1^ 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FROM 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PN 2287.F72B27 
 
 Edwin Forrest. 
 
 3 1924 027 232 127 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924027232127 
 
Slmerican actor ^erto 
 
 EDITED BY LAURENCE BUTTON 
 
^MERICAN ACTOR SERIES, [I J 
 
 EDWIN FORREST 
 
 BY 
 
 LAWRENCE BARRETT 
 
 OTlttft Elustrattons 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY 
 
 1882 
 
 f^ 
 
 
/^•/ 
 
 r^ 
 
 Copyright, 1881, 
 By James R. Osgood and Company. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 University Press : 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ♦ 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Prologue i 
 
 II. Early Youth 8 
 
 III. The Stroller 19 
 
 IV. New Orleans. — New York. — His 
 
 First Decided Success 34 
 
 V. He visits Europe 44 
 
 VI. The Astor Place Riot 58 
 
 VII. Domestic Life 73 
 
 VIII. After the Trial. — Mrs. Forrest's 
 
 Professional Life 83 
 
 IX. Maturity 94 
 
 X. His California Trip 107 
 
 XI. His Last Appearance 120 
 
 XII. Last Scene of all 140 
 
 XIII. Epilogue 148 
 
 Index 159 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Forrest at the Age of Forty-Five . . Frontispiece 
 Forrest at the Age of Thirty-One ... 44 
 Fac-Simile of London Play-Bill 53 
 
 Font-Hill 77 
 
 Mrs. Forrest 91 
 
 Fac-Simile of Letter 132 
 
 Forrest at the Age of Sixty-Five . . . .148 
 
EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PROLOGUE. 
 
 A SIMPLE record of the career of Edwin Forrest 
 will be an instructive study to the men and 
 women of his profession, and perhaps may prove pleas- 
 ing to the reader for whom the details of the actor's 
 life have interest. This record should be written while 
 there are those living who can remember him at his 
 first appearance, as well as at the close of his remark- 
 able life, that errors of date may be corrected, and a 
 fair and approved estimate of him may be given to 
 posterity. 
 
 While it wiU not be necessary to exalt him as perfec- 
 tion, it will be impossible to deny that he had great and 
 good impulses, and an aptitude for his calling beyond 
 that of any other actor of his time. He was, moreover, 
 essentially an American actor, — the first great one, — 
 and his career has new and particular interest on that 
 account. 
 
 Choosing his profession in early boyhood, Forrest 
 achieved a great fame at an age when others were in 
 the alphabet of their life-work. He passed through its 
 
2 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 humble stages so rapidly, that the want of the training 
 which only gradual and regular advancement can give 
 was evident to the last in his performances. To read 
 the words of loving friends and enthusiastic critics, 
 pubhshed since his death, it would be supposed that 
 his progress was made without rivalry or opposition. 
 But this is not the fact. Edwin Forrest came upon the 
 stage at a time when the drama in America was in the 
 full tide of success, when every theatre in the larger 
 cities could boast an excellent stock company. To 
 have distanced such men as John R. Scott, David In- 
 gersoU, Augustus Addams, Charles Eaton, Charles Webb, 
 and James E. Murdoch, was a victory due as much to his 
 •personal character as to his merits as an actor. The 
 annals of the stage will show that many of these men 
 enjoyed a reputation equal, and in some cases superior, 
 to that of Forrest. That he came to the front at last 
 and left them all behind, is one of the glories of which 
 his memory should not be deprived. 
 
 The condition of the actor at the time of the debut 
 of Edwin Forrest was singularly happy as well as singu- 
 larly unfortunate. The lovers of the drama who filled 
 the theatre when the old plays were presented could 
 not show their regard for their favorites more effectu- 
 ally, so they imagined, than by inviting them to social 
 meetings, where indulgence became the ruin of some 
 of the brightest intellects of that day. Many had fallen 
 about him, and with such examples Forrest had the 
 strength and the wisdom to shape his course by a safer 
 guide than that which his gifted fellows had so blindly 
 chosen. 
 
PROLOGUE. 3 
 
 His more thoughtful admirers have pronounced his 
 style entirely original, — a word so often misapplied in 
 theatrical criticism that it has deceived many readers. 
 If to be original means that the player must adopt an 
 absolutely new style of acting, create new and hitherto 
 unattempted, undreamed-of situations in the standard 
 old plays, and present them in a shape unlike that in 
 which they had previously been given, then there can 
 be no such thing as an original actor. The so-caUed 
 "business" of nearly all the commonly acted plays 
 has been handed down through generations of actors, 
 amended and corrected in many cases by each per- 
 former, but never radically changed. New readings of 
 certain passages have been substituted for old, but the 
 traditional " points " have been preserved ; personal 
 characteristics and physical peculiarities finding ample 
 freedom of expression within the old rulings of each 
 play. Styles of acting, too, have changed as little as 
 the "business " of the drama. 
 
 There have been three methods of acting, and only 
 three, upon the English stage since the restoration of 
 Charles the Second, during whose reign the theatres 
 were reopened in England after their long night of 
 Puritanism. These have been illustrated in our own 
 time by Forrest, Macready, and the elder Booth. 
 Modifications of these styles have been seen ; but the 
 groundwork remains, which admits of space for indi- 
 vidual freedom, but denies complete independence of 
 the old forms. At times one style has prevailed, at 
 others its rival ; and the claim of originality which one 
 generation of play-goers has set up for its favorite has 
 
4 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 arisen from the misfortune which yields to the actor 
 only the recollection of his work during the hour of its 
 performance, so that he cannot fairly be judged by 
 those who have not seen and known him on the stage. 
 The generation that witnessed the advent of Edmund 
 Kean knew not that his school was that of Garrick, 
 dead then less than half a century. The method of 
 Edwin Forrest, on the other hand, dates even farther 
 back : through the Kembles to Betterton and Barton 
 Booth, and perhaps to the same source through Cooper, 
 with whom he played, and whose acting was undoubt- 
 edly that upon which his own style was based, for it 
 was charged against him, in his early years, that he was 
 a servile copyist of this great artist, — a statement as 
 false and groundless as that of his entire originahty. 
 
 A glance at the condition of the theatre at the time 
 of Edwin Forrest's appearance will reveal how much he 
 gained from those who preceded him, and how much 
 he added to the splendor of the stage and its traditions. 
 This will properly preface the story of his hfe. 
 
 The impulse given to the drama in America by the 
 genius of the actors who crossed the Atlantic to our 
 own shores at the close of the last century had not 
 been exhausted when Forrest came upon the stage. 
 Many of those artists, who had been educated in the 
 best of the great English circuits, were veterans at this 
 time ; and the eager eyes of the young Forrest might 
 nightly see such men as Maywood, Jefferson, Warren, 
 and Wood in the regular stock, while such meteors as 
 Cooper and Cooke occasionally flashed across the 
 theatrical firmament. The character of the plays deter- 
 
PROLOGUE. 5 
 
 mined the style of the actor. All the traditions of the 
 stage were in the possession of these gifted men and 
 women, and Forrest could see his own beloved " Lear " 
 acted in the original text, and with aU the stage busi- 
 ness, which had been handed down through generations 
 of performers, perhaps direct from Richard Burbage, 
 who had listened to the master himself in that dim old 
 theatre which stood beside the Thames. 
 
 In Forrest's early days it was the fashion to admire 
 the grand works of the old dramatists ; and modern 
 sensational plays were yet unborn. Each piece was 
 cast to the full strength of the company, and no actor 
 was considered too good for his part, however humble 
 it might be. Each year brought the same order of 
 plays, varied only by a revival, perhaps, of one of the 
 less familiar old tragedies or comedies, such as " Every 
 Man in his Humor" or "The Fatal Dowry." Thus 
 the play-goer became acquainted not only with the 
 manner of the old actors, but with the very text of the 
 plays themselves. The best qualities of the drama in 
 the mother-country had been transplanted to a fresher 
 and more vigorous soil, and the harvest was reaped in 
 a group of players unsurpassed for talent in any age 
 of the theatre. 
 
 Although the accessories of the stage were stUl poor 
 and mean, the audiences were recompensed by the 
 genius of the actors, who could fire the imagination 
 and eke out the illusion even in face of the many dis- 
 advantages by which they were surrounded. Mr. For- 
 rest never fuUy escaped from the influences of that era. 
 To the last he adhered to many of the prejudices then 
 
6 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 formed, scorning all the appliances by which modern 
 ingenuity has embellished the theatre. He was fond 
 of referring to the days of Shakspere himself, when a 
 bit of rudely painted canvas, stretched from side to 
 side of the stage, upon which was scrawled, " This is a 
 house," "This is a wood," represented the sum of the 
 theatre's stock of scenery. He was wont to declare 
 that in those blessed days it was absolutely necessary 
 to be an actor, as no aid from without was known or 
 dreamed of. 
 
 In one of his later travelling experiences he reached 
 a small town where the stage appliances were beneath 
 contempt, and where this theory of his might find a 
 test. His manager feared to tell him how meagre were 
 the scenes which must represent Elsinore ; but as night 
 approached he was forced, of course, to speak. He 
 had hung two American flags at the stage openings, 
 and these represented drop curtains as well as palace, 
 platform, chamber, and castle. Instead of anger and 
 annoyance, Forrest only smiled as he saw these prepa- 
 rations, and he declared that nothing could be better. 
 He would show the audience that " Hamlet " could be 
 played in that foreign frame with none of its powers 
 shorn or weakened, while his own patriotism would 
 stimulate his energies, as his eyes rested on the banners 
 of his native land. 
 
 In enumerating the influences under which Edwin 
 Forrest entered the theatre, we should not omit to 
 name that which lay in the familiar good-fellowship of 
 the old actors. They did not always put oif with the 
 garb the cheerfulness or the sociability of the character 
 
PROLOGUE. J 
 
 they had lately been enacting. Falstaff often carried 
 into private life the habits and characteristics of his 
 stage existence, the line of identity and assumption not 
 always being very clearly drawn. 
 
 Our young player, who had already tasted tlie delicious 
 sweets of an amateur triumph, was able to learn from 
 the gracious lips of older actors incidents of their 
 bright Uves, which opened now and then to his gaze a 
 tempting vista down which his own future glory might 
 be discerned. As so much of stage knowledge is 
 conventional and unwritten, especially in the earlier and 
 mechanical outlines, such an experience was of great 
 value to the youth who was soon to appear as Young 
 Norval, and create an impression so profound that the 
 after-glories of the actor's life seeined poor beside that 
 boyish success. 
 
 With a tender farewell to those heroes of the past 
 whose example did so much to mould the early career 
 of Edwin Forrest, we may now turn to the events of the 
 life upon the threshold of which we have perhaps lin- 
 gered too long. 
 
EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 EARLY YOUTH. 
 
 EDAVIN FORREST was bom in the city of Phila- 
 delphia, March 9, 1806. His father, a Scotch- 
 man, had emigrated to this country during the last 
 year of the preceding century. His calling was that 
 of an importer of Scotch fabrics. He married, in 
 1 795, Rebecca Lauman, a lady of German descent on 
 both sides, but of American birth. Of this marriage 
 seven children were bom, the eldest of whom died in 
 infancy. Of the six who lived to maturity, three were 
 boys, three girls j and their names are here given in the 
 order of their birth, — Lauman, Henrietta, William, 
 Caroline, Edwin, Eleanora. Thus the subject of this 
 memoir was the last of the sons, the youngest but one 
 of the family. The father, William Forrest, having 
 been unsuccessful in business, became a servant of the 
 United States Bank, where he remained until the closing 
 of that institution. He was then employed by Stephen 
 Girard, in the Girard Bank, in which service he died in 
 1819, of consumption, aged sixty- two years. He had 
 accumulated nothing in the way of worldly wealth, and 
 left only his own good name as a legacy for his chil- 
 dren. The burden of life and labor thus abraptly laid 
 
EARLY YOUTH. 9 
 
 down was at once taken up by the widow, who gave 
 instant proof of her ability by the faithful support of 
 her family under the trying conditions of poverty, and 
 the affliction which his loss entailed. She was a woman 
 of great strength of character, of unusual firmness, and, 
 withal, of a loving, affectionate nature. Such mothers 
 are always to be found at the starting-point of every 
 great man's career. Opening a small shop, she soon 
 succeeded in gaining sufficient income for their joint 
 support, while she was thoughtful enough to place her 
 growing boys in situations where they might aid in the 
 task of providing for the fold. There were to be no 
 drones in that hive, and the industry of the mother ani- 
 ma'ted the spirits of the children. Our business lies 
 with the youth whose name heads these pages. We 
 leave the others, to follow Edwin Forrest. Our path 
 will lead us back to them again, as we pass along, and 
 we may dismiss them now. 
 
 Before the death of the father, and while actual want 
 was still unknown in the unpretending home, the chil- 
 dren were sent to school, and their future laid out by 
 the wisdom of both parents. Edwin, like many others 
 of his profession, was designed for the ministry, and as 
 the lad early developed certain qualities which are sup- 
 posed to point directly to that honorable pursuit, the 
 choice of the parents seemed approved by Providence. 
 Before the age of eleven, the future Charming had at- 
 tracted admiring listeners by the music of his voice 
 and by the aptness of ' his mimicry. Those qualities 
 were developed chiefly in the repeating of such wise 
 words as fell from the lips of his teacher and fiiend. 
 
lO EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Father Pilmore, an eminent divine for whom Edwin 
 Forrest entertained a lifelong reverence. 
 
 The boy's memory was remarkable. He could re- 
 cite whole passages of his preceptor's sermons. Perched 
 upon a chair or stool, crowned with the proud approval 
 of family and friends, the young mimic filled the hearts 
 of his listeners with fervent hope of his coming success 
 in the fold of their beloved church. These hopes were 
 destined to be met with disappointment. The bias, of 
 the future leader of the American stage was only faintly 
 outlined as yet : his hour of development was stiU to come. 
 
 The anecdotes of his early years are meagre and un- 
 interesting. We may be sure he did not escape the 
 hard rubs with which boyhood prepares the ground for 
 the struggles of manhood. We have reports of en- 
 counters wherein the victory was his, though not ob- 
 tained without sanguinary marks of the conflict, showing 
 how near defeat the conqueror had been. In the early 
 wordy preliminaries of these bouts we hear of such 
 expressions as would have shocked the Rev. Mr. Pil- 
 more, and made the staid mother blush for her son's 
 future ; adjectives which, however they may emphasize 
 passion, are still not pleasant to record. Edwin For- 
 rest's youth was that of nearly aU city lads whose par- 
 ents are too poor to provide watchful guards over the 
 companions of their children. 
 
 He must have learned early the road to the theatre, 
 — permitted to go by the family, or going, perhaps, 
 without the knowledge or consent of his seniors in the 
 overworked household; for before he had passed his 
 tenth year our young serraonizer and street champion 
 
EARLY YOUTH. II 
 
 was a member of a juvenile Thespian club, and before 
 eleven he had made his appearance at one of the regu- 
 lar theatres, in the rble of a female. In the habiliments 
 of the weaker sex, adorned for the play by unskilful 
 hands, ia such garments as could be collected hastily 
 and secretly from several sources, which covered a fig- 
 ure always the reverse of feminine, and were worn in a 
 manner far removed from the dainty grace belonging to 
 such robes, our hero came from behind the scenes for 
 his dkbut ; no doubt with a palpitation of heart suitable 
 to his disguise, but in no other way belonging to his 
 r&le. His reception was a shriek of laughter which 
 drowned his efforts to speak. His grotesque appear- 
 ance convulsed the audience, accustomed even to am- 
 ateur atrocities of a kindred nature ; and, after a vain 
 attempt to arrange a hostile meeting with a boy in the 
 pit whom he had especially observed as one of his most 
 conspicuous critics, he was hustled ignominiously from 
 the scene, to weep with rage over his defeat, and no 
 doubt to attribute his failure to the unappreciative pub- 
 lic, always the criminal in such cases. His first ex- 
 perience had taught him, at least, that his genius lay 
 not in the line of feminine characters. He returned to 
 the private station from which he had thus emerged 
 considerably .chagrined, and with deep regret that he 
 had not " had it out " with his loud-voiced enemy in 
 front of the stage. 
 
 His devotion to the drama was not permitted to in- 
 terfere with his home duties. He had been regularly 
 apprenticed successively to a printer, a cooper, and a 
 ship-chandler before the age of thirteen ; but we have no 
 
12 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 record of his services, or the date of their continuance, 
 in any of these unpoetical callings. We may be sure his 
 happiness lay in the evasion of his vs^ork whenever he 
 could steal a visit to the shrine where his beloved Thes- 
 pis reigned supreme. He soon outgrew the ignominy 
 of his first failure, and again and again sought to over- 
 come the disgrace by a fresh appearance. To his ap- 
 peals the irate manager lent a deaf ear; he had not 
 forgotten the disaster of that eventful night, and did not 
 desire to see it repeated. The sacred portals that led 
 to the enchanted ground of the stage were closed against 
 young Forrest, the warden being instructed not to let the 
 importunate boy pass the door. At last, in desperation, 
 he resolved to storm the citadel, to beat down the 
 faithful guard, and to carry the war into the enemy's 
 camp. One night he dashed past the astonished guar- 
 dian of the stage entrance just as the curtain fell upon 
 one of the acts of a play. He emerged before the foot- 
 lights, eluding all pursuit, dressed as a harlequin ; and 
 before the audience had recovered from its astonish- 
 ment at this scene not set down in the bills, the baffled, 
 but not subdued, aspirant had delivered the lines of an 
 epilogue in rhyme with so much effect that, before he 
 could be seized by the astounded stage manager and 
 hurled from the theatre, he had attracted public notice, 
 successfully won his surprised audience, and not only 
 secured immunity from punishment for Ins temerity, but 
 actually gained that respect in the manager's estimation 
 which he had so long and so vainly striven to acquire. 
 
 Forrest had made a reputation as a mimic among his 
 fellows, before whom he was often called upon to show 
 
EARLY YOUTH. 
 
 13 
 
 his skill. He was especially noted for his recital of 
 Goldsmith's epilogue, beginning, — 
 
 " Hold, Prompter, holdl " 
 
 These performances took place in a small bam or loft 
 hastily improvised for the use of the lad and his com- 
 panions. Edwin was regarded as the chief of this youth- 
 ful histrionic band, not only on account of his superior 
 ability, but because of his already powerful physique, 
 and a certain awe which his manner inspired in the 
 breasts of his associates. He knew more of the world 
 than they, and was the envied possessor of an awful 
 knowledge to which they could not pretend. He had 
 seen the sacred domain of the theatre in all its myste- 
 rious glory, not only as an auditor, but as an actor as 
 well. He had even stood erect in the presence of some 
 of those great ones whose names adorned the play-bills, 
 and were such marvels to the eyes of the young and 
 the uninitiated. This is a period in the life of Forrest 
 which nearly all boys reared in cities can recall; for 
 who has not passed through the first awful but delicious 
 mysteries of the play-bill, the theatre, the performance ? 
 Who has not, under the youthful roundabout, felt his 
 heart stirred by the boyish associations of the drama ? 
 
 The power to attract attention by his recitations meet- 
 ing with encouragement in such humble surroundings, 
 the young actor soon sought out opportunities on a 
 larger platform and before more critical hearers. At a 
 public exhibition of the effects of oxide gas he was 
 asked by the exhibitor to become the medium of illus- 
 tration. He consented eagerly. Under its effect he 
 
14 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 dashed wildly into one of the soliloquies of " Richard the 
 Third," and had wellnigh ranted the whole of the tent 
 scene, until where Richard, alarmed by the shouts of his 
 murdered victims, cries out, " Give me another horse ; 
 bind up my wounds," when, the effects of the gas pass- 
 ing suddenly away, the speaker awoke to find himself 
 deafened by the plaudits of an audience which was sur- 
 prised and delighted by the unexpected performance. 
 
 This incident made an impression upon the cele- 
 brated lawyer, John Swift, who at once took an interest 
 in the lad, and was instrumental in shaping his career. 
 By his aid Forrest was promised an appearance at the 
 Walnut Street Theatre, then one of the leading theatres 
 of the country. Many difficulties had to be overcome 
 before the efforts of Mr. Swift were successful. Wood 
 and Warren, the veteran managers, had been unhappy 
 in their debutants, none of whom had gained a perma- 
 nent footing ; but the kindly interest of his patron pre- 
 vailed at last against the prejudices of the managers, and 
 the opportunity to appear was offered. He selected 
 Young Norval, in Home's tragedy of "'Douglas," then 
 the crucial test by which many a young beginner essayed 
 the favor of an audience. 
 
 Supported by the kindness of two friends, — Mr. S. 
 K. Levin, a liquor merchant, and Edwin A. Carpenter, 
 a grocer, — he was enabled to receive some preliminary 
 teaching in elocution from Lemuel G. White, a distin- 
 guished professor in that branch of the dramatic art. 
 Mr. White had himself hoped to be an actor, but had 
 failed on several occasions to secure an engagement. 
 He was a devoted believer in the Garrick-Kean school, 
 
EARLY YOUTH. 
 
 15 
 
 — the natural school, so called, — as opposed to the 
 declamatory or artificial method, of which the Kembles 
 were the exponents in our century. James E. Mur- 
 doch, the most gifted elocutionist and the most charm- 
 ing high comedian of his day, and David IngersoU, 
 " the silver tongued," were among the noted scholars 
 of this master. 
 
 The long-hoped-for night had come at last. All the 
 hours which had led to this supreme one were over, 
 and their anxieties and hopes put by, to make room for 
 an event the greatest, so far, in the life of the youth of 
 whom we are writing. The aid of friends, their sup- 
 port and encouragement, the teaching of Wliite, the 
 experience gained in all the good performances he had 
 seen, in all the poor ones he had himself given, had 
 only been preparatory to this auspicious night, — the 
 27th of November, 1820. 
 
 The theatre was fiUed by an audience eager to welcome 
 a genius, but critical and severe to reprove impudent 
 assumption. The future Master of the American Stage, 
 then fourteen years of age, — a boy in years, a man in 
 character, — announced as " A young Gentleman of this 
 City," surrounded by a group of veteran actors who had 
 for many years shared the favor of the public, began a 
 career which was as auspicious at its opening as it was 
 splendid in its maturity. White had characterized the 
 lad as hobbledehoy on first seeing him, and felt doubt- 
 ful of his success ; but he gave no sign of awkwardness 
 now, — the pupil was worthy of his master. At his en- 
 trance he won the vast audience at once by the grace 
 of his figure, and the modest bearing which was natural 
 to him. Something of that magnetism which he ex- 
 
1 6 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 ercised so effectively in later years, now attracted all 
 who heard him, and made friends even before he spoke. 
 In the scenes of tenderness with his mother, his melt- 
 ing voice went to every heart, and won for him the 
 tribute of tears ; in the scenes of tumult and defi- 
 ance his proud spirit soared to a surprising height, and 
 the rapturous applause which followed testified to his 
 power J and when the last dying exclamation of the 
 so-long-orphaned Nerval fell upon the ears of his 
 mother, all the pent-up feelings of the assemblage gave 
 way to a torrent of approbation, which called the blush- 
 ing youth before the curtain, covered him with the glory 
 of resounding cheers, and filled his heart with those 
 glad sounds for which the actor lives and endures the 
 trials of his lot. 
 
 William B. Wood, in his " Personal Recollections 
 of the Stage," published in 1854, gives the cast of 
 " Douglas '.' on this occasion in full. It is worthy of 
 preservation here : — 
 
 Douglas (Young Norval) 
 Lord Randolph 
 Glenalvon . . 
 Old Norval . 
 Lady Randolph 
 Anna .... 
 
 Edwin Forrest. 
 Frederick Wlieatley. 
 William B. Wood. 
 William Warren. 
 Mrs. H. A. Williams. 
 Mrs. Joseph Jefferson. 
 
 Mrs. Williams is better remembered as Mrs. Robert 
 Haywood ; Frederick Wheatley was the father of Wil- 
 liam and Emma Wheatley (Mrs. Mason) ; William 
 Warren was the father of William Warren, so well 
 known in Boston to-day ; and Mrs. Jefferson was the 
 grandmother of the present Joseph Jefferson. 
 
 It seems incredible that Edwin Forrest was only four- 
 
EARLY YOUTH. 1/ 
 
 teen years old at this time. So much experience 
 had been his, so much had been accomplished, that 
 it appears more than likely that William Wood was 
 right when he said that the debutant was " sixteen 
 years of age." Even adding these disputed years to 
 his life, we have a marvel of achievement without a 
 parallel. He was yet to pass through a severe experi- 
 ence before gaining a fixed place upon the stage ; but 
 he had demonstrated his fitness, he had proved his 
 claim to merit, and convinced his friends of the metal 
 that was in him. 
 
 Still retaining his place in his shop, Forrest de- 
 voted his spare hours to study, under the advice and 
 direction of wise friends. He was allowed to reappear, 
 December 29th, as Frederick, in " Lovers' Vows," repeat- 
 ing his first success ; and on the 8th of January, 1 82 1, he 
 benefited as Octavian, in " The Mountaineers," a play 
 associated with the early glories of Edmund Kean. In 
 this year, also, he made his first and only venture as a 
 manager, boldly taking the Prune Street Theatre and 
 giving a successful performance of Richard the Third, 
 which not only pleased the audience, but brought him 
 in a few dollars of profit. He made many attempts to 
 secure a regular engagement in one of the Western 
 circuits, where experience could be gained, and at last, 
 after many denials, he was employed by Collins and 
 Jones to play leading juvenile parts in their theatres in 
 Pittsburg, Cincinnati, and Lexington. Thus, at the age 
 of sixteen or eighteen, Edwin' Forrest enrolled himself 
 as a regular member of a theatrical company, and broke 
 loose from trade forever. 
 
1 8 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Glancing back over this part of his life, we must stop 
 to mark how persistent was the forward progress, how 
 unfaltering the purpose, and how steady the stride to- 
 wards fame and success of the young ship-chandler's 
 apprentice. He had a good common-school educa- 
 tion, nothing more ; but a brave heart, an iron will, and 
 impulses which struggled towards the highest in all his 
 aims. He had already gained the friendship of such 
 men as John Swift, and Alexander Wilson the cele- 
 brated ornithologist, who took a deep interest in the 
 struggling lad, and gave him aid and encouragement. 
 He had not permitted his bias for the theatre to inter- 
 fere with the duty which bound him to do his share in 
 providing for the family left destitute by his father's 
 death. He was a good son to a noble mother, and 
 a good brother to his other kin, while his soul chafed 
 against the bars which shut him out from his true 
 career, and tied him to the desk where his galling 
 routine lay. His achievements were already of no 
 mean order, as we have seen. He had laid the foun- 
 dations of his future career with much sagacity, and 
 gave every assurance that the boy would become the 
 father of the man. 
 
 Although he had disappointed the fond anticipations 
 of his mother, who had in fancy seen her beloved 
 son in priest's orders, she must have found solace in 
 the conviction that one who had so properly carried 
 out the duties of a son must of necessity be guided 
 towards the right, however wide of his parents' plans 
 his career might be. 
 
THE STROLLER. 
 
 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STROLLER. 
 
 BIDDING farewell to home and family, to friends 
 and companions, Edwin Forrest crossed the 
 Alleghany Mountains to begin at Pittsburg, in October, 
 1822, the serious business of his life. His path, which 
 hitherto had lain along pleasant places, was now to 
 widen into that crowded thoroughfare where man jostles 
 man in the struggle for the goal, and along which are 
 strewn the bodies of the many who faint and fall by the 
 way. His endowments were youth, good health, high 
 spirits, and a superb physique, — qualities essential to 
 success in any calling, but particularly so in the race 
 for histrionic honors. He had seen the best models, 
 he had sat at the feet of the greatest masters of his art 
 then known in any land ; he had tasted the sweets of 
 popularity early, and had found savor therein. He 
 was now to set out upon a new venture. The amateur 
 had filled his cup of happiness with the admiration 
 which is spontaneously given ; he had gained thunders 
 of applause for his unpaid labors, but was now to begin 
 his work in earnest, and to toil for bread. He was des- 
 tined to find his honors well earned ere they were 
 gained, his bread dearly bought before it reached his 
 lips. 
 
20 EDWIN' FORREST. 
 
 The life of a strolling player in 1881 is not a com- 
 fortable one; in 1821 it must have been simply miser- 
 able vagabondage, where the stroller shared with the 
 gypsy the shelter of the hedge, with the beggar some- 
 times the broken crust ; where cuffs and stripes and sor- 
 rows were plenty, and God's sunny blessings few and far 
 between. If we could look into the theatre in which 
 Forrest's professional life began, we would see no such 
 temple as that which testifies to the wealth, the culture, 
 and the^ love of the drama shown in the Pittsburg of to- 
 dayj In 1822 the city must have confined its theatrical 
 desires to a very humble abode for the Muse of Tragedy, 
 — a dark and dingy place, fuU of holes and comers, 
 where old shadows lurked, and where the ghosts of the 
 old plays, so often laid, still walked and moved and had 
 their shadowy being. 
 
 With a salary of eight dollars a week, Edwin Forrest 
 began his regular stage life ; opening in October, 1822, as 
 Young Norval in " Douglas," that respectably duU, old 
 versified story, which has long since passed into obUvion 
 as an acting play, and is to be found only in the collec- 
 tions of the antiquarians of the stage. None of his 
 companions at this period had won great fame, although 
 many of them were excellent actors, and the company 
 as a whole was more than commonly good, — one that 
 would compare favorably in numbers and in merit with 
 any of the travelling troupes of to-day. During the jour- 
 ney over the mountains, Forrest made the acquaintance 
 of Simon Cameron, then a youth like himself, and 
 formed a friendship which was resumed in later years, 
 to last until the actor's death. This intimacy shows the 
 
THE STROLLER. 2 1 
 
 hold Forrest was beginning to take upon men of posi- 
 tion and intelligence. Mutual attraction united them, 
 mutual tastes held them together. 
 
 Of this brief Pittsburg season we know nothing, but 
 we may surmise that it brought little profit to the man- 
 agement, for it soon came to an end. Forrest had 
 played a varied list of parts, ranging from broad comedy 
 to high tragedy, and in all of them had given signs of 
 great promise. Leaving the Iron City, the little band 
 embarked for Cincinnati, going by flat-boat down the 
 Ohio River, — a journey we can imagine to have been 
 made cheerful by the glad youthful spirits of the young 
 actor and his companions, to whom the experiences 
 were so new. Exhilarated by the influences of Nature, 
 which in that region is always bountiful of her blessings, 
 and enhvened by songs and glees and merry tales, re- 
 peated under the noonday sun of autumn as they 
 drifted along, we may be sure that the hours passed 
 swiftly and joyously by. Always a good racviiteur and 
 mimic, the present occasion brought out all the best re- 
 sources of the young wanderer. Here he could freely 
 indulge in that taste for comedy which always has been 
 the passion of every tragedian in the opening of his 
 career, and in the display of those comic powers that 
 had been denied him before the foot-hghts. Past fertile 
 fields, by vine-clad slopes sunny with the lustre of the 
 grape, halting at young clearings, the abode of the few 
 who had come from the wilderness to lay the corner- 
 stones of future cities on the placid bosom of the broad 
 Ohio, this freight of happy souls bore onward, light- 
 hearted, to their destination. Many a night when all 
 
22 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 his companions were asleep, and all the laughter hushed, 
 the lad who had so lately left his mother's side be- 
 thought him of that mother and of her teachings, and 
 with tearful eyes and reverent heart he knelt in prayer 
 for the welfare of that dear absent one, asking that her 
 spirit might be with her wandering son in all his jour- 
 neyings, and that her precepts might never be neglected 
 or forgotten. 
 
 Reaching Maysville, Kentucky, after many days, the 
 little band landed, and with their precious freight of 
 baggage-properties, and such small shreds of scenery as 
 they used to transport in those days when few theatres 
 were decently provided, they found a temple waiting 
 them not unlike that which they had left ; but they were 
 greeted by the warm Kentucky hearts and open gen- 
 erous hands for which the descendants of the pioneers 
 of that State are still so famous. For five nights the 
 company entertained their new patrons, Forrest mak- 
 ing many friends the while, and then went to Lexington, 
 — a broader field and more distinguished arena than 
 any in which he had yet appeared. Lexington was 
 then, as now, the capital centre of the State. An in- 
 telligent love of the drama has ever marked the people 
 who live beyond the great rivers of the AVest. Leading 
 as they do, during a large part of the year, an agricultu- 
 ral life, watching carefully their great landed interests, 
 they find time nevertheless for reading and mental en- 
 joyment and improvement, and great pleasure in their 
 occasional visits to their cities and the theatres they 
 contain. The drama has always been their chief de- 
 light, and when the theatre was poorly supported, even 
 
THE STROLLER. 23 
 
 in the larger and older cities of the East, the principal 
 towns of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana, and 
 Georgia, as well as those of the Carolinas, sustained 
 liberally companies of a high order of excellence. 
 
 Before the beauty and intelligence of Lexington 
 Edwin Forrest now appeared, and was met by a criti- 
 cism discerning and refining, which ripened his percep- 
 tions, stimulated him, and opened up to him a new 
 avenue in his work which had hitherto been closed. 
 As has been shown, none of the theatres of that day 
 were well furnished. It was deemed unnecessary to 
 decorate the stage, and therefore with meagre ap- 
 pliances, in such poor robes as his poverty compelled 
 him to wear, but with a soul within him which asked 
 no favor of Fortune, Edwin Forrest entered upon his 
 first important performances of the higher rbles of the 
 standard drama. He followed tradition here, and 
 took up the characters which must always have some 
 feehng representative, so long as the taste for the grand 
 old dramatists survives. He soon attracted the atten- 
 tion of one of the leading men of mind in the South, — 
 President HoUey, of the University near Lexington, — 
 an able critic, a ripe scholar, a man of refined tastes, and 
 an enthusiastic lover of the theatre, who gave Forrest good 
 counsel that was of great service to him, and inspired 
 him to renewed study of his profession. It was to this 
 noble pioneer in the cause of education that Forrest : 
 was indebted for the advice which led him finally to 
 abandon comedy, and to devote his time and attention 
 to tragedy alone, to aim at lofty ideals in his private as 
 well as in his public life, and to remember that the char- 
 
24 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 ' acter of the man will ever color the work of the artist ; 
 supplementing these with other teachings for his ad- 
 vancement and improvement, that could only have 
 come from a man so pure and lofty in spirit as was 
 President HoUey. 
 
 At last the happy season came to a close, the good- 
 byes to Lexington were spoken, and the strollers once 
 more set out for other scenes and fresh adventures. 
 The ladies of the company rode in covered vans or 
 carts, perched upon the scenery or the baggage ; the 
 gentlemen went on foot. Their destination was Cin- 
 cinnati, then, as now, the Queen City of the West. 
 This was the promised land of the wanderers, towards 
 which all their steps had slowly tended, the end of 
 all their journeyings. 
 
 In February, 1823, they opened at the Columbia Street 
 
 i Theatre, in "The Soldier's Daughter ; " Forrest playing 
 
 ithe very humble part of Young Malfort, a sad youth, 
 
 I the hero of the heavy sentiment, who is introduced to 
 
 I give weight and solemnity to a very charming comedy. 
 
 This was Forrest's first appearance in Cincinnati, a city 
 
 to which after many years he was to return in triumph, 
 
 and recall with many a smile the events which we are 
 
 now tracing. The description of one theatre in the 
 
 early days of those Western cities will suffice for all. 
 
 The state of the drama, its patronage, and the style of 
 
 plays produced, were with trifling exceptions identical 
 
 in all these places. 
 
 At this period in Forrest's career it may be said with 
 certainty that the romance, if such it may be called, of 
 his life as a stroller came to an end, and the actual prose 
 
THE STROLLER. 2$ 
 
 began. Travel and the novelty of new scenes and in- 
 cidents had deadened the sense of suffering which ac- 
 companied the earUer struggles, and a refreshing sleep 
 after a day of toil and denial was still the boon allowed 
 to the wandering actor, in which some sweet dream of 
 rich comfort, of luxurious home, would banish the stern 
 reahty of the day gone by, and fortify the soul against 
 the labors of the day to come. These consolations, 
 poor though they were, which had sprung from a light 
 heart, entertained by the variety and ever-changing 
 scenes of his late experiences, were now to end. The 
 duties of the theatre grew more severe. A change of 
 bill nightly necessitated fresh and increasing work ; new 
 parts demanded new wardrobes, or old garments patched 
 and transformed ; while particular lines of business and 
 the exclusive claim to a certain range of characters grat- 
 ifying to the performer were all swept away in the de- 
 mands for what was felt to be the greatest good for the 
 greatest number. The serious hero of the opening play 
 was often the ballet-dancer of the after-piece, or the 
 painted clown who sang a comic song between drama 
 and farce. Doffing the plaid and the dirk of Young 
 Norval, .Edwin had even put on the many-colored 
 garments of the Virginia negro, had given his audi- 
 ences a break-down or a walk-around in true plantation 
 style, before Daddy Rice, the great "Jim Crow," was 
 known to the stage at all. ' 
 
 As a matter of curiosity, we give here portions of an 
 advertisement from the Cincinnati Independent Press, 
 dated July 17, 1823, showing Forrest's position on the 
 stage at that time. 
 
26 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 GLOBE THEATRE — THREE new pieces. 
 
 The public are respectfully informed that the new petit 
 comedy of " Dandyism ; or, Modern Fashions," having been 
 received with distinguished approbation, according to the wish 
 of many citizens will be repeated. An original interlude, called 
 " The Tailor in Distress ; or, A Yankee Trick,'' will also be 
 brought forward, and those two will be followed by the grand 
 pantomimic spectacle of "Don Quixote," which has been in 
 preparation for several weeks. The performance will positively 
 begin at lo minutes before 8, and close before 12 o'clock. 
 
 ON THIS EVENING, JULY 17, 
 will be presented (for the second and last time) the petit comedy 
 of 
 
 DANDYISM; OR, MODERN FASHIONS. 
 
 Mr. Wilson Mr. Cargill. 
 
 Frank Freelove Davis. 
 
 Bill Shuffle ■ • . I Two modern ( . . Scott. 
 
 Tom Tipple . . . . ) dandies. ( . . Forrest. 
 
 Post Boy, also Tailor's Boy Miss Hanna. 
 
 Charlotte Mrs. Cargill. 
 
 Betty Bab Miss Riddle. 
 
 Mrs. Wilson Mrs. Hanna. 
 
 In Act III. — a Duel between the two dandies (Messrs. 
 Scott and Forrest), in which will be introduced the most 
 modern modes of shunning a bullet, viz. long dodging, short 
 dodging, quick dodging, quizzical dodging, demi-quizzical dodg- 
 ing, and demi-semi-quizzical dodging, after the manner of Gum- 
 ming and McDuffie, the heroes of the South. 
 
 After which an original interlude (founded on fact) called 
 
 THE TAILOR IN DISTRESS; OR, A YANKEE 
 TRICK. 
 
 General Mr. Cargill. 
 
 Snip (a tailor of Paperopolis) . Eberle. 
 
THE STROLLER. 
 
 27 
 
 Tom (tailor's -boy)- . . Miss Riddle. 
 
 CuFFEEjta Kentucky negro) Mr. Forrest. 
 
 Miss Philisy (a iiegro lady) 
 
 In the course of the interlude Mr. Forrest will give mock 
 imitations of Mr. Phillips's singing. 
 
 The evening's entertainment to conclude with the grand 
 heroic pantomime of 
 
 DON QUIXOTE, 
 with appropriate scenery, dresses, and music. 
 
 Count Mr. Sweeny. 
 
 Countess . . ...... Mrs. Riddle. 
 
 Sancho Panza (Don Quixote's squire) . . . Mr. Forrest. 
 
 Captain of the Robbers. .- 
 
 Second Captain Davis. 
 
 Sutler Woman Eberle. 
 
 Don Quixote Scott. 
 
 First Traveller Cargill. 
 
 Second Traveller Giles. 
 
 First Miller Lucas. 
 
 Second Miller George. 
 
 Third Miller Giles. 
 
 At this period Forrest's labors in the theatre were 
 only equalled by his financial sufferings in private life. 
 ■ An accident to his only pair of shoes left him absolutely 
 ; without a covering for his foot, which he bandaged as 
 if wounded ; and limping about for several days he won 
 much sympathy from his companions, who knew not 
 that his distress was in his pocket. The welcome ap- 
 plause that rang in the ears of a Damon or a Pythias 
 sometimes silenced the cries of hunger, warmed the 
 almost naked body, and soothed the wounds of pride. 
 But the little band could not Uve on the good-will of 
 small audiences alone, and the crash, although long 
 
28 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 deferred, came at last to this as to nearly all other 
 theatrical ventures in that virgin field. Collins and Jones, 
 depending upon weak characters in the absence of great 
 ones, after a hard struggle finally succumbed, and the 
 doors of the theatre were suddenly closed, throwing 
 Forrest and his companions out of employment. 
 
 He had gained by this his first regular engagement 
 some local fame, not a httle valuable experience, and 
 the friendship of a number of good men who saw 
 promises of future excellence in the lad, and were not 
 slow to encourage it. Among these the most valuable, 
 perhaps, was the veteran General, afterwards President, 
 Harrison. This gentle heart beat with pure pity as he 
 heard the young stroller's stories of his trials ; and his 
 active friendship on many occasions Hghtened the bur- 
 dens which the youth was carrying. 
 
 In the upper part of a barn in the city of Hamilton, 
 all that was left of the wreck of the company of Collins 
 and Jones met again to face another failure and another 
 journey : this time to Lebanon, with the same sad ex- 
 periences, and then to Dayton, disaster following dis- 
 aster, where the union was finally and totally dissolved. 
 Penniless, hungry, poorly clad, but hopeful still, Forrest 
 
 ■ started on foot for Cincinnati, a distance of forty miles. 
 This was one of the severest trials of his life, and in 
 
 I most pathetic language he often alluded to it in after 
 years. Adventures of a gypsy nature were not wanting 
 by the way. He entered a stream, with his poor shoes 
 in his hand, to help his way along by means of the 
 row-boat he saw, apparently without an owner, lying 
 temptingly unfastened on the opposite bank. But a 
 
THE STROLLER. 
 
 29 
 
 rough warning to be ofF, emphasized by the vision of a 
 shot-gun pointing his way, led him to prefer the hard 
 road to the perils of such navigation. At last he found 
 himself once more in the Queen City of the West, poorer 
 than ever, and with no prospect of a brighter future. 
 Chance engagements, with a trifle of salary now and 
 then to keep starvation from his door, a trip to Louis- 
 ville with the wreck of the Cincinnati company, mod- 
 erate success there, a return once more to Cincinnati 
 under a new management and with a new enterprise, 
 where at last permanent employment seemed assured, 
 are among the incidents which followed that naked 
 hegira from Dayton. 
 
 During these last months in Cincinnati Forrest played 
 Nerval, yaffier, George Barnwell, and Richard the 
 Third, besides certain parts in comedy. He was the 
 mainstay of the company, the stock-star, its legitimate 
 leader. In one year the amateur of Philadelphia, in spite 
 of many disasters, became a power in the regular ranks of 
 a Western theatre. This brief interval of success served 
 only to keep the wolf from the door, but gave no margin 
 of surplus, even if the young stroller had been of a sav- 
 ing character. The near and inevitable, the idle future, 
 was still to be cared for. When July came, and with it 
 the closing of the theatres, the strollers separated. 
 
 We may here speak of a friendship which, begin- 
 ning under the shadow of mutual poverty, lasted and 
 grew stronger and more dear under the sun of pros- 
 perity. To Mrs. Riddle and her family, actors like 
 himself, Edwin Forrest owed in these dark days much 
 of the hope and encouragement which brighten ad- 
 
30 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 versity. Their courtesy and unfailing friendship were 
 the ties which bound him to duty, and kept in his 
 mind the example and precepts of his beloved mother 
 and sisters. The Riddles had passed many years 
 of honorable labor in their profession, had reached 
 respectable positions, and out of their scanty earnings 
 made Edwin feel at home in a circle where happy con- 
 tentment helped to banish from the hearthstone the 
 pangs of public neglect or private sorrows. To the 
 end of his Ufe, in fame and prosperity, the name of this 
 early benefactress of his was a dear one to his ears, and 
 he never ceased to speak fondly of her and of her 
 memory. One cold winter's day, when the snow lay deep 
 on the graves at Mount Auburn, the vnriter of these 
 lines stood by Forrest's side as the last rites of the 
 Church were performed over a member of this family, 
 who in his early days had shown herself so kindly and 
 thoroughly his friend. The strong man gazed into the 
 last resting-place of her he had loved so well, and as 
 the winter's sun fell upon that noble head, bared and 
 reverent, the tears rolled unchecked from his eyes, un- 
 used to weep. Sweet memories of the happy past 
 mingled with the sad thoughts that this, at last, was the 
 final earthly parting. 
 
 The Riddle family had taken a plain cottage at New- 
 port, Kentucky, on the Ohio River, opposite Cincin- 
 nati, and here in this enforced and penniless holiday 
 time a place was made for Forrest. They gave him 
 out of their scant store the help they could hardly 
 spare, a bed, and, if nothing more, a kindly welcome ; 
 while a neighboring field often supplied the ear of com. 
 
THE STROLLER. 3 1 
 
 which, roasted gypsy-like by the hedge-side fire, allayed 
 the pangs of hunger, and brought to him forgetfulness 
 of present misery. 
 
 Forrest had now reached the lowest point of his for- 
 tunes. Within the first year of his apprenticeship he 
 had tasted the bitterness of hope deferred, the gall of 
 unpaid toil, and suffered the hardest of all wants, the 
 want of food. It is said that at this period, giving up 
 all hope, the tortured, naked, hungry lad, in despair of a 
 brighter day to come, madly dreamed of a sudden and 
 violent end to all his misery. But with that elasticity 
 which happily belongs to great souls destined for great 
 achievements, he passed into a more hopeful and more 
 cheerful mood, when the horizon of his vision became 
 less dark and threatening. With book in hand, — a 
 poorly bound volume of his beloved Shakspere, — he 
 passed whole hours of many days beneath the trees of 
 a neighboring farm, where, pondering over the immortal 
 text, surrounded by all the influences which Nature 
 exerts over sensitive minds, new plans, new purposes, 
 took possession of him. He seemed to catch in- 
 spiring ghmpses of the destiny that awaited him, and 
 the elation that was bom of those musings hallowed the 
 spot to him forever. Looking out through the window 
 of his present poverty into the future day of his splen- 
 did prosperity, he vowed that this ground should one 
 day be his own, — an oath he religiously kept, for these 
 very acres were many years after purchased by him, 
 and during his life never passed out of his hands. The 
 ground upon which the poor young stroller had snatched 
 so many happy self-forgetting hours of study became 
 
32 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 one of the most valued possessions of the successful 
 tragedian, valued for its associations' sake if for nothing 
 more. 
 
 While enjoying this hospitality of the Riddles, Forrest 
 had succeeded in making an engagement for the fol- 
 lowing season with James H. Caldwell, then manager of 
 the most prosperous of all the Southern or Western 
 circuits. His salary was to be eighteen dollars a week, 
 an advance upon his old wages that speaks well for the 
 reputation he had already made ; and he was to make 
 his future headquarters at New Orleans, a city already 
 the centre of all that was chivalrous and cultured in the 
 South. At the last moment Forrest was so loath to part 
 with his friends, made doubly dear to him by adversity 
 and mutual tastes, that he would have been willing to 
 have sacrificed even the brilliant opportunities offered 
 to him in New Orleans, if his old friend and manager 
 Sol Smith would have given him a place among his 
 old companions of the West. This was firmly refused, 
 however, Mr. Smith insisting that for his own best in- 
 terests, as well as for the proper fulfilment of his word, 
 he should go to his Southern- engagement. In pique 
 at this denial, full of wrath, and in order effectually 
 to escape the sorrow involved in the parting from his 
 friends, as well as to break with the manager who had 
 a right to his services, and at the same time to affront 
 the manager who had declined them, he joined a cir- 
 cus troupe, and gave surprising evidences of his agil- 
 ity in the ring. Fortune, however, having something 
 better in store for him than the turning of somersaults 
 on the sawdust of a toavelling show, led liim to listen 
 
.THE STROLLER. 33 
 
 once more to the earnest advice of Mr. Smith, who 
 pointed out to him all the advantages that lay before 
 him in the South, appealed to his honor, always a safe 
 ■ and sure guide, and ^^won his consent at last to go to 
 his duty. 
 
34 
 
 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 NEW ORLEANS. — NEW YORK. — HIS FIRST DECIDED 
 SUCCESS. 
 
 DURING this journey South, over the great riv- 
 ers, Forrest made the acquaintance of General 
 Winfield Scott and John Howard Payne, in whose 
 society the passage was made only too quickly, for on 
 the 4th day of February, 1824, at the American Thea- 
 tre, under the management of Caldwell, Forrest made 
 his first bow to a New Orleans audience as Jaffier in 
 "Venice Preserved," one of the tragedies of the old 
 turgid school, which has vigor and vitality enough stiU 
 to hold a sort of contested possession of the stage. 
 
 New Orleans at this time was the gayest capital in 
 the country, and was alive vnth entertainments of all 
 kinds. The season lasted from the close of the cotton- 
 picking on the plantations until the coming of Lent. 
 Rich planters with their famihes, when the crop was 
 gathered, came to the Crescent City for their dissipa- 
 tion. The audience there, then as now, was made up 
 largely of ladies, and their presence gave a refined air 
 to the entertainment. A breathless and noiseless atten- 
 tion took the place of loud applause, and those points 
 were best valued in the actor which were given without 
 
NEW ORLEANS. 
 
 35 
 
 rant, and betrayed a delicate perception of nature in 
 as delicate a form of art. 
 
 The influence of French taste was apparent on and 
 off the stage, on the street, and in society. Caldwell 
 was an actor of the impassioned school, a great favorite 
 with the pubHc he had served for many years, and 
 much courted by society, where he shone with natural 
 lustre. He presented Forrest to his new auditors, 
 and the young man's fine figure, youthful presence, and 
 noble voice made an instant impression ; his open 
 and frank bearing, which disdained criticism, removing 
 somewhat the taint of provincialism which had early 
 shown itself in the actor's robust style. This style 
 could have been modified in the presence of so cul- 
 tured and delicate an audience had Forrest submitted 
 himself freely to its influence ; but his career was here 
 too stormy and too brief, his tastes too mature, to ad- 
 mit of the complete reform which might have taken 
 place to his advantage. 
 
 His associates, if we may trust his biographers, were 
 not of a character to purify his nature or refine his 
 manners. While an awful curiosity hovers about the 
 inventor who gave his name to the bowie-knife, it seems 
 unreasonable to attach any great importance to the 
 friendship of the man upon that ground alone. He 
 may have had quahties mitigating the ferocity which 
 characterized his many bloody contests at arms, but 
 these are not dwelt upon, and the only advantage 
 which Forrest ever reaped from this intimacy was the 
 possession of the identical knife which had played so 
 prominent a part in the hands of Colonel Bowie. At 
 
36 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 least this is all the benefit which his biographers have 
 shown as growing out of their firiendship. At no time 
 of Edwin Forrest's life did he need masculine or bar- 
 barian influence, — he always had a surplus in that 
 direction, — and it would have been better for him 
 could he have drawn his inspiration from the gentle 
 and refining spirits which have ever animated the 
 audiences and society of the Crescent City. He 
 made his choice, and selected the coterie which was 
 most congenial to him. We see in this no natural out- 
 cropping of a " Democratic '' spirit ; rather the haughty 
 conceit of the self-made man who scorned to submit 
 to judicious training. With Bowie, with a large-hearted, 
 powerfully built, fighting steamboat captain (whose 
 best exploit was not in conquering a crowd of loafers 
 by his muscle, but in the tenderness of his care of 
 Forrest wiren ill of the fever) , with Push-ma-ta-ha, the 
 Indian who is said to have suggested the production of 
 "Metamora," and with other original spirits like these, 
 Forrest passed his unoccupied time in New Orleans. 
 They charmed the young athlete by their novel free- 
 dom, and he was too full of the warm blood of the 
 barbarian himself to resist their fascination. 
 
 Of his professional progress here we have but poor 
 accounts. He seems to have been very popular, and to 
 have had an experience larger than he had heretofore 
 enjoyed. He played with the elder Conway, and was 
 affected by the grandeur of that actor's Othello, — a 
 study which served Forrest well when in later years he 
 inherited the character. This actor was in a degree 
 associated with the days of Samuel Johnson, by the 
 
ME)V ORLEANS. 37 
 
 preference which the widow of Thrale and the wife of 
 Piozzi had shown him when lie first appeared in London. 
 He was a man of remarkable physical beauty, and the 
 old lady became his ardent admirer. Her susceptibility 
 seated much amusement among her friends ; but the 
 association was valuable to Conway, as it brought him 
 into public notice through the aid of a powerful literary 
 clique. He drowned himself in Charleston Harbor 
 during a temporary fit of insanity, in 1828. 
 
 Forrest's engagement with Caldwell had taken him 
 to Petersburg, Norfolk, and Richmond, then back again 
 to New Orleans. While at Richmond he attracted the 
 attention and made the personal acquaintance of the 
 venerable Chief Justice Marshall. He saw the patriot' 
 Lafayette, then revisiting the scenes of his impulsive 
 .and ardent youth, and receiving the warm welcome 
 which was everywhere paid to him. Forrest returned 
 to New Orleans in 1825, reopening as Young Malfort, 
 in the "Soldier's Daughter," a part which seemed to 
 have fastened to him, he played it so often, even when 
 engaged for better things. In March he supported Con- 
 way, playing lago. In May he announced for his bene- 
 fit " King Lear." The performance was postponed 
 on account of the weather, and when it did take place 
 he gave "The Mountaineers" instead of the Shakspe- 
 rean tragedy. The season closed at the end of May. 
 During this latter month he had given his first perform- 
 ance of Brutus, in Howard Payne's drama, a part in 
 which he became famous in after years, given up only 
 when his strength and agility were failing him. 
 
 A quarrel with his manager, who seems to have envied 
 
38 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 his success with the public, or so Forrest believed ; his 
 first serious love affair ; and an attack of yellow fever of 
 which he nearly died, and from which he was rescued 
 by the care of his friend Graham, the steamboat cap- 
 tain, — -are the leading incidents of his later New Or- 
 leans career. Jane Placide, who inspired the first love 
 of Edwin Forrest, combined talent, beauty, and good- 
 ness. Her name was an honorable one, and the affec- 
 tion with which she filled the young actor's heart might 
 have proved the blessed experience of his life, could she 
 have returned it. Her character would have softened 
 the asperities of his, and led him by a calmer path to 
 those grand elevations towards which Providence had 
 directed his footsteps. Baffled in his love, and believ- 
 ing Caldwell to be his rival and enemy, he challenged 
 him, but was rebuked by the silent contempt of his 
 manager, whom the impulsive and disappointed lover 
 "posted." He then betook himself to the wigwam of 
 his Indian friend, where, in commune with a nature 
 new and fascinating, he sought solace for his disappoint- 
 ment. In the study of his model for " Metamora " he 
 learned to forget the pangs of his refusal, and Push- 
 ma-ta-ha by the wigwam fire consoled his pale-faced 
 friend with the history of his own wild loves. 
 
 Returning to New Orleans in August, as poor as 
 when he left it, Forrest secured a passage in a sailing 
 ship for New York, was nearly caught in the teeth of a 
 shark while bathing in the Gulf, but escaped miracu- 
 lously, and arrived home at last after an absence of 
 three years of enough drudgery and adventure to fill a 
 life, and with a varied experience which colored his 
 
NEW YORK. 39 
 
 whole career. He had not forgotten his home in* his 
 absence. He had sent to the dear ones from time to 
 time sucli sums as he could spare from his little store ; 
 and he found them now all joy, eagerly expectant to 
 see and to welcome him whose fame had already reached 
 the humble dwelling and filled the widowed mother's 
 heart with pride. 
 
 The hard novitiate of Edwin Forrest was now draw- 
 ing near its close. Securing a stock engagement with 
 Charles Gilfert, manager of the Albany Theatre, he 
 opened there in the early fall, and played for the first 
 time with Edmund Kean, then on his second visit to 
 this country. The meeting with this extraordinary 
 man, and the attentions he received from him, were 
 among the directing influences of Forrest's life. To 
 his last hour he never wearied of singing the praises of 
 Kean, whose genius filled the ' English-speaking world 
 with admiration. Two men more unlike in mind and 
 body can scarcely be imagined. Kean, who had 
 come up from his early sufferings into that prosperity 
 which crazed him, bore upon his deKcate frame the 
 marks of the struggle. The fire of genius still dwelt in 
 that eye which could melt with tenderness in the pas- 
 sion of Romeo, or flash with the lurid fires of jealousy 
 as the " dusky Moor." He had passed over the soil 
 yet virgin to his young admirer, and he bore the sad 
 marks of his bitter travail. Transformed from the cer- 
 tain misery of a provincial career whose rewards were 
 beggarly into the dazzling glory of a London triumph, 
 Kean spanned at one bound the interval which sepa- 
 rates luxury from want, wealth from poverty. But he 
 
40 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 was more trae to his earlier instincts than sensitive to 
 his later possibilities. The spark which filled the stage 
 with its divine radiance consumed the firame which 
 emitted it, and he who swayed admiring audiences by 
 his sublime powers became at last the victim of pas- 
 sions too late subjected to restraint. The early life of 
 Edmund Kean, passed in the midst of social prejudices 
 which outlawed the player, was the last sad and awful 
 protest against the injustice and ignorance of an era 
 which placed the genius of the actor among the glories 
 of mankind, while the man himself was socially neg- 
 lected and contemned. 
 
 Until now Forrest had seen no actor who represented 
 in perfection the impassioned school of which Kean 
 was the master. He had known Cooke in the dechne 
 of his powers, but his own judgment was immature. 
 Here was indeed a revelation. How must his mind 
 have grown in the study of that style which grasped 
 the innermost of the passions and flashed out its ex- 
 pression with the spark divine, through a frame slender 
 but magnetic. In later life Forrest loved to recall those 
 impressions, and a lock of the great actor's hair was 
 tenderly preserved amongst his most valued treasures. 
 He played lago to his Othello, Titus to his Brutus, 
 and Richmond to his Richard III. The season at 
 Albany ended in disaster : the actor's wardrobe was in 
 pawn ; but he went to Philadelphia to play for his old 
 friend Porter's benefit, and his return to his native city 
 was made happy by the success of his performance of 
 Jaffier on this occasion. He was called upon to re- 
 peat it, and for two nights he tasted the first sweets of 
 
HIS FIRST DECIDED SUCCESS. 41 
 
 his coming starring glories. His last hours of slavery, 
 which we will briefly notice, were now at hand. Gilfert 
 had assumed the management of the Bowery Theatre, 
 New York, under the board of directors with Prosper 
 M. Wetmore at their head, who were building that now 
 venerable edifice. Forrest was engaged for one year, 
 at a salary of twenty-eight dollars per week. 
 
 In the interval which preceded the opening of 
 the theatre, Forrest appeared at the Park, for the 
 benefit of Woodhull, playing Othello. He made a 
 pronounced success, his old manager, sitting in front, 
 profanely exclaiming, " By God, the boy has made a 
 hit ! " This was a great event, as the Park was then 
 the leading theatre of America, and its actors the most 
 exclusive and estimable. He played a few nights also 
 at Baltimore and Washington, and again passed a short 
 time with his beloved mother, to whose careful love 
 and sterling character he owed so much, and towards 
 whom his filial love was constant to the end. 
 
 He opened at the Bowery Theatre in November, 
 1826, as Othello, and made a brilhant impression. His 
 salary was raised at once from twenty-eight dollars to 
 forty dollars per week. From this success may be 
 traced the first absolute hold made by Edwin Forrest 
 upon the attention of cultivated auditors and intelligent 
 critics. The " Bowery " was then a very different the- 
 atre from what it afterwards became, when the news- 
 boys took forcible possession of its pit and the fire 
 laddies were the arbiters of public taste in its neighbor- 
 hood. The royal days of Eddy and the large-footed, 
 loud-voiced tragedians were yet to come. The sue- 
 
42 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 cessors of Hamblin were of a melodramatic school 
 which would have caused the great tragedian to smile. 
 Forrest's success was the beginning of a metropolitan 
 reputation which extended over forty years of service. 
 It was here he gained the friendship of those men, emi- 
 nent in that day as the leaders of public opinion in the- 
 atrical affairs, the journalists and writers whose kindly 
 but well-digested opinions aided him in fixing his con- 
 ceptions and perfecting his style. To James Lawson 
 and Leggett, of the Post, he owed a debt which he 
 afterwards paid with interest. A pleasant instance of 
 Forrest's moral integrity may be told here. He had 
 been approached by a rival manager, after his first suc- 
 cess, and urged to secede from the " Bowery " and 
 join the other house at a much larger salary. He 
 scornfully refused to break his word, although his own 
 interests must suffer. 
 
 His popularity at this time was so great that he was 
 often loaned to the other theatres by Gilfert, who de- 
 manded two hundred dollars a night for his services, 
 while paying Forrest only forty dollars a week. When 
 his contract for the season had expired, and Gilfert ap- 
 proached him for a renewal for another year, he re- 
 plied that he would wilhngly remain for the valuation 
 which Gilfert himself had placed upon him. He was 
 instantly engaged for eighty nights, at a salary of two 
 hundred dollars a night. This virtually closed his 
 stock career, and was the first great ad\'ance he had 
 made towards that giddy height from which he could 
 not now be kept back. From the unfavorable sur- 
 roundings of his early hfe, from the hai-d school of 
 
HIS FIRST DECIDED SUCCESS. 43 
 
 adversity, Forrest had already emerged, and was mov- 
 ing surely towards the grand development of his great 
 powers, forming his style upon the best models of the 
 robust school which Cooper and Conway had brought 
 over from the Kembles, modified and softened by the 
 acting of Edmund Kean, who had flashed so lately like 
 a meteor across his startled vision. 
 
44 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 HIS VISITS TO EUROPE. 
 
 EDWIN FORREST, according to his biographers, 
 had just passed his twenty-first birthday. He 
 was entering thus early upon a career such as few ac- 
 tors had ever known. His health was excellent, his 
 vigor unimpaired by excesses, and he might have posed 
 for one of the Olympian victors, so remarkable was his 
 physique. His open, frank nature was as yet unwarped 
 by injustice and mahgnity, still unspoiled by souring 
 adversities or sickened by satiety. He was admirably 
 suited to carry onward the traditions of the stage as 
 they descended to him; and he was destined to be 
 their best exponent in the coming years. At one 
 bound he seemed to overleap all barriers ; and he not 
 only vaulted to a high position early in life, but never 
 once fell backward. His rivals, on the other hand, 
 were ascending by more toilsome grades the heights, at 
 the top of which they beheld him who had so miracu- 
 lously surmounted them all. He had passed through 
 his theatrical drudgery in a few brief years, — endured 
 in agony, but remembered with satisfaction. In that 
 early day of the American theatre the actor was not 
 only received with applause behind tlie footlights, but 
 
HIS VISITS TO EUROPE. 45 
 
 was an object of admiring curiosity in private life. He 
 siiared with other public characters that most trying 
 of all ordeals, the praise of the street, the openly ut- 
 tered tribute of the passer-by. That such influences 
 are to-day much modified is well for the actor, since 
 they undoubtedly affected the bearing of Forrest and 
 other players of his time, giving them the air of being 
 always on parade before, as well as behind, the scenes. 
 The writer can remember when the presence of For- 
 rest upon Broadway attracted marked attention from 
 friend and foe, and led to a free exchange of opinions 
 upon his appearance, expressions of admiration or 
 condemnation being as vigorously offered as if in the 
 theatre itself. 
 
 Like all men who succeed in the pursuit of a diffi- 
 cult profession, he met with violent opposition, — the 
 more violent in his case, because his advance had been 
 so rapid and uninterrupted, and his upward course so 
 steadily pursued, that rivalry was baffled by his in- 
 dustry. Denying himself now the indulgences which 
 were the ruin of his fellows, he did not share their con- 
 vivial hours, but shunned the paths in which they were 
 blindly traveUing. We can find him at this period of 
 his hfe devoting himself to every research which tends 
 to the elevation and improvement of the mind. He 
 eagerly studied books and men, and gained, by appKca- 
 tion and self-denial, that precedence which he never 
 lost. If ever a man owed all he had acquired to the 
 theatre, it was Edwin Forrest. He was its child ; with- 
 in its walls all his experience of life had been gained, and 
 through its Kterature his mind had acquired almost the 
 only growth it ever knew. 
 
46 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 The retirement of Cooper left the stage to a band of 
 actors formed upon his style. Their names have long 
 since been forgotten ; but in absolute fitness for their 
 profession, in all the requirements for the characters 
 which each adopted, these early rivals of Forrest in 
 his starring career were foemen worthy of his steel, — his 
 equals in all things save constancy of wiU and fixedness 
 of purpose. From what is known to us of Augustus 
 Addams, he must have been an actor of uncommon 
 force. He was the idol of .his audiences, and held an 
 equal place with Forrest for a time in the estimation of 
 play-goers. With a fine and graceful physique, a voice 
 of great sweetness and power, and a keen compre- 
 hension of character, he made a great impression in 
 such heroic parts as Damon, Virginius, and Pierre. 
 He died at an age when his powers should have been 
 in their prime, a victim of that influence with which 
 a public so often suffocates, while embracing, its idol, 
 — popular applause. He was one of the greatest of 
 Forrest's competitors. 
 
 Another rival was John R. Scott, who displayed such 
 power that it was said of him by The Times, when 
 he appeared in London, that no actor possessing so 
 many beauties and so many faults had ever been seen 
 upon the English stage. Had he been true to himself, 
 he would undoubtedly have sternly contested the palm 
 of superiority \vith Forrest. To the actors of to-day, 
 educated in the modern sensational dramas, the splen- 
 dor of this company of tragedians seems unreal. The 
 list is too long for classification. It embraces Inger- 
 soU, " the silver-tongued," whose early manhood was 
 
HIS VISITS TO EUROPE. 47 
 
 the springtime of a glorious harvest destined never to 
 ripen j Charles Webb, Charles Eaton, and a long array 
 of noble names, which are now only to be found upon 
 tombstones, too early erected over their golden promise. 
 That they did not hold out to the end is a sad reflec- 
 tion, — they were so gifted, so generous, and might 
 have done so much for an art which repays industry so 
 liberally. He only reached the goal who had avoided 
 their errors and profited by their example. 
 
 The success which had greeted Forrest on his first 
 appearance in New York was renewed in every city in 
 the land. In Boston, where the people are proverbially 
 slow to admit new candidates to their regard, he sprang 
 into favor at once ; and he writes to his mother in 
 great glee at having gained a reputation in " the Mod- 
 ern Athens." Fortune attended fame, and filled his 
 pockets as the breath .of adulation filled his heart. 
 Generous and open in all things else, he was yet cau- 
 tious in his money affairs, and soon laid aside a sum with 
 which to purchase a home for his beloved mother and 
 sisters. When he had paid the last pe-nny of debt left 
 by his father, and had seen the shelter raised over the 
 head of his living family, he rejoiced in the goodness of 
 that Providence which had led him by so many thorny 
 paths into the road where roses bloomed and the laurel 
 grew. In every city he began now to make valuable 
 friends, of a class whose culture and experience aided 
 his studies, while they stimulated his pride. Here was 
 inaugurated that friendship with James Oakes, which 
 only ceased when the grave closed over the lifeless clay 
 of Forrest ; while with Barry Taylor, of Kentucky, he 
 
48 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 formed a friendship which was at all times an inspira- 
 tion and a delight. 
 
 With a patriotic love for all things American, Forrest 
 formed a plan for the encouragement or development 
 of an American drama, which resulted in heavy money 
 losses to himself, but produced such contributions to 
 our stage literature as the "Gladiator," "Jack Cade," 
 and "Metamora." He was laughed at for his pains, 
 and his outlay in money was the penalty he paid for 
 his generous beUef in the abihty of his countrymen to 
 create a drama that was to be purely national. 
 
 After five years of constant labor he felt that he had 
 earned the right to a holiday, and he fonned his plans 
 for a two years' absence in Europe. His fame had pre- 
 ceded him : he had several offers to appear profession- 
 ally ; but he was determined that study and observation 
 should be his only employment in the Old World. A 
 farewell banquet was tendered him by the citizens of 
 New York, and a brilliant assemblage gathered to speak 
 the words of cheer and bon voyage, and give the young 
 actor a substantial proof of the loving estimation in 
 which he was held by his countrymen. A medal was 
 struck in honor of the occasion. Bryant, Halleck, Leg- 
 gett, Ingraham, and other distinguished men were pres- 
 ent. The affair was a gratifying one, and an honor which 
 had never before been paid to an American actor. 
 
 In July, 1834, he sailed in the good ship " Sully " for 
 Europe, bidding farewell to the land of his birth, which 
 had given him fame and fortune, and for which he 
 entertained a Roman's love of country. Landing at 
 Havre, he went directly to Paris, to enjoy the wonders 
 
HIS VISITS TO EUROPE. 
 
 49 
 
 of that glittering capital, so dazzling to the traveller who 
 looks upon her for the first time that all the senses are 
 lost in that of admiration. Louis Philippe, the Citizen 
 King, was on the throne, and to him the young Demo- 
 crat was presented, standing somewhat reluctantly in a 
 deferential attitude before a royalty which in his heart 
 he despised. His only royalties were those of God's 
 creating, — genius and endeavor. Upon the tomb of 
 Talma he laid a laurel wreath, feeling sincere reverence 
 for the man who had ennobled his calling, and who, while 
 sharing the close friendship of the great Napoleon, to 
 whom he had shown kindness when kindness was rare 
 to that child of Destiny, refused to accept any favor at 
 his hands in his hours of triumph. Among those who 
 stood at the brilliant receptions at the Tuileries, dukes 
 and marshals, princes and queens, the dignified form 
 of Talma could be' seen honored by the smile of him 
 before whose few gifts nobility cringed and genius de- 
 graded itself Forrest admired Mademoiselle Mars as 
 the first real comedienne he had seen, and even in the 
 awkward display of an amateur conservatoire perform- 
 ance he detected the genius which afterwards dazzled 
 the world in the person of Rachel. Passing on through 
 Italy, across the Alps, he stood beside the gate of Altorf ; 
 he climbed the peaks immortalized by Tell, and there, 
 amid the solitudes where Swiss liberty was born, he 
 shouted with wild pleasure the lines which Eoiowles has 
 put in that hero's mouth : — 
 
 " Ye crags and peaks, I 'm with ye once again, 
 I call to you, with all my voice ; I hold 
 To you the hands you first beheld, to show 
 They still are free." 
 
50 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Actors are usually dreamers, and how must Forrest 
 have enjoyed his realization of all his early visions and 
 ambitions, as he saw the scenes through which he had 
 passed in mimic life. No tourist ever visits the wonders 
 of the Old World with the same childish delight which 
 fiUs the actor's soul who sees them for the first time. 
 With every spot the name of Shakspere is associated, 
 some incident or line suggesting his presence in those 
 sacred scenes. To stand in Venice and recall the words 
 of the Moor ; to fancy he can see here the footprints 
 of that hero, beside whose imaginative glory the actual 
 deeds of a Dandolo or a Foscari pale into insignificance ; 
 to cross the bridge whereon Antonio had " many a time 
 and oft" rated old Shylock "about his moneys and 
 his usances,'' — this is to find among those scenes, be- 
 side those wave-washed palaces, such realities as history 
 cannot furnish. Contrasting his present place and fu- 
 ture hopes with those to which in his youth he seemed 
 destined, Forrest must have felt a rising in the throat 
 which choked all utterance. 
 
 He went to Poland and to Moscow ; to Constantino- 
 ple, the wretched remains of the proudest empire ever 
 built upon the miseries of mankind ; across the Euxine 
 into Asia Minor ; to Africa ; to Naples, visiting the tomb 
 of Juliet ; and at last he set his foot upon the mother- 
 land, that shore inlaid with the mosaic of poetry and 
 history, consecrated to all that is grand in the past of 
 that race from which we draw our language, our glory, 
 and the basis of our laws, the land of Shakspere, the 
 birthplace of our drama, the nursery of Burbage, of 
 Betterton, of Garrick, Macready, Kean, and all the 
 
HIS VISITS TO EUROPE. 51 
 
 Kembles, the green fields, the smUing villages, the his- 
 toric associations, all clustered around the magic name, 
 England. 
 
 Here he found himself surrounded by many friends 
 awaiting to do him honor and urging him to act. He 
 yielded so far to this pressure as to consent to return 
 at once from America, to which he must now depart. 
 He had been absent two years when he landed in New 
 York, early in September, 1836. He was welcomed by 
 his many admirers with all the enthusiasm of friend- 
 ship, and he arranged to play two engagements during 
 the brief stay he was to make before his return to 
 London. 
 
 His reappearance at the Walnut Street Theatre, Phil- 
 adelphia, in September, was the occasion of an ovation 
 in every respect. Hundreds were turned away from 
 the doors, and the neighborhood of the theatre was 
 thronged with those who had failed to gain admittance. 
 He played Damon, and, on his entrance, a demonstra- 
 tion took place unusual even in a theatre, where applause 
 is so common. Men rose to their feet and cheered, 
 ladies waved their handkerchiefs, and it was some min- 
 utes before the tumult of welcome subsided and the 
 play was allowed to proceed. His speech at the close 
 evoked fresh enthusiasm. He gave six performances 
 only on this occasion, and each saw a repetition of the 
 scene at the beginning of the engagement. The re- 
 ceipts were the largest ever known in that theatre. His 
 return to his native city under such circumstances, and 
 the rapturous welcome given him, where those he loved 
 could share in his pride, touched him deeply. He 
 
52 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 bade farewell to New York in six performances, imme- 
 diately following those given in Philadelphia, and his 
 reception in that city was equally flattering. The scenes 
 at the doors were repeated, while the enthusiasm of 
 the audience seemed to pass aU bounds. He played 
 " Othello," " Lear," " Damon and Pythias," " Hamlet," 
 "Rolla," " Metamora," and "Virginius," and was sup- 
 ported by such artists as John H. Clarke (as Iago),1o\ai 
 Mason (as Macdujf), Peter Richings (as King Clau- 
 dius), Henry Placide (as Polonius), WiUiam H. Chip- 
 pendale (as the Grave-digger), W. S. Fredericks (as 
 Kenf), Mrs. Sharpe (as Emelia and Ophelia), Mrs. 
 Richardson (as Desdemona), and Miss Charlotte Cush- 
 man (as Queen Gertrude and Goneril). He was paid five 
 hundred dollars per night, and the receipts were about 
 fifteen hundred dollars, which left a large margin of 
 profit to the delighted manager of the Park. 
 
 On the 19th of September, 1836, Forrest embarked 
 once more for the mother-country, this time with seri- 
 ous purpose. After a speedy and uneventful passage 
 he reached England, and at once set about the prelim- 
 inary business of his British engagement, which began 
 October 17, 1836. He was the first really great Amer- 
 ican actor who had appeared in London as a rival of 
 the English tragedians ; for Cooper was bom in Eng- 
 land, though always regarded as belonging to the 
 younger country. 
 
 A brief summary only will be given here of this en- 
 gagement ; it will again be touched upon when we come 
 to speak of other performances in Great Britain, and the 
 incidents which grew out of them at home and abroad. 
 
HIS VISITS TO EUROPE. 
 
 S3 
 
 His opening part was Spartacus, in the " Gladiator." 
 The play was condemned, the actor applauded. In 
 spite of the special fitness which he showed for this 
 character, he was not able to make it acceptable to the 
 English public. They acknowledged the vigor of his 
 style, the ruggedness of his methods, and appreciated 
 all the magnetic qualities of the man ; but it was in his 
 Shaksperean performances that they recognized and 
 confessed his fitness to take the place of their own 
 great actors. • In Othello, in Lear, and in Macbeth he 
 won instant fame. The audience gave their applause 
 spontaneously, and the press generally spoke in his 
 favor. The part of Damon, however, was declared to 
 be beneath his powers. 
 
 He began his engagement October 17, and closed 
 December 19, having acted Macbeth seven times, 
 Othello nine, and King Lear eight. 
 
 The cast of the " Gladiator," at Drury Lane, Octo- 
 ber 17, 1836, on the night of Mr. Forrest's first appear- 
 ance in England, is worthy of preservation. It is not 
 to be found in any of the more extended biographies 
 of the actor. 
 
 Marcus Lucinius Crassus Mr. Warde. 
 
 Gellius Mr. F. Cooke. 
 
 Lentulus Mr. Hooper. 
 
 JORIUS Mr. Bartley. 
 
 Bracchius Mr. Matthews. 
 
 Florus Mr. Brindal. 
 
 Spartacus Mr. E. Forrest 
 
 Phasarius Mr. Cooper. 
 
 Enomais Mr. Baker. 
 
 Crixus Mr. Duruset. 
 
54 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 MuMMius Mr. Mears. 
 
 ScROPHA Mr. Honner. 
 
 Boy Miss Marshall. 
 
 Centurion T. Matthews. 
 
 Julia (her first appearance) Mrs. Hooper. 
 
 Senona (her first appearance in five years) . Miss Huddart. 
 
 Of this occasion the London Times, October i8, 
 1836, wrote : — • 
 
 " Drury Lane Theatre. — Mr. Edwin Forrest, who 
 has established a high reputation in America, his native 
 country, as a tragedian, appeared for the first time before 
 an English audience at this theatre last night. The char- 
 acter selected for his debut was that of Spariacus, in the 
 tragedy of that title, written by Mr. Bird, also an Amer- 
 ican. IVIr. Forrest was received with hearty warmth, 
 whicli from the first moment of his appearance left no 
 doubt, if any could have been entertained, that the audi- 
 ence were well disposed to accept his exertions for their 
 entertainment. He is a tall, rather robust man, of some 
 thirty years of age, not remarkably handsome, but with 
 expressive features and that cast of countenance which is 
 well suited for theatrical effect. His voice is remarkably 
 powerful, his figure rather vigorous than elegant, and his 
 X general appearance prepossessing. The subject of the 
 tragedy is one admirably adapted for scenic representa- 
 tion, and has already been essayed in the French and 
 German theatres. . . . The latter part of the play is less 
 vigorous than the former; but there are some scenes of 
 stirring interest, in which IVIr. Forrest made a powerful 
 impression on the audience. The poetry of the drama is 
 rather powerful than polished ; and although it contains 
 some passages of considerable beauty, it is more generally 
 characterized by a rough, passionate strain, in which 
 gracefulness is sacrificed to force. One speech in which 
 Spartacus describes the beauty of his Thracian valleys 
 
HIS VISITS TO EUROPE. 55 
 
 before the invasion of the Romans, and contrasts it with 
 the devastation which had followed their footsteps, struck 
 us as being particularly happy. At the conclusion of the 
 play Mr. Forrest was called for, and began to address the 
 audience, — a practice not usual nor safe, at least on this 
 side of the Atlantic. He thanked them for the reception 
 they had bestowed on him, and expressed his satisfaction 
 in finding in that reception a proof of their good-will 
 towards America. Now, although their praises were warm 
 and hearty, they were given to him personally and simply 
 because they thought he deserved them, and would have 
 been just as freely bestowed if he had come from Kamt- 
 schatka as from New York. There are no national preju- 
 dices between an audience and an actor, nor anywhere 
 else in this country, which could make it for a moment 
 questionable that a deserving artist would be well received 
 from whatever quarter of the globe he arrived. When, 
 however, Mr. Forrest, encouraged by the applause, began 
 to thank them for the favors they had shown to the trag- 
 edy, he provoked some dissent, the audience not seeming 
 to think as highly of the poet as of the player. So Mr. 
 Forrest made his bow and retired. 
 
 " We shall be glad to see him in some other character, 
 and if he acquits himself hereafter as well as he did on 
 this occasion, he will have no reason to be dissatisfied 
 with his voyage, and the theatre will have engaged an able 
 performer, who to very considerable skill in his profession 
 adds the attraction of a somewhat novel and a much more 
 spirited style of playing than any other tragic actor now 
 on our stage." 
 
 Henry Wikoff, who was present at Forrest's English 
 debut, gives the following account of the scene : — 
 
 " On the 17th of October [1836] he made his first bow 
 to the British public. Old Drury was crowded from pit 
 
56 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 to ceiling with an eager and excited audience. All the 
 friends of the popular actors of the day congregated in 
 force. The American minister [Andrew Stevenson, of 
 Virginia], and all the fellow-countrymen of Forrest, were 
 likewise present. There was silence until Spartacus, the 
 Gladiator, came forward, when a hearty shout of welcome 
 broke forth from all parts of the house. His magnificent 
 person astonished those who had never seen him ; his 
 rich and powerful voice thrilled all who had not heard 
 it ; his earnest, impassioned acting quite electrified the 
 audience. At the end he was overwhelmed with ap- 
 plause, and it was plain he had secured a hold on British 
 sympathies, which he never lost. There was a clique 
 present who were disappointed by his success, and when 
 he appeared, at the general demand, to make his acknowl- 
 edgments, they raised the cry of ' Shakspere, Shakspere ! ' 
 Their object was evident. The partisans of the popular 
 actors of the time knew it would be easier to arouse 
 opposition to a foreigner should he attempt a role the 
 public were accustomed to see played according to the 
 idiosyncrasies of the tragedians who had successfully 
 assumed them, and which only proved my judgment 
 was correct in suggesting an original part for Forrest's 
 debut:' 
 
 Besides the direct glories of the theatre, social cour- 
 tesies were tendered Forrest. The then unusual honor 
 of a dinner at the Garrick Club was offered and accepted. 
 Here he sat down with Charles Kemble and Macready. 
 Sergeant Talfourd was in the chair, and a host of Eng- 
 land's greatest men filled the spacious room. It was 
 during this engagement that he first met the lady whom 
 he afterwards married, — Miss Catherine Sinclair. Thus 
 his first engagement in England resulted, to all appear- 
 
HIS VISITS TO EUROPE. 
 
 57 
 
 ance, happily, leading to new alliances, dramatic and 
 domestic, to financial prosperity and general esteem. 
 
 His return to America was the signal for ovations of 
 every kind, social and professional. He now enjoyed 
 great public favor, and horses, steamers, and carriages 
 were called by the name of America's greatest actor. 
 He resumed his American engagements on the 15 th of 
 November, 1837, at the old Chestnut Street Theatre, 
 Philadelphia, where he played for one month to over- 
 flowing houses. On the nth of December a great 
 banquet was tendered him by Nicholas Biddle, Hon. 
 J. R. IngersoU, Dr. Samuel Jackson, Colonel John 
 B. Wetherill, Hon. John Swift, Colonel James Page, 
 Morton McMichael, Robert T. Conrad, Robert Morris, 
 and other distinguished gentlemen of his native city. 
 The speech of the evening was by Chief Justice Gib- 
 son, who gave as a toast, " The Stage and its Master" 
 Forrest's reply was in excellent taste, and his allusions 
 to his own early days in his native place, his struggles, 
 his encouragements, and, lastly, the present happy re- 
 sult, were received with great enthusiasm. 
 
 He now entered upon his regular engagements 
 through the different cities of the Union, meeting every- 
 where with the same success, amassing a fortune, and 
 enjoying the intimacy of some of the best spirits of 
 the land. He had reached the summit of his fame. 
 The idol of a nation, high in honor, happy in wealth, 
 married to a young and lovely woman who could sym- 
 pathize with all his lofty aspirations, — who could fore- 
 tell disaster from such a happy and fortuitous condition 
 of affairs? 
 
58 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE ASTOR PLACE RIOT. 
 
 'HP' HE fatal riot which occurred in Astor Place was 
 -*- the culmination of a quarrel between Forrest and 
 Macready, which had been growing for years. Other 
 events of Forrest's life were so involved in the career of 
 Macready that a sketch of the latter will not be out of 
 place here. William Charles Macready was not destined 
 by his parents for a player's hfe, although he was the son 
 of a celebrated country actor and manager, who had 
 conducted one of the great English circuits for several 
 years with varying success, playing important characters 
 himself. William was sent to a preparatory school with 
 the intention of giving him the advantages of a univer- 
 sity training. Disaster came to the affairs of the father, 
 however, and the education of the son was interrupted 
 just at the moment when he was about to mount to a 
 high place in the school. Disappointed at this con- 
 dition of things, but with much honesty of purpose, he 
 turned to the profession of his father, taking his place 
 in the active management of the circuit, and at last 
 making his appearance as an actor. He had many op- 
 portunities for study, although as much work on his 
 hands as he could well perform. He succeeded in 
 
THE ASTOR PLACE RIOT. 59 
 
 placing the family affairs on a more prosperous footing, 
 paid the pressing debts of his father, and, .after several 
 years of provincial work, found a place at last in Lon- 
 don, that metropolis towards which the provincial Eng- 
 lish actor looks with hungry longing. 
 
 Macready was a scholar, and he was a worker ; but 
 he had no love for his calling. It had robbed him of 
 the prize which seemed so close to his hand, — a good 
 social position and lettered ease. Diligently he strove 
 to rise from the lower ranks of his new profession, 
 but the superior qualities of his rivals stood ever in his 
 way. He seemed to possess none of, the requisites 
 for an actor, save industry; he was gaunt and an- 
 gular, had an unmusical voice and an awkward man- 
 ner, possessing none of that magnetic quaUty which 
 wins the auditor oftentimes before the interest of the 
 character has unfolded itself in the plot ; but he was 
 an enormous worker, with a soul boiling against his 
 surroundings. With an ambition which jealousy tinc- 
 tured and made contemptible, he spared no pains, he 
 shunned no task which could help him on towards the 
 height on which his eyes were fixed. The heavy parts 
 in the plays fell to him, and his manner suited them 
 admirably. He contended with such theatrical giants 
 as the last of the Kembles, Charles Young, Junius 
 Brutus Booth, and Edmund Kean. His style was un- 
 like thehs ; his work was cold, full of scholarship and of 
 study, but not impulsive or spontaneous. He was com- 
 pelled to give place for many years to men whose ex- 
 cellence and superiority he never would confess ; but 
 they were the idols of the pubhc, and by their side 
 
6o EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Macready never held any other than a subordinate rank. 
 It is said that when the play of the " Apostate " was 
 brought to the theatre by the author, the elder Booth, 
 who was enamored of Miss O'Neill, then the darling of 
 the London public, and the greatest actress of her day, 
 declined the part of Pescara, the villain, which he 
 afterwards made so famous, and demanded that of 
 Hcmeya, the lover of Florinda, that he might play the 
 love scenes with the O'Neill. This incident placed the 
 part in Macready's hands ; and it was the first great hit 
 he had made in London. The character was soon re- 
 sumed by Booth, for whom it was intended, and never 
 afterwards acted by Macready. At length, one by one, 
 the great men who had been in the way of his advance- 
 ment were removed, and he stood in the front rank of 
 his profession. All the harshness of his nature now ap- 
 peared ; he became haughty and offensive to all about 
 him, subservient only to the aristocracy, but still working 
 at his art with the spirit of a slave at the galleys. He was 
 of an economical nature, and soon accumulated means. 
 He quarrelled with and left his old manager, and, aided 
 by the wealthy friends whom he had never failed to pro- 
 pitiate, became himself a manager, inaugurating a series 
 of revivals of old plays magnificent beyond the experi- 
 ence of that day. His research and scholarship at- 
 tracted to the theatre learned men, and he gave a 
 healthy impetus to dramatic taste which will ever be 
 his crown. He put himself prominently forward in 
 these revivals, but they were none the less creditable 
 and admirable. His career as a manager was marked 
 by tyranny and cruelty. He had no friends in those 
 
THE ASTOR PLACE RIOT. 6l 
 
 who served him ; he allowed no rivals to stand between 
 him and the public. When Ryder once remonstrated 
 with him upon some occasion of punished insubordina- 
 tion, and told him he was a tyrant, Macready replied : 
 " No, sir ; I am not a tyrant. I am a despot." He 
 dearly loved a lord ; he dearly hated his profession, — 
 but it gave him all he had ; without it he would be 
 nothing. Like Congreve, before him, he had a snob's 
 contempt for his art, and was more proud of his social 
 position than of his reputation as an actor, well merit- 
 ing from the Voltaires of his day the rebuke of the old 
 French philosopher who, on the well-known occasion 
 of his visit to the author of " The Double Dealer " and 
 " Love for Love," so pointedly declared that he had 
 called, not upon Congreve the gentleman, but upon 
 Congreve the writer, adding, " If you had been no 
 more than a gentleman, sir, I would not have been 
 here." 
 
 Macready, however, attracted to the theatre some of 
 the ablest contemporary writers ; and the best stage 
 editions of the plays of his time are those which bear 
 the marks of- his directing talent. He was the original 
 of more than one hundred characters, and became at 
 last recognized as the great representative English actor. 
 He was the friend of Bulwer, of Dickens, of Forster, 
 and of Talfourd, and was so tenacious of what he con- 
 sidered his dignity that he never permitted his children 
 to see him in any of his characters for fear they might 
 conceive contempt for his authority. He was a despot 
 at home as well as in the theatre. He kept a diary 
 which speaks wonders for his diligence and his industry. 
 
62 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 but shows the violent, impetuous nature that was con- 
 stantly leading him into difficulties, as constantly, how- 
 ever, to be regretted on bended knees. Some parts of 
 this diary resemble the Confessions of Rousseau. He 
 seemed to bear a scourging monitor within his breast, 
 and that monitor was ever applying the scourge. 
 
 His performances were models of mechanism, they 
 lacked the divine spark which is called genius, but were 
 yet penetrated by an intelligence which gave them un- 
 usually attractive power. He was greatest in such parts 
 as Richelieu, Werner, and Cassius, where a certain an- 
 gularity of mind and body are not out of place, and 
 where a dry subtlety and a studied declamation are ac- 
 cepted in lieu of magnetic powers. No two men could 
 be more unlike than were Macready and Forrest, — the 
 one scholarly, mechanical, cold, laboring without love 
 in the hard traces of his profession ; the other open, 
 frank, and an ardent lover of whatever he was called 
 upon in his art to do. A good illustration of the self- 
 consciousness of Macready is given in one of the pages 
 of his diary. He is going to the first performance of 
 Bulwer's "Money," after many rehearsals, and much 
 care on his part ; and he ingenuously notes that " he is 
 certain the play will fail because there are two other 
 good parts in the piece." These are the conflicting 
 elements which form the character of one of the most 
 noted actors of his age, or any age ; but when all is said, 
 common justice demands the acknowledgment that the 
 modern theatre owes more to the industry of AMUiam 
 Macready than to the example of any other actor who 
 preceded or followed him. The stage needed just such 
 
THE ASTOR PLACE RIOT. 63 
 
 a laborer to show to the followers of Edmund Kean that 
 genius alone is not able to advance the highest purpose 
 of any art. By his constant and untiring will he per- 
 formed a herculean task, and he restored to the stage 
 a more careful and more cultivated study of its aims 
 and ends. With all the elaboration of modern French 
 comedy he united some of the deepest subtleties of the 
 old masters of the dramatic art ; and the weird tragedy 
 of " Macbeth " under his skilful mechanism was en- 
 dowed with such an amount of faithful detail that the 
 play became almost a new work, and gave his own 
 performance a place beyond the power of any rival! 
 No career is so instructive to the young actor as that 
 of Macready, in spite of the offensive nature of the 
 man. 
 
 He occupied a place in the English theatre which at 
 his retirement remained vacant for twenty years, until 
 Henry Irving advanced to fill it with some of the same 
 powerful qualities of his predecessor, much of his in- 
 dustry, but none of his coldness for his fellow-men. 
 Macready's life was that of a scholar, a gentieman, and 
 a good citizen. He fulfilled all the requirements of his 
 social fife, and retired at last from an art which he hated, 
 rich in fortune, fame, and friends. True to his princi- 
 ples to the last hour of his professional life, he is said 
 to have told his servant, when he was going to take his 
 leave forever of the pubhc, to " hold the curtain close 
 when he came off, that he might not be annoyed by the 
 adieus of those actors." He never concealed his con- 
 tempt for Charles Kean, who rivalled him in his last 
 years, and of whom he always spoke as " the son of his 
 
64 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 father." Enough has been shown of Macready's life to 
 make it clear that when Forrest went to England, he 
 was likely to find that actor's friendship warm or cold, 
 as he succeeded or failed. Macready had. appeared in 
 America in 1826, playing in New York, Philadelphia, 
 and other large cities, but with moderate success. His 
 style was not pleasing to the masses, more used to the 
 robust method of Cooper or the fiery genius of Booth, 
 although he attracted the notice of scholars and the 
 polite circles generally. He had brought letters which 
 gave him the entrte to many hospitable houses, but his 
 friends could not stir up popular feeling in his favor. 
 He returned in 1827, feeling that he had not been ap- 
 preciated here. 
 
 He was courteous to Forrest on his first visit, and a 
 seeming friendship sprang up between the two men. 
 Macready was an old friend of the lady who became 
 the wife of Forrest, and they often met under Sinclair's 
 roof. He was one of the honored guests at the cere- 
 mony of their marriage, and seemed happy in the suc- 
 cess which the young actor was gaining in a foreign 
 land. Years passed on, and Macready came again to 
 America, reappearing in 1843. Forrest was then at 
 the height of his fame, and the performances of Mac- 
 ready compared unfavorably in the mind of the pub- 
 lic with those of their own actor. The papers entered 
 into a wordy discussion upon the merits of the rival 
 stars, and considerable feeling was aroused on both 
 sides, national jealousy often stepping in to make mat- 
 ters worse. Macready returned to his own country 
 with hatred in his heart for the man who had been the 
 
THE ASTOR PLACE RIOT. 65 
 
 cause, as he thought, of his second American failure. 
 When Forrest went to London in 1845, he was met on 
 the night of his opening with a storm of hisses, and he 
 was compelled after a few nights to give up his engage- 
 ment and retire. Forrest at once charged the violence 
 of his reception upon Macready, whether justly or un- 
 justly can never be known, and declared that by his 
 means John Forster and a clique of London critics had 
 joined together to virrite and hiss him down. The jour- 
 nals which on his former visit had been loud in his 
 praises could now find no words strong enough to 
 paint his barbarous faults. 
 
 Social intercourse was broken off by Forrest, who held 
 Macready directly responsible for his reception. He 
 travelled through the provinces, and at Edinburgh one 
 night, while sitting in a box to see Macready's Hamlet, 
 he was foolish enough to hiss him in what he called a 
 pas de mouchoir in the play scene. This act, opposed 
 to good taste, and the duty which the actor owes to 
 his public and to himself, was at once reported in 
 the newspapers, and led to letters of crimination and 
 recrimination, which made the quarrel an open scan- 
 dal, not only in England, but in America, where the 
 articles were copied and read by the friends and foes 
 of both men. 
 
 Mr. Macready's first impressions of this unfortunate 
 affair, recorded in his diary, are interesting here, and 
 are quoted in full : — 
 
 " Edinburgh, March 2, 1846. — Acted Hamlet, really 
 with particular care, energy, and discrimination. The au- 
 dience gave less applause to the first soliloquy than I am 
 5 
 
66 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 in the habit of receiving ; but I was bent on acting the 
 part, and I felt, if I can feel at all, that I had strongly 
 excited them, and that their sympathies were cordially, 
 indeed enthusiastically, with me. On reviewing the per- 
 formance, I can conscientiously pronounce it one of the 
 very best I have given of Hamlet. At the waving of the 
 handkerchief before the play, and ' I must be idle,' a man 
 on the right side of the stage — upper boxes or gallery, 
 but said to be upper boxes — hissed ! The audience 
 took it up, and I waved the more, and bowed derisively 
 and contemptuously to the individual. The audience car- 
 ried it, though he was very stanch to his purpose. It 
 discomposed me, and, alas ! might have ruined many ; but 
 I bore it down. I thought of speaking to the audience, 
 if called on, and spoke to Murray about it, but he, 
 very discreetly, dissuaded me. Was called for and very 
 warmly greeted. Ryder came and spoke to me, and told 
 me that the hisser was observed, and said to be a Mr. 
 
 W , who was in company with Mr. Forrest. The 
 
 man writes in the Journal, a paper depreciating me and 
 eulogizing Mr. F., sent to me from this place." 
 
 Forrest came back to his o\vn country -with a raging 
 heart against England and Englishmen, and particularly 
 against William C. Macready. The case became an 
 international one, — the quarrel of John Bull and his 
 young offspring, Brother Jonathan. Forrest's reception 
 became a matter of patriotism ; the Democracy rallied 
 as one man to vindicate his honor and that of the na- 
 tion insulted in his person. It was well knowni that, 
 while he had been denied a fair hearing in London, on 
 account, perhaps, of Macready's secret opposition, he 
 had gained tlie applause of all the provinces through 
 
THE ASTOR PLACE RIOT. 6^ 
 
 which he played immediately after his London faUure ; 
 but this fact did not weigh in the minds of his ardent 
 friends. A storm was brewing which only waited the 
 return of Macready to burst and scatter death and de- 
 struction in its course. 
 
 It was during this interval — in June, 1847 — that 
 Edwin Forrest's mother died, an event which gave his 
 heart a shock more violent than any it had before known. 
 Her death lent a sombre coloring to the joy with which 
 fame and success in his art were now filling his soul, and 
 over her grave he shed bitter tears. 
 
 In September, 1848, Macready returned to America. 
 A plan was formed, but defeated by Forrest to whom 
 it was submitted, that Macready should be hissed 
 from the stage. Macready, in one of his speeches 
 before the curtain, unwisely alluded to this rumored at- 
 tempt, in order, it seemed, to gain sympathy for him- 
 self. He was openly hissed in Forrest's native city, 
 and there, before the curtain, alluded to the scene in 
 Edinburgh, where Forrest had hissed him. Forrest 
 replied to this in a violent and ungentlemanly letter the 
 next day in the public prints. Macready responded, 
 and threatened a lawsuit. Forrest had stigmatized him 
 as an "aged driveller," Macready then being a little 
 more than fifty years of age. In a subsequent " card " 
 Forrest declared that he solemnly believed Macready 
 had instigated his friends in England to write him 
 down, and to drive him from the field. 
 
 The honors in this wordy squabble were all with Mac- 
 ready, who preserved his dignity while defending his 
 cause. Forrest's outbreaks were in direct violation of 
 
68 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 good taste. The papers were full of the quarrel, and 
 different sides were taken by Americans as well as 
 foreigners. The following " card," from the Philadel- 
 phia Pennsylvanian of November 22, 1848, is emi- 
 nently characteristic of Forrest, and will give a fair 
 idea of the manner in which the wordy war was waged 
 on his part : — 
 
 " Mr. Macready, in his speech last night to the audi- 
 ence assembled at the Arch Street Theatre, made allusion, 
 I understand, to an ' American actor ' who had the temerity 
 on one occasion 'openly to hiss him.' This is true, and, 
 by the way, the only truth which I have been enabled to 
 gather from the whole scope of his address. But why say 
 'an American actor' ? Why not openly charge me with 
 the act ? for I did it, and publicly avowed it in The Tunes 
 newspaper, of London, and at the same time asserted my 
 right to do so. 
 
 " On the occasion alluded to, Mr. Macready introduced 
 a fancy dance into his performance of Hamlet, which I 
 designated as a pas de moiichoir, and which I hissed, for 
 I thought it a desecration of the scene ; and the audience 
 thought so, too ; for, a few nights afterwards, when Mr. 
 Macready repeated the part of Hamlet with the same 
 'tomfoolery,' the intelligent audience greeted it with an 
 universal hiss. 
 
 " Mr. Macready is stated to have said last night that 
 he ' had never entertained towards me a feeling of un- 
 kindness.' I unhesitatingly pronounce this to be a wilful 
 and unblushing falsehood. I most solemnly aver, and do 
 believe, that Mr. Macready, instigated by his narrow, en- 
 vious mind and selfish fears, did secretly — not openly — 
 suborn several writers for the English press to write me 
 down. Among them was one Forster, a ' toady ' of the 
 
THE AS TOR PLACE RIOT. 69 
 
 eminent tragedian, — one who is ever ready to do his dirty 
 worlc ; and this Forster, at the bidding of his patron, at- 
 taclced me in print, even before I had appeared upon 
 the London boards, and continued to abuse me at every 
 opportunity afterwards. 
 
 " I assert also, and solemnly believe, that Mr. Mac- 
 ready connived, when his friends went to the theatre in 
 London, to hiss me, and did hiss me, with the purpose of 
 driving me from the stage; and all this happened many 
 months before the affair at Edinburgh, to which Mr. 
 Macready refers, and in relation to which he jesuitically 
 remarks, that ' until that act he never entertained to- 
 wards me a feeling of unkindness.' Pah ! Mr. Mac- 
 ready has no feeling of kindness for any actor who is 
 likely by his talent to stand in his way. His whole 
 course as manager and as actor proves this. There is 
 nothing in him but self — self — self; and his own coun- 
 trymen, the English actors, know this well. Mr. Mac- 
 ready has a very lively imagination, and often draws 
 upon it for his facts. He said, in a speech at New York, 
 that there also there was an ' organized opposition ' to him, 
 which is likewise false. There was no opposition mani- 
 fested towards him there, for I was in the city at the 
 time, and careful to watch every movement with regard to 
 such a matter. Many of my friends called upon me when 
 Mr. Macready was announced to perform, and proposed 
 to drive him from the stage, for his conduct to me in 
 London. My advice was, do nothing ; let the superan- 
 nuated driveller alone ; to oppose him would be but to 
 make him of some importance. My friends agreed with 
 me that it was at least the most dignified course to pur- 
 sue ; and it was immediately adopted. With regard to an 
 ' organized opposition ' to him in Boston, that is, I believe, 
 equally false. But perhaps, in charity to the poor old 
 
70 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 man, I should impute these ' chimeras dire ' rather to the 
 disturbed state of his guilty conscience than to any desire 
 on his part wilfully to misrepresent." 
 
 On the yth of May, 1848, Macready began an en- 
 gagement at the Astor Place Opera House, under 
 the management of J. H. Hackett. The theatre was 
 packed by his enemies, and he was hooted from the 
 stage. He prepared to return to his own country, but 
 was persuaded by his friends to remain, in order that 
 he might see how far the public indorsed the opposition 
 against him. An invitation to this effect, signed by 
 many of the best citizens of New York, was taken as a 
 defiance by the admirers of Forrest, who prepared to 
 meet the issue. Forrest was playing at the Broadway 
 Theatre, and on the i6th of May Macready, at the 
 Astor Place house, was announced to reappear as Mac- 
 beth. The authorities had been called to the aid of the 
 signers of the call, and when the doors were opened 
 the theatre was instantly filled by a crowd of persons 
 favorable to the actor, while the great mass of his ene- 
 mies were excluded. These filled the street, however, 
 while the few who did gain admission showed then- 
 opposition upon the appearance of Macready. At the 
 first attempt the assailants were confronted by a body 
 of Macready's friends within the theatre too powerful to 
 be resisted; but the majority without added a threat- 
 ening reinforcement when the decisive moment for vio- 
 lence should arrive. 
 
 The play was stopped, Macready, hustled from the 
 back door, in the cloak of a friend, barely escaped with 
 his life, and the mimic tragedy within doors gave way 
 
THE ASTOR PLACE RIOT. yi 
 
 to the approaching real tragedy without. The theatre 
 was attacked on all sides by the mob, and its destruc- 
 tion seemed inevitable. Troops were called out, the 
 order was given to disperse, the angry crowd only 
 hooted a reply of derision, the riot act was read amid 
 the yells and oaths of the blood-seeking rabble, stones 
 and missiles were hurled at the Seventh Regiment, the 
 police gave way before the overpowering numbers of 
 the mob, and at last, the soldiers, sore pressed, wounded, 
 and nearly demoralized by the assaults which they were 
 not allowed to repulse, were called upon to fire. They 
 responded with blank cartridges, which only increased 
 the fury of the crowd. A pause, and then the order 
 was given to load with balls. A volley was fired ; the 
 cries were hushed, the smoke cleared away, the ground 
 was red with the blood of some thirty unfortunate men, 
 the rioters vanished into 'the darkness before that hail of 
 wrath, and the stain of blood was upon that quarrel 
 which began far away in Old England and ended so 
 tragically here. 
 
 Macready returned home full of manly regret for 
 the horror which had clouded his American visit, and 
 Forrest at once lost the support of what is called the 
 " upper classes " of his own people. This quarrel 
 with Macready has been given at some length, be- 
 cause it exercised an important influence upon the 
 career of Forrest. The right which he claimed to hiss 
 a brother actor cannot be defended. He was too 
 great a man to descend to such pitiful revenge. He 
 was, however, now more than ever an object of interest 
 to his more humble admirers ; and certain ardent patri- 
 
72 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 ots saw in him, or fancied they did, a champion of 
 American resistance to English assumption. He lived 
 to learn that the fame of a great actor, so hard to at- 
 tain, is stUl harder to keep. Like the most delicate 
 lace, one flaw will cause the destruction of the whole 
 fabric. 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE. 73 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 ' I '"HE lady who became the wife of Edwin Forrest 
 -'- was Miss Catherine Sinclair. Her father was a 
 man of some celebrity in musical circles, and his home 
 was the resort of men and women of taste. and culture, 
 and one of the art centres of London. The accom- 
 plishments of Miss Sinclair were the admiration of her 
 home circle, while her beauty attracted to her side a 
 host of adorers. Even in a society where physical and 
 mental beauty are not uncommon qualities in the fe- 
 male sex, the claims of Miss Sinclair were allowed pre- 
 eminence. She was the hfelong friend of Macready, 
 and at her home he often met Forrest, even after the 
 first seeds of the quarrel were sown. The affection 
 which sprang up in the breast of Forrest on his presen- 
 tation to Miss Sinclair was reciprocated by the fair ob- 
 ject of his love, and the parental consent was given to 
 their union. Henry Wikoff, a friend of Forrest's and 
 the Sinclairs, who was present at their marriage, thus 
 describes it in his " Reminiscences of an Idler: " — 
 
 " In the latter part of June [1837] the marriage of For- 
 rest took place in the church of the parish he was living 
 in, St. Paul's, Covent Garden, which was built in 1633, 
 
74 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 and is said to contain the remains of more celebrities than 
 any church in London, save Westminster Abbey. It was 
 there the handsome actor, William O'Brien, married his 
 runaway bride, Lady Susan Strongways, eldest daughter 
 of the Earl of Ilchester. Only a limited number of the tra- 
 gedian's friends were invited, as he desired to avoid any- 
 thing lilce a sensational display. Among these were the 
 American minister and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. John Bates, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Dunlop, and Miss Gamble, with some oth- 
 ers. The Rev. John Croly, the biographer of George IV., 
 officiated. I had the honor of figuring as Forrest's only 
 groomsman, or, as they call it here, his ' best man.' I do 
 not believe there ever was seen a handsomer couple who 
 took each other for better or worse, than the twain who 
 were nuptially bound together that day. Forrest was just 
 thirty-one, and a model of manly beauty ; his bride barely 
 twenty, and neither poet nor painter ever dreamed of any- 
 thing more lovely than she appeared on her bridal day. 
 Everybody gazed on them with admiration, and declared 
 never was seen a more beautiful pair. From the church 
 we adjourned to the house of the bride's father, in Alfred 
 Place, where the usual wedding breakfast was served with 
 great luxury. The United States minister, in a fehcitous 
 speech, toasted the happy couple, and Forrest responded 
 in the best taste- Dr. Croly, even better known in the 
 literary world than the church, delivered a very effective 
 speech. . . . They looked supremely happy as they set 
 off on their hymeneal trip, and everybody heartily wished 
 them God-speed." 
 
 It was remembered later that Forrest had met Miss 
 Sinclair on Friday, had proposed on Friday, and was 
 married on Friday. This may have been one of those 
 stories which are told after a catastrophe to fit the cir- 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE. 75 
 
 cumstances, and perhaps is not reliable. Mr. and Mrs. 
 Forrest soon after embarked for America, leaving behind 
 them a whole heart full of regrets, and encountering on 
 their arrival here as warm a welcome on the part of the 
 bridegroom's old admirers, who were eager to become 
 the lady's slaves as well. Presented to his friends, she at 
 once made a deep and lasting impression. Her native 
 delicacy of mind and refinement of manners enchanted 
 those who hoped for some such influence to be exerted 
 in softening the rough vigor and democratic downright- 
 ness of the man. Their society was courted by all those 
 who knew the actor ; and for the first time the admirers 
 of Forrest's genius might hope to see him at the fireside 
 of a peaceful home, where beauty and grace presided. 
 She became his companion in his travels, making the 
 time fly pleasantly when the cares of the theatre were 
 over. The hitherto lonely moments passed by him in 
 strange hotels were now intervals of happiness, bright- 
 ened by her loving companionship. She was his equal 
 mentally, and the play of her intellect brought out all the 
 power of his own well-stored mind. 
 
 The friendship which Mr. Leggett had ever enter- 
 tained for Forrest was now extended to his wife, and 
 until his death that learned man and constant fHend 
 retained his place in their hearts. During their many 
 joumeyings to the far West a pleasant correspondence 
 was kept up between them and the Leggetts, and in 
 these letters the young wife gives many evidences of the 
 commanding quahty of her intellect and her advanced 
 opinions on the subject of the married state. The 
 family of Forrest welcomed his bride with open hearts, 
 
"jS EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 and to Eleanora, the favorite sister of Edwin, the young 
 English girl became a loving and constant friend. When 
 absent, hers were the letters which brought to the sis- 
 ters' fireside the news of their wandering fortunes, and 
 her name became a household word in her husband's 
 family. 
 
 At times the actor's duties called him away from the 
 side of his wife, and then her letters betrayed the anx- 
 ious love she bore for the absent one ; his replies being 
 equally affectionate. To their home came troops of 
 friends, attracted equally by the fame of the husband 
 and the charms of the wife. Willis was there, the fash- 
 ionable poet of the day ; and Bryant, the editor of the 
 Post, the poet whose lines form a part of our literature, 
 with his grave, thoughtful face, recalhng to the young 
 wife the early glories of her gallant husband, — a 
 notable figure in that social group, who was to survive 
 all the vicissitudes of the pair, and go down at last, 
 in a good old age, to his rest. The Godwins, hus- 
 band and wife, close friends of both, afterwards so 
 sadly interested in the separation, shared an honored 
 place in that family group. While just in its dawn, 
 there was the manly affection and enduring trust of 
 James Oakes, and a renewal of an old boy-love, begun 
 in their early Thespian days in Philadelphia, with James 
 Rees, who still Uves, and who as " CoUey Gibber " has 
 since given us an estimate of his dead friend, true and 
 invaluable. Now in the ripe fulness of his fortune, the 
 thoughtful husband looked forward to his future, and 
 Fonthill was chosen as a home. The plans were formed 
 by Mrs. Forrest and approved by him. A castle of mixed 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE. yj 
 
 architecture was to spring up on the banks of the Hud- 
 son, which was to be a witness to posterity of the love 
 its founder bore his art ; for it was dedicated to American 
 actors, whose home at its builder's death if was intended 
 to be. As Nature had denied Edwin Forrest offspring, 
 he desired to adopt the unfortunate members of his pro- 
 fession. In loving emulation the youthful pair vied 
 with each other in plans for the advancement of their 
 project, and as the pile assumed proportions they gazed 
 with pardonable pride upon their work. A rude struct- 
 ure was erected on the grounds, and here they often 
 repaired to pass happy hours in directing and watching 
 the progress of the building. Here, on a certain Fourth 
 of July, Edwin Forrest gathered a number of his friends 
 and neighbors, and, surrounded by them on a green 
 knoll, he read the Declaration of Independence as he 
 only could read that document. 
 
 The married life of Forrest promised to be as peaceful 
 and happy as his professional life was glorious. Those 
 who before did not beUeve him to be a domestic char- 
 acter were now nearly convinced of their errors. If he 
 were framed at all for the quiet happiness which be- 
 longs to the fireside, surely here were the influences 
 which should attract him ; a young and lovely wife, a 
 prosperous fortune, and a place in the estimation of the 
 world beyond the common inheritance even of extraor- 
 dinary men. 
 
 His friends declared, indeed, that they saw an un- 
 usual softness and gentleness in his hitherto brusque 
 and harsh demeanor, and they attributed it to the influ- 
 ence of her who reigned in the home circle. A playful 
 
78 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 humor, which had only been allowed limited license 
 before, now seemed to be natural to him, and was a 
 welcome relief after the heavy duties of the artist were 
 performed. The rehearsals which had hitherto been 
 attended often by outbreaks of violence were now less 
 turbulent, and even carelessness or indifference es- 
 caped his merited rebuke. To this period belongs the 
 anecdote of the poor actor who was so slow in catching 
 the expression of certain lines which Forrest was try- 
 ing to teach him. When he had failed after many 
 efforts to imbue the pale speaker with some of his own 
 spirit, he excitedly repeated the speech himself, and 
 gave it with all the Forrestian emphasis. Halting at 
 the close, "There," he said, "can you not speak it 
 like that?" The actor replied quietly, "If I could, 
 Mr. Forrest, I would not be playing here for five dol- 
 lars a week." " Is that aU your salary? " inquired For- 
 rest. " All, sir." " Well, then, speak it your own way, 
 sir." The poor actor's salary was raised, however, and 
 when he went to the box-ofKce on next pay-day he had 
 cause to thank the forbearance of the star. This is 
 only one of the many acts of thoughtful kindness which 
 are told of him during the early and happy days of his 
 married life. 
 
 Honors not professional were now heaped upon For- 
 rest. He was offered the nomination to Congress from 
 one of the New York City districts, which he declined. 
 His steady democracy and honest manliness would 
 have made a mark in those halls, where eloquence like 
 his is rarely found. He delivered the oration on a 
 Fourth of July before a political gathering in New 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE. 
 
 79 
 
 York, In which, of course, many of his professional 
 admirers were numbered. It seemed as if the glory 
 of his dramatic career was to be reflected in a social 
 elevation which should raise the public regard for his 
 calling, and add new laurels to his already laden brow. 
 
 The American Dramatic Fund was organized about 
 this time, and he was chosen its first president. It had 
 given promise of being an active promoter of the best 
 interests of the American actor, and he lent to the 
 scheme his hearty support. When he withdrew his 
 influence later, it fell into a torpid condition, because 
 no longer American in its aims ; and now it lingers on, 
 with few members, the seal of death stamped upon it. 
 
 Wherever his eye fell upon anything suggesting the 
 advancement of his art, he instantly gave it his en- 
 couragement. Learning by the winning example of 
 his wife the habit of conciliation, he sought to enlarge 
 the circle of his acquaintance by a judicious selection. 
 His choice fell upon many who admired him for his 
 genius, and were attracted by his frank, generous man- 
 ner; and while such men as John B. Rice, WiUiam 
 Warren, and others of their exalted character, stood in 
 the ranks of Forrest's friends, he felt assured that their 
 relations were so independent of all self-interest as to 
 be highly complimentary to him. 
 
 His professional engagements were numerous, his 
 profits swelling the bulk of his growing fortune at a 
 rate exceeding all precedent. His property in Ken- 
 tucky he now improved, and gave to one of its avenues 
 the name of his beloved Oakes. His theatrical posi- 
 tion at the head of his profession was unchallenged. 
 
80 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Even such giants as Booth and Wallack could not 
 deny his precedence, when a whole nation endorsed 
 his claim and were his servants. 
 
 The preparations at Fonthill went on meanwhile, and 
 that massive pile moved towards its completion. Here 
 it was his wont to refresh his body and recreate his 
 mind, surrounded by the loving friends whom his own 
 genius and the graces of his wife attracted. The sister 
 of Mrs. Forrest and her father and mother shared his 
 hospitable home, and all the relaxations which such 
 family reunions and domestic associations bring seemed 
 created to brighten the path of the hard-working actor. 
 
 New parts were added to his repertoire, and Richelieu 
 and Claude (in the " Lady of Lyons ") gave new evi- 
 dences of his power. His plans for the encouragement 
 of an American drama, only in part a failure, gave him 
 new material in the " Broker of Bogota " and in " Meta- 
 mora," both produced with decided success. 
 
 How far Edwin Forrest was fitted to enjoy the calm 
 delights of a home it is impossible to say. His friends 
 could not reaUze that one so imperious, so bom to 
 rule and be obeyed, could consent to become in the 
 slightest sense subordinate to the will of another. They 
 had not known how the strong knee had bent before 
 the mother whom he adored ; how, at the parental fire- 
 side, the son was moved by the will of the good old 
 woman vt^ho could lead him by love alone. 
 
 The first cloud which seemed to lower over the do- 
 mestic heaven appeared in England during his second 
 visit, when it was said he became angry because his 
 wife was unwilling to drive Macready firom her side 
 
DOMESTIC LIFE. 8 1 
 
 during her receptions. Forrest himself refused to 
 speak to him, and he felt it galling to be compelled 
 to see any one dear to him courteous to such an enemy. 
 Macready had known the Sinclairs intimately for years, 
 and on this occasion had mingled with her other friends 
 to welcome Mrs. Forrest on her return to England. 
 
 To those who saw only the outward signs, this period 
 may be regarded as that in which Edwin Forrest stood 
 at the very pinnacle of worldly renown. Rich, famous, 
 happy, he possessed a threefold gift of the gods, and 
 he might, like Polycrates, almost tremble at so much 
 favor ; indeed, the hour was at hand when the hollow- 
 ness of this show was to be revealed, and we sorrow- 
 fully turn iiow to write the record of a career which 
 touched its zenith too early, and was destined too 
 quickly to decline. In an evil hour for himself, in an 
 evil hour for his art and the struggling drama in Amer- 
 ica, Edwin Forrest threw open the doors of his home 
 to the scrutiny of the world, and appealed to the courts 
 to remove the skeleton which was hidden in his closet. 
 With the proceedings of that trial, which resulted in 
 divorce, alimony, and separation, this memoir has 
 nothing to do. All those who are curious for such in- 
 formation are referred to two large volumes of a thou- 
 sand pages each, which contain the records of a legal 
 battle unprecedented for bitterness and for the wide 
 interest it created on account of the position of the 
 contestants, as well as the eminent character of the 
 counsel. While the proud, imperious temper of For- 
 rest may not have fitted him for the married state, it 
 seems certain that he was compelled to endure (as in 
 6 
 
82 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 his wife's reception of Macready in London) such as- 
 saults upon his pride as seemed severe trials to one of 
 his nature, and both man and wife must have lived to 
 agree with Pericles, that " She is best who is least 
 spoken of among men, whether for good or evU." 
 
 Those who had taken the part of Macready in the 
 quarrel and tmeute in Astor Place now managed to 
 divide public opinion in the interest of the wife, and a 
 strong opposition was estabhshed among those who had 
 espoused the Macready cause on that occasion. The 
 friends of good order, the friends of social decorum, 
 the higher classes, generally, were on the side of the 
 wife and against the husband ; and when the result was 
 reached and a verdict given in the lady's favor, none 
 rejoiced more than those who had been defeated in 
 their efforts to give Macready the hearing in America 
 which was denied to Forrest in England. With the 
 consequences of those events the following chapter 
 will deal ; we only state here that the alimony was fixed 
 at three thousand dollars a year, and the divorce granted 
 to the lady alone, the husband being debarred from 
 marrying again. 
 
AFTER THE TRIAL. 83 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 AFTER THE TRIAL. — MRS. FORREST'S PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 
 
 ■pDWIN FORREST, leaving the court-room a de- 
 -*— ' feated man, was instantly raised to a popularity 
 with the masses beyond anything even he had before 
 experienced. The public reversed the judgment of the 
 court, and while " good society " applauded the clear- 
 ance of the lady, the hard-handed democracy hailed 
 their old favorite as " martyr," crowning him with a 
 wreath of sorrow, only that they might worship him the 
 more. 
 
 He began an engagement soon after at the Broad- 
 way Theatre, opening as Damon. The house was 
 crowded to suffocation. Upon his entrance he was 
 greeted with deafening cheers, which were repeated 
 again and again while the actor bowed his thanks. A 
 large flag was unfurled in the pit by his admirer. Cap- 
 tain Rynders, with the words, "This is the people's 
 verdict ; " and at the close of the play, when called 
 before the curtain, he was obliged to respond to the 
 demands for a " speech." He spoke as follows, quoting 
 from the ample and complete life of Forrest by the Rev. 
 William R. Alger : — 
 
 "Ladies and Gentlemen, — After the unparalleled 
 verdict which you have rendered me here to-night, you 
 
84 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 will not doubt that I consider this the proudest moment 
 of my life. And yet it is a moment not unmingled with 
 sadness. Instinctively I ask myself the question, Why 
 is this vast assemblage here to-night, composed as it is of 
 the intelligent, the high-minded, the right-minded, and last, 
 though not least, the beautiful of the Empire City ? Is it 
 because a favorite actor appears in a favorite character 'i 
 No, the actor and the performances are as familiar to you 
 as household words. Why, then, this unusual ferment ? 
 It is because you have come to express your irrepressible 
 sympathy for one whom you know to be a deeply-injured 
 man. Nay, more, you are here with a higher and a holier 
 purpose, — to vindicate the principle of even-handed jus- 
 tice. I do not propose to examine the proceedings of the 
 late unhappy trial ; those proceedings are now before you, 
 and before the world, and you can judge as rightly of 
 them as I can. I have no desire to instruct you in the 
 verdict you shall render. The issue of that trial will yet 
 be before the court, and I shall patiently await the judg- 
 ment of that court, be it what it may. In the meanwhile, 
 I submit my cause to you, — my cause, did I say ? — no, 
 not ray cause alone, but yours, the cause of every man in 
 the community, the cause of every human being, the 
 cause of every honest wife, the cause of every virtuous 
 woman, the cause of every one who cherishes a home and 
 the pure spirit which should abide there. Ladies and 
 gentlemen, I submit my cause to a tribunal uncorrupt 
 and incorruptible ; I submit it to the sober second thought 
 of the people. A little while since, and I thought my 
 pathway of life was filled with thorns ; you have this night 
 filled it with roses (looking at the bouquets at his feet). 
 Their perfume is gratifying to the senses, and I am 
 grateful for your beautiful and fragrant offering.'' 
 
 The applause which greeted this speech was pro- 
 longed until the actor had bowed himself beyond the 
 
AFTER THE TRIAL. 85 
 
 line of the curtain. The temperance of his words 
 made him many new friends who expected nothing but 
 violence. Had he practised the same restraint before 
 and during the trial, it might have altered the issue. 
 An illustration of that roughness which characterized 
 him is here given. He had been intimate with the 
 celebrated lawyer Charles O'Conor. They were neigh- 
 bors, and were in the habit of conversing as they met 
 in the railway cars on their way to or from Yonkers 
 and New York. One day Forrest learned that O'Conor 
 had taken the brief of Mrs. Forrest, and, without wait- 
 ing to question him, on the next occasion of their 
 meeting on the train he began an abusive attack, to 
 which the lawyer listened in contemptuous silence, 
 until as the train neared the station, and they were 
 about to step down, O'Conor turned and said, " I had 
 not decided to accept the brief in this case, but your 
 brutal conduct has determined me, and I charge you to 
 look well to your case, for I wUl show you no mercy ; " 
 a threat which the able counsel religiously kept. 
 
 For sixty-nine nights the people thronged the Broad- 
 way Theatre. The engagement was unparalleled in the 
 history of the American drama for length and profit. 
 AH the allusions which could be applied to the trial 
 were given with malicious point by the actor, and hailed 
 with applause by the audience. At the end of the 
 first act of "Richelieu," when the old cardinal said, — 
 
 " France, I love thee ; all earth shall never tear thee ■* 
 From my heart. My mistress — France, my wedded wife. 
 Sweet France, who shall proclaim divorce for thee and me ? " 
 
 the audience sprang to their feet, and in a shower of 
 " bravos " the act-drop descended. In his final speech 
 
86 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 at the close of this engagement he alluded to its flat- 
 tering character, and ended by saying that " such a 
 demonstration vindicates me more than a thousand 
 verdicts, for it springs from those who make and un- 
 make judges." 
 
 " But," using again the words of Alger, " despite the 
 flattering applause of the multitude, added to the sup- 
 port of his own conscience, and notwithstanding his 
 abounding health and strength and enhancing riches, 
 from the date of his separation and desire for divorce, 
 the dominant tone of the life of Forrest was changed. 
 His demeanor had a more forbidding aspect, his dis- 
 position a sterner tinge, his faith in human nature less 
 genial expansion, his joy in existence less spontaneous 
 exuberance. The circle of his friends was greatly con- 
 tracted, a certain irritable soreness was fixed in his 
 sensibility, he shrank more strongly than ever from 
 miscellaneous society, and seemed to be more asserting 
 or protecting himself cloaked in an appearance of 
 reserve and gloom. The world of Hfe never again wore 
 to him the smiling aspect it had so often worn before." 
 
 On his again assuming the labors of his profession, 
 that which above is so clearly told became apparent to 
 his friends. The applause which filled his ears, the 
 wealth which flowed in upon him, could not improve 
 that temper which had never been amiable, and all the 
 hard stories of his life belong to this period. He meas- 
 ured the friendship of his old companions by their 
 eagerness or coldness in meeting his wishes in the col- 
 lection of evidence for his case in the trial, and as he 
 was not delicate in the tone of his requests, so was he 
 
AFTER THE TRIAL. 8/ 
 
 harsh in his treatment of those who did not fulfil them. 
 To John Rice, of Chicago, who had been closely asso- 
 ciated with him for years, he wrote for such a service as 
 no gentleman would care to perform, even for his dear- 
 est friend, and especially where a lady was concerned. 
 He never spoke to Rice after his refusal, and thus lost 
 the counsel and friendship of a man whose probity, 
 honor, and sterling manhood were so well known in 
 Chicago, which made him its chief officer on two occa- 
 sions, and at last placed him in Congress as its repre- 
 sentative. With another actor, John Gilbert, he refused 
 to play when engaging for Boston after the trial, and to 
 the day of his death he never mentioned his name 
 without abuse. 
 
 To those who stood by him he was, on the other 
 hand, grateful and affectionate in a marked degree. 
 James Oakes knew no bounds in the love he bore his 
 friend, and gave him, at every turn in the trial, proofs 
 of his loyalty. James Lawson was equally faithful, and 
 both received many proofs of his good-will ; while for 
 the Godwins, the Bryants, and others who had either 
 espoused the lady's cause openly or were coldly neu- 
 tral, he entertained the most freezing scorn. 
 
 Despising the spot which had been consecrated to 
 the great purpose of his Hfe, as a remembrance of her 
 who had shared in its inception, he sold Fonthill to the 
 Sisters of Notre Dame for one hundred thousand dol- 
 lars, and when the second instalment fell due he remit- 
 ted five thousand dollars of the purchase-money. He 
 now bought a house and grounds on Broad Street, Phil- 
 adelphia, and, placing his sisters there, he began the 
 
88 EVWIN FORREST. 
 
 foundation of another home, where all the early associ- 
 ations of his youth were revived and all trace of his 
 sorrow and bitter trial banished. Now and then some 
 touching act of charity would seem to contradict the 
 hardness of his nature. A poor actor, late for rehearsal, 
 was reproached by Forrest in a stem manner. The 
 man replied that he was very sorry ; he had met with 
 a severe affliction ; his boy had died in the night. 
 Placing fifty dollars in his hand, Forrest bade the man 
 go home, saying that he would see that his absence 
 should not work him injury. 
 
 He sought out his early manager, Jones, whom he 
 found poor and suffering in his old age, took him to his 
 stately home, and relieved his wants ; furnishing him 
 with a place where he would be out of the reach of 
 future sorrow, and watching over him until his death. 
 An incident of his brusqueness belongs here. A lady 
 who was dressed for a male part was in his way as he 
 was about to go upon the stage ; he ordered her to stand 
 aside ; she did not quickly obey, when he took the sup- 
 posed man by the shoulder rudely and pushed him away. 
 The lady burst into tears, and Forrest then apologized, 
 saying, " I did not know you were a lady." Her wo- 
 man's wit did not fail her as she replied, " Sir, you 
 might have mistaken me for a gentleman." 
 
 To his other strong passions was now added that of 
 avarice, the desire to accumulate wealth, when those to 
 whose happiness that wealth contributed were passing 
 beyond the need of his help. He had learned the 
 lesson of economy in the hard school of adversity, he 
 had known want, and he was always strictly honorable 
 
AFTER THE TRIAL. 89 
 
 in his money dealings. He said, " In early life I learned 
 to depend solely upon myself for sustenance. The de- 
 sire I had for wealth was first fostered only that I might 
 be able to contribute to the comforts of those whose 
 veins bore blood like mine, and to smooth the path- 
 way to the grave of the gentlest, the truest, the most 
 unselfish friend I ever knew, my mother ! to relieve the 
 wants of friends less fortunate than myself, and to succor 
 the distressed wherever found." 
 
 He continued his engagements for several years, meet- 
 ing with amazing success in all the large cities where 
 the fame of the trial and the genius of the man made 
 the people eager to see him. On the 20th of Septem- 
 ber, 1852, he reappeared at the Broadway Theatre, New 
 York, and repeated the triumph of his former engage- 
 ment. He returned again in February, 1853, and for 
 the first and last time in his life he took part in a great 
 revival of one of Shakspere's plays. " Macbeth " was 
 produced in grand style, with new scenery and appoint- 
 ments. The tragedy was played on twenty consecutive 
 nights, then by far the longest run of any Shaksperean 
 play in America. The cast was phenomenal, Conway, 
 Duff, Davenport, Pope, Davidge, Barry, and Madame 
 Ponisi playing the leading parts under Mr. Forrest. 
 
 In 1855 a benefit was given to the veteran actor and 
 manager, James W. Wallack, Sen., a warm friend of For- 
 rest's. On this occasion he deviated from his fixed rule 
 of life, and gave his aid and talents to the beneficiary, 
 appearing as Damon to the Fythias of Mr. E. L. Dav- 
 enport. For some professional reason now unknown, 
 Forrest was not on speaking terms with Davenport, and 
 
90 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 when the rehearsal took place avoided giving him direct 
 instruction, by saying, " Pythias stands there," or "Pyth- 
 ias goes here," without looking towards the actor. This 
 breach was never healed, and many years later, when 
 Davenport sent word to Forrest that he would like to 
 play lago to his Othello, the reply came back, " That he 
 would not let him play Montana in his cast ! " These 
 were in his violent moments, and illustrate the perverse 
 and soured elements of his nature. 
 
 After five years of constant labor, he resolved upon 
 taking the rest which he had often promised himself, 
 and in the retirement of his Philadelphia home he 
 found recreation ; the presence of Forney, Dougherty, 
 and McMichael recompensing him for the applause 
 of the theatre, which he had for a period abandoned. 
 These loving friends sought to draw him into society 
 again, and drown the bitter past in the renewal of better 
 and truer associations ; but this he declined, and with 
 his family, his books, and his few friends, he kept the 
 chosen tenor of his way unbroken. 
 
 During this retirement the first alanning symptoms of 
 the malady — which afterwards was so severe — appeared 
 in an attack of inflammatory gout or rheumatism, which 
 laid him up for weeks ; but his strong constitution and 
 regular habits of living overcame the disease for a time, 
 and the attack was forgotten. The seeds of gout were 
 hereditary, however, and were destined again and again 
 to break out and shatter his giant frame. 
 
 In 1855 a series of articles appeared in one of the 
 New York papers written in the most brilliant manner, 
 but in every way offensive to Forrest. He was here 
 
■ .' . 
 
 / 
 
 
MRS. FORRESVS PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 
 
 91 
 
 denounced as a "butcher," a "ranter," a "stage 
 ruffian," and assailed by other epithets of like coarse 
 nature. They reflected the sentiments of the clique 
 which had been favorable to Macready at the time of 
 the riot, and showed that the affair was not forgotten. 
 Indeed, from this date we notice that fashionable so- 
 ciety began to discover that Forrest was not what he 
 had been in his earlier days. Davenport and Murdoch 
 were said to be his superiors in Hamlet, Wallack, in 
 Rolla, while Gustavus Brooke, a young English actor 
 of extraordinary genius, far eclipsed him in his great 
 part, Othello. Meanwhile, resisting the verdict ren- 
 dered in the famous trial, and refusing to pay the ali- 
 mony awarded, he carried his case to the higher court, 
 where he hoped to obtain a reversal of the judgment ; 
 and in this way he kept his unfortunate family troubles 
 still in the public mind. 
 
 Mrs. Forrest, resuming her maiden name, had, soon 
 after the trial, made her appearance as an actress, select- 
 ing for her opening, with questionable taste, the comedy 
 of the " School for Scandal." A fashionable audience 
 greeted her, and she played other parts during her brief 
 engagement at Brougham's Lyceum, but with diminish- 
 ing success. She was supported by George Vandenhoff, 
 under whom she had studied for the stage, by William H. 
 Chippendale, Henry Lynne, William J. Florence, Charles 
 Kemble Mason, Charles Walcot, John Brougham, Mrs. 
 Skerrett, Mrs. Maeder, and others ; and presented " The 
 Lady of Lyons," " Much Ado About Nothing," " Love's 
 Sacrifice," and "The Patrician's Daughter." Closing 
 her season abruptly, she soon after went to California, 
 
92 ED WIN FORREST. 
 
 where she regularly entered upon the career of an 
 actress, assumed the management of one of the theatres, 
 was fairly prosperous, but returned at last to the East 
 and to retirement. 
 
 Tracing her private career in the hope of finding new 
 material for the renewal of his claim, resisting payment 
 of the alimony which caused new involvements, For- 
 rest kept himself upon the rack, even while seeking 
 rest and repose in his domestic circle. 
 
 Mr. Alger has given us a beautiful picture of one of 
 the happy scenes of his life at this time. " Early one 
 summer morning, while visiting at Forrest's home, 
 Oakes was seen wrapped in a silk moming-gown of 
 George Frederick Cooke, with a wig of John Phillip 
 Kemble on his head, and a sword of Edmund Kean 
 by his side, tackled between the thills of a heavy stone 
 roller, rolling the garden-walks to earn his breakfast. 
 Forrest vfas behind him urging him forward. Henri- 
 etta and Eleanor Forrest gazed out of a window at the 
 scene in amazement, until its amusing significance broke 
 upon them, when their frolicsome peals of laughter 
 caused the busy pair of laborers below to pause in their 
 task and look up." 
 
 A number of Forrest's friends co-operated to obtain 
 a marble statue of him as Coriolanus, and he readily 
 lent his aid, giving sittings and such advice as the 
 sculptor solicited. The celebrated Thomas Ball was 
 chosen as the artist best fitted to perform the work. 
 When completed, it was intended by Forrest to adorn 
 the future retreat for actors, the idea of which he had 
 never abandoned, although Fonthill had passed out of 
 
MRS. FORREST'S PROFESSIONAL LIFE. 93 
 
 his hands. This statue is now one of the chief points 
 of interest in the Actors' Home at Springbrook. 
 
 Much of Forrest's time, during the interval of rest 
 from theatrical labor, was given to the better investment 
 of his fortune, which had now grown to such a bulk as 
 to need the most thoughtful attention. While in his 
 home enjoyments he kept up the studies which related 
 to his art. Here, in the comfortable library, surrounded 
 by his boolcs and his few friends, he discoursed upon 
 the stage and its past glories, with the history and tra- 
 ditions of which his mind was stored, or read from 
 some poet lines which he loved, and to which his match- 
 less voice lent new meaning. 
 
 He was always courteously willing to give private ex- 
 hibitions of his powers in the recitation of selections, 
 both humorous and pathetic. At a dinner-table, where 
 his associates were to his liking, he was a decided ad- 
 dition to the merriment of the party, while as a story- 
 teller he had surpassing power. He visited the theatres 
 regularly, his entrance being the signal for a general 
 murmur of approbation, and sometimes of audible ap- 
 plause. 
 
 The promise he had made to his friend Oakes, to 
 abstain from professional duty for a period of years, had 
 been well kept, but it was soon to be revoked and an- 
 other era in his career to commence. 
 
94 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MATURITY. 
 
 IN answer to numerous inquiries, Mr. James Rees, 
 the confidential friend of Mr. Forrest, authoritatively 
 published the following during the year i860 : — 
 
 " TO CORRESPONDENTS. EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 " The question is so frequently asked in relation to the 
 probability of this gentleman's appearing again on the 
 stage, that we feel it a duty to answer such questions to 
 the best of our knowledge, as we know it is not idle curi- 
 osity which prompts them. 
 
 " These inquiries, written in many instances by persons 
 evidently anxious to witness his powerful impersonations 
 of character, are highly flattering to this inimitable artist. 
 They all develop to us the fact that thousands are so 
 sickened, and in some instances disgusted, at the present 
 state of the drama, and the paucity of genuine talent in 
 our midst, that a change for the benefit of the whole body 
 politic is most anxiously desired. 
 
 " To end the anxiety manifested, we can state with con- 
 fidence that Mr. Forrest will appear on the stage again, 
 and this event, so long looked for, will most probably take 
 place in the fall or winter season of the present year. 
 June, i860." 
 
MATURITY. 95 
 
 Accordingly, on the 1 7th of September, after an ab- 
 sence of nearly four years, Edwin Forrest again appeared 
 on the stage. He was engaged by James Nixon, and 
 began his contract of one hundred nights at Niblo's 
 Garden, New York, in the character of Hamlet. 
 
 During the retirement of Forrest, his fame had con- 
 tinued to increase. A new generation of play-goers, 
 who had only read of the giant, were now eager to see 
 him of whom they had heard so much. The panic of 
 1857, which had paralyzed all industries, and had closed 
 the theatres, or at all events had ruined the managers 
 and beggared the actors, was now passing away, and a 
 better feeling was exhibited. During these years, also, 
 new candidates for public favor had arisen in the tragic 
 and comic field. The city of New York was passing rap- 
 idly into the great metropoKs which it has since become. 
 Great political questions were agitating the country, and 
 parties were dividing the nation into sectional Hnes 
 which threatened ominous divisions. 
 
 The theatres of New York, during the years of 
 1857-60, were not without attractions of a sterling 
 character, notwithstanding the lugubrious picture drawn 
 in Forrest's card. The old drama had not yet surren- 
 dered to the sensational enemy. " Hamlet " was being 
 acted at four theatres at one time, and by leading favor- 
 ites in each : by E. L. Davenport at the Winter Garden, 
 by the grand old veteran, James Wallack, Sen., at his 
 own theatre, and by two other gentlemen in East side 
 houses. During this period a revival of " The Winter's 
 Tale " was inaugurated at Burton's Theatre, which sur- 
 passed all previous efforts in the Shaksperean field, 
 
96 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Leontes being played by the younger J. W. Wallack, a 
 man whose genius was the delight of our stage, whose 
 versatihty was the marvel of his fellows, and whose 
 genial nature and unselfish manhood were the admiration 
 of his friends. 
 
 Burton played Auiolycus as he only could play it, 
 while such actors as Fisher and Setchell, such actresses 
 as Mrs. Amelia Parker and Sara Stevens, filled the other 
 roles. The vsriter had the honor of playing Florizel in 
 this cast. Charles Mathews had returned to America for 
 the third time, and shared in the revival of " Twelfth 
 Night " with Burton, Brougham, and others of the Metro- 
 politan Theatre Company. It was during this interval 
 also that Charlotte Cushman reappeared on the stage 
 after her many years of retirement, and under Burton's 
 management gave a series of her grand performances 
 at the same house, which filled the theatre and con- 
 firmed her fame. 
 
 During this time also the coming glories of the Wal- 
 lack regime were foretold in the foresight and genius of 
 the master. The elder of that'name took a falling prop- 
 erty, gave it all the vitaUty of his own experienced 
 management, and laid the foundation for the great fame 
 which has been so well perpetuated in the abiUty of his 
 gifted son, Lester Wallack. 
 
 Here were shown the first-fruits of that versatile 
 genius which has for nearly twenty-five years sup- 
 plied the theatres of two nations. Here began the 
 modern domestic drama from which the mechanical, 
 the sensational, and the reahstic derived their inspira- 
 tion, but which they have so poorly and feebly imitated. 
 
MATURITY. 
 
 97 
 
 The first of the grand series of Boucicault's plays was 
 the three-act melodrama of "Jessie Brown." The pro- 
 duction of that piece at WaUack's marks the line which 
 separates the theatre of the past from that of the present 
 in America. Matilda Heron had but a few months be- 
 fore appeared in a play full of turgid declamation and 
 pointless _situations, — a supplement to her success in 
 " Camille." It had failed, but the cause was found in 
 the desire of the people for effects of a more natural 
 character. In " Jessie Brown," the situation, the dia- 
 logue, and the superb acting at once changed the 
 indifferent spectator into an eager and enthusiastic 
 listener. 
 
 The same change which had taken place in the field 
 of comedy and domestic drama was apparent in the 
 tragic drama as well. From the far West a youth had 
 come who bore a magical name, associated with the 
 past glories of a great father, of whom he was said to be 
 in every way worthy. Edwin Booth was hailed as the 
 " Hope of the Living Drama " by the most careful of 
 critics, and accepted by the public as the exemplar of 
 the new idea in tragedy. His youth, beauty, and su- 
 perior fitness marked him as a leader in the school of 
 which he was to be the restorer, — the impulsive, pas- 
 sionate school of tragedy ; stilted declamation and slow__- 
 solemnity giving way before the " fiery onset " of this 
 rapidly moving, nervous embodiment of all the passions. 
 His appearance in New York in 1857 was the event 
 which raUied to his side many of those who had been 
 adherents of his great father, while the new auditors — 
 the younger generation seeking for their ideal — found 
 7 
 
98 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 it in this dark-haired, brown-eyed youth, who had seized 
 the sceptre of the stage with an audacious hand, and 
 was manifesting power to retain it. Edwin Booth in 
 two years had attracted a following large in numbers, 
 and of that class called " select " in quality, although 
 there were those who scorned the claim that he was in 
 any way the rival of the master who was now in retire- 
 ment. 
 
 The hold which the new tragedian had taken upon 
 the public, the interest which his youth and talent ex- 
 cited, the personal resemblance he bore in certain re- 
 spects to the elder Booth, many of whose parts he 
 played, — all these but added zest to the desire which 
 had lately found open expression that the veteran should 
 reappear. And when Forrest did step upon the stage 
 again, it was to find that these changes had taken place 
 in his retirement. He who had surpassed other gener- 
 ations of great actors, and outlived them all ; he who 
 had borne in triumph the high name of America's great- 
 est tragedian for years unchallenged, — now confronted 
 a changing taste, a new era, and a new rival. With the 
 elder lay all the traditions of the old drama, with the 
 younger all the elements which were fusing into the 
 new. The one was supported and maintained by the 
 generations which had grown up with the veteran, 
 had seen the various stages of his career passed trium- 
 phantly, and who sought no improvement ; the other 
 represented the hopeful expression of the new genera- 
 tion which forms its own ideas by the impressions of its 
 times, and is not slavishly bound to the past. 
 
 As yet all the glory lay with the veteran. The deep 
 
MATURITY. 
 
 99 
 
 interest which he had excited during the trial, the 
 gossip of the idle, the admiration of the crowd, even 
 the long retirement, only increased the curious interest 
 which centred round his historic name ; all the invec- 
 tives which had been hurled against him by enemies, 
 all the stories of his gloomy and despotic nature, all the 
 caricatures which malice had created, all the humorous 
 anecdotes of which he was the hero or the victim, only 
 excited the curiosity of the pubhc. 
 
 Upon his opening night, at Niblo's Garden, the seats 
 were sold at auction, and the throngs which were turned 
 away nightly from the doors exceeded those which found 
 admittance. His engagement ran for one hundred 
 nights, to be divided between many of the largest cities. 
 He acted but three nights of each week, and his ser- 
 vices were rewarded with one half of the gross receipt's. 
 
 In New York he played " Hamlet," " King Lear," 
 " Othello," " Macbeth," " Richard IH.," " The Glad- 
 iator," " Damon and Pythias," " Richelieu," " Jack 
 Cade," "Virginius," and " Metamora," supported by 
 Frederick B. Conway (as the Ghost, lago, and Mac- 
 duff') , Charles Fisher (as Polonius, first time, and Cas- 
 sid), Daniel H. Harkins (as Horatio), John Chester 
 (as Roderigd), Madame Ponisi (as Queen Gertrude, 
 Emilia, and Lady Macbeth), and Mrs. F. B. Conway 
 (as Ophelia, Desdemona, etc.). 
 
 His success in Philadelphia rivalled that of New 
 York, and he closed his engagement with Mr. Nixon 
 with a grand margin of profits to both. His perform- 
 ances in that city were confined to his Shaksperean 
 parts by request, and the glad manager issued a con- 
 
lOO EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 senting card to the pubKc which demanded this con- 
 cession. Even Spartacus and Tell, the Broker and 
 Cade, were set aside for the immortal heroes of Shak- 
 spere. 
 
 The breaking out of the Rebellion gave a new im- 
 petus to the business of the theatres. The cities were 
 filled by those who had heretofore lived a life of retire- 
 ment in the provinces ; the activity of reviving trade, 
 based on the demand for supplies for the army, brought 
 many play-goers to the cities, and the officers and sol- 
 diers on duty or on leave made up an addition to the 
 resident public which accounted for the renewal of 
 prosperity. To many of these Forrest was only known 
 by his colossal fame, and eagerness to see him made 
 his audiences larger than before. Prices were raised, 
 and freely paid by the multitude who had for the first 
 time an opportunity of gratifying a long-cherished wish. 
 He played an enormous engagement under William 
 Wheatley's management at Niblo's Garden in the au- 
 tumn of 1862 with John McCuUough, L. R. SheweU, 
 J. G. Burnett, Edward Lamb, J. W. Collier, George 
 Becks, Thomas E. Morris, Mrs. Mary Gladstane, Mrs. 
 J. R. Scott, Madame Ponisi, Miss Mary Wells, and Miss 
 Josephine Henry in his support ; and under the same 
 management appeared later in the Chestnut Street The- 
 atre, Philadelphia. In Boston the vast auditorium of 
 the grandest theatre in America was found too small to 
 contain the crowd he drew. He was more eager for 
 expressions of approbation than ever ; and one evening, 
 some person having "hushed down" arising demonstra- 
 tion of approval, he addressed the audience upon the 
 
MATURITY. lOI 
 
 matter when the curtain fell and he was caUed to the 
 front, saying that " applause was the reward of the ar- 
 tist, — that it was his due ; and he who would rob him 
 of it would pick a pocket." 
 
 Severe attacks of gout were beginning to tell upon 
 that herculean form, sapping and undermining it ; but 
 he seemed to suffer no diminution of power in the great 
 characters which so well suited him, and he was said 
 to be acting better than ever before. His summers 
 were, many of them, spent at Cohasset, near the ocean 
 which he so dearly loved. Here with his friend Oakes 
 the vacations passed as cheerfully as disease and cark- 
 ing reminders of the still impending lawsuit would per- 
 mit. He had a keen sense of the sublime in nature, 
 and once, standing on the beach as the sea rushed in 
 with terrific power and dashed the spray about him, he 
 exclaimed, " Let him who disbelieves in an Almighty 
 Ruler stand here and be converted." 
 
 He was still growing more and more brusque and 
 reserved. He hated demonstration or display of any 
 kind, and was utterly careless of men's opinions as to 
 his private behavior. Angry for some reason with Ed- 
 win Booth, who was his namesake, he publicly declined 
 the salutation of the aged widow of his old friend Ju- 
 nius Brutus Booth, in order to mark his dislike for the 
 son. Standing once in the crowded rotunda of the old 
 Winthrop House on Tremont Street apart and alone, 
 an enthusiastic acquaintance recognizing him rushed 
 across the room and impulsively called him by name : 
 "Why, my dear Forrest, how do you do?" Forrest 
 muttered, " Pshaw," and abruptly turned away, where- 
 
I03 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 upon the disappointed and crestfallen man replied, 
 " Well, sir, I 've heard you were rude and selfish, but 
 I never supposed you were a brute till now.'' With an 
 angry glare they separated. 
 
 His charities were as singular as his behavior at this 
 time. He loved to perform such duties secretly, and 
 disliked being reminded of them. It is said that his 
 strange movements once attracted the attention and 
 fired the curiosity of one of his friends, who had ob- 
 served that he visited a certain poor neighborhood in 
 New York, and always evaded reply when questioned 
 on the subject. He was followed and traced to a mis- 
 erable tenement, where he made a short stay, evidently 
 desiring secrecy in his going and coming. Upon in- 
 quiry it was learned that he had found a worthy man 
 who had met with disaster through iUness. Forrest had 
 given him a home for himself and his family, and never let 
 him know even the name of his benefactor. When his 
 friends afterwards alluded to this incident, and assured 
 Forrest that his kindness was discovered, he replied, 
 "You have taken from me the sweetest pleasure of my 
 charity, and injured the family of that poor man. I will 
 go there no more." 
 
 He gave his check for one thousand dollars for the 
 use of the Sanitary Fund early in the war, and although 
 a Democrat, and bitterly opposed to the party in power, 
 he bore a sincere love for the Union, and never fal- 
 tered in his belief in the perpetuity of our institutions. 
 He refused to play for a benefit for the relief of a cer- 
 tain charity, but he sent privately his check for two 
 hundred and fifty dollars to the committee. He thus 
 
MA TURITY. 
 
 103 
 
 gained all the ignominy arising from the public an- 
 nouncement of his refusal to play, and left men igno- 
 rant of his private bounty. 
 
 He had grown more exacting than ever about his 
 duty to his art, and more intolerant than ever of those 
 who were neghgent. His rebuke was unsparing for each 
 offence against promptness, and oftentimes the quiet 
 rehearsals were enlivened by an eloquent speech from 
 the irate tragedian upon the charms of punctuality and 
 the guilt of negligence. 
 
 John McCuUough, then his chief support, gives an 
 amusing account of one of his outbreaks. An actor 
 was late for rehearsal, and the rest of the company, in- 
 cluding the star, were compelled to await his arrival. 
 He came at last, and was met by a storm of abuse from 
 Forrest. He stammered out an excuse, but it availed 
 nothing. Forrest went on excitedly, and, after animad- 
 verting upon the sin of indolence, said : " Mr. McCul- 
 lough has been with me for years, he has never been 
 for one moment late, and I hope, sir, you, who seem to 
 require a model for your conduct, will imitate that 
 gentleman." The rehearsal went on, and presently 
 McCuUough's cue for entrance was given. He came 
 not ! calls were made, minutes passed ; there was an 
 awful pause, during which the color came and went in 
 Forrest's angry face. When the delay had become 
 serious and the silence awful, the actor who had been 
 advised to follow McCuUough's example dared, slyly 
 and maliciously, to approach the irate star and say, 
 " Sir, you will have to give me a new model." Forrest, 
 not deigning a reply, turned to the stage manager and 
 
I04 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 said : " Good God, sir, go on with the business, and 
 send for McCuUough ! " The settlement with that 
 gentleman, when they met, is described as a stormy 
 one. This was not the first or last outbreak of Forrest 
 which ended in his own defeat, the humor of others 
 often turning aside his wrath. 
 
 In 1863 the writer of this memoir, then young in his 
 profession, was supporting Mrs. D. P. Bowers at the 
 Chestnut Street Theatre, Philadelphia. Mr. Forrest 
 was in retirement, living at his Broad Street home, but 
 each evening he came to the theatre and occupied a 
 box, an attentive listener. Before the close of the play 
 on several occasions, he stepped behind the scenes and 
 sent for the young actor. With a word of advice upon 
 the higher or lower tone in a speech, or a correction of 
 emphasis or pronunciation, perhaps now and then a 
 word of praise, politely and shortly he would say 
 " Good night,'' and leave abruptly. His suggestions were 
 always gratefully received, and he seemed to take pleas- 
 ure in repeating them. On one occasion, when he had 
 sent in a card correcting a pronunciation, on the ground 
 of the use of too many syllables in a certain word, and 
 the reply went back doubting the truth of his hint, a 
 reference was recommended to the dictionary, in which, 
 it is needless to say, the veteran was found correct. 
 
 It was about this time, or a httle earlier, tliat Barry 
 Sullivan played an engagement at the Walnut Street 
 Theatre, Philadelphia. It was said that he possessed 
 all the worst faults of Macready ; and his innovations 
 in the text of his parts and his mechanical style made 
 him unpopular with Forrest, who perhaps saw in him 
 
MATURITY. 105 
 
 some of the qualities whicli recalled his quarrel with 
 Macready, and hence he could do him no justice. He 
 had shown his dislike of many changes in the produc- 
 tion of " Hamlet " during the first two acts, as given by 
 Sullivan, and his bearing had attracted the attention of 
 Sullivan and the audience. Hamlet bided his time, 
 and when he came to a point in the second act which 
 he thought offered him the opportunity he wanted, he 
 took Guildenstern and Rosencrantz aside, and, advancing 
 towards the box in-which Forrest sat, pointed his finger 
 at him and said, in the words of the text, " Do you see 
 that great baby, yonder? He is not yet out of his 
 swaddling-clouts." Mingled hisses and applause were 
 the actor's reward for what was certainly " a hit, a pal- 
 pable hit," although perhaps not in the best of taste. 
 
 The new spirit which had entered the dramatic pro- 
 fession was inimical to the old actors, — to the old 
 methods. English importations had filled the Ameri- 
 can theatres with men and women who returned Forrest 
 scorn for scorn. England furnished the nursery for 
 what is falsely called burlesque, — a style of performance 
 which tickled the diseased palates of those who, by their 
 encouragement, shared in the ignominy belonging to the 
 performance. The votaries of this disgraceful school, 
 who tried to attach themselves to the decent drama, 
 made no scruple of holding up to derision all that was 
 grand or noble in old plays or old players. Caricature 
 imitations of the manner of Forrest provoked the laugh- 
 ter of the public ; and no burlesque was complete which 
 did not give some new feature of personal or mental 
 characteristics of the tragedian. It is to the credit of 
 
Io6 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 the American actors of to-day that all this innovation, 
 which is now happily losing its savor, from simple in- 
 ability to go further in slander, belongs to another na- 
 tion, to another order. Against the reign of iilth and 
 all indecency, as represented in the orgies of the " Black 
 Crook," or the naked inanities of the female burlesque 
 or blond absurdities, Forrest, and the American stage 
 generally, opposed the text of Shakspere, or that of the 
 standard authors of Europe and America. 
 
 The review of this era of Forrest's life shows us the 
 veteran going beyond the period of production, and 
 approaching that in which his greatness matured. A 
 new generation confirms or condemns the verdict of 
 the past. Curiosity mingles with a love of the old 
 literature and the old tragedies ; and the past confironts 
 the future on the threshold of the fleeting present. In 
 1865 Mr. Forrest had wellnigh reaped the harvest of 
 his Ufe, and had gained fresh laurels even while years 
 of labor were telhng upon the marked features, and age 
 had whitened the once raven locks. Could he have 
 stopped here ; could the veteran have rested his claim 
 to the regard of posterity upon the mature and healthy 
 efforts of his life ; could he have retired like Macready, 
 while his body was as powerful as his giant mind, — then 
 the sad sight of the neglected genius might have been 
 spared us, and the historian's duty made more pleasing. 
 One feeble glimmer lights up the decline of this great 
 luminary, and then the night comes, and the end. 
 
HIS CALIFORNIA TRIP. 10/ 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HIS CALIFORNIA TRIP. 
 
 THE following letters will fittingly introduce the 
 pages which treat of the engagement in Cali- 
 fornia : — 
 
 "State Capitol, Sacramento, April 20, 1857. 
 
 "Respected Sir, — The undersigned. State officers 
 and members of the Senate and Assembly, a small portion 
 of your many admirers on the coast of the Pacific, avail 
 themselves of this, the only mode under their control, of 
 signifying to you the very high estimation as a gentleman 
 and an actor in which you are generally and universally 
 held by all who have a taste for the legitimate drama. 
 Genuine taste and rigid criticism have united with the 
 verdict of impartial history to pronounce you the head and 
 leader of the noble profession to which you have conse- 
 crated abilities that would in any sphere of life render you 
 eminent. We believe that so long as Shakspere is re- 
 membered and his words revered, your name, too, will be 
 remembered with pride by all who glory in the triumphs 
 of our Saxon Mterature. 
 
 "In conclusion, permit us to express the hope that your 
 existing engagements will so far coincide with our wishes 
 as to permit us at an early day to welcome you to the 
 shores of the Pacific, assuring you of a warm and sincere 
 reception, so far as our efforts can accomplish the same ; 
 and we feel that we but express the sentiments of every 
 good citizen of the State." 
 
I08 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 This letter was signed by the Governor of Cahfomia, 
 the Lieutenant-Governor, Treasurer, Secretary of State, 
 Comptroller of the State, twenty-seven members of the 
 Senate, the Secretary and Sergeant-at-Arms, and by 
 forty-eight members of the House of Representatives. 
 
 Edwin Forrest replied : — • 
 
 " Philadelphia, July lo, 1857. 
 
 " Gentlemen, — • With a grateful pleasure I acknowl- 
 edge your communication of April 20, delivered to me a 
 short time since by the hands of Mr. Maguire. Your 
 flattering invitation, so generously bestowed and so grace- 
 fully expressed, to enter the Golden Gate and visit your 
 beautiful land, is one of the highest compliments I have 
 ever received. It is an honor, I venture to say, that was 
 never before conferred on one of my profession. 
 
 " It comes not from the lovers of the drama or men of 
 letters merely, but from the Executives, the Representa- 
 tives, and other high officials of a great State of the 
 American Confederacy, and I shall ever regard it as one of 
 the proudest compliments in all my professional career. 
 
 " Believe me, I deeply feel this mark of your kindness 
 not as mere incense to professional or personal vanity, but 
 as a proud tribute to that art which I have loved so well 
 and followed so long. 
 
 ' The youngest of the sister arts, 
 Where all their beauty blends.' 
 
 This art, permit me to add, from my youth I have sought 
 personally to elevate and professionally to improve, more 
 from the truths in nature's infallible volume than from 
 the pedantic words of the schools, — a volume open to all, 
 and which needs neither Greek nor Latin lore to be under- 
 stood. 
 
HIS CALIFORNIA TRIP. 1 09 
 
 " And now, gentlemen, although I greatly regret that 
 it is not in my power to accept your invitation, 1 sincerely 
 trust there will be a ' time for such a word,' when we may 
 yet meet together under the roof of one of those proud 
 temples consecrated to the drama by the taste and munifi- 
 cence of your fellow-citizens." 
 
 These letters, written in 1857, truly expressed the 
 actor's belief that he would be unable to visit the Pa- 
 cific coast, on account of the long journey and the 
 hardships of the sea, which he ever dreaded ; but in 
 1866 circumstances had changed his purpose, and 
 caused him to face the long voyage and the verdict 
 of a public which had appalled him before. 
 
 The previous year, while playing the part of Damon 
 at the HoUiday Street Theatre, in Baltimore, the weather 
 being very cold and the theatre open to draughts, he 
 was seized with a sudden illness, which was followed by 
 very serious results. Suffering the most intense agony, 
 he was able to get to the end of the part ; but when his 
 robes were laid aside and physicians summoned, it was 
 found to his horror that he had suffered a partial paraly- 
 sis of the sciatic nerve. In an instant the sturdy gait, 
 the proud tread, of the herculean actor were forever 
 gone ; for he never regained complete control of his 
 limb, a perceptible hobble being the legacy of the 
 dreadful visitation. He still continued to act, however ; 
 but the painful stride, the pitiful jerk which accompa- 
 nied his gait, the evident presence of the disease rob- 
 bing him of free action in one arm and of one side of 
 the body, were blots which stained the grand picture 
 which he created in such parts as Virginius, Cade, and 
 
no EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Damon. His right hand was almost powerless, and he 
 could not hold his sword. The pubhc, always quick to 
 detect the decline of power in a favorite, and too ready 
 to forget past service, began to desert the theatre when 
 the veteran appeared. He still played great engage- 
 ments where he had not been seen of late years ; but 
 in the old cities his audiences grew more and more 
 meagre, while those of his rivals were increased. 
 
 He now, in 1866, decided to go to California, urged 
 again by the manager in San Francisco. He made 
 every preparation for the journey, playing, meantime, 
 in several of the Western cities. In Chicago he gave 
 five performances at Crosby's Opera House, to an 
 average of twenty-five hundred dollars nightly. This 
 gratified him exceedingly, and consoled him for the 
 mortifications he had endured elsewhere firom pubhc 
 neglect. To James Oakes he wrote exultingly as fol- 
 lows : " Eighteen years since I acted here in a small 
 theatre, of which the present Mayor of Chicago, J. B. 
 Rice, Esq., was manager. The population, then about 
 six thousand, is now one hundred and eighty thousand, 
 with a theatre that would grace Naples, Florence, or 
 Paris. The applause I have received here has been as 
 enthusiastic as I have ever known, and the money 
 return greater. It beats the history of the stage in 
 New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charles- 
 ton, and New Orleans. Give me joy, my dear and 
 steadfast friend, that the veteran does not lag superflu- 
 ous on the stage." 
 
 The last line of the above letter shows the feehng of 
 the worn and broken man, as he heard the diminisliing 
 
HIS CALIFORNIA TRIP. in 
 
 applause in his favorite cities. His marvel at the 
 growth of Chicago in eighteen years would have been 
 greater could he have lived until the census of 1880 
 was taken, when the population had increased to half 
 a million souls, and the theatres to five equally fine edi- 
 fices, all well patronized. In quarrelling with J. B. Rice 
 Forrest lost the support of one of the noblest and truest 
 men that ever lived ; one whose advice and sturdy aid 
 would have been a safe support in his trials, had he 
 chosen to be guided by him. 
 
 In April, 1866, he went to San Francisco. At that 
 time the trip was made by steamer from New York 
 to Aspinwall, then by rail across the narrow strip of 
 isthmus to Panama, where another steamer awaited to 
 complete the voyage, which usually occupied about 
 twenty-seven or thirty days. It was the only comfort- 
 able way of reaching the far West, as the overland 
 route was then still perilous and full of hardships. 
 Forrest was a poor sailor, and endless anecdotes are 
 told of the humors of this trip arising out of his misery. 
 The vessel on the Pacific side was commanded by Cap- 
 tain Bradbury (well known to his friends by the loving 
 nickname "Yorick"), a type of the gentleman-sailor 
 such as we still see on the Cunard or Inman line of 
 steamers, — hospitable, courteous, but always attentive 
 to duty. He was, besides, a great admirer of Forrest, 
 and did all that lay in his power to make his journey 
 pleasant. Forrest's immediate companions were Mr. 
 McCuUough, his chief support, and Mr. McArdle, his 
 agent, — a congenial group. By. the midnight watch- 
 fire, when all the other passengers were asleep, or 
 
112 ED WIN FORREST. 
 
 around the table of " Yorick's " cabin, over a bowl of 
 punch, many a happy hour was passed in song and jest 
 or well-told anecdote. Forrest, however, suffered mis- 
 erably from sea-sickness. On one occasion, worn out 
 with the unceasing motion of the ship, each lurch seem- 
 ing to wrench his very vitals, he cried out, " McArdle, 
 McArdle ! where are you? — "What is it, sir?" — 
 "Tie her to a rock." — "Tie what, sir?" — "This 
 cursed ship ; do you hear me, tie her to a rock." — 
 " But there are no rocks here, sir ; we are in the middle 
 of the Pacific Ocean." — "Then run the cursed ship 
 ashore ; " and with a groan the weary man turned his 
 back to the bewildered McArdle and tried again to 
 sleep. These fantastic outbursts seemed to afford him 
 some relief, as they gave the cue for laughter to his 
 sympathizing friends. 
 
 At last a cheerful and quiet Sunday came around. 
 The sea was still, a cloudless sky above, a glassy mirror 
 below, the ship ploughing her way peacefully through 
 the water. Hardly had Forrest ventured on deck when 
 Bradbury, McCuUough, and some other kindred spirits 
 resolved upon a practical joke as a relief to the tedium 
 of the voyage. Forrest's dislike of the bigoted mem- 
 bers of the Church has often been told, but his respect 
 for the more advanced and liberal clergy is not so well 
 known. Among the passengers was a loud-voiced ex- 
 horter who had begged on two former Sundays to be 
 allowed to preach in the cabin. It was the custom of 
 Captain Bradbury to read the service of the Church of 
 England himself each Sunday to his ship's company ; 
 and as he had as little respect as Forrest for the Chad- 
 
HIS CALIFORNIA TRIP. 
 
 "3 
 
 bands of the pulpit, he declined the request of the rev- 
 erend gentleman. Upon this day, however, he relented, 
 and resolved that the service should be for the benefit 
 of Forrest. He urged Forrest to attend, assuring him 
 that the divine was a well-known orator who could give 
 an eloquent sermon, and, moreover, a brief one. After 
 much entreaty, aided by the urgent advice of McCul- 
 lough and his other friends, he consented to make one 
 of the congregation in the cabin. To the divine now 
 went Bradbury, told him that the profane play-actor, 
 the renowned Forrest, was eager to hear him, and hoped 
 he would make his sermon long. The delighted 
 preacher consented, seeing a lost soul in the balance 
 which he might happily save. Far down in the cabin, 
 crowded in by the rest of the passengers, a long dis- 
 tance from the door, sat Forrest, surrounded by Brad- 
 bury, McCuUough, and the others. Soon after the 
 prosy exhorter began an officer of the ship came to the 
 door of the cabin, and beckoned the captain, who stole 
 softly out. McCuUough soon responded to another call, 
 and so on, until Forrest was left alone without a friend. 
 Meanwhile the preacher thundered on in English fully 
 an hour, then, to show his linguistic dexterity, he dis- 
 coursed for half an hour in the Sandwich Islands dialect, 
 the Kanaka! Each moral axiom, each word of hope to 
 the lost soul, was given to Forrest directly, as if he were 
 the only individual there for whom those words were 
 spoken. The faces of the escaped ones appeared now 
 and then at the window, but the glare of Forrest's eyes 
 as he met theirs was ominous. When the agony was 
 over, the jokers were not to be found until the wrath of 
 
114 ED WIN FORREST. 
 
 the irate tragedian had had time to subside and he was 
 sufficiently calm to join heartily in the laughter against 
 himself. 
 
 The long journey ended on the 3d of May, when he 
 entered the lovely harbor of San Francisco, through 
 whose Golden Gate he had hoped years before to pass. 
 The people of that fair city, perhaps the most cosmo- 
 politan in America, were eager to show their affection 
 for this tragedian who had encountered such trials to 
 bring them amusement. It was a novel experience. 
 The veteran actor who had been famous when Tele- 
 graph HiU was a barren waste looking out on a silent 
 bay, was now the guest of a city whose population 
 numbered nearly a quarter of a million. The elements 
 which formed the society of San Francisco and the 
 whole State of California were collected firom the re- 
 motest parts of America, and, indeed, of the whole 
 world. Each State had sent out emigrants in search of 
 gold, — men who could have reached the highest ranks 
 in their own sections, but who now saw in the adven- 
 turous pursuit of wealth a field where energy might 
 rapidly roU up riches, and they might return like the 
 Indian nabob, to revel in their newly-acquired means 
 in their old homes. These men had known, or had 
 heard of, Forrest all their fives. Many of them had 
 formed a part of his support in the audiences on the 
 momentous occasion of his reappearance at the end of 
 the eventful trial. All were critics, for they had not 
 been so long in exile as to have forgotten their dramatic 
 experiences, while the advantages which had been 
 theirs in the East made them \vise in the selection of 
 
HIS CALIFORNIA TRIP. 115 
 
 their idols. Their earliest actors were Junius Brutus 
 Booth, James Stark, and Edwin Booth in the male 
 tragic line ; while Julia Dean, Laura Keene, Mrs. John 
 Wood, Catherine Sinclair, and other well-known actresses 
 were their dramatic heroines. The elder Booth had, 
 comet-like, flashed across their sight, and given them 
 the last glimmer of that irregular genius which was 
 soon to be extinguished in dark night. James Mur- 
 doch had delighted the San Franciscans with those 
 dehcate impersonations of genteel comedy, the memory 
 of which is now all that is left to us. In a word, the 
 audience before whom Forrest was now to appear had 
 all the experience of old theatre-goers, all the memories 
 of the current theatre of their age, with none of the 
 fashionable indifference to amusement which comes of 
 satiety. It was then, as it has ever since remained, a 
 community where no reputation will be taken blindly 
 as a proof of excellence, but where merit, when pro^^ed 
 and tried, will find a warmer recognition, a heartier 
 welcome, a more vigorous acceptance perhaps, than in 
 any other city of the Union. San Francisco has proved 
 the grave of many a great reputation, the starting-point 
 and outset of many a prosperous career. AH the earlier 
 fame of Davenport's Hamlet could not save that actor 
 from the greatest humiliation of his life. The theatre, 
 when he played there, was crowded at his opening, but 
 empty before the end of the .third act of the tragedy. 
 They rejected Jefferson's estimate of his own powers, 
 by turning him the cold shoulder when he appeared in 
 two characters unworthy of his genius ; but they were 
 willing to canonize him when he at last honored him- 
 
1 1 6 ED WIN FORREST. 
 
 self and them by playing those classic parts of which he 
 is, and has ever been, the greatest exponent. 
 
 Forrest was met by the heartiest of those San Fran- 
 cisco welcomes. Serenaded by night, the streets were 
 thronged to catch a ghmpse of him at the window ; and 
 when the actor's well-known face was seen, a shout 
 went up which gladdened the veteran's heart. Old 
 friends crowded about him to renew the memories of 
 the past, and he must have felt that here, at least, his 
 fame was secure and stable. Places for the opening 
 night were sold at auction, and competition like that 
 which had marked the Jenny Lind excitement in the 
 East sent the price of the first choice of seats up to 
 five hundred dollars, a sum which one eager firiend and 
 admirer gladly paid. 
 
 When the night of the 14th of May came, Washing- 
 ton Street was crowded for several blocks, long before 
 the doors of the theatre were opened, and when at last 
 the public was admitted, the few places left unsold and 
 the " standing room only " were soon filled, while thou- 
 sands were turned away disappointed, or hngered about 
 the door to catch an echo of the applause which came 
 from within. The play was " Richelieu." His recep- 
 tion when he came upon the stage as the old Cardinal 
 was deafening. The whole audience rose and cheered 
 the grand old actor, and it was several minutes before 
 he could go on with the text. The reception inspired 
 him, and he played with much of his old spirit ; but 
 the audience soon detected tliat the great man was no 
 longer what he had been, the giant not so powerful as 
 of yore. When the curtain fell, disappointment was 
 
HIS CALIFORNIA TRIP. WJ 
 
 freely expressed by many, and even the memories of 
 Stark and the then boyish efforts of Edwin Booth were 
 recalled to the detriment of Edwin Forrest. A gradual 
 dedine in receipts showed a diminished attendance, 
 until, at the end of thirty-five performances, he with- 
 drew, leaving uncompleted sixty-five nights of his en- 
 gagement. 
 
 During this time, owing to his ailments and his want 
 of success on the stage, which convinced him of his 
 failure to sustain the great fame which had preceded 
 him, his temper became more harsh and exacting than 
 ever. The property-man, bringing him the cup which 
 held the sponge with blood for his face and hands 
 in "Macbeth," was harshly asked, "What is this?" 
 "Blood, sir," replied the terrified man. "Blood," 
 thundered Forrest, examining the pinkish color of the 
 liquid. " What an ass you must be not to know the 
 color of blood, in a country where they kill a man a 
 day ! " and he dashed the innocent fluid to the floor. 
 The trying changes of the climate increased his gouty 
 and rheumatic troubles, and added to his moroseness. 
 One day, being asked if his rheumatism was no better, 
 he replied, " How can a man get better in a land where 
 they have a climate every fifteen minutes ! " 
 
 He went for relief to the Geysers, and was carried 
 into the valley whose natural springs are the wonder of 
 all travellers, unable to help himself, and never moving 
 hand or foot without pain. He was hfted to the saddle 
 of a Spanish pony by the strong hands of his attend- 
 ants, then moved slowly along to what was known as 
 the " Mud Bath," to whose healing qualities he owed 
 
1 1 8 ED WllSf FORREST. 
 
 an almost instantaneous restoration to health. In Sep- 
 tember he wrote to his friend, James Oakes : — 
 
 " Here I am still enjoying the salubrious air of the 
 mountains on horseback and afoot, and bathing in waters 
 from the hot and cold springs which pour their affluent 
 streams on every hand. My health is greatly improved, 
 and my lameness is now scarcely perceptible. In a few 
 weeks more I shall return to San Francisco to finish my 
 engagement, which was interrupted by my late indisposi- 
 tion. My present intention is not to return to the East 
 until next spring, for it would be too great a risk to en- 
 counter the rigors of a winter there which might prove 
 disastrous. You are aware that the winter in San Fran- 
 cisco is much more agreeable than the summer, and after 
 my professional engagement there I shall visit Sacra- 
 mento, and some few other towns; and then go to Los 
 Angelos, where I shall enjoy a climate quite equal to that 
 of the tropics. I am determined to come back to you in 
 perfect health. How I should like to take a tramp with 
 you into the mountains this blessed day ! I can give you 
 no reasonable idea of the weather here. The skies are 
 cloudless, save with rare and roseate shadows ; not a drop 
 of rain, and yet no drought, no aridity ; the trees are fresh 
 and green, and the air as exhilarating as champagne." 
 
 His recovery was almost miraculous, and he soon set 
 out to visit the wonders of California, the mammoth 
 trees, the valleys, and those glorious mountains whose 
 names are enduring monuments of tire great men after 
 whom they are called. While hoping to return to San 
 Francisco to complete his engagement, he received 
 news of the dangerous illness of one of his sisters, and 
 he resolved to start at once for home. On the 20th of 
 
HIS CALIFORNIA TRIP. 
 
 119 
 
 October he embarked, turning his back upon the new 
 world before which he had offered his mature genius, 
 and where his physical ailments had proved a barrier 
 to his complete success. After an uneventful journey- 
 he reached Philadelphia at last, where in his own home, 
 with his old friends, he told the story of his travels to 
 loving and eager hsteners. 
 
I20 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 fflS LAST APPEARANCE. 
 
 WHEN he had recovered his spirits after the 
 return from San Francisco, Edwin Forrest re- 
 sumed his profession. After forty years of experience 
 in the easier and less arduous paths of the stage, he 
 became again a Stroller, taking up the thread of his hfe 
 where he had left it in those far-off Southern days, and 
 weaving it into the web of his declining years. Into 
 cities where his name had been spoken of with awe as 
 the great master of the drama, where even actors of 
 ordinary rank and merit disdained to play, Forrest now 
 ventured, with companies organized only to make 
 prominent the central figure, composed of support 
 " caught up in the alarm of fear and hurry," and man- 
 aged, often, by adventurers who cared nothing for the 
 fame of the tragedian, save as an attraction to bring 
 profit to themselves. He travelled for more than two 
 full seasons, but was no longer able to give perform- 
 ances free from the taint of his bodily weakness, or of 
 the fretful temper which was intensified by the discom- 
 forts of travel and by poor food. Those who saw him 
 for the first time were disappointed, as they compared 
 him with the herculean ideal which tliey had been 
 
HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 121 
 
 taught to expect. The poverty of his surroundings 
 gave to the miserable picture an additional weight to 
 drag him down, and where he hoped to leave a fresh 
 mark of his giant powers, the result was often only 
 bitter disappointment, endured in silence or expressed 
 harshly in satirical epigrams. 
 
 Young writers, whose maiden pens had as yet dealt 
 only with police reports or details of local interest, 
 whose experience of the drama extended back to yes- 
 terday's visit to the circus or the hasty perusal of one of 
 the stage editions of the text of some old play, now be- 
 came eloquent as they fleshed their maiden swords in 
 the old and worn armor of the dying gladiator. In 
 every town he was assailed by some local wonder, with 
 downy lip, who now saw through what he called the 
 shallow disguise of an artist whose genius had inspired 
 the admiration of the oldest and wisest critics of the 
 land ; and he found in one of the most remote of villa- 
 ges to which he had penetrated, led by the adventurous 
 spirit of the money-seeking manager, a young writer who, 
 after having for several days written the coarsest abuse 
 of Forrest, boasted openly that " he had driven the driv- 
 eller from the stage." 
 
 Faults which would have disgraced the merest tyro in 
 the art were unscrupulously attributed to Forrest. All 
 the cries which the school of immaculate tragedy had 
 of old used against him were quoted anew; "robust," 
 " howHng," " tiger," were common epithets by which 
 the grand old man was greeted ; and all his old service 
 seemed forgotten. 
 
 It was indeed strange that he should have lingered so 
 
122 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 long before the public, that having outlived his vigor he 
 should have acted when his powers had declined, and 
 when he could no longer give complete and perfect 
 representations of the grand heroes with whom he was 
 identified ; but Forrest was not free from the delusion 
 which has ever clung to the hearts of actors, that there 
 exists a sentimental union between the public and the 
 artist. When the force is gone which was once able to 
 give perfect performances, the public too often forgets 
 the glories of the past in the shortcomings of the pres- 
 ent. Acting for which an apology must be offered is 
 already condemned, and no service in former days wOl 
 excuse defects in these. The relation of audience and 
 player is purely a professional one, and the interest 
 which the public has for an actor is that which arises 
 from a pleasure felt in the perfect performance of duty ; 
 but while the audiences easily lay aside or forget their 
 favorites, the sensitive actor too often accepts applause 
 as a personal tribute, never to be withheld, until he 
 awakes to the reality with a bitter sense of what he con- 
 siders the fickleness of the multitude. 
 
 Into this error Forrest fell. The idol of four genera- 
 tions could not realize that a fifth would hesitate to ac- 
 cept his great fame, and presume to demand that he 
 should be equal to that reputation, even now in his old 
 age. Infirmity and disease were good reasons why he 
 should abstain from acting, but they were poor excuses 
 for blemished pictures. 
 
 In many places he had hardly been heard of, and he 
 was often mortified to see that the box-office told a 
 humiliating story of his want of popularity. He began 
 
ff/S LAST APPEARANCE. 1 23 
 
 to set as much value upon a favorable notice now, no 
 matter who was the writer, as he once did upon metro- 
 pohtan criticisms, such as those of " CoUey Gibber " in 
 his own city. His scrap-book contains, carefully pre- 
 served by the side of a splendid analysis of Leggett's 
 or Ra)Tnond's, a long, windy effusion of some obscure 
 country novice in dramatic writing. 
 
 His old enemy the gout grew stronger, and the cold 
 weather caused him intense suffering. He was com- 
 pelled often to forfeit his engagements for a time, and 
 take an inverval of rest at some obscure hotel, where 
 poor fare and lonely surroundings only increased his 
 malady and added to his moroseness. In reply to a 
 telegram from a Western manager who asked him if he 
 would play in his city, and for how long, he answered, 
 " Ten nights if the weather is temperate ; ten minutes 
 if it is cold." Shivering beside a cheerless stove behind 
 the scenes of a theatre of a far Western town, he ex- 
 claimed, " I am worth three hundred thousand pounds 
 sterling, and I can't purchase five cents' worth of heat 
 for my body ! " Dressed one cold night in St. Louis for 
 Virginius, in which he stood almost nakedly exposed to 
 the cold air which entered the theatre by a thousand 
 neglected crannies, he muttered to himself shiveringly, 
 " I wish I wore paddings on my legs." A wag who stood 
 near and overheard him said softly to him, " Why don't 
 you, sir? " With a laugh as he glanced down upon his 
 magnificent proportions, his good-nature returned, and 
 the cold was for the time forgotten. 
 
 As his gait grew more and more feeble, he was com- 
 pelled to resort to artifice to conceal his infirmities ; 
 
124 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 and one of his companions tells a touching story of his 
 suffering in this direction. He had always been used 
 in the last scene of " Damon and Pythias " to leap out 
 of the arms of Pythias, at the voice of Dionysius, and 
 to spring upon the scaffold with a gymnast's agOity and 
 perfect grace. Each night now it was his custom to 
 inspect the platform and try this jump before the rise of 
 the curtain. The height — ordinarily three feet — had 
 been gradually lessened at each performance, until, at 
 last, one night it was found that he could not make his 
 step until it had been cut down to three inches. Being 
 asked if it would do, he said, sadly, " Yes ; " and turned 
 away to hide the tears that fell as he thought of his de- 
 caying manhood. His performances, robbed of the 
 activity of youth or the graceful movements of mature 
 age, became, on most occasions, declamatory exhibi- 
 tions in costume. 
 
 In the larger cities of the East, which he had neg- 
 lected for years, he was almost forgotten, save by those 
 older theatre-goers to whom the new drama was a 
 stranger. The traditions of the stage were passing into 
 new hands. The Shaksperean plays were receiving 
 pictorial interpretation and an unusual scholastic treat- 
 ment which somewhat atoned for the absence of vigor 
 in the actors. He who had borne the banner of the 
 old school and carried the standard into the camp of 
 the foreigner was now a forgotten veteran, who had 
 surrendered into younger hands the battle-flag of old. 
 He was present one afternoon at one of the famous re- 
 vivals at Booth's Theatre. It was reported in the wings 
 that the old master was in a back seat of the second 
 
HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 125 
 
 gallery, grimly watching the pictorial embellishments of 
 one of his own great characters. Mr. Booth, on hear- 
 ing this, immediately despatched his business manager 
 to offer him the use of the stage-box. They were not 
 on speaking terms, but Booth felt he was but doing his 
 duty to a veteran hero. Stepping softly behind For- 
 rest, the manager touched him on the shoulder, and 
 said, "Is this Mr. Forrest?" "No," growled he, as 
 he turned away and resumed his observation of the 
 play. Riding with him shortly after the revival of 
 "Julius Caesar" at Booth's Theatre, in which the 
 writer had borne a part, the question of scenic embel- 
 lishment and pictorial fidelity to place and costume 
 were discussed. He gave vent, good-naturedly, to his 
 own prejudices against what he called the " scene-paint- 
 er's drama," and said that he preferred to play even 
 Coriolanus in a simple but appropriate setting, to aU 
 the gaudy kickshaws by which modern dramatic art is 
 swaddled and smothered. 
 
 To add to his trials during these years, he was called 
 upon to part with his beloved sister Carohne. She 
 died in 1869. He wrote; "Caroline died last night. 
 We have a sad house. Why, under such bereavements, 
 has God not given us some comforting, reasonable hope 
 in the future where these severed ties of firiendship and 
 love may be again united ? Man's vanity and self-love 
 have betrayed him into such a belief, but who knows 
 that the fact substantiates it? " 
 
 In 1 8 7 1 Eleariora, the last of his little family at home, 
 passed away. He wrote : " My sister Eleanora is dead, 
 and there is now no one on earth whose veins bear 
 
126 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 blood like mine. My heart is desolate." He stood 
 beside his hearth-stone alone and hopeless. 
 
 We are coming now to the last theatrical perform- 
 ances of the first and greatest of American actors. In 
 1871 and 1872 he made one of the supreme efforts of 
 his life. His labors were amazing, his travels a marvel, 
 when the state of his health is considered, and his finan- 
 cial success surprising even for one so used to fortune. 
 His last performances were pronounced by his old ad- 
 mirers equal to his earUer ones, and it was claimed that 
 his fires flashed with their wonted splendors before ex- 
 piring forever. During this last season he played suc- 
 cessively in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Columbus, New 
 Orleans, NashviUe, Galveston, Houston, Omaha, Mem- 
 phis, Kansas City, St. Louis, Quincy, Pittsburg, Cleve- 
 land, Buffalo, Detroit, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Troy, 
 and Albany. 
 
 His last engagement in New York took place in Feb- 
 ruary, 1871. He played Lear and Richelieu, his two 
 greatest parts. The supporting company was poor, the 
 theatre — the Lyceum, on Fourteenth Street — un- 
 popular, and the weather unusually severe. There is 
 something absolutely pathetic in this engagement, so 
 inauspiciously closing a service of half a century. The 
 newspapers gave an impressive emphasis to the occa- 
 sion, and the voice of maUce was hushed in the pres- 
 ence of that strange spectacle of a great light going 
 out in flickers of its old brightness, giving forth only 
 rare intermittent flashes. The veteran writes to his 
 faithful Oakes : " Well, I am here in New York once 
 more, and on Monday next begin again my professional 
 
HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 1 27 
 
 labors, — labors begun more than forty years ago in the 
 same city. What changes since then in men and 
 things ! Will any one of that great and enthusiastic 
 audience which greeted my efforts as a boy be here 
 on Monday evening next to witness the matured per- 
 formances of the man? If so, how I should like to 
 hear from his own lips if the promises of springtime 
 have been entirely fulfilled by the fruits of the autumn 
 of life ! " 
 
 This letter shows how little heed he paid to the crip- 
 pled gait, the feeble hand, and the weakened physique 
 which had once answered the call of his commanding 
 brain. No words can so well describe the impressions 
 of these final performances as those in which Winter 
 and Sedley, Stuart and Moray, used in writing of them. 
 Extracts are offered here : — 
 
 " Never were plaudits better deserved by any actor than 
 those which have been showered down upon Forrest dur- 
 ing the past week. In his prime, when theatres were 
 crowded by the brightest and fairest of America, who 
 listened spellbound to the favorite of the hour, he never 
 played this character half so well. He was for the mo- 
 ment Lear, but not Shakspere's old man ; he was For- 
 rest's Lear. Seeing and hearing him under the disad- 
 vantages of a mangled text, a poor company,' a miserable 
 mise en seine, and a thin house, the visitor must still be 
 impressed by the one grand central figure, so eloquent, so 
 strong, so sweet in gentlest pathos. He is the King Lear 
 of the American stage ; he gave to his children, the pub- 
 lic, all that he had, and now they have deserted him. They 
 have crowned a new king, before whom they bow, and the 
 ' old man eloquent ' is cheered by few voices. The con- 
 
128 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 sciousness of his royal nature supports him, but still he is 
 deserted and alone. He bowed his head shghtly in re- 
 sponse to the acclamations of those scantily filled seats. 
 But throughout the play there was an added dignity of 
 sorrow, which showed that the neglect of the public had 
 wounded him. He knew his fate. He recognized that he 
 was a discrowned king, and that the fickle public had 
 crowned another not worthy of sovereignty and having no 
 sceptre of true genius. Actors may come and actors may 
 go, but it will be centuries before a Lear arise like unto 
 this man Forrest, whom the public seems to have so nearly 
 forgotten." 
 
 Writers who had formerly used little dehcacy in ex- 
 pressing their censure of his performance now spoke 
 with tenderness and affection of these last fruits of his 
 genius, and recognized a mellowness in tone, and a sad- 
 ness as of a near farewell, which touched the heart and 
 silenced harsh thoughts. He had lived through a man- 
 hood of hard, uns)Tnpathetic experience into an age 
 when pity mingled with reverence for duty done. After 
 twenty nights the curtain fell for the last time between 
 Edwin Forrest and a New York audience. But his 
 final stage appearance was yet to come, and it should 
 be approached with a tender sentiment of the loss which 
 was so soon to befall the American drama in the fare- 
 well of its grandest performer. 
 
 On the night of March 25, 1872, Forrest opened in 
 Lear at the Globe Theatre, Boston. The house was 
 crowded to suffocation, and the applause which greeted 
 him was the most flattering tribute of his career. From 
 Mr. Alger's ample biography we quote this letter from a 
 " distinguished author " who was present : • — ■ 
 
HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 
 
 129 
 
 " I went last night to see Forrest. I saw Lear himself; 
 and never can I forget him, the poor, discrowned, wan- 
 dering king, whose every look and tone went to the heart. 
 Though mimic sorrows latterly have httle power over 
 me, I could not suppress my tears in the last scene. The 
 tones of the heart-broken father hnger in my ear like the 
 echo of a distant strain of sad, sweet music, inexpressibly 
 mournful yet sublime. The whole picture will stay in my 
 memory so long as soul and body hang together." 
 
 " Lear " was played six nights. During the second 
 week he was announced for Richelieu and Virginiics ; 
 but he caught a violent cold on Sunday, and labored 
 sorely on Monday evening through the part of Riche- 
 lieu. On Tuesday he repeated the performance, against 
 the advice of friends and physicians. Rare bursts of 
 his old power lighted up the play, but he labored pite- 
 ously on against his increasing illness and threatened 
 pneumonia. When stimulants were offered he rejected 
 them, declaring " that if he died to-night he should stiU 
 be his old royal self" 
 
 Announced for Virginius the following evening, he 
 was unable to appear. A severe attack of pneumonia 
 developed itself; he was carried to his hotel, and his 
 last engagement was brought to an abrupt and melan- 
 choly end. 
 
 A few printed opinions of Forrest's acting, expressed 
 at different periods during his long career by fully com- 
 petent critics, may prove not without interest here, as 
 showing the regard in which he was held by men of 
 various classes and conditions on both sides of the 
 Atlantic. 
 
 9 
 
I30 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Mr. Phelps, in his " Players of a Century " (Albany, 
 1880), quotes from \!a& Albany Advertiser , October 25, 
 1825, a criticism of Forrest, — one of the earUest dis- 
 interested ones that are preserved : — 
 
 " Mr. Forrest is a stranger to us ; we are ignorant 
 whether he be a native of this country or of England ; upon 
 himself it depends to do honor to the country which gave 
 him birth. Nature has been bountiful to him. His face and 
 figure are such as to prepossess an audience in his favor ; 
 his voice (with the single exception of Mr. Cooper's) is, we 
 think, superior to any we have ever heard. This young 
 gentleman we have followed with interest through Jaffier, 
 Mark Antony, and the Indian Chief va. Noah's play, " She 
 Would be a Soldier." Mark Antony and the Indian 
 Warrior evince, in addition to Mr. Forrest's great natu- 
 ral gifts, a degree of study too often neglected by young 
 actors, and to this circumstance do we attribute the ex- 
 treme rarity of great histrionic talents combined with the 
 charms and graces of youth. If this young gentleman 
 will listen to the voice of truth, and avoid the destructive 
 school of vanity (which has ruined so many who promised 
 greatly), few, aye, a very few, years will place him in the 
 ranks with our own Cooper, and with these highly gifted 
 strangers, Conway, Booth, and Kean, who of late have 
 ' thrown ' a halo over the American stage." 
 
 Macready, in his " Reminiscences," ^vrites : — 
 "... Forrest was the Mark Antony. He was a very 
 young man, — not more, I believe, than one or two and 
 twenty. The ' Bowery lads,' as they are termed, made 
 great accounts of him, and he certainly was possessed of 
 remarkable qualifications. His figure was good, although 
 perhaps a little too heavy ; his face might be considered 
 handsome, his voice excellent. He was gifted with ex- 
 
HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 13 I 
 
 traordinary strength of limb, to which he omitted no oppor- 
 tunity of giving prominence. He had received only the 
 commonest education, but in his reading of the text he 
 showed the discernment and good sense of an intellect 
 much upon a level with that of Conway ; but he had more 
 energy, and was altogether distinguished by powers that 
 might, under proper direction, be productive of great 
 effect. I saw him again in William Tell. His perform- 
 ance was marked by vehemence and rude force that told 
 upon his hearers ; but of pathos in the affecting interview 
 with his son there was not the slightest touch, and it was 
 evident he had not rightly understood some passages of the 
 text. My observation of him was not hastily pronounced. 
 My impression was that, possessed, of natural requisites 
 in no ordinary degree, he might, under careful discipline, 
 confidently look forward to eminence in his profession. If 
 he would give himself up to a severe study of his art, and 
 improve himself by the practice he would obtain before 
 the audiences of the principal theatres of Great Britain, 
 he might make himself a first-rate actor. But to such a 
 course of self-denying training I was certain he never 
 would submit, as its necessity would not be made appar- 
 ent to him. The injudicious and ignorant flattery and the 
 factious applause of his supporters in low-priced theatres 
 would fill his purse, would blind him to his deficiency in 
 taste and judgment, and satisfy his vanity, confirming his 
 self-opinion of attained perfection. I spoke of him con- 
 stantly as a young man of unquestionable promise, but I 
 doubted his submission to the inexorable conditions for 
 reaching excellence. The event has been as I anticipated. 
 His robustious style gains applause in the coarse melo- 
 dramas of " Spartacus" and "Metamora," but the traits 
 of character in Shakspere and the poetry of the legitimate 
 drama are beyond his grasp. My forebodings were pro- 
 phetic.'' 
 
132 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 Mr. George Vandenhoff, in his " Leaves from an 
 Actor's Note Book," writing of Forrest in 1842, says : — 
 
 " I was taken by one of his great admirers to see him as 
 Metamora, and was surprised to find the house (the old 
 Chatham Theatre) more than three-fourths empty. He, 
 however, acted with his accustomed vigor ; and I freely 
 acknowledge that, for power of destructive energy, I 
 never heard anything on the stage so tremendous in its 
 sustained crescendo swell, and crushing force of utterance, 
 as his defiance of the Council in that play. His voice 
 surged and roared like the angry sea lashed into fury by a 
 storm, till, as it reached its boiling, seething climax, in 
 which the serpent hiss of hate was heard at intervals 
 amidst its louder, deeper, hoarser tones, it was. like the 
 Falls of Niagara, in its tremendous down-sweeping ca- 
 dence : it was a whirlwind, a tornado, a cataract of illim- 
 itable rage." 
 
 In 1848, Douglas Jerrold wrote of Forrest's Lear: — 
 
 " A more thoughtful, feeling, and artistic display of gen- 
 uine acting we never witnessed. From the first scene to 
 the last he was the Lear of our immortal bard. Not a hne, 
 look, or gesture told of Mr. Forrest, but Lear was Lear 
 from the first scene to the last. We never saw madness 
 so perfectly portrayed. It is true to nature — painfully so ; 
 and to the utter absence of mannerism, affectation, noisy 
 declamation, and striving for effect, may, nay must, be at- 
 tributed the histrionic triumph achieved by Mr. Forrest in 
 this difficult part. By this display of Thursday evening 
 Mr. Forrest has stamped himself a man of genius. We 
 candidly confess we did not think it was in him, and we 
 were much electrified, as was every one in the house. The 
 whole audience, in fact, was taken by surprise ; and the 
 unanimous cheering at the conclusion of each act must 
 


HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 1 33 
 
 have convinced Mr. Forrest how much his performance 
 was appreciated. He must have been gratified, for the 
 expressions of delight which greeted him were as heartfelt 
 as they were merited. The imprecation at the conclusion 
 of the first act was most impressively and admirably de- 
 livered, and drew down thunders of applause from one and 
 all. We never heard this awful curse so powerfully uttered. 
 It was dreadful from its intenseness and reality. Had we 
 space, we could point out numberless excellences in Mr. 
 Forrest's performance. A more talented exhibition we 
 never wish to see; it is impossible to imagine anything 
 more intellectual. The care and study bestowed upon this 
 part must have been great, and the actor has identified 
 himself most completely with it. It is refreshing now- 
 a-days to see one of Shakspere's plays so brought before 
 us, and we feel exceedingly obliged to Mr. Forrest for hav- 
 ing reminded us of the palmy days of Kemble and Kean ; 
 and when we add that his Lear is equal in every respect to 
 that of the two mighty tragedians, whose names are hal- 
 lowed by the admirers of genius, we think we can scarcely 
 bestow higher praise." 
 
 Henry F. Chorley wrote of him after his first engage- 
 ment in London : — 
 
 " However much Macready nerves one at the time by 
 the subtle intellect of his personifications, I am never much 
 the better for it afterwards, — never find a word, a look, or 
 an attitude written on my heart. There are certain points of 
 Mr. Forrest's playing that I shall never forget, to my dying 
 day. There is a force without violence in his passionate 
 parts, which he owes much to his physical conformation ; 
 but which, thrown into the body of an infirm old king (his 
 Lear was very kingly), is most awful and withering ; as, 
 for instance, where he slides down upon his knees, with — 
 
134 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 ' For, as I am a man, I think this lady 
 To be my child, Cordelia.' " 
 
 Mr. Wemyss, in his "Theatrical Biography" (1848), 
 gives the following opinion of Mr. Forrest's acting : — 
 
 " Mr. Forrest's Shaksperean characters, with the ex- 
 ception of Othello, where his terrific energy in the third 
 and fourth acts holds his audience in breathless amaze- 
 ment, are not above mediocrity ; his Richard the Third 
 and his Macbeth do not even deserve the name; but in 
 these characters which have been written for him, in 
 which his physical requisites have been brought into play 
 in the most favorable manner, he maintains a reputation 
 which will be cherished so long as the American drama, 
 of which he may be called the founder, shall exist." 
 
 James E. Murdoch, in "The Stage," writes : — 
 " The acting of Forrest was natural, impulsive, and ar- 
 dent, because he was not so well trained as his English 
 rivals in what may be termed a false refinement. Forrest 
 was not considered as polished an actor as Macready, 
 and was often charged with rudeness and violence in his 
 impersonations, and even ridiculed for muscularity of 
 manner ; and yet I never knew a tragedian who did not 
 use all his physical power in reaching the climax of his 
 most impassioned delineations. It must be remembered 
 that Mr. Forrest was a strong man, and when excited his 
 passions appeared more extreme than those of one more 
 delicately organized ; and unqualified condemnation was 
 only heard from those who were either unable or unwilling 
 to perceive that the traits which distinguished our then 
 young actor were really more natural than the elaborate 
 presentations and precise mannerisms of Macready. . . . 
 Although Forrest in his youth had only received what 
 was then called a good school training, he furnished in 
 
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 'IP 
 
 ( . ,,^\ 
 
 7-^ 
 
 1 
 
 ^ 
 
HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 135 
 
 his manhood an example of what might have been profit- 
 ably imitated by the young men of his time who, with all 
 of the advantages of coUegiate education, failed to exhibit 
 the progressive intellectual improvement which steadily 
 marked his course from year to year. Many who did not 
 admire his earlier dramatic performances were greatly 
 impressed with his manner in the later parts of his career, 
 his impersonation of Leur being generally considered the 
 crowning point of his excellence. Mr. Longfellow, who 
 did not admire Mr. Forrest as Jack Cade or The Gladiator, 
 speaking of his Lear, said it was a noble performance, well 
 worthy the admiration of the lovers of good acting." 
 
 Mr. Charles T. Congdon, in his " Reminiscences of 
 a Journalist " (1880), writes : — 
 
 "The transition from this dehcate triumph of the dra- 
 matic art to the gladiatorial exhibitions of Mr. Edwin For- 
 rest is like passing from the musical meadows of Arcadia 
 to the fields of Bashan, resonant with bovine bellowers. 
 As an American, I am under constitutional obligations to 
 declare Mr. Forrest the finest tragic actor of this or of any 
 age ; but as a man and a critic, I resolutely refuse to say 
 anything of the sort. ' If this be treason,' as Patrick 
 Henry said, ' make the most of it ! ' Fanny Kemble, 
 somewhere about 1832, during her first theatrical triumphs 
 in the United States, went down to the Bowery Theatre 
 to see the young tragedian about whom there was so much 
 talk; and I think her sole criticism upon him in her diary 
 is, ' What a mountain of a man ! ' Well, he was tall and 
 he was muscular. Such calves as his I have seldom seen. 
 It was with admirable instinct that Dr. Bird wrote for this 
 large person the play of ' The Gladiator.' He was born 
 for single combat. The Macduff viiih. whom he contended 
 had a hard time of it, nor did he easily succumb to the 
 
136 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 most valiant Richmond. Supernumeraries did not like to 
 be handled by him when the business required pulling 
 about and mauling. The Messenger in ' Damon and 
 Pythias ' always played the part at the risk of his bones 
 when Mr. Forrest dehneated the patriotic Syracusian. 
 Of course, all this mastodonian muscularity was a disad- 
 vantage in characters of predominating intellect, like 
 Hamlet, with which our actor never meddled without 
 reminding us of a bull in a china-shop. The merits of 
 Mr. Forrest were those which might be acquired by long 
 experience of the stage, and by many opportunities of 
 practising at the expense of the puWic. Sometimes, when 
 he had only to manage a few lengths of stately declama- 
 tion, he succeeded in making an impression upon the 
 judicious. With such a frame, and a good costume, it 
 would have been strange if he had altogether missed dig- 
 nity ; but he was not over-burthened with intellectual 
 perceptions, and, generally speaking, whatever he played 
 he was the same man. One remembers him, not as 
 Macbeth, nor even as Spartacus or Metamora, but as the 
 Great American Tragedian. Actors are not usually good 
 judges of dramas ; but it would be impossible for a player 
 of the least literary instinct to go on acting year after year 
 in such a farrago of bombast and bad rhetoric as poor 
 John Augustus Stone's aboriginal drama of ' Metamora.' 
 Mr. Stone did what he could to atone for the injury which 
 he had inflicted upon the world by the production of this 
 play and another, equally bad, which he wrote for Yankee 
 Hill. He drowned himself on June i, 1834, in the Schuyl- 
 kill River. We will accept the presumptive apology. 
 Mr. Forrest went on playing those parts specially written 
 for his private legs and larynx, to the end. One does not 
 understand why he did not lay them aside after the full 
 development of his Shaksperean aspirations. I think 
 that he had dim notions of the faults of his acting, and 
 
HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 1 37 
 
 that he tried a little to be less outrageous; but he was 
 rather worse when he attempted to be quiet than when he 
 o'erdid Termagant and out-Heroded Herod. Any at- 
 tempt to utter anything sotto voce instantly suggested 
 suiTocation. Nor could Mr. Forrest move his ponderous 
 limbs with ease, except in garments of the loosest descrip- 
 tion ; in a part like Claude Melnotte, demanding modern 
 apparel, he was like the Farnese Hercules in a dress- 
 coat. He had some original business, but it was not good ; 
 even if it had been better, he would have spoiled it by 
 over-consciousness and by thrusting it upon the attention 
 of the house." 
 
 " Hon. Wm. B. Maclay, of New York, after Forrest's 
 death, wrote : — 
 
 " Some friends of Mr. Forrest wishing to have a mar- 
 ble statue of him in one of his characters, and long divided 
 in opinion which one to select, ultimately decided upon 
 Coriolanus, in accordance with the actor's own preference. 
 It was indeed a character worthy of being classed with 
 his Lear, Damon, and Richelieu. I first saw hira in the 
 part at the old Park, in 1837. He was never a favorite 
 at that theatre, and only three years before he had played 
 an engagement there to very poor houses, as the receipts 
 of the treasury, that unerring barometer, show. For 
 ' ■ " Hamlet," JS362.75 ; " King Lear," $205 ; " Othello," 
 $385 ; while the engagement of Fanny Kemble, immedi- 
 ately following, was a remarkable contrast. Her Lady 
 Macbeth drew to the treasury $1,129.50 ; Bianca, $765; 
 and "The Hunchback," $1,526.50. After an interval of 
 many years Forrest appeared as Coriolanus at the Broad- 
 way Theatre, in one of the longest and most successful 
 of his engagements in New York. Any careful observer 
 who had had the advantage of seeing him on both the 
 
138 ED WIN FORREST. 
 
 occasions when he played the part must have been im- 
 pressed with the more perfect conception of the poet 
 which additional study and experience of the stage ena- 
 bled him to present. Sir Walter Scott deemed it fortu- 
 nate that Kemble had never seen Garrick in Hamlef. It 
 was no disadvantage to Forrest that he had never seen 
 any of his predecessors, good or bad, in the character of 
 Coriolanus. We were spared a copy, a substitute, an 
 imitation. Instead of following the line of precedents, he 
 had surrendered himself to reflection and study as guides 
 to a mastery of the character. Throughout the whole 
 performance there was a freshness, a vigor, an individu- 
 ality which distinguished it from any other, and which af- 
 forded a remarkable illustration of the scope for differing, 
 yet original conceptions that have given to the drama such 
 deserved pre-eminence among the imitative arts. So ad- 
 mirable was this delineation, that the spectator lost sight 
 of the actor. He saw Forrest, but thought only of Corio- 
 lanus. He was transported to the heart-stirring siege of 
 Corioli, stood in the market-place in Rome, mingled in 
 the procession to the Capitol, and felt appalled when he 
 beheld the illustrious exile standing in majestic silence 
 before the statue of Mars. . . . But the crowning triumph 
 of Forrest was in the closing scene of Act III., when the 
 banishment of Coriolanus is announced by Brutus, amid 
 the huzzas of the populace. The stage of the Broadway 
 Theatre had even more than the usual gradual elevation 
 as it receded from the footlights. In the position where 
 Forrest stood he seemed to have acquired additional 
 height, as with flashing eyes and dilated form he rushed 
 towards the retreating rabble, and thundered out his con- 
 centrated scorn in the exclamation, ' I banish you ! ' He 
 repeated the Hne, 'There is a world elsewhere,' with the 
 stress laid upon the word we have italicized. The idea of 
 the poet could perhaps have been more truly rendered by 
 
HIS LAST APPEARANCE. 1 39 
 
 the delivery of the passage in a self-reliant monotone, or 
 with the emphasis, if any, upon the word elsewhere j but 
 this was only like a spot upon the sun. His reading in 
 all else evinced a careful, and in many instances a subtle, 
 analysis of the text ; and his good taste led him to restore 
 the beautiful passage, — 
 
 ' My mother, oh, 
 You have won a happy victory to Rome ; 
 But for your son, believe it, I believe it. 
 Most dangerously with him you have prevailed.' 
 
 Its simple pathos did not save it in Kemble's adaptations, 
 nor is it in any other copy of the acted play with which 
 we are acquainted." 
 
140 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 LAST SCENE OF ALL. 
 
 ON the evening of April 2, 1872, at the Globe 
 Theatre, Boston, Edwin Forrest closed his 
 dramatic career. The last words of Richelieu, as the 
 drop-curtain fell, " So ends it," seemed to be the fitting 
 farewell of the grand old Cardinal's noblest representa- 
 tive. Shut out from the view of the pubhc he had 
 served so faithfully for fifty years, he passed into the 
 sick-room, and found comfort in the tender nursing of 
 his personal friends. A few days of care and rest did 
 much to restore to his frame the health and vigor which 
 never before had failed him, and enabled him disdain- 
 fully to shake off the disease. As soon as he was able 
 to move, he left for his home in Philadelphia, resting on 
 his way only a day in New York. In the quiet of his 
 study and in the society of a few congenial men he 
 spent the summer months, gaining new strength every 
 day, and hoping for fresh triumphs before the close of 
 his life. He could not, in the face of his infirmity of 
 gait, however, venture to play any of his heroic charac- 
 ters, and his friends saw httle to encourage them in the 
 hope that he would ever be able to resume Iris profes- 
 sion. But the spirit of the old warrior was in him still, 
 
LAST SCENE OF ALL. 141 
 
 and not even the warnings of his last attack were suffi- 
 cient to keep him in his well-earned retirement. As the 
 summer passed away, the desire for work and action 
 grew stronger and stronger, and he decided to re-enter 
 public life, but simply as a reader of the great plays in 
 which he had, as an actor, been so successful. His 
 voice was still the old powerful instrument of his will, 
 which he could command to instant obedience ; while 
 the clear intellect could still guide its matchless tones 
 in subtle and entrancing harmonies. In his imagina- 
 tion he saw grouped before him a new generation of 
 scholars, hanging upon his words, while the veterans 
 who had held to him through good and evil report, 
 against the allurements of change and the claims of 
 younger rivals, would swell the throng. He had still a 
 lively interest in all dramatic matters, and a strong 
 belief in the bright future of the American stage, al- 
 though he saw his own usefulness near its end. 
 
 His first reading was given at the Academy of Music 
 in Philadelphia. The large theatre was only half filled. 
 His selection was " Hamlet." The result was a disap- 
 pointment to his Hsteners ; and that it was so, he fully 
 realized. He felt that his power to charm an audience 
 had gone from him. While his grand voice was un- 
 changed, the other qualities of his popularity had van- 
 ished. He had left them on the sick-bed from which 
 he had so lately risen, and they were never to return. 
 His engagements took him to Wilmington, Delaware, 
 and later to New York. In Steinway Hall, in the city 
 that had been the scene of his greatest successes in times 
 past, his audiences were pitifully smaU, although not 
 
142 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 unappreciative. He went to Boston, and there at Tre- 
 mont Temple, on the 7th of December, 1872, he made 
 his last appeal to the public in the capacity of a reader, 
 or in any capacity, closing his book upon Othello's 
 death, Othello's occupation forever gone. He felt 
 keenly the realization of the fact that even the dim 
 glories of the reader's desk were denied to him in his 
 old age and failing strength ; and mournfully he turned 
 his face once more towards his home. The hand of 
 his friend Oakes was the last he pressed, and sadly 
 prophetic were his farewell words, " Another parting, my 
 friend. The final parting must come some time. I will 
 probably be the first to die." They never met in life 
 again. Forrest reached Philadelphia on the 9th of 
 December, and on the nth wrote to Oakes his last 
 letter, saying sadly but fondly, " God bless you ever, 
 my dear and much valued friend." 
 
 On this evening he had gone to rest seemingly in his 
 accustomed health, showing no signs of unusual weak- 
 ness, and in no way attracting particularly the attention 
 of his household. When the morning of the 12th of 
 December came, his servant, hearing no sound in his 
 chamber at his general hour of rising, became alarmed, 
 opened his master's door, and found there, cold in death 
 upon his bed, the form of the great tragedian. He was 
 partially dressed, and evidently had taken his customary 
 ■ exercise with a pair of small dumb-bells. His arms 
 were crossed upon his bosom, and he seemed to be at 
 rest. The stroke had come suddenly. With litde warn- 
 ing, and without pain, he had passed away. Concern- 
 ing the immediate cause of his death a Philadelphia 
 
LAST SCENE OF ALL. I43 
 
 correspondent of the New York Herald wrote as fol- 
 lows to that journal : — 
 
 " Dr. Gross, a surgeon of note in this city, in his cer- 
 tificate of death, says, ' Cause, apparently apoplexy of 
 the brain.' From what I learn from the servants, I incline 
 to the belief that Mr. Forrest burst a blood-vessel. It 
 was a very favorite habit of his to dress himself in the 
 morning, with the exception of his coat, and stretching 
 himself on his back in bed, in front of a movable mirror, 
 exercise with a pair of eight-pound dumb-bells. When- 
 found yesterday the dumb-bells were lying at his side. 
 The cook says, ' A red streak appeared at the side of his 
 neck just before he died.' It would appear from this that 
 he had been taking his accustomed exercise, and possibly 
 with more violence than usual, and had burst a blood- 
 vessel when attempting to rise from a reclining position." 
 
 His few intimates in Philadelphia were immediately 
 summoned, among them the faithful Rees, the constant 
 Dougherty, and they at once sent by telegraph for 
 Oakes, to whom the news of his friend's death was a 
 dreadful shock, — a thunderbolt from a clear sky. That 
 Edwin Forrest was dead was quickly known throughout 
 the city ; the fact was whispered in hotel corridors, it 
 was mooted on 'change, it was the common topic of 
 the streets ; and that an event of unusual importance 
 had taken place was read in men's faces, was felt in 
 men's talk. The electric wire flashed the news to the 
 remotest ends of the country j and wherever the drama 
 had a lover, wherever the reader of Shakspere was 
 found, the loss of the master's greatest exponent was 
 sincerely mourned. Stricken down in the prime of his 
 
144 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 manhood, taken away without a moment's warning, the 
 news was scarcely credited. No description of the last 
 scene of all can be better than that of his firiend and 
 biographer, Mr. Alger, who thus writes : — 
 
 "Arrangements were made for a simple and unosten- 
 tatious funeral, a modest card of invitation being sent to 
 only about sixty of his nearest friends or associates in 
 private or professional life. But it was found necessary 
 to forego the design of a quiet and reserved burial, on ac- 
 count of the multitudes who felt so deep an interest in the 
 occasion, and expressed so strong a desire to be present 
 at the last services, that they could not be refused admis- 
 sion. When the hour arrived, on that dark and rainy 
 December day, the heavens muiHed in black, and weeping 
 as if they felt with the human gloom below, the streets were 
 blocked with the crowd, all anxious to see once more, ere it 
 was borne forever from sight, the memorable form and face . 
 The doors were thrown open to them, and it was estimated 
 that nearly two thousand people, in steady stream, flowed 
 in and out ; each one in turn taking his final gaze. The 
 house was draped in mourning, and profusely filled with 
 flowers. In a casket covered with a black cloth, silver- 
 mounted, and with six silver handles, clothed in a black 
 dress-suit, reposed the dead actor. Every trace of passion 
 and of pain was gone from the firm and fair countenance, 
 looking strikingly hke life, whose placid repose nothing 
 could ever disturb again. All over the body and the casket, 
 and around it, were heaped floral tributes in every form, 
 sent from far and near, — crosses, wreaths, crowns, and 
 careless clusters. From four actresses in four different 
 cities came a cross of red and white roses, a basket of ever- 
 greens, a wreath of japonicas, and a crown of white ca- 
 mellias. Delegations from various dramatic associations 
 
LAST SCENE OF ALL. 1 45 
 
 were present ; a large deputation of the Lotus Club came 
 from New York, with the mayor of that city at their head. 
 All classes were there, from the most distinguished to the 
 most humble. Many of the old steadfast friends of other 
 days passed the coffin, and looked their last upon its occu- 
 pant with dripping eyes. One, a life-long professional 
 coadjutor, stooped and kissed the clay-cold brow. Several 
 poor men and women who had been blessed by his silent 
 charities touched every heart by the deep grief they 
 showed. And the household servants wept aloud at part- 
 ing from the old master, who had made himself earnestly 
 loved by them. 
 
 " The only inscription on the coffin-lid was the words, — 
 
 EDWIN FORREST, 
 Born March 9, 1806. Died December 12, 1872. 
 
 "The pall-bearers were James Oakes, James Lawson, 
 Daniel Dougherty, John W. Forney, Jesse R. Burden, 
 Samuel D. Goss, George W. Childs, and James Page. 
 The funeral cortdge, consisting of some sixty carriages, 
 moved through throngs of people lining the sidewalk, 
 along the way to St. Paul's Church, where the crowd was 
 so great, notwithstanding the rain, as to cause some delay. 
 It seemed as though the very reserve and retiracy of the 
 man in his last years had increased the latent popular 
 curiosity about him, investing him with a kind of mystery. 
 A simple prayer was read; and then, in the family vault, 
 with the coffined and mouldering forms of his father and 
 mother, brother and sisters, loving hands placed all that 
 was mortal of the greatest tragedian that ever lived in 
 America." 
 
 Nothing need be added to this. The dead man's 
 will was found to contain several bequests to old friends 
 
146 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 and servants, and an elaborate scheme by which his 
 fortune, in the hands of trustees, was to be applied to 
 the erection and support of a retreat for aged actors, 
 to be called "The Edwin Forrest Home." The idea 
 had been long in his mind, and careful directions were 
 drawn up for its practical working ) but the trustees 
 found themselves powerless to realize fully the hopes 
 and wishes of the testator. A settlement had to be 
 made with the divorced wife, who acted liberally to- 
 wards the estate ; but the amount withdrawn seriously 
 crippled it, as it was deprived at once of a large sum of 
 ready money. An informality in the drawing of the 
 will involved the trustees in trouble, under the laws of 
 the State of New York, in which much of the property 
 lay ; large fees to la\vyers still further hampered them ; 
 and their income at present is insufficient, without aid, 
 to further the testator's purpose, while a claimant 
 has arisen to demand possession of the estate on the 
 ground of propinquity of blood. 
 
 Thus the great ambition of the tragedian to be a 
 benefactor to his profession was destined to come al- 
 most to naught. No sooner had the giant frame been 
 laid in the grave than it was shown to the world how 
 utterly vain and useless had been his accumulation of 
 wealth for the laudable purposes for which he had de- 
 signed it. Of this happily little he recks now. He has 
 parted with all the cares of life, and has at last found 
 rest. Half a century before, in that very city where his 
 ashes now repose, he had breasted the world with his 
 mighty frame, his still mightier purpose ; but the weary 
 years had gradually worn away the one, failure and bit- 
 
LAST SCENE OF ALL. 
 
 H7 
 
 ter experience had done their work with the other; 
 and as his friends stood about the open grave on that 
 dismal winter's day, they loolced down upon the mortal 
 part of one who was not only the last of his race and 
 his name, but who had left nothing of import behind 
 him but his glorious reputation, as the first and the 
 greatest of American Tragedians. 
 
148 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 POSTERITY deals summarily with the fame of the 
 actor. He must reap his reward while living, and 
 solace himself with the present applause which his au- 
 diences grant ; for to him posthumous glory is denied. 
 He leaves nothing but the memory of his work behind 
 him. The breath of his fame evaporates in the shouts 
 which make the rafters ring, living a moment, and dying 
 into absolute silence. In all the sister arts the wealth of 
 a dead master's genius is proven in the hving efiSgies by 
 which men may measure his real worth after the creat- 
 ing hand is cold in death. Futurity, however, often 
 rectifies the injustice of contemporary critics ; the elo- 
 quent canvas, the speaking marble, obtaining the hom- 
 age refused the living artist. Michael Angelo on one 
 occasion, to gratify the caprice of his royal master, 
 carved an image of snow, on which, perhaps, he ex- 
 pended as much thought as upon his immortal " Moses " 
 or the imperishable Dome of St. Peter's, and which in 
 the eyes of the men of his time was perhaps to live as 
 long as either. Harassed by liis fellows in art, perse- 
 cuted by the malice of his enemies, with few smiles to 
 lighten his burden, few hands to encourage him, no 
 
W^"^ 
 
 Mf^iii&^iP^ii>»msi^bPmfi-i.'&^ 
 
EPILOGUE. 149 
 
 filial devotion to sustain him, this grandest hero of the 
 Middle Ages heard little more than the echo of the 
 fame which was to surround his memory in later years. 
 Klopstock, feeling too keenly the neglect of his own 
 time, dedicated his " Messiah " to posterity. Beet- 
 hoven, whose heavenly harmonies were drawn from a 
 soul harrowed by the ingratitude of the world about 
 him, felt that his compositions fell upon ears almost as 
 deaf as his own ; and died in poverty, with no consola- 
 tion but the faith that whole nations yet unborn would 
 chant his praises in his own immortal music. The liv- 
 ing estimation denied to the poet Keats has been more 
 than rebuked by the influence his works are now ac- 
 knowledged to have had upon the poets of the Victo- 
 rian age, when his " Endymion " is crowned with the 
 laurel refused to him. But while the ingratitude of 
 contemporaries has embittered the lives of poets, 
 painters, sculptors, composers, and authors, the theatre 
 has been ringing with the applause granted to some 
 gifted actor whose very name now is but a dim 
 and shadowy memory. His fellow-artists hve in their 
 works ; by their works, as enduring as marble, are 
 they known : the actor's work dies with him ; his 
 image is carved in snow. 
 
 ^schines was not only a great statesman, but a great 
 actor. When sent by his countr)Tiien to Philip, he 
 was compelled to obtain leave from the theatres in 
 Asia Minor, and was reluctantly spared to the state. 
 The matchless art which guided him in the perform- 
 ance of the heroic characters created by ^Eschylus and 
 Sophocles is now a matter of tradition only ; but the 
 
I50 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 reply to Demosthenes, the records of his public acts, 
 live in the state papers of his time. In all Italy no 
 bust of Roscius can be found, no transcript of those 
 features upon which in the days of his glory the Ro- 
 mans looked with so much pride and pleasure. The 
 passing breath of public adulation, the shout of the 
 populace, the regard . of a corrupt court, were the only 
 rewards of the most gifted actor of the Roman world 
 in the days of Cicero and of Caesar. The art museums 
 are crowded with the effigies of soldiers and of states- 
 men, but no sculptured marble preserves to us the form 
 of the greatest of Roman tragedians. In the hollow tri- 
 umphs of a Roman holiday with the gladiator and the 
 chariot-rider, the dancer and the mime, he heard the 
 only praises he was ever to receive ; and he has passed 
 into history with no enduring evidences of his powers 
 by which he may be estimated by posterity. 
 
 Of Richard Burbage how little is known. Aided by 
 the desti-oying fury of Puritanism, the march of Time 
 has obliterated even the simplest record of a life passed 
 in the formation of our Enghsh drama. Standing side 
 by side with Shakspere, his friend and manager, he 
 shares with him the injustice which posterity has done 
 his fame as an actor, and is denied, of course, the glory 
 given to the poet and the dramatist. No pen can 
 show us the man as he did his life's work in tliat now 
 historic theatre, no hand trace for us the creator of 
 Hamlet and Othello, the glorious forerunner of Bet- 
 terton, Garrick, and Kean. The oblivion into which 
 the fame of England's first great player has sunk still 
 shrouds the personal history of her greatest poet. To- 
 
EPILOGUE. 151 
 
 gether, in the region of mere conjecture, wander the 
 images of Shakspere and Burbage, — the one living 
 now only in his glorious writings, while to the other is 
 denied a habitation, almost a name. 
 
 While posterity, however, is shown to be indifferent 
 to the professional merits of the actor, it regards with 
 pecuhar and lasting interest all details of his non-pro- 
 fessional life. Volumes have been written, and are still 
 eagerly read, relating to the personal career of old 
 stage favorites, whose services and performances on the 
 boards can now be judged by no valid comparison. In 
 all generations the memoirs of the player who has hon- 
 ored his calling have been among the most cherished of 
 . biographical books. From Garrick the actor we turn 
 fondly to Garrick the man and the citizen ; and, while 
 we can fix in our minds no proper idea of his genius 
 behind the footlights, we can justly admire him as a 
 scholar, a poet, and a gentleman, adorning the age in 
 which he lived, and held in the most affectionate re- 
 membrance by his contemporaries, who have recorded 
 his worth. We can find in our fancy no place for Bet- 
 terton the actor ; but the friend of Pope, the pure and 
 cultured student who assisted him by his example in 
 raising the depraved stage of the Restoration into the 
 region where even a Jeremy Collier could respect it, 
 the citizen who added grace to his profession by his 
 unblemished reputation, for him we must have a grate- 
 ful and enduring memory. To the Kembles and the 
 younger Kean we turn with respect, as to men who 
 filled their high places with credit, and who left their call- 
 ing nobler than they found it. Even those who denied 
 
152 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 the genius of Macready honored the man who called 
 Dickens, Forster, Bulwer, Talfourd, Tennyson, and 
 Rogers, friend ; and his last years at Cheltenham, with 
 their peace and rest, were the fitting close of a life per- 
 sonally well spent in the strict observance of duty done 
 " ever in the great Task-master's eye." 
 
 No man knew better the history of the drama than 
 Edwin Forrest. No actor tasted so early the sweets 
 of popular renown, no man so rapidly sprang into 
 popular favor, and no one in modem times so long held 
 his high rank in his profession undisturbed. He almost 
 discounted all claims upon posterity in the munificent 
 rewards of his contemporaries. Blessed as man has sel- 
 dom been with fine personal qualities for a calling de- 
 manding so much in the way of physical attractions, 
 with a matchless voice, an industrious nature, and an 
 ambitious spirit, he seemed bom to regenerate the 
 stage. He had only to supplement his gifts with the 
 refined study and culture which embellish and crown 
 such royal possessions, to have realized all that the 
 most ambitious could wish. No life is so illustrative of 
 the necessity of character in the working out of great 
 fame, in the proper utilizing of great gifts, as his. Had 
 his patience and humility been equal to his other quali- 
 ties, we should have found united in him the private 
 life of a Betterton with his own undeniable genius. No 
 man knew the right way better tlian he ; no man, when 
 his imperious will was opposed, more often stubbornly 
 chose the wrong. At the very moment when his 
 reputation seemed the most assured, it received its 
 death-blow, and at his own hands. If his headstrong 
 
EPILOGUE. 153 
 
 obstinacy had but yielded to the importunity of his 
 real friends and his own better judgment at the most 
 momentous periods of his life, had he studied the effect 
 of his conduct upon the then struggling American 
 drama, had he shown less care for his pride and more 
 for his art, there would have been no divorce trial, no 
 riot in Astor Place. The one would have been qui- 
 etly settled without public scandal, the other prevented 
 by the power which he could have exercised over his in- 
 judicious admirers. The first gave to his private life a 
 notoriety which wUl ever be remembered to his dis- 
 credit ; the last identified him in his professional life 
 with the passions of a mob, and served to increase the 
 prejudice already felt in refined society against his too 
 emphatic democracy. The high place to which For- 
 rest's genius had raised him demanded some sacrifice 
 on his part of his personal feeling ; and in his lamen- 
 table hastiness he outraged' good taste and public opin- 
 ion, and sullied his own good name. 
 
 These two unhappy events force themselves into 
 prominence whenever his name is recalled. They cost 
 him many friends, and sowed the seeds of suspicion 
 and distrust in a nature generous in the extreme in 
 many respects, although harsh and unforgiving. During 
 the later years of his life he lived in a very narrow so- 
 cial circle, surrounded by a few tried companions, but 
 their diminished numbers too often gave a pang of sor- 
 row to an already wounded heart. His nobler quali- 
 ties were not so well known as they should have been. 
 He showed a strong interest in all young actors who 
 labored studiously for advancement in their profession. 
 
154 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 His demeanor was frequently dictatorial and rude, but 
 only where his prejudices were involved. He treated 
 with good feeling and justice his fellow-players, save 
 when his personal dislikes were particularly strong, and 
 then he condemned without reason. He spoke often 
 of the really great actor as comparable only with the 
 loftiest of mankind, thinking, perhaps, at the time, of 
 the greatness he himself had achieved, and of which he 
 was naturally proud. His opinion of his own perform- 
 ances was high, and he placed himself on a parallel 
 with the most prominent men in all walks of life. On 
 one occasion, discoursing of certain severe newspaper 
 criticisms upon the conduct of Mr. Lincoln at some im- 
 portant crisis of his career, he indignantly denounced 
 the freedom with which great reputations were some- 
 times assailed by the press, and added that this particu- 
 lar attack was only equalled by the audacity with which 
 joumahstic striplings had condemned his own perform- 
 ances. It could have no more effect upon Abraham 
 Lincoln, he declared, than similar criticism could affect 
 Edwin Forrest ; for he must regard the journalist who 
 could, for instance, find fault with his third act of 
 " Othello " as a man fit only for the lunatic asylum, 
 or an ignominious expulsion down his own back- 
 stairs. 
 
 Forrest was a great lover of books. All his life he had 
 been an extensive reader, and he often asserted that the 
 successful actor could not help acquiring a liberal edu- 
 cation in the course of his work. He was an excellent 
 illustration of his own theory in this respect, for he 
 gained all he ever had in the way of knowledge after he 
 
EPILOGUE. 155 
 
 entered the theatre. For Nature in all her moods he had 
 a profound love and reverence, but none for dogma or 
 the authority of the church. He loved his friends. He 
 hated his enemies. A lie to him was the most unpar- 
 donable of offences. He had strong passions, and they 
 often became his master. In frame he was a giant, and 
 he had many of the weaknesses of character that so 
 often attend magniiicent physical gifts. 
 
 Forrest lived to see the reign of melodrama and of 
 sensationahsm. The hero of the old classical arena stood 
 face to face with the light-armed, naked-bodied intruder 
 who had for a time won the popular regard. He fell 
 before it, and his own efforts were neglected and for- 
 saken by the admirers of an unnamable outrage upon 
 the stage of any reputable theatre. 
 
 Forrest's greatest Shaksperean parts were Lear, Othello, 
 and Coriolanus. The first grew mellow and rich as the 
 actor grew in years, while it still retained much of its 
 earHer force. His Othello suffered with the decHne of 
 his faculties, although his clear conception of all he did 
 was apparent to the end in his acting of every one of 
 his parts. Coriolanus died with him, the last of all 
 the Romans. He was greatest, however, in such rdles 
 as Virginius, William Tell, and Spartacus. Here his 
 mannerisms of gait and of utterance were less noticeable 
 than in his Shaksperean characters, or were overlooked 
 in the rugged massiveness of the creation. Hamlet, 
 Richard, and Macbeth were out of his terhperament, 
 and added nothing to his fame ; but Richelieu is said 
 to have been one of his noblest and most impressive 
 performances. He was in all things marked and dis- 
 
156 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 tinctive. His obtrusive personality often destroyed the 
 harmony of the portrait he was painting, but in his in- 
 spired moments, which were many, his touches were 
 sublime. He passed over quiet scenes with little elabo- 
 ration, and dwelt strongly upon the grand features of 
 the characters he represented. His Lear, in the great 
 scenes, rose to a majestic height, but fell in places almost 
 to mediocrity. His art was unequal to his natural gifts. 
 He was totally unlike his great contemporary and rival, 
 Macready, whose attention to detail gave to every per- 
 formance the harmony of a perfect work. 
 
 Forrest's voice, as has been said, was powerful and 
 musical, and he used it with marvellous effect. He 
 never over-excited himself or tired his listener. He 
 displayed at each rising stage of a great passion new 
 capabilities, and when it seemed that his wonderful 
 strength could bear no more, he electrified his audiences 
 by a greater and still more powerful outburst of elo- 
 quence. His tenderness lay in the tones of his voice, 
 the almost womanly sweetness of his utterance. His grief 
 was manly, never maudlin or soulless. His presence was 
 commanding and impressive beyond that of any actor 
 of his time. During his Hfe he was surrounded by imi- 
 tators, who caught only the imperfections, the outward 
 manner of the man ; but he founded no school, he cre- 
 ated no style of acting by which his followers might per- 
 petuate his methods ; and, take him for all in all, we 
 shall not look upon his hke again. 
 
 The great actor sleeps. He has gone to his last 
 account, leaving behind him a noble charity for his 
 brothers' good, which he failed to perfect before he 
 
EPILOGUE. 157 
 
 died ; and a fame such as no American may hope to 
 rival ia our generation, the fame of a life-work, if not 
 altogether well done, still done as best his nature or- 
 dered : a reputation for noble manliness of purpose, for 
 loyalty of soul. Personally and professionally, he was 
 the giant of the native American stage. 
 
 This memoir may fitly close with an illustrative anec- 
 dote of the great actor. Towards the end of his pro- 
 fessional career he was playing an engagement at St. 
 Louis. He was very feeble in health, and his lameness 
 was a source of great anxiety to him. Sitting at a late 
 supper in his hotel one evening, after a performance of 
 " King Lear," with his friend, J. B. McCuUough, of the 
 Globe Democrat, that gentleman remarked to him, " Mr. 
 Forrest, I never in my life saw you play Lear so weU as 
 you did to-night." Whereupon the veteran almost in- 
 dignantly replied, rising slowly and laboriously from his 
 chair to his full height, "Play Lear! what do you 
 mean, sir? I do not play Lear I I play Hamlet, 
 Richard, Shy lock, Virginius, if you please ; but, by 
 God, sir! I am. Lear!" 
 
 Nor was this wholly imaginative. Ingratitude of the 
 basest kind had rent his soul. Old friends were gone 
 from him, new friends were but half-hearted. His hearth- 
 stone was desolate. The public to whom he had given 
 his best years was becoming impatient of his infirmities. 
 The royalty of his powers he saw by degrees torn from 
 his decaying form. Other kings had arisen on the stage, 
 to whom his old subjects now showed a reverence once 
 all his own. The mockery of his diadem only remained. 
 
158 EDWIN FORREST. 
 
 A wreck of the once proud man who had despised all 
 weaknesses and had ruled his kingdom with imperial 
 sway, he now stood alone. Broken in health and in 
 spirit, deserted, forgotten, unkinged, he might well ex- 
 claim, " I am Lear ! " 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Academy of Music, Philadel- 
 phia, 141. 
 
 Actors' Home, Springbrook, 
 Pa., 93, 146. 
 
 Addams, Augustus, early rival 
 of Forrest, 2, 46. 
 
 ^schinus, 149. 
 
 /Sschyhis, 149. 
 
 Africa, 50. 
 
 Albany Advertiser, 130. 
 
 Albany, N. Y., Forrest's first 
 appearance there, 39, 40; 
 mention, 126. 
 
 Albany Theatre, 39. 
 
 Alger, Wm. K., biographer of 
 Forrest, quotations from his 
 work, 83, 86, 92, 128 ; his 
 account of Forrest's death 
 and burial, 144. 
 
 American Dramatic Fund, its 
 organization, 79. 
 
 American Theatre, New Or- 
 leans, 34. 
 
 Angela, Michael, 148. 
 
 Arch Street Theatre, Phila- 
 delphia, 68. 
 
 Asia Minor, 50. 
 
 Aspinwall, iii. 
 
 Astor Place Opera House, New 
 
 York, 70. 
 Astor Place Riot, 58 etseq., 153. 
 
 Baker, Mr., 53. 
 
 Ball, Thomas, sculptor, his 
 
 statue of Forrest as Coriolor 
 
 nus, 92, 137. 
 Baltimore, Md., 41, 110. 
 Barrett, Lawrence, 96; his per- 
 sonal relations with Forrest, 
 
 104, 125. 
 Barry, Thomas, 89. 
 Bartley, Mr., 53. 
 Bates, Mr. and Mrs. John, 74. 
 Becher, Lady (Miss O'Neil), 60. 
 Becks, George, 100. 
 Beethoven, 149. 
 Betterton, Thomas, 4, 50; his 
 
 reputation as a man, 150 et 
 
 seq. 
 Biddle, Nicholas, 57. 
 Bird, Dr. Robert M., author of 
 
 the " Gladiator," 54, 135. 
 " Black Crook," 106. 
 Blackfriar's Theatre, London 
 
 (old), s. 
 
i6o 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Booth, Barton, 4. 
 
 Booth, Edwin, his appearance 
 in New York as a rival to 
 Forrest, 97, 98; mention, 
 loi, 115, 117, 125. 
 
 Booth, Junius Brutus (the el- 
 der Booth), 3, 59, 60, 64, 80, 
 98, loi, 1:5, 130. 
 
 Booth, Mrs. J. B. Jr., loi. 
 
 Booth's Theatre, New York, 
 124. 
 
 Boston, Mass., 47, 69, 100, 161, 
 no; Forrest's last regular 
 engagement there, 128, 129, 
 140 ; his last reading and last 
 public appearance, 142. 
 
 Boucicault, Dion, 97. 
 
 Bowers, Mrs.,D. P., 104. 
 
 Bowery Theatre, New York, 
 
 41, 42, 135- 
 
 Bowie, Col. James, his acquaint- 
 ance with Forrest, 35, 36. 
 
 Bradbury, Captain, plays a joke 
 on Forrest, \i\ et seq. 
 
 Brindal, Mr., 53. 
 
 Broadway Theatre, New York, 
 70, 83, 85, 89, 137. 
 
 " Broker of Bogota," 80. 
 
 Brooke, Gustave V., 91. 
 
 Brougham, John, 91, 96. 
 
 Brougham's Lyceum, 91. 
 
 " Brutus " (Payne's), 37. 
 
 Bryant, Wm. C, 48, 76, 87. 
 
 Buffalo, N. Y., 126. 
 
 Bulwer-Lytton, Sir Edward, 61 , 
 62, 152. 
 
 Burbage, Richard, 5, 50; little 
 known of his non-profes- 
 sional life, 150, 151. 
 
 Burden, Jesse R., 145. 
 
 Burnett, J. G., 100. 
 
 Burton, Wm. E., his Autoly- 
 
 cus, 96. 
 Burton's Theatre, New York, 
 
 95- 
 
 C^SAR, Julius, 150. 
 
 Caldwell, James H., Forrest's 
 manager, 32, 34, 35, 37,38. _ 
 
 California, Forrest's visit to it, 
 107 et seq. ; its beautiful sce- 
 nery, 118. 
 
 Catneron, Simon, 20. 
 
 " Camille," 97. 
 
 Cargill, Mr., 26, 27. 
 
 Cargill, Mrs., 26. 
 
 Carpenter, Edwin A., 14. 
 
 Chan?iing, Wm. E., 9. 
 
 Charles II. of England, 3. 
 
 Charleston, S. C, 37, no. 
 
 Chatham Theatre, New York, 
 132. 
 
 Chester, John, 99. 
 
 Chestnut Street Theatre, Phil- 
 adelphia, 57, lo'o, 104. 
 
 Chicago, 111., 87 ; Forrest's 
 marvel at its growth, no, 1 1 1. 
 
 Childs, George W., 145. 
 
 Chippendale, Wm. H., 52, 91. 
 
 Charley, Henry F., his criti- 
 cism on Forrest's Lear, 133. 
 
 Cicero, 151. 
 
 Cincinnati, Ohio, 17, 21 ; For- 
 rest's debut there, 24 et seq., 
 29 ; mention, 1 26. 
 
 Clarke, John H., 52. 
 
 Cleveland, Ohio, 126. 
 
 Cohasset, Mass., loi. 
 
 " Colley Gibber" (James Rees), 
 friend and biographer of 
 Forrest, 79, 94, 123, 143. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 i6i 
 
 Collier, yeremy, 151. 
 
 Collier, jf. W., too. 
 
 Collins &= Jones, Forrest's early 
 managers, 17, 28. 
 
 Columbia Street Theatre, Cin- 
 cinnati, 24. 
 
 Columbus, Ohio, 126. 
 
 Congdon, Charles T., criticism 
 on Forrest's acting, 135. 
 
 Congreve, Wm., dramatist, 61. 
 
 Conrad, Robert 71, 57. 
 
 Constantinople, 50. 
 
 Conway, Frederick B., 89, 99. 
 
 Conway, Mrs. F. B., 99. 
 
 Conway, Wm. Augttstus, For- 
 rest supports him, 36, 37 ; his 
 death, 37 ; mention, 43, 130. 
 
 Cooke, George Frederick, 4, 40, 
 
 53. 92- 
 
 Cooper, Mr. (English stock 
 actor), 53. 
 
 Cooper, Thomas Apthorpe, For- 
 rest's acting said to have 
 been based upon his style, 
 4; mention, 43, 46, 52, 64, 
 130. 
 
 " Coriolanus," 137, 138, 155; 
 Ball's statue of Forrest in 
 that character, 92, 137. 
 
 Croly, Rev. John (biographer 
 of George IV.), marries Mr. 
 and Mrs. Forrest, 74. 
 
 Crosby's Opera House, Chica- 
 go, no. 
 
 Cushman, Charlotte, supports 
 Forrest, 52 ; mention, 96. 
 
 "Damon and PYxfiiAS," 51, 
 52. S3. 83, 89, 99, 109, 124, 
 136. 137- 
 
 " Dandyism," 26. 
 
 Davenport, Edwin L., Forrest's 
 quarrel with, 89, 90; men- 
 tion, 91, 95; reception of his 
 Hamlet in San Francisco, 
 
 "5- 
 Davis, Mr., 26, 27. 
 Dayton, Ohio, 28. 
 Dean, Julia, 1 1 5. 
 Demosthenes, 150. 
 Detroit, Mich., 126. 
 Dickens, Charles, 61, 1 52. 
 " Don Quixote," 27. 
 Dougherty, Daniel, 90, 145. 
 "Douglas," 14, 20. 
 Drury Lane Theatre, London, 
 
 53. 54, 55- 
 Duff, Thomas, 89. 
 Dunlop, Mr. and Mrs., 74. 
 Duruset, Mrs., 53. 
 
 Eaton, Charles, 2, 47. 
 
 Eberle, Mr., 26, 27. 
 
 Eddy, Edward, 41. 
 
 Edinburgh, Forrest hisses Mac- 
 ready at, 65, 67, 69. 
 
 Edwin Forrest Home (Actors' 
 Home at Springbrook), 93, 
 146. 
 
 Fisher, Charles, 96, 99. 
 
 Fisher, Clara (Mrs. Maeder), 91. 
 
 Floreiice, Wm. J., 91, no. 
 
 Fonthill (Forrest's Castle on 
 the Hudson), its erection, 
 77, 80 ; sold by Forrest, 87 ; 
 mention, 92. 
 
 Forney, John W., 90, 145. 
 
 Forrest, Caroline, sister of Ed- 
 win, 8 ; her death, 125. 
 
1 62 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Forrest, Edwin, 
 
 condition of the American 
 stage at the time of his 
 debut, 2 et seq. 
 
 his style based on that of 
 Cooper, 4. 
 
 plays Hamlet without sce- 
 nery, 6. 
 
 his birth, 8. 
 
 designed for the ministry, 9. 
 
 his remarkable memory as a 
 boy, 10. 
 
 his first appearance on the 
 stage, in woman's dress, 
 II. 
 
 as a harlequin, 12. 
 
 his mimicry, 12. 
 
 as a juvenile amateur, 13. 
 
 at an exhibition of oxide 
 gas, 14. 
 
 his regular debut as Young 
 Nerval, ic^ et seq. ; differ- 
 ent accounts of his age at 
 that time, 17 ; his second 
 part, 17. 
 
 takes the Prune Street The- 
 atre as manager, 17. 
 
 joins the company of Col- 
 lins c& Jones, 17. 
 
 opens at Pittsburg, Pa., 19, 
 20. 
 
 makes the acquaintance of 
 Simon Cameron, 20. 
 
 of President HoUey, 23, 24. 
 
 first appearance in Cincin- 
 nati, 24. 
 
 dances a breakdown, 25. 
 
 bill of his performance in 
 Cincinnati in 1S23, 26, 27. 
 
 hardships he endured, 27, 
 28, 31. 
 
 Forrest, Edwin, 
 
 makes the acquaintance of 
 General Harrison, 28. 
 
 kindness of the liiddle fam- 
 ily to Forrest, 29, 30, 32. 
 
 joins a circus troupe, 32. 
 
 his debut in New Orleans, 
 34- 
 
 his familiar associates there, 
 
 35. 36- 
 
 plays with the elder Con- 
 way, 36. 
 
 his first appearance in 
 Payne's " Brutus," 37. 
 
 serious illness, 38. 
 
 his love for Jane Placide, 38. 
 
 debut in Albany, N. Y., 39, 
 130. 
 
 supports Edmund Kean, 39, 
 40. 
 
 returns to Philadelphia, 40. 
 
 debut in New York, 41. 
 
 instant success at the Bow- 
 ery Theatre, 41. 
 
 close of his stock career, 41. 
 
 pays his father's debts, 47. 
 
 his successful engagements 
 through the country, 47, 
 48. 
 
 endeavors to develop an 
 American Drama, 48. 
 
 resolves to visit Europe, 48. 
 
 farewell banquet in New 
 York, 48. 
 
 travels and impressions in 
 Europe, 48-51. 
 
 returns to America, 51. 
 
 plays in Philadelphia and 
 New York to great crowds, 
 51, 52 ; returns to London, 
 52- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 163 
 
 Forrest, Edwin, 
 dibut there, 53. 
 cast of the " Gladiator " on 
 
 his opening night, 53. 
 opinion of the London Times, 
 
 54- 
 
 Wikoff's account of his dS- 
 but, 55. 
 
 banquet at the Garrick Club, 
 56. 
 
 meets Miss Catherine Sin- 
 clair, 56. 
 
 again in America, 57. 
 
 banquet at Philadelphia, 57. 
 
 at the summit of his fame 
 and fortune, 57. 
 
 his first acquaintance with 
 Macready, 64. 
 
 his reception in London in 
 1845, 65. 
 
 charges Macready with de- 
 signs to drive him from 
 the British stage, 65. 
 
 hisses Macready in Edin- 
 burgh, 65. 
 
 back in America, 66. 
 
 death of his mother, 67. 
 
 his wordy quarrels with Mac- 
 ready, 67, 70. 
 
 his card to the Philadelphia 
 papers, 68. 
 
 the riot in Astor Place, 70, 72. 
 
 his marriage, 73, 74. 
 
 domestic life, 75 et seq. 
 
 reads the Declaration of 
 Independence, 79. 
 
 elected first president of the 
 American Dramatic Fund, 
 
 79- 
 at the head of his profession 
 in America, 79, 80. 
 
 Forrest, Edwin, 
 
 beginning of domestic trou- 
 bles, 80. 
 
 trial and divorce, 81, 82. 
 
 after the trial, 83. 
 
 his popularity with the lower 
 orders, 83. 
 
 success at Broadway Thea- 
 tre, New York, 83, 85. 
 
 speech on the opening night, 
 83, 84. 
 
 quarrel with Chas. O'Conor, 
 85. 
 
 effects of his domestic trou- 
 bles upon his mind and 
 his manners, 86, 87, 88. 
 
 his honor in his money deal- 
 ings, 88, 89. 
 
 successful engagements, 8g. 
 
 home and home life in Phil- 
 adelphia, 87, 90, 92, 93, 
 119, 140. 
 
 first appearance of physical 
 decay, 90, loi, 109. 
 
 statue as Coriolanus, by Ball, 
 
 92. 137- 
 
 return to the stage, 95 et seq. 
 
 his charities, 102. 
 
 rebuked by Barry Sullivan, 
 105. 
 
 his visit to California, 107 
 et seq. 
 
 corespondence on the sub- 
 ject, 107, io8. 
 
 the voyage to San Francisco, 
 11\ et seq. 
 
 first appearance in San Fran- 
 cisco, 116. 
 
 ill health, 117, 118. 
 
 visits the Geysers, 117. 
 
 return to Philadelphia, 119. 
 
164 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Forrest, Edwin, 
 
 his farewell tour through the 
 country, 1 20 et seq. 
 
 failing health and declining 
 powers, 12^ £f seq. 
 
 death of his sisters, 125. 
 
 last regular engagement in 
 New York, 126, 128. 
 
 in Boston, 128, 129, 143. 
 
 various criticisms on his act- 
 ing, 1 30 et seq. 
 
 final readings, 141, 142. 
 
 last public appearance, 142. 
 
 his death, 142. 
 
 its cause, 143. 
 
 his funeral, 144. 
 
 his will, 146. 
 
 summary of his life, charac- 
 ter, and achievements, 152 
 et seq. 
 Forrest, Edwin, Mrs. (Cathe- 
 rine N. Sinclair), 
 
 first meets Forrest, 56. 
 
 her beauty and accomplish- 
 ments, 73. 
 
 her marriage, 73, 74. 
 
 makes a pleasant impression 
 upon her husband's friends 
 in America, 75. 
 
 their domestic life, T^et seq. 
 
 beginning of the troubles, 80. 
 
 trial and divorce, 81, 82. 
 
 her counsel, Mr. Charles 
 O'Conor, 85. 
 
 her first appearance on the 
 stage, and her professional 
 career, gi, 92. 
 
 mention, 115, 146. 
 Forrest, Eleaiiora, sister of Ed- 
 win, 8, 76, 92 ; her death, 
 
 125. 
 
 Forrest, Henrietta, sister of Ed- 
 win, 8, 92. 
 Forrest,. Lauman, brother of 
 
 Edwin, 8. 
 Fori-est, Rebecca Lauman, moth- 
 er of Edwin, 8. 
 
 her strength of character, 9. 
 
 her influence over Edwin, 
 and his affection for her, 
 18, 22, 39, 41, 47, 80, 89. 
 
 her death, 67. 
 Forrest's Castle (Fonthill on 
 
 the Hudson), its erection, 
 
 77, 80 ; sold by Forrest, 87 ; 
 
 mention, 92. 
 Forrest, Wm., father of Edwin, 
 
 8,47. 
 Forrest, Wm., jfr., brother of 
 
 Edwin, 8. 
 Forster, John (biographer of 
 
 Dickens), 5i ; unfavorable 
 
 criticism on Forrest's acting, 
 
 65 ; mention, 1 52. 
 Fredericks, W. S., 52. 
 
 Gamble, Miss, 74. 
 
 Garrick Club, London, dinner 
 to Forrest, 56. 
 
 Garrick, David, 4, 14, 50, 138, 
 150; as actor and man, 151. 
 
 George IV. of England, 74. 
 
 George, Mr., 27. 
 
 Geysers, California, Forrest's 
 visit to, 117. 
 
 Gibson, Chief "Justice, 57. 
 
 Gilbert, John, 87. 
 
 Giles, Mr., 27. 
 
 Gilfert, Charles, Forrest's man- 
 ager, 39, 41, 42. 
 
 Girard Bank, Philadelphia, 8. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 i6s 
 
 Girard, Stephen, 8. 
 
 "Gladiator," original cast in 
 London, 53; mention, 48, 
 54. 56. 99. 126, 131, 135, 
 
 155- 
 
 Gladstane, -Mrs. Mary, 100. 
 
 Globe Theatre, Boston, 128, 
 140. 
 
 Globe Theatre, Cincinnati, 26. 
 
 Godwin, Mr. and Mrs. Parke, 
 76, 87. 
 
 Goldsmith, Oliver, 13. 
 
 Graham, Captain, his friend- 
 ship for Forrest, 36, 38. 
 
 Gross, Dr. Samuel D., For- 
 rest's physician, 143, 145. 
 
 Hackett, James H., 70. 
 Halleck, Fitz Greene, 48. 
 Hamblin, Thomas S., 42. 
 Hamilton, Ohio, 28. 
 "Hamlet," 6, 52, 95, 99, 105, 
 
 136. 137. 141. 150. 15s. 157- 
 
 Hanna, Mr., 26. 
 
 Hanna, Mrs., 26. 
 
 Harkins, Daniel E., 99. 
 
 Harrison, President, 28. 
 
 Havre, France, 48. 
 
 Henry, yosephine, 100. 
 
 Henry, Patrick, 135. 
 
 Heron, Matilda, 97. 
 
 Hill, G. H. (Yankee Hill), 
 136.' 
 
 Holiday Street Theatre, Balti- 
 more, 109. 
 
 Holley, President Horace, his 
 good advice to Forrest, 23, 
 24. 
 
 Hooper, Mr., 53. 
 
 Hooper, Mrs., 54. 
 
 Honner, Mr., 54. 
 Horner, John, 14. 
 Houston, Texas, 126. 
 Huddart, Miss, 54. 
 
 Independent Press, Cincin- 
 nati, 25. 
 Ingersoll, David, 2, IJ, 46. 
 Ingersoll, y. R., 57. 
 Ingraham, D. R., 48. 
 Irving, Henry, 63. 
 
 " Jack Cade," 48, 99. 
 
 Jackson, Dr. Samuel, 57. 
 
 yefferson, yoseph (2d), 4. 
 
 yefferson, yoseph (2d), Mrs. 
 (Miss Fortune), 16. 
 
 yefferson, yoseph (4th), his re- 
 ception in San Francisco, 
 115. 
 
 yerrold, Dotiglas, criticism of 
 Forrest's Lear, 132. 
 
 "Jessie Brown," 97. 
 
 yohnson, Samuel, 36. 
 
 yones, William (Collins & 
 Jones), 17, 28; Forrest's 
 kindness to him in his old 
 age, 88. 
 
 "Julius C^sar," 125, 130. 
 
 Kansas City, 126. 
 
 Kean, Charles, 63, 151. 
 
 Kean, Edmund, Forrest sup- 
 ports him in Albany, 39 ; his 
 effect upon Forrest, 40, 43 ; 
 mention, 4, 14, 17, 50, 59, 63, 
 92, 130, 133, 150. 
 
 Keats, yohn, 149. 
 
1 66 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Keene, Laura, 115. 
 
 Kemble, Charles, 56. 
 
 Kemble Family, 4, 15, 43, 51, 
 
 S9. 151- 
 Kemble, Fattny, Mrs., 135, 137. 
 Kemble, jfohn P., 92, 133, 138, 
 
 139- 
 " King Lear." See " Lear." 
 Klopstock, Frederic G., 149. 
 Knowles, yames Sheridan, 49. 
 
 "Lady of Lyons," 80, 91. 
 Lafayette, General, 37. 
 Lamb, Edward, TOO. 
 Lawson, James, 42, 87, 145. 
 " Lear," 52, 53, 99, 126, 127, 
 128, 129, 132, 133, 135, 137, 
 
 155. 156, 157, 158- 
 
 Lebanon, Ohio, 28. 
 
 Leggett, William, 42, 48, 75, 
 123. 
 
 Lewis, S. K.,\\. 
 
 Lexington, Ky., 17, 22, 23, 24. 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, 154. 
 
 Lind, Jenny, 116. 
 
 London, England, 46, 51, 52, 
 65, 66, 69. 
 
 London Times, 46, 54, 68. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry W., his ad- 
 miration of Forrest's Lear, 
 
 135- 
 Los Angelos, Cal., iiS. 
 Louis Philippe, 49. 
 Louisville, Ky., 29. 
 "Lover's Vows," 17. 
 " Love's Sacrifice," 91. 
 Lucas, Mr., 27. 
 Lyceum Theatre, New York 
 
 (14th Street), 126. 
 Lynne, Henry, 91. 
 
 " Macbeth," 53, 63, 70, 89, 99, 
 
 "7, 134, 135- 
 Maclay, Hon. William, B., his 
 
 criticism on Forrest's acting, 
 
 137- 
 Macready, William- (the elder), 
 
 Macready, William Charles, 3, 
 50, 56. 
 
 sketch of his life, 58. 
 
 his character and disposi- 
 tion, 59, 63. 
 
 his influence on the English 
 stage, 61, 63. 
 
 his talents as an actor, 62. 
 
 his first appearance in Amer- 
 ica, 64. 
 
 his first acquaintance with 
 Forrest, 64. 
 
 attends the marriage of For- 
 rest, 64. 
 
 second visit to America, 
 64. 
 
 rupture of social intercourse 
 with Forrest in London in 
 1845, 65. 
 
 is hissed by Forrest in Edin- 
 burgh, 65. 
 
 his account of the incident 
 in his Diary, 66. 
 
 third visit to America, 67. 
 
 his wordy quarrel with For- 
 rest, 67-70. 
 
 the culmination at the riot 
 in Astor Place, New York, 
 70, 71. 
 
 friend of the Sinclairs, 73. 
 
 at Mrs. Forrest's receptions 
 in London, 81, 82. 
 
 his friends in America, 82, 
 91- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 167 
 
 Macready, William Charles, 
 mention, 104, 105, io5, 133, 
 
 134. 156- 
 his criticism of Forrest's 
 
 acting, 130, 131. 
 his social position, and his 
 declining years, 1 52. 
 
 Maeder, Mrs. (Clara Fisher), 
 91. 
 
 Maguire, Mr., 108. 
 
 Mars, Mile., 49. 
 
 Marshall, Chief yiistice, 37. 
 
 Marshall, Miss (English stock 
 actress), 54. 
 
 Mason, Charles Kemble, 91. 
 
 Mason, John, 52. 
 
 Mason, Mrs. (Emma Wheat- 
 ley), 16. 
 
 Mathews, Charles "J., 96. 
 
 Matthews, Mr. (English stock 
 actor), 53. 
 
 Matthews, T. (English stock 
 actor), 54. 
 
 Maysville, Ky., 22. 
 
 Maywood, Mrs. (Mrs. H. A. 
 Williams), i6. 
 
 Maywood, Robert C, 4. 
 
 McArdle, Joseph, Forrest's 
 agent, iii, 112. 
 
 McCttllough, J. B., editor of St. 
 Louis Globe-Democrat, 157. 
 
 McCullough, John, late for re- 
 hearsal, 103, 104; supports 
 Forrest, 100, 11 1; plays a 
 practical joke on Forrest, 
 112 et seq. 
 
 McMichael, Morton, 57, 90. 
 
 Mears, Mr. (English stock ac- 
 tor), 54. 
 
 Memphis, Tenn., 126. 
 
 "Merchant of Venice," 157. 
 
 " Metamora," suggested by 
 Push-ma-ta-ha, 36, 38 ; men- 
 tion, 48, 52, 80, 99, 131, 132, 
 
 136. ISS- 
 
 Metropolitan Theatre, New 
 York, 96. 
 
 Moray, John S., 127. 
 
 Morris, Robert, 57. 
 
 Morris, Thomas E., 100. 
 
 Moscow, 50. 
 
 "Mountaineers," 17, 37. 
 
 Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cam- 
 bridge, Mass., 30. 
 
 " Much Ado About Nothing,'' 
 91. 
 
 Murdoch, James E., 2, 15, 91, 
 115; criticism on Forrest's 
 acting, 134. 
 
 Murray, Mr., Macready's man- 
 ager, 65. 
 
 Naples, 50, no. 
 Napoleon I., 49. 
 Nashville, Tenn., 126. 
 New Orleans, La., Forrest's 
 debut there, 34 ; mention, 32, 
 
 34,37,38. "O. 126. 
 Newport, Ky., 30. 
 New York, Forrest's debut 
 there, 41. 
 mention, 38, 47, 48, 51, 52, 
 64, 6c), 78, 84, 89, 95, 97, 
 99, 100, 102, no, III, 126, 
 128, 140, 141. 
 his last professional engage- 
 ment there, 126-128. 
 his last reading, 141. 
 New York Herald, 143. 
 Niblo's Garden, New York, 95, 
 99, 100. 
 
i68 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Nixon, fames, Forrest's mana- 
 ger, 95. 99- 
 Noah, M. M., 130. 
 Norfolk, Va., 37. 
 
 Oakes, James, beginning of 
 his friendship with Forrest, 
 47 ; mention, 76, 79, 87, 92, 
 93, 101, no, 118, 126, 142, 
 
 I4S- 
 O'Brien, William (actor), 74. 
 O'Conor, Charles, opposed to 
 
 Forrest, 85. 
 Omaha, 126. 
 ONeil, Miss (Lady Becher), 
 
 60. 
 " Othello," 36, 41, 52, 53, 99, 
 
 134, 137. 142, 150. 154, 155- 
 
 Page, Col. James, 57, 145. 
 Panama, ni. 
 Paris, France, 48, no. 
 Parker, Mrs. Amelia, 96. 
 Park Theatre, New York, 41, 
 
 52, 137- 
 "Patrician's Daughter," 91. 
 Payne, John Howard, 34, 37. 
 Pericles, 82. 
 Petersburg, Va., 37. 
 Phelps, H. R., quotation from 
 his " Players of a Century," 
 130. 
 Philadelphia, Pa., Forrest's 
 birthplace, 8. 
 mention, 40, 51, 52, 57, 64, 
 67, 76, 87, 90, 99, 100, 104, 
 108, no, 119, 126, 140, 
 142, 143. 
 his last reading there, 141. 
 
 Philadelphia Pennsytvanian, 
 68. 
 
 Pilmore, Father (Dr. Joseph), 
 10. 
 
 Piozzi, Hester Lynch (Mrs. 
 Thrale), 37. 
 
 Pittsburg, Pa., 17, 19, 20, 21, 
 126. 
 
 Placide, Henry, 52. 
 
 Placide, fane, Forrest's early 
 love for her, 38. 
 
 Poly crates, 81. 
 
 Ponisi, Mme., 89, 99, 100. 
 
 Pope, Alexander, 151. 
 
 Pope, Charles, 89. 
 
 Porter, Charles (Forrest's ear- 
 ly manager), Forrest plays 
 for his benefit, 40. 
 
 Prune Street Theatre, Phila- 
 delphia, 17. 
 
 Push-ma-ta-ha (the original of 
 Metam.ora), Forrest's associ- 
 ation with him, 36, 38. 
 
 QuijtCY, 111., 126. 
 
 Rachel, Mile., 49. 
 
 Raymond, Henry y., 123. 
 
 Rees, James (" CoUey Cibber "), 
 friend and biographer of 
 Forrest, 76, 94, 123, 143. 
 
 Rice, John B., Forrest's mana- 
 ger, 79, 87, no, III. 
 
 Rice, Thomas D. ("Jim Crow 
 Rice "), 25. 
 
 " Richard III.," 17, 99, 134, 155, 
 157- 
 
 Richardson, Mrs. (Mrs. Cha,p- 
 man), 52. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 169 
 
 "Richelieu," 80, 85, 99, Ii6, 
 126, 129, 137, 140, 155. 
 
 Richings, Peter, 52. 
 
 Richmond, Va., 37. 
 
 Riddle Family, Forrest's inti- 
 macy with, 29, 30, 32. 
 
 Riddle, Miss, 26, 27. 
 
 Riddle, Miss (Mrs. W. H. 
 Smith), Forrest's deep re- 
 gret at her death, 30. 
 
 Riddle, Mrs., 27. 
 
 Rochester, N. Y., 126. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, 152. 
 
 Roscius, 150. 
 
 Rousseau, y. y., 62. 
 
 Ryder, Mr. (Macready's mana- 
 ger), 61, 66. 
 
 Rynders, Capt. Isaiah, 83. 
 
 Sacramento, Cal., 107, 118. 
 San Francisco, Cal., no, in. 
 
 its society, 114. 
 
 its critical theatre-going pop- 
 ulation, 115. 
 
 Forrest's welcome there, 116. 
 
 his first appearance there, 
 116, 117, 120. 
 " School for Scandal," 91. 
 Scott, Gen. Winfield, 34. 
 Scott, yames M., 26, 27. 
 Scott, yohn R., early rival of 
 
 Forrest, 2, 46. 
 Scott, yohn R., Mrs., 100. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, 138. 
 Sedley, Henry, 127. 
 Setchell, Daniel, 96. 
 Seventh Regiment, New York, 
 
 71- 
 Shakspere, 6, 31, 37, 50, 56, 89, 
 95, 99, 100, 106, 107, 124, 
 
 127. 131. 133. 136, 143. 150. 
 151. 
 
 Sharpe, Mrs., 52. 
 
 Shewell, L. R., 100. 
 
 " She would be a Soldier," 130. 
 
 Sinclair, Catherine N. See 
 Mrs. Edwin Forrest. 
 
 Sinclair, yohn, father of Mrs. 
 Forrest, 64, 73, 78. 
 
 Skerrett, Mrs., 91. 
 
 Smith, Solomon (the elder), 
 Forrest's early manager, 32, 
 33. 
 
 Smith, Mrs. W. H. (Miss Rid- 
 dle), 30. 
 
 " Soldier's Daughter," 24, 37. 
 
 Sophocles, 149'. 
 
 Stark, yames, 115, 117. 
 
 Steinway Hall, New York, 141 . 
 
 Stephenson, Andrew (American 
 Minister to England), 56, 
 
 74- 
 
 St. Louis, Mo., 123, 126, 157. 
 
 Stone, yohn Augustus, 136. 
 
 St. Paul's Church, Covent Gar- 
 den, London, Forrest's mar- 
 riage in it, 73. 
 
 St. Paul's Church, Philadel- 
 phia, Forrest buried in its 
 vaults, 145. 
 
 Strongways, Lady Susan, wife 
 of O'Brien, the actor, 74. 
 
 Stuart, William, manager and 
 critic, 127. 
 
 Sullivan, Barry, plays at For- 
 rest, 104, 105. 
 
 Sweeney, Mr. (American actor), 
 27. 
 
 Swift, yohn, Forrest's early 
 friend, 14, 18, _57. 
 
 Syracuse, N( Y., 126. 
 
170 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 " Tailor in Distress, 26. 
 Talfoiirdy Sergeant Thomas M., 
 
 56, 61, 152. 
 Talma, Forrest places a wreath 
 
 upon his tomb, 49. 
 Taylor, Barry, Forrest's early 
 
 friend, 47. 
 Tell, William, Forrest visits 
 
 Tell's country, 49. 
 Tennyson, Alfred, 152. 
 Theatres, 
 
 Academy of Music, Phila- 
 delphia, 141. 
 Albany Theatre, 39. 
 American Theatre, New Or- 
 leans, 34. 
 Arch Street Theatre, Phila- 
 delphia, 68. 
 Astor Place Opera House, 
 
 New York, 70. 
 Blackfriar's Theatre (old), 
 
 London, 5. 
 Booth's Theatre; New York, 
 
 124. 
 Bowery Theatre, New York, 
 
 41. 42, 135- 
 Broadway Theatre, New 
 
 York, 70, S3, 85, 89, 
 
 137- 
 Brougham's Lyceum, New 
 
 York, gi. 
 Burton's Theatre, New York, 
 
 95- 
 
 Chatham Theatre, New 
 York, 132. 
 
 Chestnut Street Theatre, 
 Philadelphia, 57, 100, 104. 
 
 Columbia Street Theatre, 
 Cincinnati, 24. 
 
 Crosby's Opera House, Chi- 
 cago, no. 
 
 Theatres, 
 
 Drury Lane Theatre, Lon- 
 don, 53, 54, 55. 
 
 Globe Theatre, Boston, 128, 
 140. 
 
 Globe Theatre, Cincinnati, 
 26. 
 
 Holiday Street Theatre, Bal- 
 timore, 109. 
 
 Lyceum Theatre, New York, 
 126. 
 
 Metropolitan Theatre, New 
 York, 96. 
 
 Niblo's Garden, New York, 
 95, 99, 100. 
 
 Park Theatre, New York, 
 
 41, S-. 137- 
 
 Prune Street Theatre, Phila- 
 delphia, 17. 
 Steinway Hall, New York, 
 
 141. 
 Tremont Temple, Boston, 
 
 142. 
 Wallack's Theatrl, New 
 
 York (old), 95, 96, 97. 
 Walnut Street Theatre, Phil- 
 adelphia, 14, 51, 104. 
 \Yinter Garden, New York, 
 95- 
 TArale, Mrs. Henry (Mme. Pi- 
 
 ozzi), 37. 
 Tremont Temple, Boston, 142. 
 Troy, N. Y., 126. 
 " Twelfth Night," 96. 
 
 Utica, N. Y., 126. 
 
 Vandenhofp, George, 91- 
 criticism of Forrest's acting. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 171 
 
 Venice, Italy, 50. 
 " Venice Preserved," 34. 
 " Virginius," 155, 157. 
 Voltaire, 61. 
 
 Walcot, Charles (Sen.), 91. 
 Wallack, James W. (Jr.), his 
 
 versatility and genius, 96. 
 Wallack, James W. (Sen.), 80, 
 
 89, 91, 95. 
 Wallack, Lester, 96. 
 Wallack's Theatre, New York, 
 
 95. 96, 97- 
 Walnut Street Theatre, Phila- 
 delphia, 14, 51, 104. 
 
 Warde, Mr. (English actor), 53. 
 
 Warren, William (Jr.), i6, 79. 
 
 Warren, William (Sen.), 4, 14, 
 16. 
 
 Washington, D. C, 41. 
 
 Webb, Charles, ^, 47. 
 
 Wells, Mary, 100. 
 
 Wemyss, Francis C, criticism 
 of Forrest's acting, 134. 
 
 Westminster Abbey, 74. 
 
 Wetherell, Col. John B., 57. 
 
 Wetmore, Prosper M., 41. 
 
 Wheatley, Emma (Mrs. Mason), 
 16. 
 
 Wheatley, Frederick, 16. 
 
 Wheatley, William, 16, 100. 
 
 White, Lemuel G., teaches For- 
 rest elocution, 14, 15. 
 
 Wikoff, Henry, his account of 
 Forrest's English debut, 55 
 his account of Forrest's mar- 
 riage, 73. 
 
 Williams, Mrs. H. A. (Mrs. 
 Robert Maywood), 16. 
 
 " William Tell," 131, 155. 
 
 milis, N. P., 76. 
 
 Wilmington, Delaware, 141. 
 
 Wilson, Alexander (the orni- 
 thologist), early friend of 
 Forrest's, 18. 
 
 Winter Garden, New York, 95. 
 
 " Winter's Tale," 95. 
 
 Winter, William, 127. 
 
 Winthrop House, Boston, loi. 
 
 Wood, Mrs. John, \ 1 5. 
 
 Wood, William B., 4, 14; gives 
 cast of Forrest's dibut, 16, 
 
 17- 
 Woodhull, Jacob, Forrest plays 
 for his benefit, 41. 
 
 .YONKERS, N. Y., 85. 
 Young, Charles, 59. 
 
 University Press : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge.