goods to his market, and he does wisely.”

As a contrast and offset to the foregoing specimens of self-display disguised as criticism of another, it is but fair to cite a few extracts from different writers who had really something appropriate to say on the subject they were treating, and who said it with exemplary directness and impartiality:

“As a reader Mr. Forrest has, in our opinion, few equals. Believing him to be the most overrated actor on the stage, we are yet not blind to his merit, but are glad to speak of the least of his excellences, and only wish they were more numerous. Let us take his inherent faults for granted, and consider his reading at the best. Does he fail in the first essential,—intelligibility? On the contrary, he enunciates a thought with such clearness that the meaning cannot be mistaken. Does he fail to give the rhythm and the rhetoric of verse? On the contrary, verse in his utterance retains its melody and music, and the high-sounding eloquence of words its majesty. He subtly marks the changes of reflection, and keeps the leading idea emphatic and distinct. There stands the thought at least, no matter if the feeling is a thousand miles away. He has carved the statue correctly, though he wants the power of the ancient sculptor to give the cold marble life. This he cannot do by ‘emphasizing every word,’ in the unnatural way of which our correspondent accuses him. Analyze one of his well-read sentences, and mark how the strong word and the strong sound fall together; then listen to most of the actors that surround him, and notice with what amusing vehemence they shout their ‘ands’ and ‘ifs’ and ‘buts.’ They begin every sentence with a stentorian cry that dwindles into an exhausted whisper.”

“As regards Forrest, we are often amused to hear people, who have vainly refused for years to recognize his great histrionic abilities, wonder how it is that he invariably attracts crowded houses whenever he performs. We do not know any actor of his rank who has been so scurrilously abused and to so little purpose. The most elaborate pretences at criticism are always poured out on his devoted head, and if the power of the press could have written a man down he surely would have been long since; for he has few special champions among acknowledged critics, a fact which shows how deep is the feeling against him among particular classes. We must candidly confess to have never been biased by profound admiration of Forrest’s acting, and yet we must also admit that after having calmly, patiently, and attentively watched some entire performances of his, we were convinced that he really possessed far greater powers of mind than any of the critics ever had given him credit for. His style is apt to be uneven, and men of his mould of intellect cannot always enact the same parts with the same good taste. But of his superb elocution,—of the noble idea of latent force and suppressed passion which his whole manner embodies,—of the perfection of manly dignity and physical development which have never had a better representative on the stage than in his person,—of the marvellous voice, so musical in its sound, and so happily adjusted in its modulations to increase the expression of a sentence,—there ought, in our judgment, to be no abatement of that admiration so long and so justly accorded to him. If all the critics in the country were with one voice to deny the existence of these things, their fiat would be powerless against the evidence of men’s senses. We admit that he has no subtlety of intellect, no finely-drawn perceptions of delicate shades of human character. What he does is the result of the action of a very strong mind, capable of being directed in a particular channel with resistless energy; but this is the very class of minds out of which have arisen some of the greatest men in the world’s annals. When Forrest performs an engagement people go to see him who know all his defects, but they go because it is the only acting of the highest class they have the opportunity of seeing, and it is so far above the rivalry of such actors as have been here during the last decade as to admit of no comparison.”

“It is said when Canova was finishing a choice marble that his friends were very anxious to see the work on exhibition, but the great artist restrained their impatience, and proposed to gratify their desire at the end of a given term. At the expiration of the time, his friends assembled eagerly, and, in tones of disappointment, exclaimed, ‘What have you been doing? You have been idle; you have done nothing to your piece.’ To which he replied, ‘On the contrary, my chisel has been exceedingly busy; I have subdued this muscle, I have brought out this feature, enlivened this expression, polished my marble.’ ‘Oh, but,’ said they, ‘these are mere trifles!’ ‘They may be,’ he said, ‘but trifles make up the sum of perfection.’ The Virginius of Mr. Forrest revived this anecdote of Canova, as well as remembrances of his early performances. The difference in the two cases, however, is that it is not the artist now, but his friends that see the perfection. Virginius has long been identified with Mr. Forrest’s fame; but, great as the lustre may be which his surpassing self-possession, noble and balanced bearing, rich, copious, and manly elocution, and deft, minute, and relative action have heretofore thrown upon this character, it has now been still more varied and beautified by the mellow tints that shadow and relieve the local splendor of salient features. It is indeed a masterpiece of acting and the ‘top of admiration.’ It is difficult to perceive any point of improvement that could give it more truth, in its lifelike resemblance, as a copy of fiction; and we are sure, after the ribaldry which of late years has degraded the boards, that there is not a single lover of the drama who saw this enactment who does not feel grateful to Mr. Edwin Forrest for his manly reassertion of the dignity of the stage.”

“We are disposed to admit the greatest liberty possible to the theatrical critic employed upon the daily press, but we cannot help alluding to the disgracefully savage bitterness of the writer in one of our weekly contemporaries as equally damaging to his employer’s reputation and his own. Mr. Forrest has now passed that period of his life in which he might have been injured by the malevolence of the individual. In the mass, criticism bows before his assured superiority, and it is simply a petty spite which dares persistently to deny his claims to genius of the highest order. He is no longer a man respecting whose position in the history of the American stage there can be any dispute. He stands completely alone. We are induced this week to make this remark from having freshly seen him in ‘Othello’ and ‘Macbeth.’ Can any observer who remembers his interpretation of the first of these characters, some twenty years since, or his rendering of the last one, but four years ago, and is disposed to examine them fairly, with reference to his present reading and acting of either part, deny this? If he does so, we can but feel that he is alike ungifted with the talent to recognize and the honesty to admit the wide difference which exists between them. His ‘Othello’ is now a most coherent and perfect whole. Where is the artist who can infuse a more perfect and thorough spirit of love than he does in that scene where he meets Desdemona again in Cyprus, after having quitted her in Venice? Where is the one who grows under the heat of Iago’s viperous tongue into a more sublimely savage delineation of jealousy than he does in the subsequent acts? Is not his

‘I love thee, Cassio,

But never more be officer of mine,’

one of the most perfect bits of natural feeling that has ever been uttered upon the stage? Friendship, anger, pity, and justice are all struggling within him, and shape the sorrow of the words that strip his lieutenant of the office which he considers him no longer worthy to retain. It may be observed that in alluding to these points we have not marked any of those more obvious beauties which have for many years been acknowledged in his representation of this character. These are settled excellencies in the estimation of all who love the tragic stage. Certain lines have been stereotyped to us by the genius of those who have embodied this greatest of Shaksperian characters; but for those who will reverently observe his impersonation, there are hitherto hidden points developed by Forrest which justify us in laughing at those whose resolute hatred of the artist blinds them to his excellence, and to the wonderful finish in the histrionic portraits which he offers them. We have good artists amongst us, but we certainly have none who can for a moment be fairly compared with him; and therefore is it that we say the man who constantly undervalues him simply marks himself as notoriously incapable of balancing the critical scales.”

The next extract is taken from a long article by the well-known scholar and author, Dr. R. Shelton Mackenzie:

“We once heard a great author say, ‘Scurrility is the shadow of Fame, and as often precedes as follows it.’ That author was Bulwer, and his remark has the weight of an aphorism. With respect to Mr. Edwin Forrest, it is singular that he has been assailed in his native town by scurrility at an advanced period of his brilliant career, and at a time when his powers have ripened into something very close to perfection.

“Unless the actuating principle of the writer be a merely malignant dislike of the man, it seems almost impossible to us that any critic, possessed of the ordinary intelligence current among the more respectable members of the fraternity, can refuse or be so morally blind as not to see the wide difference existing between the Forrest of the present time and the Forrest who was admitted by the public to be the greatest American actor some twenty years ago. At that time he was wonderful,—wonderful by his intensity, his dashing power, his superb manhood, his fine voice, and his noble presence. This made him a great artist. He might have many faults, but these were obliterated from the mind of the spectator by his many and dazzling merits, which were even the more striking from the comparative blemishes with which they were mingled.

“The artistic career of Edwin Forrest has now, however, made a great stride in advance. He has polished, refined, and completed his style. It was said of Garrick, who was several years older than Forrest when he retired from the stage, that in his latter seasons he acted better than ever, and the fact that he never, even when a master in the art, ceased to be a student, explained the cause. The same may be said, and even with more truth, of Edwin Forrest. There is no living actor half so studious as himself. His mind, always under thorough self-cultivation, has matured in later years, and the effects are apparent. He is so near perfection as an actor that it is impossible to be so attracted by his excellencies now as we might have been when contrast made them more palpable.

“Fully to appreciate the various power of Mr. Forrest cannot be done by examining him in any single character. We have therefore waited until his engagement is nearly completed, and have carefully studied him in eleven different characters,—Richelieu, Damon, Richard III., Hamlet, Othello, Virginius, Macbeth, Lucius Junius Brutus, Febro, Jack Cade, and Lear. Of these, perhaps, his Lear, his Othello, his Macbeth, his Richelieu, and his Damon are the greatest; but there is comparatively so little difference in excellence between his Hamlet and his Othello, his Virginius and his Damon, that he might reasonably except to us for noting that difference, which, after all, is in some measure the result of a purely physical variation in the bodily means at his disposal for each special embodiment.

“The almost even excellence, in so many of his great parts, to which Edwin Forrest has attained, contains in itself a strong assertion of his right not only to the first place in the histrionic annals of the last few years, but registers a positive claim to the highest position, as an artist, in all histrionic history to which the slightest degree of faith can be attached. To be at the same time a great Hamlet and a great Othello, even granting a difference in the excellence of the two parts, argues that the actor possesses to a larger extent than common that intellectual adaptability without which it would be impossible for him to represent two such widely different men. Slightly deranged, a philosophic dreamer, without the capability of sustained action, energetic only by immediate impulse, the Danish Prince differs widely from the passionate, powerful, one-purposed, and sublimely simple nature of the Moor. In grasping these two opposite characters as completely as Edwin Forrest has done, he has displayed an intellectual strength of the highest order, approaching very nearly to that subtlety of intelligence which is but rarely coupled with genius, but which, when coupled with it, makes it a genius of the highest order.

“This subtlety of intelligence he develops in his wonderful rendering of Richard, as widely opposed a character to both or either of the others as could well be presented to us. For the physical nature of Richard he has preferred Horace Walpole’s ‘Historic Doubts’ to Shakspeare’s delineation of the man, but in portraying him intellectually Edwin Forrest has simply depended on himself. He paints Richard with strong and vigorous execution, as a crafty and cruel hypocrite, with a positively unequalled subtlety of touch, rendering his hypocrisy frank and pleasant to the outside observer and coloring it with a comedy of which he offers no example in Othello and but a vague suspicion in Hamlet. His love-scene with Lady Anne is a marvellous piece of acting, which excerpts from the character as a worthy pendant to the mad scene in Lear. It was probably much more easily, although more recently, perfected by him than the latter, inasmuch as the last named was the result of careful and minute study, while the former is simply an effort of pure cultured genius which is as positively real as stage simulation ever can be. But this difference in character of the three extends even to those points in which Richard touches upon the two others. Richard is a man of strong passion as well as Othello. He is a philosopher as well as Hamlet. But passion is suppressed in Richard under the vest of his craft. It is addressed to other objects than Othello yearns for. It is bold and crafty. Othello is brave and honest. This is wonderfully discriminated by Mr. Forrest. The philosophy of Hamlet is reflective and uncertain, colored by study and lunacy. That of Richard is worldly and practical, subjected by him to his immediate ambition. Here Mr. Forrest, as an artist, is truly admirable. In Hamlet his philosophy is impulsively given to the audience. In Richard it is reasoned out and calculated with.

“Let us look at Macbeth, reaching, as Richard does, at the Crown. Most of our modern actors vary the two but little in their manner, without following the line of difference made between them by the great dramatist. This difference was in the intellectual strength of their natures. Richard is the tool of nobody. Macbeth is but a plaster in the fingers of his wife. How exquisitely does Mr. Forrest mark out the two natures! You trace Macbeth’s indecision of purpose in his very manner. His entrance in the first scene is characterized by it. The breaking off from his friends,—his return to himself when addressed by them,—his interjectional reveries,—his uncertainty of action, are all as they are given to us by Shakspeare, but scarcely such as we might have expected a man of Mr. Forrest’s physical temperament to embody. In Richard the ambition is positive. He does not reason of the acts which he commits. Hence here the artist’s actions are positive. When he commits or orders one of these deeds which tend to secure his desires or objects, it is done at once. The positive decision of the man is translated by the actor, whether it be in the passionate command or the sneering jest, by the calculated impulse of the man.”

Here is a part of an elaborate attack written by a relentless enemy and persecutor, quite remarkable for the untempered way in which it mixes truth and misrepresentation, justice and wrong:

“Mr. Forrest is now an actor who depends almost entirely on his voice as a medium of expression. He throws all his force into his reading; elocution is intended to compensate for everything,—for facial expression, for suitable action, for muscular vigor, and often, indeed, for true feeling and appreciation. By his impressive reading he frequently gains applause when in reality he deserves condemnation. There are whole scenes in his Lear unredeemed by one spark of feeling, the poverty of which he attempts to hide under a superficial gloss of elocutionary charlatanism. His fine voice aids him in this attempt; for that he has a noble voice, of great power,—whose tones are often commanding, and sometimes would be tender if they were inspired by any sincere feeling,—no one who has heard him can doubt. Take away this voice and Mr. Forrest is a nonentity, for he cannot act, and his face has no variety of expression. We know that, instead of using this fine element of success well, he has abused it; for his mannerisms of tone are perpetual, and disfigure every lengthy passage he reads. His voice has too great a burden to bear.

“This is one reason why he is so very monotonous. Another and a deeper reason is that the man himself is nothing but a monotone. No man on the stage has a more strongly marked individuality than Mr. Forrest; once seen, he cannot be easily forgotten, nor can his performances ever be confused in memory with those of others. Yet this individuality is a prison-house to him; he cannot escape from it. He is forced, in spite of himself, to play every character in exactly the same way. He develops Spartacus by the identical methods he employs in Hamlet; his Lear and his Claude Melnotte are made impressive, not by different styles. He has but one style. He is Edwin Forrest in everything; and, worse than this, he seems to care nothing for the best character he plays in comparison with his own success. Egotism is a marked peculiarity of his acting; he seems to say to the audience, not, ‘How fine is this character! how great was the author!’ but ever, ‘How finely I play it! am I not the greatest actor you ever saw?’

“Of course this strong personality is sometimes to Mr. Forrest an advantage. There are rôles which are adapted to his powers,—such as Virginius, Damon, and Spartacus. These he plays well because they do not require of him the transcendent power of genius,—the imagination which enables a man to penetrate the motives of a being foreign to himself, and to re-create in his own living nature the beauty and the passion of a dream. These he plays well because he finds in them something of himself. And even in Shaksperian characters, which are alien to his nature, he occasionally meets a passage which he can feel, and which he therefore expresses; and these moments of earnestness, occurring suddenly in the midst of long scenes of artificiality and dulness, are like flashes of lightning in a black midnight: while they last they are bright, but when they are gone they make the darkness deeper.”

The two brief notices that succeed appeared at the same time and in the same city in two opposed newspapers. The contrast is amusing, and it is easy to see how little impartial critical judgment went to the composition of either of them, as well as how bewildering they must have been to the reader who was seeking from the judgment of the press to form a dispassionate opinion on the merits of the actor:

“Having within the present year closely criticised Edwin Forrest’s performances during a long engagement, we do not intend to bore our readers with repetitions of what we have said. Mr. Forrest will go through his programme like a machine, and like most machines it may be discovered that his powers have suffered somewhat by wear and tear. He has long since passed the point of improvement. Fully settled in his own conceit that his personations are the most wonderful that the world ever saw, his only care will be to heighten defects which he considers beauties, and to dwell with increased tenderness upon each fault. There are some mothers who give their hearts to their puny, deformed, and bad-tempered children, to the neglect of others who are handsome, gentle, and intelligent. Mr. Forrest is an admirer of this policy. He slights his better qualities in acting, and dandles his absurdities with more than just parental fondness. His faults are inveterate; his beauties daily grow homely. It would be supererogation to expose at length those vices and stage tricks which have already been freely cauterized.”

“During the week Mr. Forrest has been performing the characters of Richelieu, Damon, Richard, and Hamlet. At each representation the invariable compliment of a crowded house has been paid him. With the advance of every year this actor seems to grow greater. The intellectuality of his acting becomes more and more apparent. The experience of years is now devoted to his art; a lifetime is concentrated upon the development of his transcendent genius. Mr. Forrest has shaped the colossal block of crude genius into wonderful statues of natural and lovely proportions. No intelligent praise can be extravagant which extols the exceeding beauty of the conceptions of this wonderful artist. We can scarcely think of Mr. Forrest’s fame as otherwise than increasing. It throws around his name a luminous halo, whose brightness and extent the progress of years will only intensify and enlarge.”

One more specimen will suffice. It is from the pen of an anonymous English critic:

“If Forrest is not in a paroxysm, he is a mere wicker idol; huge to the eye, but full of emptiness,—a gigantic vacuum. His distortions of character are monstrous; the athletic, muscular vigor of his Lear is a positive libel upon consistency and truth. Spartacus was made for him, and he for Spartacus; the athlete is everlastingly present in all his personations. His ravings in Othello, in Macbeth, and in Richard the Third are orgasms of vigorous commonplace.

“When Mr. Forrest represents terror, his knees shake, his hands vibrate, his chest heaves, his throat swells, and his muscles project as if he were under the influence of a galvanic battery or his whole frame put in motion by a machine. He always appears anxious to show the toughness of his sinews, the cast-iron capabilities of his body, and the prodigious muscularity of his legs, which really haunt the spectator’s eyes like huge, grim-looking spectres, appearing too monstrous for realities, as they certainly are for the dignified grace of tragedy. He delights to represent physical agony with the most revolting exaggerations. When he dies, he likes that the audience should hear the rattles in his throat, and will, no doubt, some day have a bladder of pig’s blood concealed under his doublet, that, when stabbed, the tragic crimson may stream upon the stage, and thus give him the opportunity of representing death, in the words of his admirers, to the life.

“Perhaps no stronger test of Mr. Forrest’s want of intellectual power as an actor can be given than his slow, drawling, whining mode of delivering the speech to the senate, in the play of Othello. No schoolboy could do it worse, and though in the more energetic scenes there is a certain mechanical skill and seeming reality of passion, yet the charm which this might be calculated to produce is lost by the closeness of resemblance to a well-remembered original. It is almost frightfully vigorous, and though there are some touches of true energy, this is much too boisterous, coarse, and unrelieved by those delicate inflections which so eloquently express true feeling to obtain for it that meed of praise only due to the efforts of original genius. There is much art and much skill in Mr. Forrest’s acting; but its grand defect is the general absence of truth.”

The medley of praise and abuse, the hodge-podge of incongruous opinions, seen in the foregoing illustrations of newspaper criticism, arose far less from any contradiction of excellences and faults in the acting of Forrest than from the prejudices and ignorance of the writers. A large proportion of those writers were obstinately prepossessed or corruptly interested, and few of them had any distinct appreciation of the constituent elements of the dramatic art. Destitute of the true standard of criticism, the final canon of authority, their judgments were at the mercy of impulse and chance influences.

But Forrest was no solitary, though he was an extreme, sufferer in this respect. The greatest of his predecessors, all the most gifted and famous actors and actresses, have had to undergo the same pitiless ordeal. Those concerning whose illustrious pre-eminence there can be no question whatever have borne the same shower of detraction, insult, and ridicule, the same pelting of cynical badinage. The restless vanity, presumptuous conceit, and blasé omniscience of the common order of critics have spared none of the conspicuous dramatic artists. And if any one infer from the abuse and depreciation rained on Forrest that he must have been guilty of the worst faults, he may draw the like conclusion from the like premises in relation to every celebrated name in the history of the stage.

The bigoted opposition and belittling estimates met by Talma in his bold and resolute effort to displace the conventional inanity and stilted bombast of the French stage with truth and nature are a matter of notorious record. Some of his sapient critics thought they were administering a caustic censure when they uttered the unwitting compliment, extorted by their surprise at his severe costume and grand attitudes, “Why, he looks exactly like a Roman statue just stepped out of the antique.” The biographers of Garrick give abundant evidence of the misrepresentation, ridicule, and manifold censure with which his enemies and rivals and their venal tools pursued and vexed him. He even stooped to buy them off, and sometimes counteracted their malice with his own anonymous pen. Horace Walpole wrote, “I have seen the acting of Garrick, and can say that I see nothing wonderful in it.” His small stature, his starts and pauses, were, in especial, maliciously animadverted on. Mossop was sneered at as “a distiller of syllables,” Macklin for the prominent “lines, or rather cordage, of his face,” and Quin for the “mechanic regularity and swollen pomp of his declamation.” George Steevens wrote a bitter satire, utterly unjust and unprovoked, on Mrs. Siddons. She and her brother, John Philip Kemble, were stigmatized as icebergs and pompous pretenders, and were repeatedly hissed and insulted on the stage. Before her marriage, while Siddons was playing at the Haymarket, a critic, trying to put her down, wrote to Hayley, the manager, “Miss Kemble, though patronized by a number of clamorous friends, will prove only a piece of beautiful imbecility.” In 1807 a leading London newspaper said of George Frederick Cooke, “His delivery of Lear is just what it is in Richard: in its subdued passages, little and mean; in its more prominent efforts, rugged, rumbling, and staccato, resembling rather a watchman’s rattle than any other object in art or nature.”

William Robson, in his “Old Play-Goer,” says of Edmund Kean, “His person and carriage are mean and contemptible, his judgment poor, his pathos weak, his passion extravagant and unnatural;” and then sums up his estimate of the immortal histrionist in these remarkable words: “He is nothing but a little vixenish black girl in short petticoats!” On the first appearance of Kean in Philadelphia some critics there, who were great admirers of Cooke, called him “a quack, a mountebank, a vulgar impostor.” William B. Wood said of Kean, when he had just finished a rehearsal and gone out, “He is a mere mummer.” Joseph Jefferson, great-grandfather of the Joseph Jefferson of Rip Van Winkle fame,—a beautiful and noble old man, afterwards characterized by Forrest in loving memory as “one of the purest men that ever lived, sad, sweet, lofty, thoughtful, generous,”—overheard the remark, and replied, with a quiet indignation in his tone, “Ah, Wood, you would give all the riches you ever dreamed of amassing in this world to be another just such a mummer.” The “London Spectator,” in 1836, said, “Bunn in his drowning desperation catches at any straw. He has just put forward Booth, the shadow and foil of Kean in bygone days. Booth’s Richard seems to have been a wretched failure.” At the same time another English journal used the following expressive language, in which the writer evidently does justice to himself whatever he endeavors to do to the actors he names: “Since the retirement of Young and the death of Kean, the very name of tragedy has passed away from us. We have had to submit to the presumptuous and uninspired feelings of Mr. Bell-wether Kemble, or to the melodramatic jerks and pumpings of Mr. Macready.”

An American critic wrote thus of the Nancy Sykes of Charlotte Cushman: “Miss Cushman’s performance is of the Anatomical Museum style. Her effects are thrilling and vulgar. Her poses are awkward, and her pictures unfinished and coarse in outline. She has an unpleasantly pre-raphaelite death scene, and is dragged off, stiff and stark, when all the characters express their internal satisfaction at the circumstance by smiling, shaking hands, and joining in a feeble chorus. The secret of her attraction is vigor. The masses like vigor. If they can have a little art with it, very well. But vigor they must have.” Of late it has been the fashion to extol Miss Cushman as the queenly mistress of all the dignities and refinements of the dramatic profession; but the foregoing notice is exactly of a piece with the treatment visited upon Forrest for many years by the vulgar coteries of criticism, whose aim was not justice and usefulness but effect upon the prejudiced and the careless. Even the quiet and gentlemanly Edwin Booth has been as unsparingly assailed as he has been lavishly praised. An insidious article on him, entitled “The Machine-Actor,” called him a “self-acting dramatic machine warranted;” and while admitting, with great generosity, that “he was not wholly destitute of dramatic ability,” attributed his success and reputation chiefly to extraneous conditions, in especial the shrewdness of “his managing agent, who judiciously prepared his houses for him, and pecuniarily and personally appreciated the power of the press and conciliated the critics.” The two following notices of Mr. Booth’s Melnotte—the first obviously by a critic who had, the second by one who had not, been “conciliated”—are quite as absurd in their contradiction as those so often composed on Forrest:

“On Monday evening last we enjoyed the first opportunity of seeing Mr. Edwin Booth in the character of Claude Melnotte, in the ‘Lady of Lyons.’ Our impressions of Mr. Booth in the part may be briefly summed up in saying that he is one of the very best Claudes we have ever seen,—scholarly, sustained, and forcibly reticent at all points,—not so youthful in his make-up as to suggest the enthusiastic boy of Bulwer’s drama, but in all other regards the very ideal of the character. His marvellously melodious voice sounds to peculiar advantage in the rich prose-poetry of the more sentimental passages, and in the passages of sterner interest the latent strength of the tragedian comes nobly into play. Booth’s Claude is an unqualified success, and its first rendering was witnessed by an audience brilliant in number and intelligence and markedly enthusiastic in their reception of the best points.”

“Mr. Booth’s Claude Melnotte was a failure. It was neither serious nor sentimental, comic nor tragic. The best that can be said of it is that it came near being an effective burlesque. When he first came on to the stage, I almost thought it was his intention to make it so. His carriage and general make-up were those of one of Teniers’ Dutch boors, even to the extent of yellow hair combed straight down the forehead and clipped square across from temple to temple. His action consisted mainly in a series of shrugs. I don’t remember a natural movement of body or expression of countenance, from the beginning of the piece to the end; nor a natural tone of voice.”

Still later we have seen different representatives of the press, both in America and in England, alternately describing the wonderful Othello of Salvini as “the electrifying impersonation of a demi-god” and as “an exhibition of disgusting brutality.”

The class of examples of which these are a few specimens show how little worthy the ordinary newspaper dramatic criticism is to be considered authoritative. No branch of journalism, allowing for notable individual exceptions, is more incompetent or more corrupt, because no other set of writers have so difficult a task or are so beset by vicious influences. Their vanity, prejudice, and interest worked upon, their sympathies appealed to by the artist and his friends, their antipathies by his rivals and foes, harassed and hurried with work, moved by promises of money and patronage, no wonder they often turn from the exactions of conscientious labor and study to something so much easier. The unsophisticated portion of the public, who are too much influenced by what they read in the papers, and who fancy that applause is a good proof of merit and censure a sure evidence of fault, ought to know how full of fraud and injustice the world of histrionic ambition and criticism is, and to learn to give little weight to verdicts not ascertained to come from competent and honest judges. The husband of Madame Linguet, a favorite actress at the Italian Theatre in Paris, hired a party to hiss every other actress, but to applaud her to the echo. A ludicrous mistake let out the secret. Linguet told his men one night to hiss the first actress who appeared and applaud the second. The play was changed, and in the substituted piece Madame Linguet came forward first, and was overpowered with hisses. Sir John Hill asked Peg Woffington if she had seen in the paper his praise of her performance the previous evening in the part of Calista. She thanked him for his kindness, but added that the play was changed and she had acted the character of Lady Townley. In a New York paper, in 1863, this notice appeared: “Mr. Forrest repeated, by special request, his great character of Spartacus last evening, before one of the most brilliant and enthusiastic audiences of the season. His acting was grand throughout, and at the end of the last act he received a perfect ovation from the audience.” Appended to this, in his own handwriting, pasted in one of his scrap-books, were found these words: “Mr. Forrest on the night above referred to was in Philadelphia, and did not act at all, having been called home by the death of his sister.”

After going over the mass of ignorant, capricious, and contradictory criticism bestowed on Forrest,—criticism destitute of fundamental principles or ultimate insight,—the reader may well feel at a loss to know how he is to regulate his judgment upon the subject and form a just estimate of the actor and his performances. The critics, instead of aiding, bewilder him, because themselves appear to be wildly adrift. To work our way through the chaos it is necessary for us to understand distinctly what the dramatic art is in its nature and object, and what are the materials and methods with which it aims to accomplish its purpose. The answers to these inquiries will clear away confusion, lay bare the elements of the art, and put us in possession of those laws of expression which constitute the only final standard for justly criticising the efforts of the player.

Considered in its full scope, the drama is the practical science of human nature exemplified in the revelation of its varieties of character and conduct. It aims to uncover and illustrate man in the secret springs of his action and suffering and destiny, by representing the whole range and diversity of his experience in living evolution. The drama is the reflection of human life in the idealizing mirror of art. In what does this reflection consist? In the correct exhibition of the different modes of behavior that belong to the different types of humanity in the various exigencies of their fortunes. The critic, therefore, in order to be able to say whether histrionic performances are true or false, consistent or inconsistent, noble or base, refined or vulgar, artistically elaborated and complete or absurdly exaggerated and defective, must understand the contents of human nature in all its grades of development, and know how the representatives of those grades naturally deport themselves under given conditions of inward consciousness and of exterior situation. That is to say, a man to be thoroughly equipped for the task of dramatic criticism must have mastered these three provinces of knowledge; first, the characters of men in their vast variety; second, the modes of manifestation whereby those characters reveal their inward states through outward signs; third, the manner in which those characters and those modes of manifestation are affected by changes of consciousness or of situation, how they are modified by the reflex play of their own experience.

Every man has three types of character, in all of which he must be studied before he can be adequately represented. First he has his inherited constitutional or temperamental character, his fixed native character, in which the collective experience and qualities of his progenitors are consolidated, stamped, and transmitted. Next he has his peculiar fugitive or passional character, which is the modification of his stable average character under the influence of exciting impulses, temporary exaltations of instinct or sentiment. And then he has his acquired habitual character, gradually formed in him by the moulding power of his occupation and associations, as expressed in the familiar proverb, “Habit is a second nature.” The first type reveals his ancestral or organic rank, what he is in the fatal line of his parentage. The second shows his moral or personal rank, what he has become through his own experience and discipline, self-indulgence and self-denial. The third betrays his social rank, what he has been made by his employment and caste. The original estimate or value assigned to the man by nature is indicated in his constitutional form, the geometrical proportions and dynamic furnishing of his organs, his physical and mental make-up. The estimate he puts on himself, in himself and in his relations with others, his egotistical value, is seen in the transitive modifications of his form by movements made under the stimulus of passions. The conventional estimate or social value awarded him is suggested through the permanent modifications wrought in his organs and bearing by his customary actions and relations with his fellows. Thus the triple type of character possessed by every man is to be studied by means of an analysis of the forms of his organs in repose and of his movements in passion or habit.

The classes of constitutional character are as numerous as the human temperaments which mark the great vernacular distinctions of our nature according to the preponderant development of some portion of the organism. There is the osseous temperament, in which the bones and ligaments are most developed; the lymphatic temperament, in which the adipose and mucous membrane preponderate; the sanguine temperament, in which the heart and arteries give the chief emphasis; the melancholic temperament, in which the liver and the veins oversway; the executive temperament, in which the capillaries and the nerves take the lead; the mental temperament, in which the brain is enthroned; the visceral temperament, in which the vital appetites reign; the spiritual temperament, in which there is a fine harmony of the whole. The enumeration might be greatly varied and extended, but this is enough for our purpose. Each head of the classification denotes a distinct style of character, distinguished by definite modes of manifesting itself, the principal sign of every character, the key-note from which all its expressions are modulated, being the quality and rate of movement or the nervous rhythm of the organism in which it is embodied.

Besides the vernacular classes of character ranged under their leading temperaments, there are almost innumerable dialect varieties arising from these, as modified both by the steady influence of chronic conditions of life, historic, national, local, or clique, and by fitful and eccentric individual combinations of faculty and impulse. For instance, how many types of barbarian character there are,—such as the garrulous, laughing, sensual Negro, the taciturn, solemn, abstinent Indian, the fat and frigid Esquimaux, the Hottentot, the Patagonian, the New Zealander,—all differing widely in stature, feature, gesture, disposition, costume, creed, speech, while agreeing in the fundamentals of a common nature. Among civilized nations the diversity of characters is still greater. It would require an almost endless recital of particulars to describe the differences of the Chinaman, the Japanese, the Egyptian, the Persian, the Arab, the Hindu, the Italian, the Spaniard, the German, the Russian, the Frenchman, the Englishman, the American. And then what a maze of attributes, each one at the same time clear in its sharpness or its profundity, qualify and discriminate the various orders, castes, and groups of society!—the Brahmin, the Sudra, the king, the slave, the soldier, the doctor, the lawyer, the priest, the teacher, the shop-keeper, the porter, the detective, the legislator, the hangman, the scientist, and the philosopher. Every professional pursuit, social position, mechanical employment, physical culture, spiritual belief or aptitude, has its peculiar badge of dress, look, posture, motion, in which it reveals its secrets; and the pettifogger or the jurisconsult, the prophet or the necromancer, the Quaker and the Shaker, the Calvinist and the Catholic, the tailor, the gymnast, the gambler, the bully, the hero, the poet, and the saint, stand unveiled before us. How the habitual life reveals itself in the bearing is clearly seen in the sailor when he leaves his tossing ship for the solid shore. His sensation of the strange firmness of the earth makes him tread in a sort of heavy-light way,—half wagoner, half dancing-master. There is always this appearance of lightness of foot and heavy upper works in a sailor, his shoulders rolling, his feet touching and going.

To know how consistently to construct an ideal character of any one of these kinds, at any given height or depth in the historic gamut of humanity, and to be able to embody and enact it with the harmonious truth of nature, is the task of the consummate actor. And to be qualified to catalogue all these attributes of human being and manifestation with accuracy, recognizing every fitness, detecting every incongruity, is the business of the dramatic critic. Who of our ordinary newspaper writers is competent to the work? Yet the youngest and crudest of them never hesitates to pronounce a snap judgment on the most renowned tragedians as if his magisterial “we” were the very ipse dixit of Pythagoras!

Still further, the task of the actor and of the critic is made yet more complicated and difficult by the varied modifications of all the classes of character indicated above under the influence of specific passion. The great dramatic passions, which may be subdivided into many more, are love, hatred, joy, grief, jealousy, wonder, pity, scorn, anger, and fear. To obtain a fine perception and a ready and exact command of the relations of the apparatus of expression to all these passions in their different degrees as manifesting different styles of character, to know for each phase of excitement or depression the precise adjustment of the limbs, chest, and head, of intense or slackened muscles, of compressed or reposeful lips, of dilated or contracted nostrils, of pensive or glaring or fiery or supplicating eyes, of deprecating or threatening mien, of firm or vacillating posture, is an accomplishment as rare as it is arduous. All this is capable of reduction by study and practice to an exact science, and then of development into a perfect art. For every passion has its natural law of expression, and all these laws are related and consistent in an honest and earnest character, incoherent only in a discordant or hypocritical character. There is an art to find the mind’s construction in the face. The spirit shines and speaks in the flesh. And a learned eye looks quite through the seemings of men to their genuine being and states. This is indeed the very business of the dramatic art,—to read the truths of human nature through all its attempted disguises, and expose them for instruction. How minute the detail, how keen the perception, how subtle and alert the power of adaptation requisite for this, may be illustrated by a single example. Suppose a criminal character is to be played. He may be of a timid, suspicious, furtive type, or careless, jovial, and rollicking, or brazen and defiant, or sullen and gloomy, yet be a criminal in all. He may be portrayed in the stage of excitement under the interest of plot and pursuit, or in success and triumph, or in defeat and wrath, or in the shame and terror of detection, or in final remorse and despair. There is scarcely any end to the possibilities of variety, yet verisimilitude must be kept up and nature not violated.

But we have as yet hardly hinted at the richness of the elements of the dramatic art and the scope of the knowledge and skill necessary for applying them. The aim of the dramatic art being the revelation of the characters and experiences of men, the question arises, By what means is this revelation effected? The inner states of man are revealed through outer signs. Every distinct set of outer signs through which inner states are made known constitutes a dramatic language. Now, there are no less than nine of these sets of signs or dramatic languages of human nature.

The first language is forms. When we look on an eagle, a mouse, a horse, a tiger, a worm, a turtle, an alligator, a rattlesnake, their very forms reveal their natures and dispositions and habits. In their shapes and proportions we read their history. So with man. His generic nature, his specific inheritance, his individual peculiarities are signalized in his form and physiognomy with an accuracy and particularity proportioned to the interpreting power of the spectator. The truth is all there for the competent gazer. The actor modifies his form and features by artifice and will to correspond with what should be the form of the person whose character he impersonates. And costume, with its varieties of outline and color, constitutes a secondary province artificially added to the natural language of form.

The second language is attitudes. Attitudes are living modifications of shape, or the fluencies of form. There are, for example, nine elementary attitudes of the feet, of the hands, of the toes, of the head, which may be combined in an exhaustless series. Every one of these attitudes has its natural meaning and value. All emotions strong enough to pronounce themselves find expression in appropriate attitudes or significant changes of the form in itself and in its relations to others. He who has the key for interpreting the reactions of human nature on the agencies that affect it, easily reads in the outer signs of attitude the inner states of defiance, doubt, exaltation, prostration, nonchalance, respect, fear, misery, or supplication, and so on.

The third language is automatic movements, which are unconscious escapes of character, unpurposed motions through which the states of the mover are betrayed, sometimes with surprising clearness and force. For instance, how often impatience, vexation, or restrained anger, breaks out in a nervous tapping of the foot or the finger! What can be more legible than the fidgety manner of one in embarrassment? And the degree and kind of the embarrassment, together with the personal grade and social position and culture of the subject, will be revealed in the peculiar nature of the fidgeting. There is a whole class of these automatic movements, such as trembling, nodding, shaking the head, biting the lips, lolling the tongue, the shiver of the flesh, the quiver of the mouth or eyelids, the shudder of the bones, and they compose a rich primordial language of revelation, perfectly intelligible and common to universal humanity.

The fourth language is gestures. This is the language so marvellously flexible, copious, and powerful among many barbarous peoples. It was carried to such a pitch of perfection by the mimes of ancient Rome, that Roscius and Cicero had a contest to decide which could express a given idea in the most clear and varied manner, the actor by gestures, or the orator by words. Gestures are a purposed system of bodily motions, both spontaneous and deliberate, intended as preparatory, auxiliary, or substitutional for the expressions by speech. There is hardly any state of consciousness which cannot be revealed more vividly by pantomime than is possible in mere verbal terms. As fixed attitudes are inflected form, and automatic movements inflected attitude, so pantomimic gestures are systematically inflected motion. The wealth of meaning and power in gesticulation depends on the richness, freedom, and harmony of the character and organism. The beauty or deformity, nobleness or baseness, of its pictures are determined by the zones of the body from which the gestures start, the direction and elevation at which they terminate, their rate of moving, and the nature and proportions of the figures, segments of which their lines and curves describe. Music has no clearer rhythm, melody, and harmony to the ear than inflected gesture has to the eye. The first law of gesture is, that it follows the look or the eye, and precedes the sound or the voice. The second law is, that its velocity is precisely proportional to the mass moved. The third and profoundest law, first formulated by Delsarte, is that efferent or outward lines of movement reveal the sensitive life or vital nature of the man; that afferent or inward lines reveal the percipient and reflective life or mental nature; and that immanent or curved lines, blended of the other two, reveal the affectional life or moral nature.

The fifth language is what is called facial expression. It consists of muscular contractions and relaxations, dilatations and diminutions, the fixing or the flitting of nervous lights and shades over the organism. Its changes are not motions of masses of the body, but visible modifications of parts of its periphery, as in smiles, frowns, tears. The girding up or letting down of the sinews, the tightening or loosening or horripilating creep of the skin, changes of color, as in paleness and blushing, and all the innumerable alterations of look and meaning in the brows, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the chin, come under this head. The delicacy, power, and comprehensiveness of this language are inexhaustible. So numerous and infinitely adjustable, for instance, are the nerves of the mouth, that Swedenborg asserts that no spoken language is necessary for the illuminated, every state of the soul being instantly understood from the modulation of the lips alone.

The sixth language is inarticulate noises, the first undigested rudiments of the voice. All our organic and emotional states, when they are keen enough to seek expression, and we are under no restraint, distinguish and reveal themselves in crude noises, each one the appropriate effect of a corresponding cause. We breathe aloud, whistle, gasp, sigh, choke, whimper, sob, groan, grunt, sneeze, snore, snort, sip, hiss, smack, sniff, gulp, gurgle, gag, wheeze, cough, hawk, spit, hiccup, and give the death-rattle. These and kindred noises take us back to the rawest elemental experiences, and express them to universal apprehension in the most unmistakable manner. The states of the organism in its various sensations, the forms its affected parts assume under different stimuli, are as dies which strike the sounds then made into audible coins or medals revelatory of their faces. This is the broadest and vulgarest language of unrefined vernacular man. The lower the style of acting the larger part this will play in it. From the representation of high characters it is more and more strained out and sublimated away, the other languages quite superseding it.

The seventh language is inflected tones, vocalized and modulated breath. The mere tones of the sounding apparatus of the voice, in the variety of their quality, pitch, and cadence, reveal the emotional nature of man through the whole range of his feelings, both in kind and degree. The moan of pain, the howl of anguish, the yell of rage, the shriek of despair, the wail of sorrow, the ringing laugh of joy, the ecstatic and smothering murmur of love, the penetrative tremor of pathos, the solemn monotone of sublimity, and the dissolving whisper of wonder and adoration,—these are some of the great family of inflected sounds in which the emotions of the human heart are reflected and echoed to the recognition of the sympathetic auditor.

The eighth language is articulated words, the final medium of the intellect. Vocal sounds articulated in verbal forms are the pure vehicle of the thoughts of the head, and the inflected tones with which they are expressed convey the accompanying comments of the heart upon those thoughts. What a man thinks goes out on his articulate words, but what he feels is taught in the purity or harshness of the tones, the pitch, rate, emphasis, direction and length of slide with which the words are enunciated. The word reveals the intellectual state; the tone, the sensitive state; the inflection, the moral state. The character of a man is nowhere so concentratedly revealed as in his voice. In its clang-tints all the colors and shades of his being are mingled and symbolized. But it requires a commensurate wisdom, sensibility, trained skill and impartiality to interpret what it implies. Yet one fact remains sure: give a man a completely developed and freed voice, and there is nothing in his experience which he cannot suggest by it. Nothing can be clearer or more impressive than the revelation of characters by the voice: the stutter and splutter of the frightened dolt, the mincing lisp of the fop, the broad and hearty blast of the strong and good-natured boor, the clarion note of the leader, the syrupy and sickening sweetness of the goody, the nasal and mechanical whine of the pious hypocrite, the muddy and raucous vocality of vice and disease, the crystal clarity and precision of honest health and refinement. Cooke spoke with two voices, one harsh and severe, one mild and caressing. His greatest effects were produced by a rapid transition from one of these to the other. He used the first to convince or to command, the second to soothe or to betray.

Actions speak louder than words; and the ninth language is deeds, the completest single expression of the whole man. The thoughts, affections, designs, expose and execute themselves in rounded revelation and fulfilment in a deed. When a hungry man sits down to a banquet and satisfies his appetite, when one knocks down his angered opponent or opens the window and calls a policeman, when one gives his friend the title-deed of an estate, everything is clear, there is no need of explanatory comment. The sowing of a seed, the building of a house, the painting of a picture, the writing of a book or letter, any intentional act, is in its substance and form the most solid manifestation of its performer. In truth, the deeds of every man, in their material and moral physiognomy, betray what he has been, demonstrate what he is, and prophesy what he will become. They are a language in which his purposes materialize themselves and set up mirrors of his history. Deeds are, above all, the special dramatic language, because the dramatic art seeks to unveil human nature by a representation of it not in description, but in living action.

These nine languages, or sets of outer signs for revealing inner states, are all sustained and pervaded by a system of invisible motions or molecular vibrations in the brain and the other nerve-centres. The consensus of these hidden motions, in connection at the subjective pole with the essence of our personality, at the objective pole with other personalities and all the forces of the kosmos, presides over our bodily and spiritual evolution; and all that outwardly appears of our character and experience is but a partial manifestation of its working. From the differing nature, extent, and combination of these occult vibrations in the secret nerve-centres originate the characteristic peculiarities of individuals. It may not be said that all the substances and forms of life and consciousness consist in modes of motion, but undoubtedly every vital or conscious state of embodied man is accompanied by appropriate kinds and rates of organic undulations or pulses of force, and is revealed through these if revealed at all. The forms and measures of these molecular vibrations in the nerve-centres and fibres,—whether they are rectilinear, spherical, circular, elliptical, or spiral,—the width of their gamut, with the slowness and swiftness of the beats in their extremes,—and the complexity and harmony of their co-operation,—determine the quality and scale of the man. The signals of these concealed things exhibited through the nine languages of his organism mysteriously hint the kinds and degrees of his power, and announce the scope and rank of his being. This is the real secret of what is vulgarly called animal magnetism. One person communicates his vibrations to another, either by direct contact, or through ideal signs intuitively recognized and which discharge their contents in the apprehending soul, just as a musical string takes up the vibrations of another one in tune with it. He whose organism is richest in differentiated centres and most perfect in their co-ordinated action, having the exactest equilibrium in rest and the freest play in exercise, having the amplest supply of force at command and the most consummate grace or economy in expending it, is naturally the king of all other men. He is closest to nature and God, fullest of a reconciled self-possession and surrender to the universal. He is indeed a divine magnetic battery. The beauty and grandeur of his bearing bewitch and dominate those who look on him, because suggestive of the subtlety and power of the modes of motion vibrating within him. The unlimited automatic intelligence associated with these interior motions can impart its messages not only through the confessed languages enumerated above, but also, as it seems, immediately, thus enveloping our whole race with an unbroken mental atmosphere alive and electric with intercommunication.

The variety of human characters, in their secret selfhood and in their social play,—the variety of languages through which they express themselves and their states, all based on that infinitely fine system of molecular motions in the nerve-centres where the individual and the universal meet and blend and react in volitional or reflex manifestation,—the variety of modes and degrees in which characters are modified under the influence of passion within or society and custom without,—the variety of changes in the adaptation of expression to character, perpetually altering with the altering situations,—such are the elements of the dramatic art. What cannot be said can be sung; what cannot be sung can be looked; what cannot be looked can be gesticulated; what cannot be gesticulated can be danced; what cannot be danced can be sat or stood,—and be understood. The knowledge of these elements properly formulated and systematized composes the true standard of dramatic criticism.

It is obvious enough how few of the actors and critics of the day possess this knowledge. Without it the player has to depend on intuition, inspiration, instinct, happy or unhappy luck, laborious guess-work, and servile imitation. He has not the safe guidance of fundamental principles. Without it the critic is at the mercy of every bias and caprice. Now, one of the greatest causes of error and injustice in acting and in the criticism of acting is the difficulty of determining exactly how a given character in given circumstances will deport and deliver himself. With what specific combinations of the nine dramatic languages of human nature, in what relative prominence or subtlety, used with what degrees of reserve or explosiveness, will he reveal his inner states through outer signs? Here the differences and the chances for truthful skill are innumerable; for every particular in expression will be modified by every particular in the character of the person represented. What is perfectly natural and within limits for one would be false or extravagant for another. The taciturnity of an iron pride, the demonstrativeness of a restless vanity, the abundance of unpurposed movements and unvocalized sounds characteristic of boorishness and vulgarity, the careful repression of automatic language by the man of finished culture, are illustrations.

And then the degree of harmony in the different modes of expression by which a given person reveals himself is a point of profound delicacy for actor and critic. In a type of ideal perfection every signal of thought or feeling, of being or purpose, will denote precisely what it is intended to denote and nothing else, and all the simultaneous signals will agree with one another. But real characters, so far as they fall short of perfection, are inconsistent in their expressions, continually indefinite, superfluous or defective, often flatly contradictory. Multitudes of characters are so undeveloped or so ill developed that they fall into attitudes without fitness or direct significance, employ gestures vaguely or unmeaningly, and are so insincere or little in earnest that their postures, looks, motions, and voices carry opposite meanings and thus belie one another. It requires no superficial art to be able instantly to detect every incongruity of this sort, to assign it to its just cause, and to decide whether the fault arises from conscious falsity in the character or from some incompetency of the physical organism to reflect the states of its spiritual occupant. For instance, in sarcastic speech the meaning of the tone contradicts the meaning of the words. The articulation is of the head, but the tone is of the heart. So when the voice is ever so soft and wheedling, if the language of the eyes and the fingers is ferocious, he is a fool who trusts the voice. In like manner the revelations in form and attitude are deeper and more massive than those of gesture. But in order that all the expressions of the soul through the body should be marked by truth and agreement, it is necessary that the soul should be completely sincere and unembarrassed and that the body should be completely free and flexible to reflect its passing states. No character furnishes these conditions perfectly, and therefore every character will betray more or less inconsistency in its manifestations. Still, every pronounced character has a general unity of design and coloring in its type which must be kept prevailingly in view.

The one thing to be demanded of every actor is that he shall conceive his part with distinctness and represent it coherently. No actor can be considered meritorious who has not a full and vivid conception of his rôle and does not present a consistent living picture of it. But, this essential condition met, there may be much truth and great merit in many different conceptions and renderings of the same rôle. Then the degree of intellectuality, nobleness, beauty, and charm, or of raw passion and material power, in any stated performance is a fair subject for critical discussion, and will depend on the quality of the actor. But the critic should be as large and generous as God and nature in his standard, and not set up a factitious limit of puling feebleness and refuse to pardon anything that goes beyond it. He must remember that a great deal ought to be pardoned to honest and genuine genius when it electrifyingly exhibits to the crowd of tame and commonplace natures a character whose scale of power is incomparably grander than their own. It is ever one of the most imposing and benign elements in the mission of the stage to show to average men, through magnificent examples of depth of passion, force of will, strength of muscle, compass of voice, and organic play of revelation, how much wider than they had known is the gamut of humanity, how much more intense and exquisite its love, how much more blasting its wrath, more awful its sorrow, more hideous its crime and revenge, more godlike its saintliness and heroism.

It is not to be pretended that Forrest had ever made the systematic analysis of the dramatic art sketched above. But when it was submitted to him he instantly appreciated it with enthusiasm; for he was experimentally familiar with all the rudiments of it. He was all his life an earnest student of human nature, in literature, in social intercourse, in his own consciousness, and in the critical practice of his profession. In fixing his rank as an actor the only question is how far he had the ability to represent in action what he unquestionably had the ability to appreciate in conception. While some of his admirers have eulogized him as the greatest tragedian that ever lived, some of his detractors have denounced him as one of the worst. The truth, of course, lies between these extremes. His excellences were of the most distinguished kind, but the limitations of his excellence were obvious to the judicious and sometimes repulsive to the fastidious.

To be the complete and incomparable actor which the partisans of Forrest claim him to have been requires some conditions plainly wanting in him. The perfect player must have a detached, imaginative, mercurial, yet impassioned mind, free from chronic biases and prejudices, lodged in a rich, symmetrical body as full of elastic grace as of commanding power. The spirit must be freely attuned to the whole range of humanity, and the articulations and muscles of the frame so liberated and co-operative as to furnish an instrument obviously responsive to all the play of thought and emotion. Now, Forrest, after his early manhood, under the rigorous athletic training he gave himself, was a ponderous Hercules, magnificent indeed, but incapable of the more airy and delicate qualities, the fascination of free grace and spontaneous variety. He lacked the lightning-like suppleness of Garrick and of Kean. His rugged and imposing physique, handsome and serviceable as it was, wanted the varying flexibility of the diviner forms of beauty, and so put rigid limitations on him. The same was true mentally; for while his intellect was keen, clear, broad, and vigorous, and his heart warm and faithful, and his passion deep and intense, yet his seated antipathies were as strong as his artistic sympathies, and shut him up in scorn and hostility from whole classes of character. Both physically and spiritually he was moulded in the fixed ways of the general type of characters which his own predominant qualities caused him to affect. These were grand characters, glorious in attributes, sublime in manifestation, but in spite of all his art many of their traits were in common, and there was something of monotony in the histrionic cortége, electrifying as their scale of heroism and strength was. Could he but have mastered in tragedy the spirituelle and free as he did the sombre and tenacious, he had been perfect.

The same defect here admitted for his form and mind, it must be confessed applied to his facial expression, gesture, and voice. As in attitude he could express with immense energy everything slow and tremendous in purpose or swift and resistless in execution, while the more subtile and fleeting moods were baffled of a vent, so in look and motion and tone he could give most vivid and sustained revelation to all the great cardinal emotions of the human breast, the elemental characteristics of our nature, but could not so well expose the more elusive sentiments and delicate activities. As in his tone and limbs so in his face and voice, the heavy style of gymnastic culture had fixed itself in certain rigid moulds or lines, which could not break up in endless forms accordant with endless moods, melting into one another, all underlaid by that living unity which it is the end of a true æsthetic gymnastic to produce. On occasion of his first professional visit to London an English journal well said,—

“Mr. Forrest is in person most remarkable for symmetrical but somewhat Herculean proportions. He might take the Farnese club and stand a perfect model to painter or sculptor. His neck is also as a pillar of strength, and his head is finely set on. His features are marked, but by no means of a classic caste, nor are they well suited for histrionic effect. Abundantly indicative of energy, they have not breadth of character, or beauty, or variety of expression. Under strong excitement they cut or contrast into sharp angularities, which cannot harmonize with the grand in passion.”

Even the marvellous voice of Forrest—celebrated as it was for power, tenderness, and manly sincerity—was prevailingly too dark or too crashing. He articulated a certain range of thoughts and intoned a certain range of feelings with superb correctness and force. Still, his voice wanted a clarity and a bolted solidity corresponding with its sombreness and its smashing violence. That is to say, while it wonderfully expressed the ordinary contents of understanding and passion, it relatively failed in delivering the contents of intellectualized imagination and sentiment. His voice was astonishing in volume of power, tearing fury of articulation, long-drawn cadences of solemnity and affectional sweetness, but it was deficient in light graceful play, brilliancy, concentrated and echoing sonority. For the absolute perfection often claimed in its behalf its crashing gutturality needed supplementing with that Italian quality of transparent, round, elastic, ringing precision which delivers the words on the silent air like crystal balls on black velvet.

The everlasting refrain in the cry of the weak or snarling critics of Forrest was that he overdid everything,—striding, screeching, howling, tearing passions to tatters, disregarding the sacred bounds of propriety. That there was an apparent modicum of justice in this charge must be admitted. And yet when all the truth is seen the admission makes but a very small abatement from his merit. There is a comparatively raw elemental language of human nature, such as is seen in the sneer, the growl, the hiss, the grinding of the teeth, muscular contortion, which is progressively restrained, sifted out and left behind with the advance of polished dignity and refinement. In his impersonations Forrest unquestionably retained more of this than is tolerated by the standard of courtly fashion. His democratic soul despised courtly fashion and paid its homage only at the shrine of native universal manhood. But, on the other hand, it is unquestionable that these vigorous expressions were perfectly in accordance with truth and nature as represented in men of such exceptional strength and intensity as he and the types of character he best loved to portray. He gave extraordinarily vigorous expression to an extraordinarily wide gamut of passion because he sincerely felt it, and thus nature informed his art with it. He did not in cold blood overstep truth for effect, but he earnestly set forth the truth as he conceived and felt it. With the mould and furnishing given by his physique and soul for the great rôles he essayed, efforts were easy and moderate which pale and feeble spindlings might well find extravagant or shocking. The fault clearly is more theirs than his. Power, sincerity, earnestness, are always respectable except to the envious. His total career is proof enough how profound and conscientious and popularly effective his sincerity, earnestness, and power were. But he must needs run the scathing gauntlet which all bold originality has to run. It is the same in all the arts. Nine-tenths of the current criticism is worthless and contemptible, because ignorant or corrupt. Beethoven was ridiculed as a madman and a bungler, Rossini sneered at as a shallow trickster, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi denounced as impostors, and Wagner systematically scouted as an insufferable charlatan. As Lewes says, “The effort to create a new form is deprecated, and a patient hearing denied. Repeat the old forms, and the critics denounce the want of originality. Present new forms, and the critics, deprived of their standards, denounce the heresy. It remains with the public to discover real genius in the artist, and it does so by its genuine response to his work.”

In reply to the accusation of overdoing a character by excessive force of demonstration, Forrest might fairly have asked his critics, Overdone for whom? For Boythorn or for Skimpole? For Coriolanus or for Launcelot Gobbo? For Spartacus or for a dry-goods clerk? The precision with which he conceived each of his leading characters, the patience with which he elaborated all its elements into a consistent unity, the thoroughness with which he assimilated it into his soul and identified himself with it, and the unfaltering coherency and bold relief with which he enacted it, carefully observing every condition of perspective and light and shade and relative emphasis, placed his chief rôles among the most complete specimens of the dramatic art in their way. And they forced from his own generation the almost universal acknowledgment of his solitary pre-eminence on the American stage. An anonymous writer justly said of him in 1855, “An actor of the most positive qualities, decisive in discrimination, pronounced in every attitude and phase, his embodiments have sharp and stern definition. Therefore they challenge with double force the most searching criticism, and invite while they defy the sneers of less bold and more artificial schools. His delineations are not mere cartoons, where the faults, like the virtues, are elusive and shadowy. They are pictures finished with unmistakable color, sharp expression of form, and a single, unerring meaning. Their simplicity is such that if not grand they would be shallow commonplace: just as it is but a step from Doric majesty to unrelieved and squat ugliness. A modern school of actors is perplexing itself to get rid of demonstration on the stage, to avoid scrupulously what is called ‘a scene,’ to express passion by silent and gentlemanly bitterness, to reduce all emotion to bloodless and suppressed propriety. Love is to be made a morbid gnawing; anger clipped as close as hypocrisy; jealousy corrode, but never bubble; joy be trim and well behaved; and madness violent only at rare intervals. Not of such stuff as this are made the Virginius, the Lear, the Metamora, and the Hamlet of Forrest. It is not in his nature to polish passion until, like a sentence too much refined, it loses all that is striking and natural. His anger is not conveyed off like electricity by invisible agents. His moods are construed in his audience by instinct, not by analysis. The moment he touches an emotional key a major chord is struck that rings out clear and piercing and brings back an echo equally distinct.”

The “London Times” said of the Metamora of Forrest, “It is a most accurate delineation of Indian character. There is the awkward bluntness that even approaches the comic and raises a laugh when it defies; and there is, rising from behind this, the awful sense of right that makes the Indian respected as a wronged man. The dull deportment which petrifies the figurative language that flows lazily from the lips, and the hurricane of passion that rages beneath it, are the two elements of the character, and the manner in which they are combined by Mr. Forrest renders his Metamora a most remarkable performance.” In contrast with the foregoing fairness of statement the following specimen of base and insolent ridicule is a literary curiosity:

“The Metamora of Mr. Forrest is as much like a gorilla as an Indian, and in fact more like a dignified monkey than a man. It has not the face of a man, nor the voice nor the gait of a man. Du Chaillu’s description of the gorilla would apply equally well to Forrest’s Metamora. We are told by that celebrated traveller that upon the approach of an enemy this ferocious baboon, standing upright on his hind legs, his eyes dilated, his teeth gritting and grinding, gives vent to divers snorts and grunts, and then, beating his breast fiercely with his hands till it sounds like a muffled drum, utters a loud roar. What a singular coincidence! The similarity need scarcely be pointed out. Substitute the words ‘great tragedian’ for ‘ferocious baboon,’ omit the word ‘hind,’ and you have as accurate a description of Mr. Forrest in Metamora as any reasonable man could wish. The snorting, gritting, and especially the beating of the breast and roaring, are so familiar to us, that we could almost imagine that the tragedian and the traveller have met.”

One more example of the kind of “criticism” too common in the American press will suffice:

“Can any man or woman who has paid a dollar to see Mr. Forrest in any of his great characters recall any evidence in real life to substantiate his assertions that such bellowing is natural? Did anybody ever see anybody that looked as Mr. Forrest looks when he pretends to be representing the passions of rage, hate, remorse? If Mr. Forrest ‘holds the mirror up to nature,’ he first carefully scrawls over the face certain hideous etchings, with only a small portion of surface here and there left open for reflection. His Othello is a creature to be kicked, instead of feared or loved, if met with in actual life. Is it credible that any one was ever actually moved or interested in witnessing one of this actor’s tedious and absurd performances?”

Ample reply to these brutal inquiries is afforded by the rapt silence, the copious tears, and the all-shaking plaudits of the unprecedented crowds, drawn for so long a series of years in every part of the country by the magnetic impersonations which have secured him the first illustrious place in the history of his country’s stage. But two or three individual anecdotes possess interest enough to warrant their preservation here.

While he was enacting the part of Iago to the Othello of Edmund Kean in Albany one night, a stalwart canal-boatman was seated in the pit, so near the stage that he rested his elbow on it close to the footlights. Iago, in the scene where he had wrought so fearfully on the jealousy of the Moor, crossed the stage near the boatman, and, as he passed, the man looked savagely at him and hissed through his teeth while grinding them together, “You damned lying scoundrel, I would like to get hold of you after this show is over and wring your infernal neck!” When they met in the dressing-room, Kean generously said to Forrest, “Young man, if my acting to-night had received as high a compliment as that brawny fellow in the pit bestowed on yours I should feel very proud. You made the mimic show real to him, and I will tell you your acting merited the criticism.”

Mr. Rees recalls among his interesting reminiscences an incident of which he was a witness in New Orleans. Forrest was delivering the curse in Lear with his wonted fierce and overwhelming vehemence. Mr. Rees heard a strange sound proceeding from some one beside him, and, turning, found, to his alarm, an elderly gentleman with his eyes fixed, his mouth open, and a deathly paleness overspreading his face. Seizing him by the shoulders and giving him a sudden jerk, he caused a reaction of the blood. The gentleman gasped, heaved a deep sigh, and gazed around like one awaking from a troubled sleep. The awful curse so awfully uttered, which had taken away his breath, seemed still ringing in his ears. “One moment more and I should have been a dead man,” he said. And, looking towards the vacant stage, he asked, “Is that terrible old man gone?”

Hazlitt tells the traditional story that once when Garrick was acting Lear the crown of straw which he wore was discomposed or fell off, which happening to any common actor would have caused a burst of laughter; but with him not the slightest notice was taken of the accident, but the attention of the audience remained riveted. The same thing actually befell Forrest, and gave the most astonishing proof of his absorbed earnestness and magnetizing power. It was in the old Broadway Theatre, near Anthony Street. He was performing Lear, with Barry, Davidge, Conway, Whiting, Madame Ponisi, Mrs. Abbott, and other favorites in the cast. In the last scene of the second act, when depicting the frenzy of the aged monarch, whose brain, maddened by injuries, was reeling on its throne, in the excitement of the moment Forrest tore the wig of whitened hair from his head and hurled it some twenty feet towards the footlights. The wig thus removed, there was revealed to the audience a head of glossy raven locks, forming a singular contrast to the hoary beard still fastened by a white cord to the actor’s chin. Not the least embarrassment resulted either to actor or to spectators. Amidst the vast assembly not a titter was heard, scarce a smile discerned. Enchained, entranced by the power of the player, two thousand breathless spectators gazed with bedimmed eyes on the mimic scene. Nor made he any pause or hesitation. Still did that superb voice, so rich and grand in melody and compass, speak forth in anguish and wrath the indignant denunciation of the outraged king and father, making every heart tremble with his tones. One of the actors on the stage at the time, in describing the event more than twenty years afterwards, said that as he recalled the effect produced by Forrest in that scene on the house, and on the players about him, it seemed something superhuman.

In the tragedy of Cleopatra, by Marmontel, an asp had been made so natural that it seemed alive. As it approached the queen its eyes sparkled like fire, and it began to hiss. At the close of the scene one asked a critic who sat by him how he liked the play. He replied, “I am of the same opinion as the asp.” This is the case with the average sort of critic, whose commonplace inferiority of soul seeks to revenge itself, whose vanity or complacency seeks to exalt itself, by a demeaning estimate of every artist of whom he writes. But, fortunately, there are numerous instances of a nobler style, men equally just and generous, who in all their judgments hold individual prejudices in abeyance, and, actuated solely by public spirit and love of truth and of art, follow the guidance not of whim or interest, but of general principles, as exemplified in the great fixed types of character and modified in their dialect variations. One writer of this kind has admirably said,—

“Every actor has some particular excellence, which stamps his style in everything he does. This in Forrest is the ever visible manliness of spirit, and love of equality and liberty, which place his Damon, Spartacus, Brutus, and all characters of a like nature so far above the reach of other actors. He is always the true man, casting defiance in the face of tyranny; his hand always open to the grasp of a friend, resolute, generous, and faithful. This spirit is something which every true heart, be its owner rich or poor, learned or unlearned, will always acknowledge and worship as the noblest attribute of man; and here is the real secret of Forrest’s success. The unlettered cannot but admire him for this feature, while to those who can appreciate artistic finish and detail, his acting must be an inexhaustible source of pleasure. After he has gone the stage will feel his worth. Who has not wept over the last act of Brutus? Who has not felt his ‘seated heart knock at his ribs’ while listening to the tragedian’s astonishing delivery in the third act of Damon and Pythias? Who that has ever heard him exclaim in the last act of the Gladiator, ‘There are no gods in heaven!’ can accuse him of being coarse or vulgar? Indeed, it may be said of his acting in many characters (as a Shaksperian commentator has said of Lear), ‘The genius of antiquity bows before it, and moderns gaze upon it with awe.’”

The strong proclivity of professional artists to jealousy is as proverbial as the tendency of the critic to attack and belittle. Forrest suffered much from both. His imperious independence, not less than his great success, provoked it, and he was maligned, spattered, and backbitten sufficiently from the stage as well as from the office. If in this respect he was an exception, it was merely in degree. The mortified and envious actors of Drury Lane discussing Kean in the greenroom, one of them sneeringly remarked, “They say he is a good harlequin.” “Yes,” retorted honest Jack Bannister, “an extraordinary one; for he has leaped over all your heads.” But the other side of this view was also true, and Forrest numbered his most enthusiastic admirers in the dramatic profession itself in all its ranks. They paid him many tributes from first to last, on which he justly set the highest value. For when the player is intelligent and candid, his special experience makes him the most competent critic of a player. The extent to which the peculiar style of Forrest took effect in producing imitators, conscious and unconscious,—who often, it is true, unhappily, copied his least praiseworthy points,—was a vast and unquestionable testimonial to his original power. And in here leaving the subject of criticism, it is enough, passing over the recorded praises of his genius by many leading American actors, to set down the deliberate estimate of James E. Murdock, himself a player of uncommon merit, as well as a man of refined scholarly culture. Some one had made a degrading allusion to Forrest, when Murdock replied, “Never had I been able to find a fitting illustration of the massive and powerful acting of Forrest until, on a visit to Rome some years ago, I stood before the mighty works of Michael Angelo,—his Last Judgment, his gigantic Moses. Call it exaggerated if you will. But there it is, beautiful in symmetry, impressive in proportions, sublime in majesty. Such was Edwin Forrest when representing the chosen characters of Shakspeare.” The illustration was as exact as the spirit that prompted it was generous. It indicates precisely the central attribute of the subject. For the powerful and reposeful port, the elemental poise and swing of the colossal figures of Angelo, reveal just what the histrionic pose and bearing of Forrest revealed, namely, the preponderance in him of the universal over the individual, the working of the forces of nature rather than the straining of his will. This is what makes a personality memorable, for it is contagious on others, and so invisibly descends the ages.

CHAPTER XV.
PERSONAL AND DOMESTIC LIFE.—FONTHILL CASTLE.—JEALOUSY.—DIVORCE.—LAWSUITS.—TRAGEDIES OF LOVE IN HUMAN LIFE AND IN THE DRAMATIC ART.

Forrest was now in his forty-fourth year, as magnificent a specimen of manhood perhaps as there was on the continent. His strength, vitality, fulness of functional power, and confronting fearlessness of soul before the course of nature and the faces of men, were so complete as to give him a chronic sense of complacency and luxury in the mere feeling of existence endowed with so much ability to do whatever he wished to do.

Despite a few annoying drawbacks his cup of outward prosperity too was full. It is true his fancy had been somewhat disenchanted and his temper embittered by experiences of meanness, ingratitude, and worthlessness, the envy and rancor of rivals, the shallowness and malignity of the multitude, and especially by a lasting soreness created in his heart from his late English trip and its unhappy sequel. It is also true that this evil influence had been negatively increased by the loss of the wise and benign restraint and inspiration given him during their lives by the devoted friendship of Leggett and the guardian love of his mother. Still, he had an earnest, democratic sympathy with the masses of men and a deep pride in their admiration. His popularity was unbounded. His rank in his art was acknowledged on the part of his professional brethren by his election as the first President of the Dramatic Fund Association, a society to whose exchequer he contributed the proceeds of an annual benefit for many years. He had fought his way with strenuous vigor through many hardships of orphanage, poverty, defective education, and a fearful furnace of temptations. And his reputation in every respect was without stain or shadow. This was certified by all sorts of public testimonials, the offers of political office and honor, the studied eulogies of the most cultivated and eloquent civilians, the smiling favors of the loveliest women in the land, the shouts of the crowd, and the golden filling of his coffers. His large earnings were invested with rare sagacity, his sound financial judgment and skill always enabling him to reap a good harvest wherever he tilled his fortune. He was at this time already worth two or three hundred thousand dollars. And this, in an age of Mammon, is a pledge to society of high deserts and a hostage for good behavior.

But above all he was signally blessed in his married life, the point in a character like his by far the most central and vital of all. The first ten years of his state of wedlock had indeed been happy beyond the ordinary portion of mortals. It was a well-mated match, he a noble statue of strength, she a melting picture of beauty, mutually proud and fond of each other, his native honesty and imperious will met by her polished refinement and conciliatory sweetness. Beyond all doubt he deeply and passionately loved her. And well he might, for his nature was one greatly endowed in all points for impassioned love, and she was in person, disposition, and accomplishments equally adapted to awaken it. “She was perfection,” said one, in allusion to her bridal landing in America; “the most beautiful vision I ever saw.” After the death of Forrest she herself said, “The first ten years of our married life were a season of contentment and happiness, scarcely ruffled by so much as a summer flaw; then bickering began, followed by deeper misunderstanding, and the fatal result drew on, which I have always deplored.” Yet even in these halcyon years, too short and too few, there was one thing wanting to finished household felicity. This one want was children, the eternal charm of the passing ages of humanity. Of the four pathetic creatures born to them, but one lived, and that only for a few months. Abandoning the hope of heirs to his name and fortune, and foreseeing that his estate was destined to be a large one, Forrest, with the long anticipation characteristic of a reflective mind, bethought him what disposal he had best make of his acquisitions when he should be forced to relinquish them in death. He settled upon a purpose combining elements of romance, beneficence, and imposing permanence, which showed him possessed of qualities above the vulgar average of men.

He bought an extensive tract of land on the banks of the Hudson, about sixteen miles from New York, on a site commanding one of the most enchanting prospects in the world. Here he proposed to erect a building to be called Fonthill Castle, somewhat after the fashion of the old ruined structures on the banks of the Rhine, whose beauty should gratify his taste, whose conveniences should secure his household comfort, whose historic and poetic suggestiveness should please his countrymen passing up and down the river, and whose final object should be an enduring memorial of his love for his profession and of his compassion for its less fortunate members. The building of a house is an epoch of great interest in the lives of many men. This was especially so in the life of Forrest. In a chiselled orifice of the corner-stone of Fonthill Castle he placed specimens of the American coinage, a copy of Shakspeare, and the following paper,—marred only by its betrayal of that prejudice against foreigners which was so unworthy of his own nature and of his nationality:

“In building this house, I am impelled by no vain desire to occupy a grand mansion for the gratification of self-love; but my object is to build a desirable, spacious, and comfortable abode for myself and my wife, to serve us during our natural lives, and at our death to endow the building with a sufficient yearly income, so that a certain number of decayed or superannuated actors and actresses of American birth (all foreigners to be strictly excluded) may inhabit the mansion and enjoy the grounds thereunto belonging, so long as they live; and at the death of any one of the actors or actresses inhabiting the premises, his or her place to be supplied by another from the theatrical profession, who, from age or infirmity, may be found unable to obtain a livelihood upon the stage. The rules and regulations by which this institution is to be governed will, at some future day, be framed by

“Edwin Forrest.”

To this charity he meant to devote his whole property forever. As the estate grew in value an American Dramatic School was to be added to it, lectures delivered, practical training imparted, and native histrionic authors encouraged. It was estimated that in fifty years the rich acres surrounding the Castle would be a part of New York, and that the rise of value would make the bequest at last one of the noblest known in any age.

Fonthill Castle was built of gray silicious granite of extraordinary hardness and fine grain, hammer-dressed and pointed with gray cement. The building consists of six octagon towers clumped together, the battlements of some notched with embrasures, the others capped with corniced coping. The highest tower rises about seventy feet from the base, the centre tower, the main tower, the library tower, the drawing-room tower, and the dining-room tower being of proportioned heights. The basement contains the kitchen, cellar, and store-rooms. On the next floor are the parlor, banquet-hall, study, boudoir, and library. The centre tower comprises a hall or rotunda, and above this a picture-gallery lighted from the dome. The upper rooms are divided into chambers for guests and apartments for servants. The staircase tower has a spiral staircase of granite inserted in a solid brick column, rising from the basement to the top of the tower, with landings on each floor leading to the chief apartments. The architectural design was understood to be chiefly the work of Mrs. Forrest, with modifications by him. It combined the Norman and Gothic styles, softened in detail so as to embrace some of the luxuries of modern improvements. For instance, the drawing-room and banqueting-room are lighted with deep, square, bay-windows, while those of the upper chambers and of the boudoir are of the Gothic order. In other portions of the edifice are to be seen the rounded windows of the Norman period, with their solid stone mullions dividing the compartments again into pointed Gothic. Loop-holes and buttresses give the structure the military air of a fortified castle. There are two entrances, one on the water side, one on the land side. From the summit of the staircase tower one sees up the river as far as Sing Sing and down to Staten Island. On the opposite shore frowns the wall of the Palisades. On the north lie Yonkers, Hastings, Nyack, the lovely inlet of Tappan Zee, and the cottages of Piermont, glistening like white shells on the distant beach.

During the progress of the building Forrest had improvised a rude residence on the grounds, which he constantly visited, growing ever more deeply attached to the place and to his enterprise. In this romantic spot, one Fourth of July, he gathered his neighbors and friends, to the number of some two or three hundreds, and held a celebration,—reading the Declaration of Independence and delivering an oration, followed by the distributing of refreshments under waving flags and amidst booming guns. It was a brilliant and joyous affair,—a sort of initial, and, as it proved, farewell, dedication of the scene with commingled friendly and patriotic associations. For in its opening stages of suspicion and distress the domestic tragedy had already begun which was destined to make the enchantments of Fonthill so painful to him that he would withdraw from it forever, sell it to a Catholic sisterhood for a conventual school, and take up his final abode in the city of his birth.

In the spring of 1848 Forrest was fulfilling a professional engagement in Cincinnati, and his wife was with him. One day, on entering his room at the hotel unexpectedly, he saw Mrs. Forrest standing between the knees of George W. Jamieson, an actor of low moral character, whose hands were upon her person. Jamieson at once left the room. Forrest was greatly excited, but the protestations of his wife soothed his angry suspicion, and he overlooked the affair as a mere matter of indiscreetness of manners. Still, the incident was not wholly forgotten. And some months later, after their return home, certain trifling circumstances came under his observation which again made him feel uneasy. On opening a drawer in which his wife kept her papers, he found, addressed to her, the following letter, worn and rumpled, and in the handwriting of this Jamieson:

“And now, sweetest Consuelo, our brief dream is over; and such a dream! Have we not known real bliss? Have we not realized what poets love to set up as an ideal state, giving full license to their imagination, scarcely believing in its reality? Have we not experienced the truth that ecstasy is not a fiction? I have; and, as I will not permit myself to doubt you, am certain you have. And oh! what an additional delight to think,—no, to know, that I have made some hours happy to you! Yes, and that remembrance of me may lighten the heavy time of many an hour to come. Yes, our little dream of great account is over; reality stares us in the face. Let us peruse its features. Look with me and read as I do, and you will find our dream is ‘not all a dream.’ Can reality take from us, when she separates and exiles us from each other,—can she divide our souls, our spirits? Can slander’s tongue or rumor’s trumpet summon us to a parley with ourselves, where, to doubt each other, we should hold a council? No! no! a doubt of thee can no more find harbor in my brain than the opened rose shall cease to be the hum-bird’s harbor. And as my heart and soul are in your possession, examine them, and you will find no text from which to discourse a doubt of me. But you have told me (and oh! what music did your words create upon my grateful ear) that you would not doubt me. With these considerations, dearest, our separation, though painful, will not be unendurable; and if a sombre hour should intrude itself upon you, banish it by knowing there is one who is whispering to himself, Consuelo.

“There is another potent reason why you should be happy,—that is, having been the means of another’s happiness; for I am happy, and, with you to remember and the blissful anticipation of seeing you again, shall remain so. I wish I could tell you my happiness. I cannot. No words have been yet invented that could convey an idea of the depth of that passion, composed of pride, admiration, awe, gratitude, veneration, and love, without being earthy, that I feel for you.

“Be happy, dearest; write to me and tell me you are happy. Think of the time when we shall meet again; believe that I shall do my utmost to be worthy of your love; and now God bless you a thousand times, my own, my heart’s altar.

“I would say more, but must stow away my shreds and tinsel patches. Ugh! how hideous they look after thinking of you!

“Adieu! adieu! and when thou’rt gone,

My joy shall be made up alone

Of calling back, with fancy’s charm,

Those halcyon hours when in my arm

Clasped Consuelo.

“Adieu! adieu! be thine each joy

That earth can yield without alloy,

Shall be the earnest constant prayer

Of him who in his heart shall wear

But Consuelo.

“Adieu! adieu! when next we meet,

Will not all sadness then retreat,

And yield the conquered time to bliss,

And seal the triumph with a kiss?

Say, Consuelo.”

On reading this missive, as might well be supposed, Forrest was struck to the heart with surprise, grief, and rage. To one of his ample experience of the world it seemed to leave no doubt of an utter lapse from the marriage-vow on the part of its recipient. He was heard rapidly pacing the floor of his library until long after midnight, when his wife arrived from a party and a violent scene of accusation and denial occurred. He wrote an oath, couched in the most stringent and solemn terms, which she signed, swearing that she was innocent of any criminal infringement of her marital obligations. He was quieted, but not satisfied. On questioning the servants as to the scenes and course of conduct in his house during his absences, and employing such other methods of inquiry as did not involve publicity, he learned a variety of facts which confirmed his fear and resulted in a fixed belief that his wife had been unfaithful to him. Many a jealous husband has entertained a similar belief on insufficient and on erroneous grounds. He, too, may have done so. All that justice requires to be affirmed here is the assertion that he was himself firmly convinced, whether on adequate or inadequate evidence, that he had been grossly wronged, and he acted on that conviction in good faith. The pretence that he had tired of his marriage, longed to be free, and devised false charges in order to compass his purpose, is a pure slander, without truth or reason. And as to the theory of the distinguished counsel against him, namely, that he found himself by the building of Fonthill Castle involved in a financial ruin that would disgrace him and change its name to Forrest’s Folly, and so, as the easiest way out, he deliberately “determined to have a quarrel with his wife for some private cause not to be explained, and then to assign the breaking up of his family as the reason for relinquishing his rural residence,”—it is not only the flimsiest of fancies, but a perfect absurdity in face of the facts, and an infamous outrage on the helpless memory of the dead. Could a woman of the mind, spirit, position, and with the friends of Mrs. Forrest be expected meekly to submit to such a fiendish sacrifice? How does such a thought seem in the light of the first letters of the parties in the controversy? The supposition, too, is inconceivably contradictory to the character of Forrest, who, however rough, violent, or furious he may sometimes have been, was not a man of cruel injustice or selfish malignity, was never a sneaking liar and hypocrite. Furthermore, no financial difficulty existed; since the fortune of Forrest at that time was about three hundred thousand dollars, and his direct earnings from his professional labor some thirty thousand a year. Fonthiil cost him all told less than a hundred thousand, and on separating from his wife, in addition to carrying the load of Fonthiil for six years longer, the residence which he purchased and occupied in Philadelphia was worth nearly as much more, and, besides paying out over two hundred thousand dollars in his divorce lawsuits, his wealth was steadily swelling all the time.

After the intense personal hostility and indomitable professional zeal and persistency with which Charles O’Conor pushed the cause of his fair client, in eight years securing five repetitions of judgment, heaping up the expenses for the defendant, as he says, “with the peculiar effect of compound interest,” he should not have penned so unfounded and terrible an accusation. The man who could sacrifice the honor and happiness of his wife with the motive and in the manner O’Conor attributes to Forrest must be the most loathsome of scoundrels. But in the very paper in which the great illustrious lawyer presents this theory he says, “Mr. Forrest possessed great talents, and, unless his conduct in that controversy be made a subject of censure, he has no blemish on his name.” The innocence of Mrs. Forrest is publicly accredited, and is not here impugned. But history abundantly shows that her husband’s affirmation of her guilt does not prove him to have been a wilful monster. His suspicion was naturally aroused, and, though it may have been mistaken, naturally culminated, under the circumstances accompanying its course, in an assured conviction of its justice.

In his proud, sensitive, and tenacious mind, recoiling with all its fibres from the fancied wrong and shame, the poison of the Consuelo letter worked like a deadly drug, burning and mining all within. By day or by night he could not forget it. The full experience of jealousy, as so many poor wretches in every age have felt it, gnawed and tore him. He who had so often enacted the passion now had to suffer it in its dire reality. For more than a year he kept his dark secret in silence, not saying a word even to his dearest friends, secluding himself much of the time, brooding morbidly over his pent-up misery. Now he learned to probe in their deepest significance the words of his great Master,—

“But oh, what damned minutes tells he o’er

Who dotes yet doubts, suspects yet strongly loves!”

The evidence of the love he had for his wife and of the agony his jealousy caused him is abundant. His letters to her are tender and effusive. Such extracts as these are a specimen of them: “I am quite tired of this wandering, and every hour I wish myself again with you. God bless you, my dearest Kate, and believe me wholly yours.” “This is a warm, bright, beautiful day, and I am sitting at an open window in the Eutaw House; and while I write there is above me a clear, blue, cloudless sky,—just such a day as I yearn to have with you at Fonthill.” “I saw Mr. Mackay to-day. He spoke of you in terms of unmitigated praise, and said you were every way worthy of my most devoted affection. Of course he made conquest of my whole heart. I do love to hear you praised, and value it most highly when, as in the present instance, it is the spontaneous offering of the candid and the good.” “Your two letters have been received, and I thank you, my dearest Kate, for your kind attentions in writing to me so often. Indeed, your messages are always welcome.” “I seem quite lonely without you, and even in this short absence have often wished you were here. But the three weeks will pass away, and then we shall see each other again.” Many witnesses in the trial testified to the happy domestic life of the couple, their devoted attentions and confiding tenderness up to the time of their dissension. And that the change which then occurred was as secretly painful as it was publicly marked is beyond doubt. He appeared no longer on the stage, but shunned society, even shrank from his friends, wore a gloomy and absorbed air, and brooded in solitude. The following verses—as unjust as they are severe, for jealousy is always more or less insane, a morbid fixture displacing the freedom of the mind—reflecting his feelings were found after his death, in his handwriting, copied into one of his scrap-books at the date of the divorce trial:

Away from my heart, for thy spirit is vain

As the meanest of insects that flutter in air;

I have broken the bonds of our union in twain,

For the spots of deceit and of falsehood are there.

The woman who still in the day-dawn of youth

Can hold out her hand to the kisses of all,

Whose tongue is polluted by guile and untruth,

Doth justify man when he breaks from her thrall.

But think not I hate thee; my heart is too high

To prey on the spoil of so abject a foe;

I deem thee unworthy a curse or a sigh,

For pity too base, and for vengeance too low.

Then away, unregretted, unhonored thy name,

In my moments of scorn recollected alone,—

Soon others shall wake to behold thee the same

As I have beheld thee, and thou shalt be known.

When at last he spoke reservedly on the subject to his confidential friend, he said he had begun life a very poor boy, had struggled hard to reach a pinnacle, and it now seemed severe to be struck down from all his happiness by one individual, and that one the woman whom he had loved the most of all on earth. And when the listener to whom he spoke replied with praises of the physical and spiritual beauty of Mrs. Forrest, he exclaimed, “She now looks ugly to me: her face is black and hideous.” This friend, Lawson, wrote these words at the time: “I am persuaded that both parties are still warmly attached to one another. He, judging by his looks, has suffered deeply, and has grown ten years older during the last few months. She is not less affected.”

At length a natural but unfortunate incident carried their alienation to the point of a violent and final rupture. In indignant reply to some cutting remarks on her sister, Mrs. Forrest inconsiderately said to her husband, “It is a lie!” If there was one point on which he had always been proudly scrupulous, as every friend would testify, it was that of being a man of the uttermost straightforward veracity, whatever might betide. The words, “It is a lie!” fell into his irascible blood like drops of molten iron. He restrained himself, and said, “If a man had said that to me he should die. I cannot live with a woman who says it.” From that moment separation was inevitable and irrevocable.

A little later they agreed to part, mutually pledging themselves not to allow the cause to be made known. Before leaving his house she asked him to give her a copy of the works of Shakspeare as a memento of him. He did so, writing in it, “Mrs. Edwin Forrest, from Edwin Forrest,” a sad alteration from the inscription uniformly made in the books he had before presented to her, “From her lover and husband, Edwin Forrest.” Taking her in a carriage, with a large portrait of himself at the most glorious height of his physical life, he accompanied her to the house of her generous friends, Parke and Fanny Godwin, whose steadfast fidelity had caused them to offer her an asylum in this trying hour. Parting from each other silently at that hospitable door, the gulf of pain between them was henceforth without a bridge. Slow months passed on, various causes of irritation still at work, when the following letter, which explains itself, was written:

“I am compelled to address you, by reports and rumors that reach me from every side, and which a due respect for my own character compels me not to disregard. You cannot forget that before we parted you obtained from me a solemn pledge that I would say nothing of the guilty cause; the guilt alone on your part, not on mine, which led to our separation; you cannot forget that, at the same time, you also pledged yourself to a like silence, a silence that I supposed you would be glad to have preserved; but I understand from various sources, and in ways that cannot deceive me, that you have repeatedly disregarded that promise, and are constantly assigning false reasons for our separation, and making statements in regard to it intended and calculated to exonerate yourself and to throw the whole blame on me, and necessarily to alienate from me the respect and attachment of the friends I have left to me. Is this a fitting return for the kindness I have ever shown you? Is this your gratitude to one who, though aware of your guilt and most deeply wronged, has endeavored to shield you from the scorn and contempt of the world? The evidence of your guilt, you know, is in my possession; I took that evidence from among your papers, and I have your own acknowledgment by whom it was written, and that the infamous letter was addressed to you. You know, as well as I do, that the cause of my leaving you was the conviction of your infidelity. I have said enough to make the object of this letter apparent; I am content that the past shall remain in silence, but I do not intend, nor will I permit, that either you, or any one connected with you, shall ascribe our separation to my misconduct.

“I desire you, therefore, to let me know at once, whether you have by your own assertions, or by sanctioning those of others, endeavored to throw the blame of our miserable position on me. My future conduct will depend on your reply.

“Once yours,

“Edwin Forrest.”

To this the writer received immediate response:

“I hasten to answer the letter Mr. Stevens has just left with me, with the utmost alacrity, as it affords me, at least, the melancholy satisfaction of correcting misstatements, and of assuring you that the various rumors and reports which have reached you are false.

“You say that you have been told that I am ‘constantly assigning false reasons for our separation, and making statements in regard to it intended and calculated to exonerate myself and throw the whole blame on you;’ this I beg most distinctly to state is utterly untrue.

“I have, when asked the cause of our sad differences, invariably replied that was a matter only known to ourselves, and which would never be explained, and I neither acknowledge the right of the world, nor our most intimate friends, to question our conduct in this affair.

“You say, ‘I desire you, therefore, to let me know at once, whether you have by your own assertions, or by sanctioning those of others, endeavored to throw the blame of our miserable position on me.’ I most solemnly assert that I have never done so, directly or indirectly, nor has any one connected with me ever made such assertions with my knowledge, nor have I ever permitted any one to speak of you in my presence with censure or disrespect. I am glad you have enabled me to reply directly to yourself concerning this, as it must be evident to you that we are both in a position to be misrepresented to each other; but I cannot help adding that the tone of your letter wounds me deeply: a few months ago you would not have written thus. But in this neither do I blame you, but those who have for their own motives poisoned your mind against me; this is surely an unnecessary addition to my sufferings, but while I suffer I feel the strong conviction that some day, perhaps one so distant that it may no longer be possible for us to meet on this earth, your own naturally noble and just mind will do me justice, and that you will believe in the affection which, for twelve years, has never swerved from you. I cannot, nor would I, subscribe myself other than,

“Yours now and ever,

“Catharine N. Forrest.”

The above letter was succeeded five days later by another:

“In replying to the letter I received from you on Monday last, I confined myself to an answer to the questions you therein ask me; for inasmuch as you said you were content that the past should remain in silence, and as I was myself unwilling to revive any subject of dispute between us, I passed over the harsh and new accusations contained in your letter; but on reading and weighing it carefully, as I have done since, I fear that my silence would be construed into an implied assent to those accusations. After your repeated assurances to me prior to our separation, and to others since then, of your conviction that there had been nothing criminal on my part, I am pained that you should have been persuaded to use such language to me. You know as well as I do that there has been nothing in my conduct to justify those gross and unexpected charges, and I cannot think why you should now seem to consider a foolish and anonymous letter as an evidence of guilt, never before having thought so, unless you have ulterior views, and seek to found some grounds on this for divorce. If this be your object, it could be more easily, not to say more generously, obtained. I repeatedly told you that if a divorce would make you happy, I was willing to go out of this State with you to obtain it, and that at any future time my promise to this effect would hold good. You said such was not your wish, and that we needed no court of law to decide our future position for us. From the time you proposed our separation, I used no remonstrance, save to implore you to weigh the matter seriously, and be sure, before you decided, that such a step would make you happy; you said it would, and to conduce as much as lay in my power to that happiness, was my only aim and employment until the day you took me from my home. Of my own desolate and prospectless future I scarcely dared to think or speak to you, but once you said that if any one dared to cast an imputation on me, not consistent with honor, I should call on you to defend me. That you should, therefore, now write and speak as you do, I can only impute to your yielding to the suggestions of those who, under the garb of friendship, are daring to interfere between us; but it is not in their power to know whether your happiness will be insured by endeavoring to work my utter ruin. I cannot believe it, and implore you, Edwin, for God’s sake, to trust to your own better judgment; and, as I am certain that your heart will tell you I could not seek to injure you, so likewise I am sure your future will not be brighter if you succeed in crushing me more completely, in casting disgrace upon one who has known no higher pride than the right of calling herself your wife.

“Catharine N. Forrest.”

To this Forrest replied thus:

“I answer your letter dated the 29th and received by me on the 31st ult., solely to prevent my silence being misunderstood. Mr. Godwin has told me that the tardy reply to the most material part of mine of the 24th was sent by his advice. I should indeed think from its whole tone and character that it was written under instructions. I do not desire to use harsh epithets or severe language to you; it can do no good. But you compel me to say that all the important parts of yours are utterly untrue. It is utterly untrue that the accusations I now bring against you are ‘new.’ It is utterly untrue that since the discovery of that infamous letter, which you callously call ‘foolish,’ I have ever, in any way, expressed my belief of your freedom from guilt. I could not have done so, and you know that I have not done it. But I cannot carry on a correspondence of this kind; I have no desire to injure or to crush you; the fatal wrong has been done to me, and I only wish to put a final termination to a state of things which has destroyed my peace of mind, and which is wearing out my life.

“Edwin Forrest.”

The next step in the tragedy was the filing of an application for divorce by Forrest in Philadelphia, instantly counterchecked by a similar application on the part of Mrs. Forrest in New York. He was led to his suit because, in his own words, “unwilling to submit to calumnies industriously circulated by my enemies that I had unmanfully wronged an innocent woman, the only choice open to me was either to assert my rectitude before the tribunals of my country or endure throughout life a weight of reproach which I trust my entire life proves undeserved.” Her obvious motive in the counter-suit was the instinctive impulse and the deliberate determination to protect herself from remediless disgrace and utter social ostracism. No woman with her spirit, and with the host of friends which she had in the most honored walk of the community, could willingly accept the fearful penalty of letting such a case go by default, whether she were innocent or guilty. To those who held her innocent, as the best people did, her attitude appealed to every chivalrous sentiment of admiration and sympathy; but to him who believed her guilty, as her husband did, it presented every motive to aggravate anger and resentment. The inevitable consequences resulted, and a prolonged struggle ensued, which was a desperate fight for moral existence. The miserable details need not be specified. As the combat thickened, the deeper grew the passions on each side, and the more damaging the charges and alleged disclosures. The hostile championship likewise became intenser and wider. The trial, with the incrimination of adultery and the recrimination of the same offence, began in December, 1851, and reached through six weeks. No trial of the kind in this country had ever awakened so eager and extended an interest. The evidence and arguments were minutely reproduced in the press, sold by wholesale in every corner of the land, and devoured by unnumbered thousands with every sort of scandalous gossip and comment. The completed report of the trial fills two enormous volumes of more than twelve hundred pages each. The lady gained much for her cause by her strict propriety of language, her elegant deportment, the unequalled ability and passionate zeal of her counsel, and the exalted character of her large circle of influential and unfaltering friends. The man lost as much for his cause by the partisan prejudices against him, by the imprudences of his more reckless friends, and especially by the repelling violence and coarseness of expression and demeanor to which in his exasperated state he was too often tempted. Abundant examples have already been furnished in these pages of his scholarly taste, intellectual dignity, moral refinement and strength. Justice to the truth requires the frank admission that there was also in him a rude and harsh element, a streak of uncivilized bluntness or barbaric honesty of impulse, shocking to people of conventional politeness. These people did him injustice by chiefly seeing this cruder feature in his character, for it was quite a subordinate part of his genuine nature. But it is only fair to give specimens of the level to which it not unfrequently sank him in social appearance. In his eyes observance of external seemings was nothing in comparison with sincerity to internal realities. After his separation, but before his divorce, meeting his wife in the street, she said he kept her there walking up and down for over two hours in a pouring rain, hearing and replying to him, neither of them having an umbrella. At this same period watching one night to see who entered or left his house, in which his wife was still residing, though alone, a man named Raymond came out. The following intelligible dialogue immediately took place, as sworn to in court by Raymond himself. “Why are you sneaking away like a guilty man?” “Edwin Forrest, you have waylaid me by night with a bludgeon. You want a pretence for attacking me, and I shall not give it you.” “Bludgeon! I don’t want a bludgeon to kill you. Damn you, I can choke you to death with my hands. But you are not the man I am after now. If I catch that damned villain I’ll rip his liver out. I’ll cut his damned throat at the door. You may go this time, damn you. But I have marked you, all of you, and I’ll have vengeance.” This style of speech, as laughable as it is repulsive, and which really marked not at all the extent but merely the limitation of his culture, greatly injured him, alloying alike his worth, his peace, and his success. In one instance alone, however, did his violence of temper carry him beyond discourteous and furious speech to illegal action. Meeting in Central Park Mr. N. P. Willis, whom he regarded as one of the chief fomenters of his domestic trouble, he inflicted severe personal chastisement on him. The sufferer prosecuted his assailant, and secured a verdict with damages of one dollar. Forrest brought a suit against Willis for libel, and gained a verdict with five hundred dollars damages.

In the divorce case a somewhat unexpected judgment was decreed against Forrest, acquitting his wife and condemning him to pay costs and three thousand dollars a year for alimony. He appealed, and was defeated, with an added thousand dollars a year alimony. Five times he appealed, carrying his case from court to court, and every time was baffled and thrown. And it actually was not until 1868, after eighteen years of unrelenting litigation,—years filled with irritation, acrimony, and every species of annoyance, settling in many instances into a lodged hatred,—that he finally abandoned further resistance and paid over the full award. Sixty-four thousand dollars came to Mrs. Forrest, of which sum the various expenses swallowed fifty-nine thousand, leaving the pittance of five thousand,—an edifying example of the beauty of legal controversies.

The writer is unwilling in any way to enter between the now long and forever separated disputants or to go behind the rendering of the court. The defendant is dead, and only requires for justice’s sake the assertion that he believed himself to have been wronged, and that he acted on that belief with the unforgivingness belonging to him. The plaintiff has suffered fearfully enough for any imprudence or error, was believed by her intimate and most honored friends to be innocent, was vindicated by a jury after a most searching trial, and is now living in modest and blameless retirement. She has a right to the benefit of her acquittal, and shall be left unassailed to that unseen Tribunal which alone is as just and merciful as it is infallible.

The verdict of the jury was hailed with acclamations by one party, with amazement and derision by the other. Rumors and charges of perjury, fraud, and corruption were rife, and many a character suffered badly, while the end left the contestants pretty much where the beginning found them, with the exception of the bad passion, costs, and anguish that lay between. They had been hoisted into a public pillory in the face of the whole country, subjected to all kinds of odious remarks, the very sanctities of their being defiled and profaned by the miscellaneous gawking and commenting of the prurient crowd. Besides all this long strain on his feelings and huge drain on his purse, Forrest had the angry grief of seeing large numbers of his most cherished friends fall away from him to the side of his antagonist, never to be spoken to again. And then he had the mortification of defeat amidst the cheers and jeers of his foes, who combined to honor the victorious lawyer to whom at every step he owed his repulses with a brilliant banquet and a service of plate, including a massive silver pitcher bearing the inscription, “From God the conquering champion cometh!” He was just the kind of man to feel these things most keenly. No wonder the unsuccessful warfare and its shameful close stung his pride, envenomed his resentment, darkened his life, and left on him rather a permanent wound than a scar. But, sure of the rightfulness of his cause, his self-respect and his faith in ultimate justice for the iniquity he felt had been done him enabled him to bear up with defiant fortitude. And he was far from being unsustained without, numerous as were the familiar associates who deserted him. Whenever he appeared in public the same enthusiastic multitudes as of old greeted him with an even wilder admiration. Many a voice and pen were lifted to defend and applaud him, while many attacked him. The tributes in the newspapers more than equalled the denunciations. Two examples in verse will show the estimate of him and his cause formed by close acquaintances:

TO EDWIN FORREST.

Thou noble and unflinching one,

Who stoodst the test so firm and true;

Doubt not, though clouds may hide the sun,

The eye of truth shall pierce them through.

Heed not the sneer and heartless mirth

Of those whose black hearts cannot know

The sterling honesty and worth

Of him at whom they aim the blow.

Thy peace is wrecked—thy heart is riven—

By her so late thy joy and pride,

And thou a homeless wanderer driven

Upon the world’s tumultuous tide.

Yet doubt not, for amid the throng

There’s many a heart beats warm and high

For him who cannot brook a wrong,

Whose noble soul disdains a lie.

Then hail, Columbia’s gifted son,

Pride of our glorious Drama, hail!

Thou deeply wronged and injured one,

Let not thy hope or courage fail.

Though perjury seek thy name to blight,

And venomed tongues with envy rail,

The truth, in all its lustre bright,

’Gainst heartless fops shall yet prevail.

M. C.

TO EDWIN FORREST.

May I, in this gay masquerade of thought,

When crowds will seek thee,

With gay devices curiously wrought,

And love-words greet thee,

Bestow the offering of an earnest soul,

Though it be vain

As to Niagara’s eternal roll

The drops of summer rain!

A thought of thee dwells ever in my heart

And haunts my brain,

And tears unbidden to mine eyelids start

Whene’er I hear thy name.

Yet ’tis no love-thought,—no impassioned dream

Of wild unrest

Quickening my pulses when with earnest beam

Thine eyes upon me rest.

But something deeper, holier far than this,—

A mournful thought

Of all the sorrow and the loneliness

With which thy life is fraught,—

Of thy great, noble heart, so rudely torn

From the deep trust of years,—

Of the proud laurels which thy brow has worn,

Dim with the rust of tears;

Of wrongs and treachery in the princely home

Thy genius earned;

Thy hearth made desolate, thy pathway lone,

Thy heart’s deep worship spurned;

Thy manly prayer for justice coldly met

With mocking jeers,

The seal of exile on thy forehead set

For all thy coming years.

Most deeply injured! yet unshaken still

Amid the storm,

Thy soul leans calmly on its own high will

And waits the coming morn.

And all pure hearts are with thee, and beat high

To know at last

The world will scan thee with unbiassed eye,

Revoking all the past.

Celia.

A fortnight after the close of the trial, Forrest began a new engagement at the Broadway Theatre.

One of the leading journals of the day said, “The return of Mr. Forrest to the stage, from which he has been so long self-exiled, will form the most interesting feature in the dramatic season. There have been many, though we have not been of the number, who have thought he would never reappear on the boards after the unwarrantable treatment he received at the hands of the maliciously and ignorantly prejudiced. Mr. Forrest, however, has justly relied upon the spirit of fair play which characterizes the American people. Let all men be fairly judged before they are condemned, and especially those who, like him, have long and manfully withstood such a ‘downright violence and storm of fortune’ as would have overwhelmed most men, and whose careers have added to the lustre of their country’s history. We believe that he will never have cause to say, like Wolsey,—

‘I shall fall

Like a bright exhalation in the evening,

And no man see me more!’

but that he who has so long

‘Trod the ways of glory,

And sounded all the depths and shoals of honor,

Will find a way, out of his wreck, to rise in.’

“All men have their faults, and envy makes those of the great as prominent as possible.

‘Men’s evil manners live in brass; their virtues

We write in water.’

“Much to their ignominy, the assailants of Forrest have never given him credit for those high-minded and disinterested acts of generosity which those who know him best can never recall without admiration, and which, when his history is written, will leave little comfort to his maligners, professional or otherwise. We wish for him a delighted welcome back to the stage, and a complete deliverance from the toils in which his enemies have sought to destroy him.”

The house was packed to its extremest capacity, and hundreds clamored in the streets. An inscription was hung across the parquet, “This is the people’s verdict!” As he entered on his ever favorite roll of Damon, the audience rose en masse, and greeted him with waving hats, handkerchiefs, and scarfs, and long, deafening plaudits, which shook the building from dome to foundation. In matchless solidity of port he stood before the frenzied tempest of humanity, and bowed his acknowledgments slowly, as when Zeus nods and all Olympus shakes. A shower of bouquets entwined with small American flags fell at his feet. He addressed the assembly thus, constantly interrupted with cheers:

“Ladies and Gentlemen,—After the unparalleled verdict which you have rendered me here to-night, you will not doubt that I consider this the proudest moment of my life. And yet it is a moment not unmingled with sadness. Instinctively I ask myself the question, Why is this vast assemblage here to-night, composed as it is of the intelligent, the high-minded, the right-minded, and last, though not least, the beautiful of the Empire City? Is it because a favorite actor appears in a favorite character? No, the actor and the performances are as familiar to you as household words. Why, then, this unusual ferment? It is because you have come to express your irrepressible sympathy for one whom you know to be a deeply-injured man. Nay, more, you are here with a higher and a holier purpose,—to vindicate the principle of even-handed justice. I do not propose to examine the proceedings of the late unhappy trial; those proceedings are now before you, and before the world, and you can judge as rightly of them as I can. I have no desire to instruct you in the verdict you shall render. The issue of that trial will yet be before the court, and I shall patiently await the judgment of that court, be it what it may. In the mean while I submit my cause to you; my cause, did I say?—no, not ‘my’ cause alone, but yours, the cause of every man in this community, the cause of every human being, the cause of every honest wife, the cause of every virtuous woman, the cause of every one who cherishes a home and the pure spirit which should abide there. Ladies and gentlemen, I submit my cause to a tribunal uncorrupt and incorruptible; I submit it to the sober second-thought of the people. A little while since, and I thought my pathway of life was filled with thorns; you have this night strewed it with roses (looking at the bouquets at his feet). Their perfume is gratifying to the senses, and I am grateful for your beautiful and fragrant offering.”

The success of the entire engagement was unprecedentedly brilliant. Called before the curtain at the close of the final performance, he said,—

“Ladies and Gentlemen,—This is the sixty-ninth night of an engagement which, take it all in all, has, I believe, no parallel in the history of the stage. It is without parallel in its duration, it is without parallel in the amount of its labors, and it is without parallel in its success. For sixty-nine almost successive nights, in despite of a season more inclement than any I ever remember, the tide of popular favor has flowed, like the Pontic Sea, without feeling a retiring ebb. For sixty-nine nights I have been called, by your acclamations, to the spot where I now stand to receive the generous plaudits of your hands, and I may say hands with hearts in them. No popular assembly, in my opinion, utters the public voice with more freedom and with more truth than the assembly usually convened within the walls of a theatre. If this be so, I have reason to be greatly proud of the demonstration which for twelve successive weeks has greeted me here. Such a demonstration any man ought to be proud of. Such a demonstration eloquently vindicates the thought of the great poet:

‘Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, though ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.’

Such a demonstration speaks more eloquently to the heart than any words. Such a demonstration contains in it an unmistakable moral. Such a demonstration vindicates me more than a thousand verdicts, for it springs from those who make and unmake judges.”

But despite the flattering applause of the multitude, added to the support of his own conscience, and notwithstanding his abounding health and strength and enhancing riches, from the date of his separation and desire for divorce the dominant tone of the life of Forrest was changed. His demeanor had a more forbidding aspect, his disposition a sterner tinge, his faith in human nature less genial expansion, his joy in existence less spontaneous exuberance. The circle of his friends was greatly contracted, a certain irritable soreness was fixed in his sensibility, he shrank more strongly than ever from miscellaneous society, and seemed to be more asserting or protecting himself cloaked in an appearance of reserve and gloom. In fact, the excitement and suffering he had gone through in connection with his domestic unhappiness gave his whole nature a fearful wrench, and deposited some permanent settlings of acridity and suspicion. The world of human life never again wore to him the smiling aspect it had so often worn before. His sense of justice had been wounded, his heart cut, his confidence thrown back, and his rebelling will was constrained to resist and to defy.

And why all this strife and pain? Why all this bitter unyielding opposition and writhing agony under what was and is and will be? Wherefore not quietly accept the inevitable with magnanimous gentleness and wisdom, and, without anger or fuss or regret, conform his conduct to the best conditions for serenity of soul and wholesomeness of heart, in contentment with self and charity for all? Why not rather have suppressed wrath, avoided dispute, foregone retaliation, parted in peace if part they must, and, each uncomplained of and uninterfered with by the other, passed freely on in the strangely-checkered pathways of the world, to test the good of life and the mystery of death and the everlasting divineness of Providence? How much more auspicious such a course would have been than to be so convulsed with tormenting passions and strike to and fro in furious contention! Yes, why did they not either forgive and forget and renew their loving covenant, or else silently divide in kindness and liberty without one hostile deed or thought? Thus they would have consulted their truest dignity and interest. But, alas! in these infinitely delicate, inflammable, and explosive affairs of sentiment, dignity and interest are usually trampled contemptuously under foot by passion.

Every one acts and reacts in accordance with his style and grade of character, his degrees of loyalty or enslavement to the different standards of action prevailing around him. A man held fast in a certain low or mediocre stage of spiritual evolution will naturally conduct himself in any trying emergency in a very different manner from one who has reached a transcendent height of emancipation, spontaneity, and nobleness. And there were two clear reasons why Forrest, in this most critical passage of his life, did not behave purely in the best and grandest way, but with a mixture of the vulgar method and the better one. First, he had not attained that degree of self-detachment which would make it possible for him to act under exciting circumstances calmly in the light of universal principles. He could not disentangle the prejudiced fibres of his consciousness from the personality long and closely associated with his own so as to treat her with impartiality and wisdom, regarding her as an independent personality rather than as a merged part of his own. He must still continue related to her by personal passion of some kind, when one passion died an opposite one springing up in its place. And, secondly, he could not in this matter free himself, although in many other matters he did remarkably free himself, from the tyranny of what is called public opinion. He had in this instance an extreme sensitiveness as to what would be thought of him and said of him in case his conduct openly deviated much from the average social usage. Thus his personal passions, mixed up in his imagination with every reference to the woman he had adored but now abominated, incapacitated him from acting consistently throughout with disinterested delicacy and forbearance, though these qualities were not wanting in the earlier stages of the difficulty before he had become so far inflamed and committed.

Speculation is often easy and practice hard. One may lightly hold as a theory that which when brought home in private experience gives a terrible shock and is repelled with horror and loathing. Both Forrest and his wife had reflected much on what is now attracting so much attention under the title of the Social question. They both entertained bold, enlightened views on the subject, as clearly appears from a remarkable letter written from Chicago, in 1848, by Mrs. Forrest in reply to one from James Lawson. A comprehensive extract, followed by a few suggestions on the general lessons of the subject, particularly as connected with the dramatic art, shall close this unwelcome yet indispensable chapter of the biography.

“It is impossible, my dear friend, that the wonderful change which has taken place in men’s minds within the last ten years can have escaped the notice of so acute an observer as you are; and if you have read the works which the great men of Europe have given us within that time, you have found they all tend to illustrate the great principle of progress, and to show at the same time that for man to attain the high position for which he is by nature fitted, woman must keep pace with him. Man cannot be free if woman be a slave. You say, ‘The rights of woman, whether as maid or wife, and all those notions, I utterly abhor.’ I do not quite understand what you here mean by the rights of woman. You cannot mean that she has none. The poorest and most abject thing of earth has some rights. But if you mean the right to outrage the laws of nature, by running out of her own sphere and seeking to place herself in a position for which she is unfitted, then I perfectly agree with you. At the same time, woman has as high a mission to perform in this world as man has; and he never can hold his place in the ranks of progression and improvement who seeks to degrade woman to a mere domestic animal. Nature intended her for his companion, and him for hers; and without the respect which places her socially and intellectually on the same platform, his love for her personally is an insult.

“Again, you say, ‘A man loves her as much for her very dependence on him as for her beauty or loveliness.’ (Intellect snugly put out of the question.) This remark from you astonished me so much that I submitted the question at once to Forrest, who instantly agreed with me that for once our good friend was decidedly wrong. (Pardon the heresy, I only say for once.) What! do you value the love of a woman who only clings to you because she cannot do without your support? Why, this is what in nursery days we used to call ‘cupboard love,’ and value accordingly. Depend upon it, as a general rule, there would be fewer family jars if each were pecuniarily independent of the other. With regard to mutual confidence, I perfectly agree with you that it should exist; but for this there must be mutual sympathy; the relative position of man and wife must be that of companions,—not mastery on one side and dependence on the other. Again, you say, ‘A wife, if she blame her husband for seeking after new fancies, should examine her own heart, and see if she find not in some measure justification for him.’ Truly, my dear friend, I think so too (when we do agree, our unanimity is wonderful); and if after that self-examination she finds the fault is hers, she should amend it; but if she finds on reflection that her whole course has been one of devotion and affection for him, she must even let matters take their course, and rest assured, if he be a man of appreciative mind, his affection for her will return. This is rather a degrading position; but a true woman has pride in self-sacrifice. In any case, I do not think a woman should blame a man for indulging in fancies. I think we discussed this once before, and that I then said, as I do now, that he is to blame when these fancies are degrading, or for an unworthy object; the last words I mean not to apply morally, but intellectually. A sensible woman, who loves her husband in the true spirit of love, without selfishness, desires to see him happy, and rejoices in his elevation. She would grieve that he should give the world cause to talk, or in any way risk the loss of that respect due to both himself and her; but she would infinitely rather that he should indulge ‘new fancies’ (I quote you) than lead an unhappy life of self-denial and unrest, feeling each day the weight of his chains become more irksome, making him in fact a living lie. This is what society demands of us. In our present state we cannot openly brave its laws; but it is a despotism which cannot exist forever; and in the mean time those whose minds soar above common prejudice can, if such be united, do much to make their present state endurable. It is a fearful thing to think of the numbers who, after a brief acquaintance, during which they can form no estimate of each other’s characters, swear solemnly to love each other while they ‘on this earth do dwell.’ Men and women boldly make this vow, as though they could by the magic of these few words enchain forever every feeling and passion of their nature. It is absurd. No man can do so; and society, as though it had made a compact with the devil to make man commit more sins than his nature would otherwise prompt, says, ‘Now you are fairly in the trap, seek to get out, and we cast you off forever,—you and your helpless children.’ Man never was made to endure even such a yoke as unwise governments have sought to lay on him; how much more galling, then, must be that which seeks to bind the noblest feelings and affections of his nature, and makes him—

‘So, with one chained friend, perhaps a jealous foe,

The dreariest and the longest journey go.’

“That there is any necessity to insure, by any means, a woman’s happiness, is a proposition you do not seem to have entertained while writing your letter of May 24th; but perhaps we are supposed to be happy under all circumstances.”

There is for man and woman on this earth one supreme happiness, one contenting fulfilment of destiny, whether there are more or not. It is a pure, calm, holy, and impassioned love, joining them in one life, filling both soul and body with a peaceful and rapturous harmony, glorifying the scenery of nature by its reflection, making the current of daily experience a stream of prophetic bliss, revealing to them authentic glimpses of God in each other, and opening eternity to their faith with mystic suggestions of worlds bygone and worlds to come, lives already led and forgotten and lives yet to be welcomed. This is the one absolute blessing, without whose appeasing and sufficing seal the human creature pines for he knows not what, and dies unsatisfied, no matter how much else is granted him. Any one to whom this divine fortune falls, and whose conscience, instead of wearing it proudly as a crown of glory in the sight of God, shrinks with it guiltily before the sight of men, is a contemptible coward, unworthy of the boon, and sure to forfeit it. As the most original thinker, the boldest diver into the mysteries of our nature, America has produced, expresses it,—

“The sense of the world is short,

Long and various the report,

To love and be beloved.

Men and gods have not outlearned it,

And how oft soe’er they’ve turned it,

’Tis not to be improved.”

Thousands, enslaved by the conventional, distracted by the external, absorbed in the trivial, may be ignorant of the incomparable importance of the truth here expressed, care nothing about it, and give themselves up to selfish ambitions and contemptible materialities. This must be so, since the blind cannot see; and even the seeing eye sees in an object only what it brings the means of seeing; and the marvellous heights and depths of experience are fatally locked from the inexperienced. Nevertheless, the truth above affirmed survives its overlooking by the unworthy, and every man and woman gifted with profound insight and sensibility knows it and feels it beyond everything else. The great multitudes of society also have at least dim glimpses of it, strange presentiments of it, blind intuitions awakening a strong and incessant curiosity in that direction. This is the secret cause of the universal interest felt in the subject of love and in every instance of its transcendent experience or exemplification. One of the most central functions of art—whether written romance, painting, sculpture, music, or the drama—is directly or indirectly to celebrate this truth by giving it concentrated and relieved expression, and thus inciting the contemplators to aspire after their own highest bliss. To those whose emotions are rich and quick enough to interpret them, what are the finest songs of the composers but sighings for the fulfilment of affection, or raptures in its fruition, or wailings over its loss? With what unrivalled power Rubens, in his fearful pictures of love and war, has uncovered to the competent spectator the horrible tragedy all through history of the intimate association of lust and murder, libidinous passion and death! And pre-eminently the stage, in all its forms,—tragic, comic, and operatic,—has ever found, and always will find, its most fascinating employment and crowning mission in the open display—published to those who have the keys to read it, veiled from all who have not—of the varied bewitchments, evasions, agonies, and ecstasies of the passion of love between the sexes. That is the most effective actor or actress whose gamut of emotional being and experience, real and ideal, is greatest, and whose training gives completest command of the apparatus of expression, making the organism a living series of revelations, setting before the audience in visible play, in the most precise and intense manner, the working of love, in all its kinds and degrees, through the language of its occult signals. The competent actor shows to the competent gazer the exact rank and quality of the love actuating him by the adjustment of his behavior to it,—every look and tone, every changing rate and quality in the rhythm of his motions, every part of his body which leads or dominates in his bearing, whether head, shoulder, chest, elbow, hand, abdomen, hip, knee, or foot, having its determinate significance. Thus people are taught to discern grades of character through styles of manners, inspired to admire the noble and loathe the base at the same time that they are deepened in their own desires for the divine prizes of beauty and joy.

The most wholesome and triumphant art of the stage has always taught in its personifying revelation that the highest blessedness of human life is the perfect attunement of the natures of man and woman in a perfect love around which nature thrills and over which God smiles. No diviner lesson ever has been or ever will be taught on this earth. All other fruitions here are but preliminaries to this, all sacrifices penances for its failure, all diseases and crimes the fruit of its violation.

In contrast with this glorious proper fulfilment of affection, wherever we look on the history of our race we find six great chronic tragedies which dramatic art has portrayed perhaps even more fully than it has the positive triumph itself.

First, is the tragedy of the indifferent heart which neither receives nor gives nor possesses love. Thin and sour natures, frivolous, dry, cynical, or hard and arrogant,—the enchanted charms and mysteries of nature and humanity have no existence for them. They sit aloof and sneer, or plot and struggle and get money and win office, or eat and drink and joke and sleep and perish,—the amazing horrors and the entrancing delights of experience equally sealed books to them. They may attain incidental trifles, but, with their poor, shrivelled, loveless hearts, not attaining that for which man most was made, to the sorrowing gaze of nobler natures their earthly lot is a tragedy.

Secondly, is the pathetic tragedy of being loved without the power to return it. Coquetry, which has strewn its way everywhere with ravaged and trampled prizes, reverses this, and without sympathy or principle seeks to elicit and attract affection merely to pamper vanity and gratify an obscene love of power; and this too is a tragedy, but one of a fiendish import. The other is a sad and painful experience, yet with something of an angelic touch in it. It seems to hint at a great dislocation somewhere in the past of our race, causing this plaintive discord of conjoined but jarring souls, whose incongruous rhythms can never blend though in juxtaposition, like an ill-matched span whose paces will not coincide but still hobble and interfere. To be the recipient of a great absorbing love which one is absolutely unable to reciprocate is to any one of generous sympathies a keen sorrow. Sometimes too it is a sharp and wearing annoyance. And yet it is not infrequent, both out of wedlock and in it. There are limits alike of adaptation and of misadaptation to awaken love; and we can never have any more love than we awaken or give any more than is awakened in us. There are fatalities in these relations wholly beyond the reach of the will. When two persons are married whose characters, culture, and fitnesses place them on such different levels that they can meet only by a laborious ascent on one side or a distasteful descent on the other, where the ideal life of one is constantly hurt and baffled and flung in on itself from every attempt at genial fellowship, any high degree of love is hopeless. The conjunction is a yoke, not a partnership. Respect, gratitude, pity, service, almost every quality except love, may be earned. But love comes, if it come at all, spontaneously, in answer to the native signals which evoke it. In vain do we strive to love one not suited to us nor fitted for us; and a sensitive spirit forced to receive the affectionate manifestations of such a one is often sorely tried when seemingly bound to appear blessed.

The same considerations apply with double weight and poignancy to the third and larger class of tragedies of affection, namely, those who love where they are not acceptable and cannot win a return. Piteous indeed is the lot, touching the sight, of one humbly offering his worship, patiently continuing every tender care and service at a shrine which, despite every effort to change or disguise its insuperable repugnance, must still feel repugnant. And then, furthermore, there is the anguish of the homage welcomed at first and toyed with, but soon betrayed and cast away. The pangs of jilted love are proverbial, and the experience is one of the commonest as it is one of the cruellest in the world. Broken hearts, blasted lives, early deaths, terrible struggles of injured pride and sacred sentiment to conceal themselves and hold bravely up, caused by failures to secure the hand of the one devotedly beloved but idly entreated, are much more numerous than is imagined by the superficial humdrum world. They are in reality so numerous that if they were all known everybody not familiar with the poetic side and shyer recesses of human nature would be astonished. This forms a heavy item in the big statistics of human woe.

The examples contained under the head of the fourth tragedy are the experiences of those who are full of rich affections but find no congenial person on whom to bestow them or from whom to obtain a return. Accordingly, their real passions find only ideal vents in fervent longings and dreams, in music, prayer, and faith, or embodiment in industry and beneficence. Their unfulfilled affection thus either fortifies their being with the culture and good works it prompts, or opens an imaginative world into which they exhale away in romantic desires. A noble woman whose rare wealth and effusiveness of soul had not been happily bestowed, once said, with a sigh, to Thackeray, when they had been conversing of the extremes in the character of the great Swift, “I would gladly have suffered his brutality to have had his tenderness.” The remark pierces us with a keen and wide pain expanding to brood in pity over the vast tragedy of humanity pining unsatisfied in every age. Yes, exhalations of sinless and ardent desire, yearnings of beautiful and baffled passion, are wasted in the air, sufficient, if they were legitimately appropriated, to make the whole world a heaven. Ah, let us trust that they are not wasted after all, but that they enter into the air to make it warmer and sweeter for the breathing of the happier generations to come, when the earth shall be purely peopled with children begotten by pairs all whose rhythms correspond, and who love the individuality of self in one another not less because they love the universality of God in one another more.

The fifth tragedy in the history of human affection consists of the instances of those who have been blessed with an adequate love rounded and fulfilled on both sides, but who have ceased to possess it longer, except in its results. They have in some cases outgrown and wearied of their objects, in others been outgrown and wearied of, in others still been parted by death. These examples likewise are tragic each in its way, but less melancholy on the whole than the others. These have had fruition, have, once at least, lived. The memory is divine. If they are worthy, it enriches and sanctifies their characters, and, in its treasures of influence, remains to be transferred from its exclusive concentration on one and freely poured forth on humanity, nature, and God. It then prepares its possessor for that immortal future of which it is itself an upholding prophecy. And so every deep and tender nature must feel with the poet that it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

But the sixth tragedy of love is the most lacerating and merciless of the whole, and that is the tragedy of jealousy. This dire passion played the most ravaging part in the domestic life of Forrest, and his enactment of it in the rôle of Othello held the highest rank in his professional career. It has also exercised a most extensive and awful sway in the entire history of the human race up to this moment. The relative place and function of the dramatic and lyric stage cannot be appreciated without a full appreciation of this hydra passion, the green-eyed monster that makes the meat it feeds on.

Even of its victims few clearly understand the ingredients and essence of jealousy. In the catalogue of the passions it is the impurest, the insanest, and the most murderous. Every composition whose elements blend in harmony is pure. Earth is pure and honey is pure, but a mixture of earth and honey is impure. So in moral subjects. Loyalty is pure, being consonantly composed of reverence and obedience; conscious disloyalty is impure, being inconsonantly composed of a perception of rightful authority and rebellious resistance to it. Now, no other passion is composed of such an intense and incongruous combination of intense opposites as jealousy. In it love and hate, esteem and scorn, trust and suspicion, hope and fear, joy and pain, swiftly alternate or discordantly mix and conflict. It is these meeting shocks of contradictory polarities repulsing or penetrating one another in the soul, rending and exploding in every direction in the consciousness of its victim, that make jealousy the maddest and most slaughterous because it is the most violently impure passion known to man. In every one of its forms, when strong enough, it is a begetter of murders, has been ever since the devil first peered on Adam and Eve embracing in Paradise, and will be until it is abolished by slowly-advancing disinterestedness. It is an appalling fact that the murders of wives by jealous husbands are tenfold greater in number than any other single class of murders. When we add to these the husbands murdered by their wives, and the despatched paramours on both sides, the wild and deadly raging of jealousy may be recognized in something of its frightful fury.

The cause of the greater prevalence of murder between the married is not far to seek. It is the weariness of an over-close and continual intimacy, with the wearing and goading irritations it engenders. It is the tyrannical assertion of the possession of one by the other as something owned and to be governed. This provokes the rebellious and revengeful instincts of a personality aching to be free; and the aggravated and ruminating desire is finally so nourished and stung as to burst into frenzied performance. And those ill-starred couples one of whose members violently destroys the life of the other are insignificant in number when compared with those who are slowly and stealthily murdered without the explicit consciousness of either party, by the gnawing shock and fret of discordant nerves, the steady grinding out of the very springs and sockets of the faculties by repressive contempt and hate and fear. A proud, sensitive woman may go into the presence of her husband an angel, and leave it a fiend, her amour-propre having been wounded in its sacredest part and filled with irrepressible resentment. Persons of genius, of absorbing devotion to an aim, are either more unhappy in wedlock or else more exquisitely blessed and blessing than others. They live largely in an ideal realm, on a ticklish level of self-respect, a height of consciousness vital to them. Socrates, Cicero, Dante, Milton, Chateaubriand, Byron, Bulwer, Kean, Talma, Thackeray, Dickens, are examples. A collision jars the statue off its pedestal. A tone of contempt or a look of indifference cuts like a dagger, tears the spiritual tissues of selfhood,—and the invisible blood of the soul follows, draining faith, love, life itself, away. The one vast secret of pleasing and living happily with high sensitive natures is sympathetic and deferential attention. Where this is not given, and there is sorrow and chafing, an intercourse which is ever a slow moral murder, and often inflamed into a swift physical murder, that liberty of divorce should be granted for which the chaste and noble Milton so long ago made his plea. Society should cease to say, Whom man has joined together let not God put asunder!

Having seen what the constituent elements of jealousy are, it now remains to probe its essence. What is jealousy in its substance and action? It is the appropriation of one person by another as a piece of property, and a spontaneous resentment and resistance to any assertion of its personality on its own part. The jealous man virtually says, “She belongs to me and not to herself. If she dares to alienate herself from me or give anything to anybody besides me, I will kill her.” The jealous woman says, “He is mine, and if he leaves me or smiles on another I will stab him and poison her.” This is the fell passion in its fiercest extreme of selfishness.

Viewed in another light it is less dreadful, though just as narrow and selfish. The lover has assimilated the beloved as a portion of his own being. His life seems bound up in her and dependent on her. Her withdrawal is a loss so impoverishing to his imagination that it threatens death. He feels that the dissolution of their unity will tear him asunder. Then jealousy is his instinct of self-preservation, rising in grief, pain and anger to repel or revenge an attack on the dearest part of his life. Still, in this form as in the previous it implies the subdual and suppression of one personality by another, and is the sure signal of a crude character and an imperfect development. The rich, generous nature, detached from himself, full of free affection, living directly on objects according to their worth, ready to react on every action according to its intrinsic claim, is not jealous. Liberty and magnanimity at home and abroad are the marks of the fully-ripened man. He knows his own personal sovereignty and abundant resources as a child of God and an heir of the universe, and frankly allows the equal personal sovereignty of each of his fellow-creatures. He claims and grants no imposition of will or slavish subserviency, but seeks only spontaneous companionship in affection. Mechanical conformity and hypocrisy can be compelled. Love, veiled in its divinity, comes and goes as it lists, and is everywhere the most authentic envoy of the Creator. Jealousy is mental slavery, spiritual poverty, the ravenous cry of affectional starvation, the blind, fallacious, desperate, murderous struggle of a frightened and famishing selfhood.

The conduct dictated by such a passion must be of the worst kind. It begins with a mean espionage and ends with a maniacal violence. Its relentless cruelty compels its objects to have recourse to the most unprincipled methods to avert its suspicion and avoid its wrath, sinking self-respect and honorable frankness in hypocrisy and fraud. Why is the word or even the oath of any man or woman in regard to a question of chastity or fidelity to the marriage vow almost universally considered perfectly worthless? It is because the penalties of dereliction on the part of woman are so intolerable, so much worse than death, that to secure escape from them the social conscience justifies means which the social code condemns. Accordingly, we see the highest personages, the greatest dignitaries and popular favorites, go into court and openly perjure themselves, while society cries bravo! The woman is so fearfully imperilled that for her rescue the fashionable standard of honor sustains deliberate perjury, the debauching of religious conscience on the very shrine of public authority.

This wicked social exculpation of the male and immolation of the female is a lingering accompaniment of the historic evolution of man, the survival in human civilization of the selfish instincts which in the lower ranks of the animal kingdom cause the stronger to drive away the weaker and monopolize the weakest. Among the most potent and fearless beasts the male, seeing any other male sportively inclined, is seized with a frenzy to kill him and appropriate the object. Animal man has the same instinct, and it has smeared the entire course of history with broad trails of blood and victimized womanhood by the double weapons of force and fear. The spectacle of the harem of one man with a thousand imprisoned women guarded by eunuchs tells the whole story. But surely when human beings, no longer remaining mere instinctive animals, become free personalities, lords of thought and sentiment, each with a separate individual responsibility distinctly conscious and immortal, they should govern themselves by spontaneous choice from within and not be coerced by an artificial terror applied from without.

The method in history of giving the strongest males possession of the females is no doubt the mode in which nature selects and exalts her breeds. But as society refines it will be seen that the strength of brute instinct, the strength of position, the strength of money, the strength of every artificial advantage, should be put aside in favor of the diviner strength of genius, goodness, beauty, moral and physical completeness of harmony. Freedom would secure this as compulsion prevents it. Man is destined to outgrow the destructive monopolizing passion of jealousy native to his animality. This is shown by his capacity for chivalry, which is a self-abnegating identification of his personality with the personalities of others, not merely freeing them from his will, but aiding them to secure their own happiness in their own way.

The effort to suppress free choice by the use of terror has been tried terribly enough and long enough. It has always proved an utter failure, viewed on any large scale. Has the awful penalty affixed to any deviation from the prescribed legal method of sexual relations wholly prevented such deviation? It has often led to concealment and duplicity,—two lives carried on at once, a life of demure conformity in public, a life of passionate fulfilment in secret. The well-understood sacrifice of truth to appearance has ever served to inflame the mistrust and swell the vengeance of the jealous. The only real remedy will be found in perfect truth, frankness, and justice. In regard to the personal autonomy of the affections, woman should be raised to the same status and be tried by the same code as man. That code should not be as now the legacy of the brutish and despotic past, but the achievement of a scientific morality, those laws of universal order which express the will of the Creator, the collective harmony of Nature. Since the unions of the sexes are of all grades and qualities, all degrees of impurity and beastliness or of purity and sacredness, the parties to them cannot be justly judged by a single rigid rule of external technicality, and ought not to be sealed with one unvarying approval of respectable or branded with one monotonous stigma of illicit. They should be judged by the varying facts in the case as they are in the sight of God; and when those facts are not known in their true merits there is no competency or right to judge the man or the woman at all. The present judgments of society unquestionably ought in many cases to be reversed. For example, it is to be said that the women who consort with men they loathe, and against their will breed children infected with ferocious passions and diseased tendencies, no matter how regularly they are married or how proud their social position, should be condemned or rescued. Also it is to be said that persons filled with a true and divine love, whether sanctioned or unsanctioned by conventional usages, claim to be left to the inherent moral reactions of their acts, and to the unprejudiced judgments of the competent. This central truth, compromise whom it may, and encompassed with delicacies and with difficulties as it may be, is to be firmly maintained, although Pecksniff and Grundy shriek at it until the whole continent quivers.

The distinction of love and freedom from lust and license is obvious, and the unleashing of the latter in the disguise of the former cannot be too vehemently deprecated. But that a man or a woman may cherish in the wedded state an impure and detestable passion, or outside of it know a heavenly one, is a truth which can be denied only by a character of odious vulgarity. The rank and worth of a love are to be estimated by its moral and religious quality in the sight of God and its natural influence on character. To estimate it otherwise, as is usually done, is to violate morality and religion with conventionality, and in place of nature, sincerity and truth install arbitrary artifice, hypocrisy and falsehood. The grand desiderata in all relationships of affection are, first, the observance of open truth and honor, second, the recognition of their varying grades of intrinsic nobleness and charm or intrinsic foulness and criminality, and the treatment of the parties to them accordingly. Meanwhile, the frank and clear discussion of the subject is imperatively needed. The double system hitherto in vogue of at once enforcing ignorance and stimulating prurience by banishing the subject from confessed attention and study into the two regions of shamefacedness and obscenity has wrought immeasurable evil. For the sexual passion, morbidly excited by nearly all the influences of society, and then mercilessly repressed by public opinion, has a morbid development which breaks out in those monstrous forms of vice which are the open sores of civilization. Take away the inflaming lures of mystery and denial—shed the clear, cold light of scientific knowledge on the facts of the case and the principles properly regulative of conduct—and the passion will gradually become moderate and wholesome. Science has brought region after region of human life under the light and guidance of its benign methods. The region of the personal affections in society and the procreation of posterity, being most obstinately held by passions and prejudices, longest resists the application of impartial, fearless study to the usages imposed by traditional authority. The consistent doing of this will be one of the greatest steps ever taken. It will break the historic superstition that the conjunction of a pair married in seeming by a priest is necessarily holier than that of a pair married in reality by God, destroy the stupid prejudice which makes in the affectional relations of the sexes only the one discrimination that they are in or out of wedlock, and remove the cruel social ban which renders it impossible for straightforward sincerity of affection and honesty of speech to escape the dishonor which double-facedness of passion and duplicity of word and deed so easily shoulder aside. And when this is done, much will have been done to inaugurate the better era for which the expectation of mankind waits.

The principal reason why the married so frequently experience satiety and weariness, and the consequent sting of a foreign hunger provocative of the wandering which gives occasion for jealousy, is that in their long and close familiarity the partners come to feel that they have seen all through and all around each other, have exhausted each other of all fresh charm, piquancy, and interest. The genuine remedy for this, the only really adequate and enduring remedy, is the recognition in each other of the infinite mystery of all conscious being, a free personality on endless probation and destined for immortal adventures. Then each will be to the other—what every human being intrinsically is—a concentrated epitome of the Kosmos and an explicit revelation of God. There is no revelation of the free conscious God except in the free conscious creature, and in every such being there is one. Let a pair be worthy to see and feel this truth, and there can be no exhaustion of their mutual interest, because before their reverential observation there can be no end to the surprises of the infinite in the finite. Then the sweetness, the wonder, the varying lure of love will never wither and die into indifference, nor roil and perturb into jealousy and madness.

No doubt to many these views will seem a transcendental romance, a delusive dream. Not every one has the nature finely touched to fine issues capable of living in the ether of these ideal heights. But there are on the earth holy and entranced souls who live there. It is obvious enough how absurdly inapplicable all this class of considerations must be to the basest kinds of persons, those who, like brutes, wallow in styes of sensuality, or, like devils, surrender themselves to the tyranny of the lowest passions. Such must needs be relegated to an inferior standard. Those whose consciences are coarser and lower than the code of society may most properly be held in subjection by its laws. But those whose consciences are purer and higher than the current social code, the nobler natures who sincerely aspire to the fulfilment of their destiny as children of God, should be a law unto themselves. They will not be tyrants over or spies upon one another. Full of self-respect and mutual respect, owning the indefeasible sovereignty of each personality in the offices of its individual being, they will pass and repass shrouded in transparent royalty, exacting no subjection, making no inquiries.

And now this long and central chapter in the life of Forrest, with the essential lessons it has for others, may be ended by a brief statement of the moral scale of degrees in the conduct of different men under the provoking conditions of jealousy.

One man detects the woman to whom he is legally united, but whom he hates and loathes, in criminal relations with another. He takes an axe, chops them in pieces, then sets the house on fire, and, cutting his own throat, falls into the flames. In other cases his insane fury satiates itself with a single victim, the man or the woman, as caprice dictates. This is crazy ferocity, making its subject first a maniac, then a tiger, then a devil. Has not humanity by its smothered approval too long kept the diabolical horror of this style of behavior recrudescent?

Another mournful and shocking form of this tragedy there is. And it is a form repeated far more frequently in its essential features than ever comes to the open light of day. A man of a sombre, vivid, and proud nature, possessed with a passion so absorbing that it sways his being with tidal power, awakens to the fact that the love he thought all his own has wandered elsewhere. His heart stands still and his brain reels. His love is too true and deep to change. To injure her is as impossible as to restrain himself. He says not a word, makes not a sign, but his sad, dark purpose is fixed. He leaves directions that no questions be asked, no public notice taken of him or of his fate further than the most modest funeral, and that a plain stone be reared over him with the single word, Infelicissimus. Then a pistol-ball in his heart closes the throbbing of an agony too great to be borne. The suicide is the pathetic slave of his passion. Surely for such there must be a sequel in some choicer world, where the tangled plot will be cleared up and the soul not be thus helplessly self-entangled.

In the third case, a husband, receiving proof of the infidelity of his honored and trusted wife, in a furious revulsion of scorn and detestation thrusts her into the street, proclaims her offence everywhere, and seeks release and redress in a public court. This is one form of the average of social feeling and conduct in such a case. It is the common spirit of revenge cloaked in justice. It may not be thought base, but it cannot be called noble.

In still another example the jealous man is now enraged and now distressed with conflicting impulses to revenge and to pardon. First he storms and threatens, then he weeps and entreats; now, he strides up and down, tearing his hair, crying and sobbing; and now he rushes out and confides his misery, begging for sympathy and counsel. And whether he condones or dismisses the offender depends on her own policy. This course, ruled by no principle, is a mess of incoherent impulse, raw and childish, a manner of proceeding of which, although it is so common, any grown-up and well-conditioned man should be ashamed.

In the next instance we see the man, on learning his misfortune in losing the exclusive affection of her whom alone he has loved, staggered by the blow, smitten to the heart with grief, flung upon himself in recoiling anguish. But, to shield her from disgrace, and to avoid shame to himself and scandal to the public, he keeps the secret sacredly; ending, however, all marriage intimacy, their lives henceforth a mere contiguity of ice and gloom until death. This is another expression of the average level of men and style of social feeling, not lower, not much higher, than might be expected.

A greatly superior example, finer and braver, comparatively rare, perhaps, yet with a larger list of performers than many would suppose, is where the fault is frankly confessed and freely forgiven, just as other faults are, or the deed justified and accepted on the ground of an integral affection and an approving conscience willing with courageous openness to take every consequence. There is valor, dignity, consistency, force of character in this. It is impossible for persons of low animal instincts or where there is treachery and lying.

But the highest degree of chivalry under such circumstances is that exemplified by the man who, cleansed from the foul and cruel usages of the past, freed from the taints of the tyrannical masculine selfhood, does what man has so rarely done, but what multitudes of women have often done. He shows a love so pure and exalted that it subordinates his selfhood and blends his happiness in that of the beloved object. For her well-being he is willing to stand aside and yield up every claim. Is such generosity beyond the limit of human nature? It may be beyond the limit of historic human nature, trailing the penalties of the past. It is not beyond the limit of prophetic human nature, carrying the purposes of God.

No doubt some barrier at present is necessary; and society has a right to give the law, from insight, but not from despotism. Monogamic union is the true relation, and its vow should not be broken by either party. But if it is broken the social penalty should be the same for man as for woman. In such case the parties should either condone or separate without furious controversy or personal revenge. Truth and fitness should be set above conventionality and prejudice, and frankness remove hypocrisy. Such alone is the teaching of this chapter, which invokes the pure, steady light of science to shine on the facts of sex, cleanse foulness out, and bring the code of society into unison with the code of God.

CHAPTER XVI.
PROFESSIONAL CHARACTER.—RELATIONS WITH OTHER PLAYERS.—THE FUTURE OF THE DRAMA.

One of the most striking traits in the character of Forrest was a profound respect for his profession and a scrupulous observance of the duties it imposed. His conscientiousness in studying his parts, in being punctual in rehearsal and at performance, in holding all considerations of convenience or pleasure sternly subordinate to the conditions for the best fulfilment of his rôle, were worthy of exact imitation. Before beginning a season he went into training, carefully regulating his habits in diet and in hours of exercise and sleep; and during an engagement he always exerted a good deal of self-denial in the nursing and husbanding of his powers. He strove also to improve in his renderings not only by an earnest, direct study of the part, and by a careful attention to critical suggestions from every quarter, but likewise by keeping his faculties alert during his own performances to catch every hint of inspiration from nature or accident, to seize on the causes of each failure or success, and to utilize the experience for the future.

These same habits of punctuality and critical self-observation belonged to Mrs. Siddons, and were one of the secrets of her astonishing rise, just as they were of that of Forrest. The first time that Mrs. Siddons played the part of Lady Macbeth, she says, “So little did I know of my part when it came night that my shame and confusion cured me, for the remainder of my life, of procrastinating my business.” After this first performance of Lady Macbeth, Mrs. Siddons recalled in her dressing-room what she had done, and practised various improvements. Trying to get the right look and tone for the words, “Here’s the smell of the blood still,” she did it so naturally that her maid exclaimed, “Dear me, ma’am, how hysterical you are! I vow, ma’am, it’s not blood, but rose-paint and water!”

Perhaps the just sense which Forrest had of the dignity of his profession, and likewise his sense of manly behavior, will be shown most forcibly by an anecdote. An old schoolmate of his, who had become a clergyman, met him one day and asked the favor of a ticket to his performance of Lear that evening, but added that he wished his seat to be in a private box where he could see without being seen. “No, sir,” was the reply with which the player rebuked the preacher; “when I look at my audience I should feel ashamed to see there one who is ashamed to be seen. Permit me to say, sir, that our acquaintance ends here.” Had he remembered the lines of Richard Perkins to the old dramatic author Thomas Heywood, their quotation would have been apt and pungent:

“Still when I come to plays, I love to sit,

That all may see me, in a public place,

Even in the stage’s front, and not to get

Into a nook and hoodwink there my face.

This is the difference: Some would have me deem

Them what they are not: I am what I seem!”

In no element or domain of his life was Forrest more misunderstood and belied than in regard to his general and particular relations with the other members of his profession. Justice to his memory requires that the truth be shown; and, besides, the subject has a strong interest.

The exercise of the dramatic faculty by itself is productive of tenderness, largeness, flexibility, and generosity of mind and heart. It is based on a rich, free intelligence and sensibility, and serves directly to quicken and invigorate the imagination and the sympathies. In fact, so far as its offices are fulfilled it delivers one from the hard, narrow limits of his own selfhood, familiarizes him with the conception and feeling of other grades and styles of character, conduct, and experience, through his passing assumptions of their parts and identification with their varieties develops the whole range of his nature, and makes him, while sensitive to differences, tolerant of them and full of charity. The true moral genius of the drama, supremely exemplified in Shakspeare, is the same genial gentleness and forbearing magnanimity towards every form of humanity as is shown by the God whose earth sustains and sky overarches and rain and sun and harvest visit and bless alike the coward and the hero, the saint and the scoundrel. For the moral essence of the drama consists in the recognition and appreciation of character and manners, not in asserting the will of self nor in assailing the wills of others. But there is a sharp contradiction between this natural tendency of the dramatic art by itself and the ordinary influence exerted by the professional practice of the art as a means of gaining celebrity and a livelihood. If the former would develop a generous emulation to see who can best reproduce in sympathetic imagination every height and depth of human nature and life, the latter instinctively stimulates a hostile rivalry to see who can secure the best parts and win the most pay and praise. Thus the members of the histrionic profession are drawn to one another in kindly sentiment by the intrinsic qualities of their art, but thrown into a hostile relation by those accidental conditions of their trade which make them selfish competitors for precedence. The breadth of the intrinsic tendency of the art is seen in the unparalleled mutual interest and kindness of actors and actresses, as a class standing by one another in all times of adversity with a generosity no other class exhibits; the aggravating power of the accidental influence of the profession is exposed in the notorious jealousy and irritability of these hunters after popularity. Accordingly, among the votaries of the stage a great many friendships are fostered and a great many rankling animosities are bred.

Forrest had all his life too profound an interest in his art, too exalted an estimate of the mission of the stage, too dignified and just a mind, too deep and ready a sympathy, to be capable of the contempt and dislike for his theatrical compeers and associates of which he was often accused. He was an irascible and imperious man. He was not a suspicious, an envious, or an unkind man. And the high spirit of affection and munificence breathing in his beautiful bequest of all his fortune to soothe the declining years of aged or disabled actors and to elevate their favorite art, will awaken a late remorse for the great wrong done his heart.

Others have suffered the same wrongs. Mrs. Siddons was accused of “pride, insolence, and savage insensibility to the distresses of her theatrical associates.” She was satirized in the daily papers for her parsimony and avaricious inhospitality. The charges were cruelly unjust. The truth simply was that she was engrossed in labor, study, and the fulfilment of her duties to her family, while the meaner part of the profession and of the public wished her to give herself to their convivialities. Lawyers are not expected to plead cases for one another gratuitously, nor doctors to transfer a fee to a rival. Why should an actor alone be held bound to give his time and earnings to his associates whenever they ask? The practice of calling up and representing together the noblest sentiments of human nature is expected to create in them more friendship, more genial feeling, than is cultivated in others. This is a compliment to the profession. But any actor of high rank who protects his individuality and asks no favor beyond justice and good will, dignifies his profession and serves the true interests of its members.

Forrest had too profound and assured a sense of his own place and rank and worth to be restlessly inquisitive and sensitive as to what his associates thought or felt about him, or to feel any mean twinge of jealousy at any attention they could draw. He did not, as Macready and so many other renowned players did, desire to monopolize everything to himself when before an audience. On the contrary, nothing so much pleased him as to see another actor or actress studious, aspiring, and successful. Then the more applause they secured the better he liked it. But one point there was in his conduct which gave much offence to many and was not forgiven by them. He shrank from all familiar association with those of his profession who were not gentlemen and ladies in their personal self-respect and professional conduct. He had a horror for carelessness, sloth, unpunctuality, untruthfulness, drunkenness, or other common neglect of duty and thrift, whether arising from a slipshod good nature or from depravity. And it is notorious that the dramatic profession, although the freest of all professions from the darker crimes, is much addicted to indulgence in the vices associated with conviviality and a relaxed sternness of social conscience. The temptations to these snares of soul and body Forrest had felt and resisted. The opposite traits he had made a second nature. He liked men and women who kept their word, did their duty, saved their money, and aspired to do more excellent work and win a better position. It was because so many of those with whom he came in contact on the stage were not studious, prompt, careful, self-respectful, but idle, loose, negligent, reckless, that he stood socially aloof from them, censured them, and drew their hostility. But the more faithful and honorable body of the profession always cherished a warm appreciation of his sterling qualities of character and stood in the most friendly personal relations with him. Repeatedly, in different periods of his career, in Great Britain and in America, the whole company of a theatre, at the close of one of his engagements, united in bestowing some gift, with an address, in testimony of their sense of his courtesy, their admiration for his genius, and their gratitude for his professional example. John McCullough, who for five years played second parts to him and was his intimate comrade on and off the stage, speaks of him thus: “He was exact to a moment in every appointment; and the tardiness of any one delaying a rehearsal stirred his mightiest anger. He would sternly say to the offender, ‘You have stolen from these ladies and gentlemen ten minutes of their time,—ten minutes that even God cannot restore.’ But to those whom he saw attentive and industrious he was the kindest of men. No matter how incapable they might be, he aided them to the full extent of his power, often at rehearsal playing the most unimportant parts to teach an actor, and encouraging him by kind words and treatment. He never recognized the existence of weaknesses so long as they did not interfere with business. An actor might be what he pleased in private life until he carried the effects into moments of duty, and then he knew no mercy. On the stage he was the best and easiest of men. It was a pleasure to act with him. He would in every way assist those around him, aid them in every possible fashion, and do all to strengthen their faith in him and in themselves. Particularly was this so in the case of subordinates; while to equals who showed the slightest carelessness or injustice he was unrelenting.” And in this connection the following letter written by Forrest to Thomas Barry, manager of the old Tremont Theatre and of the later Boston Theatre, is very characteristic:

“Baltimore, December 17th, 1854.

“My dear Mr. Barry,—From an expression which you used to me while I had the pleasure to be with you last in Boston, I inferred that you could not justify my conduct towards Mr. —— in refusing him permission to act with me during my late engagement there. When I briefly replied to your expression, I supposed I had answered your objections. But, thinking over the matter since, I am not so certain that I had convinced you of my undeniable right to pursue the course I then adopted. So I will now more fully state my views of the question.

“It is an axiom that a man in a state of liberty may choose his own associates, and if he find one to be treacherous and unworthy he may discard him. Therefore I discard Mr. ——. Again, I never believed in the hypocrisy which tells us to love our enemies. My religion is to love the good and to eschew the evil. Therefore I eschew Mr. ——. Physical cowardice may be forgiven, but I never forgave a moral coward; and therefore I forgive not Mr. ——. He who insists upon associating, professionally or otherwise, with another known to despise him, is a wretch unworthy of the name of man. Consequently Mr. —— is unworthy of the name of man. But, sir, besides all this, I have an indisputable right to choose from the company such actors as I consider will render me the most agreeable as well as the most efficient support.

“In my rejection of Mr. —— I took the earliest care not to jeopardize any of the interests of your theatre. For I advised you in ample time of my resolution, warning you of my intentions, and giving my reasons therefor, so that you might choose between the services of Mr. —— and my own. For, while I claim the right in these matters to choose for myself, I unhesitatingly concede the same right to another.

“And now if, after this expression of my views relative to this thing, you still hold to the opinion that my conduct was unjustifiable, you cannot with the slightest propriety ask me to fulfil another engagement so long as Mr. —— remains in your company. For I pledge you my word as a man that he shall never, under any circumstances, act with me again.

“Yours truly,

“Edwin Forrest.

“Thos. Barry, Esq.”

Two incidents of a different kind will illustrate other qualities in the character of Forrest. A boy of sixteen or seventeen had a few lines to recite. At rehearsal his delivery was incorrect and annoying. Forrest repeated the lines, and asked to have them read in that manner. Each attempt failed more badly than the preceding. At last, quite irritated and out of patience, Forrest said, “Not so, not so. Read the passage as I do.” The boy looked up with an injured but not immodest air, and replied, “Mr. Forrest, if I could read the lines as you do, I should not be occupying the low position I do in this company.” Forrest felt that his petulance had been unjust. His chin sank upon his breast as he paused a moment in reflection. Then he said, “I am properly rebuked, and I ask your pardon.” At the close of the rehearsal he went to the manager and inquired, “How much do you give that boy a week?” “Eight dollars.” “Well, during my engagement pay him sixteen, and charge the extra amount to me.”

At another rehearsal the company had been waiting some time for the arrival of a subordinate player who was usually very prompt and faithful. When the delinquent entered, Forrest broke out testily, “Well, sir, you see how long you have detained us all.” The poor man, pale, and struggling with emotion, answered, humbly, “I am very sorry. I came as soon as I could. I have suffered a great misfortune. My boy died last night.” A thrill of sympathy went through the company. Forrest stepped forward and took the man respectfully by the hand, and said, “Excuse me, my friend, and go back to your home at once. You ought not to be here to-day, and we will get along in some way without you.” Then, giving him a fifty-dollar bill, he added, “And accept this with my sincere apology.”

The tremendous strength of Forrest, and the downright earnestness with which he used it on those unhappy men whose business it was to be seized, shaken, and hurled about, gave rise to scores of apocryphal stories concerning his violence in acting and the terrible sufferings of his subordinates. In many of these stories, under their exaggeration, something characteristic can be discerned. On a certain occasion when he impersonated a Roman hero attacked by six minions of a tyrant, he complained that the aforesaid minions were too tame; they did not come upon him as if it were a real struggle. After his storming against their inefficiency, the supernumeraries sulked and consulted. Their captain said, “If you want this to be a bully fight, Mr. Forrest, you have only to say so.” “I do,” he replied. When the scene came on, the hero was standing in the middle of the stage. The minions entered and deployed in rapid skirmishing. One struck energetically at his face, a second levelled a strenuous kick at his paunch, and the remainder made ready to rush for a decisive tussle. For one instant he stood astounded, his chest heaving, his eyes flashing, his legs planted like columns of rock. Then came two minutes of powerful acting, at the end of which one supernumerary was seen sticking head foremost in the bass-drum of the orchestra, four were having their wounds dressed in the greenroom, and one, finding himself in the flies, rushed on the roof of the theatre shouting “fire!” Forrest, called before the curtain, panted his thanks to the audience, who, taking it as a legitimate part of the performance, protested that they had never before seen him act so splendidly. The story is questionable, yet through its grotesque dilatation undoubtedly one lower and lesser phase of the actor and of his public may be seen.

During the earlier years of his own pecuniary prosperity, Forrest lent at various times sums of money ranging from one dollar to five hundred dollars to a large number of his more improvident theatrical associates. In very few instances were these sums repaid. In most cases the obligation was suffered to go by default, and in many the favor of the loans, so far from being felt as a claim for gratitude, proved a source of uneasiness and alienation. To a man of his just, careful, straightforward character and habits this multiplied experience of dishonesty, often coupled with treachery and slander, was extremely trying. It nettled him, it embittered him, it tended strongly to close his originally over-free hand against applications to borrow, and made him sometimes suspicious that friendly attentions were designed, as they not unfrequently were, as means to get at his purse. The rich man is much exposed to this experience, with its hardening and souring influence on character, especially the rich man in a profession like the dramatic abounding with impecunious and unthrifty members. Under these circumstances it was certain that many unsuccessful applicants for pecuniary favors, persons whom he refused because he thought them unworthy, would slander him. But throughout his life his heart and hand were generously open to the appeals of all distressed actors or actresses on whom he believed assistance would not be thrown away. In many an instance of destitution and suffering among his unfortunate brethren and sisters sick, deserted, dying, did his bounty come to relieve and console. Among his papers a score or more of letters were found, with widely-separated dates, from well-known members of the profession, containing requests of this sort or thanks for his prompt responses. For example, there was one from the estimable gentleman and veteran actor George Holland gratefully acknowledging a gift of two hundred dollars. The kind deeds of Forrest were not blazoned, but carefully concealed. Yet the few friends who had his inmost confidence, who were themselves the frequent channels of his secret beneficence, knew how free and full his charities were, especially to worthy and unfortunate members of the dramatic profession. In the course of his career he gave over fifty benefits for needy associates, dramatic authors, and public charities,—from Porter, Woodhull, Devese, and Stone, to John Howard Payne and J. W. Wallack and the Dramatic Fund Association,—the proceeds of which were upwards of twenty-five thousand dollars. And when, in consequence of the thickening requests for such favors and the invidiousness of a selection, he made a rule not to play for the benefit of any one, unless in some exceptional case, he would still often give towards the object his price for a single performance, two hundred dollars. Yet, such is the unreasonableness of censorious minds, he was severely blamed for showing an avaricious and unsympathizing spirit towards his theatrical contemporaries. The accusation frequently appeared in print and stung him, though he could never brook to answer it.

Many a time on the last night of his engagement at a theatre he would send for the treasurer and make him his almoner for the distribution of sums varying from five to fifteen dollars to the humbler laborers, the scene-shifters, gasman, watchman, and others whose incomes were hardly enough to keep the wolf from their doors. During one of his engagements at Niblo’s Garden the actors and actresses for some reason did not receive their regular salary. Learning the fact, he refused to take his share of the proceeds until they had been paid; and, going still further, he advanced a sum from his own pocket to make up what was due them.

More interesting and important, however, than his pecuniary attitude towards his fellow-players is his moral relation. And this in one aspect was eminently sweet and noble. If he avoided unworthy actors with contempt, he yielded to no one in the admiration, gratitude, and love he cherished for the gifted and faithful, the lustre of whose genius gilded the theatre, and the merit of whose character lifted and adorned the profession.

The earliest strong and distinct feeling of love, in the usual sense of the word, ever awakened in him, he said, was by a young and fascinating actress in the part of Juliet, whom he saw in a Philadelphia theatre when he was in his thirteenth year. What her name was he knew not, nor what became of her, nor could he remember who played Romeo to her; but the emotions she awakened in him by her representation of the sweet girl of Verona, the picture of her face and form and moving, remained as fair and bright and delicious as ever to the end of his days. Recounting the story to his biographer one evening in the summer of 1869 as he sat in his library, the moonlight streaming through the trees in at the open window and across the floor, he said, “A thousand times have I wondered at the intensity of the impression she made on my boyish soul, and longed to know what her after-fate was. She was a vision of enchantment, and, shutting my eyes, I seem to see her now. Years ago I came across the following lines, which so well corresponded to my remembrance of her that I committed them to memory:

“‘’Twas the embodying of a lovely thought,

A living picture exquisitely wrought

With hues we think, but never hope to see

In all their beautiful reality,

With something more than fancy can create,

So full of life, so warm, so passionate.

Young beauty, sweetly didst thou paint the deep

Intense affection woman’s heart will keep

More tenderly than life! I see thee now,

With thy white-wreathed arms, thy pensive brow,

Standing so lovely in thy sorrowing.

I’ve sometimes read, and closed the page divine,

Dreaming what that Italian girl might be,

Yet ne’er imagined look or tone more sweet than thine.’”

An actor named James Fennell, endowed with a superb figure and a noble elocution, and a great favorite with play-goers in the boyhood of Forrest, made an indelible impression on him. The finished actor, however, was an unhappy man, thriftless in his affairs, and an inveterate drunkard. When he had become an old man his intemperance grew so gross, and his indebtedness to his landlady was so great, that she would keep him no longer. Driven away, he roamed about for some time in despair. Finally, on a bitter winter’s night, amidst a pelting snow-storm, he came back and knocked at the door. The landlady opened the window and looked out. Fennell, a picture of woebegone wretchedness, struck an attitude and recited the lines,—

“Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,

Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door;

His days are dwindled to the shortest span:

Oh, give relief, and heaven will bless your store;—”

with such powerful pathos that the heart of the woman relented, and she took him in and cared for him till, a little later, he died. The piteous case of this actor, whose infirmity destroyed the fruits of his genius, taught the youthful Forrest a lesson which he never forgot.

Instead of looking to artificial stimulants to prop up forces flagging under the strain of the irregular exertions and late hours of a player, he learned to depend on a sufficient supply of plain, wholesome food, carefully and slowly taken, and a scrupulous observance of full hours of sleep. Had they followed this wise course, how many—like the brilliant and wayward Kean, whose conduct disgraced the profession his genius glorified, and poor Mrs. George Barrett, whose beauty of person and motion intoxicated the beholder—would have been kept from their untimely and unhonored graves!

The first actor of really strong original power and commanding art under whose influence Forrest came in his early youth was Thomas A. Cooper. From him the boyish aspirant caught much that was valuable. He always retained a grateful recollection of his debt, and spoke warmly of his benefactor. In the destitute age of the veteran, Forrest was one of the first movers in securing a benefit for him. Unable himself to act on the occasion in New York, he got up another benefit at New Orleans, in which he acted the chief part, and raised a handsome sum for his old instructor. Cooper warmly acknowledged the kindness of his young friend in a published card. On another occasion also the same spirit was shown. One of the daughters of Cooper was to make her débût in the character of Virginia, the performance to be for the benefit of Cooper. Forrest agreed to give his services and play the part of Virginius. As soon as he heard that Miss Cooper would feel more confidence if her father played that part, Forrest consented to undertake the part of Dentatus. One of the daily journals remarked, “This is another instance of that generous kindness on the part of Mr. Forrest which has bought him golden opinions from all sorts of people. The public will award him the meed which such an act merits.”

Another actor of consummate merit, both as artist and as man, there was in Philadelphia, in whose public performances and personal intercourse the boy Forrest took the keenest delight,—Joseph Jefferson, the incomparable comedian, great-grandfather of the present Joseph Jefferson the exquisite perfection and unrivalled popularity of whose Rip Van Winkle have filled the English-speaking world with his fame. The elder Jefferson was a man universally beloved for his charming qualities of character and universally admired for his inimitable art. Forrest’s memory of him was singularly clear and strong and sweet. Whenever touching on this theme his tongue was full of eloquent music and his heart seemed steeped in tender reverence and love. He said the Theatre had produced some saints as well as the Church, and Jefferson was one of the most benignant and faultless. For thirty-five years he was the soul and life of the Philadelphia stage, the pre-eminent favorite of all, delighting every one who saw him with the quiet felicities and irresistible strokes of an art that was as nature itself. He played the characters of fools,—Launcelot Gobbo, Dogberry, Malvolio, the fool in Lear,—Forrest said, in a manner that made them actually sublime, suggesting something supernatural, through their mirth and simpleness insinuating into the audience astounding and overpowering meanings. In his age Jefferson risked his little fortune, the modest earnings of an industrious life, in an enterprise of his friend Warren, the theatrical manager. It was all lost. Once more he appealed to the patrons who had always smiled on him. The summer birds had flown, and his benefit-night showed him an empty house. The blow actually killed him. He left the city and went to Harrisburg, where he soon afterwards died among strangers. Hearing of his poverty and loneliness at Harrisburg, Forrest, who was then in his high tide of success, wrote to him that he would get up a benefit for him at the Arch Street Theatre and play Othello for him. But the heart-broken player replied that he would never be a suppliant for patronage in that city again. While he lay in his room very sick, the doctor called and found him reading Lalla Rookh. “I can assure you of a cure,” said the physician. Jefferson replied, in a sad but firm voice, “My children are all grown up. I am of no further use to them; and I am weary of life. I care not to get well. I think it is better to be elsewhere.” And so he died. Chief-Justice Gibson placed a marble slab over his dust, with a happy inscription which some nameless but gifted friend of the actor has appended to his own tributary verses.

For thee, poor Player, who hast seen the day

When stern neglect has bent thee to her state,

With fond remembrance let the poet pay

One tribute to thy melancholy fate.

Haply some aged man may yet exclaim,

“Him I remember in his youthful pride,

When sober age ran riot at his name,

And roaring laughter held his bursting side.”

There at his home, the father, husband kind,

Oft have I noted his calm noon of life;

With humor chastened, and with wit refined,

Enjoy the social board with comforts rife.

Him have I seen when age crept on apace,

Portraying to the life some earlier part,

The soul of mirth reflected from his face,

While bitter pangs disturbed his throbbing heart.

One night we missed him from his ancient chair,

Placed by our host beside the blazing hearth;

Another passed, yet still he was not there,

Gone was the spirit of our former mirth!

The future came, and with it came the tale,

How Time had cured the wounds the world had given;

How Death had wrapt him in his sable veil

And gently borne him to the gates of heaven.

Beneath the shadow of a sacred dome

The pride and honor of our stage reclines;

There stranger hands conveyed him to his home,

And graced his memory with these sculptured lines:

Beneath this marble

Are deposited the ashes of

Joseph Jefferson,

An actor whose unrivalled powers

Took in the whole extent of Comic Character,

From Pathos to heart-shaking Mirth.

His coloring was that of nature, warm, fresh,

And enriched with the finest conceptions of Genius.

He was a member of the Chestnut Street Theatre,

Philadelphia,

In its most high and palmy days,

and the compeer

Of Cooper, Wood, Warren, Francis,

and a host of worthies

Who,

like himself,

Are remembered with admiration and praise.

The love and reverence which Forrest cherished for this exquisite actor and good man were in the eyes of the numerous friends who often heard him express them in fond lingering reminiscences, a touching proof of the goodness of his own heart despite all the scars it had suffered.

When Forrest was playing at Louisville in his youth, during a rehearsal of Macbeth he came to the lines,—

“Till that Bellona’s bridegroom, lapped in proof,

Confronted him with self-comparisons,”

when Drake, the manager of the theatre, who happened to be on the stage, said to him, “Boy, who was Bellona? And who was her bridegroom?” The stripling tragedian was forced to answer, “I do not know.” “Then,” exclaimed Drake, “get a classical dictionary and study the thing out. Never go on spouting words ignorant of their meaning.” “Thank you, sir, for so good a piece of advice,” replied young Forrest, with a little mortification in his air. “I have had that lesson before, but see that I have failed to practise it as I ought to have done.” A long time after, in another city, when Drake had become a venerable white-haired gentleman, Forrest was rehearsing Othello in his presence. These lines were spoken relating to the magic handkerchief:

“A sibyl, that had numbered in the world

The sun to course two hundred compasses,

In her prophetic fury sewed the work;

The worms were hallowed that did breed the silk;

And it was dyed in mummy, which the skilful

Conserved of maidens’ hearts.”

A citizen who was standing by Drake asked him if he could explain these strange words. He said he could not. Forrest immediately gave, with great rapidity of utterance, an elegant and lucid exposition of the classical superstitions on which the passage is based. He did it with such grace and force that the whole company broke into applause. He turned to Drake with a low bow and said, “My dear sir, I owe this to you. Do you remember the lesson you taught me at Louisville, fifteen years ago, about Bellona and her bridegroom? Allow me now to thank you.” As he took him by the hand the tears were rolling down the cheeks both of the old man and of the young man.

Forrest ever remembered with gratitude the kindness shown him by Mr. Jones, one of the managers under whom he made his first journey to the West and served his practical apprenticeship on the stage. And when the player had become a mature man, crowned with prosperity, living in his great mansion on Broad Street, in Philadelphia, and the manager was destitute and forsaken, bowed by misfortune and old age, he gave his early benefactor a home, taking him into his own house, treating him with kind consideration, comforting his last days, and following his dust to the grave with affectionate respect.

The relations of Forrest with the ladies who acted principal parts with him were almost uniformly of the most satisfactory character, marked by the greatest courtesy, justice, and delicacy. There were two or three instances of strong dislike on both sides. But in all the other examples, from his first assistants, Mrs. Riddle and Miss Placide, to his latest protégées, Miss Kellogg and Miss Lillie, there was nothing but the highest esteem and the most cordial good-will between the parties, their kind sentiments towards him ever sincere, his grateful recollections of them unalloyed. To that estimable woman and gifted actress, Mrs. Riddle, he especially felt himself indebted. In a letter to his biographer he says of her, “To her most kind and unselfish friendship, her motherly care, her wise counsels, the valuable instructions her artistic genius and experience enabled her to give me during two of the most critical years of my young life, I owe more of acknowledgment and affection than I can easily express or ever forget.”

But the most beautiful of all his relations with women of the dramatic profession was the long and sacred friendship subsisting between him and Mrs. Sarah Wheatley. This honored lady, distinguished even more for the rare strength and beauty of her character than for her extraordinary histrionic talent, was a great favorite with the theatrical public of New York. She was one of the few examples that charm and uplift all who feel their influence, of a perfectly balanced womanhood, commanding the whole range of feminine virtues, from modest gentleness and self-denial to august dignity and authority, fitted to sweeten, adorn, or aggrandize any station. She first went upon the stage, without any preparatory training, to relieve and support her family, and, as it were by instinctive fitness, was instantly at home and a mistress there. And after withdrawing from the public, she lived amidst the worship of her children and her children’s children to an extreme old age, full of exalted worth and serenity, the admiration and delight of the widest circle of friends, who felt that the atmosphere of her presence and manner more than repaid every attention they could lavish on her. Mrs. Wheatley saw the Othello of Forrest on the memorable night he played for the benefit of poor Woodhull. She felt his power, foresaw what he might become, and, with a generous impulse, went to him from behind the scenes and spoke kindly to him words of warm appreciation. The poor, unfriended youth was deeply touched. This was the beginning of an acquaintance which was never interrupted or shadowed by the faintest cloud, but grew stronger and holier to the end. She never noticed his foibles, for he never had them in her presence; and he thought of her with a loving veneration second only to that he felt for his mother. Her son, Mr. William Wheatley,—widely known to the dramatic profession as actor and manager, and esteemed by all for his talent, integrity, and refinement,—speaking of the beauty of this friendship after the death of the great tragedian, whom he had known long and most intimately, said, “If there was one sentiment deeper and keener than any other in the soul of Forrest, it was his reverence for a pure and good woman: and I know that his esteem for my mother approached idolatry, and that she regarded him with maternal fondness.”

On a certain occasion when his friend James Oakes was with Forrest in his room at a hotel in New York, something had occurred which had greatly enraged him. He was pacing up and down the floor in a fury, tearing and swearing with the greatest violence. A servant knocked at the door, and announced that Mrs. Wheatley was in waiting. “The change that came over my friend at the announcement of this name,” said Oakes, “was like a work of magic. The wrinkles left his brow, a smile was on his mouth, and his angered voice grew calm and musical.” “Mrs. Wheatley?” he said. “Ask her if she will do me the honor to come to my parlor.” Then, turning to his silent friend, he exclaimed, “Oakes, if you want to see a woman fit to be worshipped by every good man, a model of grace and dignity, a living embodiment of wisdom and goodness, you shall now have that grand satisfaction.” As she entered he lifted his head illuminated with joy, threw open his arms, and cried, “Why, Mother Wheatley, how long it is since I saw you last,—more than a year!” “It is a long time,” she answered, with a sweet and grave fervor; “it is a long time; and how has it been with you all the while, my boy?” Oakes adds, “It was a picture as charming to behold as anything I ever saw. It stands in my memory holy to this day.” When such experiences are found in the life of one whose biography is to be written, they should be recorded, and not, as is usually done, be carefully omitted; for these sacred passages are just what is most wholesome and needful in a world gone insane with selfish struggles, hatred, and indifference.

Of the appreciation Forrest had of the genius of the great comedian William E. Burton, he gave a striking expression in the last year of his life. He had been confined to his bed for several weeks in great agony. Oakes was sitting by him. Their talk turned upon the unrivalled gifts and charm of old Joseph Jefferson. Forrest poured out his heart warmly, as he always did, on this favorite theme. He then spoke of the wonderful pathos and instructiveness which might be thrown into the humblest comic characters, and added in close, “I would give twenty thousand dollars to have Burton alive again for ten years to go over the country and play the fools of Shakspeare!”

All who knew Forrest with any intimacy were well aware of his enthusiastic appreciation of the genius and affection for the memory of Kean. He never tired of expatiating on this subject. And he always felt a sharp pleasure in the recollection that when his friend Hackett, the incomparable American Falstaff, called on Kean in London, only a few days before his death, the first words of the dying tragedian were a kind inquiry after the welfare of Edwin Forrest. In his library one day, showing a friend a superb steel engraving of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of John Philip Kemble, he said earnestly and with a regretful tone, “I would give a thousand dollars in gold for a likeness of Kean as good as this is of Kemble.” He was familiar with the principal histories of the stage and biographies of players, and felt the keenest interest in their characters, their styles of acting, their personal fortunes. He also felt a pride in the fame and triumphs of his best contemporaries. He was always on kind terms with the elder Booth, to whom he assigned dramatic powers of a very extraordinary degree, although he believed that considerable of their effectiveness was caught from the contagious and electrifying example of Edmund Kean. In the last year of his life, when he was badly broken down in health and fortune, Booth said to Forrest one day, “I want to play the Devil.” “It seems to me,” said Forrest, “that you have done that pretty well all your life.” “Oh, I don’t mean that,” replied Booth; “I am referring to the drama of Lord Byron. I want to play Lucifer to your Cain. Would not that draw,—you cast in the character of Cain, I in that of Lucifer?” “I think it would,” remarked Forrest. “We must do it before we die,” replied Booth,—and went away, soon to pass into the impenetrable shadow, leaving this too with many another broken and unfulfilled dream.

Forrest assigned an exalted artistic rank to the very varied dramatic impersonations of Mr. E. L. Davenport, every one of whose rôles is marked by firm drawing, distinct light and shade, fine consistency and finish. His Sir Giles Overreach was hardly surpassed by Kean or Booth, and has not been approached by anybody else. His quick, alert, springy tread full of fire and rapidity, the whole man in every step, fixed the attention and made every one feel that there was a terrific concentration of energy, an insane possession of the nerve-centres, portending something frightful soon to come. An old play-goer on witnessing this impersonation wrote the following impromptu:

“While viewing each remembered scene, before my gaze appears

Each famed depictor of Sir Giles for almost fifty years;

The elder Kean and mighty Booth have held all hearts in thrall,

But, without overreaching truth, you overreach them all!”

It is a satisfaction to put on record this judgment of one artist concerning another whose merit transcends even his high reputation,—especially as a coolness separated the two men, Mr. Davenport having through a misapprehension of the fact of the publication of Jack Cade by Judge Conrad inferred that it had thus in some sense become the property of the public, and produced the play on the stage, while Forrest held it to be his own private property. He had been so annoyed by such proceedings on the part of other actors before, provoking him into angry suits at law, that his temper was sore. He wrote sharply to Mr. Davenport, who, even if he had made a mistake, had done no conscious wrong and meant no offence, and who replied in a calmer tone and with better taste. Here the matter closed, but left an alienation,—for Forrest when irritated was relentlessly tenacious of his point. Mr. Davenport is a man of gentle and generous character, respected and beloved by all his companions. He is also in all parts of his profession a highly accomplished artist and critic. Accordingly, when he expresses the conviction, as he repeatedly has both before and since the decease of his former friend and great compeer, that Forrest was beyond comparison the most original and the greatest actor America has produced, his words are weighty, and their spirit honors the speaker as much as it does the subject.

In a letter written to Forrest twenty-five years earlier, under date of October 10th, 1847, Mr. Davenport had said, “I have not words to express the gratification and pleasure I felt in witnessing your masterly performance. It was probably the last time I shall have an opportunity to see you for years; but I assure you, however long it may be, the remembrance will always live in my mind as vividly as now.”

The treatment also which Mr. John McCullough received from Forrest during his five years of constant service under him, the impression he made on his young coadjutor, and the permanent esteem and gratitude he secured from him, are all pleasant to contemplate. At the close of their business arrangement, Forrest said to McCullough, “I believe I have kept my agreement with you to the letter; but before we part I want to thank you for your strict fidelity to your professional duties at all times. And allow me to say that I have been most of all pleased to see you uniformly so studious and zealous in your efforts to improve. Continue in this course, firm against every temptation, and you will command a proud and happy future. Now, as a token of my esteem, I put in your hands the sum of five hundred dollars, which I want you to invest for your little boy, to accumulate until he is twenty-one years old, and then to be given to him.” McCullough says that with the exception of two or three unreasonable outbreaks, which he immediately forgave and forgot, Forrest was extremely kind and good to him, sparing no pains to encourage and further him. And in return the young man would at any time have gladly given his heart’s blood for his dear old imperious master, whom, in his enthusiasm, he held to be the most truthful and powerful actor that ever lived. Such an estimate by one of his talent and rank, making every allowance for the personal equation, is an abundant offset for the squeamish purists who have stigmatized Forrest as “a coarse ranter,” and the prejudiced critic who called him “a vast animal bewildered with a grain of genius.” It may well be believed that in the history of his country’s drama he will be seen by distant ages towering in statuesque originality above the pigmy herd of his imitators and detractors.

Gabriel Harrison was another actor on whom the personality and the playing of Forrest took the deepest effect. He was a long time on the stage, and, though he afterwards became an author, a teacher, and a painter, he never abated the intense fervor of his enthusiasm for the dramatic art. His “Life of John Howard Payne,” and his “Hundred Years of the Dramatic and Lyric Stage in Brooklyn,” show him to be a man of much more than common intelligence and culture. He knew Forrest well for many years, and cherished the warmest friendship for him as a man whose nature he found noble and whose intercourse charming. The last Thanksgiving Day that Forrest had on earth, Harrison, by invitation, spent with him alone in his Broad Street mansion, enjoying a day of frank and memorable reminiscences, delicious effusions of mind and heart and soul. Harrison, writing to the biographer of his friend in protest against the epithet melodramatic, records his estimate thus: “Are the wonderful figures of Michael Angelo melodramatic because they are so strongly outlined? Is Niagara unnatural and full of trick because it is mighty and thunders so in its fall? When I looked at it, its sublimity made me feel as if I were looking God in the face; and I have never thought that God was melodramatic. I have seen Forrest act more than four hundred times. I have sat at his feet as a pupil artist learning of a master artist. In all his chief rôles I have studied him with the most earnest carefulness, from his tout ensemble to the minutest particulars of look, tone, posture, and motion. And I say that without doubt he was the most honest, finished, and powerful actor that ever lived. Whenever I saw him act I used to feel with exultation how perfectly grand God had made him. How grand a form! how grand a mind! how grand a heart! how grand a voice! how grand a flood of passion, sweeping all these to their mark in perfect unison! My memory of him is so worshipful and affectionate, and so full of regret that I can see him no more, that my tears are blotting the leaf on which I write.”

One further incident in the life of Forrest will also serve to illustrate his feeling towards the personnel of his profession. It is not without an element of romantic interest. It will fitly close the treatment of this part of the subject. At the end of the war he received a letter from a granddaughter of that Joseph Jefferson whose memory he had always cherished so tenderly. Residing in the South, the fortunes of war had reduced her to poverty, and she asked him to lend her a hundred dollars to meet her immediate necessities. With joyous alacrity he forwarded the amount, and deemed the ministration a great privilege. The sequel of the good deed will please every one who reads it. It need only be said that at the date of the ensuing correspondence Forrest had just been bereaved of his last sister, Eleonora:

“Philadelphia, June 13th, 1871.

“My dear Mr. Forrest,—I understand from my aunt, Mrs. Fisher, that during my absence from America, and when she had become destitute from the effects of the war, you were kind enough to let her have one hundred dollars.

“My being nearly related to the lady sufficiently explains why I enclose you the sum you so generously gave.

“Permit me to offer my condolence in your late sad loss, and to ask pardon for addressing you at such a time.

“Faithfully yours,

“J. Jefferson.

“To Edwin Forrest.”

“Philadelphia, June 15th, 1871.

“Dear Mr. Jefferson,—I received your note of 13th inst., covering a check for one hundred dollars, in payment of a like sum loaned by me, some years since, to your relative, Mrs. Fisher.

“I have no claim whatever on you for the liquidation of this debt. Yet, as the motive is apparent which prompts you to the kindly act, I make no cavil in accepting its payment from you.

“With thanks for the touching sympathy you express in my late bereavement, I am sincerely yours,

“Edwin Forrest.

“J. Jefferson, Esq.”

When an actor vanquishes the jealous instinct of his tribe and really admires another, his professional training gives a distinct relish and certainty to his praise. When Garrick heard of the decease of Mrs. Theophilus Cibber, a sister of Arne the musician, he said, “Then Tragedy is dead on one side.” Also when seeing Carlin Bertinazzi in a piece where, having been beaten by his master, he threatened him with one hand while rubbing his wounded loins with the other, Garrick was so delighted with the truthfulness of the pantomime that he cried, “See, the back of Carlin has its expression and physiognomy.” Old Quin had a strong aversion to Mrs. Bellamy, and a conviction that she would fail. But at the close of the first act, as she came off the stage, he caught her in his arms, exclaiming, generously, “Thou art a divine creature, and the true spirit is in thee.” Within a year of the expulsion of Mrs. Siddons from Drury Lane as an uninteresting performer, Henderson declared that “she was an actress who had never had an equal and would never have a superior.” She remembered this with deep gratitude to her dying day; and when his death had left his family poor she played Belvidera in Covent Garden for their benefit.

Forrest was abundantly capable of this same liberal spirit. No admirer of Henry Placide in his best day could be more enthusiastic in his eulogy than Forrest was, declaring that in his line he had no living equal. He said the same also of the Jesse Rural and two or three other parts of William R. Blake. He had likewise a profound admiration for the romantic and electrifying Othello of Gustavus Vasa Brooke. And of the performance of Cassio in Othello and of Cabrero in the Broker of Bogota, by William Wheatley, he said, “They were two of the most perfect pieces of acting I ever saw. One night when he had performed the part of Cabrero better than he ever had done it before, producing a sensation intense enough in the applause it drew to gratify the pride of any player, he said to me, as he left the stage, ‘Never again will I play that part.’ And, surely enough, he never did. The reason why was a mystery I have not been able to this day to fathom.”

Forrest once said, “An intelligent, sympathetic actor, who resists the social temptations of his profession and keeps dignity of character and high purpose, ought to be the most charming of companions. In a great many cases this is the fact. With their insight into character, their power of interpreting even the most unpurposed signals, the secrets of society are more open to them than to others, and they have more adventures. This naturally makes them interesting.” He gave two examples in illustration. When he was playing in England, he and James Sheridan Knowles became warm friends. Knowles had often seen Mrs. Siddons act. Forrest asked him what was the mysterious effect she produced in her celebrated sleep-walking scene of Lady Macbeth. He said, “I have read all the high-flown descriptions of the critics, and they fall short. I want you to tell me in plain blunt phrase just what impression she produced on you.” Knowles replied, with a sort of shudder, as if the mere remembrance terrified him still, “Well, sir, I smelt blood! I swear that I smelt blood!” Forrest added that the whole life of that amazing actress by Campbell was not worth so much to him as this one Hogarthean stroke by Knowles.

The other anecdote related to an incident which happened to John McCullough, who for several years had been playing second parts to Forrest. He was staying in Washington. Two or three nights before the assassination of President Lincoln he was awakened by tears falling on his face from the eyes of some one standing over him. Looking up, he saw Wilkes Booth, and exclaimed, “Why, what is the matter?” “My God,” replied the unhappy man, already burdened with his monstrous crime, and speaking in a tone of long-drawn melancholy indescribably pathetic, “My God, how peacefully you were sleeping! I cannot sleep.”

Another element of strong interest in actors, giving them an imaginative attraction, is the obvious but profound symbolism of their art, the analogies of scenic life and human life. Harley, while playing Bottom in Midsummer Night’s Dream, was stricken with apoplexy. Carried home, the last words he ever spoke were the words in his part, “I feel an exposition to sleep coming over me.” Immediately it was so, and he slept forever. The aged Macklin attended the funeral of Barry. Looking into the grave, he murmured, “Poor Spranger!” One would have led him away, but the old man said, mournfully, “Sir, I am at my rehearsal; do not disturb my reverie.” The elements of the art of acting are the applied elements of the science of human nature. They are the same on the stage as in life, save that there they are systematized and pronounced, set in relief, and consequently excite a more vivid interest. How rich it would have been to share in the fellowship of Lekain and Garrick when in the Champs Elysées they practised the representation of drunkenness! “How is that?” said Lekain. “Very well,” replied Garrick. “You are all drunk except your left leg.”

Such works as Colley Cibber’s Apology, the several lives of Garrick, Boaden’s Life of Kemble, Macklin’s Memoirs, Campbell’s Life of Mrs. Siddons, Galt’s Lives of the Players, Proctor’s Life of Kean, Collier’s Annals of the Stage, Doran’s His Majesty’s Servants, were familiar to Forrest. His memory was well stored with their contents. He had reflected carefully and much on the general topics of which they treat, and he conversed on them with eloquence and with wisdom. He cherished an eager interest in everything pertaining to his profession viewed in its most comprehensive aspect. His intelligent and profound enthusiasm for the theatre gave him an entire faith that the drama is destined to flourish as long as human nature shall be embodied in men. Its seeming eclipse by cheaper and coarser attractions he held to be but temporary. Its perversion and degradation in meaningless spectacles and prurient dances will pass by, and its restoration to its own high mission, the exhibition of the grandest elements of the soul in the noblest situations, the teaching of the most beautiful and sublime lessons by direct exemplification in breathing life, will give it, ere many generations pass, a glory and a popular charm it has never yet known. Then we may expect to see a great purification and enrichment of the subject-matter presented on the stage. The mere animal affections will cease to have an exaggerated and morbid attention paid to them. Justice will be done to the generic moral sentiments of man, and to his noblest historic and ideal types. The passions of love of truth and spiritual aspiration will dilate in treatment, those of individual jealousy and social ambition dwindle. Instructive and inspiring plays will be constructed out of the veracious materials furnished by characters and careers like those of Columbus and Galileo.

Certainly the realization of such a vision is a great desideratum; because the theatre is a sort of universal Church of Humanity, where good and evil are shown in their true colors without formalism or cant. Its influence—unlike that of sectarian enclosures—is to draw all its attendants together in common sympathies towards the good and fair, and in common antipathies for the foul and cruel. Men are more open and generous in their pleasures than in their pains. Places of public amusement are the first to vibrate to the notes of public joy or grief, defeat or triumph. Telegrams announcing victories or calamities are read from the stage. Theatres are sure to be decked on great festival or pageant days, the popular pulse beating strongest there.

The taste for dramatic representations is native and ineradicable in man. It is a fixed passion with man to love to see the passions of men exhibited in plot and action, and to watch the mutual workings of characters on one another through their different manners of behavior. Just now, it is true, the great, complex, terribly exciting and exacting drama of real life, revealed to us in the newspaper and the novel and the telegraph, so fastens and drains our sympathies that we lack the ideal freedom and restful leisure to enjoy the stage drama so eagerly as it was enjoyed at an earlier and simpler time. But this will not always be so;—

“The world will grow a less distracting scene,

And life, less busy, wear a gentler mien.”

Forrest looked for a revival, at no remote date, in America and Europe, of the ancient Greek pride and joy in athletic exercises and the development of nude strength and beauty. The reflex influence from such a revival, he imagined, would flood the stage with a new lustre, making it a resplendent and exalted centre for the inspiring exposure to the public of the perfected models of every form of human excellence. Then the gymnasium, the circus, the race-course, dance, music, song, and the intellectual emulations of the academy may all be grouped around the theatre and find their dazzling climax in the scenic drama, made religious once more as it was in the palmiest day of Greece.

CHAPTER XVII.
OUTER AND INNER LIFE OF THE MAN.

The external life of Forrest from the close of his first engagement after the divorce trial to the year 1869—the period stretching from his forty-sixth to his sixty-third year—was largely but the continual repetition of his old triumphs, varied now and then with some fresh professional glory or new personal adventure. To recite the details of his travels and theatrical experiences would be to make a monotonous record of popular successes without any important significance or general interest. A brief sketch of the leading incidents of this period is all that the reader will care to have.

The immense publicity and circulation given to the sensational reports of the long-drawn legal warfare between Forrest and his wife in their suits against each other added to his great fame a still greater notoriety, which enhanced public curiosity and drew to the theatre greater crowds than ever whenever he played. From Portland and Boston to Cincinnati and St. Louis, from Buffalo and Detroit to Charleston and New Orleans, the announcement of his name invariably brought out an overwhelming throng. The first sight of his person on the stage was the signal for wild applause. At the close of the performance he was often called before the curtain and constrained to address the assembly, and then on retiring to his hotel was not unfrequently followed by band and orchestra and complimented with a serenade.

The ranks of his enemies, reinforced with the malevolent critics or Bohemians whom he would not propitiate by any favor, social or pecuniary, continued to fling at him and annoy him in every way they could. But while their pestiferous buzzing and stinging made him sore and angry, it did not make him unhappy. His enormous professional success and broad personal following prevented that. One example of his remarkable public triumphs may stand to represent scores. It was the last night of a long and most brilliant engagement in New York. The “Forrest Light Guard,” in full uniform, occupied the front seats of the parquet. No sooner had the curtain fallen on the performance of Coriolanus than the air grew wild with the prolonged shouts of “Forrest! Forrest!” At last he came forth, and the auditory, rising en masse, greeted him with stormy plaudits. “Speech! speech!” they cried. He responded thus:

“I need not tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that I am gratified to see this large assemblage before me; and I have an additional gratification when I remember that among my troops of friends I have now a military troop who have done me the honor to grace my name by associating it with their soldier-like corps. This night, ladies and gentlemen, ends my labors inside of the theatre for the season. I call them labors, for no one who has not experienced the toil of acting such parts as I have been called upon nightly to present to you, can have any idea of the labor, both mental and physical, required in the performance of the task. They who suppose the actor’s life to be one of comparative ease mistake the fact egregiously. My experience has shown me that it is one of unremitting toil. In no other profession in the world is high eminence so difficult to reach as in ours. This proposition becomes evident when you remember how many of rare talents and accomplishments essay to mount the histrionic ladder, and how very few approach its topmost round. My earliest ambition was distinction upon the stage; and while yet a mere child I shaped my course to reach the wished-for goal. I soon became aware that distinction in any vocation was only to be won by hard work and by an unfailing self-reliance. And I resolved

‘with such jewels as the exploring mind

Brings from the caves of knowledge, to buy my ransom

From those twin jailers of the daring heart,

Low birth and iron fortune.’

I resolved to educate myself; not that education only which belongs to the schools, and which is often comprised in a knowledge of mere words, but that other education of the world which makes words things. I resolved to educate myself as Garrick, and Kemble, and Cooke, and, last and greatest of all, Edmund Kean, had done. As he had done before me, I educated myself. The self-same volume from which the Bard of Avon drew his power of mastery lay open before me also,—the infallible volume of Nature. And in the pages of that great book, as in the pages of its epitome, the works of Shakspeare, I have conned the lessons of my glorious art. The philosopher-poet had taught me that

‘The proper study of mankind is man;’

and, in pursuit of this study, I sojourned in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, as well as in the length and in the breadth of our own proud Republic. To catch the living lineaments of passion, I mixed with the prince and with the potentate, with the peasant and with the proletary, with the serf and with the savage. All the glorious works of Art belonging to the world, in painting and in sculpture, in architecture and in letters, I endeavored to make subservient to the studies of my calling. How successful I have been I leave to the verdict of my fellow-countrymen,—my fellow-countrymen, who, for a quarter of a century, have never denied to me their suffrages. Ladies and gentlemen, I have spoken thus much not to indulge in any feeling of pride, nor to gratify any sentiment of egotism, but I have done so in the hope that the words which I have uttered here to-night may be the means, perhaps, of inspiring in the bosom of some young enthusiast who may hereafter aspire to the stage a feeling of confidence. Some poor and friendless boy, perchance, imbued with genius, and with those refined sensibilities which are inseparably connected with genius, may be encouraged not to falter in his path for the paltry obstacles flung across it by envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness. Let him rather, with a vigorous heart, buckle on the armor of patient industry, with his own discretion for his tutor, and then, with an unfaltering step, despising the malice of his foes,

‘climb

The steep where Fame’s proud temple shines afar.’”

A shower of bravos broke out, bouquets were thrown upon the stage, and the actor slowly withdrew, crowned with the applauses of the people like a victorious Roman in the Capitol.

As the years passed on, Forrest came to take an ever keener interest in accumulating wealth. A good deal of his time and thought was devoted to the nursing of his earnings. He showed great shrewdness in his investments, which, with scarcely a single exception, turned out profitably. He was prudent and thrifty in his ways, but not parsimonious or mean. He lived in a handsome, generous style, without ostentation or extravagance, keeping plenty of servants, horses, and carriages, and a table generous in wholesome fare but sparing of luxuries. This love of money, and pleasure in amassing it, though it became a passion, as, with his bitter early experience of poverty and constant lessons of the evils of improvidence, it was natural that it should, did not become a vice or a disease; for it never prevented his full and ready response to every claim on his conscience or on his sympathy. And within this limit the love of accumulation is more to be praised than blamed. In final refutation of the gross injustice which so often during his life charged upon him the vice of a grasping penuriousness, a few specimens of his deeds of public spirit and benevolence—not a list, but a few specimens—may fitly be recorded here. To the fund in aid of the Democratic campaign which resulted in the election of Buchanan as President he sent his check for one thousand dollars. He gave the like sum to the first great meeting in Philadelphia at the outbreak of the war for the defence of the Union. In 1867, when the South was in such distress from the effects of the war, he gave five hundred dollars to the treasurer of a fund in their behalf, saying, “God only knows the whole suffering of our Southern brethren. Let us do all we can to relieve them, not stopping to question what is constitutional; for charity itself fulfils the law.” He subscribed five hundred dollars towards the relief of the sufferers by the great Chicago fire in 1871. The ship “Edwin Forrest” being in distress on the coast, the towboat “Ajax,” from New York, went to her assistance, having on board three pilots. The “Ajax” was never heard of afterwards. To the widows of the three lost pilots Forrest, unsolicited, sent one thousand dollars each. On two separate occasions he is known to have sent contributions of five hundred dollars to the Masonic Charity Fund of the New York Grand Lodge. These acts, which were not exceptional, but in keeping with his nature and habit, are not the acts of an unclean slave of avarice. The jealousy too often felt towards the rich too often incites groundless fault-finding.

It is true that an absorbing passion for truth, for beauty, for humanity, for perfection, is more glorious and commanding than even the most honorable chase of riches. But it is likewise true that reckless idlers and spendthrifts are a greater curse to society, breed worse evils, than can be attributed to misers. Self-indulgence, dependence, distress, contempt, the worst temptations, and untimely death, follow the steps of thriftlessness. Self-denial, foresight, industry, manifold power of usefulness, wait on a well-regulated purpose to secure pecuniary independence. Money represents the means of life,—the command of the best outer conditions of life,—food, shelter, education, culture in every direction. In itself it is a good, and the fostering of the virtues adapted to win it is beneficial alike to the individual and the community, despite the enormous evils associated with the excessive or unprincipled pursuit of it. Sharp and exacting as he was, the absolute honesty and honor of Forrest in all pecuniary dealings were so high above suspicion that they were never questioned. Although often wrongfully accused of a miserly and sordid temper, he never was accused of falsehood or trickery. The large fortune he obtained was honorably earned, liberally used, and at last nobly bestowed. He had a good right to the deep, vivid satisfaction and sense of power which it yielded him. His fortune was to him a huge supplementary background of support, a wide border of the means of life surrounding and sustaining his immediate life.

An extract from a letter written by him to his biographer may fitly be cited to complete what has been said above. Under date of August 28th, 1870, he wrote. “The desire I had for wealth was first fostered only that I might be abler to contribute to the comforts of those whose veins bore blood like mine, and to smooth the pathway to the grave of the gentlest, the truest, the most unselfish friend I ever knew—my mother!—and so, from this holy source, to widen the boundaries of all good and charitable deeds,—to relieve the wants of friends less fortunate than myself, and to succor the distressed wherever found. In early life, from necessity, I learned to depend solely upon myself for my own sustenance. This self-reliance soon gave me power in a small way to relieve the wants of others, and this I never failed to do even to the extent of my ability. So far did I carry this feeling for the distress of others that I have frequently been forced to ask an advance of salary from the theatre to pay the current expenses of my own frugal living. And this I have done when in the receipt of eight thousand dollars a year. I have been very, very poor; but in my whole life I have never from need borrowed more than two hundred dollars in all. I have lent two thousand times that sum, only an infinitesimal part of which was ever returned.”

In 1851 Forrest moved from New York to Philadelphia, and took his three sisters to live with him. But he paid frequent visits to his romantic castle on the Hudson. During one of these visits an incident occurred which presents him to the imagination in real life in a light as picturesque and sensational as many of those scenes of fiction on the stage in which he had so often thrilled the multitude who beheld him. The steamboat “Henry Clay,” plying on the Hudson between New York and Albany, when opposite Fonthill was suddenly wrapt in flames by an explosion of its boiler, and sunk with a crowd of shrieking passengers. The New York “Mirror” of the next day said, “We are informed that while the unfortunate wretches were struggling, Edwin Forrest, who was then at his castle, seeing their condition, rushed down to the river, jumped in, and succeeded in rescuing many from a watery grave, as well as in recovering the bodies of several who were drowned.”

In 1856 Forrest sold Fonthill to the Catholic Sisterhood of Mount Saint Vincent, for one hundred thousand dollars. For the devout and beneficent lives of the members of this order he had a profound reverence; and immediately on completing the sale he made to the Mother Superior a present of the sum of five thousand dollars. And so ended all the dreams of domestic peace and bliss his fancy had woven on that enchanted spot, still to be associated with memories of his career and echoes of his name as long as its gray towers shall peer above the trees and be descried from afar by the sailers on the lordly river below.

In 1857 Forrest received an unparalleled compliment from the State of California. The Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary, Treasurer, and Comptroller of the State, twenty-seven members of the Senate, with the Secretary and Sergeant-at-Arms, the Speaker and forty-eight members of the House of Representatives, sent him a letter of invitation to make a professional visit to the Golden Coast. It read as follows:

“State Capitol, Sacramento, April 20th, 1857.

“Respected Sir,—The undersigned, State officers and members of the Senate and Assembly, a small portion of your many admirers on the coast of the Pacific, avail themselves of this, the only mode under their control, of signifying to you the very high estimation, as a gentleman and an actor, in which you are generally and universally held by all who have a taste for the legitimate drama. Genuine taste and rigid criticism have united with the verdict of impartial history to pronounce you the head and leader of the noble profession to which you have consecrated abilities that would in any sphere of life render you eminent. We believe that so long as Shakspeare is remembered, and his words revered, your name, too, will be remembered with pride by all who glory in the triumphs of our Saxon literature.

“In conclusion, permit us to express the hope that your existing engagements will so far coincide with our wishes as to permit us, at an early day, to welcome you to the shores of the Pacific, assuring you of a warm and sincere reception, so far as our efforts can accomplish the same, and we feel that we but express the feelings of every good citizen of the State.”

To this he replied:

“Philadelphia, July 10th, 1857.

“Gentlemen,—With a grateful pleasure I acknowledge your communication of April 20th, delivered to me a short time since by the hands of Mr. Maguire.

“Your flattering invitation, so generously bestowed and so gracefully expressed, to enter the Golden Gate and visit your beautiful land, is one of the highest compliments I have ever received. It is an honor, I venture to say, that was never before conferred on one of my profession.

“It comes not from the lovers of the drama or men of letters merely, but from the Executive, the Representatives, and other high officials of a great State of the American Confederacy; and I shall ever regard it as one of the proudest compliments in all my professional career.

“Believe me, I deeply feel this mark of your kindness, not as mere incense to professional or personal vanity, but as a proud tribute to that art which I have loved so well and have followed so long:

“‘The youngest of the Sister Arts,

Where all their beauty blends.’

“This art, permit me to add, from my youth I have sought personally to elevate, and professionally to improve, more from the truths in nature’s infallible volume than from the pedantic words of the schools,—a volume open to all, and which needs neither Greek nor Latin lore to be understood.

“And now, gentlemen, although I greatly regret that it is not in my power to accept your invitation, I sincerely trust there will be a time for such a word, when we may yet meet together under the roof of one of those proud temples consecrated to the drama by the taste and the munificence of your fellow-citizens.”

During the crisis of his domestic unhappiness—1849–1852—Forrest had withdrawn from the stage for about two years. In 1856, stricken down with a severe attack of gout and inflammatory rheumatism, wearied also of his long round of professional labors, he retired into private life for a period of nearly five years. He now devoted his time to the care of his rapidly increasing wealth, and to the cultivation of his mind by reading, studying works of art, and conversing with a few chosen friends, leading, on the whole, a still and secluded life. At this time an enthusiastic religious revival was going on in the city, and it was reported that the tragedian had been made a convert. An old and dear friend, the Rev. E. L. Magoon, wrote to him a very cordial letter expressing the hope that this report was well founded. Here is the reply of Forrest:

“Philadelphia, March 27, 1858.

“I have much pleasure in the receipt of yours of the 23d instant.

“While I thank you and Mrs. Magoon with all my heart for the kind hope you have expressed that the recent rumor with regard to my highest welfare may be true, I am constrained to say the rumor is in this, as in most matters which pertain to me, most pitifully in error: there is not one word of truth in it.

“But in answer to your questions, my good friend,—for I know you are animated only by a sincere regard for my spiritual as well as for my temporal welfare,—I am happy to assure you that the painful attack of inflammatory rheumatism with which for the last three months I have combated is now quite overcome, and I think I may safely say that with the return of more genial weather I shall be restored once more to a sound and pristine health.

“Then, for the state of my mind. I do not know the time, since when a boy I blew sportive bladders in the beamy sun, that it was ever so tranquil and serene as in the present hour. Having profited by the leisure given me by my lengthened illness seriously to review the past and carefully to consider the future, both for time and for eternity, I have with a chastened spirit beheld with many regrets that there was much in the past that might have been improved; more, perhaps, in the acts of omission than in acts of commission, for I feel sustained that my whole conduct has been actuated solely by an honest desire to adhere strictly to the rule of right; that the past has been characterized, as I trust the future will be, to love my friends, to hate my enemies,—for I cannot be a hypocrite,—and to live in accordance with the Divine precept: ‘As ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.’

“And now for that ‘higher welfare’ of which you speak, I can only say that, believing, as I sincerely do, in the justice, the mercy, the wisdom, and the love of Him who knoweth the secrets of our hearts, I hope I may with

‘An unfaltering trust approach my grave,

Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch

About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.’

“Hoping you are in the enjoyment of good health, and that you still prosper in the ‘good work,’ which to you I know is a labor of love,

“I am your friend,

“Edwin Forrest.”

At length, rested in mind and body, chastened in taste, sobered and polished in style, but with no abatement of fire or energy, sought by the public, solicited by friends, urged by managers, and impelled by his own feelings, he broke from his long repose, and reappeared in New York under circumstances as flattering as any that had ever crowned his ambition. Niblo’s Garden was packed to its remotest corners with an auditory whose upturned expanse of eager faces lighted with smiles and burst into cheers as he slowly advanced and received a welcome whose earnestness and unity might well have thrilled him with pride and joy. The following lines, strong and eloquent as their theme, written for the occasion by William Ross Wallace, contain perhaps the most truthful and characteristic tribute ever paid to his genius, drawing the real contour and breathing the express spirit of the man and the player.

EDWIN FORREST.

Welcome to his look of grandeur, welcome to his stately mien,

Always shedding native glory o’er the wondrous mimic scene,

Always like a mighty mirror glassing Vice or Virtue’s star,

Giving Time his very pressure, showing Nations as they are!

Once again old Rome—the awful—rears her red imperial crest,

And Virginius speaks her downfall in a father’s tortured breast;

Once again far Albion’s genius from sweet Avon leans to view,

As he was, her thoughtful Hamlet, and the very Lear she drew.

Nor alone does Europe glory in the Actor’s perfect art,—

From Columbia’s leafy mountains see the native hero start!

Not in depths of mere romances can you Nature’s Indian find;

See him there, as God hath made him, in the Metamora shrined.

Where hast thou, O noble Artist,—crowned by Fame’s immortal flower,—

Grasped the lightnings of thy genius? caught the magic of thy power?

Not, I know, in foreign regions,—for thou art too true and bold:

’Tis the New alone gives daring thus to paint the shapes of Old:

From the deep full wind that sweepeth through thine own wild native woods,

From the organ-like grand cadence heard in autumn’s solemn floods,

Thou hast tuned the voice that thrills us with its modulated roll,

Echoing through the deepest caverns of the hearer’s startled soul:

From the tender blossoms blooming on our haughty torrents’ side—

Like some angel sent by Pity, preaching gentleness to Pride—

Thou didst learn such tender bearing, hushing every listener’s breath,

When in thee poor Lear, the crownless, totters gently down to death:

From the boundless lakes and rivers, from our broad continuous climes,

Over which the bell of Freedom sounds her everlasting chimes,

Thou didst catch that breadth of manner; and to wreath the glorious whole,

Sacred flames are ever leaping from thy democratic soul.

Welcome then that look of grandeur, welcome then that stately mien,

Always shedding native glory o’er the wondrous mimic scene,

Always like a mighty mirror glassing Vice or Virtue’s star,

Giving Time his very pressure, showing Nations as they are!

After a long absence from Albany, Forrest fulfilled an engagement there in 1864. It carried his mind back to his early struggles in the same place, though few of the kind friends who had then cheered him now remained. There was no vacant spot, however, any more than there was any loss of fervor. On the last night the audience—so crowded that “they seemed actually piled on one another in the lobbies”—called him before the curtain and asked for a speech. He said,—

“I am very glad, ladies and gentlemen, that an opportunity is thus afforded me to say a few words, to thank you for your generous welcome here, and also for the kind applause you have lavished on my performances. In Albany I seem to live a twofold existence,—I live one in the past, and I live one in the present,—and both alike are filled with the most agreeable memories. Here, within these very walls, even in my boyish days, I was cheered on to those inspiring toils

‘Which make man master men.’

Here, within these walls, while yet in my boyish days, one of the proudest honors of my professional life was achieved; for I here essayed the part of Iago to the Othello of the greatest actor that ‘ever lived in the tide of times,’—Edmund Kean. To me there is music in the very name,—Edmund Kean, a name blended indissolubly with the genius of Shakspeare; Edmund Kean, who did more by his acting to illustrate the Bard of all time than all the commentators from Johnson, Warburton, and Steevens down to the critics of the present day. It was said of Edmund Kean by a distinguished English poet, that ‘he read Shakspeare by flashes of lightning.’ It is true; but those flashes of lightning were the coruscations of his own divine mind, which was in affinity with the mind of Shakspeare. Now I must beg leave to express my heartfelt thanks for this demonstration of your favor, hoping at no distant day to meet you again.”

Thus it is clear that, whatever the sufferings of Forrest may have been, however many trials and pangs his growing experience of the world may have brought him, he had great enjoyments still. Besides the proud delight of his professional successes and the solid satisfaction of his swelling property, he had an even more keen and substantial complacency of pleasure in his own physical health and strength. His enormous vital and muscular power supported a superb personal consciousness of joy and contentment. He trod the earth like an indigenous monarch, afraid of nothing. The dynamic charge, or rather surcharge, of his frame was often so profuse that it would break out in wild feats of power to relieve the aching muscles. For instance, one night when acting in the old Tremont Theatre in Boston, under such an exhilarating impulse he struck his sword against a wooden column at the side of the stage as he was passing out, and cut into it to the depth of more than three inches. An Englishman who sat near jumped from his seat in terror, and tremblingly said, as he hastened out, “He is a damned brute. He is going to cut the theatre down!” This full vigor of the organic nature, this vivid relishing edge of unsatiated senses, yielded a constant feeling of actual or potential happiness, and clothed him with an air of native pride which was both attractive and authoritative. He had paid the price for this great prize of an indomitable physique in systematic exercises and temperance. He wore it most proudly and kept it intact until he was fifty-nine years old. The lesson of his experience and example in physical culture is well worth heeding.

The fashion of society in regard to the education and care of the body has passed through three phases. The most extraordinary phase, in the glorious results it secured, was the worship of bodily perfection among the Greeks, a reflex revival of which was shown by the nobles and knights at the period of the Renaissance. The Greek gymnastic of the age of Pericles, as described by Plato so often and with such enthusiasm,—a gymnastic in which music, instead of being an end in itself, a sensuous luxury of the soul, was made a guide and adjunct to bodily training, giving rhythm to every motion, or that grace and economy of force which so much enhances both beauty and power,—lifted men higher in unity of strength and charm of health and harmony of faculties than has anywhere else been known. The Grecian games were made an ennobling and joyous religious service and festival. The eager, emulous, patriotic, and artistic appreciation of the spectators,—the wondrous strength, beauty, swiftness, rhythmic motions, imposing attitudes of the athletes,—the legends of the presence and contentions of the gods themselves on that very spot in earlier times,—the setting up of the statues of the victors in the temples as a worship of the Givers of Strength, Joy, and Glory,—served to carry the interest to a pitch hardly to be understood by us. The sculptures by Phidias which immortalize the triumph of Greek physical culture show a harmony of the circulations, a compacted unity of the organism, a central poise of equilibrium, a profundity of consciousness and a fulness of self-control, a perfect blending of the automatic and the volitional sides of human nature, which must have exalted the Olympic victors at once to the extreme of sensibility and to the extreme of repose. It is a million pities that this ideal should ever have been lost. But in Rome, under the military drill and unbridled license of the emperors, it degenerated into a brutal tyranny and sensuality, the gigantic superiority of potency it generated being perverted to the two uses of indulging self and oppressing others.

The next swing of the historic pendulum flung men, by the reaction of spirituality, over to the fatal opposite,—the ecclesiastic contempt and neglect of the body. The Christian ideal, or at least the Church ideal, in its scornful revulsion from gladiators and voluptuaries, glorified the soul at the expense of the loathed and mortified flesh. At the base of this cultus was the ascetic superstition that matter is evil, that the capacity for pleasure is an infernal snare, and that the only way to heaven is through material maceration and renunciation. Sound philosophy and religion teach, on the contrary, that the body is the temple of God, to be developed, cleansed, and adorned to the highest degree possible for His habitation.

The third phase in the history of bodily training is that neutral condition, between the two foregoing extremes, which generally characterizes the present period,—a state of almost universal indifference, or a fitful alternation of unregulated attention to it and neglect of it. The pedagogue gives his pupils some crude exercises to keep them from utterly losing their health and breaking down on his hands under the barbaric pressure of mental forcing; the drill-sergeant disciplines his recruits to go through their technical evolutions; the dancing-master trains the aspirants for the mysteries of the ballet; and the various other classes of public performers who get their living by playing on the curiosity, taste, or passion of the public, have their specialities of bodily education for their particular work. But a perfected system of æsthetic gymnastics, based on all that is known of the laws of anatomy, physiology, and hygiene,—a system of exercises regulated by the exactest rhythm and fitted to liberate every articulation, to develop every muscle, and to harmonize and exalt every nerve,—such a system applied from childhood to maturity for the purpose not of making professional exhibitors of themselves, but of perfecting men and women for the completest fulfilment and fruition of life itself, does not yet exist. It is the great educational desideratum of the age. Co-ordinating all our bodily organs and spiritual faculties, unifying the outward organism and the inward consciousness, it would remove disease, crime, and untimely death, open to men and women the highest conditions of inspiration, and raise them towards the estate of gods and goddesses. Avoiding equally the classic deification of the body and the mediæval excommunication of it, emerging from the general indifference and inattention to it which belong to the modern absorption in mental work and social ambition, the next phase in the progress of physical education should be the awakening on the part of the whole people of a thorough appreciation of its just importance, and the assigning to it of its proportionate place in their practical discipline. This is a work worthy to be done now in America. As democratic Athens gave the world the first splendid gymnastic training with its transcendent models of manhood, so let democratic America, improving on the old example with all the new treasures of science and sympathy, make application to its citizens of a system of motions for the simultaneous education of bodies and souls to the full possession of their personal sovereignty, making them all kings and queens of themselves, because strong and beautiful and free and happy in every limb and in every faculty!

There is a vulgar prejudice among many of the most refined and religious people against the training of the body to its highest condition, as if that necessitated an animality fatal to the richest action of mind, heart, and soul. The fop whose delicacy is so exquisite that the least shock of vigorous emotion makes him turn pale and sicken, fancies the superb athlete a vulgar creature whose tissues are as coarse as wire netting and the globules of his blood as big as peas. But in reality the presence of fidgeting nerves in place of reposeful muscles gives feebler reactions, not finer ones, a more irritable consciousness, not a richer one. Were this squeamish prejudice well founded it would make God seem a bungler in his work, essential discord inhering in its different parts. It is not so. The harmonious development of all portions of our being will raise the whole higher than any fragment can be lifted alone. The two finest and loftiest and richest flowers of Greek genius, Plato and Sophocles, were both crowned victors in the Olympic games. But this strong, lazy prejudice has widely fulfilled itself in fact by limiting the greatest triumphs of physical culture to the more debased and profane types,—to professional dancers and pugilists. And even here it is to be affirmed that, on this low range of brawn and pluck and skill, physical power and prowess are better than physical weakness and cowardice. It is better, if men are on that level, to surpass and be admired there than to fail and be despised there. But since one God is the Creator of flesh and spirit, both of which when obedient are recipients of his influx and held in tune by all his laws, the best material states are not hostile, but most favorable, to the best spiritual fulfilments. The life of the mind will lift out of, not mire in, the life of the body. And hitherto unknown revelations of inspired power, delight, and longevity wait on that future age when the vindication of a divineness for the body equally sacred with that of the soul shall cause the choicest persons to be as faithful in physical culture for the perfection of their experience as prize-fighters are for winning the victory in the ring. Give us the soul of Channing, purest lover and hero of God, in the body of Heenan, foremost bruiser and champion of the world; the soul of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, tender poetess of humanity, in the body of Fanny Elssler, incomparable queen of the stage;—and what marvels of intuitive perception, creative genius, irresistible authority, and redemptive conquest shall we not behold!

Such is one of the prophecies drawn from the supremest examples of combined mental and physical culture in the dramatic profession. Forrest fell short of any such mark. His gymnastic was coarse and heavy, based on bone and muscle rather than brain and nerve. The sense of musical rhythm was not quick and fine in him. His blood was too densely charged with amorous heat, and his tissues too much clogged with his weight of over two hundred pounds, for the most ethereal delicacies of spirituality and the inspired imagination. But within his limitations he was a marked type of immense original and cultivated power. And his sedulous fidelity in taking care of his bodily strength and health is worthy of general imitation. He practised athletics daily, posturing with dumb-bells or Indian clubs, taking walks and drives. He was extremely attentive to ventilation, saying, “The first condition of health is to breathe pure air plentifully.” He ever sought the sunshine, worshipping the smile of the divine luminary with the ardor of a true Parsee. “The weather has been pernicious,” he says in one of his letters. “Oh for a day of pure sunshine! What a true worshipper of the Sun I have always been! And how he has rewarded me, in the light of his omnipotent and kindly eye, with health and joy and sweet content! How reasonable and how sublime was the worship of Zoroaster! I had rather be a beggar in a sunny climate than a Crœsus in a cloudy one.” He was temperate in food and drink, shunning for the most part rich luxuries, complex and highly-seasoned dishes, falling to with the greatest relish on the simplest and wholesomest things, especially oatmeal, cracked wheat, corn-meal mush, brown bread, Scotch bannocks, cream, buttermilk. When fatigued, he turned from artificial stimulants and sought recovery in rest and sleep. When hard-worked, he never omitted going regularly to bed in the daytime to supplement the insufficient repose of the night. He had great facility in catching a nap, and at such times his deep and full respiration was as regular as clock-work. But above all the rest he attributed the greatest importance to keeping his skin in a clean and vigorous condition. Night and morning he gave himself a thorough washing, followed by energetic scrubbing with coarse towels and a percussing of his back and spine with elastic balls fastened to the ends of two little clubs. His skin was always aglow with life, polished like marble, a soft and sensitive yet firm and flowing mantle of protection and avenue of influences between his interior world and the exterior world. This extreme health and vigor of the skin relieved the tasks put on the other excretory organs, and was most conducive to vital energy and longevity.

The one fault in the constitution of Forrest was the gouty diathesis he inherited from his grandfather on the maternal side. This rheumatic inflammability—a contracted and congested state of some part of the capillary circulation and the associated sensory nerves accumulating force to be discharged in hot explosions of twinging agony—might have been cured by an æsthetic gymnastic adapted to free and harmonize all the circulations,—the breath, the blood, the nerve-force. But, unfortunately, his heavy and violent gymnastic was fitted to produce rigidity rather than suppleness, and thus to cause breaks in the nervous flow instead of an equable uniformity. This was the secret of his painful attacks and of his otherwise unexpectedly early death. There are three natures in man, the vital nature, the mental nature, the moral nature. These natures express and reveal themselves in three kinds or directions of movement. The vital nature betrays or asserts itself in eccentric movement, movement from a centre; the mental, in acentric movement, movement towards a centre; the moral, in concentric movement, movement around a centre. Outward lines of motion express vital activity, inward lines express mental activity, curved lines, which are a blending of the two other, express moral or affectional activity. This physiological philosophy is the basis of all sound and safe gymnastic. The essential evil and danger of the heavy and violent gymnastic of the circus and the ring is that it consists so largely of the outward and inward lines which express the individual will or vital energy and mental purpose. Each of these tends exclusively to strengthen the nature which it exercises. Straight hitting, pushing, lifting, jumping, in their two directions of exertion, tend to expand and to contract. That is vital, and this is mental. Both are expensive in their drain on the volition, but one tends to enlarge the physical organism, the other to shrink it and to produce strictures at every weak point. The former gives a heavy, obese development; the latter an irritable, irregular, at once bulgy and constricted development. The vice of the vital nature dominating unchecked is gluttony, and its end, idiocy. The vice of the mental nature is avarice, both corporal and spiritual, and its end, madness. The vice of the moral nature, when it becomes diseased, is fanaticism; and its subject becomes, if the vital element in it controls, an ecstatic devotee; if the mental element controls, a reckless proselyter. Now, a true system of gymnastic will perfect all the three natures of man by not allowing the vital or the mental to domineer or its special motions to preponderate, but blending them in those rotatory elliptical or spiral movements which combine the generous expansion of the vital organs and the selfish concentration of the mental faculties in just proportion and thereby constitute the language of the moral nature. Rigid outward movements enlarge the bulk and strengthen sensuality. Rigid inward movements cramp the organism and break the unity and liberty of its circulations, leading to every variety of disease. But flowing musical movements justly blent of the other two movements, in which rhythm is observed, and the extensor muscles are used in preponderance over the contractile so as to neutralize the modern instinctive tendency to use the contractile more than the extensor,—movements in which the motor nerves are, for the same reason, used more than the sensory,—will economize the expenditure of force, soothe the sensibilities, and secure a balanced and harmonious development of the whole man in equal strength and grace. Such a system of exercise will remove every tendency to a monstrous force in one part and a dwarfed proportion in another. It will secure health and beauty in a rounded fulness equally removed from shrivelled meagreness and repulsive corpulence. It will make its practiser far more than a match for the huge athletes of the coarse school, as the man whose every limb is a whip is thrice more puissant and terrible than the man whose every limb is a club. The deepest secret of the final result of this æsthetic gymnastic is that it gives one the perfect possession of himself in the perfected unity of his organism, the connective tissue being so developed by the practice of a slow and rhythmical extensor action that it serves as an unbroken bed of solidarity for the whole muscular coating of the man. Nothing else can be so conducive as this to equilibrium, and consequently to longevity. When the unity of the connective tissue is broken by strictures at the articulations or elsewhere, the waves of motion or force ever beating through the webs of nerves are interrupted, stopped, or reflected by devitalized wrinkles which they cannot pass. Thence result the innumerable mischiefs of inflammation in the outer membrane and catarrh in the inner.

The æsthetic gymnastic, which will serve as a diacatholicon and panacea for a perverted and sick generation, is one whose measured and curvilinear movements will not be wasteful of force but conservative of it, by keeping the molecular vibrations circulating in the organism in perpetual translations of their power, instead of shaking them out and losing them through sharp angles and shocks. This will develop the brain and nerves, the genius and character, as the old system developed the muscles and the viscera. It will lead to harmony, virtue, inspiration, and long life, as the old system led to exaggeration, lust, excess, and early death. How greatly it is needed one fact shows, namely, the steady process which has long been going on of lessening beauty and increasing ugliness in the higher classes of society, lessening roundness and increasing angularity of facial contour. The proof of this historic encroachment of anxious, nervous wear and tear displacing the full grace of curved lines with the sinister sharpness of straight lines is given in most collections of family portraits, and may be strikingly seen by glancing from the rosy and generous faces of Fox and Burke or of Washington and Hamilton to the pinched and wrinkled visages of Gladstone and D’Israeli or of Lincoln and Seward.

There is probably only one man now living who is fully competent to construct this system of æsthetic gymnastic,—James Steele Mackaye, the heir of the traditions and the developer of the philosophy of François Delsarte. It was he of whom Forrest, two years before his own death, said, “He has thrown floods of light into my mind: in fifteen minutes he has given me a deeper insight into the philosophy of my own art than I had myself learned in fifty years of study.” If he shall die without producing this work, it will be a calamity to the world greater than the loss of any battle ever fought or the defeat of any legislative measure ever advocated. For this style of gymnastic alone recognizes the infinitely solemn and beautiful truth that every attitude, every motion, tends to produce the quality of which it is the legitimate expression. Here is brought to light an education constantly going on in every one, and far more momentous and fatal than any other. Here is a principle which makes the body and the laws of mechanics as sacred revelations of the will of God as the soul and the laws of morality. Here is the basis of the new religious education destined to perfect the children of men, abolish deformity, sickness, and crime, and redeem the earth.

Had Forrest practised such a style of exercise, instead of weighing upwards of two hundred pounds and suffering from those irregularities of circulation which often disabled, at length paralyzed, and at last killed him at sixty-seven, he would have weighed a hundred and sixty, been as free and agile as he was powerful, and lived without an ache or a shock to ninety or a hundred.

His faithful exercises, defective as they were in the spirit of beauty and economy, gave him enormous vital potency and tenacity. He felt this keenly as a priceless luxury, and was justly proud of it. He used to be extremely fond of the Turkish bath, and once said, “No man who has not taken a Turkish bath has ever known the moral luxury of being personally clean.” He was a great frequenter of the celebrated establishment of Dr. Angell, on Lexington Avenue, in New York. After the bath and the shampoo, and the inunction and the rest, on one occasion, as he was striding up and down the room, feeling like an Olympian god who had been freshly fed through all the pores of his skin with some diviner viands than ambrosia, he vented his slight grief and his massive satisfaction in these words: “What a pity it is that a man should have to suffer for the sins of his ancestors! Were it not for this damned gouty diathesis, I would not swap constitutions with any man on earth,—damned if I would!”

It was in 1865, while playing, on a terribly cold February night, in the Holliday Street Theatre, in Baltimore, that Forrest received the first dread intimation that his so proudly cherished prerogative of bodily strength was insecure. He was enacting the part of Damon. The theatre was so cold that, he said, he felt chilled from the extremities of his hands and feet to the centre of his heart, and the words he uttered seemed to freeze on his lips. Suddenly his right leg began twitching and jerking. He nearly lost control of it; but by a violent effort of will he succeeded in getting through the play. Reaching his lodgings and calling a physician, he found, to his great grief and horror, that his right sciatic nerve was partially paralyzed.

An obvious lameness, a slight hobble in his gait, was the permanent consequence of this attack. It was sometimes better, sometimes worse; but not all his earnest and patient attempts to cure it ever availed to find a remedy. It was a mortifying blow, from which he never fully recovered, though he grew used to it. His strength of build and movement had been so complete, such a glory to him, he had so exulted in it as it drew admiring attention, that to be thus maimed and halted in one of its most conspicuous centres was indeed a bitter trial to him. Still he kept up good heart, and fondly hoped yet to outgrow it and be all himself again. He was just as faithful as ever to his exercises, his diet, his bathing, his rest and sleep; and he retained, in spite of this shocking blow, an astonishing quantity of vital and muscular energy. Still a large and dark blot had been made on his personal splendor, and all those rôles which required grace and speed of bodily movement sank from their previous height. Notwithstanding his strenuous endeavors to neutralize the effects of this paralysis, its stealthy encroachments spread by imperceptible degrees until his whole right side—shoulder and chest and leg—shrank to smaller dimensions than the left, and at last he was obliged when fencing to have the sword fastened to his hand. And yet he continued to act to the end; acting still with a remarkable physical power and with a mental vividness not one particle lowered from that of his palmiest day. But, after the year 1865, for any of his old friends who remembered the electrifying spontaneity of his terrible demonstrations of strength in former days, to see him in such casts as Metamora, Damon, Spartacus, and Cade, was painful.

In the month of January, 1866, Forrest had a most gratifying triumph in Chicago. The receipts were unprecedentedly large, averaging for the five nights of his engagement nearly twenty-five hundred dollars a night. He wrote to his friend Oakes: “Eighteen years since, I acted here in a small theatre of which the present mayor of Chicago, J. B. Rice, Esq., was manager. The population, then about six thousand, is now one hundred and eighty thousand, with a theatre that would grace Naples, Florence, or Paris. The applause I have received here has been as enthusiastic as I have ever known, and the money-return greater. It beats the history of the stage in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston, and New Orleans. Give me joy, my dear and steadfast friend, that the veteran does not lag superfluous on the stage.”

Early in the same year he accepted the munificent offer made by the manager of the San Francisco theatre to induce him to pay a professional visit to California. He remembered the flattering letter sent him by the government of the State nine years before. He felt a keen desire, as a patriotic American, to view the wondrous scenery and products of the golden coast of the Pacific, and he also was ambitious that the youngest part of the country should behold those dramatic portrayals which had so long been applauded by the oldest. Landing in San Francisco on the third of May, he was serenaded in the evening by the Philharmonic Society, and on the fourteenth made his débût in the Opera House in the rôle of Richelieu. The prices of admission were doubled, and the seats for the opening night were sold at auction. The first ticket brought five hundred dollars. “At an early hour last night,” said one of the morning papers, “the tide of people turned with steady current towards the Opera House. Throng after throng approached the portal and melted into the vast space. Inside, the scene was one of extraordinary magnificence. Hundreds of flaming jets poured a flood of shadowless light on the rich painting and gilding of the amphitheatre, the luxurious draperies of the boxes, and the galaxy of wealth and beauty smiling beneath its rays.” He played for thirty-five nights to an aggregate of over sixty thousand persons, and was paid twenty thousand dollars in gold. His engagement was suddenly interrupted by a severe attack of his old enemy the gout. He fled away to the cedar groves, the mineral springs, and the mountains, to feast his eyes on the marvellous California landscapes and to nurse his health. His enjoyment of the whole trip, and in particular of his long tarry at the Mammoth Tree Grove, was profound. He delighted in recalling and describing to his friends one scene in this grove, a scene in which he was himself a striking figure. Visible in various directions were gigantic trees hundreds of feet in height, whose age could be reckoned by centuries, bearing the memorial names of celebrated Americans, — Bryant, Lincoln, Seward, Longfellow, Webster, Kane, Everett, and the darling of so many hearts, sweet Starr King,—whose top, three hundred and sixty-six feet high, overpeers all the rest. Here the Father of the Forest, long ago fallen, his trunk four hundred and fifty feet long and one hundred and twelve feet in circumference at the base, lies mouldering in gray and stupendous ruin. A hollow chamber, large enough for one to pass through on horseback, extends for two hundred feet through the colossal trunk of this prone and dead monarch of the grove, whose descendants tower around him in their fresh life, and seem mourning his requiem as the evening breeze sighs in their branches. Forrest mounted a horse, and, with all the pageant personalities he had so long made familiar to the American people clustering upon his own, rode slowly through this incredible hollow just as the level beams of the setting sun illuminated the columns of the grove and turned it into a golden cathedral.

In September he wrote to Oakes,—

“Here I am still enjoying the salubrious air of the mountains, on horseback and afoot, and bathing in waters from the hot and cold springs which pour their affluent streams on every hand.

“My health is greatly improved, and my lameness is now scarcely perceptible. In a few weeks more I shall return to San Francisco to finish my engagement, which was interrupted by my late indisposition. My present intention is not to return to the East until next spring; for it would be too great a risk to encounter the rigors of a winter there which might prove disastrous. You are aware that the winter in San Francisco is much more agreeable than the summer; and after my professional engagement there I shall visit Sacramento and some few other towns, and then go to Los Angelos, where I shall enjoy a climate quite equal to that of the tropics. I am determined to come back to you in perfect health. How I should like to take a tramp with you into the mountains this blessed day! I can give you no reasonable idea of the beauty of the weather here. The skies are cloudless, save with the rare and rosiest shadows, not a drop of rain, and yet no drought, no aridity; the trees are fresh and green, and the air as exhilarating as champagne.”

The news of the serious illness of his sister Caroline caused him to abandon the purpose of resuming his interrupted engagement in San Francisco, and, enriched with a thousand agreeable memories, on the twentieth of October he set sail for home.

The sentiment of patriotism was a fervid element in the inner life of Forrest, a source of strength and pleasure. He had a deep faith in the democratic principles and institutions of his country, a large knowledge and enjoyment of her scenery, a strong interest in her honor, industries, and fortunes, and an unshaken confidence and pride in her sublime destiny. His sympathy in politics, which he studied and voted on with intelligent conviction, had always been Southern as well as democratic; but at the first sound of the war he sprang into the most resolute attitude in defence of the imperilled cause of freedom and humanity. He wrote the following letter to one of his old friends in the West in June, 1861:

“The political aspect of our country is ominous indeed, and yet I hope with you that in the Divine Providence there will be some great good brought out of this evil state of affairs which will prove at last a blessing to our country. Oftentimes from that we consider evil comes a reviving good. I trust it may prove so in this case. I do not, however, condemn the South for their feelings of just indignation towards the intermeddling abolitionist of the North,—the abolitionist who for years by his incendiary acts has made the homestead of the planter a place of anxiety and unrest instead of peace and tranquillity. But I do condemn the leaders of this unwarrantable rebellion, those scurvy politicians who, to serve their own selfish ends, flatter and fool, browbeat and threaten honest people into an attitude which seems to threaten the safety of our glorious Union. I still believe in man’s capacity to govern himself, and I prophesy that by September next all our difficulties will be adjusted. The South will know that the North has no hostile, no subversive feelings to gratify, that it is the Union of the States—that Union cemented by the blood of patriot sires—which is to be preserved unbroken and inviolate, and that under its fraternal ægis all discord shall cease, all wounds be healed. To this end we must be ready for the field; we must gird up our loins and put on our armor; for a graceful and lasting peace is only won when men are equals in honor and in courage. And to this end it gives me pleasure to know that my namesake, your son ——, has decided to take arms in defence of the Union of the States and the Constitution of our fathers; and, more, that his good mother, as well as yourself, approves his resolution. Now is the time to test if our Government be really a shield and a protection against anarchy and rebellion, or merely a rope of sand, an illusion, a chimera; and it is this spontaneous uprising of every friend of freedom rallying around the flag of his country—that sacred symbol of our individual faith—which will proclaim to the world in tones more potent than heaven’s thunder-peal that we HAVE a Government stronger and more enduring than that of kings and potentates, because founded on equal and exact justice, the offspring of man’s holiest and noblest nature, the attribute of God himself.”

Two years later, he wrote in a letter to another friend,—

“Great God! in what a melancholy condition is our country now! An ineradicable curse begin at the very root of his heart that harbors a single thought that favors disunion. May God avert the overwhelming evil!”

He made himself familiar with the triumphs of American genius in every department of industry and art, and glowed with pride over the names of his illustrious countrymen. The following brief letter reveals his heart. He never had any personal acquaintance with the brilliant man whose departure he thus mourns.

“New York, July 15th, 1859.

“My dear Oakes,—It is with the deepest emotions I have just heard of the death of Rufus Choate. His decease is an irreparable loss to the whole country. A noble citizen, a peerless advocate, a great patriot, has gone, and there is no one to supply his place. In the fall of this great man death has obtained a victory and humanity suffered a defeat.

“Edwin Forrest.”

One other letter of his should be preserved in this connection, for its eloquent expression of blended friendship and patriotism:

“Philadelphia, July 28th, 1862.

“My dear Friend,—Where are you, and what are you doing? Are you ill or well? I have telegraphed to you twice, and one answer is that you are ill, another that you are much better. I called on Mr. Chickering during my recent visit to New York, and he assured me you could not be seriously ill, or he would have been advised of it; and so I calmed my fears. That you have greatly suffered in mind I have reason to know. The death of Colonel Wyman assured me of that. You must have felt it intensely. But he fell nobly, in the discharge of a most sacred duty which consecrates his name forever among the defenders of the Union of his country. I too have lost friends in the same glorious cause,—peace and renown to their ashes! Among them one, the noblest of God’s manly creatures, Colonel Samuel Black, of Pennsylvania. Enclosed you have a merited eulogy of him by our friend Forney, who knew him well. Let us prepare ourselves for more of the same sad bereavements. This unnatural war, which has already ‘widow’d and unchilded many a one,’ has not yet reached its fearfullest extent. The Union cemented by the blood of our fathers must and shall be preserved; this is the unalterable decree of the people of the Free States. Better that all the slaves should perish and the blood of all those who uphold the institution of slavery perish with them, than that this proud Temple, this glorious Union consecrated to human freedom, should tumble into ruins. Do you remember what Tom Paine, the great Apostle of Liberty, wrote to General Washington in 1796? ‘A thousand years hence,’ he writes, ‘perhaps much less, America may be what Britain now is. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue be as if it had never been. The ruins of that Liberty thousands bled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale. When we contemplate the fall of empires and the extinction of the nations of the Old World we see but little more to excite our regret than mouldering ruins, pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty pyramids. But when the Empire of America shall fall the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass or marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity, a Babel of invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance,—but here, oh painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the greatest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell!’

“May God in his infinite wisdom avert from us such a moral desolation! Write to me soon, and tell me all about yourself. I have been ill of late and confined to my bed. I am now better.

“Edwin Forrest.

“James Oakes, Esq.”

The earnestness of the feeling of Forrest as an American exerted a profound influence in moulding his character and in coloring his theatrical representations. The satisfactions it yielded, the proud hopes it inspired, were a great comfort and inspiration to him. And he said that one of his greatest regrets in dying would be that he should not see the unparalleled growth, happiness, and glory of his country as they would be a hundred years hence.

Another source of unfailing consolation and pleasure to him was his love of nature. He took a real solid joy in the forms and processes of the material creation, the changing lights and shades of the world, the solemn and lovely phenomena of morning and evening and summer and winter, the gorgeous upholstery of the clouds, and the mysterious marshalling of the stars. His letters abound in expressions which only a sincere and fervent lover of nature could have used. Writing from Philadelphia in early October, when recovering from a severe illness, he says, “It is the true Indian summer. The sunbeams stream through the golden veil of autumn with a softened radiance. How gratefully I receive these benedictions from the Universal Cause!” And in a letter dated at Savannah, November, 1870, he writes to his biographer, “Ah, my friend, could the fine weather you boast of having in Boston make me feel fresh and happy, Heaven has sent enough of it here to fill a world with gladness. The skies are bright and roseate as in summer, the air is filled with fragrance drawn by the warm sun from the balsamic trees, while the autumnal wild-flowers waft their incense to the glorious day. All these things I have enjoyed, and, I trust, with a spirit grateful to the Giver of all good. Yet all these, though they may meliorate in a degree the sadness of one’s life, cannot bind up the broken heart, heal the wounded spirit, nor even, as Falstaff has it, ‘set a leg.’”

This taste for nature, with the inexhaustible enjoyment and the refining culture it yields, was his in a degree not common except with artists and poets. While acting in Cleveland once in mid-winter, he persuaded a friend to walk with him for a few miles early on a very cold morning. Striding off, exulting in his strength, after an hour and a half he paused on the edge of the lake, his blood glowing with the exercise, his eyes sparkling with delight, while his somewhat overfat companion was nearly frozen and panted with fatigue. Stretching his hand out towards the magnificent expanse of scenery spread before them, he exclaimed, “Bring your prating atheists out here, let them look on that, and then say there is no God—if they can!”

An eminent New York lawyer, an intimate friend of Forrest, who had spent his whole life in the city absorbed in the social struggle, was utterly indifferent to the beauties of nature. He had never felt even the loveliness of a sunset,—something which one would think must fill the commonest mind with glory. Walking with him in the environs of the city on a certain occasion when approaching twilight had caused the blue chamber of the west to blaze with such splendors of architectural clouds and crimsoned squadrons of war as no scenic art could ever begin to mock, Forrest called the attention of his comrade to the marvellous spectacle. “I have no doubt,” said the lawyer, “that I have seen a great many of these things; but I never cared anything about them.” The disciple of Shakspeare proceeded to discourse to the disciple of Coke upon Littleton on the charm of natural scenery, its soothing and delight-giving ministrations to a man of taste and sensibility, in a strain that left a permanent impression on his hearer, who from that time began to watch the phenomena of the outward world with a new interest.

But even more than in his professional triumphs, his increasing store of wealth, his animal health and strength, his patriotism, or his love for the works of God in nature, Forrest found during the last twenty years of his life a never-failing resource for his mind and heart in the treasures of literature. He gathered a library of between ten and fifteen thousand volumes, well selected, carefully arranged and catalogued, for the accommodation of which he set apart the finest apartment in his house, a lofty and spacious room running the whole length of the edifice. In this bright and cheerful room all the conveniences of use and comfort were collected. Beside his desk, where from his chair he could lay his hand on it, superbly bound in purple velvet, on a stand made expressly for it, rested his rare copy of the original folio edition of Shakspeare, valued at two thousand dollars. Around him, invitingly disposed, were the standard works of the historians, the biographers, the poets, and especially the dramatists and their commentators. Here he added to his shelved treasures many of the best new works as they appeared, keeping himself somewhat abreast with the fresh literature of the times in books like Motley’s Netherlands, Grimm’s Life of Michael Angelo, and Hawkins’s Life of Kean, which he read with a generous relish. Here, ensconced in an arm-chair by the window, or lolling on a lounge in the centre of the library, or seated at his study-table, he passed nearly all the leisure time of his lonely later years. Here he would occupy himself for many an hour of day and night,—hours that flew swiftly, laden with stingless enjoyment,—passing from volume to volume sipping the hived sweetnesses of the paradisal field of literature. Here, alone and quiet in the peopled solitude of books, he loved to read aloud by the hour together, listening to himself as if some one else were reading to him,—the perfection of his breathing and the ease of his articulation being such that the labor of utterance took nothing from the interest of the subject, while the rich music and accurate inflections of his voice added much. Here his not numerous intimates, with occasional callers from abroad,—Rees, Forney, and his particular favorite, Daniel Dougherty,—would often drop in, ever sure of an honest welcome and genial fellowship, and speed the time with wit and humor, reminiscence, anecdote, argument, joke, and repartee, vainly seeking to beguile him into that more general society which would have gladly welcomed what he could so richly give and take.

An extract from a letter of his written in June, 1870, is of interest in this connection:

“I will read Forster’s Life of Walter Savage Landor, of which you speak, at my first leisure; though I consider Forster personally to be a snob. You will find among my papers in your possession exactly what I think of him. For Landor, even as a boy, I had a great admiration. I sate with wonder while I quaffed instruction at the shrine of his genius. There is a book just published in England which I shall devour with an insatiable mental appetite. It is called ‘Benedict Spinoza, his Life, Correspondence, and Ethics.’ It is the first time that his works have been collected and published in English. So that I shall have a rare treat. His Ethics I have read in a French translation which I found in Paris years ago; and its perusal divided my time between the pleasures of the town and the intellectual culture which the study of his sublime philosophy gave me. It was called ‘Spinoza’s Ethics; or, Man’s Revelation to Man of the Dealings of God with the World.’”

Yes, his library was indeed his sure refuge from care and sorrow, a sweet solace for disappointment and vacancy and heartache. Here, in the glorious fellowship of the genius and worth of all ages, he fully gratified that love of reading without whose employment he would hardly have known how to bear some of the years of his checkered life. An anecdote will illustrate the strength of this habit in him and afford an interesting glimpse of the interior of the man. In his library one summer afternoon, the notes of birds in the trees and the hum of bees in his garden languidly stealing in at the open window, he sat, with the precious Shakspeare folio in his lap, conversing with his biographer. He said, “If I could describe how large a space Shakspeare has filled of my inward life, and how intense an interest I feel in his personality, no one would believe me. I would this moment give one hundred thousand dollars simply to read—even if the instant I had finished its perusal the manuscript were to be destroyed forever—a full account of the first eighteen years of the life of Shakspeare,—such an account as he could himself have written at forty had he been so minded, of his joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, his aspirations, his disappointments, his friendships, his enmities, his quarrels, his fights, his day-dreams, his loves; in short, the whole inward and outward drama of his boyhood.” It was certainly one of the most striking tributes ever paid to the genius of the immortal dramatist. A thorough familiarity with the works of Shakspeare is of itself an education and a fortune for the inner man. There all the known grades of experience, all the kinds of characters and styles of life seen in the world, are shown in their most vivid expressions. There all the varieties of thought and sentiment are gathered in their most choice and energetic forms of utterance. There are stimulus and employment for every faculty. There is incitement for all ambition, solace for all sorrow, beguilement for all care, provocation and means for every sort and degree of self-culture. Shakspeare is one of the greatest teachers that ever lived, and those players who have character, docility, and aspiration are his favorite pupils. Betterton, who was born in 1635, only twelve years after the death of Shakspeare, made a journey from London to Warwickshire on purpose to gather up what traditions and anecdotes remained of him. Garrick was the author of the remarkable centennial celebration of his memory. And the voice of Kemble faltered and his tears were visible as in his farewell speech on the stage he alluded to the divine Shakspeare.

Anecdotes of the conduct and expressions of a man when he is off his guard and unstudiedly natural give a truer picture of his character than elaborate general statements. And three or four brief ones may be given to close this chapter with an impartial view of the inner life of Forrest in its contrasted aspects of refinement and even sublimity at one time, and of rude severity and coarseness at another.

One summer evening, when he was paying a visit to his friend Oakes, they were at Cohasset, sitting on a piazza overhanging the sea. Mr. John F. Mills, one of the best men that ever lived, whose beautiful spirit gave pain to his host of friends for the first time only when he died, was with them. There had been a long storm, and now that it had subsided the moaning roar of the sea was loud and dismal. Forrest addressed it with this extemporaneous apostrophe, as reported by Mr. Mills: “Howl on, cursed old ocean, howl in remorse for the crimes you have committed. Millions of skeletons lie bleaching on your bed; and if all our race were swallowed there to-night you would not care any more for them than for the bursting of a bubble on your breast. There is something dreadful in this inhumanity of nature. Therefore I love to hear you groan, you heartless monster! It makes you seem as unhappy as you make your victims when they empty their stomachs into you or are themselves engulfed. Gnash your rocky teeth and churn your rage white. Thank God, your cruel reign will one day end, and there will be no more sea.”

The next evening they sat in the same place, but the moon was up, and his mood was different, more placid and pensive than before. The swell and plunge of the billows on the beach made solemn accompaniment to the guttural music of his voice. There was a mournfulness in the murmur of his tones as elemental and sad as the tremendous sighing of the sea itself. “This world,” he said, “seems to me a penal abode. We have all lived elsewhere and gone astray, and now we expiate our bygone offences. There is no other explanation that I can think of for the tangled snarl of human fates. True, since we are ignorant of these sins, our punishment seems not just. But then we may some time recover memory of all and so understand everything clearly. It is all mystery now, but if there is any explanation I am convinced we are convicts working out our penances, and hell is not hereafter but here. Just hear those breakers boom, boom, boom. Do they not seem to you to be drumming the funereal Rogue’s March for this Botany Bay of a world?”

A stranger to Forrest, merely to gratify his vanity by drawing the attention of a company to his speech, said he had seen the celebrated actor drunk in the gutter. The friend who reported this to Forrest would not reveal who the man was. But one day he pointed him out on the opposite sidewalk. The outraged and angry tragedian went quietly over and accosted the slanderer; “Do you know Edwin Forrest, and do you say you once saw him drunk in the gutter?” On receiving an affirmative reply he broke out in the strong vernacular of which he was a master, “Now, you sneaking scoundrel and lying calumniator, I am Edwin Forrest. I ache all over to give you the damnedest thrashing you ever tasted. But it is against my principles. I should be ashamed of myself if I stooped to take such advantage of your cowardly weakness. But, while I will not do it with my body, in my mind I kick and spit on you. Now pass on, and relish yourself, and be damned, you human skunk.”

Although Forrest used much profane language, his real spirit was not an irreverential one. His profanity was but an expletive habit, a safety-valve for wrath. When expostulated with on the custom, he said, “I never knowingly swear before ladies or clergymen, lest it should shock or grieve them. But at other times, when it is necessary either for proper emphasis or as a vent for passion too hot and strong, why I let it rip as it will.”

In connection with the Broad Street mansion which he occupied at the time of his death, Forrest built and fitted up a handsome private theatre. John Wiser, a scenic artist, arranged and painted it. At its completion Forrest seated himself in a large chair, and, after expressing his pleasure at the effect, said, “John, do you know what would be the most delightful sight in the world, eh? If I could only see this room filled with children, and a company of little boys and girls playing on that stage.”

One day when Forrest was walking with a friend in Brooklyn a beggar accosted them. Tears were in his eyes, and he had a ragged exterior as well as a tottering form and a pale and sunken look. With a plaintive voice he said, “For the love of heaven, gentlemen, give me a trifle for the sake of my starving family. You will not feel it, and it will relieve a half a score of hungry ones. Will you not aid me?” Forrest looked at the man for a moment as if reading his very soul, and then said, while placing a golden eagle in his hand, “Yes, my friend, you are either a true subject for charity or else the best actor I ever saw.”

Forrest always carried his professional humor and docility with him. He gave a ludicrous description of an amateur grave-digger who lived in Philadelphia. He was worth fifty thousand dollars, yet whenever a grave was to be made he liked to have a hand in it. His nose was so turned up that his brains might have been seen, had he possessed any. And his voice was a perfect model for the second grave-digger in Hamlet, saying, “The crowner hath set on her, and finds it Christian burial.”

A strolling exhibitor of snakes came to Louisville when Forrest was playing there in his youth. Wishing to feel the strongest emotions of fear, that he might utilize the experience in his acting, Forrest asked the man to take care of the head of a boa-constrictor some twelve feet in length and let the hideous reptile crawl about his naked neck. He never forgot the cold, clammy slip of the coils on his flesh and the sickening horror it awakened.

CHAPTER XVIII.
PRIZES AND PENALTIES OF FAME.

The next important feature to be studied in order to appreciate the character and life of Forrest is his experience of the prizes and the penalties of fame. For he had a great fame; and fame, particularly in a democratic country, inflicts penalties as well as bestows prizes. Not one man in a thousand has enough force and tenacity of character to determine to gain the solid and lasting prizes of life. Average men willingly put up with cheap and transient substitutes for the real ends, or with deluding mockeries of them. They seek passing pleasures instead of the conditions of permanent happiness; applause instead of merit; a crowd of acquaintances instead of true friends; notoriety or stagnant indifference instead of fame. There is nothing more worthy of contempt, although it is so miserably common, than the mean and whining cant which puts negation and failure above affirmation and success, constantly asserting the emptiness and deceit of all earthly goods. In opposition to this morbid depreciation of every natural attractiveness without and desire within, nothing is more wholesome or grand than a positive grasp and fruition of all the native worths of the world. A great deal of the fashionable disparagement and scorn of the prizes of wealth, position, reputation, is but unconscious envy decrying what it lacks the strength and courage to seize. The fame which a gifted and faithful man secures is the reflex signal of the effects he has produced, and a broad, vivid, healthy enjoyment of it is an intrinsic social good to be desired. It is one of the greatest forces employed by Providence for the education of men and the advancement of society. To condemn or despise it is to fling in the face of God. The fancied pious who do this are dupes of an impious error.

Fame is a life in the souls of other men added to our own. It is a feeling of the effect we have taken on the admiration and love of those who regard us with honoring attention and sympathy. It is a social atmosphere of respect and praise and curiosity, enveloping its subject, fostering his self-esteem, keeping his soul in a moral climate of complacency. The famous man has a secret feeling that the contributors to his glory are his friends, loyal to him, ready to protect, further, and bless him. Thus he is fortified and enriched by them, their powers ideally appropriated to his ideal use. Thus fame is the multiplication of the life of its subject, reflected in the lives of its givers. This is the real cause of the powerful fascination of fame for its votaries; for there is no instinct deeper in man than the instinct which leads him to desire to intensify, enlarge, and prolong his existence; and fame makes a man feel that in some sense his existence is multiplied and continued in all those who think of him admiringly, and that it will last as long as their successive generations endure. As Conrad makes Jack Cade say,—

“Fame is the thirst

Of gods and godlike men to make a life

Which nature made not, stealing from heaven

Its imaged immortality.”

And so in its ultimate essence and use fame represents a magnified and prolonged idealization of direct personal experience. It is ideal means of life, a deeper foundation and wider range of reflected sympathetic life embracing and sustaining immediate individual life. This great prize is evidently a good to be desired, the evils connected with it belonging not to itself but to unprincipled methods of pursuing it, vulgar errors in distributing it, and the selfish perversion of its true offices. It exists and is enjoyed in various degrees, on many different levels, from the plebeian enthusiasm for the champion boxer to the aristocratic recognition of a great thinker. As we ascend in rank we lose in fervor. Fame is seen in its ruddiest intensity at the funeral of Thomas Sayers celebrated by fifty thousand screaming admirers; in its palest expansion in the renown of Plato, whose works are read by scattered philosophers and whose name glitters inaccessibly in the eternal empyrean. The reason for this greater heat of glory on its lower ranges plainly is that men feel the sharpest interest in the lowest bases of life, because these are the most indispensable. Existence can be maintained without transcendent talents, but not without health, strength, and courage. Animal perfection goes before spiritual perfection, and its glory is more popular because more appreciable.

Forrest drank the intoxicating cup of fame on widely separated levels, from the idolatrous incense of the Bowery Boys who at the sight of his herculean proportions shied their caps into the air with a wild yell of delight, to the praise of the refined judges who applauded the intellectual and imaginative genius of his Lear. It was a genuine luxury to his soul for many years, and would have been a far deeper one had it not been for the alloys accompanying it. He enjoyed the prize because he had honorably won it, not sacrificing to it the more commanding aims of life; and fame is a mockery only when it shines on the absence of the goods greater than itself,—honor, health, peace, and love. He suffered much on account of it, in consequence of the detestable jealousies, plots, ranklings, and slanders always kindled by it among unhappy rivals and malignant observers. But one suffering he was always spared, namely, the bitter mortifications of the charlatan who has snatched the outward semblance of the prizes of desert without paying their price or possessing their substance. Striving always to deserve his reputation, he did not forfeit his own esteem. The satisfaction he received from applause was the joy of feeling his own power in the fibres of the audience thrilling under his touch. Fame was the magnifying and certified abstract of this,—a vast and constant assurance in his imagination of life and power and pleasure. Dry sticks, leather men, may sneer at the idea, but the rising moral ranks of souls are indicated by the intensity with which they can act and react on ideal considerations. Fame puts a favorable bias on all our relations with the approving public, and thus enriches our inner life by aiding our sympathies to appropriate their goods.

The actor lives in an atmosphere electrized with human publicity, and walks between walls lined with mirrors. Everything in his career is calculated to develop an acute self-consciousness. And then by what terrible trials his sensitiveness is beset in his exposure to the opposite extremes of derision and eulogy! Dr. Johnson, alluding at one time to the sensibility of Garrick, said, contemptuously, “Punch has no feelings.” At another time, praising his genius, he said, sublimely, “His death eclipsed the gayety of nations.” The actor tastes the sweetness of fame more keenly than any other, because no other lives so directly on it or draws the expression of it so openly and directly. Bannister was invited by the royal family at Windsor one evening to read a new play, and was treated with the utmost regard. The very next night he was stopped by a footpad, who, dragging him to a lamp to plunder him, discovered who he was, and said, “I’ll be damned if I can rob Jack Bannister.” Having thus the esteem of both extremes of society, it is safe to conclude that he enjoyed the admiration of all between. And this boon of public honor and love will seem valuable to a performer in proportion to the quickness and depth of his emotional power. “The awful consciousness,” said Mrs. Siddons, “that one is the sole object of attention to that immense space, lined as it were with human intellect all around from top to bottom, may perhaps be imagined, but can never be described.” A vulgar performer would rush on as if those heads were so many turnips. The genius of imaginative sensibility is the raw material for greatness. Forrest had much of this, although his self-possession was so strong; and under his composed exterior, even after he had been thirty years on the stage, he often shrank with temporary trepidation from the ordeal of facing a fresh audience. His enjoyment of the tributes paid to him was commensurately deep.

And, stretching through the long fifty years of his professional course, how varied, how numerous, how interesting and precious, these crowded tributes were! There was no end to the compliments paid him, echoes of the impression he had made on the country. Now it was a peerless race-horse, carrying off prize on prize, that was named after him. Then it was some beautiful yacht, club-boat, or pilot-boat, of which there were a dozen or more to whose owners he presented sets of flags. At another time it was a noble steamer or merchantman, of which there were a good many named for him, each adorned with a statue of some one of his characters as a figure-head. Locomotives and fire-engines also were crowned with his name and his likeness. Military companies, too, took their titles from him and carried his face copied on their banners. The following letter indicates another of the results of his fame:

“Waltham, February 12th, 1871.

“Edwin Forrest, Esq.:

“Dear Sir,—Being one of the small army of boys called after you, I should feel happy to receive some token from my illustrious namesake, if nothing more than his autograph. Hoping to see you before you leave the stage,

“I am respectfully yours,

“Edwin Forrest Moore.”

Seven different dramatic associations, composed of amateurs and professionals, were formed in the cities of Portland, Boston, New York, and elsewhere, bearing his name. And the notices of him in the newspapers were to be reckoned by thousands, ranging all the way from majestic eulogium to gross vituperation.

Portraits of him, paintings, engravings, photographs, in his own individuality and in his chief impersonations, were multiplied in many quarters. Numerous plaster casts of him, four or five busts in marble, and one full-length statue of surpassing grandeur, were taken. Many celebrated artists studied him, from Gilbert Stuart, whose Washington stands supremely immortal in American portraiture, to William Page, whose lovingly elaborated Shakspeare may become so in creative portraiture. Page has depicted Forrest in the role of Spartacus. He shows him at that moment of the scene in the amphitheatre where he utters the words which he never spoke without moving the audience to repeated bursts of applause: “Let them come in: we are armed!” The last portrait ever painted by the dying Stuart was of Forrest, then in his youth and only just beginning to become famous. Forrest used often to speak of his sitting to Stuart, whose strong fiery soul was enclosed in a frame then tottering and tremulous with age. “He was an old white lion,” said Forrest, “and so blind that I had to tell him the color of my eyes and of my hair. By sudden efforts of will he threw the lines and bits of color on the canvas, and every stroke was speech.”

Of the likenesses of Forrest published in this volume, the frontispiece is engraved from a daguerreotype of him at the age of forty-six; the succeeding one is from a painting by Samuel Lawrence, and shows him as he was at twenty-eight; the last one is from a photograph taken when he was in his sixty-seventh year. The illustrations of him in dramatic characters are from photographs made after he had passed sixty and had suffered partial paralysis. They do no justice to him as he appeared in his perfect meridian.

Of all the expressions of admiration, affection, pleasure, called forth by a professional artist, of all the forms or signals of fame, perhaps none is more flattering or more delightful to the recipient than the tributary verses evoked from souls endowed with the poetic faculty. As such natures are finer and higher than others, their homage is proportionally more precious. During his life more than fifty poems addressed to Forrest were published, and gave him a great deal of pure pleasure. A few specimens of these offerings may properly find a place here.

The following lines felicitously copied were thrown upon the stage to him one evening in a bouquet:

TO EDWIN FORREST.

When Time hath often turned his glass,

And Memory scans the stage,

Foremost shall then thy image pass,

The Roscius of this age.

The succeeding piece was written in 1828:

TO EDWIN FORREST.

Young heir of glory, Nature’s bold and favorite child,

Nurtured ’midst matchless scenes of wild sublimity,

Thou who wert reared with sternest truth in groves of song,

To thy bare arm the grasp is given to hurl the bolts

Of wrathful heaven. ’Tis thine, with thundering voice to shake

Creation to her centre, wakening love or rage,

And show thyself as angels or as demons are.

Yea, thou didst seem, as at the shrine I saw thee kneel,

With that bold brow of thine, like some creation bright

From higher spheres breathing thy inspiration there,

As if the Altar’s flame itself had lit thine eye

With all the dazzling radiance of the Deity.

Go forth. Already round thy brow the wreath of fame

Amidst thy godlike locks with classic grace is curled.

Go forth, and shine, the Sun of the dramatic world!

R. M. Ward.

The next piece, in which he is associated with his friend Halleck, is dated 1830:

TO EDWIN FORREST.

When genius, with creative fancy fraught,

Moulds some new being for the sphere of thought,

How the soul triumphs as, supremely blest,

She opes her temple to the welcome guest,

And her white pulses feel, with answering glow,

The kindred breath of the young presence flow!

Such moments, bright as hours in heaven that bring

To spirits life, a pure and deathless thing,

Cheer him who, warm with poesy’s true flame,

Rears in his bower of song the birds of fame;

He whose wreathed locks the lyric laurels wear

Green with immortal dew and cloudless air;

Whose harp-chords wildly echoed back the swell

Of glory’s clarion when Bozzaris fell,—

Thus knew his human fancies grow divine,

And poured their spirit o’er the happy line.

Yet not alone the sons of song can feel

This joy along the grateful senses steal.

To him who, musing, waits at Nature’s throne,

And feels, at last, her wealth become his own,

Then with the priceless gold, thought, passion, heart,

And feeling, tempers to the test of art,

Blends these with poesy’s mysterious spell

Strange as the sigh of ocean’s rosy shell,

No less belong the triumph-throb, the pride

To mind-ennobling sympathies allied,

The deep emotion, and the rapture free;

And these, O Forrest, we behold in thee!

Who e’er has marked thine eye, thy matchless mien,

While, all forgetful of the mimic scene,

Spurning the formal, manner-taught control,

Thou bar’st the fire that lightens in the soul,

Has deemed there moved the form that Shakspeare drew

From visions bright with passion’s warmest hue,

As, wildly garbed in awful tragic guise,

Macbeth, Othello, Lear, he saw arise.

When the last outrage of oppression falls

On man enthralled by man, and Freedom calls

Some champion to flash her steel where’er,

Bloody and black, death, shrieking, hovers near,

Who can portray like thee the throe of hate

Which warns the tyrant of his dreadful fate?

Who image forth th’ exalted agony

Of strife and maddening hope of victory?

There thrills an echo of the pulse, the tone,

That universal man exults to own,

A voice which teaches craven souls that War

For right than guilty Peace is holier far;

Nor suffers them to breathe and pass away

As dust that ne’er forsook its primal clay.

The lines that follow next were printed in 1852, after the divorce trial:

TO EDWIN FORREST.

In every soul where Poesy and Beauty find a place,

Thy image, Forrest, sits enshrined in majesty and grace.

Could but the high and mighty bard, whose votary thou art,

Have seen with what a matchless power thou swayest the human heart,

He too had bowed beneath the spell and owned thy wondrous sway,

And bound thy brow with laurel, and with flowers strewn thy way.

The clouds of grief that for a time obscured thy brilliant morn,

Like to the envious shadows that would dim the rising sun,

Meridian’s fame has put to flight. Cast not thy glances back,

But in the light of fearless genius hold thine onward track.

Margaret Barnett.

This sonnet was written in the same year:

TO EDWIN FORREST.

King of the tragic art! without compeer!

Thy sway is sovereign in the scenic realm;

And where thy sceptre waves, or nods thy helm,

All crowd to be thy royal presence near.

Thou speakest,—we are stilled; the solemn Past,

Rich with grand thought, and filled with noble men

Over whose lives and deeds time’s veil is cast,

Rises to view, and they do live again!

While thou dost tread life’s stage, thy lofty fame,

Undimmed, shall grow, and be the drama’s pride

Centuries hence, when all shall see thy name

Carved deep and high her noblest names beside;

And, with the noblest placed, will aye be found,

In Thespis’ fane, thy statue, laurel-crowned!

R. H. Bacon.

Here is a tribute penned in 1862, in the midst of our civil war:

EDWIN FORREST AS “DAMON.”

Great master of the tragic art,

Whose genius moves the passions’ spring,

To melt the eye and warm the heart

With love of virtue, hate of sin,

Is it our nation’s bleeding fate

That gives thee such heroic fire

Singly to brave the Senate’s hate

And faith for country’s good inspire?

Yes; ’tis not all the mimic scene

We view when now beholding thee;

The heart-strung voice and earnest mien

Of “Damon” breathe pure liberty.

The test of friendship true is there;

But hope for freedom more than life

Starts the usurping tyrant near—

Pleads for the boy—weeps for the wife.

O art divine! when Forrest brings

His matchless eloquence to bear,

Denouncing treason’s poisonous stings,

While for his loved land falls the tear,

The temple of the Muses, filled

With beauty, fashion, youth, and age,

Proves admiration for the skilled

And perfect artist of the stage.

G. C. Howard.

And a year later the following eloquent verses were published by their author in the Philadelphia “Press:”

FORREST.

Pride of the Grecian art,

King of the glorious act,

Whose sceptre-touch can start

From airiest fancy fact!

Sole monarch of the stage!

Thy crowning is the truth

That garners unto age

The laurel-wreaths of youth.

Were massive mien or mould

Of Thespian gods divine

E’er richer in the gold

Of Thespian grace than thine?

A voice that thrills the soul

Through all her trembling keys,

From deepening organ-roll

To flute-born symphonies;

An eye that gleams the light

Of Tragedy’s quick fire,

And soul that sweeps aright

Each grandest poet-lyre,—

These into living thought,

Forrest! in thee sublime

The Thespian gods have wrought,

A masterpiece for Time!

Not from the clods of earth

’Mid grovelling toil and strife

Thy Genius hailed her birth

To all her peerless life;

Her viewless home hath been

Where Poesy hath flung

Its sweetest words to win

The music of thy tongue!

How Manhood’s honor rose,

How perished Woman’s shame,

When robed in worth and woes

Thine own Virginius came!

How Freedom claims a peal

And Tyranny a knell

When Brutus waves the steel

Where Slave and Tarquin fell!

When Spartacus leads on

Each gladiator-blade,

Or feudal tyrants fawn

To lion-hearted Cade,—

How every listening heart

its narrow span,

And, in that glorious art,

Adores the peerless man!

But dearer than the rest

We own thy mystic spell

To lave the lingering breast

Where Avon’s sweetness fell!

To marshal from the page

And summon from the pen

Of Shakspeare, to thy stage,

His living, breathing men!

No longer Shakspeare’s line,

But studious gaze controls;

It girds and gilds from thine

The multitude of souls!

While Genius claims a crown,

Or mimic woe a tear,

Paled be the envious frown

And dumb the cynic sneer

That barreth from thy heart

Or veileth from thy name

The loftiest, grandest part

Of histrionic Fame!

C. H. B.

A single sonnet more shall end these examples of the poetic tributes to the genius and worth of Forrest; tributes which, adding lustre to his career and shedding comfort and joy into his heart, were and are one of the most attractive illustrations of the value and sweetness of the prize of fame:

ON ROOT’S DAGUERREOTYPE OF MR. FORREST.

Light-born, and limned by Heaven! It is no cheat,

No image; but himself, his living shade!

With hurried pulse, the heart leaps forth to greet

The man who merits more than Tully said

Of his own Roscius, that the histrion’s power

Was but a leaf amid his garland wreath.

His swaying spirit ruled the magic hour,

But his vast virtues knew no day, no death.

He seems not now, but is. And I do know,

Or think I do, what meaning from those lips

Would break; and on that bold and manly brow

There hangs a light that knows not an eclipse,

The light of a true soul. If art can give

The bodied soul this life, who doubts the soul will live?

Robert T. Conrad.

Public and private banquets were given in honor of the actor by distinguished men in all parts of the country, occasions drawing together brilliant assemblages and yielding the highest enjoyment to every faculty of sense and soul. To meet around the social table, decked with everything that wealth and taste can command, the most eminent members of the learned professions, artists, authors, statesmen, the leaders of the business world, beautiful and accomplished women, and pass the hours in friendly converse seasoned with every charm of culture and wit, is one of the choicest privileges society can bestow in recognition and reward of worth and celebrity. Among the more notable of these honors may be mentioned as especially brilliant and locally conspicuous at the time a dinner given him at Detroit by General Lewis Cass, one at Cincinnati by his old friend James Taylor, one at New Orleans by a committee of the leading citizens, including some of his early admirers, and, later, one at Washington by his intimate and esteemed friend Colonel Forney, then Clerk of the House of Representatives. During one of his engagements in Washington he dined with a distinguished company under the princely auspices of Henry Clay. The great Kentuckian, in allusion to Pierre Soulé, a Louisiana Senator, who was a passionate orator but wanting, perhaps, in sobriety of judgment and steadiness of character, said to one of the guests, “A mere actor, sir, a mere actor!” At that instant chancing to catch the eye of Forrest, he promptly added, with the courteous grace of self-possession and winsome eloquence native to his thoroughbred soul, “I do not allude, Mr. Forrest, when I use the word actor thus demeaningly, to those men of genius who impersonate the great characters of Shakspeare and the other immortal dramatists, holding the very mirror of truth up to nature; I refer to the man who in real life affects convictions and plays parts foreign to his soul.”

At a banquet given in honor of John Howard Payne, the first vice-president, Prosper M. Wetmore, an old and dear friend of Forrest, paid him a compliment which, received as it was by the brilliant company with three times three enthusiastic cheers, must have given him a proud pleasure. Mr. Wetmore said, “Before mentioning the name of the gentleman whose health I am about to ask you to drink, I take this opportunity to say a word in relation to the generosity of his heart and the richness of his mind. He was one of the very first who took an interest in the festival of Thursday last, and kindly offered his name and services to add to the attractions of the evening. He has always been the foremost to do his share in honoring our sons of genius; and his purse has never been shut against the meritorious who stood in need of his bounty. His talents as an actor you all know and appreciate. Allow me to give you—Edwin Forrest:

“His health; and would on earth there stood

Some more of such a frame,

That life might be all poetry,

And weariness a name.”

Such as above described were the satisfactions afforded to Forrest by his fame. They are what thousands have vainly wished to win, fondly believing that if they could gain them they should be happy indeed. But to these advantages there are drawbacks, corresponding to these prizes there are penalties, which were experienced by Forrest in all their varieties of bitterness. The evils which dog the goods of public life, as their shadows, went far to disenchant him, to sour him, to make him turn sadly and resentfully into himself away from the lures and shams of society.

To any man of honorable instincts, clear perceptions, and high principles, the incompetency, corruption, and selfish biases of many of those who assume to sit in judgment on the claims of the competitors for public favor and glory, the shallowness and fickleness of the average public itself, the contemptible means successfully used by ignoble aspirants for their own advancement and the defeat of their rivals, the frequent reaction of their own modesty and high-mindedness to obscure and keep down the most meritorious, have a strong influence to rob ambition of its power, destroy all the relish of its rewards, and make fame seem worthless or even odious. Critics write in utter ignorance of the laws of criticism or standards of judgment, and even without having seen the performance they presume to approve or to condemn. Claqueurs are hired to clap one and to hiss another irrespective of merit or demerit. Wreaths, bouquets, rings, jewelled snuff-boxes, are purchased by actors or actresses themselves, through confederates, to be then presented to them in the name of an admiring public. A vase or cup or watch has been known to go with a popular performer from city to city to be presented to him over and over with eulogistic addresses of his own composition. A brazen politician, successful in compassing a nomination and election by shameless wire-pulling, mendacity, and bribery, then receives the tribute of an ostentatious testimonial of which he is himself the secret originator and prime manager. No one who has not had long experience of the world and been admitted behind the scenes, with the keys for interpreting appearances, can suspect how common such things are. They are terribly disheartening and repulsive to a generous soul. They destroy the splendor and value of the outward prizes of existence, and thus paralyze the grandest motives of action. When fools, charlatans, and swindlers carry off honors, then wisdom, genius, and heroism are tempted to despise honors. When the owl is umpire in a contest of song between the donkey and the nightingale, and awards the prize to the brayer, the lark and the mocking-bird may well decline to enter the lists.

In the fashionable rage for Master Betty, Kemble and Siddons were quite neglected; as the levee of Tom Thumb drew a throng of the nobility and fashion of London while poor Haydon, across the street, watched them with a gnawing heart from the door of his deserted exhibition. Cowper says in his “Task,”—

“For Betty the boy

Did strut and storm and straddle, stamp and stare,

And show the world how Garrick did not act.”

When, with pompous incompetency, Lord Abercorn told Mrs. Siddons that “that boy would yet eclipse everything which had been called acting in England,” she quietly replied, with crushing knowledge, “My lord, he is a very clever, pretty boy, but nothing more.” Garrick said it was the lot of actors to be alternately petted and pelted. And Kemble, when congratulated on the superb honors given him at his final adieu to the stage, responded, “It was very fine, but then I could not help remembering that without any cause they were once going to burn my house.” Genius and nobility naturally love fame, worship the public, would pour out their very life-blood to gain popular sympathy and admiration; but after such experiences of baseness and wrong and error the fascination flies from the prizes they had adored as so sacred, and never more do their souls leap and burn with the old enthusiasm of their unsophisticated days. The injustice of the world drives from it the love and homage of its noblest children.

Parasites and egotists seek association with a famous man merely to gratify their vanity, though they call it friendship. They fawn on him to share a reflection of his glory, to reap advantage from his influence, or to beg loans of his money; and when circumstances unmask their characters and show how they were preying on his frankness, he is revolted and his confidence in human nature shaken. Many a man of a sweet and loving nature, like the noble Timon, has gone out to the world with throbbing heart and open arms, and, met with selfishness and treachery, reacted into despair and hate. One of the penalties of a great reputation with its personal following is to be annoyed by sycophants, toadies, the impertinent curiosity of a miscellaneous throng who have neither genuine appreciation for talent nor sincere love for excellence, but a pestiferous instinct for boring and preying. Mrs. Siddons, bereaved of her children amidst her great fame, was so annoyed by worrying interruptions, assailed by envy, slandered by enemies, and vexed by parasites, that she breathed the deepest wishes of her soul in these lines:

“Say, what’s the brightest wreath of fame,

But cankered buds that opening close?

Ah, what the world’s most pleasing dream,

But broken fragments of repose?

“Lead me where peace with steady hand

The mingled cup of life shall hold,

Where time shall smoothly pour his sand,

And wisdom turn that sand to gold.

“Then haply at religion’s shrine

This weary heart its load shall lay,

Each wish my fatal love resign,

And passion melt in tears away.”

The falsehood, the injustice, the plots, insincerity and triviality that gather about the surfaces and course of a showy popular career Forrest experienced in their full extent. He was not deceived by them, but saw through them. They repelled and disgusted him, angered and depressed him. They did not make him a misanthrope, but they chilled his demeanor, hardened his face, checked the trustfulness of his sympathy, and gave him an increasing distaste for convivial scenes and an increased liking for his library and the chosen few in whom he could fully confide. He was a man who esteemed justice and sincerity above all things else. Flattery or interested eulogy he detested as much as he did venal prejudice and blame. He loathed the unmeaning, conventional praises of the journals, the polite compliments of acquaintances or strangers, but was glad of all honest estimates. His dignity kept him from mingling with the audience as they conversed on their way out of the theatre, but he loved to hear what they said when it was repeated by one whom he could trust. Nothing more surely proves that deep elements of love and pride instead of shallow vanity and selfishness formed the basis of his character than the fact that he hated to mix in great companies, either public or private, where he was known and noticed, but loved to mingle with the population of the streets, with festive multitudes, where, unrecognized, he could look on and enter into their ways and pleasures. “It is a great feat,” he used to say, “to resist the temptations of our friends.” He did it when he withdrew from the obstreperous enthusiasm of those who adulated him while revelling at his expense and shouting, “By heaven, Forrest, you are an institution!”—forsaking them, and giving himself exclusively to nature, his art, his books, and his disinterested friends.

The practice of the arts of purchasing unearned praise, the tricks of the mean to circumvent the noble, the accredited verdicts of titled ignorance, and the fickle superficiality of popular favor, lessen the value of common fame in the eyes of all who understand these things. They foul its prizes and repel ingenuous spirits from its pursuit. The same influence is exerted in a yet stronger degree by the experience of the malignant envy awakened in plebeian natures by the sight of the success of others contrasted with their own failure. It was long ago remarked that

“With fame in just proportion envy grows;

The man that makes a character makes foes.”

The selfishness—not to say the innate depravity—of human nature, as transmitted by historic inheritance, is such that every one who has not been regenerated by the reception or culture of a better spirit secretly craves a monopoly of the goods which command his desires. He dislikes his competitors, and would gladly defeat their designs and appropriate every waiting laurel to himself. In 1865 Forrest wrote, in a letter to Oakes, “Yes, my dear friend, there are many in this world who take pleasure in the misfortunes of their fellow-men and gloat over the miseries of their neighbors. And their envy, hatred, and malice are always manifested most towards men of positive natures.”

Souls of a generous type leave this base temper behind, and rejoice in the glory of a rival as if it were their own. But mean souls, so far from taking a disinterested delight in the spectacle of triumphant genius or valor justly crowned with what it has justly won, are filled with pain at the sight, a pain obscenely mixed up with fear and hate. Wherever they see an illustrious head they would fain strike it down or spatter it with mud. Their perverse instincts regard every good of another as so much kept from them. There was a powerful passage in the play of Jack Cade which Forrest used to pronounce with tremendous effect, ingravidating every word with his own bitter experience of its truth:

“Life’s story still! all would o’ertop their fellows;

And every rank, the lowest, hath its height,

To which hearts flutter with as large a hope

As princes feel for empire! but in each

Ambition struggles with a sea of hate.

He who sweats up the ridgy grades of life

Finds in each station icy scorn above;

Below him, hooting envy!”

The extent to which this dark and malign power operates in the breasts of men is fearful. The careless see it not, the innocent suspect it not; carefully disguising itself under all sorts of garbs, it dupes the superficial observer. But the wise and earnest student of human life who has had large experience knows that it is almost omnipresent. In every walk of society, every profession,—even in the Church and among the clergy,—are men who fear and hate their superiors simply because they are superior, and the inferiors feel themselves obscured and taunted by the superiority. A good free man loves to reverence a superior, feels himself blessed and helped in looking up. But the slave of egotism and envy feels elevated and enriched only in looking down on those he fancies less favored than himself. It is a frightful and disheartening phase of human nature; but it ought to be recognized, that we may be guarded against it in others and stimulated to outgrow it in ourselves.

No other profession is so beset by the temptations and trials of this odious spirit as the histrionic, which lives directly in the public gaze, feeding on popular favor. And among all the actors America has produced, no other had so varied, so intense and immense an experience of the results of it as Forrest. He wrote these sad and caustic words in his old age: “For more than forty years the usual weapons of abuse, ridicule, and calumny have been unceasingly levelled at me, personally and professionally, by envious associates, by ungrateful friends turned traitors, by the hirelings of the press, and by a crowd of causeless enemies made such by sheer malignity.” In a speech made twenty-two years previously in the Walnut Street Theatre, in response to a call before the curtain, he had said, “I thank you with all my heart for this glorious and generous reception. In the midst of my trials it is gratifying to be thus sustained. I have been assailed, ladies and gentlemen, by a fiendish combination of enemies, who, not content with striking at my professional efforts, have let loose their calumnies upon my private character and invaded the sacred precincts of my home. Apart from the support of my ardent and cherished friends is the consciousness that I possess a reputation far dearer than all the professional honors that the world could bestow,—a reputation which is dearer to me than life itself. I will therefore pursue unawed the even tenor of my way. I will, with God’s blessing, live down the calumnies that would destroy me with my countrymen; and, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left hand, will fearlessly toil to preserve to the last the reputation of an honest and independent American citizen.”

To a man of his keen feeling and proud self-respect it must have been a torture to read the studiously belittling estimates, the satires, the insults, the slanderous caricatures continually published in the newspapers under the name of criticism. No wonder they stirred his rage and poisoned his repose, as they wounded his heart, offended his conscience, and made him sometimes shrink from social intercourse and sicken of the world. One critic says, “He is an injury to the stage. He has established a bad school for the young actors who are all imitating him. He has a contempt for genius and a disrelish for literature.” Against this extract, pasted in one of his scrap-books, Forrest had written, “Oh! oh!” A second writes, “It is impossible for us to admit that a man of Mr. Forrest’s intelligence can take pleasure in making of himself a silly spectacle for the amusement of the ignorant and the sorrow and pity of the educated. We prefer to believe that it is even a greater pain for him to play Metamora than it is for us to see him play it. In that case, how great must be his anguish!” A third philosophizes thus on his playing: “The best performances of Mr. Forrest are those tame readings of ordinary authors which offer no opportunity for enormous blunders. In the flat, dreary regions of the commonplace he walks firmly. But he climbs painfully up Shakspeare as a blind man would climb a mountain, continually tumbling over precipices without seeming to know it. He shocks our sensibilities, astonishes our judgment, bewilders and offends us; and this is at least excitement, if not entertainment. But his Brutus is a remarkably stupid performance. The only way in which he can redeem its stupidity is to make it worse; and if he wants to do this he must inspire it with the spirit of his Hamlet or his Othello.” A fourth makes malicious sport at his expense in this manner: “Mr. Forrest excels every tragedian we remember in one grand achievement. He can snort better than any man on the stage. It is an accomplishment which must have cost him much labor, and of which he is doubtless proud, for he introduces it whenever he gets a chance. His snort in Hamlet is tremendous; but that dying, swan-like note, which closes the career of the Gladiator, is unparalleled in the whole history of his sonorous and tragic nose. It must be heard, not described. We can only say that when he staggers in, with twenty mortal murders on his crown, with a face hideous with gore, and falls dying on the stage, he sounds a long, trumpet-like wail of dissolution, which is the most supernaturally appalling sound we ever heard from any nose, either of man or brute.” And a fifth caps the climax by calling him “A herculean murderer of Shakspeare!” So did a critic say of Garrick, on the eve of his retirement, “His voice is hoarse and hollow, his dimples are furrows, his neck hideous, his lips ugly, especially the upper one, which is raised all at once like a turgid piece of leather.” “He is a grimace-maker, a haberdasher of wry faces, a hypocrite who laughs and cries for hire!” Well might Byron exclaim,—

“Hard is his fate on whom the public gaze

Is fixed forever to detract or praise.”

A servile fawning on the press, a cowardly fear of its censures, a tremulous sensitiveness to its comments, is one of the chief weaknesses of American society. Its unprincipled meddlesomeness, tyranny, and cruelty are thus pampered. A quiet ignoring of its impertinence or its slander is undoubtedly the course most conducive to comfort on the part of one assailed. But the man who has the independence and the courage publicly to call his wanton assailant to account and prosecute him, even though shielded by all the formidable immunities of an editorial chair, sets a good example and does a real service to the whole community. Every American who values his personal freedom should crown with his applause the American who seizes an insolent newspaper by the throat and brings it to its knees; for unkind and unprincipled criticism is the bane of the American people. The antidote for this bane is personal independence supported by personal conscience and honor in calm defiance of all prying and censorious espionage. This would produce individual distinction, raciness, and variety, resulting in an endless series of personal ranks, with perfect freedom of circulation among them all; whereas the two chief exposures of a democracy are individual envy and social cowardice, yielding the double evil of universal rivalry and universal truckling, and threatening to end in a dead level of conceited mediocrity. The envy towards superiors which De Tocqueville showed to be the cardinal vice of democracy finds its worst vent in the newspaper press, which assails almost every official in the country with the foulest accusations. Are these writers destitute of patriotism and of faith in humanity? Are they ignorant of the fact that if they convince the public that their superiors are all corrupt the irresistible reflex influence of the conviction will itself corrupt the whole public?

That American citizen who has original manhood and lives a fresh, honest life of his own, regardless of the dictation of King Caucus or Queen Average,—the most heartless and vulgar despots that ever reigned,—sets the bravest of examples and teaches the most needed of lessons. Fenimore Cooper did this, criticising the errors and defects of his fellow-citizens as an enthusiastic and conscientious patriot should who sets humanity and truth above even country and fashion, and in consequence he was misunderstood, lampooned, and insulted by the baser newspapers, and finally, after one or two hundred libel suits, hounded into his grave. If they ever come to their senses, his repentant countrymen will one day build him a monument. Forrest was much this sort of man. He asserted himself, resented and defied dictation, and wanted others to do the same. He secured at different times a verdict with damages against the proprietors of four newspapers, and threatened libel suits against three others, which he withdrew on receiving ample public apology. The apology given in one instance, where he had been professionally abused and personally accused of drunkenness, is of so exemplary a character that it ought to be preserved. And here it is:

“It will perhaps be remembered by most of our readers that Mr. Edwin Forrest brought a libel suit against the proprietors of this paper for articles which appeared in our issues of 10th, 17th, and 24th of November, 1867. The solicitations and representations of mutual friends have induced Mr. Forrest generously to consent to the withdrawal of the case. Under these circumstances it becomes our duty as it is our pleasure, to express our regret at the publication of the articles in question.

“The articles complained of were, we frankly admit, beyond the limits of dramatic criticism; and the present proprietors, who saw them for the first time when printed, were at the time and still are sincerely sorry they appeared. Though not personally acquainted with Mr. Forrest, we do know, what the world knows, that he has always been prompt and faithful in his professional engagements; and his bitterest enemies, if he have any, must admit that he is not only eminent in his profession but especially free from the vice of intemperance.”

The newspaper attack from which he suffered the most was so peculiar in some of its features as to demand mention. In 1855 a series of elaborate critiques on his chief rôles appeared in a leading metropolitan journal. They were so scholarly, careful, and strong in their analysis of the plays, and so cutting in their strictures on the player, that they attracted wide attention and did him much damage. Now, two hands were concerned in these articles. The learning, thought, and eloquence were furnished by a German of uncommon scholarship and talent, who deeply felt the power and merit of Forrest as an actor and considered him a man of accomplished dramatic genius. The articles, as he wrote them, were then padded with demeaning epithets and scurrilous estimates of Forrest by one who was filled with prejudices theoretical and personal. Could Forrest have totally disregarded the articles, fortified in a magnanimous serenity, it had been well. He could not do it. He took them home with extreme pain and with extreme wrath, intensely resenting their injustice and their unkindness. This is a specimen of what is inflicted and suffered in the battle of public life. It tempts one to say, Blessed is the man who escapes all publicity, and lives and loves and dies happily in private! No doubt, however, it is best to say, with the grand old Faliero,—

“I will be what I should be, or be nothing.”

His long, crowded experience of unfairness and unkindness deposited in Forrest a burning grudge against the world, a fierce animosity towards his injurers, an angry recoil of self-esteem, and a morbid exaggeration of the real vices of society. In one of his letters to a friend he writes, “This human life is a wretched failure, and the sooner annihilation comes to it the better.” An old poet makes one of his characters who had been deeply wronged say,—

“I will instruct my sorrows to be proud,

For grief is proud and makes his owner stout.”

Mrs. Montagu wrote to John Philip Kemble under similar circumstances, “If you retire, from an opinion that mankind are insincere, ungrateful, and malignant, you will grow proud by reflecting that you are not like these Pharisees.” How such an opinion in Forrest marred his peace of mind and rankled in his general feelings—although much kindliness to men and much enjoyment of life still remained—was obvious enough in his later years, and is vividly expressed in many of his letters. “It would amaze and shock the honest, upright people of this country,” he writes, “could they but know as I do how these sage judges, these benign law-peddlers, are manipulated by outsiders to give any decree that malice and money may demand.” Again he writes, “I have all my life been cheated and preyed on by harpies, right and left. While they have enjoyed my money and maligned me I have toiled on for the next batch of swindlers. I have squandered more than a quarter of a million dollars on friends who, with a few noble exceptions, have returned my kindness not only with ingratitude but with obloquy.” And at another time he says still more at length, “Whatever my enemies may say of me—be it good or bad—matters but little. I would not buy their mercy at the price of one fair word. I claim no exemption from the infirmities of my temper, which are doubtless many. But I would not exchange the honest vices of my blood for the nefarious hypocrisies and assumed virtues of my malignant detractors. I am no canting religionist, and I cordially hate those who have wronged and backbitten me. I have—yes, let me own that I have—a religion of hate; not of revenge, for while I detest I would not injure. I have a hatred of oppression in whatever shape it may appear,—a hatred of hypocrisy, falsehood, and injustice,—a hatred of bad and wicked men and women,—and a hatred of my enemies, for whom I have no forgiveness excepting through their own repentance of the injuries they have done me. I have never flattered the blown-up fool above me nor crushed the wretch beneath me.

“‘I have not caused the widow’s tear,

Nor dimmed the orphan’s eye;

I have not stained the virgin years,

Nor mocked the mourner’s cry.’”

“As for those who misjudge and mislike me, I hate and defy them, and appeal for justice to Nature and God, confident that they will one day grant it.”

These expressions but too plainly reveal the sore places in his heart. Ah, could he but have attained a sweet and magnanimous self-sufficingness, frankly forgiven and forgotten his foes, and outgrown all those chronic contempts and resentments,—could he but have turned his thoughts away from brooding over the vices of men, and dwelt prevailingly on the other side of the picture of the world,—how much more peaceful and dignified and happy his age would have been! But this is hardly to be expected of one passionately struggling in the emulous arena, his veins swollen with hot blood in which still runs the barbaric tradition, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. To expurgate that old animal tradition and introduce in its place the saintly principle of forgiveness needs patient suffering and leisurely culture grafted on a fine spirit. When this result is secured, man rises superior to wrong, to enmity, to disgrace, is content to do his duty and fulfil his destiny in the love of truth and humanity, sure that every one will at last be rewarded after his deserts, and letting the cruel or ridiculous caprices of fortune and fame pass by him as unregarded as the idle wind.

It would not be fair to the truth of the case if this chapter left the impression that Forrest found on the whole the penalties of his fame bitterer to bear than its prizes were sweet to enjoy. The opposite was the fact. The annoyances attendant on his great reputation alloyed but destroyed not the comfort it yielded in its varied tributes and in its vast supporting sense of sympathetic life. Besides, the very vexations consequent on it were often accompanied by their own outweighing compensations. Sallying out of the Tremont House in Boston, one forenoon, arm in arm with his friend Oakes, and passing down Washington Street, his attention was caught by a hideous caricature of himself in a shop-window. A group of boys were gazing at it in great merriment. “Good heavens, Oakes,” he cried, “just look at that infernal thing! It is enough to make one curse the day he was born.” At that moment one of the boys recognized him, and exclaimed to the others, “Here he is!” Forrest whispered to his friend, “Boys are impartial; they have not the prejudices men have. I am going to ask them their opinion. Look here, boys, do I look like that?” One of them, a little older than the rest, answered, promptly, “Well, we knew that it was you; but then you see there is this difference,—this makes us laugh, and you make us cry.” “Thank you, my lad, thank you,” responded Forrest, “Come on, Oakes; I have got better than I bargained for. My enemy when he produced that beastly monstrosity little dreamed what a pleasure he was going to give me.” And, as they swung slowly along, he said, half musingly, “I wonder why they always degrade me by caricature and never exalt me by idealization.” The solution, which he left unattempted, is this. Caricature is the exaggeration of bad points, idealization is the heightening of good points. It is much easier to make the bad appear worse than it is to make the good appear better. Man intuitively likes to attempt what he feels he can succeed in, and dislikes to attempt what he feels he shall fail in. Therefore, when commonplace natures represent their superiors they lower them by travesty rather than raise them by improvement. And so in critical art caricature abounds over idealization.

CHAPTER XIX.
FRIENDSHIPS.—THEIR ESSENTIAL NATURE AND DIFFERENT LEVELS.—THEIR LOSS AND GAIN, GRIEF AND JOY.

In addition to the satisfaction yielded by his professional triumphs, the growth of his fortune, the enjoyment of his health and strength, his taste for literature, his delight in nature, his love of country, and the tributes of his fame, there was another element in the life of Forrest which was of eminent importance, the source of a great deal of comfort and not a little pain,—his friendships. Some sketch of this portion and aspect of his experience must be essayed, though it will perforce be a brief and poor one because these delicate concerns of the heart are shy and elusive, leaving few records of themselves as they glide secretly to oblivion enriching only the responsive places which they bless and hallow as they pass. There are many histories which no historian writes, and the inmost trials and joys of the soul are mostly of them.

Friendship, in our times, is more thought about and longed for than it is talked of, and more talked of than experienced. Yet the experience itself of men differs vastly according to their characters, situations, and companions. To some, in their relations with humanity, the world is made up of strangers; they have neither acquaintances, enemies, nor friends. To some it consists of enemies alone. To a few it holds only friends. But to most men it is divided into four groups,—a wilderness of strangers, a throng of acquaintances, a snarl of enemies, and a knot of friends. Among the members of this larger class the chief distinctions lie in the comparative number and fervor of their lovers and of their haters, and in the comparative space they themselves assign to their experience respectively of sympathy and of antipathy. Some men pursued by virulent foes have the gracious faculty and habit of ignoring their existence, giving predominant attention to congenial persons, and forgetting annoyances in the charm of diviner employment. Others are continually infested by persecutions and resentments as by a species of diabolical vermin which tarnish the brightness of every prize, destroy the worth of every boon, and foster a chronic irritation in consciousness. To hate enemies with barbaric pertinacity of unforgivingness tends to this latter result, while to love friends with frank and joyous surrender tends to the former. Both the sinister and the benign experience were well illustrated in the life of Forrest, who had sympathetic companionship richly and enjoyed it deeply, although he was pestered by a mob of parasites, censors, and assailants whom he religiously abhorred and loathed. Hostility filled a large, dark, sad, cold place in his history, friendship a prominent, bright, warm, and happy place. The two facts have their equal lesson,—one of warning, one of example. Blessed is the fortunate man who cherishes his friends with loving enthusiasm, but never has a single grudge or fear or sneer for a foe.

The universal interest felt in the subject of friendship—the strange fascination the story of any ardent and noble instance of it has for all readers,—the intense longing for such an experience which exists explicit or latent in the centre of every heart in spite of all the corrupting and hardening influences of the world—is a pathetic signal of the mystery of our nature and a profound prophecy of our destiny. It means that no man is sufficient unto himself, but must find a complement in another. It means that man was not made to be alone, but must supplement himself with his fellows. The final significance of friendship—whereof love itself is but a specialized and intensified variety—is an almost unfathomable deep, but it would appear to be this. Every man in the structure and forces of his physical organism is an epitome of all Nature, a living mirror of the material universe; and in the faculties and desires of his soul he is a revelation of the Creator, a conscious image of God. As the ancients said, man is a little universe in the great universe,—microcosmos in macrocosmo. But every one of these divine microcosms has a central indestructible originality differencing it from all the rest. This is the eternal essence or monad of its personality, which reflects in its own peculiar forms and colors the substances and lights and shades of the whole. Thence arises that inexhaustible charm of idiosyncrasy, that everlasting play and shimmer of individual qualities, which constitutes the lure for all pursuit, the zest wherewith all life antidotes the monotonous bane of sameness and death. Now the secret of friendship becomes clear in the light of these statements. First, it is the destiny of every man eternally to epitomize in his own being the universe of matter and mind,—in other words, to be an intelligent focal point in the surrounding infinitude of nature and the interior infinitude of God. Secondly, he is to recognize such an epitome embodied and endlessly varied in the endless variety of other men, all of whom are perfectly distinguishable from one another by unnumbered peculiarities, every shape and tinge of their experience determined by their personal moulds and tints. Thirdly, the entire life of every person consists, in the last analysis, of a mutual communication between his selfhood and that surrounding Whole made up of everything which is not himself,—an interchange of action and reaction between his infinitely concentrated soul and his infinitely expanded environment. Fourthly, when two men, two of these intellectual and sentient microcosms, meet, so adjusted as mutually to reflect each other with all their contents and possibilities in sympathetic communion, their life is perfected, their destiny is fulfilled, since the infinite Unity of Being is revealed in each made piquant with the bewitching relish of foreign individuality, and nothing more is required, save immortality of career in boundless theatre of space, to round in the drama with sempiternal adventures and surprises, as, beneath the sleepless eye of the One, the Many hide and peep beneath their incarnate masks in life after life and world beyond world. Thus the highest idea of the experience of friendship is that it is God glimmering in and out of the souls of the friends in revelation of their destiny,—as Plato would say, the perpetually varied perception of the Same under the provocative and delightful disguise of the Other. And every lower idea of it which has any truth is in connection with this and points up to it,—from the revellers who entwine their cups and attune their glee, the soldiers who stand side by side in battle, and the politicians who vote the same ballot, to the thinkers who see the same truths and the martyrs who die in allegiance to the same sentiment. Everywhere, on all its ranges, friendship means communion of lives, sharing of thought and feeling, co-operative fellowship of personalities, the reflection of one consciousness in another. Those who meet only at the bottom of the scale in sensual mirth should be able sometimes, at least by the aid of a literary telescope, to see those who commingle at its top in immortal faith and aspiration.

Forrest possessed in a marked degree many of the qualities of a good friend; although, of course, it is not pretended that he had the mental disinterestedness, the refined spirituality, or the profound philosophic and religious insight which calls one to the most exalted style and height of friendship as it is celebrated for perpetual remembrance in the In Memoriam of Tennyson. He was affectionate, quick of perception, full of spontaneous sympathy and a deep and wide humanity, strictly truthful, in the highest degree just in his principles and purposes though often badly warped by prejudice, prompt in attention, retentive in memory, and inflexibly faithful to his pledge. If he was proud, it was not an arrogant and cruel pride, but a lofty self-assertion bottomed on a sense of worth. And even in regard to his irascible temper, the inflammability and explosiveness were on the surface of his mind, while tenderness, justice, and magnanimity were in its depths, excepting where some supposed meanness or wrong had caused hate to percolate there. The keenness and tenacity of his feelings took effect alike in his attractions and repulsions, so that he was as slow to forget a comrade as he was to forgive a foe. In London he saw two carriage-dogs who had been mates for years running along together, when one of them was crushed by a wheel and killed. The other just glanced at him, and, without deigning so much as to stop and smell of him, trotted on. From the sight of this Forrest caught such a contempt for the whole breed of carriage-dogs that he could never afterwards look at one without disgust. It was hardly fair perhaps to spread over an entire race what was the fault of one, but the impulse was generous. So long as any man with whom he had once been friends behaved properly and treated him justly he remained as true as steel to his fellowship. But open dereliction from duty, or clear degradation of character, or, in particular, any instance of baseness, cowardice, or treachery, moved his scorn and anger and fatally alienated him. It will be remembered that while yet a mere youth he played very successfully at Albany with Edmund Kean, whose genius he idolized. After the play a man whom he had always liked said to him, “Your Iago was better than Kean’s Othello.” Forrest says, “I never spoke to that man again!”

There was a strong feeling of kindness and admiration between him and Silas Wright, the celebrated Democratic Senator from New York. The day was once fixed for an important debate between Silas Wright and Daniel Webster. Early in the morning a man who had seen Wright drinking deeply and somewhat overcharged went to Webster and said, “You will have an easy task to-day in overthrowing your adversary; he already reels.” Indignant at the meanness of the remark, the great man frowned darkly and answered in his sternest tones, “Sir, no man has an easy victory over Silas Wright, drunk or sober,” and stalked away. Forrest used to tell this anecdote with characteristic relish of the rebuke pride gave impertinence. He could well appreciate traits of character and modes of conduct which he did not profess to practise but openly repudiated for himself. For instance, though he preferred truth to charity when they were opposed, he often quoted with the warmest admiration the sentiment uttered by some one on the death of Robert Burns: “Let his faults be like swans’ feet, hid beneath the stream.” And he also once said, “The finest eulogy I ever heard spoken of General Grant was, as uttered by an old acquaintance of his, ‘He never forgot a friend nor remembered an enemy.’ Ah, is not that beautiful? If it be justly said, as I am sorry to say I very much doubt, it sets a grace around his head which he himself could never set there.” It is certainly a very curious—though not at all an extraordinary—illustration of human nature to set against the above utterance of Forrest the following quotation from a letter of his dated Syracuse, October 5, 1868: “I saw by the telegraphic news in the paper this morning that George W. Jamieson was killed last night by a railroad train at Yonkers. God is great; and justice, though slow, is sure. Another scoundrel has gone to hell—I trust forever!”

Of the very large number of friends Forrest had, his intimacy continued to the end of life with but comparatively few. Fatal barriers and chill spaces of separation came between him and a great many of them, caused sometimes by mere lapse of time and pressure of occupation or removal of residence and change of personal tastes, sometimes by alienating disagreements and collisions of temper. These estrangements were so numerous that he acquired the reputation of being a quarrelsome man and hard to get along with, which was not altogether the fact.

One class of his earlier friends were in many cases converted into enemies on this wise. Boon companions are easy to have, but cheap, superficial, fickle. Genuine friendship, on the other hand, generous community of life and aspiration, co-operative pursuit and enjoyment of the worthiest ends, is a rare and costly prize, requiring virtues and imposing tasks. Multitudes therefore are tempted to put up with jovial fellowship in the pleasures of the table and let the desire for an ennobling intercourse of souls die out. The parasitic and treacherous nature of most pot-fellowship is proverbial. How well Shakspeare paints it in his version of Timon! When the eyes of the generous Athenian were opened to the selfishness of his pretended friends he became so rankling a misanthrope that the Greek Anthology gives us this as the epitaph sculptured on his sepulchre:

“Dost hate the earth or Hades worse! Speak clear!

Hades, O fool! There are more of us here.”

Forrest was not many years in learning how shallow, how selfish, how untrustworthy such comrades were. He had too much ambition, too much earnestness and dignity to be satisfied with a worthless substitute for a sacred reality. He would not let an ungirt indulgence of the senses in conviviality take the place of a consentient action of congenial souls in the enjoyment of excellence and the pursuit of glory. More and more, therefore, he withdrew from these scenes of banqueting, story-telling, and singing, and found his contentment more and more in books, in the repose and reflection of solitude, and in the society of a select few. The most of those whom he thus left to themselves resented his defection from their ways, and repaid his former favor and bounty with personal dislike and invidious speech.

Another class of his quondam friends he broke with not on the ground of their general principles and social habits but in consequence of some particular individual offence in their individual character and conduct. His standard for a friend—his standard of honesty, sincerity, and manly fairness—was an exacting one, and he brooked no gross deviation from it. When he believed, either correctly or incorrectly, that any associate of his had wilfully violated that standard, he at once openly repudiated his friendship and walked with him no more. In this way dark gaps were made in the ranks of his temporary friends by the expulsion thence of the satellites who preyed on his money, the actors who pirated his plays, the debauchees who dishonored themselves, the companions who betrayed his confidence and slandered his name. And thus the crowd of his revengeful assailants was again swelled. A single example in illustration of his conduct under such circumstances is marked by such racy vigor that it must be here adduced. A man of great smartness and of considerable distinction, with whom he had been especially intimate, but whom, having discovered his unworthiness, he had discarded, sought to reingratiate himself. Forrest wrote him this remarkable specimen of terse English:

“New York, January 14, 1859.

“I hope the motives which led you to address me a note under date of 13th inst. will never induce you to do so again. Attempts upon either my credulity or my purse will be found alike in vain. No person however malicious, as you assume to believe, could change my opinion of you. Your intention to write a book is a matter which rests entirely with yourself. May I, however, take the liberty of suggesting that at this late day such a thing is not really needed, to illustrate your character, to alter public opinion, nor to prove to the world how great a dust can be raised by an ass out of place in either diplomacy or literature? There is already enough known of your career to prove that your task of becoming the apologist for a prostitution which has girdled the globe is one congenial to your tastes, fitted to your peculiar abilities, and coincident with your antecedents even from your birth to the present day.

“Edwin Forrest.”

Furthermore, an important circle of his most honored friends fell away from Forrest under circumstances peculiarly trying to his feelings. All those who in the time of his domestic unhappiness and the consequent lawsuits sympathized with the lady and supported her cause against him he regarded as having committed an unpardonable offence. He would never again speak with one of them. It was a heavy defection. It inflicted much suffering on him and bred a bitter sense of hostility towards them, with a sad feeling of impoverishment. For the places they had occupied in his heart and memory were thenceforth as so many closed and sealed chambers of funereal gloom.

But, after all the foregoing failures have been allowed for, there remain in the life we are contemplating a goodly number of friendships full of hearty sincerity and wholesome human helpfulness and joy,—friendships unstained by vice, unbroken by quarrels, undestroyed by years. Several of these have already been alluded to; especially the supreme example in his opening manhood, his relations with the eloquent, heroic, and generous William Leggett. Some account also has been given of his endeared intimacy with James Lawson, who first greeted him on the night of his first appearance in New York, and whose faithful attachment to his person and interests grew closer and stronger to the day of his death, never for an instant having seen the prospect of a breach or known the shadow of a passing cloud. “My friend Lawson,” said Forrest, when near his end, “is a gentleman on whom, as Duncan remarked of the thane of Cawdor, I have always built an absolute trust. He has, in our long communion of nigh fifty years, never failed me in a single point nor deceived me by so much as a look, but has been as good and kind to me as man can be to man.” Here is one of his letters:

“Philadelphia, Dec. 1, 1869.

“Dear Lawson,—I am glad you like the notice of Spartacus. It was written by our friend Forney, in his hearty and friendly spirit.

“My dear friend Lawson, it is not money that I play for now, but the excitement of the stage keeps me from rusting physically and mentally. It drives away the canker care, and averts the progress of decay. It is wholesome to be employed in ‘the labor we delight in.’ What prolonged the life of Izaak Walton, but his useful employments, which gave vigor to his mind and body, until mildly drew on the slow necessity of death? I hope to take you by the hand when you are ninety, and tell some merry tales of times long past. Day after to-morrow I leave home for Cincinnati, and shall be absent in the West for several months, and return with the birds and the buds, to see you once more, I hope, in your usual enjoyment of health and happiness. God bless you.

“Your sincere friend,

“Edwin Forrest.”

And now some examples of less conspicuous but true and valued friendships, selected from among many, claim brief place in this narrative. William D. Gallagher, a Quaker by persuasion, a man of literary tastes and a most quiet and blameless spirit, cherished from boyhood a fervid admiration and love for Forrest ever gratefully appreciated by him. He took extreme pains to collect materials for the biography of his friend, materials which have been often used in the earlier pages of this volume. Forrest desired his biographer, if he could find appropriate place in his work, to record an acknowledging and tributary word in memory of this affectionate and unobtrusive friend. The fittest words for that purpose will be the following citation from a letter of Forrest himself. “I deeply regret to inform you of the death of William D. Gallagher, who on his recent visit to Boston was so much pleased in forming your acquaintance and hearing your discourses. He was a man to be honored and loved for his genuine worth. He was quite free from every vice of the world. He carried the spirit of a child all through his life. He was as pure and gentle, I believe, as an angel. Though he cut no figure in society, I was proud to know that so good a man was my friend. I used to feel that I had rather at any time clasp his hand than that of the heir apparent to the throne of England.”

In the chief cities which Forrest every year visited professionally he formed many delightful acquaintances, many of which, constantly renewed and heightened by every fresh communion of heart and life, ripened into precious friendships. Of these, John C. Breckinridge, of Lexington, Kentucky, and John G. Stockly, of Cleveland, Ohio, and Charles G. Greene, of Boston, Massachusetts, may be named. But more particular mention should be made of James V. Wagner, of Baltimore. A Baltimore correspondent of the “National Intelligencer,” in one of his communications, says, “We learn that the distinguished American tragedian during his recent sojourn in this city has presented a splendid carriage and pair of horses to his long-tried and faithful friend, our fellow-citizen James V. Wagner. When the celebrated actor was but a stripling and at the beginning of his career, Mr. Wagner took him warmly by the hand, and has been his ardent admirer and friend from that time to the present. The gift is a magnificent one, and reflects credit on bestower and receiver. It is an establishment altogether fit for a duke or a prince.” In 1874 a son of Mr. Wagner gives this pleasing reminiscence of the frequent and ever-charming visits of Forrest at his father’s house: “Often in childhood have I sat upon his knee, and, as I then felt, listened to the words of Metamora, Jack Cade, and Lear in broadcloth. Often did he stroke my little black locks and ask me if I would become a carpenter, a lawyer, a minister, or a merchant. I can testify to his fondness for young children, consequently his goodness of heart.”

Judge Conrad, the eloquent author of Jack Cade, the high-souled, brilliant man, was a very dear and close friend of Forrest. The impulsive and generous writer gave the appreciative and steadfast player much pleasure and inspiration by his intercourse, and received a cordial esteem and many important favors in return. On Forrest’s arrival from Europe with his wife in 1846 he was greeted with this hearty letter by Conrad:

“My dear Mr. and Mrs. Forrest,—A thousand warm and hearty welcomes home! I had hoped to greet you in person, but my engagements preclude me that pleasure. You doubtless find that the creaking and crazy world has been grating upon its axis after the rough old fashion since you left us; that there are fresh mounds in the grave-yard, and fresh troubles in the way to it; but I am sure that you find the hearts of old as true as ever. Your wandering way has had anxious eyes watching over it; and your return is, in this city, hailed with general rejoicing. Absence embalms friendships: friends seldom change when so separated that they cannot offend. And to one who has a circle such as you have, I should think it almost worth while to go abroad for the luxury of returning home. Thank God that you are back and in health!

“Mrs. Conrad and our girls unite with me in bidding you welcome. The news of your arrival made a jubilee with the children. We all look forward anxiously for the privilege of taking you by the hand.

“Very truly your friend,

“R. T. Conrad.”

One brief interruption to this friendship there was. It originated in some misunderstanding which provoked anger and pain. Forrest wrote at once, not unkindly, and asked an explanation. He was rejoiced by the immediate receipt of the following letter, which he endorsed with the single word “Reconciliation,” and they were again united:

“Philadelphia, June 25th, 1849.

“My dear Forrest,—Your letter throws the duty of apology upon me, and, from my heart, I ask your pardon, and will tear to tatters all record of what has passed. But there is no madness Coleridge tells us, that so works upon the brain as unkindness in those we love.

“Forget what has passed,—but not until you have forgiven one whose pulses beat sometimes too hotly, but will always beat for you. This single cloud in our past—a past all bright to me—has been absorbed by the nobler and purer atmosphere of your nature. Surely it cannot now cast a shadow.

“Before the receipt of your note I had written a letter under my own signature, replying to a brutal attack upon you in the Boston ‘Aurora Borealis’ in relation to your course towards dramatic authors. It will appear in McMakin’s ‘Courier,’ and I have seized the occasion to make some editorial remarks upon the subject that will not dissatisfy you; and, as the circulation of the ‘Courier’ is nearly wide as that of the wind, I think it will do good.

“Let me sign this hasty note as most truly and heartily

“Your friend,

“R. T. Conrad.

“E. Forrest, Esq.”

The friendship with James Taylor, described in a previous chapter of this biography, which was so pleasant and valuable to Forrest at the time, never died, but was kept fresh and strong to the last. This will appear from the interesting letters that follow:

“Fire Island, N.Y., July 14th, 1870.

“Edwin Forrest, Esq.:

“My dear Friend,—When you were last at my house I promised you a copy of my portrait of George F. Cooke. I could not until now procure such a copy as I thought worthy to be sent you. It was first photographed and then painted, and is an exact counterfeit of the original. It is not full size. Several attempts were made to get a good photograph copy, or negative, and in the present size it was the most perfect. The history of this picture (I mean the one in my possession) is as follows: A young gentleman by the name of Jouitt studied portrait-painting with Sully in 1816, and on his leaving for his native State, Kentucky, Sully presented him with this picture of Cooke, being a copy of his original picture of the great tragedian. Jouitt presented the picture to Captain John Fowler, of Lexington, Ky., in 1818, and he on his death-bed in 1840 gave it to me. He was an old pioneer, and came to Kentucky with my mother in 1783. Now, my old and much-admired friend, please accept this portrait as a testimony of my high regard for you as a gentleman and a man of genius. I often have a vivid recollection of the old times when we were together,—the night you slept with me at Kean’s Hotel, and the New Year’s dinner at Ayer’s Hotel with Clay, Merceir, and others. We were young then, full of life, hope, and enthusiasm; and I do not feel old yet. These days, my friend, I look back on with pleasure. I was not then vexed or troubled with the cares of life. If we should never meet again, I wish you much happiness and length of days. I am here enjoying the breezes of ‘Neptune’s salt wash,’ fishing, and sailing. I shall return to New York in a week or ten days. Please write to me at the St. Nicholas, as I desire to know whether the picture reached you uninjured.

“Yours very sincerely,

“James Taylor.”

“Fire Island, August 1st, 1870.

“Edwin Forrest:

“My dear Friend,—Yours of the 21st of July was forwarded to me from New York at the close of last week, and I regret that it was out of my power to comply with your request to meet you at your home in Philadelphia. I have been here now over three weeks,—a most delightful cool place,—and I only regret that I have to leave it in the midst of the hot season to return to Kentucky, where business calls me. I am gratified that you liked the portrait; it is in fact a true copy of the original. Dear Ned, I often think of our young days in Lexington with our friends Lewis, Turpin, Clay, and others, and how happy we were amidst those scenes. But they are gone, and we are almost old men. I hope we shall gracefully go down to death, having courageously fought the battle of life. You will leave a name and a fame behind you as one of the great masters of the dramatic art. Should you again visit the West, you know where to find your friend,

“James Taylor.”

Another letter, much longer and more important, was addressed by Mr. Taylor to S. S. Smith, a common friend to the two persons,—a friend of whom Forrest once wrote to Oakes, “If my old friend S. S. Smith does not go to heaven when he dies, the office of door-keeper there is a sinecure and the place might as well be shut up. He is one of the most honest, kind-hearted, trustworthy men I have ever known. I have always cherished the warmest esteem for him.” This letter was written after the death of Forrest, and contains a most interesting and touching tribute to him. It belongs in the closing chapter rather than here.

Among the long- and well-cherished friends of Forrest, of a later date than Taylor, were the two distinguished New York counsellors John Graham and James T. Brady. The sudden death of the latter at the zenith of his manhood called from him a strong expression of feeling in a letter to one of their common friends: “The death of Brady shocked me very much. He was a genial, noble man, and an eloquent and honest lawyer,—every way so unlike the pettifogging peddlers of iniquity and the corrupt and ermined ruffians of the bench whom we have known. I feel honored in saying that I was his friend and that he was mine. His place will not easily be supplied with any of those who knew him, and could not know him without loving him. What an interesting figure he was, and how he drew all eyes where he came, with his beating heart, his bright frank face, his large and warm presence! He was a contrast indeed to those commonplace creatures concerning whom nobody cares anything, and never asks who they are, or what they do, or whence they come, or where they go. I regret that he should have died and not have made friends with John Graham. How I should like to have been instrumental with you in bringing about a reconciliation between them!”

And now we come to the central, crowning, supreme friendship which most of all alleviated the life and blessed the heart of Forrest alike when he was young and when he was old,—the glowing bond of cordiality that knit his soul with the soul of James Oakes. One of the two partners in this happy league of unselfish love and faithful service has passed through nature to eternity, while one still lives. To do justice to the relation on the side of the former it is necessary to know something of the character of the man who sustained the other side of it. And though it is a delicate office, and one somewhat offensive to fashion, to speak frankly of the traits of the living, except indeed in assault and censure, yet, since truth is truth, and moral lessons have the same import whether drawn from those who are alive or from those who are dead, one who is called to tell the story of a departed Damon may perhaps venture honestly and with modesty to depict his lingering Pythias.

Oakes is a man of positive nature, downright and forthright, as blunt and strong in act and word as Forrest himself, and, so far, fitted to meet and mate him. He has made a host of foes by his bluff truth of speech and deed, his sturdy standing to his opinion, his straight march to his purpose. These foes, no matter who they were, high or low, he has always scorned and defied with unfaltering and unrepentant vigor. He has likewise made a host of friends, by his sound judgment always at their service, his genially affectionate spirit, and his unwearied devotion to gentle works of humanity in befriending the unfortunate and ministering to the distressed, the sick, and the dying. To these friends, rich and poor alike, and whether basking in popular favor or crushed under obloquy, he has always been steadfastly true. No fickle misliker or mere sunshine friend he, but, like Forrest, tenacious both in antipathies and sympathies. His nature has ever been wax to receive, steel to retain, the memory of injuries and of benefits, hostility and love. His sensitive openness to the beauty of nature, to the charm of poetry, to the voice of eloquence, to the touch of fine sentiment, is extreme. Anything pathetic, noble, or grand makes his tears spring quicker than a woman’s, and his blood burns with instant indignation and his heart beats fast and loud against injustice, cruelty, or meanness. And yet he is not what is called a society man, a careful observer of the sleek proprieties of the polite world of conventional appearances. On the contrary, in many things his aboriginal love of free sincerity has shocked these. And he has been a strong lover of horses, of dogs, of sporting life, and of the rough, warm, honest ways of fearless and spontaneous sporting men. A soft heart, a true tongue, a clear head, self-asserting character and life, pity for suffering, defiance to pretension, contempt for fashion when opposed to nature, have been his passports to men and theirs to him. From his boyhood he has taken delight in doing kind deeds to the needy, carrying wines, fruits, flowers, and other delicacies to the sick, being a champion for the weak and injured, whether man or woman or child or quadruped or bird. Hundreds of times has he been seen in drifting snow-storms, undeterred by the pelting elements, in his wide-rimmed hat, shaggy overcoat, and long boots up to his thighs, loaded with good things, on his way to the bedside of some disabled friend or some poor sufferer forgotten by others. His enemies no doubt may justly bring many accusations against him. His friends certainly will confess his defects and faults. He himself would blush at the thought of claiming immunity from a full share of the weaknesses and sins of men. But no one who knows him, whether friend or foe, can question his extreme tenderness, tenacity, and fidelity of nature, his rare sensibility of hate for detestable forms of character and action, his heroic adhesion and indefatigable attentiveness to all whom he admires and loves.

His moral portrait is limned by the hand of one who had known him most thoroughly on his favorable side as a friend for nearly all his lifetime, in this private epistle:

“New York, Sunday morning, May 24, 1874.

“My dear Oakes,—Your letter of the 22d reached me yesterday morning, and was read and re-read with pleasure. When you tell me you foot up sixty-seven, I find it difficult to believe you, and if you refer me to the record I shall still exclaim with Beau Shatterly (do you remember how poor Finn used to play it?), ‘D—n parish registers! They’re all impudent impositions and no authority!’

“There are a few exceptional men in the world who project their youth far forward into their lives, and this not so much from force of constitution as from the size of their hearts. You are one of these few phenomenal men. That you may long continue to flourish in perennial spring is my sincerest prayer. You have been just and generous (except to yourself),—to what extent you forget. I think the recording angel must sometimes curse your good deeds, you have given him or her or it (there is no sex to angels) so many to record in that huge log-book which is kept up aloft for future reference. In the race for salvation, while the saints (professional) are plying steel and whipcord, jostling each other and riding foul, you will distance them and go into the gate at an easy canter under no pull at all. As for me, it is different. I stood near the pyramid of Caius Sextius at Rome, at the grave of Keats, and read his epitaph by himself, ‘Here lies one whose name was writ in water,’ and said, That ought to be mine. However, I went up the steps of the Santa Scala on my knees, invested fifty francs or so in indulgences, and left the Eternal City whiter than snow,—but perhaps only as a whited sepulchre is sometimes whiter than snow.

“Excuse my levity. You will read between the lines and find plenty of sad and serious thoughts there. If I did not valiantly fight against bitter memories, I should cave.

“Yours entirely,

“F. A. D.”

Oakes had many friends besides Forrest, some of whom he had known earlier and most of whom were friends in common to them both. Among the chief of these may be named—and they were men of extraordinary talent, force, racy originality of character, and depth of human passion—George W. Kendall and A. M. Holbrook, editors of the New Orleans “Picayune,” William T. Porter, editor of the “Spirit of the Times,” Dr. Charles M. Windship, of Roxbury, the romantic and tragic William Henry Herbert,—better known as Frank Forrester, a sort of modern Bertrand du Guesclin, who, when the woman he loved deceived him, resolutely severed every tie joining him with humanity and the world, requested that no epitaph should be written on him save “The Most Unhappy,” and quieted his convulsed brain with a bullet,—Sargent S. Prentiss, of Mississippi, Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, George W. Prentice, Albert Pike, Colonel Powell T. Wyman, and Francis A. Durivage. The inner lives of such characters as these, and others whose names are not given, fully revealed, show in human experience gulfs of delight and woe, degrees of intensity and wonder, little dreamed of by the peaceful and feeble superficialists who fancy in their innocence that the life of the nineteenth century is tame and dull, wholly wanting in the extremities of spiritual adventure and social excitement that marked the times of old. The knowledge of the sincere life of society to day—the real unconventional life behind the scenes—as it was uncovered and made familiar to Forrest and Oakes, when it is suddenly appreciated by a thoughtful scholar, an inexperienced recluse, gives him a shock of amazement, a mingled sorrow and wonder which make him cry, “What a sad, bitter, strange, beautiful, terrible world it is! O God! who knows or can even faintly guess from afar the meaning of it all? These fathomless passions of men and women, giving a bliss and a pain which make every other heaven or hell utterly superfluous,—these temptations and crimes which horrify the soul and curdle the blood,—these betrayals and disappointments that break our hearts, unhinge our reason, and precipitate us into self-sought graves, mad to pluck the secret of eternity,—who shall ever read the infinite riddle and tell us what it all is for?”

As the heaping decades of years rolled by, Oakes had to part with many of his dearest friends at the edge of that shadow which no mortal, only immortals, can penetrate. But, unlike what happens with most men, his friendly offices ceased not with the breath of the departed. For one and another and another and another of his old comrades, whom he had assiduously nursed in their last hours, when all was ended, with his own hands he tenderly closed the eyes, washed the body, put on the burial-garments, and reverently laid the humanized clay in the earth with farewell tears. To so many of his closest comrades had he paid this last service that at length in his twilight meditations he began to feel a chilly solitude spreading around. It was in such a mood that he wrote a letter to one of the surviving and central figures of that group of strong, brave, fiery-passioned men, who knew the full height and depth of the romance and tragedy of human experience, and had nearly all gone, most of them untimely, and several by their own hands. It was to Albert Pike that he wrote. What he wrote moved Pike to compose an essay, “Of Leaves and their Falling,” in which this touching, tributary passage occurs. Having alluded to the dead of their circle,—Porter, Elliot, Lewis and Willis Gaylord Clark, Herbert, Wyman, Forrest, and others,—he proceeds: “James Oakes, of the old Salt-Store, 49 Long Wharf, Boston,—‘Acorn’ of the old ‘Spirit of the Times,’—lives yet, as generous and genial as ever. He loved Porter like a brother, and, in a letter received by me yesterday, says, ‘This is my birthday! 67 is marked on the milestone of my life just passed. Among the few old friends of my early days who are left on this side the river, none is dearer to me than yourself. As I creep down the western slope towards the last sunset, my old heart turns with irresistible longings to those early friends, my love for whom grew with my growth and strengthened with my strength. Alas, how few are left! As I look back upon the long line of grave-stones by the wayside that remind me of my early associates, a feeling of inexpressible sadness possesses me, and my heart yearns towards the few old friends left, to whom I cling with hooks of steel.’ And so he thanks me for a poem sent him, and tells me how he has worked for the estate of Forrest, and sincerely and affectionately wishes that God may bless me and keep me in health for many years to come.

“Ah, dear old friend! the cold November days of life have come for both of us, and the dull bars of cloud scowl on the barren stubble-fields, the wind blows inhospitably, and the hills in the distance are bleak and gray and bare, and the winter comes, when we must drop from the tree, and be remembered a little while, and then forgotten almost as soon as the dead leaves.

“Well, what does it matter to us if we are to be forgotten before the spring showers fall a second time on our graves, as Porter was, except by two or three friends? What is it to the leaf that falls, killed by an untimely frost, whether it is remembered or forgotten by its fellows that still cling to the tree, to fall a little later in the season? Men are seldom remembered after death for anything that you or I would care to be remembered for.

“Porter would not have cared to be remembered by many, nor by any one, unless with affection for his unbounded goodness of heart and generosity. Nor am I covetous of large remembrance among men. If I should die before him, I should wish, if I cared for anything here after death more than a dead leaf does, to have Oakes come to my grave, as I wish that he and I could go to that of Porter, and there repeat, in the language to which no translation can do justice, this exquisite threnody of Catullus:

INFERIÆ AD FRATRIS TUMULUM.

Multas per gentes et multa per æquora vectus,

Advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,

Ut te postremo donarem munere mortis,

Et mutum nequicquam alloquerer cinerem,

Quandoquidem Fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,

Heu miser indigne frater ademte mihi

Nunc tamen interea hæc prisco quæ more parentum

Tradita sunt tristes munera ad inferias,

Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,

Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

“Discontented with the translations whereof by Lamb, Elton, and Hodgson, I have endeavored this more literal one:

“Through many nations, over many seas,

Brother, to this sad sacrifice I come

To pay to thee Death’s final offices,

And, though in vain, invoke thine ashes dumb,

Since Fate’s fell swoop has torn thyself from me,—

Alas, poor brother, from me severed ruthlessly!

“Therefore, meanwhile, these offices of sorrow,

Which, by old custom of our fathers’ years

To the last sacrifice assigned, I borrow,

Flowing with torrents of fraternal tears,