Virtue cast round his head her smiling wreath,
Which did not leave him on his bed of death.
His image lives, and from my grief-worn heart,
While life remains, will never, never part.
Weep, soldiers, weep! with tears of sadness lave
Your friend and brother's drear, untimely grave!"
In March the celebrated and ill-starred Conway filled an engagement in New Orleans. The witnessing of his performances formed one of the epochs in the development of Forrest's dramatic power. He played Malcolm to the Macbeth of the tall and over-impassioned tragedian, and caught some valuable suggestions from his idiomatic individuality and style. But it was the Othello of this powerful and unhappy actor which most impressed him. He played this part with a sweetness and a majestic and frenzied energy which no audience could resist. The whole truth of the course of the ambition, love, jealousy, madness, vengeance, desperation, remorse, and death of the noble but barbaric Moor was painted in volcanic and statuesque outlines. Nothing escaped the apt pupil, who with lynx-eyed observation fastened on every original point, every electric stroke, and at this adolescent period drank in the significance of the fully-developed passions of unbridled human nature. It was not long after these mimic presentments when the real passions in the darkly-tangled plot of his own existence wrought so convulsively on poor Conway, the friction sunk so profoundly into the sockets and vital seats of his being, that he went mad, threw himself overboard, and all his griefs and fears at once in the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Early in May, Forrest's benefit was announced, and he was underlined for Lear, "the first time in New Orleans." On account of bad weather the benefit was postponed, and, when it did occur, instead of Lear he performed Octavian, in Coleman's Mountaineers. The season closed with the end of the month, when he played Carwin, the leading rôle in the drama of Therese, by John Howard Payne.
The first actress in the company of the American Theatre at New Orleans for the season of 1825 was Miss Jane Placide. She was born at Charleston, and was then, in her twentieth year, deservedly a great favorite with the Southern public. She was extremely beautiful in her person, sweet in her disposition, piquant in her manners, and artistically natural in her rôles. Among the many private suppliants for her smiles rumor included both Caldwell and Forrest. Where the tinder of such rivalry is lying about, flashes of jealousy, easily provoked, may at any time elicit an explosion of wrath. So it happened here, and the two men had a sharp quarrel. The young actor challenged the calmer manager. He refused to accept it, saying their altercation was an inconsiderate effervescence which had better be forgotten by them both. But the temper of Forrest, aggravated by his hot associates and the local code, was not so cheaply to be assuaged. He had the following card printed and affixed in several conspicuous places: "Whereas James H. Caldwell has wronged and insulted me, and refused me the satisfaction of a gentleman, I hereby denounce him as a scoundrel and post him as a coward. Edwin Forrest."