The exact knowledge, co-operative power, and disciplined skill chiefly exemplified hitherto in war, or in great business enterprises conducted in the exclusive interests of their supporters against all others,—this combination, universalized and put on a basis of disinterestedness, seeking the good of an entire nation or the entire world, will furnish the true form of government now wanted. For no government of the many by the few in the spirit of will, whether that will represents the minority or the majority, can be permanent. The only everlasting or truly divine government must be one free from all will except the will of God, one which shall guide in the spirit of science by demonstrated laws of truth and right, representing the harmonized good of the whole.
In view of such a possible result, the trustful American, comparing his people with Asiatics or with Europeans, can regard without fear the apparent change of certain forms of virtue into correlative forms of vice; because he holds that this is but a transient disentwining of the moral and religious tendrils from around smaller and more selfish objects in preparation for their permanent re-entwining around greater and more disinterested ones, when private families shall dissolve into a universal family, or their separate interests be conformed to its collective interests. All humanity is the family of God, and perhaps the historic selfishness of the lesser families may crumble into individualities in order to re-combine in the universal welfare of this.
Meanwhile, it may well be maintained that the repulsive swagger of self-assertion sometimes seen here is a less evil than the degrading servility and stagnant spirit of caste often seen elsewhere. The desideratum is to construct out of the alienated races
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and classes of men here thrown together, jarring with their distinctions and prejudices, yet under conditions of unprecedented favorableness, a new type of character, carrying in its freed and sympathetic intelligence all the vital and spiritual traditions of humanity. There are but two methods to this end: one, the intermingling of the varieties in generative descent; the other, the personal assimilation of contrasting experiences and qualities by mutual sympathetic interpretation and assumption of them. This latter process is the very process and business of the dramatic art. The true player is the most detached, versatile, imaginative, and emotional style of man, most capable of understanding, feeling with, and reproducing all other styles, best fitted, therefore, to mediate between hostile clans and creeds and reconcile the dissonant parts of society and the race in its final cosmopolite harmony.
Consequently, among the public agencies of culture destined to educate the American people out of their defects and faults into a complete accordant manhood—if, as is fondly hoped, that happy destiny be reserved for them—the dramatic art will have an unparalleled place of honor assigned to it. The dogmatic Church, so busy in toothlessly mumbling the formulas of an extinct faith that it loses sight of the living truths of God in nature and society, will be heeded less and less as it slowly dies its double death in drivel of words and drivel of ceremonies. But the plastic Stage, clearing itself of its abuses and carelessness, and receiving a new inspiration at once religious in its sacred earnestness and artistic in its free range of recreative play, will become more and more influential as it learns to exemplify the various ideals of human nature and human life set off by their graded foils, and presents the gravest teachings disguised in the finest amusements.
In the democratic idea, every man is called on to be a priest and a king unto God. Church and State, in all their forms and disguises, have sought to monopolize those august rôles for a few; but the Theatre, in the examples of its great actors, has instinctively sought to fling their secrets open to the whole world; and, when fully enlightened by the Academy, it will clearly teach what it has thus far only obscurely hinted. It will reveal the hidden secrets of power and rank, the just arts of sway, and
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the iniquitous artifices of despotism. And it will assert the indefeasible claim of every man, so far as he wins personal fitness and desert, to have open before him a free passage through all the spheres and heights of social humanity. The greatest player is the one who can most perfectly represent the largest scale of characters, keeping each in its exact truth and grade, yet passing freely through them all. That, too, is the moral ground and essence of democracy, whose basis is thus the same as that of the dramatic art,—namely, a free and intelligent sympathy giving men the royal freedom of mankind by right of eminent domain. The priesthood and kingship of man are universal in kind, but endlessly varied in degree, no two men on earth nor no two angels in heaven having such a monotonous uniformity that they cannot be discriminated. Each one has an original stamp and relish of native personality. The law of infinite perfection, even in liberty itself, is perfect subordination in the infinite degrees of superiority.
These opposed and balancing truths found a magnificent impersonation on the stage in Edwin Forrest, and made him pre-eminently the representative American actor. All his great parts set in emphatic relief the intrinsic sovereignty of the individual man, the ideal of a free manhood superior to all artificial distinctions or circumstances. He showed man as inherent king of himself, and also relative king over others in proportion to his true superiority in worth and weight. When Tell confronted Gessler, or Rolla appeared with the Inca, or Spartacus stood before the Emperor, or Cade defied the King, or Metamora scorned the Englishman, the titular monarch was nothing in the tremendous presence of the authentic hero. Genuine virtue, power, and nobleness took the crown and sceptre away from empty prescription. This was grand, and is the lesson the American people need to learn. It enthrones the truth, while repudiating the error, of vulgar democracy. That error would interpret the doctrine of equal rights into a flat and dead uniformity, a stagnant level of similarities; but that truth affirms an endless variety of degrees with a boundless liberty around all, each free to fit himself for all the privileges of human nature according to his ability, and entitled to enjoy those privileges in proportion to the fitness he attains. The principle of order, rank, authority, hierarchy, is as omnipotent and sacred in genuine democracy as
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it is in nature or the government of God. The American idea, as against the Asiatic and European, would not destroy the principle of precedence, but would make that principle the intrinsic force and merit of the individual, instead of any historic or artificial prerogative. It asserts that there must be no horizontal caste or stratum in society to prevent the vertical any more than the level circulation of the political units. It declares that there shall be no despotic fixtures reserving the most desirable and authoritative places for any arbitrary sets of persons, but that there shall be divine liberty for the ablest and best to gravitate by divine right to the highest places. That is the American idea purified and completed. That, also, is the central lesson of the dramatic art in its crowning triumphs on the popular stage. And in the half-inspired, half-conscious representation of it lay the commanding originality of Edwin Forrest, our first national tragedian.
The foregoing thoughts put us in possession of the data and place us at the point of view for an intelligent and interested survey of the field before us. And we will now proceed to the proper narrative of the biographic details, and to the critical delineation of the professional features suggested by the title of our work.
CHAPTER III. BOYHOOD AND YOUTH.
When Edwin was born, his father, encumbered and oppressed by the debts which his failure some years before had entailed on him, was serving in a bank, at a small salary. The family, consisting then of the parents and five children, were forced to live in a very humble style, and to practise a stern economy. For many years they endured the trials and hardships of poverty almost in its extremities. Yet, by dint of industry, character, and tidiness, they managed to maintain respectable appearances and a fair position. Both the father and mother were exemplary members of the Episcopal Church, under the pastoral charge of the Rev. Doctor Pilmore, on whose Sunday services they, with their children, were regular attendants.
What they most lamented was their inability to give their boys and girls the education and accomplishments whose absence in themselves their strong judgment and refined sensibility caused them deeply to regret. But they sought to make such compensation as they could by example, by precept, by directing in the formation of their habits and the choice of their associates, and by keeping them at the public schools as long as possible.
Lorman, the eldest son, when of the proper age to earn his living, was apprenticed to a tanner and currier. William, at a later period, was set at work in a printing-office. Henrietta, the eldest daughter,—as could not be avoided,—was early taken from under the rule of the school-mistress to the side of her mother, to help in the increasing labors of the household. Edwin went constantly to the public school nearest his home, from the age of five to thirteen, together with his eldest sister, Caroline, and also, for the last six years, with his youngest sister, Eleanora.
During this period the life of the family presents little besides that plain and humble story of toil, domestic fidelity, social strug
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gle, self-denial, and patience familiar in our country to a multitude of families in the middle and lower walks. In the mean while, duties were done, simple pleasures were enjoyed, plans were formed, hopes were disappointed, the seasons came round, the years moved on, changes occurred, experiences accumulated, as will happen to all, whether rich or poor.
The youngest son gave more striking signs of talent than any of the rest, and naturally the fonder anticipations of his parents centred in him. They meant, at any cost, if it were a possible thing, to give him such an education and training as would fit him for the Christian ministry. They were led to this determination by the counsel of their pastor, by their own pronounced religious feelings, and by the most distinctive gift of the boy himself. That gift was the marked power and taste of his elocution. It is interesting, and seems strange, as we look back now, to think of the destiny of Forrest had the original intention of his parents been carried out. Perhaps he would have become a bishop, and a judicious and influential one. It is certainly not impossible; so much do circumstances, companions, aims, duties, the daily routine of life, contribute to make us what we are. The essential germ or monad of the personality is unextinguishable, but its development may be amazingly fostered and guided or twisted and stunted. The coin of manhood remains what it is in itself, but its image and superscription are determined by the mould and die with which it is struck.
Edwin had a sweet, expressive, vigorous voice, with natural accent and inflection, free from the common mechanical mannerisms. His superiority in this respect over all his comrades was signal. With that unsparing tendency to let down every superiority, to level all distinctions, which is so characteristic of the rude democracy of the school-yard and the play-ground, his fellows nicknamed him the Spouter!
From his very first attendance at church, when a mere child in petticoats, he was much impressed by the imposing appearance and preaching of Dr. Joseph Pilmore. Father Pilmore was a large man, with a deep, rich voice, a manner of emphatic earnestness, his long powdered hair falling down his shoulders after the fashion of an Addisonian wig. The boy would not leave the pew until the old pastor came along, patted him on the head, and gave
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him a blessing. He would then go home, make a pulpit of a stuffed semicircular chair with a pillow placed on the top of its back for a cushion, mount into it, and preach over from memory parts of the sermon he had just heard,—with his sisters, and such other persons as might be at hand, for an audience. At such times, before he would consent to declaim, he used to insist on having his costume, namely, a pair of spectacles across his nose, and a long pair of tongs over his neck, their legs coming down his breast to represent the bands of the preacher.
To the end of his life he retained a most grateful remembrance of his first pastor. The picture of him as he used to appear in the pulpit always remained in his imagination, a venerable image, unfaded, unblurred. One favorite gesture of the reverend orator, a forcible smiting of his breast, took such hold of the young observer that it haunted him for years after he had gone upon the stage; and he found himself often involuntarily copying it, even in situations where it was not strictly appropriate.
Such were the grace, propriety, and vigor displayed by the infantile declaimer, that when he went, as he often did, to see his brother Lorman in the tannery where he was employed, the workmen would lift him upon a stone table designed for dressing leather, listen to his recitations, and reward him with their applause.
Among the most valued friends of the Forrest family at this time was an elderly Scotchman, of great cultivation of mind, gentle heart, and charming manners, who had seen much of the world, was an intense lover of nature, possessed of fine literary taste and a rare natural piety of soul. He delighted in talking over with his friend their common memories of dear old Scotland, often quoting from Ferguson, Burns, and other Caledonian celebrities. This was no less a person than the famous ornithologist, Alexander Wilson; a man of sweet character, whose pictures of birds, descriptions of nature, and effusions of sentiment can never fail to give both pleasure and edification to those who linger over his limpid and sinless pages. The little boy, fascinated by the gentle personality, as well as by the picturesque conversation, so different from that of the business or working men he usually heard, was wont, on occasions of these visits, to draw near and attend to what was said. One day his father exclaimed,
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"Come, Edwin, let us hear you recite the speech of the Shepherd Boy of the Grampian Hills." Wilson at once recognized the remarkable promise of the lad, and from that time took a deep interest in him. He often heard him read and declaim, corrected his faults, gave him good models of delivery, and called his attention to excellent pieces for committing to memory. He taught him several of the best poems of Robert Burns. Among these were the Dirge beginning
