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point. In the one example he was, as it would seem, morally without excuse; in the other, pardonable, but scarcely to be approved.
He was eating an apple in the street, when he came to a horse attached to a baker's cart, standing beside the curb-stone. He amused himself by holding the apple under the horse's nose, and, as often as the animal tried to bite it, suddenly snatching it away, and fetching him a blow on the mouth. At that mischievous moment the driver of the cart came up, and, crying out, "What are you doing there, you damned little scoundrel?" gave him a piercing cut across the leg with his whip. The little fellow limped off in excruciating pain, but carefully marked his enemy. The passion for revenge burned in him. He kept a sharp lookout. Within a week he spied the driver a short distance ahead. He picked up a stone, took good aim, and, striking him on the back of the head, knocked him from his cart into the street. He then dismissed the subject from his mind, satisfied that he had squared accounts. Many would hold that, instead of squaring accounts, he had only made a bad matter worse. But such was his way of regarding it; and the business of a biographer is to tell the truth.
The other instance is impressive in its teaching. On a cold winter morning he was trundling along the sidewalk a wheelbarrow loaded with articles from the store. A Quaker, very tall and portly, dressed in the richest primness of the costume of his sect, meeting him, ordered him, in a very authoritative tone, to move off into the street. He apologized, expostulating that he was weary, the load was hard for him to carry, the sidewalk was much easier for him, and was amply wide enough for the few people then out. Without another word the sanctimonious old tyrant seized hold of the wheelbarrow, tipped it over into the street, and, pushing the boy aside, walked on. The blood of young Forrest boiled with indignation so that his brain seemed ready to burst. The ground was covered slightly with snow. He sank on his knees on it and tried in vain to pull up a paving-stone, to hurl at his tormentor. Weeping bitterly with baffled rage, he gathered his scattered load together and started on, cursing the cruel injustice to which he had been forced to submit. For years and years after, he said, the association of this outrage
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was so envenomed in his memory that whenever he saw a Quaker he had to make an effort not instinctively to hate him. Such wrongs as this, inflicted on a sensitive child, often leave scars which rankle through life, permanently embittering and deforming the character. No generous nature but will take the warning, and considerately try to be ever just and kind to the young. In the bearing and effect of early experiences on subsequent character, it is profoundly and even wonderfully true that as the twig is bent the tree is inclined.
The kind friend and patron young Forrest had won by his exhibition at the Tivoli Garden did not forget him, but continued to give him good advice and encouragement. About a year afterwards he introduced him to the managers of the Walnut Street Theatre, Messrs. Wood and Warren. In consequence of this friendly intercession, and of his own promise, he was enabled to make his formal début, on the stage of the Walnut Street Theatre, on the evening of November 27th, 1820, in the character of Norval. His success was decisive. The leading Philadelphia newspaper said, "Of the part of Norval, we must say that it was as uncommon in the performance as it was extraordinary in just conception and exemption from the idea of artifice. We mean that the sentiment of the character obtained such full possession of the youth as to take away in appearance every consideration of an audience or a drama, and to give, as it were, the natural speaking of the shepherd boy suddenly revealed by instinct to be the son of Douglas. We were much surprised at the excellence of his elocution, his self-possession in speech and gesture, and a voice that, without straining, was of such volume and fine tenor as to carry every tone and articulation to the remotest corner of the theatre. We trust that this young gentleman will find the patronage to which his extraordinary ripeness of faculty and his modest deportment entitle him."
It is certainly interesting to find in this, the first criticism of the first regular appearance of Forrest, in the fifteenth year of his age, a distinct indication of his most prominent characteristics throughout his whole histrionic career, namely, his earnest realism, his noble voice, his accurate elocution, and his steady poise. The notice was from the pen of William Duane, of the "Aurora," then one of the ablest and most experienced editors in the
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country, and afterwards Secretary of the Treasury under General Jackson.
The play was repeated December 2d. December 29th he sustained the part of Frederick, in Lovers' Vows; and January 6th, 1821, he assumed the rôle of Octavian, in The Mountaineers. On the last occasion, which was his benefit, the following notice was published in one of the morning papers: "The very promising youth, Master Forrest, who has appeared twice as Young Norval, and once as Frederick, is to perform Octavian this evening, and the profits of the house are for his benefit. We trust that this modest and promising youth will obtain the notice to which he is certainly well entitled from the lovers of the drama and of native genius."
Though the receipts from these his first four performances were not unusually large, the popular applause and the critical verdict were flattering. The results of the experiment confirmed his bent and fixed his resolution for life.
During this year, that is, before he was fifteen years old, he made another appearance on the stage, under circumstances which show the native boldness and resolution of his character. Without advice or assistance of any kind, he went alone to the proprietors of the Prune Street Theatre and asked them to let it to him on his own account for a single night. The proposition surprised them, but they admired the pluck of the boy so much that they granted his request. He engaged the company to support him, got his brother William to print the bills announcing him in the character of Richard the Third, drew a good house, and came off with a liberal quantity of applause and a small pecuniary gain.
It was at this date, when Forrest was in his fifteenth year, that he, who was destined to inspire so many poems, drew from the prophetic muse of an admirer the first verses ever composed on him. They were written by the Hon. Joseph R. Chandler, one of the most distinguished citizens of Philadelphia, and then editor of the "United States Gazette."
"Turn we from State to view the mimic Stage,
Which gives the form and pressure of the age.
Each season brings its wonders, and each year
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Some unfledged buskins on our boards appear;
And Covent Garden sends us stage-sick trash
To gather laurels or to pocket cash.
A Phillipps comes to sing us Braham's airs,
And Wallack, Finn, and Maywood strut with theirs.
These sickly meteors dim our hemisphere,
While rare as comets Cookes and Keans appear:
These fopling twinklers, with their borrowed glare,
Will meet our censure when we cease to stare.
But the bright sun that gives our stage its rays
Still lights and warms us by its innate blaze.
We have a power to gild our drama's age,—
Cooper's our Sun, his orbit is our stage.
Long may he shine, by sense and taste approved,
By fancy reverenced, and by genius loved!
And when retiring, mourned by every grace,
May Forrest rise to fill his envied place!
Dear child of genius! round thy youthful brow
Taste, wit, and beauty bind thy laurel now.
No foreign praise thy native worth need claim;
No aid extrinsic heralds forth thy name;
No titled patron's power thy merit decked:—
The blood of Douglas will itself protect!"
The insight and the foresight indicated in the application of the last line to the yet undeveloped boy are remarkable, and will thrill every one who is familiar with the bearing and poise of the mature actor and man. For in him the massive majesty of pose, the slow weight of gesture, the fixedness of look, the ponderous gutturality and sweetness of articulative energy, all revealed an intensity and equilibrium of selfhood, a deep and vast power of personality, not often equalled. He was nothing if not independent and competent to his own protection.
The eminent English tragedian Cooper was at that time living in Philadelphia, in the intervals between his starring engagements. He was an actor of pronounced and signal merits, and of great professional authority, from his varied and long experience. Edwin had seen him in several of his chief parts, with docile quickness had caught important impressions from his performances, and was full of admiration for him. When, after his early successes, he had determined to become an actor himself, he longed for the sympathy and counsel of the illustrious veteran. Accordingly, armed with an introduction, he went to see the old king in his private state. He was received kindly, but with some loftiness. Cooper told him he must not trust to his raw triumphs
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as an amateur, but must be willing to serve a regular apprenticeship to the art, and climb the ladder round by round, not trying to mount by great skips. The best men in every profession, he said, were those who had gone through all its experiences. The greatest lawyers he had known in England, he declared, had begun their career by sweeping out the law-office. Edwin, thinking his adviser meant him to stoop to the position of a supernumerary or call-boy, rather petulantly, but tellingly, answered, "When one knows how to read, he needs not to learn his letters." The old man was nettled by the pert reply, and the interview closed with coolness, though not, as has been reported, with anger or alienation. They were ever afterwards good friends, frequently meeting, and the veteran not only gave him much useful instruction, but also used his influence to secure for the novice an engagement in Boston. That there was no quarrel, no ingratitude, but, on the contrary, both a thankful appreciation and a generous return from the boyish aspirant and pupil, we shall, on a future page, cite the testimony of the old actor himself, amidst the decay and want of his last days.
The advice of Cooper was based on his own experience, and was sound. He himself, at fourteen, had engaged under Stephen Kemble. Kemble kept him a whole season without a single appearance. When he did appear, it was as a substitute for another, in the character of Malcolm, in Macbeth. He forgot his part, and was actually hissed off the stage. But he persevered, and slowly worked his way to the very summit of the profession. His advice to Edwin did not contemplate so low a descent as the boy inferred, but only that he should be modest and studious, begin in relatively humble parts, and grow by degrees. Forrest of his own accord, or perhaps in consequence of Cooper's words, really followed exactly this course a little later.
Although retaining his place in the store, his heart was given to the theatre, and the dearest exercises of his soul were devoted to the cultivation of the powers which, he hoped, would enable him at some future time to shine as he had seen others shine. Not only had Cooper presented a model to his admiring fancy, Edmund Kean also had electrified his senses and indelibly stamped his imagination. It was only two nights after his own benefit as Octavian that Kean began an engagement of twelve
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nights in the same theatre. And of all in the crowds who waited on this peerless meteor of the stage, melted at the pathos of his genius, or trembled before the irresistible bursts of his power, in not one did the exhibition kindle such imperishable wonder and such idolatrous admiration as in the fond proud boy who was himself aspiring to become a great actor, and who drew from what he then saw a large share of the inspiration which afterwards urged him so high.
The nature of Edwin Forrest in his fifteenth year was remarkably developed and mature, especially when we consider the small advantages he had enjoyed. He was distinguished from most youths of his age by the intensity and tenacity of his passion and purpose, and by the vividness with which the objects of his thought were pictured in his mind. A consequence of these attributes was a strong personal magnetism, a power of attracting and deeply interesting susceptible natures with whom he came in contact.
He was not without touches of a poetic and sentimental vein, leading him sometimes to indulge in melancholy reveries. The following lines were composed by him at this time,—that is, in 1820. They were found among his posthumous papers, inscribed in his own hand, "Verses, or Doggerel, written in my Boyhood":
"Scenes of my childhood, hail!
All hail, beloved years
When Hope first spread life's sail,
Ere sorrow came, or tears.
Hail to the blissful hours
Of life's resplendent morn,
When all around was flowers,
And flowers without a thorn!
"Hail, guardians of my youth!
Hail their instructions given,
Showing the path of Truth,
The flowery way to heaven!
All hail the reverend place
Where first I lisped His name,
Where first my infant lips
God's praises did proclaim!
Inestimable precious scenes,
Now faded and all past,
Can you not fling one ray serene
To cheer me on at last?
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Ah, no! Life's winter has set in,
And storms and tempests rise;
A chaos infinite of sin
Sweeps full before my eyes.
"This frail habiliment of soul
Must shortly cease to be,—
Some planet then my goal,—
Home for eternity.
Another document from his pen at about the same time will certainly interest readers who recall the circumstances of his situation then, and the facts of his subsequent career. It is the earliest application he ever made—and it was in vain—to the manager of a theatre for an engagement.
"Philada., Dec. 6, 1820.
"To Mr. James H. Caldwell, New Orleans.
"Sir,—Having understood you intend to open your theatre in the city of New Orleans some time during this month, I, by the advice of a number of friends, have taken the liberty of addressing you relative to an engagement. I am desirous of performing in your company for six or eight nights, in such parts as I shall name at the foot of this letter.
"I acted last season in Messrs. Warren and Wood's theatre for a few nights, and drew respectable and profitable houses, which is a difficult matter to do at this season in Philadelphia. For my capacity I refer you to the managers above named, or to Col. John Swift, of this city. Should you think it troublesome to write to these gentlemen on the subject, I will procure the necessary papers and forward them to you. If you conclude to receive me, I should like to hear on what terms, and so forth. Address care of John R. Baker and Son, 61 Race St., Philada.
