"Look to your wife; observe her well with Cassio;
Wear your eye thus, not jealous,—nor secure."
All these words, except the last two, Forrest uttered in a frank and easy fashion; but suddenly, as if the intensity of his under-knowledge of evil had automatically broken through the good-natured part he was playing on the surface and betrayed his secret in spite of his will, he spoke the words nor secure in a husky tone, sliding down from a high pitch and ending in a whispered horror. The fearful suggestiveness of this produced from Kean a reaction so truly artistic and tremendous that the whole house was electrified. As they met in the dressing-room, Kean said, excitedly, "In the name of God, boy, where did you get that?" Forrest replied, "It is something of my own." "Well," said he, while his auditor trembled with pleasure, "everybody who speaks the part hereafter must do it just so."
There must, from all accounts, have been something supernaturally sweet and sorrowful, an unearthly intensity of plaintive and majestic pathos, in the manner in which Kean delivered the farewell of Othello. The critics, Hazlitt, Procter, Lamb, and the rest, all agree in this. They say, "the mournful melody of his voice came over the spirit like the desolate moaning of the blast that precedes the thunder-storm." It was like "the hollow and musical murmur of the midnight sea when the tempest has raved itself to rest." His "tones sunk into the soul like the sighing of the breeze among the strings of an æolian harp or through the branches of a cypress grove." His voice "struck on the heart like the swelling of some divine music laden with the sound of years of departed happiness." The retrospect of triumphant exultation, the lingering sense of delight, the big shocks of sudden agony, and the slow blank despair, breathed in a voice elastic and tremulous with vital passion and set off with a by-play of exquisitely artistic realism, made up a whole of melancholy beauty and overwhelming power perhaps never equalled. It was at once an anthem, a charge, and a dirge. Forrest was inexpressibly delighted and thrilled by it, and he did not fail to his dying day to speak of it with rapturous admiration.
Kean, both as a man and as an actor, made a fascinating impression on the imagination and heart as well as on the memory of his youthful supporter in the Albany theatre. What he had himself experienced under the influence of this marvellous player, in the profound stirring of his wonder and affection, remained to exalt his estimate of the rank of his professional art and to stimulate still further his personal ambition. This is the way the sensitive soul of genius grows, by assimilating something from every superior ideal exhibited to it. Kean himself, at a public dinner given him in Philadelphia on his return thither from Albany, generously said that he had met one actor in this country, a young man named Edwin Forrest, who gave proofs of a decided genius for his profession, and who would, as he believed, rise to great eminence. This kind act on the part of the veteran was reported to the novice, and sank gratefully into his heart. To be praised by one we admire is such a delight to the affections and such a spur to endeavor that it is a pity the successful are not more ready to give it to the aspiring. Ah, what a heaven this world would be if all the men and women in it were only what in our better hours we dream and wish!
One incident occurred during this season at Albany showing extraordinary character in so young a man. The fearful power of the passion for gaming has been well known in all ages. It has prevailed with equal violence and evil among the rudest savages and in the most luxurious phases of civilization. Every year, at the present time, in the capital centres of Christendom it explodes in forgeries, murder, and suicides. And we read in the Mahabharata, the great Sanscrit epic written we know not how many centuries before the Christian era, that king Yudishthira was so desperately addicted to gambling that on one occasion he staked his empire, and lost it; then his wife, and lost; finally, his own body, lost that, and became the slave of the winner. In New Orleans Forrest had felt something of the horrid fascination of this passion. He had not, however, indulged much in it, although his friend Gazonac, who stood at the head of the profession, had initiated him pretty thoroughly into the secret tricks of the art.
The company of actors and actresses used often to stay after the play was over and engage in games of chance. Forrest joined them several times. He then steadily refused to do so any more; for he felt that the gambling spirit was getting hold of him. But on a certain evening they urged him so strongly that he consented,—determined to give them a lesson. He said it was a base business, full of dishonest arts by which all but the sharpest adepts could be cheated. They maintained that there were among them neither decoys nor dupes, and they challenged fraud. They played all night, and Forrest at last had won every cent they had with them. He then rose to his feet, and denounced the habit of gaming for profit as utterly pernicious. He recited some examples of the horrors he had known to result from it. He said it demoralized the characters of those who practised it, and, producing nothing, was a robbery, stealing the time, thought, and feeling which might so much better be devoted to something useful. With these words he swept the implements of play into the fire, strewed the money he had won on the floor, left the room, and went home in the gray light of the morning,—and never gambled again from that hour unto the day of his death.
May 16th, 1826, Forrest made his first re-appearance on the stage of his native city. It was on the occasion of a benefit given to his old friend Charles S. Porter, manager of the theatre, it will be remembered, in which he made his début as Rosalia de Borgia. He took the part of Jaffier in Venice Preserved. His success was flattering and complete. The leading journal of the city said, "He left us a boy, and has returned a man. The talents he then exhibited, improved by attention and study, now display themselves in the excellence of his delineation. He is by no means what he was when he left us. His delivery, attitudes, and gesture are similar to those of Conway; and he could not have chosen a better model. Just in his conception of his part, clear and correct in his utterance, graceful in his action, he never offends us by unmeaning rant. When one so young relies more on his own judgment than on the flattery of partial friends, we cannot expect too much from him. We doubt if any aspirant at the same age has ever equalled him. No performer, perhaps, ever was received and continued to play with so much applause. On the dropping of the curtain at the end of the fourth act, he was rewarded with nine rounds of cheers."
His unmistakable triumph was crowned by such loud and general calls for an engagement that the manager came forward and announced that he had secured the services of Mr. Forrest for two nights, and that he would appear, on the evening after the next, in the character of Rolla. This, on the whole, was the most signal and important victory he had ever achieved. It consoled him and it spurred him. He slept sweetly that night under his mother's roof, and in his dreams saw himself decked with wreath and crown, time after time, through a long vista of brightening successes.
The Bowery Theatre, in New York, now nearly finished, was to be opened in the autumn, and its proprietors were on the watch to secure the best talent for the company. They had heard favorable reports of the acting of Forrest in Albany. Prosper M. Wetmore and another of the directors of the new theatre made a journey to that city on purpose to see a specimen of his performance and decide whether or not it would be expedient to engage him. They were so much pleased with his playing that they earnestly urged Gilfert, who was already engaged as manager, to close with him at once. He did so, bargaining with him to play leading parts for the first season at a salary of twenty-eight dollars a week. Wetmore, who was a cultivated gentleman of literary habits, afterwards Navy Agent at New York, became a fast friend of Forrest for life, and half a century later was fond of recalling the incidents of this journey, so interesting in the adventure and so pleasant in the results.