In his basic build, his informing temperament, the habitual sway of his being, Forrest was a marked specimen of this dominating class of men. The circumstances of his life and the training
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of his mind were unfavorable to the full development of his power, in the highest directions; and it never came in him to a refined and free consciousness. Had it done so, as it did in Daniel Webster, he would have been a man entirely great. Webster was scarcely better known by his proper name than by his popular sobriquet of the godlike. He and Forrest were fashioned and equipped on the same scale, and closely resembled each other in many respects. The atlantean majesty of Webster seemed so self-commanded in its immense stability that the spectator imagined it would require a thousand men planting their levers at the distance of a mile to tip him from his poise. When he drew his hand from his bosom and stretched it forth in emphatic gesture, the movement suggested the weight of a ton. It was so with Forrest. The slowness of his action was sometimes wonderfully impressive, suggesting to the consciousness an imaginative apprehension of immense spaces and magnitudes with a corresponding dilation of passion and power. His attitudes and gestures cast angles whose lines appeared, as the imagination followed them, to reach to elemental distances. And it is the perception or the vague feeling of such things as these that magnetizes a spell-bound auditory as they gaze. The organic foundation for this exceptional power is the unification of the nervous system by the exact correlation and open communication of all its scattered batteries. This heightens the force of each point by its sympathetic reinforcement with all points. The focal equilibrium that results is the condition of an immovable self-possession. This is an attainment much more common once than it is in our day of external absorption and frittering anxieties. Its signs, the pathetic and sublime indications of this transfused unity, are visible in the immortal masterpieces of antique art, in the statues of the gods, kings, sages, heroes, and great men of India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome. It is now excessively rare. Most of us are but as collections of fragments pieced together, so full of strictures and contractions that no vibratory impact or undulation can circulate freely in us. But Forrest had this open and poised unity in such a degree that when at ease he swayed on his centre like a mountain on a pivot, and when volition put rigidity into his muscles the centre was solidaire with the periphery. And he was thus differenced from his average fellow-men just as those two or three matchless thorough
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bred stallions who have so startlingly raised the breed of horses in this whole country were differenced from their plebeian brothers in the dray and at the plough.
The truth here indicated is one of surpassing importance. However overlooked by the ignorant multitude, it was blindly felt by them, and it was clearly seen by all who had the key to it, especially by women of rich intuitions. With these Forrest was always an especial favorite. Not only did the magnetizing signs of his power so work upon hundreds of men all over the land that he was imitated by them, his habitudes of bearing and voice copied and transmitted, but they also wrought more deeply still on more sensitive imaginations, producing reactions there to be transmitted thence upon their offspring and perpetuate his traits in future generations. This is one of the historic prerogatives of the potent and brilliant artist, one of the chosen modes by which selective nature or providence improves the strain of our race. No biography can have a stronger claim on public attention than one which promises to throw light on the law for exalting the human organism to its highest perfection,—a secret which belongs to the complete training of a dramatic artist and the fascination with which it invests him in the eyes of sensibility.
Still further, Forrest has a claim for posthumous justice as one who was wronged in important particulars of his life and misjudged in essential elements of his character. Outraged, as he conceived, in the sanctities of his manhood, he bore the obloquy for years with outward silence, but with an inner resentment that rankled to his very soul. Endowed with a tender and expansive heart, cultivated taste, and a scrupulous sense of justice, shrinking sensitively from any stain on his honor, he was in many circles considered a selfish despot addicted to the most unprincipled practices. His enemies, combining with certain sets of critics, incompetent, prejudiced, or unprincipled, caused it to be quite commonly supposed that he was a coarse, low performer, merely capable of splitting the ears of the groundlings; while, in fact, his intellectual vigor, his conversational powers, his literary discernment, and his sensibility to the choicest delicacies of sentiment were as much superior to those of the ordinary run of men as his popular success on the stage was greater than that of the ordinary stock of actors. Betrayed—as he and his intimate
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friends believed—in his own home, he was, when at length, after long forbearance, moved to seek legal redress, himself accused, and as he always felt, against law, evidence, and equity, loaded with shameful condemnation and damages. Standing by his early friends with faithful devotion and open purse, he was accused of heartlessly deserting them in their misfortunes. A penniless boy, making his money not by easy speculations which bring a fortune in a day, but by hard personal labor, he gave away over a quarter of a million dollars, and then was stigmatized as an avaricious curmudgeon. Cherishing the keenest pride in his profession and in those who were its honor and ornament,—bestowing greater pecuniary benefactions on it than any other man who ever lived, and meditating a nobler moral service to it than any other mere member of it has conferred since Thespis first set up his cart,—he was accused of valuing his art only as a means of personal enrichment and glorification, and of being a haughty despiser of his theatrical brothers and sisters. As a result of these industrious misrepresentations, there is abroad in a large portion of the community a judgment of him which singularly inverts every fair estimate of his deserts after a complete survey. It seems due to justice that the facts be stated, and his character vindicated, so far as the simple light of the realities of the case will vindicate it.
Two definite illustrations may here fitly serve to show that the foregoing statements are to be regarded not as vague generalities, but as strict and literal truth. One is in relation to the frequent estimate of Forrest as a quarrelsome, fighting man. Against this may be set the simple fact that, with all his gigantic strength, pugilistic skill, and volcanic irritability, from his eighteenth year to his death he never laid violent hand in anger on a human being, except in one instance, and that was when provocation had set him beside himself. The other illustration is concerning his alleged pecuniary meanness. When he was past sixty-five, alone in the world with his fast-swelling fortune, under just the circumstances to give avarice its sharpest edge and energy, he set apart the sum of fifty thousand dollars for an annuity to an old friend, to release him from toil and make his last years happy. Even of those called generous, how many in our day are capable of such a deed in answer to a silent claim of friendship?
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One more element or feature in this life, of public interest, of attraction and value for biographic use, is its strictly American character. All the outlines and setting of Forrest's career, the quality and smack of his sentiments, the mould and course of his thoughts, the style of his art, were distinctly American. His immediate descent, on both sides, from European immigrants suggests the lesson of the mixture in our nationality, the providential place and purpose of the great world-gathering of nationalities and races in our republic. His personal prejudice against foreigners, with his personal indebtedness to the teachings and examples of foreigners,—Pilmore, Wilson, Cooper, Conway, Kean,—brings up the question of the just feelings which ought to subsist between our native-born and our naturalized citizens; that true spirit of human catholicity which should blend them all in a patriotism identical at last with universal philanthropy and scorning to harbor any schismatic dislikes. And then his intimate relations, at critical periods of his life, with the most marked specimens of our Western and Southern civilization, bring upon the biographic scene many illustrations of those unique American characters, having scarcely prototypes or antitypes, which have passed away forever with the state of society that produced them.
His experience arched from 1806 to 1872, a period perhaps more momentous in its events, discoveries, inventions, and prophetic preparations than any other of the same length since history began. He saw his country expand from seventeen States to thirty-seven, and from a population of six millions to one of forty millions, with its flag floating in every wind under heaven. Washington, indeed, and Franklin, were dead when the life of Forrest began; but Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Marshall, and a throng of the Revolutionary worthies were still on the stage. When he died, every one of the second great cluster of illustrious Americans, grouped in the national memory, with Clay, Calhoun, Webster, Irving, Cooper, and Channing in the centre, was gone; and even the third brilliant company, Emerson, Hawthorne, Bryant, Bancroft, and their peers, was already broken and faltering under the blows of death and decay. During this time his heart-strings stretched out to embrace, the vascular web of his proud sympathies was woven over, every successive State and
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Territory added to our domain, till, in his later age, his enraptured eyes drank in the wondrous loveliness of the landscapes of California. By his constant travels and sojourns in all parts of the land, by his acquaintance with innumerable persons representing all classes and sections, by the various relationships of his profession with literature, the press, and the general public, there are suggestive associations, for more than fifty years, between his person, his spirit, his fortunes, and everything that is most peculiar and important in the historic growth and moral changes and destiny of his country.
The composition of a narrative doing justice to a life with such contents and such relations may well be thought worth the while of any one. And if it be properly composed, if the programme here laid down be adequately filled up, the result cannot fail to offer instructions worthy the attention of the American people.
For the reasons now explained, the most intimate friends of Forrest had often tried to induce him to write his own memoir. They knew that such a work would possess extreme interest and value, and they felt that he had every qualification to do it better than it could be done by anybody else. But their efforts were vain. Pride in him was greater than vanity. He had as much self-respect as he had self-complacency. He was, therefore, not ruled by those motives which caused Cicero, Augustine, Petrarch, Rousseau, Gibbon, and a throng of lesser men, to take delight in painting their own portraits, describing their own experiences, toning up the details with elaborate touches. To the reiterated arguments urged by his friends, he replied, "I have all my life been surrounded, as it were, by mirrors reflecting me to myself at every turn; subjected to those praises and censures which keep consciousness in a fever; accompanied at every step by a constant clapping of hands and stamping of feet and pointing of fingers, with the shout or the whisper, 'There goes Forrest!' I have for years been sick of this fixing of attention on myself. I can enjoy sitting down alone and recalling the scenes and occurrences of the past, regarding them as objects and events outside. But to call them up distinctly as parts of myself, and record them as a connected whole, with constant references to the standards in my own mind and the prejudices in the minds of my friends and my enemies,—I cannot do it. The pain of the reminiscences, the
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distress of the fixed self-contemplation, would be too much. It would drive me mad. Give over. No persuasion on earth can induce me to think of it."
Every attempt to secure an autobiography having failed, the author of the present work was led, under the circumstances before stated, and with the promise that every facility should be afforded him, to assume the task. In the first conversation held with him on the undertaking, Forrest said, "Tell the truth frankly. Let there be no whitewashing. Show me just as I have been and am." As he thus spoke, he took down from a shelf of his library the first volume of the "Memoirs of Bannister the Comedian," by John Adolphus, and read, in rich sweet tones mellowed by the echoes of his heart, the opening paragraph, which is as follows: "A friendship of many years' duration, terminated only by his death, impels me to lay before the public a memoir of the life of the late John Bannister. In executing this task I am exempted from the difficulties that so frequently beset the author of a friendly biographical essay: I have no vices to conceal, no faults to palliate, no contradictions to reconcile, no ambiguities of conduct to explain. I purpose to narrate the life of a man whose characteristic integrity and buoyant benevolence were always apparent in his simulated characters, and who in real life proved that those exhibitions were not assumed for the mere purposes of his profession, but that his great success in his difficult career arose in no small degree from that truth and sincerity which diffused their influence over the personages he represented." As the admiring cadence of his voice died sadly away, he laid down the volume and said to his auditor, "For your sake, in the work on which you have entered, I wish it were with me as it was with Bannister. But it is otherwise. My faults are many, and I deserve much blame. Yet, after every confession and every regret, I feel before God that I have been a man more sinned against than sinning; and, if the whole truth be told, I am perfectly willing to bear all the censure, all the condemnation, that justly belongs to me. Therefore use no disguising varnish, but let the facts stand forth."
Such were the words of Forrest himself; and in their spirit the author will proceed, sparing no pains to learn the truth, neither holding back or trimming down foibles and vices nor magnify
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ing virtues, recording his own honest convictions without fear or favor, hoping to produce as the result a book which shall do justice to its subject, and contain enough substantial worth and interest to repay the attention its readers may bestow on it. The work will be written more from the stage point of view than from the pulpit point of view, but most of all from that popularized academic or philosophic point of view which surveys the whole field of human life in a spirit at once of scientific appreciation, poetic sympathy, and impartial criticism.
