The following tribute was paid to him in one of the papers of his native city on the day of his burial:
"When we are awakened from the dreams of mimic life, so vividly portrayed by histrionic skill, to the fatal realities of life itself, the blow falls with double severity. Such was the effect on Monday evening, when, on the falling of the curtain at the Arch Street Theatre, after the first piece, Mr. Thayer stepped forward, announced the sudden death of Mr. William Forrest, the Manager, and requested the indulgent sympathy of the audience for the postponement of the remaining entertainments. A shock so sudden and so profound it has seldom been our lot to record. Engaged in his duties all the morning, it appeared but a moment since he had been among us, in the full enjoyment of health, when the hand of the unsparing destroyer struck him down. Mr. Forrest was a great and general favorite among his associates, to whom he was endeared by every feeling of kindness and affection. Few possessed a more placid or even disposition, and few won friends so fast and firmly. In his private relations he was equally estimable, and the loss of him as a son and as a brother will be long and severely felt."
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He was also spoken of in the same strain by the journals of Albany, one of them using these words: "Our citizens will regret to read of the death of Mr. William Forrest. He was known here not only as a manager of much taste and enterprise, but as an actor of conceded merit and reputation. He was also esteemed here, as in Philadelphia, by numerous acquaintances for his personal worth and social qualities. The tidings of his decease will be received with sorrow by all who knew him."
So, on the modest actor, manager, and man, after the short and well-meant scene of his quiet, checkered, not unsuccessful life, the curtain fell in swift and tragic close, leaving the mourners, who would often speak kindly of him, to go about the streets for a little while and then fade out like his memory.
The three daughters of the family—none of them ever marrying—lived to see their youngest brother at the height of his fame, and always shared freely in the comforts secured by his prosperity. They were proud of his talents and reputation, grateful for his loving generosity, devoted to his welfare. In his absence from home their correspondence was constantly maintained, and the only interruption their attachment knew was death. Henrietta lived to be sixty-five years old, dying of liver-complaint in 1863. The next, Caroline, died from an attack of apoplexy in 1869, at the age of sixty-seven. And the youngest, Eleanora, after suffering partial paralysis, died of cancer in 1871, being sixty-three years old.
No one among all our distinguished countrymen has been more thoroughly American than Edwin Forrest. From the beginning to the end of his career he was intensely American in his sympathies, his prejudices, his training, his enthusiasm for the flag and name of his country, his proud admiration for the democratic genius of its institutions, his faith in its political mission, his interest in its historic men, his fervent love of its national scenery and its national literature. He was also American in his exaggerated dislike and contempt for the aristocratic classes and monarchical usages of the Old World. He did not seem to see that there are good and evil in every existing system, and that the final perfection will be reached only by a process of mutual giving and taking, which must go on until the malign elements of each are expelled, the benign elements of the whole combined.
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In view of the concentrated Americanism of Forrest, it may seem singular that he was himself a child of foreign parentage, his father being Scotch, his mother German. But this fact, which at first appears strange, is really typical. Nothing could be more characteristic of our nationality, which is a composite of European nationalities transferred to these shores, and here mixed, modified, and developed under new conditions. The only original Americans are the barbaric tribes of Indians, fast perishing away, and never suggested to the thought of the civilized world by the word. The great settlements from which the American people have sprung were English, French, Dutch, and Spanish. To these four ethnic rivers were added a dark flood of slaves from Africa, and vast streams of emigration from Ireland and Germany, impregnated with lesser currents from Italy, Sweden, Portugal, Russia, and other countries, adding now portentous signal-waves from China and Japan.
The history of European emigration to America is, in one aspect, a tragedy; in another aspect, a romance. When we think of the hardships suffered, the ties sundered, the farewells spoken, the aching memories left behind, it is a colossal tragedy. When we think of the attractive conditions inviting ahead, the busy plans, the joyous hopes, the prophetic schemes and dreams of freedom, plenty, education, reunion with following friends and relatives, that have gilded the landscape awaiting them beyond the billows, it is a chronic romance. The collective experience in the exodus of the millions on millions of men, women, and children, who, under the goad of trials at home and the lure of blessings abroad, have forsaken Europe for America,—the laceration of affections torn from their familiar objects, the tears and wails of the separation, the dismal discomforts of the voyage, the perishing of thousands on the way, either drawn down the sepulchral mid-ocean or dashed on the rocks in sight of their haven, the long-drawn heart-break of exile, the tedious task of beginning life anew in a strange land,—and then the auspicious opening of the change, the rapid winning of an independence, the quick development of a home-feeling, the assuagement of old sorrows, the conquest of fresh joys and a fast-brightening prosperity broad enough to welcome all the sharers still pouring in endless streams across the sea,—the perception of all this makes
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the narrative of American immigration at once one of the most pathetic and one of the most inspiring episodes in the history of humanity. This tale—as a complete account of the emigrant ships, the emigrant trains, the emigrant wagons, the clearings and villages and cities of the receding West, would reveal it—stand unique and solitary in the crowd of its peculiarities among all the records of popular removals and colonial settlements since the dispersion of the Aryan race, mysterious mother of the Indo-European nations, from its primeval seat in the bosom of Asia. All this suffering, all this hope, all this seething toil, has had its mission, still has its purpose, and will have its reward when the predestined effects of it are fully wrought out. Its providential object is to expedite the work of reconciling the divided races, nations, parties, classes, and sects of mankind. The down-trodden poor had groaned for ages under the oppressions of their lot, victims of political tyranny, religious bigotry, social ostracism, and their own ignorance. The traditions and usages of power and caste which surrounded them were so old, so intense, so unqualified, that they seemed hopelessly doomed to remain forever as they were. Then the Western World was discovered. The American Republic threw its boundless unappropriated territory and its impartial chance in the struggle of life open to all comers, with the great prizes of popular education, liberty of thought and speech, and universal equality before the law. The multitudes who flocked in were rescued from a social state where the hostile favoritisms organized and rooted in a remote past pressed on them with the fatality of an atmosphere, and were transferred to a state which offered them every condition and inducement to emancipate themselves from clannish prejudices, superstitions, and disabilities, to flow freely together in the unlimited sympathies of manhood, and form a type of character and civilization as cosmopolitan as their two bases,—charity and science. The significance, therefore, of the colonizing movement from the Old World to the New is the breaking up of the fatal power of transmitted routine, exclusive prerogative and caste, and the securing for the people of a condition inviting them to blend and co-operate on pure grounds of universal humanity. In spite of fears and threats, over all drawbacks, the experiment is triumphantly going on. The prophets who fore
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see the end already behold all the tears it has cost glittering with rainbows.
America being thus wholly peopled with immigrants and the descendants of immigrants, our very nationality consisting in a fresh and free composite made of the tributes from the worn and routinary nations of the other hemisphere, the distinctive glory and design of this last historic experiment of civilization residing in the fact that it presents an unprecedented opportunity for the representatives of all races, climes, classes, and creeds to get rid of their narrow and irritating peculiarities, to throw off the enslaving heritage imposed on them by the hostile traditions and unjust customs of their past, no impartial observer can fail to see the unreasonableness of that bitter prejudice against foreigners which has been so common among those of American birth. This prejudice has had periodical outbreaks in our politics under the name of Native Americanism. In its unreflective sweep it is not only irrational and cruel, but also a gross violation of the true principles of our government, which deal with nothing less than the common interests and truths of universal humanity. And yet, in its real cause and meaning, properly discriminated, it is perfectly natural in its origin, and of the utmost importance in its purport. It is not against foreigners, their unlimited welcome here, their free sharing in the privilege of the ballot and the power of office, that the cry should be raised. That would be to exemplify the very bigotry in ourselves against which we protest in others. It is only against the importation to our shores, and the obstinate and aggravating perpetuation here, of the local vices, the bad blood, the clannish hates, the separate and inflaming antagonisms of all sorts, which have been the chief sources of the sufferings of these people in the lands from which they came to us. In its partisan sense the motto, America for those of American birth, is absurdly indefensible. But the indoctrination of every American citizen, no matter where born or of what parentage, with the spirit of universal humanity is our supreme duty. Freedom from proscription and prejudice, a fair course and equal favor for all, an open field for thought, truth, progress,—this expresses the true spirit of the Republic. It is only against what is opposed to this that we should level our example, our argument, and our persuasion. The invitation our flag advertises to
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all the world is, Come, share in the bounties of God, nature, and society on the basis of universal justice and good will, untrammelled by partial laws, unvexed by caste monopolies. Welcome to all; but, as they touch the strand, let them cast off and forget the distinguishing badges which would cause one portion to fear or hate, despise or tyrannize over, another portion. Not they who happened to be born here, but they who have the spirit of America, are true Americans.
The father and mother of Edwin Forrest were thoroughly Americanized, and taught him none of the special peculiarities of his Scottish or German ancestry. So far as his conscious training was concerned, in language, religion, social habits, he grew up the same as if his parentage had for repeated generations been American. This was so emphatically the case that all his life long he felt something of the Native American antipathy for foreigners, and cherished an exaggerated sympathy for many of the most pronounced American characteristics. Yet there never was any bigotry in his theoretical politics. His creed was always purely democratic; and so was the core of his soul. He was only superficially infected by the illogical prejudices around him. Whatever deviations he may have shown in occasional word or act, his own example, in his descent and in his character, yielded a striking illustration of the genuine relation which should exist between all the members of our nationality, from whatever land they may hail and whatever shibboleths may have been familiar to their lips. Namely, they should, as soon as possible, forget the quarrels of the past, and hold everything else subordinate to the supreme right of private liberty and the supreme duty of public loyalty, recognizing the true qualifications for American citizenship only in the virtues of American manhood, the American type of manhood being simply the common type liberalized and furthered by the free light and stimulus of republican institutions. Overlook it or violate it whoever may, such is the lesson of the facts before us. And it is a point of the extremest interest that, however much Forrest may sometimes have failed in his personal temper and prejudices to practise this lesson, the constantly emphasized and reiterated exemplification of it in his professional life constitutes his crowning glory and originality as an actor. He was distinctively the first and greatest democrat, as such, that
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ever trod the stage. The one signal attribute of his playing was the lifted assertion of the American idea, the superiority of man to his accidents. He placed on the forefront of every one of his celebrated characters in blazing relief the defiant freedom and sovereignty of the individual man.
Thus an understanding of the ground traversed in the present chapter is necessary for the appreciation of his position and rank in the history of the theatre. Boldly rejecting the mechanical traditions of the stage, shaking off the artificial trammels of the established schools of his profession, he looked directly into his own mind and heart and directly forth upon nature, and, summoning up the passionate energies of his soul, struck out a style of acting which was powerful in its personal sincerity and truth, original in its main features, and, above all, democratic and American in its originality.
But though the parents of Edwin did not try to neutralize the influence of purely American circumstances of neighborhood and schooling for their child, they could not help transmitting the organic individual heritage of their respective nationalities in his very generation and development. The generic features and qualities of every one are stamped in his constitution from the historic soil and social climate and organized life of the country of the parents through whom he derives his being from the aboriginal Source of Being. Certain peculiar modes of acting and reacting on nature and things—modes derived from peculiarities of ancestral experience, natural scenery, social institutions, and other conditions of existence—constitute those different styles of humanity called races or nations. These peculiarities of constitution, temper, taste, conduct, looks, characterize in varying degrees all the individuals belonging to a country, making them Englishmen, Spaniards, Russians, Turks, or Chinese. These characteristics, drawn from what a whole people have in common, are transmitted by parents to their progeny and inwrought in their organic being by a law as unchangeable as destiny,—nay, by a law which is destiny. The law may, in some cases, baffle our scrutiny by the complexity of the elements in the problem, or it may be qualified by fresh conditions, but it is always there, working in every point of plasma, every fibril of nerve, every vibration of force. The law of heredity is obscured
