To witness King Richard the Third,
Enacted to-night in a—Booth?
The order to you I have brought,
Not liking the Manager's trick;
For instead of the Forrest I sought,
He now only offers a stick."
The impression he made, however, his great and unquestionable success, are best shown by certain salient facts with which the dramatic critics, prejudiced or unprejudiced, had nothing to do: the brilliant public banquet given in his honor by the Garrick Club, with Thomas Noon Talfourd in the chair; the exhibition, at the Somerset House, of his full-length portrait as Macbeth in the dagger-scene; and the numerous valuable presents made to him by various eminent men, including a superb original oil-portrait of Garrick;—these tell their own story. At the close of his first engagement a testimonial was given him by his fellow-actors, every one of them spontaneously joining in the contribution. It was, as the "Morning Herald" described it, "a splendid snuff-box of tortoise-shell, lined and mounted with gold, with a mosaic lid, and the inscription,—
"To Edwin Forrest, Esq., the American tragedian, from the performers of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in testimony of their admiration of his talent as an actor, and their respect for him as a man. 'His worth is warrant for his welcome hither.'—Shakspeare."
The prolonged stay of Forrest in England was ostensibly to continue for another season the brilliant professional life there opened to him. But, in reality, a tenderer attraction constituted his principal motive. He had met in the fashionable circles of the art life of London a young lady of extreme beauty and of accomplished manners, thoroughly imbued with musical and dramatic tastes, who had quite won his heart. This was Catherine Norton Sinclair, daughter of a very distinguished English vocalist. Miss Sinclair, with much force of character and grace and vivacity of demeanor, had a personal loveliness which gave her distinction wherever she appeared, and an ingenuous sympathetic expression which made her a general favorite. She was the first and only woman whom Forrest, with all his earnest but not absorbing amours, had ever seriously thought of marrying. Her image, fixed in his bewitched imagination wherever he went, made him impatient to be with her again in fact. This was the magnet that drew him, after every departure, so quickly back to London. The maiden, on the other hand, was as much enamored as the man. More than thirty-six years afterwards, when he was lying cold in his coffin, and so much of joy and hope and pain and tragic grief lay buried between their separated souls, she said, "The first time I saw him—I recall it now as clearly as though it were but yesterday—the impression he made was so instantaneous and so strong, that I remember I whispered to myself, while a thrill ran through me, 'This is the handsomest man on whom my eyes have ever fallen.'" On meeting they were mutually smitten, and the passion grew, and no obstacles intervened, and they were betrothed. The intervals between his starring engagements in the chief cities of the United Kingdom he spent in courtship. It was a period of divine intoxication, which they alone who have had a kindred experience can understand, when life was all a current of bliss in a world sparkling with enchantment. A favorite poet has said,—
"Oh, time is sweet when roses meet,