“Yours now and ever,
“Catharine N. Forrest.”
The above letter was succeeded five days later by another:
“In replying to the letter I received from you on Monday last, I confined myself to an answer to the questions you therein ask me; for inasmuch as you said you were content that the past should remain in silence, and as I was myself unwilling to revive any subject of dispute between us, I passed over the harsh and new accusations contained in your letter; but on reading and weighing it carefully, as I have done since, I fear that my silence would be construed into an implied assent to those accusations. After your repeated assurances to me prior to our separation, and to others since then, of your conviction that there had been nothing criminal on my part, I am pained that you should have been persuaded to use such language to me. You know as well as I do that there has been nothing in my conduct to justify those gross and unexpected charges, and I cannot think why you should now seem to consider a foolish and anonymous letter as an evidence of guilt, never before having thought so, unless you have ulterior views, and seek to found some grounds on this for divorce. If this be your object, it could be more easily, not to say more generously, obtained. I repeatedly told you that if a divorce would make you happy, I was willing to go out of this State with you to obtain it, and that at any future time my promise to this effect would hold good. You said such was not your wish, and that we needed no court of law to decide our future position for us. From the time you proposed our separation, I used no remonstrance, save to implore you to weigh the matter seriously, and be sure, before you decided, that such a step would make you happy; you said it would, and to conduce as much as lay in my power to that happiness, was my only aim and employment until the day you took me from my home. Of my own desolate and prospectless future I scarcely dared to think or speak to you, but once you said that if any one dared to cast an imputation on me, not consistent with honor, I should call on you to defend me. That you should, therefore, now write and speak as you do, I can only impute to your yielding to the suggestions of those who, under the garb of friendship, are daring to interfere between us; but it is not in their power to know whether your happiness will be insured by endeavoring to work my utter ruin. I cannot believe it, and implore you, Edwin, for God’s sake, to trust to your own better judgment; and, as I am certain that your heart will tell you I could not seek to injure you, so likewise I am sure your future will not be brighter if you succeed in crushing me more completely, in casting disgrace upon one who has known no higher pride than the right of calling herself your wife.
“Catharine N. Forrest.”
To this Forrest replied thus:
“I answer your letter dated the 29th and received by me on the 31st ult., solely to prevent my silence being misunderstood. Mr. Godwin has told me that the tardy reply to the most material part of mine of the 24th was sent by his advice. I should indeed think from its whole tone and character that it was written under instructions. I do not desire to use harsh epithets or severe language to you; it can do no good. But you compel me to say that all the important parts of yours are utterly untrue. It is utterly untrue that the accusations I now bring against you are ‘new.’ It is utterly untrue that since the discovery of that infamous letter, which you callously call ‘foolish,’ I have ever, in any way, expressed my belief of your freedom from guilt. I could not have done so, and you know that I have not done it. But I cannot carry on a correspondence of this kind; I have no desire to injure or to crush you; the fatal wrong has been done to me, and I only wish to put a final termination to a state of things which has destroyed my peace of mind, and which is wearing out my life.
“Edwin Forrest.”
The next step in the tragedy was the filing of an application for divorce by Forrest in Philadelphia, instantly counterchecked by a similar application on the part of Mrs. Forrest in New York. He was led to his suit because, in his own words, “unwilling to submit to calumnies industriously circulated by my enemies that I had unmanfully wronged an innocent woman, the only choice open to me was either to assert my rectitude before the tribunals of my country or endure throughout life a weight of reproach which I trust my entire life proves undeserved.” Her obvious motive in the counter-suit was the instinctive impulse and the deliberate determination to protect herself from remediless disgrace and utter social ostracism. No woman with her spirit, and with the host of friends which she had in the most honored walk of the community, could willingly accept the fearful penalty of letting such a case go by default, whether she were innocent or guilty. To those who held her innocent, as the best people did, her attitude appealed to every chivalrous sentiment of admiration and sympathy; but to him who believed her guilty, as her husband did, it presented every motive to aggravate anger and resentment. The inevitable consequences resulted, and a prolonged struggle ensued, which was a desperate fight for moral existence. The miserable details need not be specified. As the combat thickened, the deeper grew the passions on each side, and the more damaging the charges and alleged disclosures. The hostile championship likewise became intenser and wider. The trial, with the incrimination of adultery and the recrimination of the same offence, began in December, 1851, and reached through six weeks. No trial of the kind in this country had ever awakened so eager and extended an interest. The evidence and arguments were minutely reproduced in the press, sold by wholesale in every corner of the land, and devoured by unnumbered thousands with every sort of scandalous gossip and comment. The completed report of the trial fills two enormous volumes of more than twelve hundred pages each. The lady gained much for her cause by her strict propriety of language, her elegant deportment, the unequalled ability and passionate zeal of her counsel, and the exalted character of her large circle of influential and unfaltering friends. The man lost as much for his cause by the partisan prejudices against him, by the imprudences of his more reckless friends, and especially by the repelling violence and coarseness of expression and demeanor to which in his exasperated state he was too often tempted. Abundant examples have already been furnished in these pages of his scholarly taste, intellectual dignity, moral refinement and strength. Justice to the truth requires the frank admission that there was also in him a rude and harsh element, a streak of uncivilized bluntness or barbaric honesty of impulse, shocking to people of conventional politeness. These people did him injustice by chiefly seeing this cruder feature in his character, for it was quite a subordinate part of his genuine nature. But it is only fair to give specimens of the level to which it not unfrequently sank him in social appearance. In his eyes observance of external seemings was nothing in comparison with sincerity to internal realities. After his separation, but before his divorce, meeting his wife in the street, she said he kept her there walking up and down for over two hours in a pouring rain, hearing and replying to him, neither of them having an umbrella. At this same period watching one night to see who entered or left his house, in which his wife was still residing, though alone, a man named Raymond came out. The following intelligible dialogue immediately took place, as sworn to in court by Raymond himself. “Why are you sneaking away like a guilty man?” “Edwin Forrest, you have waylaid me by night with a bludgeon. You want a pretence for attacking me, and I shall not give it you.” “Bludgeon! I don’t want a bludgeon to kill you. Damn you, I can choke you to death with my hands. But you are not the man I am after now. If I catch that damned villain I’ll rip his liver out. I’ll cut his damned throat at the door. You may go this time, damn you. But I have marked you, all of you, and I’ll have vengeance.” This style of speech, as laughable as it is repulsive, and which really marked not at all the extent but merely the limitation of his culture, greatly injured him, alloying alike his worth, his peace, and his success. In one instance alone, however, did his violence of temper carry him beyond discourteous and furious speech to illegal action. Meeting in Central Park Mr. N. P. Willis, whom he regarded as one of the chief fomenters of his domestic trouble, he inflicted severe personal chastisement on him. The sufferer prosecuted his assailant, and secured a verdict with damages of one dollar. Forrest brought a suit against Willis for libel, and gained a verdict with five hundred dollars damages.
In the divorce case a somewhat unexpected judgment was decreed against Forrest, acquitting his wife and condemning him to pay costs and three thousand dollars a year for alimony. He appealed, and was defeated, with an added thousand dollars a year alimony. Five times he appealed, carrying his case from court to court, and every time was baffled and thrown. And it actually was not until 1868, after eighteen years of unrelenting litigation,—years filled with irritation, acrimony, and every species of annoyance, settling in many instances into a lodged hatred,—that he finally abandoned further resistance and paid over the full award. Sixty-four thousand dollars came to Mrs. Forrest, of which sum the various expenses swallowed fifty-nine thousand, leaving the pittance of five thousand,—an edifying example of the beauty of legal controversies.