"When chill November's surly blast
Made fields and forests bare,"
and the exquisite verses "To Mary in Heaven,"—
"Thou lingering star with lessening ray,
That lov'st to greet the early morn."
When the eager learner had mastered a new piece, he was all alive until he could recite it to Wilson, who used to encourage and reward him with gifts of the plates of his great work on American Ornithology, which was then passing through the press. The service thus rendered was of inestimable value. The picture is beautiful: the wise and loving old man leaning in spontaneous benignity and joy over the aspiring and grateful child,—forming his taste, moulding his mind and heart. In a case like this, nothing can be more charming than the relation of teacher and pupil. It is that proper and artistic relation of experienced age and docile youth immortalized by antique sculpture in the exquisite myth of Cheiron and Achilles. Forrest never forgot his indebtedness to his early benefactor, but in his last days was fond of citing, with admiring pathos, the dying words of his old friend: "Bury me where the sun may shine on my grave and the birds sing over it."
Things were going on with the Forrest household in this modest and hopeful way, when the heaviest calamity it had ever known befell it. The death of its head, and the consequent cessation of his salary, left the family destitute of the means of support. The good and judicious mother showed herself equal to the emergency. Drying her tears and holding her heart firm, she undertook to fulfil the offices of both parents. With such
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help as she could get, she bought a little stock or goods and opened a millinery-shop. In the mean time the two older sons were earning a little at their trades, and the two older daughters assisted their mother. They made bonnets, and various articles of needle-work, while she worked, in her spare hours, at binding shoes. In the later years of the proud fame and wealth of Forrest, as these scenes floated back into his memory, his heart visibly swelled under his breast, and tears filled his eyes.
The youngest daughter, then eleven, was kept at school. But it was found necessary to abandon the plan of educating Edwin for the clerical profession. Reluctantly his mother took him from school, and put him at service, first, for a short time, in the printing-office of the "Aurora," under Colonel Duane, where he was known as "Little Edwin," then in a cooper-shop on the wharf, and finally in a ship-chandlery store on Race Street. This was in 1819, when he was thirteen years old.
Several years previously his taste for dramatic expression had directed his attention to the stage. He had developed a keen love for theatrical entertainments, and he let no opportunity of attending the theatre go by unimproved. He found frequent means of gratifying this desire, although his parents strongly disapproved of it. He also, in company with his brother William, joined a Thespian club, composed of boys and young men possessed with the same passion for theatricals as himself, and gave much of his leisure time to their meetings and performances. Many a time he and his fellows performed plays in a wood-shed, fitted up for the purpose, to an eager audience of boys, the price of admittance being sometimes five pins, sometimes an apple or a handful of raisins.
The place he most delighted to visit was the old South Street Theatre, long since passed away, with its great pit surmounted by a double row of boxes. The most prominent object, midway in the first tier, was what was called the Washington Box. This was adorned with the insignia of the United States, and had often been occupied by Washington and his family in the days when Philadelphia was the capital of the nation. The boy used to regard this box with intense reverence. It was in this theatre, then under the management of Charles Porter, that Forrest, a lad of eleven, made his first public appearance on any stage. The
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circumstances were amusing. He was in the street, playing marbles on the pavement with some other urchins, when Porter came along, and said to him, "Can you perform the part of a girl in a play?" "Why?" asked Edwin, looking up in surprise. "Because," replied the manager, "the girl who was to perform the character is sick." "Do you want me to take the part?" "Yes. Will you?" "When is it to be played?" "To-morrow night." "I will do it," answered the inconsiderate youth, triumphantly. Porter gave him a play-book, pointed out the part he was to study, and left him.
Edwin began forthwith, and was soon quite up in the part. But how to provide himself with a suitable costume for the night! This was a great difficulty. At length, bethinking him of a female acquaintance of his, whose name was Eliza Berryman, he went to her and borrowed what was needful in general, but not in particular.
Night came on, and the boy, as a substitute for a girl, was to take the part of Rosalia de Borgia, in the romantic melodrama of Rudolph, or the Robbers of Calabria. He went to the theatre and donned the dress. Finding himself in want of a bosom, he tore off some portions of scenery and stuffed them about his breast under the gown, and was ready for the curtain to rise. He had been provided by the kind Eliza with a sort of turban for the head, and for ringlets he had placed horse-hair done into a bunch of curls. The first scene displayed Rosalia de Borgia at the back of the stage, behind a barred and grated door, peering out of a prison. As she stood there, she was seen by the audience, and applauded. They could not then well discern her rugged and somewhat incongruous appearance. Pretty soon Rosalia came in front, before the foot-lights. Then at once rose a universal guffaw from the assembly. She looked about, a little disconcerted, for the cause of this merriment. To her intense sorrow and disgust, she found that her gown and petticoat were quite too short, and revealed to the audience a most remarkably unfeminine pair of feet, ankles, and legs.
He stood it for a time, until a boy in the pit, one of his mates, whom he had told that he was going to play, and who was there to see him, yelled out, "The heels and the big shoes! Hi yi! hi yi! Look at the legs and the feet!" Forrest, placing his
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hand over his mouth, turned to the boy, and huskily whispered, "Look here, chap, you wait till the play is done, and I'll lick you like hell!" Then the boy in the pit bawled out, "Oh, she swears! she swears!" The audience were convulsed with laughter, the curtain came down, and poor Rosalia de Borgia, all perspiration, was hustled off the stage in disgrace.
This ludicrous failure was his first, and, with one exception, his last, appearance in a female part.
But he was not of a strain to give up in discomfiture. He determined to appear again, and in something which he knew he could do well. Accordingly, having prepared himself thoroughly in the famous epilogue written by Goldsmith for Lee Lewis in the character of Harlequin, he asked the manager to allow him another chance on the stage of the South Street Theatre. Porter replied, rather roughly, "Oh, you be damned! you have disgraced us enough already!" Deeply aggrieved by this rebuff, young Forrest yet resolved to speak his piece at any rate. So, one night, dressed in tight pantaloons and a close round jacket, he went behind the scenes, got some paint of the scene-painter, and painted his clothes, as well as he could, with stripes and diamonds, in resemblance of a harlequin. Then, watching an opportunity, in the absence of the manager from the stage, at the ringing down of the curtain he suddenly sprang before the foot-lights, and, to the astonishment of the audience, began,—
"Hold, prompter, hold! a word before your nonsense;
I'd speak a word or two to ease my conscience.
My pride forbids it ever should be said
My heels eclipsed the honors of my head."
At the word "heels" the audience took the joke, and, recognizing the boy, loudly applauded him. Encouraged thus, he went on, and spoke the whole epilogue in a most creditable manner, with thunders of applause from the audience, and from manager Porter too, who had now come in. Concluding with the last line,—
"And at one bound he saves himself—like me,"—
Forrest turned a hand-spring and a flip-flap, and made his exit, to the complete amazement of everybody in the theatre. He was
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vociferously encored, again made his appearance, turned his flip-flap, and spoke his piece even better than before. Encored still again, he did not come back, but betook himself to his home as soon as possible, rejoicing in the belief that the glory of his present triumph would offset the shame of his previous fiasco.
Somewhat later he was duly announced in the bills, and repeated the performance between the play and the after-piece, with as good success as on the first occasion.
He kept his word with the boy in the pit, whose pointed remarks and loud laughter had so much annoyed and provoked him. He inflicted the promised thrashing, though—as he said, in relating the incident more than fifty years later—it was one of the toughest jobs he ever undertook. As soon as the combatants were satisfied, the victor and the victim made up, shook hands, and remained ever afterwards firm friends.
A little domestic scene which occurred about this time may fitly be introduced here, as illustrating the character and influence of the mother, and also, as will appear in a subsequent chapter, the assimilating docility of the child. It was a Sunday afternoon, in the summer. The tired and careful mother sat at the open window, the sunshine streaming across the floor, gazing at the passers in the street, and musing, perhaps, on times long gone by. Edwin was turning the leaves of a large pictorial copy of the Bible. A sudden explosion of laughter was heard from him. "What are you laughing at, my boy? It seems unbecoming, with that book in your hands." "Why, mother, I cannot help it; it is so absurd. Here is a picture of the grapes of Eshcol; and the bunches of them are so big and heavy that it takes two men, with a pole across their shoulders, to carry them along! Is it not funny?" "Edwin, come to me," replied the mother, with calm seriousness. Taking his hand in hers, and looking steadily in his eyes, she said, "Do you not think it very presumptuous and conceited in you, so young, so ignorant, knowing only the climate and fruits of Pennsylvania, to set yourself up to pronounce judgment in this way on the artist who most likely had at his service the experience of travellers in all countries? It is more than probable that in those tropical climes where the Bible was written the vines might grow almost into trees, and bear clusters of grapes ten times larger than any you ever saw. Modesty is one
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of the best traits in a young person. I want you to remember never again to laugh at the fancied ignorance and absurdity of another, when perhaps the ignorance and absurdity are all your own." However often he may have failed to practise the lesson, yet when, fifty-five years afterwards, the old actor related the incident, the beating of his heart, the tenderness of his voice, and the moisture in his eyes, turned reverently towards the portrait of his mother on the wall, showed how profoundly the influence of that hour had sunk into his soul.
When Master Forrest was in the first part of his fourteenth year, he chanced one evening to be in the audience of a lecturer, in the old Tivoli Garden Theatre, on Market Street, who was discoursing on the properties of nitrous oxide, or, as it is more commonly called, laughing-gas. The lecturer invited any of his auditors who desired to come forward and inhale the exhilarating aura. The chance was one just suited to the disposition of our hero. He stepped up and applied his mouth and nostrils to the bag. In a moment, as the air began to work, his ruling passion broke forth. Striking out right and left, to the no slight consternation of those nearest him, he advanced to the front of the stage, and declaimed a famous passage from the stage-copy of Shakspeare,—
"What ho! young Richmond, ho! 'tis Richard calls:
I hate thee for thy blood of Lancaster,"—
with extraordinary energy and effect. John Swift, an eminent lawyer of that day, and a very cultivated and generous man, was so struck by the dramatic talent and force of the lad that he took the pains to seek him out and make his acquaintance, befriending him in the noblest manner, and often thereafter giving him kind counsel and assistance.
Despite his constantly-growing zeal and devotion to dramatic matters, Edwin kept his situation in the ship-chandlery store, and was tolerably faithful to its duties. But his heart was not in the business. The counter and the ledger had no charms for him. All his young enthusiasm was for the play-book and the stage. His employer often found him in a corner conning Shakspeare, or in the back office practising declamation. He said to him one day, with a shake of his wiseacre head, "Ah, boy, this theatrical
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infatuation will be your ruin! The way to thrive is to be attentive to trade. Did you ever know a play-actor to get rich?" But all this prudential advice, this chill preaching of the shop, was utterly ineffectual on the strong imaginative bent and passionate ambition it encountered.
While carrying parcels home to the customers of the firm, he sometimes met with such adventures as a boy of his high and pugnacious spirit would be likely to meet with in those times, when wrestling and fighting were much more common, especially among boys, than they are now. On a certain occasion, jostled and jeered by an older and bigger boy than himself, he said, "You wait till I can deliver this bundle and get back here, and I will fight you to your heart's content." The fellow agreed to it. Away hied Edwin, and deposited his goods. He then ran home and put on an old suit of clothes, to be in better fighting trim. His mother asked him what he was going to do; and when he explained, she begged him not to go, and used such arguments as she could command to impress him with the wickedness and vulgarity of such brutal encounters. But all in vain. "Mother," he said, "I have pledged my word; I must do it. It would be mean not to." And he tore away, repaired to the rendezvous, and, after a tough bout, gave his insulter a terrible thrashing, and went quietly back to the ship-chandlery. It must be confessed that, though inwardly tender and generous, he was rough, easy to quarrel with, and not slow to go to the extremes of fists and heels.
But one of the severest traits in him, all his life, one of the deepest characteristics of his individuality, was the barbaric intensity of his wrath against those who wronged him, the Indian-like bitterness and tenacity of the spirit of revenge in his breast when aroused by what he thought any wanton injury. He never laid claim to the spirit of saintliness, but rather trod it under foot, as affectation, pitiful weakness, or hypocrisy. This marked a gross limit of his moral sensibility in his own personal relations, though he could keenly appreciate the finest touches of abnegation and magnanimity in others. To justice, as he saw it, he was always loyal. But, when his selfhood was wounded, the pain of the bruise not rarely, perhaps, made him a little blind or perverse. Two anecdotes of his boyhood throw light on this
