Sounds so well fitted to her untuned ear?'"
The Age and Argus spoke of the most extraordinary contrast of the conduct of a part of the press towards Mr. Forrest to the treatment he received when he acted at Drury Lane in 1836, and said, "Many persons intimate that had he been now engaged there instead of appearing at the Princess's, the theatrical reporters would have been unable to discover a single fault in his performances,—managerial tact being competent to guide the honest opinions of most of these gentry. The 'Observer' endeavors to depict Mr. Forrest as a fool, an idiot, whose performance is simply ludicrous; albeit we have reason to believe the writer is the self-same person who seven years ago tried to write him up as a first-rate tragedian."
Forrest thought, from some direct proofs and a mass of circumstantial evidence, he could trace the fierce hostility with which he was met to its chief source in Macready. He may have been mistaken; but such was his belief. Macready, returning from America irritated towards him as a more than formidable rival before the people, was now idle, and had repeatedly failed to draw a remunerative audience in London. In fact, such was the temper of the man that when manager Bunn was nightly losing money by him, and, in order to make him break his engagement, purposely vexed him by casts which he disliked, he one night rushed off the stage in a fury, and, without a word of provocation, fell on Bunn, a much smaller and weaker man, and beat him so dreadfully that the poor manager lay in bed in frightful agony for two weeks. He was prosecuted, convicted, and forced to pay a hundred and fifty pounds damages. Macready was the intimate friend of the theatrical critic who abused Forrest the most unrelentingly. He was the intimate friend of Bulwer Lytton, who refused the request of Forrest to be allowed to appear in his two plays of "Richelieu" and "The Lady of Lyons."
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He was the intimate friend of Mitchel, the manager of the English theatrical company in Paris, who rudely refused to see Forrest when he applied to him for an interview. This last circumstance was especially mortifying, as he had informed his friends before leaving home that he intended to perform in Paris, and flattering notices of him and of his purposed appearance among them had been published in the French press.[A] Macready himself had failed to make an impression in Paris, and the English company there was not pecuniarily successful. Forrest believed, whether correctly or not, that his rival had interfered to prevent his engagement there. Thus his antagonism was edged with a sharper hate.
[A]
"Forrest a reçu le surnom de Talma de l'Amérique, et ce surnom n'est point immérité. Forrest, de stature plus grande, plus athlétique que Talma, a avec lui une certaine ressemblance de tête. Il a étudié ce grand modèle auquel il a gardé une sorte de culte, et, dans son dernier voyage de Paris, en 1834, sa première visite fut à la tombe du grande artiste, sur laquelle il alla modestement et secrètement déposer une couronne. Il y a quelque choses de touchant et d'éloquent dans cet hommage apporté des rives lointaines du Nouveau-Monde à celui qui fut le roi du théâtre européen. Forrest a dans son répertoire certains rôles qui auront pour le public français un grand attrait de nouveauté. Tel est, par exemple, celui de l'Indien Metamora, qu'il rend avec tant d'énergie et de sauvage vérité. A son talent de premier ordre, Forrest a dû non-seulement une réputation sans rivale en ce pays, mais encore une très-belle fortune. Il est aussi haut placé comme homme que comme artiste. Il est l'un des tribuns les plus éloquents du parti démocrate, et il été un moment question de le nommer représentant du peuple au congrès. Il a donc tout espèce de titres à une réception brillante et digne de lui de la part du peuple parisien, si hospitalier à toutes les gloires. A sa titres nombreux à cette hospitalité, M. Forrest en a ajouté un encore, s'il est possible, par la manière honorable et cordiale dont il a parlé de la France dans le discours d'adieu qu'il a adressé l'autre jour aux habitans de Philadelphie. Voici la fin de ce speech: 'Pendant le voyage que je vais faire à l'étranger, je me propose de donner quelque représentations dans la capitale de la France, où je recevrai, je n'en doute pas, l'accueil le plus bienveillant et le plus cordial. Je crois que je ne hasarde rien en osant tant espérer. Je parle d'après ma connaissance personnelle du peuple français, au sein duquel je sais qu'un Américain est toujours bien venu. Un Américain se souvient avec gratitude que la France a été l'alliée, l'amie de son pays, dans la guerre de son indépendance, et la nation française n'a point oublié que c'est à l'exemple de l'Amérique qu'elle doit son initiation à la grande cause de la liberté humaine.'"
Meanwhile, the respective adherents of the rivals fanned the flames of the quarrel by their constant recriminations in the press, and kept the controversy spreading. Criticisms, accusations, rejoinders, flew to and fro between the assailants and the cham
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pions of each side. An extract from an article by one of the best-informed of the English friends of the American actor, though obviously written with a bias, yet throws light in several directions. He says, "There are half a dozen writers for the press in London who are recipients of constant attentions from the clique with which Macready lives, a clique of wits, artists, authors, and men-about-town, who hover in the outskirts of high life and form a barrier stratum between the lesser aristocracy and the critics. The critics support upward, the clique transmit notice downward, and Macready controls this clique by the consequence he has as favored by the noblemen who play the patron to his profession. Forrest is a true republican, and cannot be a courtier,—
'He would not flatter Neptune for his trident.'
He neglects the finical rules and scorns to observe the demands of the courtly circles which arrogate all superiority to themselves." Under these circumstances a growing dislike and a final collision between the men were inevitable by the logic of human nature.
Thus the quarrel went on, nor was confined to the scene of combat. Its echoes rolled back to America, growing as they went, and adding, somewhat extravagantly, to their individual import a national significance. A long article appeared in the "Democratic Review," entitled "Mr. Forrest's Second Reception in England." A portion of it will be found still to possess interest and suggestiveness:
"It is the fortune of this country to send over the water from time to time men who are palpable and obvious embodiments of its spirit, and who do not fail, therefore, to stir the elements among which they are cast.
"Daniel Webster was one of these; and we all recollect how his motions were watched, his words chronicled, his looks at court, in Parliament, and at agricultural dinners taken down. They felt that he was a genuine piece of the country, and, in presence of his oak-ribbed strength of person and understanding, acknowledged that he belonged to the land he came from. Mr. Forrest is another of these; quite as good in his way; struck out of the very heart of the soil, and vindicating himself too clearly to be misunderstood, as a creature of its institutions, habits, and daily life. His biography is a chapter in the life of the country; and
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taking him at the start, as he appears on the Bowery stage (a rugged, heady, self-cultured mass of strength and energy thrown down in the most characteristic spot in the American metropolis), and running on with him through all his career, in the course of which it became necessary for him more than once to take society by the collar, down to the day when, in his brass-buttoned coat, he set out for this second expedition to Europe, we shall find him American every inch, the growth of the place, and well entitled to make a stir among the smooth proprieties of the Princess's Theatre. And he has done so. When, after an absence of something like seven years, he heaves up his sturdy bulk against the foot-lights on the English house, the audience know him at once to be genuine: but lurking in the edges of the place are certain sharp-eyed gentlemen, who in the very teeth of the unquestionable force before them, massive, irregular it may be, discover that Mr. Forrest has lapsed from his early manner, and has subsided into tameness and effeminacy!
"Mr. Forrest's English position at this moment is, in our view, just what his true friends would desire. He is carrying his audiences with him; and has from the press just the amount of resistance required to rouse him to new efforts, and to bring out the whole depth and force of New-Worldism in him, to play an engagement such as he has never played before, and to measure himself in assured strength by the side of the head of the English school.
"Mr. Macready, an admirable performer, succeeds by subduing all of the man within him; because he ceases, in the fulfilment of his function as an actor, to have any fellowship with the beatings and turmoils and agitations of the heart. He is classical in spirit, in look, and action.
"It is because he is a man of large heart, and does not forget it in all the mazes of the stage, that Mr. Forrest has sway with the house. He never loses sight of the belief that it is he, a man, with men before him, who treads the boards, and asks for tears, and sobs, and answers of troubled hearts. It is no painted shadow you see in Forrest; no piece of costume; no sword or buckler moving along the line of light as in a procession; but a man, there to do his four hours' work; it may be sturdily, and with great outlay of muscular power, but with a big heart;
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and if you fail to be moved, you may reasonably doubt whether sophistication has not taken the soul out of you, and left you free to offer yourself for a show-case or a clothier's dummy.
"We take an interest in Mr. Forrest because we see in him elemental qualities characteristic of the country, and we feel therefore any slight put upon him as, in its essence, a wound directed at the country itself. He carries with him into action, upon the stage, qualities that are true to the time and place of his origin. Whether rugged or refined, he is upon a large scale, expansive, bold, gothic in his style; and it is not, therefore, matter of wonder that he should have encountered, both at home and abroad, the hostility of simpering elegance and dainty imbecility."
Concluding his London engagement, Forrest proceeded to the principal cities of the United Kingdom and appeared in his leading rôles, and was uniformly greeted with full houses and unstinted applause. The tone of the press towards him was everywhere highly flattering. At Sheffield in particular his success was great. The dramatic company were as much pleased with him as the audiences were, and took occasion on his closing night to express their sentiment in a manner which gratified him deeply. After the tragedy of Othello, Mr. G. V. Brooke, who had sustained the part of Iago, invited Forrest to meet the theatrical company in the green-room, and, entirely to his surprise, addressed him thus:
"Sir,—A most pleasing duty has devolved upon me, in being deputed by my brother actors to express the gratification and delight we have experienced in witnessing your powerful talent as an actor, and your courteous and gentlemanly bearing to your brother professors of the sock and buskin. I am obliged to be very brief in my remarks, as some of the gentlemen around me will have, in a very short time, to be on duty at the post of honor. Allow me, then, sir, before you return to the land of your birth, of which you are a brilliant ornament, to present you, in the name of myself and brother actors, with this small testimonial of our esteem, and to wish that health and prosperity may attend you and Mrs. Forrest, whatever part of the globe it may be your lot to visit."
The following was the inscription on the testimonial, which was a very elegant silver snuff-box: "Presented to Edwin For
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rest, Esq., by the members of the Sheffield Theatrical Company, as a mark of their esteem for him as an Actor and a Man. January 30, 1846."
Forrest replied in the following words:
"I accept this gratifying token of the kind feeling entertained towards me by the members of this company with mingled sentiments of pride and satisfaction. Believe me, there is no praise that could be awarded to my professional exertions so dear to me as that which is offered by my brother actors; for they who, through years of toil, have labored up the steep and thorny pathway which leads to eminence in our laborious art, can alone appreciate the difficulties that must be encountered and overcome. I shall ever look back with sincerest pleasure to my intercourse with the Sheffield dramatic corps, to whose uniform kindness I am greatly indebted for their prompt and cordial co-operation in all the professional duties which we have been called upon to perform together. Both here and at Manchester I have found you always ready and willing to second my views, and any request made to you at rehearsal in the morning you have never failed to perform with alacrity and promptitude at night.
"You have in the kindest terms alluded to the courtesy which you have been pleased to say has characterized my conduct towards all the members of the company. In reply, I can only say, you have, each and all, met me with an entirely correspondent feeling, and I thank you from my heart. These same courtesies shown to one another are productive of a vast amount of good. I cannot but remember that I, too, have gone through the 'rough brake,' that I, too, began the profession in its humblest walks; and I have not forgotten the pleasing and inspiring emotions that were awakened in my youthful breast when I have received a kind word, or an approving smile, from those who were 'older and better soldiers' than myself. And at the same time my experience has taught me that there is no one engaged in the art, be he ever so humble, but some advantage may be gleaned from his observations. As I knew not until this moment of your kind intention to present me with this flattering testimonial, I am wholly unprepared to thank you as I ought. There are feelings too deep to be expressed in words; and such are my feelings now.
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"Once more, I thank you: and permit me to add that, should any here, by life's changing scene, be 'discovered' in my country, I shall take sincerest pleasure in promoting his views to the best of my ability."
