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One small and humble trunk held all his effects,—a very scant wardrobe, a few trifling keepsakes, a Bible the gift of his mother, an edition of Shakspeare in one cheap volume, Walker's Classical Pronouncing Dictionary, and a little collection of plays in pamphlet form. Joining the company which Collins and Jones had gathered, consisting of about a dozen persons, male and female, they regarded one another with mutual interest; and, with that intuitive reading of character which their professional art bestows, they in an amazingly short time were intimately acquainted, and quite prepared to share adventures, confidences, and lives. Besides Collins and Jones, there were Groshorn, Scott, Eberle, leader of the orchestra, Lucas, scene-painter, Henderson, stage manager, Davis, Mrs. Pelby, Mrs. Riddle, Miss Fenton, Miss Sallie Riddle, and Miss Eliza Riddle. Several of these not only had varied and ripe experience of the stage, but were also highly distinguished for their talents and accomplishments. This was especially the case with Mrs. Pelby and Mrs. Riddle.
The magnetic personality, the inexperienced youth, the attractive ingenuousness, and the enthusiastic ambition of Forrest made him at once a prominent object of attention in the company, all of whom were ready to give him such instructions and aids as were in their power. But, above all the rest, to the constant generous kindness and teaching of Mrs. Riddle he always expressed himself as deeply indebted for services rendered at the most critical period of his life, and whose record remained as fresh in his latest memory as their results were indelible in his being.
About the middle of October they began playing in Pittsburg, in a building so ruinous and dilapidated that on rainy nights the audience in the pit held up their umbrellas to screen themselves from the leakings through the roof. The first performance was Douglas, Forrest sustaining the part of Young Norval with much applause. In the course of the season here he played many characters, in tragedy, comedy, farce, and ballet. In grappling with these subordinate parts he afterwards said he could distinctly remember that he often felt ashamed to find how ignorant he was, and was almost appalled at the immense task before him in becoming the actor he wished to be. But the progress he felt he
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was making, combined with the unstinted praise he received, kept his spirits at a high point.
The following letter, dated Pittsburg, October 10th, 1822, is the earliest letter from him to his mother found among his papers after his death:
"Dear Mother,—I arrived here yesterday at about eleven o'clock, and am much pleased with the place and its inhabitants. I was quite out of patience riding so long in the stage over such tremendous mountains, but was greatly delighted, on reaching the summit of them, to view the surrounding country,—so vast and varied a landscape.
"Pittsburg is three hundred miles from Philadelphia. It is a sort of London in miniature, very black and smoky. The Alleghany River and Mountains surround it. The theatre is very old.
"This, you know, is the first time I have ever been away from you. I have felt many qualms of homesickness, and I miss you, dear, dear mother, more than words can give out. Has William gone to Petersburg? Furnish me with every particular, especially how our Tid is, and whether she reads with the yard-stick. Give me an account, too, of my Grandma, and of my beautiful Sister. The long ride in the stage has made my hurdies so callous that they would ward off a cannon-ball.
"Give my respects to all my friends, particularly to Philip. Inform me also, if you can, how the Tivoli Garden gets on. Write as early as possible, and pray pay the postage, as I am out of funds. I expect the managers by the next stage. Mr. Hughes, formerly of the Walnut Street Theatre, is here. I find him a perfect gentleman.
"Your affectionate son,
"Edwin Forrest."
In a short time the company collected their properties and took passage on the Ohio River in a flat-boat for Maysville, Kentucky. They floated lazily along for five days and nights, in delightful weather, through lovely scenery new to the most of them, filling the time with stories, games, and jokes,—a happy set, careless, healthy, and as gay and free as the ripples of the
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stream that glanced around them. They played at Maysville a few evenings with excellent success, greatly delighting the rude Kentuckians, who thronged in from miles around.
Departing thence, they journeyed to Lexington, then the most important town in the State, where they were encouraged to make a considerable tarry, as they found a nice theatre, good patronage, and an uncommonly intelligent auditory. The Transylvania University was here, under the presidency of the celebrated Horace Holley. Many of the teachers and pupils of the University attended the performances night after night. Forrest was looked on as a lad of extreme promise. He made many friends among the students. One of these friendships in particular, that formed with young James Taylor, son of a wealthy planter of Newport, was kept unbroken to the end of his life.
In 1870, Mr. William D. Gallagher, an old and dear friend of Mr. Forrest, visited Col. Taylor at his estate in Newport. Taylor gave him many pleasing reminiscences of his early days and his romantic friendship with the young actor, then so world-famous. He said that while at Lexington he one night invited Forrest to his hotel. He acceded, without waiting to change his costume as Young Norval. He spent the night with him, sharing his bed, and breakfasted with him the next morning. After breakfast, as he went to his own quarters in another street, the boys, attracted by his theatrical dress, followed him with shouts and cheers.
President Holley was a man of very extraordinary oratorical power. He was really a man of genius, his freedom of thought and his æsthetic culture far in advance of his time. He had a great fame in his day, but, leaving no visible work behind him, his name is now but a faded tradition. He was so much struck by the performances of Forrest that he generously sought him out and held several long interviews with him, in which, with a masterly power which profoundly impressed his youthful listener, he unfolded his views of art and of life and urged him to cherish noble aspirations in the profession he had chosen. This contact with the veteran preacher was one of the moulding points in the career of the player. Such acts of condescension and disinterestedness—or perhaps it is juster to call them acts of love and duty—are charming and are divinely encouraging. There are
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more of them in the world than we think, though certainly there are far fewer of them than there ought to be. The record of each, while delightful to contemplate, is a stimulus to produce others.
Holley urged Forrest to curb his taste for comic and farcical parts and as soon as possible to cease appearing in such characters. He strove to impress on him a deeper sense of his fitness for the highest walks of tragedy, and explained to him most eloquently the noble qualities the enactment of such parts both required and cultivated in the performer, as well as the valuable lessons they taught to the spectator. He also dwelt at length on the true principle of the dramatic art, which he maintained to be not merely to hold the mirror up to crude nature, but to give a choice and refined presentation of the truth. Nature, he said, is reality, but art is ideality. The actor is not to reflect all the direct and unrelieved facts of nature, but to present a selective and softened or intensified reflection of them. Art plays the tune of nature, he held, but with variations. He uttered these and other thoughts with such remarkable grace and precision that Forrest said the conversation made an epoch in his mind, although he differed from him in opinion, then and always holding that the purpose of acting was to show the exact truth of nature. Holley was right; and it is notable that his youthful auditor in rejecting the view he advocated accurately marked his own central defect not less than his most conspicuous merit as an actor.
Closing their season at Lexington, February 22d, 1823, the company started across the country for Cincinnati, the women with the theatrical paraphernalia in covered wagons, the men on horseback. Their good humor and abundant faculty for finding or making enjoyment in everything stood them in hand during the journey, which their rude accommodations and the wintry weather would otherwise have made cheerless enough. They opened in Cincinnati, in the old Columbia Street Theatre, on the evening of March 6th, 1823. The play was The Soldier's Daughter. Forrest, who lacked just three days of being seventeen years old, was assigned the humble part of Malfort, a serious walking gentleman. His range of casts during this season was extremely varied, reaching from the heights of dire tragedy
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to the level of ridiculous pantomime. He danced in the then popular ballet of Little Red Riding-Hood. He often sang comic songs between the plays. Eberle, who was a good violinist, on one occasion appeared as an old broken soldier with a wooden leg and a fiddle, accompanied by Forrest as his daughter in a ragged female dress. The father fiddled, the daughter sang with laughable pathos,—
"Oh, cruel was my parients, as tored my love from me;
And cruel was the great big ship as tooked him off to sea;
And cruel was the capitaine and the boswain and the men,
As didn't care a fardin if we never met agen."
(Tears.)
The performance was encored so warmly that it was repeated many successive nights. He also played Corinthian Tom in the extravaganza of Tom and Jerry, Lubin in the Wandering Boys of Switzerland, and Blaize in the Forest of Bondy, or the Dog of Montargis. In the last character he sang this song:
"Bondy's forest,—full of leaves;
Bondy's forest,—full of thieves;
They hold your bridle, take your cash,
And then they give your throat a gash.
Sing la, la, la, la, la."
At this time he had a trained dog, who knew as much as a great many men. He was strongly attached to this dog, who appeared on the stage with him in the Forest of Bondy and acted his part with striking effect. He was a frisky and mischievous creature. He occupied the same room with Edwin; and one morning he took advantage of the leisure his habits as an early riser gave him to gnaw and tear in pieces one of his master's only pair of boots. The poor actor was in a dilemma. He had no money and no credit. In his wrath he thought of whipping the dog. But that would boot nothing. The innocent creature knew no better. So he pretended to have a sore foot, put a bandage on it, borrowed an old slipper, and hobbled about until his wages fell due and enabled him to buy a pair of shoes.
In contrast with the above-named comic casts, Forrest took the second parts to the Damon, Brutus, and Virginius of the stars
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Pelby and Pemberton, and at his own benefit played Richard the Third.
Without making a great sensation or achieving any brilliant success, he was decidedly popular. Sol Smith and Moses Dawson, editors of the two Cincinnati newspapers at that time, both praised him highly and prophesied his future eminence. Moses Dawson—a leading Democrat of the West, the first to raise the political banner inscribed with the name of Andrew Jackson, and who is said to have died of joy at the triumph of his party in the Presidential election of 1844—wrote the earliest earnest and studious criticisms ever composed on the acting of Forrest. He carefully noted all the points and peculiarities of the youthful performer, honestly stated his defects and faults, generously signalized his excellences, and made judicious suggestions for his profit. His candid and thoughtful words were of great service to the boy, and were never forgotten by the man.
A specimen from one of these articles will be of interest: "Mr. Forrest has a finely-formed and expressive countenance, expressing all the passions with marvellous exactness and power, and he looks the character of Richard much better than could be expected from a person of his years. He assumes a stately majesty of demeanor, passes suddenly to wheedling hypocrisy, and then returns to the haughty strut of towering ambition, with a facility which sufficiently evidence that he has not only deeply studied but also well understood the immortal bard. The scene with Lady Ann appeared to us unique, and superior to everything we have ever seen, not excepting Kemble or Cooke. In the soliloquies he uttered the sentiments as if they had arisen in his mind in that regular succession, and we never once caught his eye wandering towards the audience. Of the tent scene we do not hesitate to say that it was a very superior piece of acting. Horror and despair were never more forcibly represented. We consider Mr. Forrest's natural talents of the highest grade, and we hope his good sense will prevent him from being so intoxicated with success as to neglect study and industry. We are willing to render to youthful talent a full meed of praise; but while we applaud, we would caution. Applause should not be received as a reward, but as an incentive to still further exertion to deserve it."
During his first engagement in Cincinnati, Forrest boarded
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with widow Bryson, on Main Street. Almost half a century afterwards, William D. Gallagher sought this excellent woman out, and obtained from her some very interesting reminiscences. It seems that General Harrison, who was subsequently President of the United States, came to Mrs. Bryson one day and asked her to do him the favor to take as a boarder a young man named Edwin Forrest, who was then playing at one of the theatres. The General said he feared, if the youth boarded with the other players, he would form bad habits. He wished to guard him from this, as he considered him a young man of extraordinary ability, and destined to excel in his profession. She assented. She said he was at that time a beautiful boy, with deep and very dark brown eyes, a complexion of marble clearness mantling with blood, and a graceful, sinewy form. He once made her very angry by an insulting remark concerning one of the female boarders, whose conduct did not suit his ideas of propriety. Mrs. Bryson declared that she would not have such language used at her table. He replied that of course he did not apply it to her. But she could not forget, and sent for General Harrison, and related the matter to him. He brought Edwin before her. The youth hung down his head. "Poor fellow!" added the old lady, "it has been a long time since then. Forty-six or seven years. Yet I can plainly see him standing there now!" Eying him sternly, the General said, "Sir, the father of this lady was a Revolutionary soldier; her husband was one of my trusty officers in the late war; and she is a lady whom I highly esteem. When I introduced you into her family, I did not suppose you would treat her with disrespect; and I now ask you to make her a humble apology." Edwin raised his head and said, "General, I did make a severe remark concerning a particular person whom Mrs. Bryson thinks she knows, but does not. It was an unguarded act. I am very sorry for it, and ask her a thousand pardons. I assure you, madam, I would not, under any circumstances, use words to hurt your feelings." He then turned and made a humble excuse to Harrison, who reprimanded him with severity. It did him good; it was a lesson he never forgot. But Mrs. Bryson confessed that she learned soon after that he was right in what he had said about the woman.
