William, the second son, expired under a sudden attack of bilious colic, at the age of thirty-four. He was a printer, and worked at this trade for several years, buffeted by fortune from place to place. The mechanical drudgery, however, irked him. The lack of opportunity and ability to rise and to better his condition also disheartened and repelled him; and before he was twenty-one he abandoned the business of type-setting for an employment more suited to his tastes. He adopted the theatrical profession and entered on the stage, of which he had been an amateur votary from his early youth. Their common dramatic aptitudes and aspirations were a strong bond of fellowship between him and his youngest brother, and they had a thousand times practised together at the art of acting, in private, before either made his appearance in public. This coincidence of talent and ambition between the brothers seems to reveal an inherited tendency. The local reputation of the elder, once clear and bright, has been almost utterly lost in the wide and brilliant fame of the younger. It is fitting that it be here snatched from oblivion, at least for a passing moment. For he was both a good man and a good actor, performing his part well alike on the scenic stage and on the real one; though in his case, as in that of most of his contemporaries, the merit was not of such pronounced and impressive relief as to survive in any legible character the obliterating waves of the half-century which has swept across it. Yet his accomplishments, force, and desert were sufficient to make him, in spite of early poverty and premature death, for several years the respected and successful manager of the leading theatre, first of Albany, afterwards of Philadelphia.
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."
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.
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.