or two. I felt that it was all over with me, and a slight chill went
through my breast, but my heart was hot and my brain was steady, and I
resolved that at all events he should die too. Every fight is won in
the eye first. Well, as I held my look rooted in his eye, I suddenly
saw in it a slight quiver, an almost imperceptible sign of giving way.
A thrill of joy shot through my heart, and I knew that he was mine. At
that instant he stabbed at me. I took his blade right through my left
arm, and at the same time, by an upward stroke, as swift as lightning
and reaching to his very spine, I ripped him open from the abdomen to
the chin. He gave a hoarse grunt, the whole of his insides gushed out,
and he tumbled into my lap, dead."
An intimate of Bowie, and a firm patron and friend of Forrest, teaching
him much by precept in answer to his inquiries, and contagiously
imparting to him yet more by personal contact and example, was
Colonel Macaire. The real name of this man, and also those of the
two succeeding members of the group, are replaced here by fictitious
ones on account of their relatives who are still living. The two most
prominent traits of Macaire in social life were his enthusiasm for the
military art and his extreme fondness for horses. He was a finished
soldier and officer. The martial discipline had left its results
plainly all through his mind and his person, in a sensitive loyalty to
the code of honor, an easy precision of movement, and an authoritative
suavity of demeanor. The military art, on the whole, regarded in its
influences on individuals and nations, is perhaps the richest in its
power and the most exact in its methods of all the disciplines thus far
developed in history. Its drill, faithfully applied to a fair subject,
nourishes the habit of obedience and the faculty of command, regulates
and refines the behavior, lifts the head, throws back the shoulders,
brings out the chest, deepens the breathing, frees the circulation,
and through its marching time-beat exalts the rank of the organism
by co-ordinating its functions in a spirit of rhythm. It changes the
contracted and fixed action of the muscles for an action flowing over
the shoulders and hips and drawing on the spinal column instead of the
brain. And every work which can be shifted from the brain to the spine
is a mental economy especially needed in these days of excessive mental
action and deficient vital action.
Macaire was a great expert in horses, ever to be found where the
best thoroughbreds were to be seen, attending races with the most
avid relish. And it is well known that hardly anything else is so
effective in imparting vitality and courage to a man as the habit of
sympathetic contact with horses, looking at them, breathing with them,
handling them, driving them. The popular instinct says they give their
magnetism to their keepers. The fact is, the vibrations of the blood
and nerves of the animal are communicated to those of the man and
strengtheningly mix with them. The evil connected with this good is
that the companionship often not only imparts vital force and courage
but likewise stimulates the coarser animal passions. The tendency,
however, is neutralized in the man of refinement.
It was from his friendship with Macaire--attending races, going through
stables, visiting armories, drills, and fields of review--that Forrest
first learned to feel that keen love for horses which was one of his
passions to the end of his life, and first took that intelligent
interest in the law of the military drill which gradually grew upon him
until he had appropriated its fruits. For the inartistic rudeness of
his early gymnastic, his rough circus-tumbling, had left him somewhat
stiff and enslaved in parts of his body. But rhythmic movements,
regulated by will until they become automatic, free the muscles and
joints and give the organism a liberal grace, a generous openness
and ease of bearing. A few months after his début in New Orleans the
"Advertiser" remarked, "We are happy to be able to say that Mr. E.
Forrest now uses his limbs with freedom and grace." The improvement had
made itself plain.
The third of the set of comrades grouped about Forrest at this time
was Gazonac, one of the most remarkable of the gentlemen gamblers and
duellists for whom the Crescent City was famous fifty years ago. Such
were the qualities of this smooth, imperturbable, and accomplished
man, consummate master of every trick of his art and of every weapon
of offence or defence, and such was the tone of popular sentiment in
the place, that although gambling was his profession and duelling
his diversion he neither had a bad conscience in himself nor was
regarded as an outcast by the community. He was a rare judge and
adept in everything concerning the physical powers of men, and the
expression of their passions in real life under the most concentrated
excitements. And he was himself trained to the very nicest possible
degree of self-control. His muscular tissue, of the most elastic and
tenacious texture, covered him like a garment flowing around his joints
as if it had no fastenings, and under it he moved in subtle ease and
concealment, allowing no conceivable provocation to extort any signal
without consent of his will. His nervous system had been drilled to
act with the precision of astronomical clock-work. His conscious
calculations had the swiftness and exactitude of the instincts of
animals. What he did not know concerning the public sporting life and
the secret passionate life of the city was not worth knowing; and he
knew it not superficially but through and through. He had fought a
dozen duels and always killed his opponent. "How have you invariably
come off victor?" Forrest once asked him. "It is easy enough," he
answered, "if one is but complete master of himself, of his weapon, and
of the situation, cool as personified mathematics. I always shoot, on
an exact calculation, just enough quicker than my adversary for my ball
to strike him as he fires, and so disorder his aim."
An absolute social nonchalance in every emergency, a perfect
superiority to the fear of our fellow-beings singly or collectively, is
attainable only in one of three ways, if we omit idiotic insensibility,
sheer brute stolidity. First, by ourselves, as it were, impersonating
and representing the established standard of judgment, the code by
which we and our conduct are to be tested. This is the assured ease of
the fashionable leader, the noble, the king. Second, by utterly defying
that standard, and ignoring it, substituting for it a personal standard
of our own, or the code of some special class of our associates. This
is the sang-froid of the gambler, the stony courage of the habituated
criminal. He is immovably collected, cool, and brave, in spite of his
condemnation by law and morality, because he has displaced from his
consciousness the social standard of judgment prevalent around him
which he disobeys, and set up in its stead another standard which he
obeys. His conscience then does not make a coward of him. Self-poised
in what he himself thinks, he is not disturbed by mental reaction
on what he imagines other people think. The moment he violates his
own conscience or the code which he professes loyalty to, he feels
guilty, and to that extent becomes weak and cowardly. The third method
of superiority to fear is by conscious and direct obedience to the
intrinsic right, the will of God. This is the imperial heroism of the
saint and the martyr. Then the supreme code of the universe makes the
harmonious conscience indomitably superior to the frowning penalties of
all lesser and meaner codes, and no personal enemy, no hostile public
opinion, can terrify.
It was partly by the first, chiefly by the second, hardly at all, it
is to be feared, by the third, of these methods that Gazonac acquired
his marvellous self-possession and marble equilibrium of nerve. But
he had it. And the perfected empire of his being in the range of his
daily life, his transcendent fearlessness of everything external, his
superlative feeling of competency to every occasion, was in itself
a rare achievement and an enviable prize. He had disentangled and
freed the fibres of his brain from all imaginative references to the
opinions of other persons or to the requirements of any code but
the one enthroned in his own bosom. To this imperfect code he was
true, and therefore, however wrong and guilty he may have been, in
his self-sufficingness he did not suffer the retributions of a bad
conscience. He was shielded in the partial insensibility of a defective
conscience. If the conscience of a man be pure and expansive enough
properly to represent to him the will of God or the whole truth of
his duty, then a neglectful superiority to individual censures and to
social opinion is an heroic exaltation, which the more it sets other
men against him so much the more it shows him to be diviner than they.
Under the guidance of this typical man, who was always scrupulously
tender and careful with him, Forrest was initiated into all the
mysteries, all the heights and depths, of a world of experience
kept veiled and secret from most people. It was a world of dreadful
fascinations and volcanic outbreaks, extravagant pleasures and
indescribable horrors,--a world whose heroes are apt, as the proverb
goes, to die with their boots on. Together they visited cock-pits,
race-courses, bar-rooms, gambling-saloons, and every other resort
of disorderly passion and disreputable living. And the young actor
with his professional eyes drank in many a revelation of human nature
uncovered at its deepest places and in its wildest moods. It was a
fearful exposure, and he did not escape unscathed, though it seems from
his after-life that he was more instructed than he was infected. He
never forgot the impression made on him in the cock-pit by the rings
of staring visages, tier above tier, massed in frenzied eagerness
and regularly vibrating with the struggles of the feathered and
gaffed champions whose untamable ferocity of valor and pluck seemed
to satirize the vulgar pride of human battle. Still deeper was the
effect on his memory of the scene when, at a race, he saw a vast crowd,
including the governor of the State, the mayor of the city, members
of Congress, rich planters, leading lawyers and merchants, boatmen,
bullies, and loafers, all armed, yet behaving as politely as in a
parlor, restrained by the knowledge that at the slightest insult knives
would gleam, pistols crack, blood flow, and no one could foretell where
the fray would end.
On one occasion, taking a swim with Gazonac in Lake Pontchartrain,
Forrest saw a thick-set and commanding sort of man, with flashing
black eyes, his breast scarred all over with stabs. "Who is that?" he
asked. "It is Lafitte, the pirate," his comrade replied. A week or
two afterwards, he saw Lafitte, in the square fronting the cathedral,
running like a deer, chased by a man with a knife. Gazonac said, "Oh,
on the quarter-deck, with his myrmidons around him, he could play the
hero; but he was not a brave man. Some men can fight in crowds but
cannot fight singly. This requires courage." He then proceeded to
relate some examples of single-handed fights. Two friends of his fought
a duel on this wise. They were locked in a room in the dark, naked,
each having a knife. In the morning they were found dead in a bloody
heap, cut almost into strips. A man who can foresee such a result yet
go resolutely into it is no coward, Gazonac said.
Two others fought thus. They were to begin with rifles at three hundred
paces; if these failed, advance with pistols; and, these failing, close
with knives. At the first shot both dropped dead: the bullet of one
struck exactly between the eyes, that of the other pierced the pit of
the stomach.
In still another case, two men of his acquaintance were addressing
the same woman, and were very jealous of each other. At an offensive
remark of one the other said, "I will take your right eye for that!"
"Will you?" was the retort, which was scarcely spoken before his enemy
had gouged the eye from his head and politely handed it to him. He
quietly replied, "I thank you," and put the palpitating orb in his
pocket. Then, regardless of the streaming socket and the agony, with
the ferocity and swiftness of a tiger he turned on his remorseless
mutilator and with one stroke of a long and heavy knife nearly
severed his head from his body, and dilated above him shuddering with
revengeful joy.
Besides listening to innumerable descriptions of this sort, nearly as
vivid as sight itself, Forrest actually saw many terrible quarrels and
several fatal fights. And the convulsive exhibitions of human passion
and energy in their elemental rawness thus afforded were recorded in
his imagination and reproduced in the most sensational of his poses
and bursts. That he should be, under such a training, melodramatic
sometimes, whatever else he added, was inevitable. His school was
naturalistic and appalling. Even when he attained to so much that was
finer and higher, some portion of this still clung to him. He had, it
must be remembered, no academic advantages and no tutor, but was a
child of nature.
The fourth member of the Forrest group in New Orleans was Charles
Graham, captain of a steamer on the Mississippi. He was originally a
flatboatman, and was not only familiar with the traditions of the river
and the rude border-life concentrated on its current for so many years,
but well represented it all in himself. He was widely known among all
classes, and especially was such a favorite with the boatmen as to be a
sort of a king over them. Though of a kind heart, he was not incapable
of taking a frightful revenge when wronged or provoked. One of his
men having been abused in a house of disreputable women, he fastened
a cable around a large wooden pier on which the house rested, and,
starting his steamer, pulled the house over into the river and drowned
the whole obscene gang, then proceeded on his way as if nothing had
happened.
Such were the typical men in that half-barbaric and reckless
civilization. And it was by his intimacy with them at the most plastic
period of his life that Forrest so completely absorbed and stood for
the most distinctive Americanism of half a century ago. Graham was
fond of the drama, and was drawn warmly to Forrest from his first
appearance in Jaffier. He used to come to the theatre sometimes with a
throng of fifty or even a hundred boatmen in his train. And whenever
the actor indulged in his most carnivorous rages then their delight and
their applause were the most unbounded. It will be seen that the young
tragedian was at that time in a poor school for guiding to artistic
delicacy, but in a capital school for developing natural truth and
power.
The last of the five friends who were most constantly with Forrest
and in one way or another exerted the strongest influences on him was
Push-ma-ta-ha, chief of the Choctaw tribe of Indians, who had a liking
for the white men and some of their arts and was in the custom of
paying long visits to New Orleans. Push-ma-ta-ha was indeed a striking
figure and an interesting character. He was in the bloom of opening
manhood, erect as a column, graceful and sinewy as a stag, with eyes
of piercing brilliancy, a voice of guttural music like gurgling waters,
the motions of his limbs as easy and darting as those of a squirrel.
His muscular tissue in its tremulous quickness seemed made of woven
lightnings. His hair was long, fine, and thick, and of the glossiest
blackness; his skin, mantled with blood, was of the color of ruddy
gold, and his form one of faultless proportions. A genuine friendship
grew up between this chief and Forrest, not without some touch of
simple romance, and leading, as we shall see, to lasting results in the
life of the latter.
Push-ma-ta-ha was a natural orator of a high order. He inherited this
gift from his father, for whom he had a superstitious veneration,
claiming that the Great Spirit had created him without human
intervention. Whether this idea had been implanted in him in his
childhood by some medicine-man, or was a poetic pretence of his own,
Forrest could not tell. The elder chief died in Washington, where he
was tarrying with a deputation. His dying words to his comrades are a
fine specimen of his eloquence; "I shall die, but you will return to
our brethren. As you go along the paths, you will see the flowers and
hear the birds sing, but Push-ma-ta-ha will see them and hear them no
more. When you shall come to your home, they will ask you, Where is
Push-ma-ta-ha? And you will say to them, He is no more. They will hear
the tidings like the sound of the fall of a mighty oak in the stillness
of the woods."
The North American Indian seen from afar is a picturesque object. When
we contemplate him in the vista of history, retreating, dwindling,
soon to vanish before the encroachments of our stronger race, he is
not without mystery and pathos. But studied more nearly, inspected
critically in the detail of his character and habits, the charm for
the most part disappears and is replaced with repulsion. The freedom
of savages from the diseased vices of a luxurious society, the proud
beauty of their free bearing, the relish of their wild liberty with
nature, exempt from the artificial burdens and trammels of our
complicated and stifling civilization, appeal to the imagination.
Poetical writers accordingly have idealized the Indian and set him off
in a romantic light, forgetting that savage life has its own vices,
degradations, and hardships. Cooper, the novelist, paints Indian
life as a series of attractive scenes and adventures, full of royal
traits. Palfrey, the historian, describes it as cheap, tawdry, nasty,
and horrid. There is truth, no doubt, in both aspects of the case;
but the artist naturally selects the favorable point of view, and the
dramatist impersonating a barbaric chieftain very properly tries to
emphasize his virtues and grandeur, leaving his meanness and squalor
in shadow. It is truth of history that the American Indian had noble
and great qualities. His local attachment, tribal patriotism, and
sensitiveness to public opinion, were as deep and strong, and produced
as high examples of bravery and self-sacrifice, as were ever shown
in Greece or Rome, Switzerland or Scotland. Nothing of the kind ever
surpassed his haughty taciturnity and indomitable fortitude. And if
his spirit of revenge was infernal in the level of its quality, it was
certainly sublime in the intensity and volume of its power. Although in
richness of mental equipment and experience there can be no comparison
between them, yet if we had the data for a series of complete parallels
and portraits; it would be extremely instructive to confront Philip
of Pokanoket with Philip of Macedon, Push-ma-ta-ha with Alcibiades,
Tecumseh with Attila, and Osceola with Spartacus. In kinds of passion,
in modes of thought, in styles of natural and social scenery, in
varieties of pleasure and pain, what correspondences and what contrasts
there would be!
The acquaintance of Forrest with Push-ma-ta-ha was the first cause of
his deep interest in the subject of the American Aborigines, of his
subsequent extensive researches into their history, and finally of his
offering a prize for a play which should embody a representative idea
of their genius and their fate.
However wild and questionable in a moral point of view were some of
Forrest's closest friends in New Orleans, and freely as he himself
indulged in pleasure, he shed the worst influences exerted on him, was
never recklessly abandoned to any vice whatever, but held a strong
curb over his passions, and was uniformly faithful and punctual in
the extreme to all his professional duties, steadily working in every
way he knew to improve and to rise. And he owed in several respects
an immense debt to these friends. For, stimulated by the sight of
their superb poise, courage, and exuberant fulness of animal life
and passion, he took them as models, and labored with unflagging
patience by a careful hygiene and gymnastic and critical self-control
to fortify his weak places and lift his constitutional vitality and
confidence to the highest point. He was temperate in food and drink,
scrupulous as to rest and sleep, abundant in bathing, manipulation,
and athletics. His development was steady, and he became in a certain
personal centrality of balance, an assured and massive authority of
bearing, unquestionably one of the most pronounced and imposing men on
the continent.
Nor, in that remote situation, in those tempted days, did he forget his
distant home, with the humble and repulsive hardships pressing on the
dear ones within it. He wrote to them affectionately, cheering them up,
sending them such small remittances as he could afford, and promising
larger ones in the future. With the very first money he received from
Caldwell, after paying his landlady, he purchased and forwarded by ship
to his mother a barrel of flour, a half-barrel of sugar, and a box of
oranges. His youngest sister, in the last year of her life, described
the scene in their home when these things arrived. She was out of the
house on an errand when they came. Entering the door, there sat her
mother weeping for joy, with an open letter in her hand. Caroline stood
with her bonnet on, just starting to take a dish of oranges to one of
their neighbors, and Henrietta rushed forward, crying, "Oh, Eleanora,
here is something from our dear Edwin!"
One evening, near the close of the season, Forrest had made so great
a sensation in the audience that they stamped, clapped, shouted, and
insisted on his coming before the curtain to receive their plaudits.
But he had left the theatre in haste to fulfil an appointment
elsewhere, and knew not of the honor designed for him. The people,
ignorant of his absence, were furious at what they chose to interpret
as his want of respect for them. They vowed vengeance. His benefit
was to come off a few nights later. It was whispered abroad that the
audience would not suffer him to perform unless he offered a meek
apology for his insolent disregard of their wishes. He determined that
he would not apologize, and that he would act. His friends, already
described, with a good number of trusty followers, each a match for
ten untrained men in a fight, were on hand, resolved to protect him,
and, as they phrased it, to put him through. As the curtain rose and
the youthful actor stepped forward, he was greeted with a shower
of hisses, mixed with cries of "Apology! Apology!" It was the first
experience of the kind he had ever known, and he felt for an instant
that horripilating chill called _gooseflesh_ creep over some parts of
his skin. But, nothing daunted, he at once, in the fixed attitude he
had assumed, turned his level eyes on the noisy crowd, and said, in
a calm, clear voice, "Gentlemen, not being guilty of any offence, I
shall make no apology. When you called me, I was out of hearing. Is it
just to punish me for a fault of which I am innocent?" A perfect hush
followed, and in a moment the changed temper of the audience declared
itself in a unanimous cheer, and the play went swimmingly on to the
close.
Soon after the theatre had closed for the summer, about the middle of
June, Forrest was attacked by the dreadful fever to which the city was
periodically exposed. The low state of his finances caused him to dwell
in a malarious quarter near the river, and to stay there at a time
when the city was largely deserted by the better classes. It was the
first severe and serious illness he had suffered. His best friends were
away. He could not afford to hire special attendance. The disease raged
terribly. His pain was extreme, and his depression worse. He thought
he should die; and then bitterly he lamented that he had ever left his
home, to perish in this awful way among strangers. "And yet," he said,
"I meant it for the best; and what else could I do? Oh, my mother,
where are you? How little you imagine the condition your poor boy is
in now!" In his delirium he raved continually about his mother, and
sometimes fancied she was with him, and lavished endearing epithets on
her. So they told him after his recovery.
When he had been confined twelve or fourteen days, left alone one
afternoon, he managed to get on his clothes and crawl into the open
air. He was a most forlorn and miserable wretch, emaciated, trembling,
with a nauseous stomach and a reeling brain. The scene without was in
full keeping with his feelings. The squares were empty and silent. The
grass was growing in the deserted street. The air was thick, lurid, and
quivering with a sickly heat, while to his distempered fancy, through
the steamy haze above, the sun seemed to hang like a great yellow
scab. At that moment a crocodile five or six feet long crept up in
the gutter, and stared stupidly at him with its glazed and devilish
eyes. Horrified, he shook his fist with a feeble cry at the ominous
apparition, and the giant reptile waddled slowly away. He sat down on
the curb-stone, faint and despairing, when who should come along but
his good friend Captain Graham, just then landed at the wharf a few
rods below! Gazing with astonishment at the haggard wreck before him,
the captain exclaimed, "Why, good God, my boy, is that you?" "Yes,"
gasped the poor fellow, piteously, "this is all there is left of Edwin
Forrest." The captain lifted him up and almost carried him to his
boat, laid him on his own bed in the cabin, had him carefully sponged
all over, first with warm water, finally with brandy, then gave him a
heavy dose of raw whiskey. This acted as a benign emetic, and greatly
relieved him. He fell asleep, and slept sweetly all night. The next day
he returned to his lodgings convalescent. And in about three weeks he
was well enough to start off with Caldwell and a part of his company on
a theatrical tour through Virginia. The following letter tells us how
he was then, and what he was doing:
"PETERSBURG, July 26th, 1824.
"BELOVED MOTHER,--I must indeed beg ten thousand pardons for not
writing to you earlier. Although we are separated, think not you are
forgotten by me. Oh, no, dear mother, you are ever in my memory,
and your happiness is my greatest wish. I hope, my dear mother, in
the course of three or four weeks, to be with you on a visit of a
fortnight or so, but must then return here to perform at Richmond and
Norfolk. I sincerely desire that this vacation may occur. Then I shall
see you; and I assure you such a meeting will be as great a happiness
as I can possess in this world.
"I hope all the family have enjoyed full health since you last wrote.
For myself, I have not altogether been myself since the severe attack
of the fever which I had previous to leaving New Orleans. Well, well,
I am in hopes I shall mend shortly and be myself again. The country
I am now in is delightful, and the climate far more agreeable to me
than that of the South. Please inform me of every little circumstance
that has happened lately. How are my dear sisters? Also, where is my
dear brother Lorman, of whom I have heard nothing for some time? Dear
mother, it will relieve me much if you can give me any information
concerning him.
"How does the old firm of John R. Baker, Son and--no, not clerk now!
But is it still in existence? Should you see Max Stevenson, ask him
whether he received my letter. Make my best regards to Sam Fisher, not
forgetting the worthy Levan. Where are Joe Shipley, Charley Scriver,
and Blighden Van Bann? I have not heard from them lately. Likewise
give me all the information you can respecting the theatres.
"Have you seen Mrs. Page? Mother, she is indeed an excellent lady,
one who merits every attention and regard; and I am sure your
ever-friendly and social feelings towards her will not be lessened
when you know that it will give infinite satisfaction to your wild but
truly affectionate son,
"EDWIN FORREST."
His anticipations of visiting home were doomed to disappointment. In a
letter to his mother, dated at Fredericksburg, September 29th, we find
him saying that he had been acting every night, except Sundays, and
that there was no prospect of an intermission. He adds, "I performed
Pythias for my opening here, and have succeeded to the delight of all
the inhabitants. I had some difficulty with the manager again. He cast
me, as an opening part, in Mortimer in the comedy of Laugh When You
Can. I refused to play it, and left the theatre. However, in two days I
saw my name in the bill for Pythias, and resumed my situation. All has
gone on smoothly since, and I have triumphed over him as a tragedian in
the opinions of those who recently esteemed him above praise or censure.
"As I passed through Washington on the way here, I had the satisfaction
of seeing the worthy old Philadelphia manager, Warren. He expressed
considerable surprise and pleasure when I introduced myself to him; for
I had changed and grown entirely out of his memory."
During this trip in Virginia, Forrest saw Chief-Justice Marshall in a
scene which always remained as a distinct picture in his memory. The
illustrious magistrate was stopping at a country inn in the course
of his circuit. The landlady was trying to catch a hen to roast for
dinner. The feat proving rather difficult for the aged and corpulent
hostess, the Chief Justice came forth to aid her. There he stood,
bare-headed, his vast silver shoe-buckles shining in the sun, a close
body-coat and a pair of tight velvet breeches revealing his spare and
sinewy form, striving to scare the refractory fowls into the hen-coop,
awkwardly waving his hands towards them and crying, "Shoo! Shoo! Shoo!"
A few weeks later, Marshall went to the theatre in Richmond. It was
the only time he had ever visited such a place. On invitation of
Manager Caldwell, he went behind the scenes, examined the machinery
and properties with great interest, and revealed his curiosity and
naïveté in such questions, Forrest said, as a bright and innocent boy
of sixteen might have asked. In recalling the incident when forty-five
years had passed, Forrest remarked that nearly every great man had a
good deal of the boy in him, but that Marshall showed the most of it,
in his child-like simplicity and frankness, of all the great men he
had ever known. Yes, those were simple times, times of high character
and modest living, the purity of the early Republic. And if the above
anecdote makes us smile, it also makes us love the stainless friend of
Washington, the great Justice whose ermine was never soiled even by so
much as a speck of suspicion.
While at Richmond, and again subsequently at New Orleans, Forrest had
the felicity of seeing La Fayette, also of playing before him and
winning his applause. The triumphal progress through America of this
beloved hero of two hemispheres was a proud recollection to all who
shared in it. It was a thrilling poem in action instead of words. The
enthusiasm was something which we in our more broken and cynical times
can hardly conceive. From town to town, from city to city, from State
to State, whole populations turned out to meet him, with bells, guns,
popular songs, garlands of flowers in the hands of school-children;
and he moved on beneath a canopy of banners amidst swelling music,
accompanied by the prayers and tears of the grateful people whom he had
befriended in the midnight of their struggle, and who idolized him now
that he had come back to bask in the noonday of their glory. It was one
of the most charming episodes in history, and one which no American
heart can afford to forget. Yet in this mixed world the sublime and
the ridiculous are usually near together. It was so in this case in
an incident which came under the personal observation of Forrest. He
stood near to La Fayette on one occasion when a long series of citizens
were introduced to him. Of course it became a wearisome formality to
the illustrious guest, who bore it with smiling fortitude by dint of
converting it into an automatic performance. As he shook hands first
with one, then with another, he would say, "Are you married?" If the
reply was "Yes," he would add, "Happy man!" If the reply was "No,"
still he would add, as before, "Happy man!"
Caldwell re-opened at the American Theatre January 3d, 1825, in The
Soldier's Daughter, Forrest taking the rôle of Malfort Junior. During
the month he played, among other parts, Adrian in the comedy of Adrian
and Orilla, Master of Ceremonies in Tom and Jerry, Joseph Surface in
the School for Scandal. The "Louisiana Advertiser" says, in a notice of
The Falls of Clyde, "Nothing could be more to our taste than the wild
music and dramatized legends of Scotland. Mr. E. Forrest never appeared
to so much advantage. Every person applauded him." Some weeks later
the same paper remarks, "Mr. Forrest's Almanza is well conceived, and
displays great genius."
At this period of his life Forrest was in the habit of writing verses
whenever his heart was particularly touched. Quite a number of his
effusions, mostly of an amatory cast, were published in the corner
of a New Orleans newspaper. A diligent search has brought them to
light, together with the fact that the lady to whom the most of them
were addressed is yet living in that city, the widow of one of its
most influential and wealthy merchants, and that she remembers well
her girlish admiration for the handsome young tragedian, and still
preserves in manuscript several letters and poems sent to her by him.
In his latter days he himself gave the following account of this slight
literary episode. "In my youth," he said, "I used to write poetry;
that is, as I should say, doggerel. The editor of the 'Louisiana
Advertiser' printed it, and encouraged me to compose more. I used to
read it over and think it very fine. But after a few years I looked at
the pieces again, and was mortified at their worthlessness. Glancing
around furtively to see if any one was observing me, I rushed the whole
collection into the fire. Oh, it was wretched stuff, infernally poor
stuff! Moses Y. Scott satirized my poetry in some lines beginning,--
'With paces long and sometimes scanty,
Thus he rides on with Rosinante!'"
A selection of three of the better among these pieces will suffice to
satisfy curiosity; and it is to be feared that after perusing them the
judgment of the reader will accord with that of Moses Y. Scott.
TO ----.
"Thy spell, O Love, is elysium to my soul;
Freely I yield me to thy sweet control;
For other joys let folly's fools contend,
Whether to pomp or luxury they tend.
Let sages tell us, what they ne'er believe,
That love must ever give us cause to grieve;
Mine be the bliss C----'s love to prove,
To love her still, and still to have her love.
If without her of countless worlds possessed,
I still should mourn, I still should be unblest.
For her I'd yield whole worlds of richest ore,--
Possessed of her, the gods could give no more.
For her, though Paradise itself were given,
I'd love her still, nor seek another heaven."
TO MISS S---- ON HER LEAVING TOWN.
"Ah, go not hence, light of my saddened soul!
Nor leave me in this absence to lament;
Thy going sheds dark chaos o'er the whole,--
A noonday night from angry Heaven sent.
"Ah, go not where, now tow'ring to the skies,
Malignant hills to separate us rise;
For should those smiling eyes, attemp'ring every ray,
That now shine sweetly, lambent with celestial day,
Averted from me e'er on distant objects roll,
Melancholy's deep shade would shroud my lifeless soul.
"Oh, stay thine eyes,--diffuse their animating ray,--
And with their smiling pleasures brighten all the day.
But if relentless 'gainst me with the fates you join,
Then go! though still my heart, my soul, is thine.
And when from me so distant thou art gone,
Oh, yield one sigh responsive to mine own!"
The third piece was composed on occasion of the military funeral of
Henry K. Bunting, an intimate friend of Forrest, a young man of most
estimable character, whose early death was lamented by the whole
community:
"How slow they marched! each youthful face was pale,
And downcast eyes disclosed the mournful tale;
Grief was depicted on each manly brow,
And gloomy tears abundantly did flow
From each sad heart. For he whose breath had fled
Was loved by all,--in honor's path was bred.
I knew him well; his heart was pure and kind,
A noble spirit, and a lofty mind.
Virtue cast round his head her smiling wreath,
Which did not leave him on his bed of death.
His image lives, and from my grief-worn heart,
While life remains, will never, never part.
Weep, soldiers, weep! with tears of sadness lave
Your friend and brother's drear, untimely grave!"
In March the celebrated and ill-starred Conway filled an engagement
in New Orleans. The witnessing of his performances formed one of the
epochs in the development of Forrest's dramatic power. He played
Malcolm to the Macbeth of the tall and over-impassioned tragedian, and
caught some valuable suggestions from his idiomatic individuality and
style. But it was the Othello of this powerful and unhappy actor which
most impressed him. He played this part with a sweetness and a majestic
and frenzied energy which no audience could resist. The whole truth
of the course of the ambition, love, jealousy, madness, vengeance,
desperation, remorse, and death of the noble but barbaric Moor was
painted in volcanic and statuesque outlines. Nothing escaped the apt
pupil, who with lynx-eyed observation fastened on every original point,
every electric stroke, and at this adolescent period drank in the
significance of the fully-developed passions of unbridled human nature.
It was not long after these mimic presentments when the real passions
in the darkly-tangled plot of his own existence wrought so convulsively
on poor Conway, the friction sunk so profoundly into the sockets and
vital seats of his being, that he went mad, threw himself overboard,
and all his griefs and fears at once in the deep bosom of the ocean
buried.
Early in May, Forrest's benefit was announced, and he was underlined
for Lear, "the first time in New Orleans." On account of bad weather
the benefit was postponed, and, when it did occur, instead of Lear he
performed Octavian, in Coleman's Mountaineers. The season closed with
the end of the month, when he played Carwin, the leading rôle in the
drama of Therese, by John Howard Payne.
The first actress in the company of the American Theatre at New
Orleans for the season of 1825 was Miss Jane Placide. She was born at
Charleston, and was then, in her twentieth year, deservedly a great
favorite with the Southern public. She was extremely beautiful in
her person, sweet in her disposition, piquant in her manners, and
artistically natural in her rôles. Among the many private suppliants
for her smiles rumor included both Caldwell and Forrest. Where the
tinder of such rivalry is lying about, flashes of jealousy, easily
provoked, may at any time elicit an explosion of wrath. So it happened
here, and the two men had a sharp quarrel. The young actor challenged
the calmer manager. He refused to accept it, saying their altercation
was an inconsiderate effervescence which had better be forgotten by
them both. But the temper of Forrest, aggravated by his hot associates
and the local code, was not so cheaply to be assuaged. He had the
following card printed and affixed in several conspicuous places:
"Whereas James H. Caldwell has wronged and insulted me, and refused me
the satisfaction of a gentleman, I hereby denounce him as a scoundrel
and post him as a coward. Edwin Forrest."
Caldwell, so far from being enraged at this sonorous manifesto,
laughed at it, quietly adding, "Like the Parthian, he wounds me
as he flies." For in the afternoon of the very day of his issuing
the ominous placard, Forrest had accepted an invitation from his
friend Push-ma-ta-ha to spend a month with him in the wigwams and
hunting-grounds of his tribe; and already, side by side, on horseback,
each with a little pack at his saddle, they were scampering away
towards the tents of the Choctaws, a hundred miles distant. Three
reasons urged him to this interesting adventure. First, he loved his
friend, the young Indian chief, and longed to see him in his glory at
the head of his people. Secondly, he was poor, and there it would cost
him nothing for food and lodgings. And thirdly, he desired to make a
personal study of Indian character, life, and manners.
The red men treated him, as the friend and guest of their chief, with
marked distinction, making him quickly feel himself at home. He adapted
himself to their habits, dressed in their costume, and, as far as he
could, took part in all their doings, their smokes, their dances, their
hunts, their songs. Their rude customs were not offensive but rather
attractive to him, and he was happy, feeling that it would not be hard
for him to relapse from civilization and stay permanently with these
wild stepchildren of nature. He seemed to come into contact with the
unwritten traditions of the prehistoric time, and to taste the simple
freedom that prevailed before so many artificial luxuries, toils, and
laws had made such slaves of us all. The fine chance here offered him
of getting an accurate knowledge of the American Indian, alike in his
exterior and his interior personality, he carefully improved, and when
he came to enact the part of Metamora it stood him in good stead.
One night Push-ma-ta-ha and Forrest were lying on the ground before a
big fire which they had kindled a little way out from the village. They
had been conversing for hours, recalling stories and legends for their
mutual entertainment. The shadows of the wood lay here and there like
so many dark ghosts of trees prostrate and intangible on the earth. The
pale smoke from their burning heap of brush floated towards heaven in
spectral volumes and slowly faded out afar. In the unapproachable blue
over their heads hung the full moon, and in the pauses of their talk
nothing but the lonely notes of a night-bird broke the silence. Like
an artist, or like an antique Greek, Forrest had a keen delight in the
naked form of man, feeling that the best image of God we have is nude
humanity in its perfection, which our fashionable dresses so travesty
and degrade. Push-ma-ta-ha, then twenty-four years old, brought up
from his birth in the open air and in almost incessant action of sport
and command, was from head to foot a faultless model of a human being.
Forrest asked him to strip himself and walk to and fro before him
between the moonlight and the firelight, that he might feast his eyes
and his soul on so complete a physical type of what man should be. The
young chief, without a word, cast aside his Choctaw garb and stepped
forth with dainty tread, a living statue of Apollo in glowing bronze.
"Push-ma-ta-ha," said Forrest, in wondering admiration, "who were your
grandparents?" His nostrils curled with a superbly beautiful disdain,
and, stretching forth his arm with a lofty grace which the proudest
Roman orator could not have surpassed, he replied, "My father was never
born. The Great Spirit shivered an oak with one of his thunderbolts,
and my father came out, a perfect man, with his bow and arrows in his
hand!"
Whether this was superstitious inspiration or theatrical brag on the
part of the Indian, certainly the scene was a weird and wonderful one,
and the speech extremely poetic. Forrest used in after-years to say,
"My God, what a contrast he was to some fashionable men I have since
seen, half made up of false teeth, false hair, padding, gloves, and
spectacles!"
But a sense of duty, in a few weeks, urged the actor to be seeking
an engagement for the next season, and, saying good-by forever to
his aboriginal comrades, he returned to New Orleans and took passage
in a small coasting-vessel for Philadelphia, where he arrived with a
single notable adventure by the way. For on the third day out they were
becalmed; and, suffering from the excessive heat, he thought to refresh
himself by a swim. With a joyous shout and splash he sprang from the
taffrail, and swam several times around the sloop, when, chancing to
look down and a little way behind, he saw a huge shark making towards
him. Three or four swift and tremendous strokes brought him within
reach of the anchor-chain, and he convulsively swung himself on deck,
and lay there panting with exhaustion. But the ruling passion was
strong even then. He immediately went over and over in consciousness,
in order to fix them in memory for future use in his art, the frightful
emotions he had felt while chased by this white-tusked devil of the
ocean!
CHAPTER VII.
BREAKING THE WAY TO FAME AND FORTUNE.
ONE morning, early in August, 1825, a young man of fine figure and
stately bearing, with bright dark-brown eyes, raven hair, and a clear,
firm complexion like veined marble, approached the door of a modest
house in Cedar Street, Philadelphia. Without knocking, he entered
quickly. "Mother! Henrietta!" he cried, springing towards them with
open arms. "Gracious Heaven, Edwin!" they exclaimed, "is it possible
that this is you, changed so much and grown so tall?" "Yes, mother,"
he said, "Heaven has indeed been gracious to me; and here I am once
more with you, after three years of strolling and struggling among
strangers. Here I am, with a light pocket but a stout heart. I shall
be something yet, mother; and then the first thing I am resolved to do
is to make you and the girls independent, so far as the goods of this
world go."
He had firm grounds for his confidence, as the sequel showed, though
many dark days of hope deferred were yet to put his mettle to the
proof. He was in his twentieth year, and his reputation had not reached
much beyond the local centres where he had gained it. But it was
plainly beginning to spread. Even his friendliest admirers had not the
prescience to discern the signs of that vast success which was to make
him a continental celebrity; but he knew better than they the fervor of
his ambition and the strength of the motives that fed it, and he felt
the consciousness of a latent power which justified him in sanguine
dreams for the future. His intuitive perception had interpreted better
than the critics or his friends the revelation and prophecy contained
in the effects he had already often produced on his audiences. He
knew very well himself that which it needed fame to make the public
consciously recognize. That fame he not only expected, but was resolved
to win.
In the autumn he succeeded in securing an engagement on moderate
terms at the theatre in Albany, then under the management of a
shrewd, capable, but eccentric Dutchman, Charles Gilfert. He was to
play leading parts in the stock company, and second parts to stars.
Albany, as the capital of the State of New York, during the theatrical
season was thronged with cultivated and distinguished people, and
was an excellent place for a dramatic aspirant to achieve and extend
a reputation. Forrest began with good heart and zeal, and, without
any sudden or brilliant success, received sufficient encouragement
to increase his confidence and keep him progressing. He took great
pains to perfect his physical development, exercising his voice in
declamation, practising gestures, and every night and morning taking
a thorough sponge-bath, followed by vigorous friction with coarse
towels. Immediately after his morning ablutions he always devoted a
half-hour to gymnastics,--using dumb-bells, springing, attitudinizing,
and walking two or three times about the room on his hands. One of the
most distinguished philosophical writers of our country, who was a
native of Albany and at that time a particular friend of Forrest, has
recently been heard to describe with great animation the pleasure he
used to take in visiting the actor at this early hour of the morning to
see him go through his gymnastic performances. The metaphysician said
he admired the enormous strength displayed by the player, and applauded
his fidelity to the conditions for preserving and increasing it, though
for his own part he never could bring himself to do anything of the
kind.
Nothing occurred through the winter out of the ordinary routine,
except his happy and most profitable intercourse with Edmund Kean,
during the last engagement filled in Albany by that illustrious actor
and unfortunate man. This encounter was of so much consequence to
Forrest that we must pause a little over it. It will be recollected
that he had, several years before, seen Kean perform a few nights in
Philadelphia, and that he was filled with enthusiasm about him. But
now the discipline and experience of five added years fitted him far
more worthily to appreciate the genius and to profit from the startling
methods and points of the tragedian whom many judges declare to have
been the most original and electrifying actor that has ever stepped
before the foot-lights.
Edmund Kean, born under the ban of society, treated as a dog, beaten,
starved, while yet an infant flung for a livelihood on his wits and
tricks as a public performer, associating mostly with vagrants and
adventurers, but occasionally with the best and highest, early became
a wonder both in the elastic strength of his small body and in the
penetrative power of his flashing mind. With sensibilities of extreme
delicacy and passions of terrific energy he combined a natural and
sedulously-cultivated ability of giving to the outer signs of inner
states their utmost possible distinctness and intensity. Perhaps there
never was, within his range, a greater master of the physiological
language of the soul, one who set facial expression in more vivid
relief. As a student of his art he went to no traditional school of
posture, no frigid school of elocution, but to the original school of
nature in the burning depths of his own mind and heart.
His direct observations of other men, and his reflex researches on
himself in his impassioned probationary assumptions of characters,
struck to the automatic centres of his being, the seats of those
intuitions which are historic humanity epitomized in the individual,
or the spirit of nature itself inspiring man. And when he acted there
was something so unitary and elemental in the unconscious depths from
which his revelations seemed to break in spontaneous thunderbolts
that sensitive auditors were filled with awe, utterly overwhelmed
and carried away from themselves. Coleridge said that seeing him act
Macbeth was like reading the play by flashes of lightning. In his
most impassioned moods his voice suggested, by the tense intermittent
vibration of his whole resonant frame revealed in it, the frenzied
energy of a tiger. He spoke then in a stammering staccato of spasmodic
outbursts which shook others because they threatened to shatter him.
After years of maddening scorn, poverty, drudgery, neglect, he vaulted
at one bound, with his first appearance as Shylock on the stage of
Drury Lane, into an almost fabulous popularity, courted and fêted by
the proudest in the land, and reaping an income of over fifty thousand
dollars a year. No wonder he grew wild, reeling with all sorts of
intoxication between the throne of the scenic king and the den of the
ungirt debauchee.
The essential peculiarity of Kean's greatness in his greatest effects
was that his acting was then no effort of will, no trick or art of
calculation, but nature itself uncovered and set free in its deepest
intensity of power, just on the edge, sometimes quite over the verge,
of madness. He penetrated and incorporated himself with the characters
he represented until he possessed them so completely that they
possessed him, and their performance was not simulation but revelation.
He brought the truth and simplicity of nature to the stage, but nature
in her most intensified degrees. His playing was a manifestation of the
inspired intuitions, infallibly true and irresistibly sensational. It
came not from the surfaces of his brain, but from the very centres of
his nervous system, and suggested something portentous, preternatural,
supernal, that blinded and stunned the beholders, appalled their
imagination, and chilled their blood. This same curdling automatic
touch Lucius Junius Brutus Booth also had; but it is asserted that he
was first led to it by imitating Kean.
At the time of his engagement in Albany, Kean was much marred and
broken from his best estate by his bad habits. The intoxication
of fame, the intoxication of love, and the dismal intoxication of
stimulants snatched to keep his jaded faculties at their height, had
done their sad work on him. Still, the habitudes of his genius lingered
fascinatingly with him, and he delivered his climacteric points
with almost undiminished power, between the cloudy intervals of his
weariness striking lightning and eliciting universal shocks.
Nothing could have been more fortunate for Forrest, just at that
time, than to watch such an actor in his greatest parts and come
into confidential contact with him. In playing Iago to his Othello,
Titus to his Brutus, Richmond to his Richard, the best chance was
afforded for this. About noon of the day they were to act together,
as Kean did not come to the rehearsal, Forrest called at his hotel
and asked to see him. He told the messenger to say to Mr. Kean that
the young man who was to play Iago wished a brief interview with him,
to receive any directions he might like to give for the performance
in the evening. "Show him up," said the actor, graciously. As Forrest
entered, with a beating heart, Kean rose and welcomed him with great
kindness of manner. In answer to a question as to the business of the
play, he said, "My boy, I do not care how you come on or go off, if
while we are on the stage you always keep in front of me and let not
your attention wander from me." He had not yet breakfasted, late as
it was, but was in a loose dressing-gown, with the marks of excessive
indulgence in dissipation and sleepless hours too plainly revealed
in his whole appearance. A rosewood piano was covered with spilth
and sticky rings from the glasses used in the debauch of the night.
"Have you ever heard me sing?" asked Kean. "Oh, yes, in Tom Tug the
Waterman." "Did you see my Tom Tug?" responded the actor, in a pleased
tone of caressing eagerness. "I learned those songs purely by imitation
of my old friend Incledon; and I approached him so closely that it was
said no one could tell the singing of one of us from that of the other.
But now you shall hear me sing my favorite piece." He sat down at the
piano, struck a few notes, and sang the well-known song of Moore,
"Farewell, but whenever you welcome the hour." His face was very pale,
and wore an expression of unutterable pathos and melancholy; his hair
was floating in confused masses, and his eyes looked like two great
inland seas. Both he and his auditor wept as he sang with matchless
depth of feeling and a most mournful sweetness,--
"Let fate do her worst, there are relics of joy,
Bright dreams of the past, which she cannot destroy,
Which come in the night-time of sorrow and care
And bring back the features that joy used to wear.
Long, long be my heart with such memories filled!
Like the vase in which roses have once been distilled,--
You may break, you may ruin the vase, if you will,
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still."
While he thus sang, he was, to the fancy of his moved and admiring
listener, himself the vase broken and ruined, and his genius, still
blooming over the ruins of the man, distilled its holy perfume around
him.
The Othello of Kean was his unapproachable masterpiece, crowded with
electric effects in detail and crowned with a masterly originality as
a whole. It left its general stamp ineffaceably on the young actor who
that night confronted it with his Iago in such a manner as to win not
only the vehement applause of the house but likewise the warm approval
of the Othello himself. Forrest had carefully studied the character of
Iago in the independent light of what he knew of human nature. And
he conceived the part in what was then quite an original reading of
it. The current Iago of the stage was a sullen and sombre villain, as
full of gloom as of hate, and with such sinister manners and malignant
bearing as made his diabolical spirit and purposes perfectly obvious.
One must be a simpleton to be deceived by such a style of man. A man
like Othello, accustomed to command, moving for many years among all
sorts of men in peace and war, could be so played on only by a most
accomplished master of the arts of hypocrisy. Forrest accordingly
represented Iago as a gay and dashing fellow on the outside, hiding his
malice and treachery under the signs of a careless honesty and jovial
good humor. One point, strictly original, he made which powerfully
affected Kean. Iago, while working insidiously on the suspicions of
Othello, says to him,--
"Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio;
Wear your eye thus, not jealous,--nor secure."
All these words, except the last two, Forrest uttered in a frank and
easy fashion; but suddenly, as if the intensity of his under-knowledge
of evil had automatically broken through the good-natured part he was
playing on the surface and betrayed his secret in spite of his will,
he spoke the words _nor secure_ in a husky tone, sliding down from a
high pitch and ending in a whispered horror. The fearful suggestiveness
of this produced from Kean a reaction so truly artistic and tremendous
that the whole house was electrified. As they met in the dressing-room,
Kean said, excitedly, "In the name of God, boy, where did you get
that?" Forrest replied, "It is something of my own." "Well," said he,
while his auditor trembled with pleasure, "everybody who speaks the
part hereafter must do it just so."
There must, from all accounts, have been something supernaturally
sweet and sorrowful, an unearthly intensity of plaintive and majestic
pathos, in the manner in which Kean delivered the farewell of Othello.
The critics, Hazlitt, Procter, Lamb, and the rest, all agree in this.
They say, "the mournful melody of his voice came over the spirit like
the desolate moaning of the blast that precedes the thunder-storm."
It was like "the hollow and musical murmur of the midnight sea when
the tempest has raved itself to rest." His "tones sunk into the soul
like the sighing of the breeze among the strings of an æolian harp or
through the branches of a cypress grove." His voice "struck on the
heart like the swelling of some divine music laden with the sound of
years of departed happiness." The retrospect of triumphant exultation,
the lingering sense of delight, the big shocks of sudden agony, and
the slow blank despair, breathed in a voice elastic and tremulous
with vital passion and set off with a by-play of exquisitely artistic
realism, made up a whole of melancholy beauty and overwhelming power
perhaps never equalled. It was at once an anthem, a charge, and a
dirge. Forrest was inexpressibly delighted and thrilled by it, and he
did not fail to his dying day to speak of it with rapturous admiration.
Kean, both as a man and as an actor, made a fascinating impression on
the imagination and heart as well as on the memory of his youthful
supporter in the Albany theatre. What he had himself experienced under
the influence of this marvellous player, in the profound stirring of
his wonder and affection, remained to exalt his estimate of the rank
of his professional art and to stimulate still further his personal
ambition. This is the way the sensitive soul of genius grows, by
assimilating something from every superior ideal exhibited to it. Kean
himself, at a public dinner given him in Philadelphia on his return
thither from Albany, generously said that he had met one actor in this
country, a young man named Edwin Forrest, who gave proofs of a decided
genius for his profession, and who would, as he believed, rise to great
eminence. This kind act on the part of the veteran was reported to the
novice, and sank gratefully into his heart. To be praised by one we
admire is such a delight to the affections and such a spur to endeavor
that it is a pity the successful are not more ready to give it to the
aspiring. Ah, what a heaven this world would be if all the men and
women in it were only what in our better hours we dream and wish!
One incident occurred during this season at Albany showing
extraordinary character in so young a man. The fearful power of the
passion for gaming has been well known in all ages. It has prevailed
with equal violence and evil among the rudest savages and in the most
luxurious phases of civilization. Every year, at the present time, in
the capital centres of Christendom it explodes in forgeries, murder,
and suicides. And we read in the Mahabharata, the great Sanscrit epic
written we know not how many centuries before the Christian era, that
king Yudishthira was so desperately addicted to gambling that on one
occasion he staked his empire, and lost it; then his wife, and lost;
finally, his own body, lost that, and became the slave of the winner.
In New Orleans Forrest had felt something of the horrid fascination of
this passion. He had not, however, indulged much in it, although his
friend Gazonac, who stood at the head of the profession, had initiated
him pretty thoroughly into the secret tricks of the art.
The company of actors and actresses used often to stay after the play
was over and engage in games of chance. Forrest joined them several
times. He then steadily refused to do so any more; for he felt that the
gambling spirit was getting hold of him. But on a certain evening they
urged him so strongly that he consented,--determined to give them a
lesson. He said it was a base business, full of dishonest arts by which
all but the sharpest adepts could be cheated. They maintained that
there were among them neither decoys nor dupes, and they challenged
fraud. They played all night, and Forrest at last had won every cent
they had with them. He then rose to his feet, and denounced the habit
of gaming for profit as utterly pernicious. He recited some examples
of the horrors he had known to result from it. He said it demoralized
the characters of those who practised it, and, producing nothing, was
a robbery, stealing the time, thought, and feeling which might so
much better be devoted to something useful. With these words he swept
the implements of play into the fire, strewed the money he had won
on the floor, left the room, and went home in the gray light of the
morning,--and never gambled again from that hour unto the day of his
death.
May 16th, 1826, Forrest made his first re-appearance on the stage of
his native city. It was on the occasion of a benefit given to his
old friend Charles S. Porter, manager of the theatre, it will be
remembered, in which he made his début as Rosalia de Borgia. He took
the part of Jaffier in Venice Preserved. His success was flattering
and complete. The leading journal of the city said, "He left us a
boy, and has returned a man. The talents he then exhibited, improved
by attention and study, now display themselves in the excellence of
his delineation. He is by no means what he was when he left us. His
delivery, attitudes, and gesture are similar to those of Conway; and
he could not have chosen a better model. Just in his conception of his
part, clear and correct in his utterance, graceful in his action, he
never offends us by unmeaning rant. When one so young relies more on
his own judgment than on the flattery of partial friends, we cannot
expect too much from him. We doubt if any aspirant at the same age
has ever equalled him. No performer, perhaps, ever was received and
continued to play with so much applause. On the dropping of the curtain
at the end of the fourth act, he was rewarded with nine rounds of
cheers."
His unmistakable triumph was crowned by such loud and general calls
for an engagement that the manager came forward and announced that he
had secured the services of Mr. Forrest for two nights, and that he
would appear, on the evening after the next, in the character of Rolla.
This, on the whole, was the most signal and important victory he had
ever achieved. It consoled him and it spurred him. He slept sweetly
that night under his mother's roof, and in his dreams saw himself
decked with wreath and crown, time after time, through a long vista of
brightening successes.
The Bowery Theatre, in New York, now nearly finished, was to be opened
in the autumn, and its proprietors were on the watch to secure the
best talent for the company. They had heard favorable reports of the
acting of Forrest in Albany. Prosper M. Wetmore and another of the
directors of the new theatre made a journey to that city on purpose to
see a specimen of his performance and decide whether or not it would
be expedient to engage him. They were so much pleased with his playing
that they earnestly urged Gilfert, who was already engaged as manager,
to close with him at once. He did so, bargaining with him to play
leading parts for the first season at a salary of twenty-eight dollars
a week. Wetmore, who was a cultivated gentleman of literary habits,
afterwards Navy Agent at New York, became a fast friend of Forrest for
life, and half a century later was fond of recalling the incidents of
this journey, so interesting in the adventure and so pleasant in the
results.
Gilfert had lost money at Albany, and, when he closed, his company
were dismissed unpaid, some of them utterly destitute. Forrest himself
was forced to leave his wardrobe with his hostess as security for
arrearages. He took passage down the Hudson to New York, and, securing
lodgings at a tavern in Cortlandt Street, began as best he could to
fill the time until the opening of the Bowery. He was a stranger in
the city. He was without money, without friends, his wardrobe in pawn,
with no stated employment to occupy his attention and pass the hours.
Naturally, life seemed dull and the days grew heavy. First he felt
homesick, then he felt sick of himself and sick of the world. His
faculties turned in on themselves, and made him so morbidly melancholy
that he thought of ending his existence. He actually went to an
apothecary and got some arsenic on pretence that he wanted to kill
rats. This revulsive and dismal state of feeling, however, did not last
long. An event occurred which brought him relief and caused him to
fling away the poison and resume his natural tone of cheerful fortitude
and readiness for enjoyment.
The propitious event referred to was this. An actor at the Park
Theatre, by the name of Woodhull, was about having a benefit, and
experienced much difficulty in deciding on something attractive for the
occasion. Walking in the street with Charles Durang, of Philadelphia,
who had recently seen Forrest act in that city, and expressing his
anxiety to him, Durang replied, "If I were you, I would try and get
Forrest to act for me. And there he is now, sitting under the awning
in front of the hotel. I will introduce you." The deed suited the
word, and in a moment Woodhull had made his request. At first Forrest
somewhat moodily declined, saying that he was penniless, friendless,
spiritless, and could do nothing. "But," the poor actor urged, "I have
a large family dependent on me, and this benefit is my chief reliance."
"Is that so?" asked Forrest. "It is, indeed," was the reply. "Then,"
said the generous tragedian, mounting out of his unhappiness, "I will
play Othello for you, and do my best." The new acquaintances parted
with hearty greetings, Woodhull to finish the arrangements for his
benefit, Forrest to prepare for his arduous task. For he felt that this
his first appearance in the chief metropolitan theatre of the country
was an ordeal that might make him or undo him quite.
He shut himself up in his room with his Shakspeare. He studied the
part with all the earnestness of his soul, over and over, with every
light he could bring to bear upon it, carefully perfected himself in
it according to his best ideal, and impatiently awaited the evening.
It came, and found a house poor in numbers, which disheartened him not
a whit. Durang was there, and has described the scene. The audience,
though neither fashionable nor large, was eager and susceptible. As
the actor came on, his careful costume, superb form, and reposeful
bearing made a strong sensation on the expectant auditory. And when
the sweet, resonant tones of his deep, rich voice broke forth in
the eloquence of an unaffected manliness, the charm was obviously
deepened. His remarkable self-possession and deliberate way of doing
just what he intended to do were very impressive, and, combined with
his terrible earnestness growing with the thickening plot, took hold
of the sympathies of the house more and more powerfully. In the
middle of the pit sat Gilfert, energetically plying his snuff-box and
inspecting alternately the player and the spectators. And when, in the
fourth act, as the pent flood of passion in the breast of the tortured
Othello burst in fearful explosion on Iago in one resplendent climax of
attitude, look, voice and gesture, and the whole audience rose to their
feet and gave vent to their unprecedented excitement in round after
round of cheering, the little Dutchman let his snuff-box mechanically
slip through his fingers, and cried, "By heaven, he has made a hit!"
The popular verdict was one of unqualified enthusiasm, and the
directors and manager of the Bowery felt that they had underrated their
prize. Gilfert hurried behind the scenes, lavishing congratulations on
his protégé, and promising the next day to pay his debts and supply him
with some pocket-money. In doing a kind thing for a needy fellow-actor,
Forrest found that he had also done an exceedingly good thing for
himself.
With the means he had wrung from the delinquent and doubtful but now
sanguine Gilfert, he proceeded to Albany and redeemed his wardrobe.
He then went to Washington, and played Rolla for the benefit of his
brother William. He next fulfilled an engagement as a Star for six
nights in Baltimore, and then paid a visit to his home in Philadelphia.
He was able from the remnant of his earnings to carry four hundred
dollars to his mother. And when he gave it to her, sitting happy at her
feet, and told her of his trials, and of his struggles against them,
as he felt her hand on his head and saw her fond eyes looking approval,
the sweetness of the satisfaction seemed to sink into his very bones.
So he himself said, and added, "The applause I had won before the
foot-lights? Yes, it was most welcome and precious to me; but, compared
with this, it was nothing, less than nothing!"
The Bowery was opened with great display and success the last week in
October. On the following Monday Forrest made his first appearance
there. Othello was the play. The house was thronged in all parts,
everything was fresh and new, eager expectation filled the air, and he
came forward encouraged by the memory of his decisive triumph at the
benefit of Woodhull, and nerved with determination now to outdo it.
Yet, in spite of all the favoring conditions, so much depended on the
result of his performance this night, and his sensitiveness was still
so little hardened by custom, that his nervousness and trepidation
were quite apparent to critical eyes. But as the play progressed this
wore off, and his acting became so sincere, so varied and vigorous,
he set his best points in such clean-cut relief, and his elocution
was so full of natural passion, that he carried the sympathies of
the audience with him ascendingly to the close. The ovation he then
received left no doubt as to the place he was thenceforth to hold in
the theatrical world of New York and the country. By unanimous consent,
admitting errors and faults both positive and negative, he had shown an
extraordinary breadth and raciness of original individuality, and an
extraordinary power of painting the character he had pictured in his
imagination so vividly that it should also live in the imaginations of
the beholders and kindle their sensibilities. This is the one test of
the true actor, that he can transmit his thoughts and passions into
others, causing his ideal so to move before them that they recognize
it and react on it with the play of their souls accordant with his.
This given, all defects are pardoned; this denied, all merits are
ineffectual. Forrest had this from first to last, whenever appeal was
made from dialect cliques to the great vernacular of human nature.
At the close of the performance Forrest was personally congratulated by
the stockholders of the theatre in the committee-room. Their chairman
said to him, "We are all very much more than gratified. You have
made a great hit; but, if you are willing, we would like to cancel
our engagement with you at twenty-eight dollars a week, and----" Here
Forrest interrupted him by saying, "Certainly, gentlemen; just as you
please; for I am confident I can readily command those terms almost
anywhere I feel disposed to play." "We have no doubt of it," replied
the chairman; "but we propose to cancel the engagement made with you at
twenty-eight dollars a week, and to draw an agreement giving you forty
dollars a week instead." This of course was very agreeable to him, and
accordingly it was so arranged.
With this night his histrionic probation was at an end, and fame and
fortune were secure. It was now that he made the acquaintance of James
Lawson, who was so enraptured with his playing that he sought an
introduction on the spot, and then went home and wrote for one of the
morning papers a glowing eulogium on the performance. Lawson remained
through life one of his most trusted and useful friends, especially in
his business concerns, never wavering in his loyalty to him for one
moment in all the succeeding years, and surviving to be one of the
trustees of his estate. Here, also, at the same time, and under the
identical circumstances, began his friendship with Leggett, one of the
most important and valued attachments he ever formed. Leggett, at that
time associated with Bryant in the editorship of the New York "Evening
Post," was a man of a high-strung, chivalrous nature, possessed of
uncommon talents and of immense force of character. Among his fine
tastes was a sincere passion for the drama. He was the elder by four
years, and had enjoyed far superior educational advantages. He loved
Forrest devotedly as soon as he knew him, and his affection was as
ardently returned. In their manly truth and generous sympathy, which
knew no taint of affectation or mean design, they were a great comfort
to each other. In the fourteen years that passed before death came
between them they rendered invaluable services to each other in many
ways.
The following letter is interesting in several respects. It shows
his great devotion to his mother, betrays his tendency to occasional
depression of spirit, and reveals even so early in his life that
irregular violence in the currents of his blood from the effects of
which he finally died. It bears date a little less than a month after
his début at the Bowery.
"NEW YORK, Dec. 3d, 1826.
"MOST BELOVED MOTHER,--The reason I have not answered your letter
is a serious indisposition under which I have been laboring for
some time. But, thanks be to the Eternal (only for your sake and
my dear sisters'), I am now convalescent. You will ask, no doubt,
why it is only for your sake that I thank the Eternal. Because were
you separated forever from me existence would have no longer an
attraction. Again, you will wonder what has made me tired of life,
especially now that I am on the full tide of prosperity. Alas! I know
not how soon sickness may render me incapable of the labors of my
profession; and then penury, perchance the poor-house, may ensue. I
shudder to think of it. Yet the terrible reflection haunts me in spite
of myself; and were it not for you and the girls I should not shrink
to try the unsearchable depths of eternity. But no more of this gloomy
subject.
"Dining last Sunday with Major Moses, when the cloth was removed, as
I was preparing to take a glass of wine, I felt a pain in my right
breast, which rapidly increased to such a degree that I told the
Major, who sat next to me, of the singular sensation. I had no sooner
spoken than the pain shot to my heart and I fell upon the floor. For
the space of fifteen minutes I lay perfectly speechless. When, through
the kind attentions of the family (which I can never forget), I had in
a measure recovered, the pain was still very violent. A physician was
summoned, who bled me copiously, and this relieved my sufferings. In
consequence of my weakened and distressed condition, I was persuaded
to stay there all night. The next morning I returned to my lodgings,
and remained in-doors all day, though feeling perfectly recovered.
But the following evening, very injudiciously, I performed Damon.
The exertion in this arduous part caused a relapse, which, however,
was not seriously felt until Thursday evening, when I was performing
William Tell. Then, indeed, it was agony. All that I had suffered
before was but the shadow of a shade to what I then felt,--pains in
all my limbs, and my head nigh to bursting. With the unavoidable use
of brandy, ether, and hartshorn, I got wildly through the character.
Since that time I have had medical attendance and every attention
that kindness can show. In a few days, without doubt, I shall be on
the boards again.
"I received a few days ago a letter from William, which remains
unanswered. Please inform him of the cause. I shall take my benefit
shortly, and am led to believe that it will be all that I can desire.
Do not think I shall then forget those who heretofore may sometimes
have had cause to upbraid me. Farewell, dear mother.
"Tell Henrietta to write, and quickly, too.
"Yours most affectionately,
"EDWIN FORREST."
His illness proved, as he thought it would, brief. His success knew
no abatement. He drew such crowds nightly and excited them to such a
pitch that the whole city became alive and agog about him. Of the many
tributes then paid him, these lines may serve as a specimen:
"See how the stormy passions of the soul
Are EDWIN FORREST'S, and at his control:
How he can drive the curdling blood along
Its choking channels--how his face and tongue
Can check the current as it seeks the brain,
Arrest its course, and bring it back again;
Freeze it when circling round the glowing heart,
Or thaw it thence, and bid it, melting, part;
Rouse up revenge for Tell's unmeasured wrongs
Until it echoes from a thousand tongues;
Or melt the soul of friendship quite away
When Damon claims his Pythias' dying day."
From this auspicious beginning he went steadily on gaining power and
public favor until his popularity was so conspicuous that one of the
managers of the rival establishment came to him with an offer of
three times the amount he was then receiving. He replied, "I cannot
listen to you, as I am engaged to Gilfert for the season." "You are
not bound by a legal paper, and therefore are free," expostulated the
wily bargainer. "Sir," was his characteristic answer, "my word is as
strong as any written contract." During this first winter, so rapidly
did his fame spread that Gilfert actually lent him repeatedly to other
theatres at two hundred dollars a night, he still paying him only his
forty dollars a week. Certain disinterested persons who learned this
fact commented on it to Gilfert himself with much severity. And at
the end of the engagement he said to the young man, "I want to engage
you for the next season, but I suppose our terms must be somewhat
different. What do you expect?" Forrest quietly looked at him, and
replied, "You have yourself fixed my value. You have found me to be
worth two hundred dollars a night." He was at once engaged at that rate
for eighty nights. And it is to be remembered that sixteen thousand
dollars then was equivalent to thirty thousand now. He had just passed
his twenty-first birthday. Thus in six short months the youthful artist
who came to the metropolis poor, scarcely known, little heralded,
had acquired an imposing fame, was surrounded by a brilliant host of
friends, and entered on his summer vacation prospective master of a
sumptuous income.
CHAPTER VIII.
GROWTH AND FRESHNESS OF PROFESSIONAL GLORY: INVIDIOUS ATTACKS AND THEIR
CAUSES.
THE next marked division in the biography of Forrest covers the period
between his twenty-first and his twenty-eighth year, from the close of
his first engagement at the Bowery in 1827 to his departure for Europe
in 1834. No other actor ever lived who at so early an age achieved a
series of popular successes so steady, so brilliant, so extensive as
those which filled these seven triumphant and happy years. They yet
remain unparalleled. It was undoubtedly the most fortunate and the most
enjoyed period of all in his long career. His health and vigor were
superb, his faculties joyously unfolding, his senses in their keenest
edge, his glory spreading on all sides, money pouring into his purse,
the general love and praise lavished on him scarcely as yet broken by
the dissenting voices or alloyed by the signals of envy. His name was
emblazoned in the chief cities all over the land, the press teemed with
kindly notices, his performances were attended nightly by enthusiastic
crowds, who applauded him to the very echoes that applauded again.
In his social relations,--the secondary domain of life,--he saw his
desires flatteringly gratified in an increasing degree, his goings and
comings announced like those of a king, the eyes of the throng turned
after him wherever he went, his thoughts and passions taking electric
effect on the excited crowds who gathered to gaze on his playing,
choice friends suing for his leisure hours. The common estimate of him
and the popular feeling towards him are accurately reflected in the
sonnet addressed to him at this time by his friend Prosper M. Wetmore:
"Enriched with Nature's brightest powers of mind,
Deep is thy influence o'er man's feeling breast;
When fiercest passions come at thy behest
In all the magic strength of truth, they bind
'Neath their broad spell the pulses of the heart,
Freezing the soul with horror and dismay:
O'er Tarquin's corse, where Brutus leads the way,
Revenge stalks darkly forth: thy potent art
Recalls the aged Lear to tell his woes,
Enlisting in his cause each sense that thrills:
Stern Richard smiles upon the blood he spills:
Tell, patriot Tell, defies his tyrant foes.
"Eagle-eyed Genius round thy youthful name
Flashes the brilliance of a deathless Fame!"
And in the primary domain of life--his own physique--he was blessed
with a basis of favorable conditions quite as rare. His clean-sinewed
frame so firmly poised in its weighty centres, his rich flood of blood
copiously nourishing the seats of function, his generous intelligence
and his native fearlessness of temper, were the ground of a gigantic
complacency in himself which was equally pleasurable to him and
attractive to others so long as he intuitively experienced rather
than consciously asserted it. He was vaguely aware, in an uncritical
way, that his sphere was heavier than those of the men he met, that
the elemental rhythms of his being were larger, that the gravitation
of his personal force overswayed theirs. While this was indicated by
nature without his knowledge, it made him interesting, a sort of magnet
to which others swayed in loyal curiosity or affection. And such was
entirely the case up to this time. His frank, fresh nature was as yet
unwrung by injustice, malignity, and falsehood, unspoiled either by
souring adverses or sickening satieties. He was a wholesome specimen
of a man of the unperverted, untechnical human type, to whom, in his
personal harmony and power, with his loving and trusted friends and his
progressive grasping of the prizes of the great social struggle, the
experience of each day as it came and went was a cup of nectar which
he quaffed without a question, finding neither guilt at the top nor
remorse at the bottom.
But he had sufficient force and height of character not to yield
himself up to selfish indulgence. Notwithstanding the flattery bestowed
on him, he felt the defects in his education, and determined to
remedy them as well as he could. He knew that he needed the polish
of literary and social culture and the training of critical studies
alike to supplement the advantages and to neutralize the disadvantages
of the coarse and boisterous scenes--the bold and lawless styles of
men--amidst which much of his life in the West and South had been
passed. Accordingly, when the opportunity was given him for a choice
of associates, he took for his intimate friends in New York a very
different class from those he had affiliated with in New Orleans.
Without at all losing his taste for manly sports or shunning the
company of their votaries, his preferred friends were men of literary
and artistic tastes, of the highest refinement and the best social
rank. A large number of accomplished persons, like Leggett, Bryant,
Wetmore, Halleck, Inman, Ingraham, Dunlap, Lawson, were in those years
on affectionate terms with him as his avowed admirers. From their
example, their conversation, their criticism, he profited much. He
became a liberal buyer of books, and soon had an excellent library,
which he used faithfully, devoting a large portion of his leisure to
reading. Nor did he read idly. He read as a student, reflecting on
what he read, striving to improve his mind and taste by knowledge in
general, as well as to pierce more deeply into the philosophy of the
dramatic art in particular. He made himself familiar with the history
of plastic and pictorial art, with engravings of celebrated statues
and paintings, carefully noting their most impressive attitudes and
groupings. He also explored the history of costume in the principal
countries, classic, mediæval, and modern. The habit of reading
and meditating which he formed at this time was fostered by many
influences, grew stronger with his years, spread over wide provinces of
biography, poetry, philosophy, and science, and was to the very last
the chief solace and ornament of his existence.
While thus devoting himself with new zeal to mental culture, he did not
forego one whit of his old assiduity in exercises for the furtherance
of his bodily development. During his second year in New York he
took a series of lessons in boxing. He felt a great interest in this
art, became a redoubtable proficient in its practice, and was ever
an earnest and open admirer of its prominent heroes. Those who feel
this to be discreditable to him will find on reflection, if they think
fairly, that it was, on the contrary, a credit to him. Multitudes of
refined people have an intense admiration for superlative developments
of physical beauty, force, and courage, though they conceal their taste
because by the standards of a squeamish politeness it is considered
something low and coarse. But Forrest always scorned that style of
public opinion, defied it, and frankly lived out what he thought and
felt. At the time of the famous fight between Heenan and Sayers for
the belt of world-championship, it was clear that scholars, poets,
statesmen, divines, and even fashionable women, felt the keenest
interest in the contest. They read the details with avidity, and talked
of them with the liveliest eagerness. The fascination is nothing to
be ashamed of, but rather to be cultivated with pride. To a just
perception, the fighting is not attractive, but repulsive and dreadful.
It is the strength, grace, discipline, smiling fearlessness, superb
hardihood, connected with the struggle, the rare exaltation of the
most fundamental qualities of a kingly nature, that evoke admiration.
Surely it is better to be a perfect animal than an imperfect one. When
all things are in harmony, the finest corporeal condition is the basis
for the highest spiritual power. A champion in finished training,
with his perfected form, his marble skin, clear unflinching eyes,
corky tread, and indomitable pluck, is a thrilling sight. When the
crowd see him, their enthusiasm vents itself in a shout of delight.
His mauling his adversary into a disfigured mass of jelly is indeed
frightful and loathsome; but that is a base perversion, not the proper
fruition, of his high estate. The functional power of his bearing is
magnificent. He is in a condition of godlike potency. It is a higher
thing to admire this glorious wealth of force, ease, and courage than
to despise it. Personal gifts of strength, skill, fearlessness, are
certainly desirable on any level in preference to the corresponding
defects. To turn away from them with disgust is a morbid weakness, not
a proof of fine superiority. While in this world we cannot escape the
physical level of our constitution, however much we may build above it.
Is it not plainly best as far as possible to perfect ourselves on every
level of our nature? An Admirable Crichton, able to surpass everybody
on all the successive heights of human accomplishments, from fencing
with swords to fencing with wits, from dancing to dialectics, cannot
be held, except by a mawkish judgment, as inferior to a Kirke White
writing verses of pale piety while dying of consumption brought on by
over-stimulus of literary ambition.
Forrest had pretty thoroughly practised gymnastics, the exercises of
the military drill, horsemanship, and fencing, each of which has a
particular efficacy in developing and economizing power, by harmonizing
the nervous system, if the will does not interpose too much resistance
to the flow of the rhythmical vibrations through the muscles. He now
felt that there was a special virtue in the mastery of boxing; and
to avail himself of it he secured the services of George Hernizer, a
distinguished professor of the manly art, a man of immense strength,
great experience, and not a little moral dignity. Supreme mastership,
in whatever province it be achieved, even though it be in the mere
ranges of physical force and prowess, gives its possessor an assured
feeling of competency and superiority, which has an intrinsic moral
value and reflects itself through him in some quiet lustre of repose
and security. It is those whose equilibrium is most unstable who are
the most irritable and resentful. It is weakness and insecurity that
make one fretful and quarrelsome. Shakspeare says it is good to have a
giant's strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant. We know that
the more gigantic the resources of a man the less tempted he is to put
them forth. It is ever your weakling who is naturally waspish.
Before putting on the gloves with his pupil for the first time,
Hernizer sat down with him and talked with him for half an hour in a
wise and kindly manner on the morality of the art, or the true spirit
in which it should be approached. He summed up in terse maxims the
principles which ought to govern all who practise it, and enforced them
with apt illustrations. He warned him especially never to lose his
temper, and never to presume on the advantages of his skill to strike
any man unnecessarily. He said that every boxer who had the instincts
of a gentleman was made more generous and forbearing by his safeguard
of reserved power. Forrest, eager to be at the work, and scarcely
appreciating the propriety or value of the lecture, listened to it
impatiently at the time, but remembered it with profit and gratitude
all his life. As he recalled the circumstances and lingered over the
narrative forty years later, a light of retrospective fondness played
in his eyes, and his tongue seemed laved and lambent with love.
When he had taken lessons for about six months, one day when his
nervous centres were aching with fulness of power, as he was sparring
with his teacher, a sort of good-natured berserker rage came over him.
The ancestral instincts of love of battle burned in his muscles, and he
longed to pitch into the strife in right down sincerity. "Come, now,
Hernizer," he cried, "let us try it for once in real earnest." "Pshaw!
no, no!" replied the master, parrying him off. But waxing warmer and
warmer in the play he pressed hard on him, putting in the licks so hot
and heavy that at last Hernizer, rallying on his resources, fetched
him a blow fair between the eyes that made him see stars and sent him
reeling against the wall. "I have got enough!" exclaimed Forrest,
with a laugh, as soon as he could collect himself, and went and threw
his arms around his teacher; and the two athletes stood in a smiling
embrace, their naked breasts clasped together, and the great waves
of warm blood mantling through them. Such a passage would have made
untrained and nervous men angry or sullen, but it only made these
giants laugh with pleasure and sharpened their fellowship. However,
Forrest said, he never again asked Hernizer to buckle to it in earnest.
Forrest did not inherit that herculean poise of power which for half a
century made him such a massive mark of popular admiration. He attained
it by training. And herein he is a splendid example to his countrymen,
thousands on thousands of whom, in their whining debility, dyspeptic
pallor, and fidgety activity, need nothing else so much as a thorough
physical regimen to replenish their blood, soothe their exasperated
nerves, and give a solid equilibrium to their energies. The Greeks and
Romans, the nobles and knights of the Middle Age, were wiser than we in
securing a superb physical basis for human perfection. Men like Plato,
Pericles, Æschylus, Sophocles, were foremost in the palæstra as well as
in the lists of mind. There never was another time or land in which the
excited suspicions and emulations of society tended so terribly as in
our own to fret and haggardize men and prematurely break them down and
wear them out. Our incessant reading, our excessive brain-work, cloys
the memory, impoverishes the heart, wearies the soul, and destroys
the capacity for relishing simple natural enjoyments. This is one
of the morals which the biography of Forrest ought to emphasize by
the brilliant contrast it exhibits. For he at thirty, the period when
laborious Americans begin to give out, had developed an organism of
extraordinary power, with cleanly-freed joints and firmly-knit fibres
and a copiously-stocked reservoir of vitality. With an unfailing
digestion which quickly assimilated the nutriment from what he ate,
effort slowly tired, rest rapidly restored him. As he himself once
expressed it, the engine was strong and there was always plenty of fire
under the boiler. He therefore felt no need of stimulation; and this,
no doubt, was one of his safeguards against that insidious temptation
to intemperance to which so many members of his profession, from the
exhausting nature of its irregular exertions, are fatally exposed. A
full force of vitality transfuses the elastic frame with an electric
consciousness of pleasure and wealth. It is the ready power to do
anything we like within the limits of our nature, just as a rich man
feels that he can buy this, that, or the other thing at any moment if
he wishes. In contrast with the drooping, tremulous man, overtasked and
drained, startled at each sound, shrinking from the thought of effort,
crossing the street to avoid the trial of accosting an acquaintance,
afflicted with lingering pains by the slightest injury, there is
nothing so inexhaustibly fascinating as an exuberant vigor of life in
the senses, easily shedding annoyances, quickly healing hurts, ready at
every turn for transmutation into any form of the universal good.
The effect of an artistic drill resolutely applied is something
which very few persons appreciate. Faithfully practised, its power
is surprising. Most observers, instead of recognizing its steady
accumulation of gains, attribute the startling result to exceptional
genius. Artistic drill for super-eminent excellence in _any_ personal
accomplishment has a moral value no less than a physical service but
little understood. It lifts one above the multitude in that particular
and gives him distinction. It thus fosters self-respect and puts him
at work with greater zeal and assurance. It is thus a moral basis
of inspiration and contentment. The _drill_ of the horseman, the
sportsman, the boxer, the soldier, the dancer, the singer, the orator,
has an effect quite distinct from and superior to that of labor or
exercise. Labor or exercise is straggling, broken, fitful; but drill
is regular, symmetric, _rhythmical_, and has an influence to refine and
exalt by economizing and directing the forces of the organism while
enhancing them. It is a discipline of art. In its final completeness,
corporeal and mental, it gives one an easy confidence, a feeling of
competency, which is a great luxury. It enables one to stand up before
his fellow-men with free chest and alert spirit and look straight in
their eyes without blenching and perform his tasks without flurry. This
was Forrest. He attained this deliberate self-possession, this mastery
of his resources, in a degree which cannot be ascribed to one actor out
of ten thousand, to one man out of a million.
A brief account of his first appearance in Boston will give an idea of
the experience which he enjoyed in those years, in constant repetition,
as his fresh engagements led him over the land from city to city.
"BOSTON, February 7th, 1827.
"MY DEAR MOTHER,--Sunday evening I arrived, after a tedious and
wearisome journey, at the place which is called the literary emporium
of the Western hemisphere, and on Monday evening, for the first time
in my life, made my bow to the good people of Massachusetts. I was
received with acclamations of delight, and the curtain fell amidst
repeated and enthusiastic testimonials of gratification and approval.
"Here, mother, I must break off awhile; for Mr. Fisher, a Quaker
preacher, has just stepped in to see me. He was one of my
fellow-passengers hither in the stage-coach; and as he is a very
agreeable man, possessing much mind, I have a disposition to treat him
with deference and respect.
"Evening, 11 o'clock.
"I have just returned from performing William Tell. The house was
crowded, and the applause generous. I am charmed with the Boston
people. They are both liberal and refined. In this place I shall add
much to my reputation, as well as enlarge my purse, and at present
this latter is as necessary and will be as acceptable as the former.
"Why does not brother William write me oftener than he does? Did you
receive the $100 I sent you?
"All court, every attention, is paid me here by the young men of first
respectability. These truly flattering attentions make me hold you,
beloved mother, dearer than ever before. I trust I shall not live in
vain, but hold my course a little longer, that I may restore you to
peace and competency and reflect a mellow light upon the evening of
your declining day.
"With sincerest love for sisters and brother, I am yours till death.
"EDWIN FORREST."
It was on the opening night of this engagement, February 5th, 1827,
in the old Federal Street Theatre, in the character of Damon, that
Forrest was seen for the first time by James Oakes, who was destined to
be his most intimate and devoted friend from that hour unto the close
of earth. After the play Oakes went behind the scenes and obtained an
introduction, his heart yet shaking from his eyes the watery signals
of the profound emotion awakened in him by the performance. The new
acquaintance was cemented by a long and happy conversation in the
room of the actor, though neither of them could then have dreamed how
momentous a part it was to bear henceforth in the lives of both. They
flowed harmoniously together as if they had been foreordained for each
other by being set to the same rhythm. Forrest was a little less than
twenty-one, Oakes a little less than twenty years old at that time.
They were as alert and sinewy, as free and pleasureful, as a couple of
bounding stags, and the world lay all before them in roselight. Ah,
what a tinge of pensive wonder, what a shade of mournful omen, would
have dropped on the bright sentiment of that exuberant season if they
could have foreseen all to the end,--the tragic sorrows and deaths of
so many of their friends, leaving these two to journey on, clinging the
closer the more others fell away!
A little over four months after his brilliant success in Boston, he
appeared, under circumstances less auspicious, in the capital of Rhode
Island, and had a short but ominous illness, which he described in a
letter to his mother.
"PROVIDENCE, 20th June, 1827.
"DEAR MOTHER,--I performed for the first time under the immediate
patronage of Providence on Friday evening last. And, to say truth, it
was but to 'a beggarly account of empty boxes,'--a thing very strange
to me nowadays. The theatre is an old barn of a place, and reminds
me very much of the itinerant expeditions of my early days in Ohio
and Kentucky, days which often come back to my thought and twinge me
with their bitter-sweet memories. This edifice, however, is rendered
sacred in my eyes by the remembrance that George Frederick Cooke once
performed in it to enraptured audiences. The company is wretched,
but to-morrow it is to receive new acquisitions, and fair hopes are
aroused that in the event the enterprise will prove profitable.
"Last Monday evening, while enacting the character of Virginius,
in one of the most impassioned scenes, the blood rushed with such
violence into my head that it was with the utmost difficulty I could
complete the performance. Never in the course of my life have I
experienced such agony and horror as in that moment. I returned to my
lodgings and vainly commended myself to sleep. It was not till I had
had administered to me an anodyne powerful enough to have made me at
any other time sleep the sleep of death that I could secure repose.
The next morning I awoke unrefreshed and with little abatement of the
pain. A physician was sent for, who cupped me on the back of the neck,
producing instant relief. I have since been rapidly recovering, and
shall, no doubt, be perfectly competent to the intended performance of
Jaffier to-morrow night.
"I hope to pass a day or two with you about the 4th of July. Tell the
girls I shall bring them some presents. By the time I reach New York
you shall hear further about the bust for which I have given sittings
to a sculptor at the request of a group of my friends.
"Your affectionate son,
"EDWIN FORREST."
By his fidelity in varied physical drill, Forrest had become a prodigy
of strength and endurance. With vivid passions, enormous vitality,
an ingenuous and sympathetic soul, a most attractive person, in the
unconventional habits of the freest of the professions, few men
were ever more beset within and without by the temptations to a
dissipated and spendthrift course. One guardian influence against
these temptations was the warning examples of so many members of his
profession whom he saw ruined by such indulgences, losing self-respect
and sinking to the lowest abandonment, coming to untimely graves, or
left in their age destitute and helpless. As one instance after another
of this sort came under his observation, he resolved to heed the
lesson, to be industrious, temperate, and prudent, and to husband his
earnings. His spontaneous tendency was to profusion, and he gave away
and lent lavishly. Learning wisdom, he became more careful in lending,
but always continued liberal in giving, and never had a passion for
saving until, largely alienated from society, he fell back as a natural
resource on that habit of accumulation which is so apt to grow by what
it feeds on.
But another influence of restraint and carefulness was stronger with
him than fear, and that was filial duty and love. Looking back to
those days from the closing part of his life, he said, with deep
emotion, "One of the strongest incentives to me in my early exertions
was the desire of relieving my mother and my sisters by securing them
independence and comfort in a home of their own." This sacred purpose
he had promised himself to fulfil. He never lost sight of it. Under
date of Buffalo, August 18th, 1827, he had written the following letter
to his mother:
"DEAR MOTHER,--After a tedious and not very profitable engagement at
Albany, I proceeded thence in a westerly direction with my friend
D. P. Ingraham, of whom you have often heard me speak in terms of
respect and admiration. I make this journey for the purpose of
recreation, in viewing the romantic beauties with which nature has
clothed and adorned herself in this part of our country, and the
developments of art and industry which are here so rapidly leading to
wealth and happiness. I have passed through a series of flourishing
towns,--Schenectady, Amsterdam, Utica, Clinton, Vernon, Auburn,
Canandaigua, Rochester, and others,--all of which have given me
delight. Buffalo is in a dull situation, and I shall leave at once
in a steamboat for the Falls of Niagara. Before this tremendous and
sublime cataract I anticipate much pleasure in the excitement of those
exalted feelings in which my soul loves to luxuriate. From there we
shall go to Montreal and Quebec, and then return to New York.
"Before beginning my winter engagement I shall visit you. My salary
for the next year is advanced from $40 a week to $400. I should now
like--and indeed no pleasure in the world could equal it--to settle
you and my dear sisters down in some respectable, handsome, and quiet
part of Philadelphia, where you may gently pass your dear reserves of
time apart from the care and toil with which you have too long been
forced to struggle. I say Philadelphia, because I fear you could not
be prevailed on to come to New York. And indeed I do not wonder; for,
besides the numerous circle of friends you have, it is there that the
sacred ashes of my father lie.
"I shall write more fully anon.
"Your affectionate son,
"EDWIN."
For three years now his income had been large and his investments
sagacious. The time had arrived for carrying out his design. It was
the autumn of 1829, when he was but twenty-three years old. Collecting
everything he possessed, he went from New York to Philadelphia, paid
the debts his father had left at his death twelve years before, bought
a house in the name of his mother and sisters, and deposited in the
bank to their account all he had remaining, thus securing them a
handsome support whatever might happen to him. What a luxury it must
have been to him to do this! It was the proudest and sweetest day he
had known in his life. The deed was an unobtrusive one, with no scenery
to emblazon it, no crowd to applaud; but the most eloquent climax he
ever made on the stage could not speak so strongly to the heart. His
own heart must have made blessed music in his breast as he returned to
New York thinking that for his dear mother and sisters, after so many
years of bitter poverty and toil, now there was to be no more drudgery
or anxiety. Meeting his friend Lawson the evening after his return, he
exclaimed, "Thank God, I am not worth a ducat!" and, relating what he
had done, received his heartiest congratulations on it.
At this time American literature in all its forms was chiefly derived
from English sources. As yet it scarcely had any vigorous, independent
existence. This was emphatically true of the drama. Hardly a play of
any success or note had been produced in this country by a native
author. All the literary circles were slavishly subjected to English
authority, and this whole province of life, both in respect of
intellectual production and taste and in respect to the business
management of it, was principally under English control. The managers
of our theatres felt that their interest lay in getting tested plays
from abroad at a merely nominal price, rather than in expending larger
sums on the risky experiment of securing original productions at home.
But Forrest was never an unthinking conformist in anything, accepting
what was customary simply because it was easiest and because others did
so. He had a bold individuality which was constantly showing itself.
The feeling of nationality and patriotic pride, too, was always intense
in him. Moved by this sentiment, as well as by the desire to secure
some parts which should be exclusively his own, he began a series of
liberal offers, from five hundred to three thousand dollars each, for
original plays by American authors. He hoped thus to do something
towards the creation of an American Dramatic Literature in the plays
which our writers would be stimulated to produce, and to contribute in
his own representations of them some original types of acted characters
to the youthful stage of his country. He was the first American actor
who had ever had the enterprise, ambition, and liberality to do this.
It shows generous qualities of character,--the boldness of genius and
faith,--especially when it is remembered that he was only twenty-two
years old when he issued his first proposal, which was published by his
friend Leggett with a brief preface in a weekly review of which he was
then proprietor and editor:
"We have received the following note from Edwin Forrest, and take
great pleasure in communicating his generous proposition to the public
in his own language. It is much to be desired that native genius may
be aroused by this offer from native genius, and that writers worthy
to win may enter the laudable competition.
"'DEAR SIR,--Feeling extremely desirous that dramatic letters should
be more cultivated in my native country, and believing that the dearth
of writers in that department is rather the result of a want of the
proper incentive than of any deficiency of the requisite talents, I
should feel greatly obliged to you if you would communicate to the
public, in the next number of the 'Critic,' the following offer. To
the author of the best Tragedy, in five acts, of which the hero or
principal character shall be an aboriginal of this country, the
sum of five hundred dollars, and half of the proceeds of the third
representation, with my own gratuitous services on that occasion. The
award to be made by a committee of literary and theatrical gentlemen.'"
The committee selected by Forrest consisted of his friends Bryant,
Halleck, Lawson, Leggett, Wetmore, and Brooks. Fourteen plays were
presented in competition, and the prize was adjudged to Metamora, or
the Last of the Wampanoags, by John Augustus Stone, of Philadelphia.
Afterwards, at intervals, a similar or a larger premium was offered,
until he had secured, in all, nine prize plays: Metamora, Oraloosa,
and The Ancient Briton, by Stone; The Gladiator, Pelopidas, and The
Broker of Bogota, by Robert Montgomery Bird; Caius Marius, by Richard
Penn Smith; Jack Cade, by Robert T. Conrad; and Mohammed, by George H.
Miles. In the last instance about eighty productions were forwarded to
the judges, and, as not one of them was thought to meet the conditions
assigned, Forrest sent his check for a thousand dollars to the author
of Mohammed, as that was considered the most effective composition,
though not well adapted to the stage. The result of his efforts in
fostering a native drama was indirectly wide and lasting, in calling
general attention to this province of letters and stimulating much
able work in it. The result directly was the writing of about two
hundred plays, nine of which received prizes. Of these nine-five proved
failures after a few trials. But four, namely, Metamora, The Gladiator,
The Broker of Bogota, and Jack Cade, possessed remarkable merits,
acquired an immense popularity, and are permanently identified both
with his personal fame and with the history of the American stage. An
analysis of their plots, specimens of their language, and a description
of the dramatic character of Forrest in his imposing power and purest
originality as the impersonator of their heroes will be given in the
next chapter. In leaving this feature of his career, its substance may
be briefly summed up. In one way and another, first and last, he paid
out from his private purse for the encouragement of a native dramatic
literature as much as twenty thousand dollars, in premiums, benefits,
and gratuities to several of the unfortunate authors. Recalling his
early poverty, scanty education, and hard struggles, this fact speaks
for itself. And the ridicule often in his life cast on him for the
comparative failure of the undertaking in a high literary sense, is
cheap and unmanly. It was a noble example. Its success personally, and
pecuniarily, was emphatic and brilliant in the extreme. Its public
influence was neither small nor dishonorable.
While Forrest was filling an engagement in Augusta, Georgia, in 1831,
there appeared in the "Chronicle" of that city, from the pen of its
editor, A. H. Pemberton, a spirited and vigorous article, entitled
"Calumny Refuted, A Defence of the Drama." It was written in response
to an article called "Theatre versus Sunday-Schools," published in "The
Charleston Observer" by a Presbyterian clergyman named Gildersleeve.
The "Chronicle" had warmly commended a favorite actress to the
patronage of the citizens of Augusta on occasion of her benefit;
whereupon Gildersleeve attacked, from a sectarian point of view, the
editor, the actress, and the theatrical art and profession, displaying
a narrow and intolerant spirit. Forrest was so much pleased with the
ability and catholic temper of the reply which followed, that he had it
printed in a pamphlet, with this dedication:
"TO MRS. BROWN:
"MADAM,--With much pleasure we dedicate to you the following pages
from the pen of the editor of the Augusta 'Chronicle,' whose testimony
to your amiable qualities in private life and your talents in the
dramatic profession we cordially concur in, convinced that the base
and unmerited attack which has drawn forth the present publication
will meet the reprobation of an enlightened community, and ensure you
the public favor you so truly deserve. Wishing you all health and
happiness, we remain, Madam, your obedient servants."
Signed by Edwin Forrest and fifteen other actors and actresses.
The summer of 1831 Forrest spent with his friend Robert M. Bird, author
of The Gladiator, in a long and delightful tour, visiting the Falls of
Niagara, the Natural Bridge in Virginia, the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky,
and passing through the Southern States by way of New Orleans to Vera
Cruz and Mexico. Just before starting on this journey he had brought
out one of his new plays in Philadelphia, referring to which the
"Chronicle" said, "We hope that to-night Mr. Forrest will perceive
in pit, box, and gallery substantial proof that his fellow-citizens
appreciate his exertions in insuring the success of plays produced
by his countrymen, and that they are anxious to treat him with a
liberality like that which has always distinguished himself."
His parting performance was Lear. The house was thronged to its
utmost capacity, and when the curtain fell there were unanimous and
long-continued calls for him. He came forward and made the following
speech:
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN,--Though exhausted by the exertions of the
evening, I cannot resist the opportunity, thus kindly afforded, to
return my unfeigned thanks, not only for the unceasing patronage and
liberal applause which you have bestowed upon my humble efforts as a
tragedian, but also for your unequivocal approbation of my labors in a
cause, the accomplishment of which is the proudest wish of my heart; I
mean the establishment of an AMERICAN NATIONAL DRAMA.
"My endeavors cannot but be crowned with success when thus ably
seconded by the intelligence of a community whose kindness I most
gratefully acknowledge, and whose good opinion it would be my boast to
deserve.
"I am, for a while, about to forego the gratification of your
smiles,--to exchange the populous city for the mountain-top, the
broad lake, the flowering prairie, and the solitude of the pathless
wood,--in the hope that, thus communing, my heart may be lifted up,
and I may with more fidelity portray the lofty grandeur of the tragic
muse from having gazed into the harmonious, unerring, and interminable
volume of NATURE.
"Trusting I shall have the honor of appearing before you again
next season, I wish you the enjoyment of uninterrupted health and
happiness, and bid you, regretfully, _Adieu_."
Dr. Bird was an excellent travelling companion, being a man of most
genial quality, fine talents and scholarship, master of the Spanish
language, and very familiar with South America in its history,
geography, and scenery, and the characteristic traits of its people.
The scenes of two of his dramas were laid here; and at Bogotá and in
Peru they talked over the fates of Febro the Broker, and Oraloosa, the
last of the Incas. The trip proved a charming and profitable one, and
the friends came back to their tasks with increased zeal and vigor.
During the years now under review--from 1827 to 1834--the success and
prosperity of Forrest were uninterrupted and unbounded. Not a single
incident occurred seriously to mar his happiness. Professional and
social honors flowed on him from all quarters. The obstacles put in his
way became stepping-stones. He seemed to need only to wish a prize in
order to receive it. Ensphered in the splendid and sounding reputation
he had won, he passed in starring engagements from city to city through
the land, everywhere welcomed with enthusiastic acclaim and the mark of
incessant private attentions. To be a popular favorite in this country
fifty years ago was a very different thing from what it is now. Then a
famous man stood out conspicuously, and was heralded and followed and
huzzaed and talked about in a degree scarcely credible to the present
generation. Every day the individual seems to wither and dwindle more
and more as society dilates and clamors and pushes its monopolizing
claims. The conflict of interests, the noisy and hurrying battle of
life, the distracting multiplicity of pursuits, duties, and amusements,
leave us neither time nor faculty for leisurely contemplation or for
disinterestedly admiring other people. We are absorbed in ourselves and
the frittering hurly-burly about us. Fame is less sincere and valuable,
less easily retained, than it used to be when public attention was
not so preoccupied, so jaded and fickle. Those who are accustomed
to the rapid succession of actors, singers, orators, coming each
season, taking their fees, their bouquets, their applause, and utterly
forgotten as soon as they have passed, cannot well realize the extent
and steadfastness of the proud affection with which the American people
regarded Forrest. Nothing like it seems possible now.
He keenly enjoyed this popularity. Open-hearted as he was, and
democratic in temper, nothing else could have given him so much
pleasure or have been so stimulating to his ambition as this idolatry
from the masses. It was as a luxurious incense in his nostrils; and it
made him comparatively insensible to those sneers and snarls, those
malignant insinuations and mocking comments which no one running such
a triumphant career could expect altogether to escape. His prosperity
was so great, his progress so rapid and constant, his friends so
numerous and warm, the common tone of the press so eulogistic, that it
was easy for him to shed the assaults of his enemies unnoticed, and
to meet the gibes of rancorous critics with equanimity. Firm in his
health, proud in his strength, assured in his place, frank and trusting
in his love, and satisfied with his work and its prizes, he could
afford to smile at impotent attacks. He did so, and stood them for a
long time undisturbed.
But when, in later years, the bloom had been somewhat brushed from
life, and the freshness worn from experience, and the meaner phases
of human nature abundantly brought home to him,--then the war of
incompetent and unprincipled criticism, the storm of virulent personal
animosities, raging ever worse and worse, was a very different
thing. Then the stings of ridicule and falsehood were bitterly felt
and resented. Their poison sank deeply into his soul, and, rankling
there, made him a changed man. In a subsequent chapter there will be
an occasion to do justice to this subject and to its morals by a full
treatment. It is appropriate here merely to explain the causes of
the unfair depreciation and the venomous hostility with which he was
pursued from the time he first appeared suddenly in the theatrical
firmament as a star of the first magnitude.
The first cause of the endless flings, aspersions, and belittling
valuations of which Forrest was the subject is to be found in the mere
fact of his success itself. Every one familiar with the workings of
unregenerate human nature must confess the truth of this assertion,
dark and sad as it is. In this world of baffled aspirants and jealous
rivals the man who surpasses his competitors finds himself amidst a
host of foes, who, soured and angry at their own failure, are mortified
by his success and strive by malignant detractions to blacken his
laurels and drag him down to themselves. Envy is a frightful power
among men, and it is said by De Tocqueville to be the characteristic
vice of a democracy. Like a diseased eye, it is offended by everything
bright. Nobody assails the nobodies who never undertake anything.
Few assail the incompetents who fail in what they undertake. But let
a strong man conspicuously cover himself with coveted prizes, and
hundreds will be snarling at his heels, barking at his glory, eagerly
declaring that he does not deserve his success, but that it properly
belongs to them. A vast quantity of acrimonious criticism originates
in envy. The ancient Roman victors when they rode in a Triumph wore
amulets as a protection against the evil eyes of envy.
Another cause in Forrest of offence and numerous dislike was the
pronounced distinctiveness of his character, his marked and independent
manhood. Most people are of the conventional type in personality and
manners, each one as the rest are. And their likings are confined to
those of their own stamp. A man of fresh and decisive originality,
who is and appears just what God and nature have made him, who thinks
for himself, speaks for himself, acts himself out with freedom and
power, disturbs and repels them. He irritates their prejudices by
violating their standards. His frank and flexible spontaneity, his
uncovered impulsive revelation of his feelings, and fearless choice
of what he will do or will not do, imply a tacit contempt for their
meek conformities and spirit of routine. Thus their self-esteem is
hurt and they are made angry. Forrest was a man of this kind, not
addicted to swear in the polished phrase of the magistrate, but in his
own honest vernacular. The true theory of republican America is that
the people should _not_ be cast in the monotonous moulds of certain
classes or types, the national character a fixed repetition, but that
every citizen should be in himself a priest and a king before God,
with his own form and color and relish of individuality unrepressed by
any foreign dictation. This democratic idea was well realized in Edwin
Forrest. It made him all his life a touchstone of hostility to those
whose social subserviency it rebuked or whose aristocratic prejudices
it set bristling.