The following letter is interesting in several respects. It shows his great devotion to his mother, betrays his tendency to occasional depression of spirit, and reveals even so early in his life that irregular violence in the currents of his blood from the
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effects of which he finally died. It bears date a little less than a month after his début at the Bowery.
"New York, Dec. 3d, 1826.
"Most beloved Mother,—The reason I have not answered your letter is a serious indisposition under which I have been laboring for some time. But, thanks be to the Eternal (only for your sake and my dear sisters'), I am now convalescent. You will ask, no doubt, why it is only for your sake that I thank the Eternal. Because were you separated forever from me existence would have no longer an attraction. Again, you will wonder what has made me tired of life, especially now that I am on the full tide of prosperity. Alas! I know not how soon sickness may render me incapable of the labors of my profession; and then penury, perchance the poor-house, may ensue. I shudder to think of it. Yet the terrible reflection haunts me in spite of myself; and were it not for you and the girls I should not shrink to try the unsearchable depths of eternity. But no more of this gloomy subject.
"Dining last Sunday with Major Moses, when the cloth was removed, as I was preparing to take a glass of wine, I felt a pain in my right breast, which rapidly increased to such a degree that I told the Major, who sat next to me, of the singular sensation. I had no sooner spoken than the pain shot to my heart and I fell upon the floor. For the space of fifteen minutes I lay perfectly speechless. When, through the kind attentions of the family (which I can never forget), I had in a measure recovered, the pain was still very violent. A physician was summoned, who bled me copiously, and this relieved my sufferings. In consequence of my weakened and distressed condition, I was persuaded to stay there all night. The next morning I returned to my lodgings, and remained in-doors all day, though feeling perfectly recovered. But the following evening, very injudiciously, I performed Damon. The exertion in this arduous part caused a relapse, which, however, was not seriously felt until Thursday evening, when I was performing William Tell. Then, indeed, it was agony. All that I had suffered before was but the shadow of a shade to what I then felt,—pains in all my limbs, and my head nigh to bursting. With the unavoidable use of brandy, ether, and hartshorn, I got wildly through the character. Since that time I have had
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medical attendance and every attention that kindness can show. In a few days, without doubt, I shall be on the boards again.
"I received a few days ago a letter from William, which remains unanswered. Please inform him of the cause. I shall take my benefit shortly, and am led to believe that it will be all that I can desire. Do not think I shall then forget those who heretofore may sometimes have had cause to upbraid me. Farewell, dear mother.
"Tell Henrietta to write, and quickly, too.
"Yours most affectionately,
"Edwin Forrest."
His illness proved, as he thought it would, brief. His success knew no abatement. He drew such crowds nightly and excited them to such a pitch that the whole city became alive and agog about him. Of the many tributes then paid him, these lines may serve as a specimen:
"See how the stormy passions of the soul
Are Edwin Forrest's, and at his control:
How he can drive the curdling blood along
Its choking channels—how his face and tongue
Can check the current as it seeks the brain,
Arrest its course, and bring it back again;
Freeze it when circling round the glowing heart,
Or thaw it thence, and bid it, melting, part;
Rouse up revenge for Tell's unmeasured wrongs
Until it echoes from a thousand tongues;
Or melt the soul of friendship quite away
When Damon claims his Pythias' dying day."
From this auspicious beginning he went steadily on gaining power and public favor until his popularity was so conspicuous that one of the managers of the rival establishment came to him with an offer of three times the amount he was then receiving. He replied, "I cannot listen to you, as I am engaged to Gilfert for the season." "You are not bound by a legal paper, and therefore are free," expostulated the wily bargainer. "Sir," was his characteristic answer, "my word is as strong as any written contract." During this first winter, so rapidly did his fame spread that Gilfert actually lent him repeatedly to other theatres at two hundred dollars a night, he still paying him only his forty
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dollars a week. Certain disinterested persons who learned this fact commented on it to Gilfert himself with much severity. And at the end of the engagement he said to the young man, "I want to engage you for the next season, but I suppose our terms must be somewhat different. What do you expect?" Forrest quietly looked at him, and replied, "You have yourself fixed my value. You have found me to be worth two hundred dollars a night." He was at once engaged at that rate for eighty nights. And it is to be remembered that sixteen thousand dollars then was equivalent to thirty thousand now. He had just passed his twenty-first birthday. Thus in six short months the youthful artist who came to the metropolis poor, scarcely known, little heralded, had acquired an imposing fame, was surrounded by a brilliant host of friends, and entered on his summer vacation prospective master of a sumptuous income.
chapter viii
The next marked division in the biography of Forrest covers the period between his twenty-first and his twenty-eighth year, from the close of his first engagement at the Bowery in 1827 to his departure for Europe in 1834. No other actor ever lived who at so early an age achieved a series of popular successes so steady, so brilliant, so extensive as those which filled these seven triumphant and happy years. They yet remain unparalleled. It was undoubtedly the most fortunate and the most enjoyed period of all in his long career. His health and vigor were superb, his faculties joyously unfolding, his senses in their keenest edge, his glory spreading on all sides, money pouring into his purse, the general love and praise lavished on him scarcely as yet broken by the dissenting voices or alloyed by the signals of envy. His name was emblazoned in the chief cities all over the land, the press teemed with kindly notices, his performances were attended nightly by enthusiastic crowds, who applauded him to the very echoes that applauded again.
In his social relations,—the secondary domain of life,—he saw his desires flatteringly gratified in an increasing degree, his goings and comings announced like those of a king, the eyes of the throng turned after him wherever he went, his thoughts and passions taking electric effect on the excited crowds who gathered to gaze on his playing, choice friends suing for his leisure hours. The common estimate of him and the popular feeling towards him are accurately reflected in the sonnet addressed to him at this time by his friend Prosper M. Wetmore:
"Enriched with Nature's brightest powers of mind,
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Deep is thy influence o'er man's feeling breast;
When fiercest passions come at thy behest
In all the magic strength of truth, they bind
'Neath their broad spell the pulses of the heart,
Freezing the soul with horror and dismay:
O'er Tarquin's corse, where Brutus leads the way,
Revenge stalks darkly forth: thy potent art
Recalls the aged Lear to tell his woes,
Enlisting in his cause each sense that thrills:
Stern Richard smiles upon the blood he spills:
Tell, patriot Tell, defies his tyrant foes.
"Eagle-eyed Genius round thy youthful name
Flashes the brilliance of a deathless Fame!"
And in the primary domain of life—his own physique—he was blessed with a basis of favorable conditions quite as rare. His clean-sinewed frame so firmly poised in its weighty centres, his rich flood of blood copiously nourishing the seats of function, his generous intelligence and his native fearlessness of temper, were the ground of a gigantic complacency in himself which was equally pleasurable to him and attractive to others so long as he intuitively experienced rather than consciously asserted it. He was vaguely aware, in an uncritical way, that his sphere was heavier than those of the men he met, that the elemental rhythms of his being were larger, that the gravitation of his personal force overswayed theirs. While this was indicated by nature without his knowledge, it made him interesting, a sort of magnet to which others swayed in loyal curiosity or affection. And such was entirely the case up to this time. His frank, fresh nature was as yet unwrung by injustice, malignity, and falsehood, unspoiled either by souring adverses or sickening satieties. He was a wholesome specimen of a man of the unperverted, untechnical human type, to whom, in his personal harmony and power, with his loving and trusted friends and his progressive grasping of the prizes of the great social struggle, the experience of each day as it came and went was a cup of nectar which he quaffed without a question, finding neither guilt at the top nor remorse at the bottom.
But he had sufficient force and height of character not to yield himself up to selfish indulgence. Notwithstanding the flattery bestowed on him, he felt the defects in his education, and
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determined to remedy them as well as he could. He knew that he needed the polish of literary and social culture and the training of critical studies alike to supplement the advantages and to neutralize the disadvantages of the coarse and boisterous scenes—the bold and lawless styles of men—amidst which much of his life in the West and South had been passed. Accordingly, when the opportunity was given him for a choice of associates, he took for his intimate friends in New York a very different class from those he had affiliated with in New Orleans. Without at all losing his taste for manly sports or shunning the company of their votaries, his preferred friends were men of literary and artistic tastes, of the highest refinement and the best social rank. A large number of accomplished persons, like Leggett, Bryant, Wetmore, Halleck, Inman, Ingraham, Dunlap, Lawson, were in those years on affectionate terms with him as his avowed admirers. From their example, their conversation, their criticism, he profited much. He became a liberal buyer of books, and soon had an excellent library, which he used faithfully, devoting a large portion of his leisure to reading. Nor did he read idly. He read as a student, reflecting on what he read, striving to improve his mind and taste by knowledge in general, as well as to pierce more deeply into the philosophy of the dramatic art in particular. He made himself familiar with the history of plastic and pictorial art, with engravings of celebrated statues and paintings, carefully noting their most impressive attitudes and groupings. He also explored the history of costume in the principal countries, classic, mediæval, and modern. The habit of reading and meditating which he formed at this time was fostered by many influences, grew stronger with his years, spread over wide provinces of biography, poetry, philosophy, and science, and was to the very last the chief solace and ornament of his existence.
While thus devoting himself with new zeal to mental culture, he did not forego one whit of his old assiduity in exercises for the furtherance of his bodily development. During his second year in New York he took a series of lessons in boxing. He felt a great interest in this art, became a redoubtable proficient in its practice, and was ever an earnest and open admirer of its prominent heroes. Those who feel this to be discreditable to him will find on reflection, if they think fairly, that it was, on
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the contrary, a credit to him. Multitudes of refined people have an intense admiration for superlative developments of physical beauty, force, and courage, though they conceal their taste because by the standards of a squeamish politeness it is considered something low and coarse. But Forrest always scorned that style of public opinion, defied it, and frankly lived out what he thought and felt. At the time of the famous fight between Heenan and Sayers for the belt of world-championship, it was clear that scholars, poets, statesmen, divines, and even fashionable women, felt the keenest interest in the contest. They read the details with avidity, and talked of them with the liveliest eagerness. The fascination is nothing to be ashamed of, but rather to be cultivated with pride. To a just perception, the fighting is not attractive, but repulsive and dreadful. It is the strength, grace, discipline, smiling fearlessness, superb hardihood, connected with the struggle, the rare exaltation of the most fundamental qualities of a kingly nature, that evoke admiration. Surely it is better to be a perfect animal than an imperfect one. When all things are in harmony, the finest corporeal condition is the basis for the highest spiritual power. A champion in finished training, with his perfected form, his marble skin, clear unflinching eyes, corky tread, and indomitable pluck, is a thrilling sight. When the crowd see him, their enthusiasm vents itself in a shout of delight. His mauling his adversary into a disfigured mass of jelly is indeed frightful and loathsome; but that is a base perversion, not the proper fruition, of his high estate. The functional power of his bearing is magnificent. He is in a condition of godlike potency. It is a higher thing to admire this glorious wealth of force, ease, and courage than to despise it. Personal gifts of strength, skill, fearlessness, are certainly desirable on any level in preference to the corresponding defects. To turn away from them with disgust is a morbid weakness, not a proof of fine superiority. While in this world we cannot escape the physical level of our constitution, however much we may build above it. Is it not plainly best as far as possible to perfect ourselves on every level of our nature? An Admirable Crichton, able to surpass everybody on all the successive heights of human accomplishments, from fencing with swords to fencing with wits, from dancing to dialectics, cannot be held, except by a mawkish judg
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ment, as inferior to a Kirke White writing verses of pale piety while dying of consumption brought on by over-stimulus of literary ambition.
Forrest had pretty thoroughly practised gymnastics, the exercises of the military drill, horsemanship, and fencing, each of which has a particular efficacy in developing and economizing power, by harmonizing the nervous system, if the will does not interpose too much resistance to the flow of the rhythmical vibrations through the muscles. He now felt that there was a special virtue in the mastery of boxing; and to avail himself of it he secured the services of George Hernizer, a distinguished professor of the manly art, a man of immense strength, great experience, and not a little moral dignity. Supreme mastership, in whatever province it be achieved, even though it be in the mere ranges of physical force and prowess, gives its possessor an assured feeling of competency and superiority, which has an intrinsic moral value and reflects itself through him in some quiet lustre of repose and security. It is those whose equilibrium is most unstable who are the most irritable and resentful. It is weakness and insecurity that make one fretful and quarrelsome. Shakspeare says it is good to have a giant's strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant. We know that the more gigantic the resources of a man the less tempted he is to put them forth. It is ever your weakling who is naturally waspish.
