CHAPTER XXIII.

CLOSING YEARS AND THE EARTHLY FINALE 795

APPENDIX.

I. THE WILL OF EDWIN FORREST 849

II. THE FORREST MEDALS AND TOKENS 855

LIST OF STEEL PLATES.

PAGE

Portrait of EDWIN FORREST ætat. 46. Engraved by _Fred. Halpin_

(Frontispiece).

" " " 21 Engraved by _Fred. Halpin_ 262

EDWIN FORREST as VIRGINIUS " _W. G. Jackman_ 230

" METAMORA " _Jas. Bannister_ 237

" SPARTACUS " _Fred. Halpin_ 249

REBECCA FORREST " _R. Whitechurch_ 424

EDWIN FORREST as SHYLOCK " _D. G. Thompson_ 738

" MACBETH " _Augustus Robin_ 739

" RICHARD III. " _H. B. Hall & Sons_ 746

" HAMLET " _G. H. Cushman_ 751

" OTHELLO " _G. R. Hall_ 769

" KING LEAR " _G. H. Cushman_ 781

Portrait of EDWIN FORREST ætat. 66 " _H. B. Hall & Sons_ 795

FORREST MEDALS " _Samuel Sartain_ 855

The engravings of Mr. Forrest in character are after photographs by

Brady.

LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST.

CHAPTER I.

PRELUDE.

EDWIN FORREST has good claims for a biography. The world, it has

been said, is annually inundated with an intolerable flood of lives

of nobodies. So much the stronger motive, then, for presenting the

life of one who was an emphatic somebody. There is no more wholesome

or more fascinating exercise for our faculties than in a wise and

liberal spirit to contemplate the career of a gifted and conspicuous

person who has lived largely and deeply and shown bold and exalted

qualities. To analyze his experience, study the pictures of his deeds,

and estimate his character by a free and universal standard, is one of

the fittest and finest tasks to which we can be summoned. To do this

with assimilating sympathy and impartial temper, stooping to no meaner

considerations than the good and evil, the baseness and grandeur of

man as man, requires a degree of freedom from narrow distastes, class

and local biases, but rarely attained. Every effort pointing in this

direction, every biographic essay characterized by a full human tone

or true catholicity, promises to be of service, and thus carries its

own justification. The habit of esteeming and censuring men in this

generous human fashion, uninfluenced by any sectarian or partisan

motive, unswayed by any clique or caste, is one of the ripest results

of intellectual and moral culture. It implies that fusion of wisdom and

charity which alone issues in a grand justice. One of the commonest

evils among men is an undue sympathy for the styles of character and

modes of life most familiar to them or like their own, with an undue

antipathy for those unfamiliar to them or unlike their own. It is

a duty and a privilege to outgrow this low and poor limitation by

cultivating a more liberal range of appreciation.

There is still lingering in many minds, especially in the so-called

religious world, a strong prejudice against the dramatic profession.

Analyzed down to its origin, the long warfare of church and theatre,

the instinctive aversion of priest and player, will be found to be

rooted in the essential opposition of their respective ideals of life.

The ecclesiastical ideal is ascetic, its method painful obedience and

prayer, its chief virtues self-restraint and denial; the dramatic

ideal is free, its method self-development and culture, its ruling

aims gratification and fulfilment The votaries of these distinctive

sets of convictions and sentiments have from an early age formed two

hostile camps. Accordingly, when one known as a clergyman was said to

be writing the life of an actor, the announcement created surprise

and curiosity and elicited censorious comment. The question was often

asked, how can this strange conjunction be explained? It is therefore,

perhaps, not inappropriate for the author of the present work to state

the circumstances and motives which caused him to undertake it. The

narrative will be brief, and may, with several advantages, take the

place of a formal preface. Conventional prefaces are rarely read; but

the writer trusts that the statement he proposes to make will be not

only interesting to the reader but likewise helpful, by furnishing him

with the proper key and cue to the succeeding chapters. It may serve

as a sort of preparatory lighting up of the field to be traversed; a

kind of prelusive sketch of the provinces of experience to be surveyed,

of the lessons to be taught, and of the credentials of the author in

the materials and other conditions secured to him for the completion

of his task. This statement is to be taken as an explanation, not as

an apology. The only justification needed lies in the belief that the

theatrical life may be as pure and noble as the ecclesiastical; that

the theatre has as sound a claim to support as the church; that the

great actor, properly equipped for his work, is the most flexible

and comprehensive style of man in the world, master of all types of

human nature and all grades of human experience; and that the priestly

profession in our day has as much to learn from the histrionic as it

has to teach it.

In the winter of 1867, a man of genius, a friend in common between

us, having been struck by paralysis and left without support for his

family, I encountered James Oakes engaged in the benevolent business

of raising funds for the relief of the sufferers from this calamity.

Propitious conditions were thus supplied for the beginning of our

acquaintance in respect and sympathy. There were characteristic

cardinal chords in our breasts which vibrated in unison, and, in

consequence, a strong liking sprang up between us.

For forty years James Oakes had been the sworn bosom friend of Edwin

Forrest. He regarded him with an admiration and love romantic if not

idolatrous. He had, as he said, known him as youth, as man, in all

hours, all fortunes; had summered him and wintered him, and for nigh

half a century held him locked in the core of his heart, which he

opened every day to look in on him there. He resembled him in physical

development, in bearing, in unconscious tricks of manner, in tastes and

habits. Indeed, so marked were the likeness and assimilation, despite

many important differences, that scores of times the sturdy merchant

was taken for the tragedian, and their photographs were as often

identified with each other.

No one could long be in cordial relations with Oakes and not frequently

hear him allude to his distinguished friend and relate anecdotes of

him. Besides, I had myself recollections of Forrest warmly attracting

me to him. He was one of the first actors I had ever seen on the stage;

the very first who had ever electrified and spell-bound me. When a

boy of ten years I had seen him in the old National Theatre in Boston

in the characters of Rolla, Metamora, and Macbeth. The heroic traits

and pomp of the parts, the impassioned energy and vividness of his

delineations, the bell, drum, and trumpet qualities of his amazing

voice, had thrilled me with emotions never afterwards forgotten. I had

also, in later years, often seen him in his best casts. Accordingly,

when, on occasion of a visit of Forrest to his friend in Boston in the

early autumn of 1868, the offer of a personal interview was given me, I

accepted it with alacrity.

There were three of us, and we sat together for hours that flew

unmarked. It was a charmed occasion. There was no jar or hindrance,

and he without restraint unpacked his soul of its treasures of a

lifetime. The great range of experience from which he drew pictures

and narratives with a skill so dramatic, the rare ease and force of

his conversation, the deep vein of sadness obviously left by his

trials, the bright humor with which he so naturally relieved this

gloom and vented his heart, the winning confidence and gentleness

with which he treated me, no touch or glimpse of anything coarse or

imperious perceptible in that genial season,--all drew me to him with

unresisted attraction. I seemed to recognize in him the unquestionable

signals of an honest and powerful nature, magnanimous, proud, tender,

equally intellectual and impassioned, harshly tried by the world yet

reaping richly from it, capable of eloquent thoughts and great acts,

not less fond and true in friendship than tenacious in enmity, always

self-reliant, living from impulses within, and not, like so many

persons, on tradition and conventionality.

Such was the beginning of my private acquaintance with Forrest. Between

that date and his death I had many meetings and spent considerable

time with him. He took me into his confidence, unbosomed himself to

me without reserve, recounted the chief incidents of his life, and

freely revealed, even as to a father confessor, his inmost opinions,

feelings, and secret deeds. The more I learned of the internal facts

of his career, and the more thoroughly I mastered his character,

constantly reminding one--as his friend Daniel Dougherty suggested--of

the character of Guy Darrell in the great novel of Bulwer, the more I

saw to respect and love. It is true he had undeniable faults,--defects

and excesses which perversely deformed his noble nature,--such as

frequent outbreaks of harshness and fierceness, occasional superficial

profanity, a vein of unforgiving bitterness, sudden alternations of

repulsive stiffness with one and too unrestrained familiarity with

another. Still, in his own proper soul, from centre to circumference,

undisturbed by collisions, he was grand and sweet. When truly himself,

not chafed or crossed, a more interesting man, or a pleasanter, no one

need wish to meet.

Oakes had long felt that the life of his friend, so prominent and

varied and comprehensive, eminently deserved to be recorded in some

full and dignified form. He was seeking for a suitable person to

whom to intrust the work. With the assent of Forrest he urged me to

assume it. I did not at first accede to the proposal, but took it into

consideration, making, meanwhile, a careful study of the subject, and

arriving finally at the conclusions which follow.

I found in Edwin Forrest a man who must always live in the history

of the stage as the first great original American actor. This place

is secured to him by his nativity, the variety, independence, vigor,

and impressiveness of his impersonations, the important parts with

which he was so long exclusively identified, the extent and duration

of his popularity, and the imposing results of his success. Other

distinguished actors who have had a brilliant reputation in this

country have been immigrants or visitors here, as Cooke, Cooper,

Conway, Kean, Booth; or have been eminent only in some special part,

as Marble, Hackett, Setchell, Jefferson; or have enjoyed but a local

celebrity, as Burton, Warren, and others. But Forrest, home-born on

our soil, intensely national in every nerve, is indissolubly connected

with the early history of the American drama by a career of conspicuous

eminence, illustrated in a score of the greatest characters, and

reaching through fifty years. During this prolonged period his massive

physique, his powerful personality, his electrifying energy, his

uncompromising honesty and frankness, his wealth, the controversies

that raged around him, the unhappy publicity of his domestic

misfortune, and other circumstances of various kinds, combined, by

means of the newspapers, pamphlets, pictures, statuettes, caricatures,

to make him a familiar presence in every part of the country.

Therefore, whatever differences there may have been in the critical

estimates of the rank of his particular presentments or of his general

style of acting, it is impossible to deny him his historic place as the

first great representative American actor. He likewise _deserves_ this

place, as will hereafter be recognized, by his pronounced originality

as the founder of a school of acting--the American School--which

combined, in a manner without any prominent precedent, the romantic and

the classic style, the physical fire and energy of the melodramatic

school with the repose and elaborate painting of the artistic school.

It cannot be fairly thought that the great place and fame of Forrest

are accidental. Such achievements as he compassed are not adventitious

products of luck or caprice, but are the general measure of worth and

fitness. Otherwise, why did they not happen as well to others among

the hundreds of competitors who contended with him at every step for

the same prizes, but were all left behind in the open race? If mere

brawniness, strutting, rant, purchased favor, and clap-trap could

command such an immense and sustained triumph, why did they not yield

it in other cases, since there were not at any time wanting numerous

and accomplished professors of these arts? A wide, solid, and permanent

reputation, such as crowned the career of Forrest, is obtained only by

substantial merit of some kind. The price paid is commensurate with the

value received.

The common mass of the community may not be able to judge of the

supreme niceties of merit in the different provinces of art, to

appreciate the finest qualities and strokes of genius, and award their

plaudits and laurels with that exact justice which will stand as the

impartial verdict of posterity. In these respects their decisions are

often as erroneous as they are careless and fickle; and competent

judges, trained in critical knowledge, skilled by long experience to

detect the minutest shades of truth and falsehood, beauty and ugliness,

desert and blameworthiness, will not hesitate to overrule the passing

partialities of the contemporary crowd, and rectify their errors for

the record of history. But the multitude are abundantly able--none more

so--to respond with admiring interest to the impression of original

power, recognize the broad outlines of a sublime and fiery soul, thrill

under the general signs of genius, and pay deserved tribute to popular

exhibitions of skill. And when this great coveted democratic tribute

has been given to a public servant, in an unprecedented degree, for

half a century, throughout the whole extent of a nation covering eight

millions of square miles and including more than thirty millions of

inhabitants, securing him a professional income of from twenty to

forty thousand dollars a season, and filling three dozen folio volumes

with newspaper and magazine cuttings composed of biographic sketches

of him and critical notices of his performances,--to undertake to set

aside the overwhelming verdict, as deceived and vulgar, is both idle

and presumptuous. To account for a career like that of Edwin Forrest

it is necessary to admit that he must have embodied force, intellect,

passion, culture, and perseverance in a very uncommon degree. And

in perceiving and honoring the general evidences of this the great

average of the people are better judges, fairer critics, than any

special classes or cliques can be; because the former are free from the

finical likes and dislikes, the local whims and biases, the envy and

squeamishness which prejudice the feelings and corrupt the judgments of

the latter.

The historic place and power of Forrest are of themselves one good

reason why his life should be fully and fairly written while all the

data are within reach. For it can hardly be a matter of doubt that

the theatre is destined in future ages to have in this country a rank

and a space assigned to it in the education and entertainment of the

public such as it has not yet known. The interest in types of human

nature, in modes of human life, in all the marvels of the inner world

of the soul, will increase with that popular leisure and culture which

the multiplication of labor-saving machinery promises to carry to an

unknown pitch; and as fast as this interest grows, the estimate of

the drama will ascend as the best school for the living illustration

of the experience of man. It is not improbable that the scholars and

critics of America a hundred or two hundred years hence will be looking

back and laboring with a zeal we little dream of now to recover the

beginnings of our national stage as seen in its first representatives.

For then the theatre, in its splendid public examples and in its

innumerable domestic reduplications, will be regarded as the unrivalled

educational mirror of humanity.

Of no American actor has there yet been written a biography worthy

of the name; though scarcely any other sphere of life is so crowded

with adventure, with romance, with every kind of affecting incident,

and with striking moral lessons. The theatre is a concentrated nation

in itself. It is a moving and illuminated epitome of mankind. It is

a condensed and living picture of the ideal world within the real

world. It has its old man, its old woman, its king and queen, its

fop, buffoon, and drudge, its youth, its chambermaid, its child, its

fine lady, its hero, its walking gentleman, its villain,--in short,

its possible patterns of every style of character and life. On the

surface of that little mimic world play in miniature reflection all

the jealousies and ambitions, hopes and fears, joys and sorrows, plots

and counterplots, of the huge actual world roaring without. A clear

portrayal of this from the interior, or even a constant suggestion of

it in connection with the history of one of its representatives, must

be full of interest and edification.

It is very singular, and lamentable too, that while there are hundreds

of admirable and celebrated biographies of kings, generals, statesmen,

artists, inventors, merchants, authors, there is said not to exist a

single life of an actor which is a recognized classic, a work combining

standard value and popular charm. This is especially strange when we

recollect that the genius of the player has an incomparable claim for

literary preservation, because the glorious monuments of the deeds

of the others remain for the contemplation of posterity, but the

achievements of the actor pass away with himself in a fading tradition.

Architect, sculptor, painter, poet, composer, legislator, bequeath

their works as a posthumous life. The tragedian has no chance of this

sort unless the features and accents of the great characters he created

are photographed in breathing description on the pages that record his

triumphs and make him live forever, who otherwise would soon become a

bodiless and inaudible echo.

The highest value and service of histrionic genius consist herein; that

the magical power of its performances evokes in the souls of those who

throng to gaze on them the noblest thoughts and sentiments in a degree

superior to that in which they experience them in ordinary life. They

thus feel themselves exalted to a grander pitch than their native one.

If the great impersonations of Forrest can in a permanent biography be

pictured adequately in the colors of reality, each copy of the book

will perpetuate a reflex Forrest to repeat in literature on succeeding

generations what he did so effectively in life on his contemporaries;

namely, strike the elemental chords of human nature till they vibrate

with intense sympathy to sublimer degrees than their own of the great

virtues of manly sincerity, heroism, honor, domestic love, friendship,

patriotism, and liberty, which he illustrated in his chief parts.

Furthermore, every actor who excelling in his art maintains a high

character and bearing, and wins a proud social position and fortune,

exerts an effective influence in removing the traditional odium or

suspicion from his class, and thus confers a benefit on all who are

hereafter to be members of it. His example deserves to be lifted into

general notice. In the case of Forrest this consideration received an

unprecedented emphasis from the fact of his devoting the vast sum of

money amassed in his laborious lifetime to the endowment of a home for

aged and dependent members of his profession, and of a school for the

public teaching of the dramatic art.

Besides, he was a man of extraordinary strength and originality of

character, an imperious, self-defending personality, living steadfastly

at first hand from his own impulses, perceptions, and purposes, not

shiftily in faded reflections of the opinions and wishes of other

people at the second or third remove. He was a standing refutation of

the common prejudice against actors, that simulating so many fictitious

traits they gradually cease to have genuine ones of their own, and

become mere lay figures ready for every chance dress. If any man ever

was true to his own fixed type, Forrest was. The study of such a

character is always attractive and strengthening, a valuable tonic for

more dependent and aimless natures.

He lived a varied, wide, and profound life. He travelled extensively,

mingled with all sorts of people, the noble and the base, the high

and the low, observed keenly, reflected much, was exposed to almost

every sort of trial, and assimilated into his experience the principal

secrets of human nature. The moral substance of the world passed into

his soul, and the great lessons of human destiny were epitomized

there. He knew the inebriating sweetness of popular applause, and the

bitter revulsions consequent on its change into public disfavor and

censure. He wore the honors, suffered the penalties, and proved both

the solidity and the hollowness of fame on its various levels, from the

wild idolatry of ignorant throngs to the admiring friendship of gifted

and refined spirits. There are swarms of men of dry and contracted

souls, and of a poor, wearisome monotony of conventional habits, with

no spiritual saliency or relish, no free appropriation of the treasures

of the world, whose lives if written would have about as much dignity

and interest as the life of a dorbug or a bat. But when a man's

faculties are expansive, and have embraced, in a fresh, impulsive way,

a great range of experiences, the story is worth telling, and, if truly

told, will not fail to yield matter for profitable meditation.

In addition, Forrest always showed himself a man of sterling integrity,

inflexible truth, whose word was as good as his bond, who toiled in the

open ways of self-denial and industry to build his name and position.

He bribed no one to write him up, bought no one from writing him

down, stooped to no startling eccentricities or tricks to get himself

talked about, arranged no conspiracies to push his own claims or hold

others back, but by manly resolution, study, and effort paid the fair

price for all he won, triumphantly resisting those insidious lures of

indolence, dissipation, and improvidence so incident to a theatrical

career, and steadily raising himself to the summit of his difficult

profession, where he sat in assured mastery for two generations. There

was a native grandeur about him which attracted admiring attention

wherever he moved.

The life of one who for so long a time and in so great a degree

enjoyed the favor of his countrymen may be said to belong to the

public. The man who has been watched with such eagerness in the

fictitious characters of the stage kindles a desire to see him truly

in his own. It is proper that the story should be told for the

gratification of the natural curiosity of the people, as well as

for the sake of the numerous lessons it must inculcate. The lesson

of an adventurous and ascending career surmounting severe hardships

and obstacles,--the lesson of a varied, fresh, full, racy, and

idiosyncratic experience,--the lesson of an extraordinary knowledge of

the world, transmuting into consciousness the moral substance of the

sphere of humanity,--the lesson of self-respect and force of character

resisting the strongest temptations to fatal indulgence,--the lesson

of strong faults and errors, not resisted or concealed, but unhappily

yielded to, and the bearing of their unavoidable penalties,--the lesson

of resolute devotion to physical training developing a frail and feeble

child into a man of herculean frame and endurance,--the lesson of

talent and ambition patiently employing the means of artistic mental

improvement by independent application to truth and nature,--the lesson

of a brilliant fortune and position bravely won and maintained,--these

and other lessons, besides all those numerous and highly important ones

which the theatrical world and the dramatic art in themselves present

for the instruction of mankind, have not often been more effectively

taught than they may be from the life of Edwin Forrest.

The subject-matter of the drama, understood in its full dignity,

is nothing less than _the science of human nature and the art of

commanding its manifestations_. The exemplification of this in the

theatre in our country, it is believed, will hereafter be endowed

with a personal instructiveness and a social influence greater than

it has ever had anywhere else. For the moral essence and interest of

representative playing on the stage ultimately reside in the contrasts

between the varieties of reality and ideality in the characters and

lives of human beings. All spiritual import centres in the conflict

and reconciliation of actuals and ideals. In this point of view

the biography of the principal American as yet identified with the

histrionic profession assumes a grave importance for Americans. Such a

narrative will afford opportunity to show what are the elements of good

and bad acting both in earnest and in fiction; to contrast the folly of

living to gain applause with the dignity of living to achieve merit;

to exhibit the valuable uses of competent criticism, the frequency

and ridiculous arrogance of ignorant and prejudiced criticism; to

expose the mean and malignant artifices of envy, jealousy, and ignoble

rivalry. It will, in a word, give occasion for illustrating the true

ideal of life, the harmonious fruition of the full richness of human

nature, with instances of approaches to it and of departures from it.

To get behind the scenes of the dramatic art is to get behind the

scenes of the sources of power, the arts of sway, the workings of vice

and virtue, the deepest secrets of the historic world.

In the distinguishing peculiarities of his structure and strain

Edwin Forrest was one of those extraordinary men who seem to spring

up rarely here and there, as if without ancestors, direct from some

original mould of nature, and constitute a breed apart by themselves.

Alexander, Cæsar, Demosthenes, Mirabeau, Chatham, Napoleon, draw their

volitions from such an unsounded reservoir of power, have such latent

resources of intuition, can strike such all-staggering blows, that

common men, appalled before their mysteriousness, instinctively revere

and obey. In the primeval time such men loomed with the overshadowing

port of deities and were worshipped as avatars from a higher world.

One of this class of men has, if we may use the figure, a sphere so

dense and vast that the lighter and lesser spheres of those around

him give way on contact with his firmer and weightier gravitation.

Wherever he goes he is treated as a natural king. He carries his royal

credentials in the intrinsic rank of his organism. There is in his

nervous system, resulting from the free connection and uninterrupted

interplay of all its parts, a centralized unity, a slowly swaying

equilibrium, which fills him with the sense of a saturating drench of

power. His consciousness seems to float on his surcharged ganglia in an

intoxicating dreaminess of balanced force, which, by the transcendent

fearlessness and endurance it imparts, lifts him out of the category

of common men. The dynamic charge in his nervous centres is so deep

and intense that it produces a chronic exaltation above fear into

complacency, and raises him towards the eternal ether, among the

topmost heads of our race. Each of these men in his turn draws from

his admiring votaries the frequent sigh of regret that nature made but

one such and then broke the die. This high gift, this unimpartable

superiority, is a secret safely veiled from vulgar eyes. Fine spirits

recognize its occult signals in the pervasive rhythm of the spinal

cord, the steadiness of the eye, the enormous potency of function, the

willowy massiveness of bearing, and a certain mystic languor whose

sleeping surface can with swift and equal ease emit the soft gleams of

love to delight or flash the forked bolts of terror to destroy. This

gift, as terrible as charming, varies with the temperament and habits

of its possessor. In Coleridge its profuse electricity was steeped in

metaphysical poppy and mandragora. In our American Samuel Adams it

was gathered in a battery that discharged the most formidable shocks

of revolutionary eloquence. In Sargent S. Prentiss, one of the most

imperial personalities this continent has known, it stood at a great

height, but his body was too much for his brain, and, as in a thousand

other melancholy examples of splendid genius ruined, the authentic

divinity continually gave way to its maudlin counterfeit. Where the

spell of this supernal inspiration has been inbreathed, unless it

be accompanied by noble employment and gratified affection, either

the mind topples into delirium and imbecility, or the temptation to

drunkenness is irresistible. It can know none of the intermediate

courses of mediocrity, but must still touch some extreme; and one of

the five words, ambition, love, saintliness, madness, or idiocy, covers

the secret history and close of genius on the earth.

In his basic build, his informing temperament, the habitual sway of

his being, Forrest was a marked specimen of this dominating class

of men. The circumstances of his life and the training of his

mind were unfavorable to the full development of his power, in the

highest directions; and it never came in him to a refined and free

consciousness. Had it done so, as it did in Daniel Webster, he would

have been a man entirely great. Webster was scarcely better known by

his proper name than by his popular sobriquet of the godlike. He and

Forrest were fashioned and equipped on the same scale, and closely

resembled each other in many respects. The atlantean majesty of Webster

seemed so self-commanded in its immense stability that the spectator

imagined it would require a thousand men planting their levers at

the distance of a mile to tip him from his poise. When he drew his

hand from his bosom and stretched it forth in emphatic gesture, the

movement suggested the weight of a ton. It was so with Forrest. The

slowness of his action was sometimes wonderfully impressive, suggesting

to the consciousness an imaginative apprehension of immense spaces

and magnitudes with a corresponding dilation of passion and power.

His attitudes and gestures cast angles whose lines appeared, as the

imagination followed them, to reach to elemental distances. And it

is the perception or the vague feeling of such things as these that

magnetizes a spell-bound auditory as they gaze. The organic foundation

for this exceptional power is the unification of the nervous system

by the exact correlation and open communication of all its scattered

batteries. This heightens the force of each point by its sympathetic

reinforcement with all points. The focal equilibrium that results is

the condition of an immovable self-possession. This is an attainment

much more common once than it is in our day of external absorption and

frittering anxieties. Its signs, the pathetic and sublime indications

of this transfused unity, are visible in the immortal masterpieces of

antique art, in the statues of the gods, kings, sages, heroes, and

great men of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It is now excessively

rare. Most of us are but as collections of fragments pieced together,

so full of strictures and contractions that no vibratory impact or

undulation can circulate freely in us. But Forrest had this open and

poised unity in such a degree that when at ease he swayed on his centre

like a mountain on a pivot, and when volition put rigidity into his

muscles the centre was solidaire with the periphery. And he was thus

differenced from his average fellow-men just as those two or three

matchless thoroughbred stallions who have so startlingly raised the

breed of horses in this whole country were differenced from their

plebeian brothers in the dray and at the plough.

The truth here indicated is one of surpassing importance. However

overlooked by the ignorant multitude, it was blindly felt by them, and

it was clearly seen by all who had the key to it, especially by women

of rich intuitions. With these Forrest was always an especial favorite.

Not only did the magnetizing signs of his power so work upon hundreds

of men all over the land that he was imitated by them, his habitudes of

bearing and voice copied and transmitted, but they also wrought more

deeply still on more sensitive imaginations, producing reactions there

to be transmitted thence upon their offspring and perpetuate his traits

in future generations. This is one of the historic prerogatives of the

potent and brilliant artist, one of the chosen modes by which selective

nature or providence improves the strain of our race. No biography can

have a stronger claim on public attention than one which promises to

throw light on the law for exalting the human organism to its highest

perfection,--a secret which belongs to the complete training of a

dramatic artist and the fascination with which it invests him in the

eyes of sensibility.

Still further, Forrest has a claim for posthumous justice as one who

was wronged in important particulars of his life and misjudged in

essential elements of his character. Outraged, as he conceived, in the

sanctities of his manhood, he bore the obloquy for years with outward

silence, but with an inner resentment that rankled to his very soul.

Endowed with a tender and expansive heart, cultivated taste, and a

scrupulous sense of justice, shrinking sensitively from any stain on

his honor, he was in many circles considered a selfish despot addicted

to the most unprincipled practices. His enemies, combining with

certain sets of critics, incompetent, prejudiced, or unprincipled,

caused it to be quite commonly supposed that he was a coarse, low

performer, merely capable of splitting the ears of the groundlings;

while, in fact, his intellectual vigor, his conversational powers, his

literary discernment, and his sensibility to the choicest delicacies of

sentiment were as much superior to those of the ordinary run of men as

his popular success on the stage was greater than that of the ordinary

stock of actors. Betrayed--as he and his intimate friends believed--in

his own home, he was, when at length, after long forbearance, moved to

seek legal redress, himself accused, and as he always felt, against

law, evidence, and equity, loaded with shameful condemnation and

damages. Standing by his early friends with faithful devotion and

open purse, he was accused of heartlessly deserting them in their

misfortunes. A penniless boy, making his money not by easy speculations

which bring a fortune in a day, but by hard personal labor, he gave

away over a quarter of a million dollars, and then was stigmatized

as an avaricious curmudgeon. Cherishing the keenest pride in his

profession and in those who were its honor and ornament,--bestowing

greater pecuniary benefactions on it than any other man who ever

lived, and meditating a nobler moral service to it than any other

mere member of it has conferred since Thespis first set up his

cart,--he was accused of valuing his art only as a means of personal

enrichment and glorification, and of being a haughty despiser of his

theatrical brothers and sisters. As a result of these industrious

misrepresentations, there is abroad in a large portion of the community

a judgment of him which singularly inverts every fair estimate of his

deserts after a complete survey. It seems due to justice that the facts

be stated, and his character vindicated, so far as the simple light of

the realities of the case will vindicate it.

Two definite illustrations may here fitly serve to show that the

foregoing statements are to be regarded not as vague generalities,

but as strict and literal truth. One is in relation to the frequent

estimate of Forrest as a quarrelsome, fighting man. Against this may be

set the simple fact that, with all his gigantic strength, pugilistic

skill, and volcanic irritability, from his eighteenth year to his death

he never laid violent hand in anger on a human being, except in one

instance, and that was when provocation had set him beside himself.

The other illustration is concerning his alleged pecuniary meanness.

When he was past sixty-five, alone in the world with his fast-swelling

fortune, under just the circumstances to give avarice its sharpest

edge and energy, he set apart the sum of fifty thousand dollars for an

annuity to an old friend, to release him from toil and make his last

years happy. Even of those called generous, how many in our day are

capable of such a deed in answer to a silent claim of friendship?

One more element or feature in this life, of public interest, of

attraction and value for biographic use, is its strictly American

character. All the outlines and setting of Forrest's career, the

quality and smack of his sentiments, the mould and course of his

thoughts, the style of his art, were distinctly American. His immediate

descent, on both sides, from European immigrants suggests the lesson

of the mixture in our nationality, the providential place and purpose

of the great world-gathering of nationalities and races in our

republic. His personal prejudice against foreigners, with his personal

indebtedness to the teachings and examples of foreigners,--Pilmore,

Wilson, Cooper, Conway, Kean,--brings up the question of the just

feelings which ought to subsist between our native-born and our

naturalized citizens; that true spirit of human catholicity which

should blend them all in a patriotism identical at last with universal

philanthropy and scorning to harbor any schismatic dislikes. And then

his intimate relations, at critical periods of his life, with the

most marked specimens of our Western and Southern civilization, bring

upon the biographic scene many illustrations of those unique American

characters, having scarcely prototypes or antitypes, which have passed

away forever with the state of society that produced them.

His experience arched from 1806 to 1872, a period perhaps more

momentous in its events, discoveries, inventions, and prophetic

preparations than any other of the same length since history began.

He saw his country expand from seventeen States to thirty-seven, and

from a population of six millions to one of forty millions, with its

flag floating in every wind under heaven. Washington, indeed, and

Franklin, were dead when the life of Forrest began; but Jefferson,

Adams, Madison, Marshall, and a throng of the Revolutionary worthies

were still on the stage. When he died, every one of the second great

cluster of illustrious Americans, grouped in the national memory, with

Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Irving, Cooper, and Channing in the centre, was

gone; and even the third brilliant company, Emerson, Hawthorne, Bryant,

Bancroft, and their peers, was already broken and faltering under the

blows of death and decay. During this time his heart-strings stretched

out to embrace, the vascular web of his proud sympathies was woven

over, every successive State and Territory added to our domain, till,

in his later age, his enraptured eyes drank in the wondrous loveliness

of the landscapes of California. By his constant travels and sojourns

in all parts of the land, by his acquaintance with innumerable persons

representing all classes and sections, by the various relationships

of his profession with literature, the press, and the general public,

there are suggestive associations, for more than fifty years, between

his person, his spirit, his fortunes, and everything that is most

peculiar and important in the historic growth and moral changes and

destiny of his country.

The composition of a narrative doing justice to a life with such

contents and such relations may well be thought worth the while of any

one. And if it be properly composed, if the programme here laid down

be adequately filled up, the result cannot fail to offer instructions

worthy the attention of the American people.

For the reasons now explained, the most intimate friends of Forrest

had often tried to induce him to write his own memoir. They knew that

such a work would possess extreme interest and value, and they felt

that he had every qualification to do it better than it could be done

by anybody else. But their efforts were vain. Pride in him was greater

than vanity. He had as much self-respect as he had self-complacency.

He was, therefore, not ruled by those motives which caused Cicero,

Augustine, Petrarch, Rousseau, Gibbon, and a throng of lesser men,

to take delight in painting their own portraits, describing their

own experiences, toning up the details with elaborate touches. To

the reiterated arguments urged by his friends, he replied, "I have

all my life been surrounded, as it were, by mirrors reflecting me to

myself at every turn; subjected to those praises and censures which

keep consciousness in a fever; accompanied at every step by a constant

clapping of hands and stamping of feet and pointing of fingers, with

the shout or the whisper, 'There goes Forrest!' I have for years been

sick of this fixing of attention on myself. I can enjoy sitting down

alone and recalling the scenes and occurrences of the past, regarding

them as objects and events outside. But to call them up distinctly as

parts of myself, and record them as a connected whole, with constant

references to the standards in my own mind and the prejudices in the

minds of my friends and my enemies,--I cannot do it. The pain of the

reminiscences, the distress of the fixed self-contemplation, would be

too much. It would drive me mad. Give over. No persuasion on earth can

induce me to think of it."

Every attempt to secure an autobiography having failed, the author of

the present work was led, under the circumstances before stated, and

with the promise that every facility should be afforded him, to assume

the task. In the first conversation held with him on the undertaking,

Forrest said, "Tell the truth frankly. Let there be no whitewashing.

Show me just as I have been and am." As he thus spoke, he took down

from a shelf of his library the first volume of the "Memoirs of

Bannister the Comedian," by John Adolphus, and read, in rich sweet

tones mellowed by the echoes of his heart, the opening paragraph, which

is as follows: "A friendship of many years' duration, terminated only

by his death, impels me to lay before the public a memoir of the life

of the late John Bannister. In executing this task I am exempted from

the difficulties that so frequently beset the author of a friendly

biographical essay: I have no vices to conceal, no faults to palliate,

no contradictions to reconcile, no ambiguities of conduct to explain. I

purpose to narrate the life of a man whose characteristic integrity and

buoyant benevolence were always apparent in his simulated characters,

and who in real life proved that those exhibitions were not assumed for

the mere purposes of his profession, but that his great success in his

difficult career arose in no small degree from that truth and sincerity

which diffused their influence over the personages he represented." As

the admiring cadence of his voice died sadly away, he laid down the

volume and said to his auditor, "For your sake, in the work on which

you have entered, I wish it were with me as it was with Bannister.

But it is otherwise. My faults are many, and I deserve much blame.

Yet, after every confession and every regret, I feel before God that

I have been a man more sinned against than sinning; and, if the whole

truth be told, I am perfectly willing to bear all the censure, all the

condemnation, that justly belongs to me. Therefore use no disguising

varnish, but let the facts stand forth."

Such were the words of Forrest himself; and in their spirit the author

will proceed, sparing no pains to learn the truth, neither holding

back or trimming down foibles and vices nor magnifying virtues,

recording his own honest convictions without fear or favor, hoping to

produce as the result a book which shall do justice to its subject, and

contain enough substantial worth and interest to repay the attention

its readers may bestow on it. The work will be written more from the

stage point of view than from the pulpit point of view, but most of

all from that popularized academic or philosophic point of view which

surveys the whole field of human life in a spirit at once of scientific

appreciation, poetic sympathy, and impartial criticism.

It is to be understood that the acts or traits herein described which

reflect particular credit on Edwin Forrest have not been paraded

or proclaimed by himself, but have either been drawn from him by

questioning or been discovered through inquiries set on foot and

documents brought to light by friends who loved and honored him, knew

how grossly he had been belied, and were determined that his true

record should be set before the public. The writer hopes his readers

will not here take a prejudice, imagining that they spy that frequent

weakness of biographers, a tendency to undue laudation. All that he

asks is that a candid examination be given to the evidence he adduces,

and then that a corresponding decision be rendered. While he tries to

do justice to the good side of his subject, he will be equally frank in

exposing the ill side and pointing its morals.

The sources of information and authority made use of are as follows:

First, conversations and correspondence, for five years, with Forrest

himself; second, conversations and correspondence with his chief

friends and intimates; third, half a dozen biographical sketches

of considerable length, several of them in print, the others in

manuscript; fourth, magazine articles and newspaper notices and

criticisms, extending through his entire career, and reaching to the

number of some twenty thousand; fifth, the mass of letters and papers

left by him at his death, and made available for my purpose by the

kindness of his executors. I must also make grateful acknowledgment, in

particular, of valuable suggestions and aid from Gabriel Harrison and

T. H. Morrell, two enthusiastic admirers of the player, whose loving

zeal for him did not end with his exit.

CHAPTER II.

PARENTAGE AND FAMILY.

[Illustration]

EDWIN FORREST made his first appearance on the stage of this world the

ninth day of March, 1806, in the city of Philadelphia. His father,

William Forrest, was a Scotchman, who had migrated to America and

established himself in business as an importer of Scottish fabrics.

He was of good descent. _His_ father, the grandparent of the subject

of this biography, is described as a large, powerfully-built man,

residing, in a highly respectable condition, at Cooniston, Mid-Lothian,

Edinburgh County, Scotland. In the margin is a copy of the family

coat of arms. It was discovered and presented to Mr. Forrest by his

friend William D. Gallagher. The motto, "Their life and their green

strength are coeval," or, as it may be turned, "They live no longer

than they bear verdure," happily characterizes a race whose hardy

constitutions show their force in vigorous deeds to the very end. He

who, in America, plumes himself on mere titular nobility of descent,

may be a snob; but the science of genealogy, the tracing of historic

lineages and transmitted family characteristics, deals with one of

the keenest interests of the human heart, one of the profoundest

elements in the destiny of man. And the increasing attention given to

the subject in our country is a good sign, and not the trifling vanity

which some superficial critics deem it. It deals with those complicated

facts of crossing or mingling streams of blood and lines of nerve out

of which--and it is a point of immeasurable importance--the law of

hereditary communication of qualities and quantities, influences and

destinies, is to be formulated.

William Forrest, after a long struggle against pecuniary

embarrassments, gave up his mercantile business, and obtained a

situation in the old United States Bank. On the closing of that

institution, in connection with which his merits had secured him the

friendly acquaintance of the celebrated millionaire Stephen Girard, he

received a similar appointment in the Girard Bank. This office he held

until his death, oppressed with the debts bequeathed by his failure,

supporting his family with difficulty, and leaving them quite destitute

at last.

Mr. Forrest was much esteemed for his good sense, his dignified

sobriety of demeanor, his strict probity, his modesty and industry.

Reserved and taciturn in manners, tall, straight, and slender in

person, he was a hard-working, care-worn, devout, and honest man,

who strove to be just and true in every relation. He had a pale and

sombre face, with regular features, which lighted up with strong

expressiveness when he was pleased or earnestly interested. He was

somewhat disposed to melancholy, though not at all morose, his

depression and reserve being attributable rather to weariness under his

enforced struggle with unfavorable conditions than to any native gloom

of temper or social antipathy.

Edwin, in his own later years, dwelt with veneration on the memory

of his father, and was fond of recalling his early recollections of

him, deeply regretting that there was no portrait or daguerreotype of

him in existence. He was wont to say that among the sweetest memories

that remained to him from his childhood were the rich and musical

though plaintive tones of his father's voice, the ringing and honest

heartiness of his occasional laugh, and the singular charm of his

smile. He said, "I used to think, when my father smiled, the light

bursting over his dark and sad countenance,--its very rarity lending it

a double lustre,--I used to think I never saw anything so beautiful."

The light of love and joy broke over his sombre features like sunshine

suddenly gilding a gray crag.

The unobtrusive, toilsome life of this worthy man, unmarked by any

salient points possessing general interest for the public, glided

on in even course to the close, darkened by the shadows of material

adversity, but brightened by the serene lights of domestic happiness

and self-respect. In his poverty he knew many mortifications, many

hardships of self-denial and anxious forethought. But in his upright

character and blameless conduct, in his retiring and religious

disposition, in the kind and respectful regard of all who knew him, he

experienced the supports and consolations deserved by such a type of

man,--a type common in the middle walks of American society, and as

full of merit as it is free from all that is noisy or meretricious.

He was not an educated man, not disciplined and adorned by the arts

of literary and social culture. But his virtues made him eminently

respectable in himself and in his sphere. He came of a good stock, with

noble traditions in its veins, endowed with sound judgment, refined

nervous fibre, a grave moral tone, and persevering self-reliance. He

died of consumption, in 1819, in the sixty-second year of his age.

In the death of his youngest son his blood was extinguished, and the

fire went out on his family hearth. No member of his lineage remains

on earth. The recollections of him, now dim threads in the minds of

a few survivors, will soon fall into the unremembering maw of the

past. Herein his life and fate have this interest for all, that they

so closely resemble those of the great majority of our race. Few can

escape this common lot of obscurity and oblivion. Nor should one care

much to escape it. It is not possible for all to be conspicuous,

famous, envied. Neither is it desirable. The genuine end for all is

to be true and good, obedient to their duty, and useful and pleasant

to their kind. If they can also be happy, why then, that is another

blessing for which to thank God. Beyond a question the most illustrious

favorites of fortune, amidst all the glitter and hurrah of their

lot, are often less contented in themselves and less loved by their

associates than those members of the average condition who attract so

little attention while they stay and are forgotten so soon when they

have gone. And, mortal limits once passed, what matters all this to

the immortal soul? The rank of a man in the sight of God and his fate

in eternity--which are the essential things alike for the loftiest and

the lowliest--depend on considerations very different from the tinsel

of his station or the noise of his career. One may be poor, weak,

obscure, unfortunate, yet be a truly good and happy man. That is the

essential victory. Another may be rich, powerful, renowned, enveloped

in the luxuries of the earth. If his soul is adjusted to its conditions

and wisely uses them, this is a boon still more to be desired; for he

too has the essential victory. The real end and aim of life always lie

within the soul, not in any exterior prize: still, the best outward

conditions may well be the most coveted, although there is no lot which

does not yield full compensations, if the occupant of that lot is what

he ought to be.

The foregoing sketch, brief and meagre as it is, presents all for which

the constructive materials exist.

In turning from the father to the mother of Edwin Forrest, the data are

as simple and modest as before, and a still more genial office awaits

the biographer. For she was an excellent example of a good woman,

gentle, firm, judicious, diligent, cheerful, religious, ever faithful

to her duties, the model of what a wife and a mother ought to be. Her

son growingly revered and loved her to the very end of his life, as

much as a man could do this side of idolatry; and he was anxious that

her portrait should be presented and her worth signalized in this book.

Ample opportunities will be afforded for doing this.

Rebecca Forrest was, in every sense of the words, a true mate and

helpmeet to her husband. He reposed on her with unwavering affection,

respect, and confidence, and found unbroken comfort and satisfaction

there, whatever might happen elsewhere. Through twenty-five years of

happy wedlock she shared all his labors and trials, joys and sorrows,

and survived him for a yet longer period, fondly venerating his memory,

scrupulously guarding and training his children. Her maiden name was

Lauman. Born in Philadelphia, she was of German descent on both sides,

her parents having migrated thither in early life, and set up a new

hearth-stone, to continue here, in a modified form, the old Teutonic

homestead left with tears beyond the sea.

William Forrest and Rebecca Lauman were married in 1795, he being at

that time thirty-seven years old, she thirty-two. Seven children were

born to them in succession at quite regular intervals of two years. The

nameless boy who preceded Edwin in 1804 died at birth. The remaining

six were all baptized in the Episcopal Church of Saint Paul, on Third

Street, in Philadelphia, by the Rev. Doctor Pilmore, on the same day,

November 13, 1813. The names of these six children, in the order of

their birth, were Lorman, Henrietta, William, Caroline, Edwin, and

Eleanora.

The first of these to die was Lorman, the eldest of the family. He

was a tanner and currier by trade. He was over six feet in height,

straight as an arrow, lithe and strong, and of a brave and adventurous

disposition. He left home on a filibustering enterprise directed to

some part of South America, in his twenty-sixth year, and nothing was

heard of him afterwards. The following letter, written by Edwin to his

brother William, who was then at Shepherdstown, in Virginia, announces

the unfortunate design of poor Lorman:

"PHILADELPHIA, August 1st, 1822.

"DEAR BROTHER,--I received your favor of 29th July, and noted its

contents. I am sorry to hear you have such ill luck. Your business in

this city is very good.

"Lorman has returned from New York, and intends on Monday next to

embark on board a patriot privateer, now lying in this port, for

Saint Thomas, and from thence to South America, where, in the patriot

service, he has been commissioned 1st lieutenant, at a salary of

eighty dollars per month. He screens himself from mother by telling

her he is going to Saint Thomas to follow his trade, being loath to

inform her of the true cause. A numerous acquaintance accompany him on

the said expedition. He wishes me to beg of you not to say anything

when you return more than he has allowed himself to say. It is a

glorious expedition, and had I not fair prospects in the theatric line

I should be induced to go.

"Come on as early as possible. You may stand a chance of getting a

berth in the Walnut Street Theatre, or, which is most certain and

best, work at your trade.

"Mrs. Riddle has removed her dwelling to a romantic scene in Hamilton

Villa. John Moore, advancing above mediocrity, performed Alexander

the Great for her benefit. Please write as early as possible. Till

then adieu. In haste, your affectionate brother,

"EDWIN."

The expedition proved an ill-starred one, and Lorman perished in it

in some unrecorded encounter, passing out of history like an unknown

breath. It seems fated that the paths to all great goals shall

be strewn with the wrecks of untimely and irregular enterprises,

unfortunate but prophetic precursors of the final triumphs. It has been

so in the case of the many premature and wrongful attempts to grasp for

the flag of the United States those backward and waiting territories

destined, perhaps, as the harmonies of Providence weave themselves

out, spontaneously to shoot into the web of the completed unity of the

Western Continent.

Many a gallant and romantic fellow, many a reckless brawler, many

a coarse and vulgar aspirant, many a crudely dreaming and scheming

patriot, half inspired, half mad, has fallen a victim to those

numerous semi-piratical attempts at conquest which have in the eyes

of some flung on our flag the lustre of their promise, in the eyes

of others, planted there the stains of their folly and crime. But if

there be a systematic plan or divine drift and purport in history,

every one of these efforts has had its place, has contributed its

quota of influence, has left its seed, yet to spring up and break into

flower and fruit. Then every life, buried and forgotten while the

slow preparations accumulate, will have a resurrection in the ripe

fulfilment of the end for which it was spent. Meanwhile, the brief and

humble memory of Lorman Forrest sleeps with the nameless multitude of

pioneers the forerunning line of whose graves invites the progress of

free America all around the hemisphere.

William, the second son, expired under a sudden attack of bilious

colic, at the age of thirty-four. He was a printer, and worked at this

trade for several years, buffeted by fortune from place to place. The

mechanical drudgery, however, irked him. The lack of opportunity and

ability to rise and to better his condition also disheartened and

repelled him; and before he was twenty-one he abandoned the business

of type-setting for an employment more suited to his tastes. He

adopted the theatrical profession and entered on the stage, of which

he had been an amateur votary from his early youth. Their common

dramatic aptitudes and aspirations were a strong bond of fellowship

between him and his youngest brother, and they had a thousand times

practised together at the art of acting, in private, before either

made his appearance in public. This coincidence of talent and ambition

between the brothers seems to reveal an inherited tendency. The local

reputation of the elder, once clear and bright, has been almost utterly

lost in the wide and brilliant fame of the younger. It is fitting that

it be here snatched from oblivion, at least for a passing moment. For

he was both a good man and a good actor, performing his part well

alike on the scenic stage and on the real one; though in his case,

as in that of most of his contemporaries, the merit was not of such

pronounced and impressive relief as to survive in any legible character

the obliterating waves of the half-century which has swept across it.

Yet his accomplishments, force, and desert were sufficient to make

him, in spite of early poverty and premature death, for several years

the respected and successful manager of the leading theatre, first of

Albany, afterwards of Philadelphia.

The following tribute was paid to him in one of the papers of his

native city on the day of his burial:

"When we are awakened from the dreams of mimic life, so vividly

portrayed by histrionic skill, to the fatal realities of life

itself, the blow falls with double severity. Such was the effect

on Monday evening, when, on the falling of the curtain at the Arch

Street Theatre, after the first piece, Mr. Thayer stepped forward,

announced the _sudden death_ of Mr. William Forrest, the Manager, and

requested the indulgent sympathy of the audience for the postponement

of the remaining entertainments. A shock so sudden and so profound

it has seldom been our lot to record. Engaged in his duties all the

morning, it appeared but a moment since he had been among us, in the

full enjoyment of health, when the hand of the unsparing destroyer

struck him down. Mr. Forrest was a great and general favorite among

his associates, to whom he was endeared by every feeling of kindness

and affection. Few possessed a more placid or even disposition, and

few won friends so fast and firmly. In his private relations he was

equally estimable, and the loss of him as a son and as a brother will

be long and severely felt."

He was also spoken of in the same strain by the journals of Albany, one

of them using these words: "Our citizens will regret to read of the

death of Mr. William Forrest. He was known here not only as a manager

of much taste and enterprise, but as an actor of conceded merit and

reputation. He was also esteemed here, as in Philadelphia, by numerous

acquaintances for his personal worth and social qualities. The tidings

of his decease will be received with sorrow by all who knew him."

So, on the modest actor, manager, and man, after the short and

well-meant scene of his quiet, checkered, not unsuccessful life, the

curtain fell in swift and tragic close, leaving the mourners, who would

often speak kindly of him, to go about the streets for a little while

and then fade out like his memory.

The three daughters of the family--none of them ever marrying--lived to

see their youngest brother at the height of his fame, and always shared

freely in the comforts secured by his prosperity. They were proud

of his talents and reputation, grateful for his loving generosity,

devoted to his welfare. In his absence from home their correspondence

was constantly maintained, and the only interruption their attachment

knew was death. Henrietta lived to be sixty-five years old, dying

of liver-complaint in 1863. The next, Caroline, died from an attack

of apoplexy in 1869, at the age of sixty-seven. And the youngest,

Eleanora, after suffering partial paralysis, died of cancer in 1871,

being sixty-three years old.

No one among all our distinguished countrymen has been more thoroughly

American than Edwin Forrest. From the beginning to the end of his

career he was intensely American in his sympathies, his prejudices,

his training, his enthusiasm for the flag and name of his country,

his proud admiration for the democratic genius of its institutions,

his faith in its political mission, his interest in its historic men,

his fervent love of its national scenery and its national literature.

He was also American in his exaggerated dislike and contempt for the

aristocratic classes and monarchical usages of the Old World. He did

not seem to see that there are good and evil in every existing system,

and that the final perfection will be reached only by a process of

mutual giving and taking, which must go on until the malign elements of

each are expelled, the benign elements of the whole combined.

In view of the concentrated Americanism of Forrest, it may seem

singular that he was himself a child of foreign parentage, his father

being Scotch, his mother German. But this fact, which at first appears

strange, is really typical. Nothing could be more characteristic

of our nationality, which is a composite of European nationalities

transferred to these shores, and here mixed, modified, and developed

under new conditions. The only original Americans are the barbaric

tribes of Indians, fast perishing away, and never suggested to the

thought of the civilized world by the word. The great settlements from

which the American people have sprung were English, French, Dutch, and

Spanish. To these four ethnic rivers were added a dark flood of slaves

from Africa, and vast streams of emigration from Ireland and Germany,

impregnated with lesser currents from Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Russia,

and other countries, adding now portentous signal-waves from China and

Japan.

The history of European emigration to America is, in one aspect, a

tragedy; in another aspect, a romance. When we think of the hardships

suffered, the ties sundered, the farewells spoken, the aching memories

left behind, it is a colossal tragedy. When we think of the attractive

conditions inviting ahead, the busy plans, the joyous hopes, the

prophetic schemes and dreams of freedom, plenty, education, reunion

with following friends and relatives, that have gilded the landscape

awaiting them beyond the billows, it is a chronic romance. The

collective experience in the exodus of the millions on millions of men,

women, and children, who, under the goad of trials at home and the lure

of blessings abroad, have forsaken Europe for America,--the laceration

of affections torn from their familiar objects, the tears and wails of

the separation, the dismal discomforts of the voyage, the perishing

of thousands on the way, either drawn down the sepulchral mid-ocean

or dashed on the rocks in sight of their haven, the long-drawn

heart-break of exile, the tedious task of beginning life anew in a

strange land,--and then the auspicious opening of the change, the rapid

winning of an independence, the quick development of a home-feeling,

the assuagement of old sorrows, the conquest of fresh joys and a

fast-brightening prosperity broad enough to welcome all the sharers

still pouring in endless streams across the sea,--the perception of all

this makes the narrative of American immigration at once one of the

most pathetic and one of the most inspiring episodes in the history of

humanity. This tale--as a complete account of the emigrant ships, the

emigrant trains, the emigrant wagons, the clearings and villages and

cities of the receding West, would reveal it--stand unique and solitary

in the crowd of its peculiarities among all the records of popular

removals and colonial settlements since the dispersion of the Aryan

race, mysterious mother of the Indo-European nations, from its primeval

seat in the bosom of Asia. All this suffering, all this hope, all this

seething toil, has had its mission, still has its purpose, and will

have its reward when the predestined effects of it are fully wrought

out. Its providential object is to expedite the work of reconciling the

divided races, nations, parties, classes, and sects of mankind. The

down-trodden poor had groaned for ages under the oppressions of their

lot, victims of political tyranny, religious bigotry, social ostracism,

and their own ignorance. The traditions and usages of power and caste

which surrounded them were so old, so intense, so unqualified, that

they seemed hopelessly doomed to remain forever as they were. Then the

Western World was discovered. The American Republic threw its boundless

unappropriated territory and its impartial chance in the struggle of

life open to all comers, with the great prizes of popular education,

liberty of thought and speech, and universal equality before the law.

The multitudes who flocked in were rescued from a social state where

the hostile favoritisms organized and rooted in a remote past pressed

on them with the fatality of an atmosphere, and were transferred to a

state which offered them every condition and inducement to emancipate

themselves from clannish prejudices, superstitions, and disabilities,

to flow freely together in the unlimited sympathies of manhood, and

form a type of character and civilization as cosmopolitan as their

two bases,--charity and science. The significance, therefore, of the

colonizing movement from the Old World to the New is the breaking up

of the fatal power of transmitted routine, exclusive prerogative and

caste, and the securing for the people of a condition inviting them to

blend and co-operate on pure grounds of universal humanity. In spite of

fears and threats, over all drawbacks, the experiment is triumphantly

going on. The prophets who foresee the end already behold all the

tears it has cost glittering with rainbows.

America being thus wholly peopled with immigrants and the descendants

of immigrants, our very nationality consisting in a fresh and free

composite made of the tributes from the worn and routinary nations

of the other hemisphere, the distinctive glory and design of this

last historic experiment of civilization residing in the fact that

it presents an unprecedented opportunity for the representatives of

all races, climes, classes, and creeds to get rid of their narrow and

irritating peculiarities, to throw off the enslaving heritage imposed

on them by the hostile traditions and unjust customs of their past, no

impartial observer can fail to see the unreasonableness of that bitter

prejudice against foreigners which has been so common among those of

American birth. This prejudice has had periodical outbreaks in our

politics under the name of Native Americanism. In its unreflective

sweep it is not only irrational and cruel, but also a gross violation

of the true principles of our government, which deal with nothing

less than the common interests and truths of universal humanity. And

yet, in its real cause and meaning, properly discriminated, it is

perfectly natural in its origin, and of the utmost importance in its

purport. It is not against foreigners, their unlimited welcome here,

their free sharing in the privilege of the ballot and the power of

office, that the cry should be raised. That would be to exemplify

the very bigotry in ourselves against which we protest in others. It

is only against the importation to our shores, and the obstinate and

aggravating perpetuation here, of the local vices, the bad blood, the

clannish hates, the separate and inflaming antagonisms of all sorts,

which have been the chief sources of the sufferings of these people in

the lands from which they came to us. In its partisan sense the motto,

America for those of American birth, is absurdly indefensible. But the

indoctrination of every American citizen, no matter where born or of

what parentage, with the spirit of universal humanity _is_ our supreme

duty. Freedom from proscription and prejudice, a fair course and equal

favor for all, an open field for thought, truth, progress,--this

expresses the true spirit of the Republic. It is only against what is

opposed to this that we should level our example, our argument, and our

persuasion. The invitation our flag advertises to all the world is,

Come, share in the bounties of God, nature, and society on the basis of

universal justice and good will, untrammelled by partial laws, unvexed

by caste monopolies. Welcome to all; but, as they touch the strand,

let them cast off and forget the distinguishing badges which would

cause one portion to fear or hate, despise or tyrannize over, another

portion. Not they who happened to be born here, but they who have the

spirit of America, are true Americans.

The father and mother of Edwin Forrest were thoroughly Americanized,

and taught him none of the special peculiarities of his Scottish or

German ancestry. So far as his conscious training was concerned, in

language, religion, social habits, he grew up the same as if his

parentage had for repeated generations been American. This was so

emphatically the case that all his life long he felt something of the

Native American antipathy for foreigners, and cherished an exaggerated

sympathy for many of the most pronounced American characteristics. Yet

there never was any bigotry in his theoretical politics. His creed

was always purely democratic; and so was the core of his soul. He was

only superficially infected by the illogical prejudices around him.

Whatever deviations he may have shown in occasional word or act, his

own example, in his descent and in his character, yielded a striking

illustration of the genuine relation which should exist between all

the members of our nationality, from whatever land they may hail and

whatever shibboleths may have been familiar to their lips. Namely, they

should, as soon as possible, forget the quarrels of the past, and hold

everything else subordinate to the supreme right of private liberty and

the supreme duty of public loyalty, recognizing the true qualifications

for American citizenship only in the virtues of American manhood, the

American type of manhood being simply the common type liberalized and

furthered by the free light and stimulus of republican institutions.

Overlook it or violate it whoever may, such is the lesson of the facts

before us. And it is a point of the extremest interest that, however

much Forrest may sometimes have failed in his personal temper and

prejudices to practise this lesson, the constantly emphasized and

reiterated exemplification of it in his professional life constitutes

his crowning glory and originality as an actor. He was distinctively

the first and greatest democrat, as such, that ever trod the stage.

The one signal attribute of his playing was the lifted assertion of

the American idea, the superiority of man to his accidents. He placed

on the forefront of every one of his celebrated characters in blazing

relief the defiant freedom and sovereignty of the individual man.

Thus an understanding of the ground traversed in the present chapter is

necessary for the appreciation of his position and rank in the history

of the theatre. Boldly rejecting the mechanical traditions of the

stage, shaking off the artificial trammels of the established schools

of his profession, he looked directly into his own mind and heart and

directly forth upon nature, and, summoning up the passionate energies

of his soul, struck out a style of acting which was powerful in its

personal sincerity and truth, original in its main features, and, above

all, democratic and American in its originality.

But though the parents of Edwin did not try to neutralize the influence

of purely American circumstances of neighborhood and schooling for

their child, they could not help transmitting the organic individual

heritage of their respective nationalities in his very generation

and development. The generic features and qualities of every one

are stamped in his constitution from the historic soil and social

climate and organized life of the country of the parents through whom

he derives his being from the aboriginal Source of Being. Certain

peculiar modes of acting and reacting on nature and things--modes

derived from peculiarities of ancestral experience, natural scenery,

social institutions, and other conditions of existence--constitute

those different styles of humanity called races or nations. These

peculiarities of constitution, temper, taste, conduct, looks,

characterize in varying degrees all the individuals belonging to

a country, making them Englishmen, Spaniards, Russians, Turks, or

Chinese. These characteristics, drawn from what a whole people have

in common, are transmitted by parents to their progeny and inwrought

in their organic being by a law as unchangeable as destiny,--nay,

by a law which _is_ destiny. The law may, in some cases, baffle our

scrutiny by the complexity of the elements in the problem, or it may

be qualified by fresh conditions, but it is always there, working

in every point of plasma, every fibril of nerve, every vibration of

force. The law of heredity is obscured or masked in several ways.

First, the peculiarities of the two lines of transmitted ancestry, from

father and from mother, may in their union neutralize each other, or

supplement each other, or exaggerate each other, or combine to form new

traits. Secondly, they may be modified by the reaction of the original

personality of the new being, and also by the reaction of the new

conditions in which he is placed. Still, the law is there, and works.

It is at once the fixed fatality of nature and the free voice of God.

Edwin Forrest was fortunate in the national bequests of brain and blood

or structural fitnesses and tendencies which he received from his

fatherland and from his motherland. The distinctive national traits of

the Scottish and of the German character, regarded on the favorable

side, were signally exemplified in him. The traits of the former are

courage, acuteness, thrift, tenacity, clannishness, and patriotism; of

the latter, reasoning intelligence, poetic sentiment, honesty, personal

freedom, capacity for systematic drill, and open sense of humanity.

These two lines of prudential virtue and expansive sympathy were marked

in his career. The attributes of weakness or vice that belonged to

him were rather human than national. So the Caledonian and Teutonic

currents that met in his American veins were an inheritance of goodness

and strength.

Nor was he less fortunate in the bequeathal of strictly personal

qualities from his individual parents. Those conditions of bodily

and mental life, the offshoot of the conjoined being of father and

mother, imprinted and inwoven and ever operative in all the globules

of his blood and all the sources of his volition, were far above

the average both in the physical power and in the moral rank they

gave. His father was a tall, straight, sinewy man, who lived to his

sixty-second year a life of hardship and care, without the aid of

any particular knowledge of the laws of health. His mother was of an

uncommonly strong, well-balanced, and healthy constitution, who bore

seven children, worked hard, saw much trouble, but lived in equanimity

to her seventy-fifth year. From the paternal side no special tendency

to any disease is traceable; on the maternal side, only, through the

grandfather, who was an inveterate imbiber of claret, that germ of the

gout which ripened to such terrible mischief for him. In intellectual,

moral, and religious endowments and habits, both parents were of a

superior order, remarked by all who knew them for sound sense, sterling

virtue, unwearied industry, devout spirit and carriage. The good,

strong, consecrated stock, both national and personal, they gave their

boy, alike by generative transmission, by example, and by precept, was

of inexpressible service to him. He never forgot it or lost it. It

stood him in good stead in a thousand trying hours. Amidst the constant

and intense temptations of his exposed professional life, it gave him

superb victories over the worst of those vices to which hundreds of his

fellows succumbed in disgraceful discomfiture and untimely death. It

is true he yielded to follies and sins,--as, under such exposures, who

would not?--but his sense of honor and his memory of his mother kept

him from doing anything which would destroy his self-respect and give

him a bad conscience. This inestimable boon he owed to the moral fibre

of his birth and early training.

The thoughtful reader will not deem that the writer is making too much

of these preliminary matters. Besides their intrinsic interest and

value, they are vitally necessary for the full understanding of much

that is to follow. In the formation of the character and the shaping

of the career of any man the circumstance of supremest power is the

ancestral spirits which report themselves in him from the past, and

the organific influences of blood and nerve brought to bear on him

in the mystic world of the womb previous to his entrance into this

breathing theatre of humanity. The ignorance and the squeamishness

prevalent in regard to the subject of the best raising of children are

the causes of indescribable evils ramifying in all directions. It has

been tabooed from the province of public study and teaching, although

no other matter presents such pressing and sacred claims on universal

attention. It cannot always continue to be so neglected or forced into

the dark. The young giant, Social Science, so rapidly growing, will

soon insist on the thorough investigation of it, and on the accordant

organization in practice of the truths which shall be elicited. When

by analysis, generalization, experiment, and all sorts of methods and

tests, men shall have ransacked every other subject, it may be hoped,

they will begin to apply a little study to the one subject of really

paramount importance,--the breeding of their own species. When the same

scientific care and skill, based on accumulated and sifted knowledge,

shall be devoted to this province as has already been exemplified with

such surprising results in the improvement of the breeds of sheep,

cows, horses, hens, and pigeons, still more amazing achievements may

be confidently expected. The ranks of hopeless cripples, invalids,

imbeciles, idlers, and criminals will cease to be recruited. The

rate of births may perhaps be reduced to one-fourth of what it now

is, with a commensurate elevation of the condition of society by the

weeding out of the perishing and dangerous classes. And the rate

of infant mortality may be reduced to one per cent. of its present

murderous average. The regeneration of the world will be secured by the

perfecting of its generation.

These ideas were familiar to Forrest. He often spoke of them, and

wondered they were so slow to win the notice they deserved. For the

hypocrisy or prudery which affected to regard them as indelicate and

to be shunned in polite speech, he expressed contempt. In his soul the

chord of ancestral lineage which bound his being with a vital line

running through all foregone generations of men up to the Author of

men, was, as he felt it, exceptionally intense and sacred. And surely

the whole subject of our consanguinity in time and space is, to every

right thinker, as full of poetic attraction and religious awe on one

side as it is of scientific interest and social importance on the other.

Each of us has two parents, four grandparents, eight

great-grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents. In every receding

generation the number doubles, from thirty-two to sixty-four, then

to one hundred and twenty-eight, and so on; so that at the twentieth

remove, omitting the factor of intermarriages, one has over a million

ancestors! So many threads of nerve thrilling into him out of the dark

past! So many invisible rivulets of blood tributary to the ocean of his

heart, the collective experiences of all of them latently reported in

his structure! His physiological mould and type, his mental biases and

passional drifts, his longevity, and other prospective experiences and

fate, are the resultant of these combined contributions modified by his

own choice and new circumstances. What can be conceived more solemnly

impressive, or to us morally more sublime and momentous, than this

picture of an immortal personality, isolated in his own responsible

thought amidst the universe, but surrounded by the mysterious ranks

of his ancestry, all connected with him by spiritual ligaments which

lengthen and multiply, but never break, as he tracks them, further

and further, through the annals of time, through prehistoric ages,

incapable of solution or pause till his faith apprehends the beginning

of their tremulous lines in the creative fiat of God!

Indulge in whatever theories we may, whether of continuous development

or of sudden creation, it is through our parents that we receive our

being. It is through our ancestry, spreading ultimately back to the

limits of the human race, that each of us descends from God. By them it

is that the Creator creates us. Well may the great Asiatic races, the

soft and contemplative Brahmins, the child-like Chinese, the pure and

thoughtful Parsees, worship their unknown Maker in forms of reverential

remembrance and adoration paid to their known ancestors, gathering

their relics in dedicated tombs or temples, cherishing their names and

examples and precepts with fond devotion, celebrating pensive and glad

festivals in their honor, preparing, around their pious offerings of

fruits and flowers, little seats of grass, in a circle, for the pleased

guardian spirits of their recalled fathers and mothers invisibly to

occupy. Let not the reckless spirit of Young America, absorbed in the

chase of material gain, and irreverent of everything but sensuous good,

call it all a superstition and a folly. There is truth in it, too, and

a hallowing touch of the universal natural religion of humanity.

America, in her hasty and incompetent contempt for the dotage, fails to

appropriate the wisdom of the Orient. More of their humility, leisure,

meditation, reverence, aspiration, mystic depth of intuition, will do

us as much good as more of our science, ingenuity, independence, and

enterprise will do them. The American people, in their deliverance

from the entrammelling conditions of the over-governed Old World, and

their exciting naturalization on the virgin continent of the West,

have, to some extent, erred in affixing their scorn and their respect

to the wrong objects. In repudiating excessive or blind loyalty to

titular superiors and false authority, they have lost too much of the

proper loyalty to real superiors and just authority. They are too much

inclined to be contented with respectability and the average standard,

instead of aspiring to perfection by the divine standard. They show

too much deference to public opinion, and are too eagerly drawn after

the vulgar prizes of public pursuit,--money and social position,--to

the comparative neglect of personal reflection and culture, personal

honor, and detachment in a self-sustaining insight of principles.

They think too subserviently of what is established, powerful,

fashionable,--the very vice from which the founders of the country fled

hither. They think too meanly and haltingly of the truth and good which

are not yet established and fashionable, but ought to be so,--thus

turning their backs on the very virtue which heaven and earth command

them in especial to cultivate, namely, the virtue of an unflinching

spirit of progress in obedience to whatever is right and desirable

as against whatever wrongfully continues to govern. The best critics

from abroad, and the wisest observers at home, agree that the most

distinctive vice in the American character is described by the terms

complacent rashness and assumption, crude impertinence, disrespect to

age, irreverence towards parents, contempt for whatever does not belong

to itself. This rampant democratic royalty in everybody has proved

sadly detrimental to that spirit of modesty and docility which, however

set against oppression and falsehood, is profoundly appreciative of

everything sacred or useful and sits with veneration at the feet of

the past to garner up its treasures with gratitude. The American who

improves instead of abusing his national privileges will maintain his

private convictions and not bend his knee slavishly to public opinion,

but he will treat the feelings of others with tenderness, bow to all

just authority, and reverently uncover his heart before everything that

he sees to be really sacred.

On these points, it will be seen in the subsequent pages, the subject

of the present biography, as a boldly-pronounced American citizen, was

in most respects a good example. If occasionally, in some things, he

practised the American vice,--self-will, unconscious bigotry intrenched

in a shedding conceit,--he prevailingly exemplified the American

virtue,--tolerance, frankness, generosity, a sympathetic forbearance in

the presence of what was venerable and dear to others, although it was

not so to him. While withholding his homage from merely conventional

sanctities, he never scoffed at them; and he always instinctively

worshipped those intrinsic sanctities which carry their divine

credentials in their own nature. The filial and fraternal spirit in

particular was very strong in him, and bore rich fruits in his life and

conduct.

The conspicuous relative decay of the filial and fraternal virtues, or

weakening of the family tie, among the American people, the precocious

development and self-assertion of their children, wear an evil aspect,

and certainly are not charming. Yet they may be inevitable phases in

the evolution of the final state of society. They may distinguish a

transitional stage through which all countries will have to pass,

America being merely in the front. In ancient life the political

and social unit was the family. The whole family was held strictly

responsible for the deeds of each member of it. The drift marked by

democracy is to make the individual the ultimate unit in place of

the family, legally clearing each person from his consanguineous

entanglements, and holding him responsible solely for his own deeds

in relation to entire society. The movement towards individuality is

disintegrating; but, when completed, it may, by a terminal conversion

of opposites, play into a more intimate fellowship and harmony of

the whole than has ever yet been realized on earth. Thus it is not

impossible that the narrower and intenser domestic bonds may be giving

way simply before the extruding growth of wider and grander bonds, the

particular yielding merely as the universal advances. If the destiny

of the future be some form of social unity, some public solidarity

of sympathies and interests in which all shall mutually identify

themselves with one another, then the temporary irreverences and

insurgences of a democratic régime may have their providential purpose

and their abundant compensation in that final harmony of co-operative

freedom and obedience to which they are preparing the way out of

priestly and monarchical régimes.

Either this is the truth, that the youthful insubordination and

premature complacency, the rarity of generous friendships and the

commonness of sinister rivalries, which mark our time and land are

necessary accompaniments of the passage from individual loyalties

to collective loyalties, from an antagonistic to a communistic

civilization, or else our republicanism is but the repetition of a

stale experiment, doomed to renewed failure. There are political

horoscopists who predict the subversion of the American Republic and

its replacement by a monarchy. Thickening corruption and strife between

two hostile parties over a vast intermediate stratum of indifference

prompt the observer to such a conclusion. But a more auspicious faith

is that these ills are to be overruled for good. It is more likely

that both republicanism and monarchy, in their purest forms, are to

vanish in behalf of a third, as yet scarcely known, form of government,

which will give the final solution to the long-vexed problem, namely,

government by scientific commissions which will know no prejudice, but

represent all in the spirit of justice.

The exact knowledge, co-operative power, and disciplined skill

chiefly exemplified hitherto in war, or in great business enterprises

conducted in the exclusive interests of their supporters against

all others,--this combination, universalized and put on a basis of

disinterestedness, seeking the good of an entire nation or the entire

world, will furnish the true form of government now wanted. For no

government of the many by the few in the spirit of will, whether that

will represents the minority or the majority, can be permanent. The

only everlasting or truly divine government must be one free from

all will except the will of God, one which shall guide in the spirit

of science by demonstrated laws of truth and right, representing the

harmonized good of the whole.

In view of such a possible result, the trustful American, comparing

his people with Asiatics or with Europeans, can regard without fear

the apparent change of certain forms of virtue into correlative forms

of vice; because he holds that this is but a transient disentwining of

the moral and religious tendrils from around smaller and more selfish

objects in preparation for their permanent re-entwining around greater

and more disinterested ones, when private families shall dissolve into

a universal family, or their separate interests be conformed to its

collective interests. All humanity is the family of God, and perhaps

the historic selfishness of the lesser families may crumble into

individualities in order to re-combine in the universal welfare of this.

Meanwhile, it may well be maintained that the repulsive swagger of

self-assertion sometimes seen here is a less evil than the degrading

servility and stagnant spirit of caste often seen elsewhere. The

desideratum is to construct out of the alienated races and classes

of men here thrown together, jarring with their distinctions and

prejudices, yet under conditions of unprecedented favorableness, a new

type of character, carrying in its freed and sympathetic intelligence

all the vital and spiritual traditions of humanity. There are but

two methods to this end: one, the intermingling of the varieties in

generative descent; the other, the personal assimilation of contrasting

experiences and qualities by mutual sympathetic interpretation and

assumption of them. This latter process is the very process and

business of the dramatic art. The true player is the most detached,

versatile, imaginative, and emotional style of man, most capable of

understanding, feeling with, and reproducing all other styles, best

fitted, therefore, to mediate between hostile clans and creeds and

reconcile the dissonant parts of society and the race in its final

cosmopolite harmony.

Consequently, among the public agencies of culture destined to educate

the American people out of their defects and faults into a complete

accordant manhood--if, as is fondly hoped, that happy destiny be

reserved for them--the dramatic art will have an unparalleled place

of honor assigned to it. The dogmatic Church, so busy in toothlessly

mumbling the formulas of an extinct faith that it loses sight of the

living truths of God in nature and society, will be heeded less and

less as it slowly dies its double death in drivel of words and drivel

of ceremonies. But the plastic Stage, clearing itself of its abuses and

carelessness, and receiving a new inspiration at once religious in its

sacred earnestness and artistic in its free range of recreative play,

will become more and more influential as it learns to exemplify the

various ideals of human nature and human life set off by their graded

foils, and presents the gravest teachings disguised in the finest

amusements.

In the democratic idea, every man is called on to be a priest and a

king unto God. Church and State, in all their forms and disguises, have

sought to monopolize those august rôles for a few; but the Theatre, in

the examples of its great actors, has instinctively sought to fling

their secrets open to the whole world; and, when fully enlightened by

the Academy, it will clearly teach what it has thus far only obscurely

hinted. It will reveal the hidden secrets of power and rank, the just

arts of sway, and the iniquitous artifices of despotism. And it will

assert the indefeasible claim of every man, so far as he wins personal

fitness and desert, to have open before him a free passage through all

the spheres and heights of social humanity. The greatest player is the

one who can most perfectly represent the largest scale of characters,

keeping each in its exact truth and grade, yet passing freely through

them all. That, too, is the moral ground and essence of democracy,

whose basis is thus the same as that of the dramatic art,--namely, a

free and intelligent sympathy giving men the royal freedom of mankind

by right of eminent domain. The priesthood and kingship of man are

universal in kind, but endlessly varied in degree, no two men on earth

nor no two angels in heaven having such a monotonous uniformity that

they cannot be discriminated. Each one has an original stamp and relish

of native personality. The law of infinite perfection, even in liberty

itself, is perfect subordination in the infinite degrees of superiority.

These opposed and balancing truths found a magnificent impersonation

on the stage in Edwin Forrest, and made him pre-eminently the

representative American actor. All his great parts set in emphatic

relief the intrinsic sovereignty of the individual man, the ideal of a

free manhood superior to all artificial distinctions or circumstances.

He showed man as inherent king of himself, and also relative king over

others in proportion to his true superiority in worth and weight.

When Tell confronted Gessler, or Rolla appeared with the Inca, or

Spartacus stood before the Emperor, or Cade defied the King, or

Metamora scorned the Englishman, the titular monarch was nothing in

the tremendous presence of the authentic hero. Genuine virtue, power,

and nobleness took the crown and sceptre away from empty prescription.

This was grand, and is the lesson the American people need to learn. It

enthrones the truth, while repudiating the error, of vulgar democracy.

That error would interpret the doctrine of equal rights into a flat

and dead uniformity, a stagnant level of similarities; but that truth

affirms an endless variety of degrees with a boundless liberty around

all, each free to fit himself for all the privileges of human nature

according to his ability, and entitled to enjoy those privileges in

proportion to the fitness he attains. The principle of order, rank,

authority, hierarchy, is as omnipotent and sacred in genuine democracy

as it is in nature or the government of God. The American idea, as

against the Asiatic and European, would not destroy the principle of

precedence, but would make that principle the intrinsic force and merit

of the individual, instead of any historic or artificial prerogative.

It asserts that there must be no horizontal caste or stratum in society

to prevent the vertical any more than the level circulation of the

political units. It declares that there shall be no despotic fixtures

reserving the most desirable and authoritative places for any arbitrary

sets of persons, but that there shall be divine liberty for the ablest

and best to gravitate by divine right to the highest places. That is

the American idea purified and completed. That, also, is the central

lesson of the dramatic art in its crowning triumphs on the popular

stage. And in the half-inspired, half-conscious representation of it

lay the commanding originality of Edwin Forrest, our first national

tragedian.

* * * * *

The foregoing thoughts put us in possession of the data and place us

at the point of view for an intelligent and interested survey of the

field before us. And we will now proceed to the proper narrative of the

biographic details, and to the critical delineation of the professional

features suggested by the title of our work.

CHAPTER III.

BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.

WHEN Edwin was born, his father, encumbered and oppressed by the debts

which his failure some years before had entailed on him, was serving in

a bank, at a small salary. The family, consisting then of the parents

and five children, were forced to live in a very humble style, and

to practise a stern economy. For many years they endured the trials

and hardships of poverty almost in its extremities. Yet, by dint of

industry, character, and tidiness, they managed to maintain respectable

appearances and a fair position. Both the father and mother were

exemplary members of the Episcopal Church, under the pastoral charge

of the Rev. Doctor Pilmore, on whose Sunday services they, with their

children, were regular attendants.

What they most lamented was their inability to give their boys and

girls the education and accomplishments whose absence in themselves

their strong judgment and refined sensibility caused them deeply to

regret. But they sought to make such compensation as they could by

example, by precept, by directing in the formation of their habits

and the choice of their associates, and by keeping them at the public

schools as long as possible.

Lorman, the eldest son, when of the proper age to earn his living, was

apprenticed to a tanner and currier. William, at a later period, was

set at work in a printing-office. Henrietta, the eldest daughter,--as

could not be avoided,--was early taken from under the rule of the

school-mistress to the side of her mother, to help in the increasing

labors of the household. Edwin went constantly to the public school

nearest his home, from the age of five to thirteen, together with his

eldest sister, Caroline, and also, for the last six years, with his

youngest sister, Eleanora.

During this period the life of the family presents little besides that

plain and humble story of toil, domestic fidelity, social struggle,

self-denial, and patience familiar in our country to a multitude of

families in the middle and lower walks. In the mean while, duties were

done, simple pleasures were enjoyed, plans were formed, hopes were

disappointed, the seasons came round, the years moved on, changes

occurred, experiences accumulated, as will happen to all, whether rich

or poor.

The youngest son gave more striking signs of talent than any of the

rest, and naturally the fonder anticipations of his parents centred

in him. They meant, at any cost, if it were a possible thing, to give

him such an education and training as would fit him for the Christian

ministry. They were led to this determination by the counsel of their

pastor, by their own pronounced religious feelings, and by the most

distinctive gift of the boy himself. That gift was the marked power

and taste of his elocution. It is interesting, and seems strange, as

we look back now, to think of the destiny of Forrest had the original

intention of his parents been carried out. Perhaps he would have

become a bishop, and a judicious and influential one. It is certainly

not impossible; so much do circumstances, companions, aims, duties,

the daily routine of life, contribute to make us what we are. The

essential germ or monad of the personality is unextinguishable, but

its development may be amazingly fostered and guided or twisted and

stunted. The coin of manhood remains what it is in itself, but its

image and superscription are determined by the mould and die with which

it is struck.

Edwin had a sweet, expressive, vigorous voice, with natural accent and

inflection, free from the common mechanical mannerisms. His superiority

in this respect over all his comrades was signal. With that unsparing

tendency to let down every superiority, to level all distinctions,

which is so characteristic of the rude democracy of the school-yard and

the play-ground, his fellows nicknamed him the Spouter!

From his very first attendance at church, when a mere child in

petticoats, he was much impressed by the imposing appearance and

preaching of Dr. Joseph Pilmore. Father Pilmore was a large man, with a

deep, rich voice, a manner of emphatic earnestness, his long powdered

hair falling down his shoulders after the fashion of an Addisonian wig.

The boy would not leave the pew until the old pastor came along, patted

him on the head, and gave him a blessing. He would then go home, make

a pulpit of a stuffed semicircular chair with a pillow placed on the

top of its back for a cushion, mount into it, and preach over from

memory parts of the sermon he had just heard,--with his sisters, and

such other persons as might be at hand, for an audience. At such times,

before he would consent to declaim, he used to insist on having his

costume, namely, a pair of spectacles across his nose, and a long pair

of tongs over his neck, their legs coming down his breast to represent

the bands of the preacher.

To the end of his life he retained a most grateful remembrance of his

first pastor. The picture of him as he used to appear in the pulpit

always remained in his imagination, a venerable image, unfaded,

unblurred. One favorite gesture of the reverend orator, a forcible

smiting of his breast, took such hold of the young observer that it

haunted him for years after he had gone upon the stage; and he found

himself often involuntarily copying it, even in situations where it was

not strictly appropriate.

Such were the grace, propriety, and vigor displayed by the infantile

declaimer, that when he went, as he often did, to see his brother

Lorman in the tannery where he was employed, the workmen would lift

him upon a stone table designed for dressing leather, listen to his

recitations, and reward him with their applause.

Among the most valued friends of the Forrest family at this time was

an elderly Scotchman, of great cultivation of mind, gentle heart, and

charming manners, who had seen much of the world, was an intense lover

of nature, possessed of fine literary taste and a rare natural piety

of soul. He delighted in talking over with his friend their common

memories of dear old Scotland, often quoting from Ferguson, Burns,

and other Caledonian celebrities. This was no less a person than the

famous ornithologist, Alexander Wilson; a man of sweet character, whose

pictures of birds, descriptions of nature, and effusions of sentiment

can never fail to give both pleasure and edification to those who

linger over his limpid and sinless pages. The little boy, fascinated by

the gentle personality, as well as by the picturesque conversation, so

different from that of the business or working men he usually heard,

was wont, on occasions of these visits, to draw near and attend to what

was said. One day his father exclaimed, "Come, Edwin, let us hear you

recite the speech of the Shepherd Boy of the Grampian Hills." Wilson

at once recognized the remarkable promise of the lad, and from that

time took a deep interest in him. He often heard him read and declaim,

corrected his faults, gave him good models of delivery, and called his

attention to excellent pieces for committing to memory. He taught him

several of the best poems of Robert Burns. Among these were the Dirge

beginning

"When chill November's surly blast

Made fields and forests bare,"

and the exquisite verses "To Mary in Heaven,"--

"Thou lingering star with lessening ray,

That lov'st to greet the early morn."

When the eager learner had mastered a new piece, he was all alive until

he could recite it to Wilson, who used to encourage and reward him

with gifts of the plates of his great work on American Ornithology,

which was then passing through the press. The service thus rendered was

of inestimable value. The picture is beautiful: the wise and loving

old man leaning in spontaneous benignity and joy over the aspiring

and grateful child,--forming his taste, moulding his mind and heart.

In a case like this, nothing can be more charming than the relation

of teacher and pupil. It is that proper and artistic relation of

experienced age and docile youth immortalized by antique sculpture in

the exquisite myth of Cheiron and Achilles. Forrest never forgot his

indebtedness to his early benefactor, but in his last days was fond of

citing, with admiring pathos, the dying words of his old friend: "Bury

me where the sun may shine on my grave and the birds sing over it."

Things were going on with the Forrest household in this modest and

hopeful way, when the heaviest calamity it had ever known befell it.

The death of its head, and the consequent cessation of his salary, left

the family destitute of the means of support. The good and judicious

mother showed herself equal to the emergency. Drying her tears and

holding her heart firm, she undertook to fulfil the offices of both

parents. With such help as she could get, she bought a little stock

or goods and opened a millinery-shop. In the mean time the two older

sons were earning a little at their trades, and the two older daughters

assisted their mother. They made bonnets, and various articles of

needle-work, while she worked, in her spare hours, at binding shoes.

In the later years of the proud fame and wealth of Forrest, as these

scenes floated back into his memory, his heart visibly swelled under

his breast, and tears filled his eyes.

The youngest daughter, then eleven, was kept at school. But it was

found necessary to abandon the plan of educating Edwin for the clerical

profession. Reluctantly his mother took him from school, and put him

at service, first, for a short time, in the printing-office of the

"Aurora," under Colonel Duane, where he was known as "Little Edwin,"

then in a cooper-shop on the wharf, and finally in a ship-chandlery

store on Race Street. This was in 1819, when he was thirteen years old.

Several years previously his taste for dramatic expression had directed

his attention to the stage. He had developed a keen love for theatrical

entertainments, and he let no opportunity of attending the theatre

go by unimproved. He found frequent means of gratifying this desire,

although his parents strongly disapproved of it. He also, in company

with his brother William, joined a Thespian club, composed of boys and

young men possessed with the same passion for theatricals as himself,

and gave much of his leisure time to their meetings and performances.

Many a time he and his fellows performed plays in a wood-shed, fitted

up for the purpose, to an eager audience of boys, the price of

admittance being sometimes five pins, sometimes an apple or a handful

of raisins.

The place he most delighted to visit was the old South Street Theatre,

long since passed away, with its great pit surmounted by a double row

of boxes. The most prominent object, midway in the first tier, was what

was called the Washington Box. This was adorned with the insignia of

the United States, and had often been occupied by Washington and his

family in the days when Philadelphia was the capital of the nation.

The boy used to regard this box with intense reverence. It was in this

theatre, then under the management of Charles Porter, that Forrest,

a lad of eleven, made his first public appearance on any stage. The

circumstances were amusing. He was in the street, playing marbles on

the pavement with some other urchins, when Porter came along, and said

to him, "Can you perform the part of a girl in a play?" "Why?" asked

Edwin, looking up in surprise. "Because," replied the manager, "the

girl who was to perform the character is sick." "Do you want me to

take the part?" "Yes. Will you?" "When is it to be played?" "To-morrow

night." "I will do it," answered the inconsiderate youth, triumphantly.

Porter gave him a play-book, pointed out the part he was to study, and

left him.

Edwin began forthwith, and was soon quite up in the part. But how to

provide himself with a suitable costume for the night! This was a great

difficulty. At length, bethinking him of a female acquaintance of his,

whose name was Eliza Berryman, he went to her and borrowed what was

needful in general, but not in particular.

Night came on, and the boy, as a substitute for a girl, was to take

the part of Rosalia de Borgia, in the romantic melodrama of Rudolph,

or the Robbers of Calabria. He went to the theatre and donned the

dress. Finding himself in want of a bosom, he tore off some portions

of scenery and stuffed them about his breast under the gown, and was

ready for the curtain to rise. He had been provided by the kind Eliza

with a sort of turban for the head, and for ringlets he had placed

horse-hair done into a bunch of curls. The first scene displayed

Rosalia de Borgia at the back of the stage, behind a barred and grated

door, peering out of a prison. As she stood there, she was seen by the

audience, and applauded. They could not then well discern her rugged

and somewhat incongruous appearance. Pretty soon Rosalia came in front,

before the foot-lights. Then at once rose a universal guffaw from the

assembly. She looked about, a little disconcerted, for the cause of

this merriment. To her intense sorrow and disgust, she found that her

gown and petticoat were quite too short, and revealed to the audience a

most remarkably unfeminine pair of feet, ankles, and legs.

He stood it for a time, until a boy in the pit, one of his mates, whom

he had told that he was going to play, and who was there to see him,

yelled out, "The heels and the big shoes! Hi yi! hi yi! Look at the

legs and the feet!" Forrest, placing his hand over his mouth, turned

to the boy, and huskily whispered, "Look here, chap, you wait till the

play is done, and I'll lick you like hell!" Then the boy in the pit

bawled out, "Oh, she swears! she swears!" The audience were convulsed

with laughter, the curtain came down, and poor Rosalia de Borgia, all

perspiration, was hustled off the stage in disgrace.

This ludicrous failure was his first, and, with one exception, his

last, appearance in a female part.

But he was not of a strain to give up in discomfiture. He determined

to appear again, and in something which he knew he could do well.

Accordingly, having prepared himself thoroughly in the famous epilogue

written by Goldsmith for Lee Lewis in the character of Harlequin, he

asked the manager to allow him another chance on the stage of the South

Street Theatre. Porter replied, rather roughly, "Oh, you be damned! you

have disgraced us enough already!" Deeply aggrieved by this rebuff,

young Forrest yet resolved to speak his piece at any rate. So, one

night, dressed in tight pantaloons and a close round jacket, he went

behind the scenes, got some paint of the scene-painter, and painted his

clothes, as well as he could, with stripes and diamonds, in resemblance

of a harlequin. Then, watching an opportunity, in the absence of

the manager from the stage, at the ringing down of the curtain he

suddenly sprang before the foot-lights, and, to the astonishment of the

audience, began,--

"Hold, prompter, hold! a word before your nonsense;

I'd speak a word or two to ease my conscience.

My pride forbids it ever should be said

My heels eclipsed the honors of my head."

At the word "heels" the audience took the joke, and, recognizing the

boy, loudly applauded him. Encouraged thus, he went on, and spoke the

whole epilogue in a most creditable manner, with thunders of applause

from the audience, and from manager Porter too, who had now come in.

Concluding with the last line,--

"And at one bound he saves himself--like me,"--

Forrest turned a hand-spring and a flip-flap, and made his exit, to the

complete amazement of everybody in the theatre. He was vociferously

encored, again made his appearance, turned his flip-flap, and spoke his

piece even better than before. Encored still again, he did not come

back, but betook himself to his home as soon as possible, rejoicing in

the belief that the glory of his present triumph would offset the shame

of his previous fiasco.

Somewhat later he was duly announced in the bills, and repeated the

performance between the play and the after-piece, with as good success

as on the first occasion.

He kept his word with the boy in the pit, whose pointed remarks and

loud laughter had so much annoyed and provoked him. He inflicted the

promised thrashing, though--as he said, in relating the incident

more than fifty years later--it was one of the toughest jobs he ever

undertook. As soon as the combatants were satisfied, the victor and the

victim made up, shook hands, and remained ever afterwards firm friends.

A little domestic scene which occurred about this time may fitly

be introduced here, as illustrating the character and influence of

the mother, and also, as will appear in a subsequent chapter, the

assimilating docility of the child. It was a Sunday afternoon, in

the summer. The tired and careful mother sat at the open window, the

sunshine streaming across the floor, gazing at the passers in the

street, and musing, perhaps, on times long gone by. Edwin was turning

the leaves of a large pictorial copy of the Bible. A sudden explosion

of laughter was heard from him. "What are you laughing at, my boy? It

seems unbecoming, with that book in your hands." "Why, mother, I cannot

help it; it is so absurd. Here is a picture of the grapes of Eshcol;

and the bunches of them are so big and heavy that it takes two men,

with a pole across their shoulders, to carry them along! Is it not

funny?" "Edwin, come to me," replied the mother, with calm seriousness.

Taking his hand in hers, and looking steadily in his eyes, she said,

"Do you not think it very presumptuous and conceited in you, so young,

so ignorant, knowing only the climate and fruits of Pennsylvania, to

set yourself up to pronounce judgment in this way on the artist who

most likely had at his service the experience of travellers in all

countries? It is more than probable that in those tropical climes where

the Bible was written the vines might grow almost into trees, and bear

clusters of grapes ten times larger than any you ever saw. Modesty

is one of the best traits in a young person. I want you to remember

never again to laugh at the fancied ignorance and absurdity of another,

when perhaps the ignorance and absurdity are all your own." However

often he may have failed to practise the lesson, yet when, fifty-five

years afterwards, the old actor related the incident, the beating of

his heart, the tenderness of his voice, and the moisture in his eyes,

turned reverently towards the portrait of his mother on the wall,

showed how profoundly the influence of that hour had sunk into his soul.

When Master Forrest was in the first part of his fourteenth year,

he chanced one evening to be in the audience of a lecturer, in the

old Tivoli Garden Theatre, on Market Street, who was discoursing on

the properties of nitrous oxide, or, as it is more commonly called,

laughing-gas. The lecturer invited any of his auditors who desired to

come forward and inhale the exhilarating aura. The chance was one just

suited to the disposition of our hero. He stepped up and applied his

mouth and nostrils to the bag. In a moment, as the air began to work,

his ruling passion broke forth. Striking out right and left, to the no

slight consternation of those nearest him, he advanced to the front

of the stage, and declaimed a famous passage from the stage-copy of

Shakspeare,--

"What ho! young Richmond, ho! 'tis Richard calls:

I hate thee for thy blood of Lancaster,"--

with extraordinary energy and effect. John Swift, an eminent lawyer of

that day, and a very cultivated and generous man, was so struck by the

dramatic talent and force of the lad that he took the pains to seek him

out and make his acquaintance, befriending him in the noblest manner,

and often thereafter giving him kind counsel and assistance.

Despite his constantly-growing zeal and devotion to dramatic matters,

Edwin kept his situation in the ship-chandlery store, and was tolerably

faithful to its duties. But his heart was not in the business. The

counter and the ledger had no charms for him. All his young enthusiasm

was for the play-book and the stage. His employer often found him

in a corner conning Shakspeare, or in the back office practising

declamation. He said to him one day, with a shake of his wiseacre head,

"Ah, boy, this theatrical infatuation will be your ruin! The way to

thrive is to be attentive to trade. Did you ever know a play-actor to

get rich?" But all this prudential advice, this chill preaching of

the shop, was utterly ineffectual on the strong imaginative bent and

passionate ambition it encountered.

While carrying parcels home to the customers of the firm, he sometimes

met with such adventures as a boy of his high and pugnacious spirit

would be likely to meet with in those times, when wrestling and

fighting were much more common, especially among boys, than they are

now. On a certain occasion, jostled and jeered by an older and bigger

boy than himself, he said, "You wait till I can deliver this bundle

and get back here, and I will fight you to your heart's content."

The fellow agreed to it. Away hied Edwin, and deposited his goods.

He then ran home and put on an old suit of clothes, to be in better

fighting trim. His mother asked him what he was going to do; and when

he explained, she begged him not to go, and used such arguments as she

could command to impress him with the wickedness and vulgarity of such

brutal encounters. But all in vain. "Mother," he said, "I have pledged

my word; I must do it. It would be mean not to." And he tore away,

repaired to the rendezvous, and, after a tough bout, gave his insulter

a terrible thrashing, and went quietly back to the ship-chandlery. It

must be confessed that, though inwardly tender and generous, he was

rough, easy to quarrel with, and not slow to go to the extremes of

fists and heels.

But one of the severest traits in him, all his life, one of the deepest

characteristics of his individuality, was the barbaric intensity of

his wrath against those who wronged him, the Indian-like bitterness

and tenacity of the spirit of revenge in his breast when aroused

by what he thought any wanton injury. He never laid claim to the

spirit of saintliness, but rather trod it under foot, as affectation,

pitiful weakness, or hypocrisy. This marked a gross limit of his moral

sensibility in his own personal relations, though he could keenly

appreciate the finest touches of abnegation and magnanimity in others.

To justice, as he saw it, he was always loyal. But, when his selfhood

was wounded, the pain of the bruise not rarely, perhaps, made him a

little blind or perverse. Two anecdotes of his boyhood throw light

on this point. In the one example he was, as it would seem, morally

without excuse; in the other, pardonable, but scarcely to be approved.

He was eating an apple in the street, when he came to a horse attached

to a baker's cart, standing beside the curb-stone. He amused himself

by holding the apple under the horse's nose, and, as often as the

animal tried to bite it, suddenly snatching it away, and fetching him

a blow on the mouth. At that mischievous moment the driver of the cart

came up, and, crying out, "What are you doing there, you damned little

scoundrel?" gave him a piercing cut across the leg with his whip. The

little fellow limped off in excruciating pain, but carefully marked

his enemy. The passion for revenge burned in him. He kept a sharp

lookout. Within a week he spied the driver a short distance ahead. He

picked up a stone, took good aim, and, striking him on the back of the

head, knocked him from his cart into the street. He then dismissed the

subject from his mind, satisfied that he had squared accounts. Many

would hold that, instead of squaring accounts, he had only made a bad

matter worse. But such was his way of regarding it; and the business of

a biographer is to tell the truth.

The other instance is impressive in its teaching. On a cold winter

morning he was trundling along the sidewalk a wheelbarrow loaded with

articles from the store. A Quaker, very tall and portly, dressed in

the richest primness of the costume of his sect, meeting him, ordered

him, in a very authoritative tone, to move off into the street. He

apologized, expostulating that he was weary, the load was hard for

him to carry, the sidewalk was much easier for him, and was amply

wide enough for the few people then out. Without another word the

sanctimonious old tyrant seized hold of the wheelbarrow, tipped it over

into the street, and, pushing the boy aside, walked on. The blood of

young Forrest boiled with indignation so that his brain seemed ready

to burst. The ground was covered slightly with snow. He sank on his

knees on it and tried in vain to pull up a paving-stone, to hurl at

his tormentor. Weeping bitterly with baffled rage, he gathered his

scattered load together and started on, cursing the cruel injustice to

which he had been forced to submit. For years and years after, he said,

the association of this outrage was so envenomed in his memory that

whenever he saw a Quaker he had to make an effort not instinctively to

hate him. Such wrongs as this, inflicted on a sensitive child, often

leave scars which rankle through life, permanently embittering and

deforming the character. No generous nature but will take the warning,

and considerately try to be ever just and kind to the young. In the

bearing and effect of early experiences on subsequent character, it is

profoundly and even wonderfully true that as the twig is bent the tree

is inclined.