While these impulsive phrases reveal his intense and unstable sensibility, they must be taken with great allowance, or they will do injustice to his better nature. They are transitory phases of experience betraying his weakness. In his deeper and clearer moods he felt a strange and profound presentiment of immortality, and surmised that this life was neither the first nor the last of us. But living as he did mostly for this material world and its prizes, he could not hold his mind steadily to the sublime height of belief in the eternal life of the soul. And so all sorts of doubts came in and were recklessly entertained. Had his spirituality equalled his sensibility and intelligence, and had he aimed at personal perfection as zealously as he aimed at professional excellence, his faith in immortality would have been as unshakable as was his faith in God. Also could he have filled his soul with the spirit of forgiveness and charity instead of harboring tenacious instincts of hate and disgust, he would have been a serene and benignant man. His complaining irritability would have vanished in a devout contentment; for he would have seen a plan of exact compensations everywhere threading the maze of human life.
But then he would not have been Edwin Forrest. Inconsistent extremes, unregulated impulsiveness, unsubdued passion, some moral incongruity of character and conduct, of intuition and thought, belonged to his type of being. It is only required that those who assume to judge him shall be just, and not be misled by any superficial or partial appearance of good or evil to give an unfair verdict. His defects were twofold, and he had to pay the full penalty for them. First, no man can lead a really happy and noble life, in the high and true sense of the words, who is infested with feelings of hate and loathing towards persons who have injured him or shown themselves detestable. He must refuse to entertain such emotions, and with a magnanimous and loving heart contemplate the fairer side of society. For almost all our experience, whether we know it or not, is strained through and tested and measured by our emotional estimates of our fellow-men. It is chiefly in them, or in ourselves as affected by our thoughts of them, that God reveals himself to us or hides himself from us. Second, Forrest not only dwelt too much on mean or hostile persons and on real or fancied wrongs, but he did not live chiefly for the only ends which are worthy to be the supreme aim of man. The genuine ends of a man in this world are to glorify God, to serve humanity, and to perfect himself. And these three are inseparably conjoined, a triune unity. The man who faithfully lives for these religious ends will surely attain peace of mind and unwavering faith in a Providence which orders everything and cannot err. The highest conscious ends of Forrest were not religious, but were to glorify his art, to perfect his strength and skill, and to win the ordinary prizes of society,—wealth, fame, and pleasure. Elements of the superior aims indeed entered largely into his spirit and conduct, but were not his proposed and consecrating aim. This, as now frankly set forth, was his failure, and the lesson it has for other men.
But, on the other hand, he had his praiseworthy success. If he was inferior to the best men, he was greatly superior to most men. For he was no hypocrite, parasite, profligate, squanderer of his own resources, or usurper of the rights of others. After every abatement it will be said of him, by all who knew the man through and through, that he was great and original in personality, honest in every fibre, truthful and upright according to the standard of his own conscience, tender and sweet and generous in the inmost impulses of his soul. On the other hand, it must be admitted that he was often the obstinate victim of injurious and unworthy prejudices, and abundantly capable of a profanity that was vulgar and of animosities that were ferocious. This is written in the very spirit which he himself inculcated on his biographer, to whom he addressed these words with his own hand in 1870: “Having revealed myself and my history to you without disguise or affectation, I say, Tell the blunt truth in every particular you touch, no matter where it hits or what effect it may have. To make it easier for you, I could well wish that my whole life, moral and mental, professional and social, could have been photographed for your use in this biographical undertaking. And then, ‘though all occasions should inform against me,’ though I might have too much cause to sigh over my many weaknesses and follies, no single act of mine, I am sure, should ever make me blush with shame. I always admired the spirit of Cromwell, who said sternly, when an artist in taking his portrait would have omitted the disfiguring wart on his face, ‘Paint me as I am!’”
Forrest was one of those elemental men who want always to live in direct contact with great realities, and cannot endure to accept petty substitutes for them, or pale phantoms of them at several removes. He craved to taste the substantial goods of the earth in their own freshness, and refused to be put off with mere social symbols of them. He loved the grass, the wind, the sun, the rain, the sky, the mountains, the thunder, the democracy. He loved his country earnestly, truth sincerely, his art profoundly, men and women passionately and made them love him passionately,—the last too often and too much. For these reasons he is an interesting and contagious character, and, as his figure is destined to loom in history, it is important that his best traits be appreciated at their full worth.
It is but justice, as an offset to his occasional fits of the blues and to the lugubrious sentiments he then expressed, some of which were quoted a page or two back, to affirm the truth that if he suffered more than most people he likewise enjoyed much more. Prevailingly he loved the world, and set a high value on life and took uncommon pains to secure longevity. As a general thing his spirit of enjoyment was sharp and strong. One illustration of this was the pronounced activity of the element of humor in him. This humor was sometimes grim, almost sardonic, and bordering on irony and satire, but often breathed itself out in a sunny playfulness. This lubricated the joints and sockets of the soul, so to speak, and made the mechanism of experience move smoothly when otherwise it would have gritted harshly with great frictional waste in unhappy resistances. It is difficult to give in words due illustration of this quality, of its genial manifestations in his manner, and of its happy influence on his inner life. But all his intimate friends know that the trait was prominent in him and of great importance. When on board the steamer bound for California, sick and wretched, he sent for the captain, and with great earnestness demanded, “For how much will you sell this ship and cargo?” After giving a rough estimate of the value, the captain asked, “But why do you wish to know this?” Forrest answered, “I want to scuttle her and end this detestable business by sinking the whole concern to the bottom of the sea!” A soft-spoken clergyman, who occupied the next state-room, overheard him giving energetic expression to his discontent, and called on him to expostulate on the duty of forbearance and patience, saying, “Our Saviour, you know, was always patient.” “Yes,” retorted the actor, grimly, “but our Saviour went to sea only once, and then he disliked it so much that he got out and walked. Unfortunately, we cannot do that.”
At another time a Calvinistic divine had been trying to convince him of the punitive character of death, arguing that death was not the original destiny of man, but a penalty imposed for sin. “What,” said Forrest, “do you mean to say that if it had not been for that unlucky apple we should have seen old Adam hobbling around here still?”
Even to the end of his life he had the heart of a boy, and when with trusted friends it was ever and anon breaking forth in a playfulness and a jocosity which would have astonished those who deemed him so stern and lugubrious a recluse. One day he went into a druggist’s shop where he was familiar, for some little article. The druggist chanced to be alone and stooping very low behind his counter pouring something from a jug. Forrest slipped up and leaning over him thundered in his ear with full pomp of declamation, “An ounce of civet, good apothecary!” The poor trader revealed his comic fright by a bound from the floor which would not have disgraced a gymnast.
On arriving at the places where he was to act he was often annoyed by strangers who pressed about him with pestering importunity merely from a vulgar curiosity. On these occasions he would sometimes, as he reached the hotel and saw the crowd, leap out of the carriage, say with a low bow to his agent, “Please keep your seat, Mr. Forrest, and I will inquire about a room,” and then vanish, laughing in his sleeve, and leaving the embarrassed McArdle to sustain the situation as best he might.
His just and complacent pride in his work, too, kept him from being chronically any such disappointed and grouty complainer as he might sometimes appear. It is a sublime joy for a man of genius, a great artist, to feel, as the reward of heroic labor engrafted on great endowment, that his rank is at the top of the world; that in some particulars he is superior to all the twelve hundred millions of men that are alive. There were passages in the acting of Forrest, besides the terrific burst of passion in the curse of Lear, which he might well believe no other man on earth could equal.
The knowledge and culture of Forrest were in no sense limited to the range of his profession. He was uncommonly well educated, not only by a wide acquaintance with books, but also by a remarkably varied observation and experience of the world. Whenever he spoke or wrote, some proof appeared of his reading and reflection. Speaking of Humboldt, he said, “Humboldt was a man open to truth without a prejudice. He was to the tangible and physical world what Shakspeare was to the mind and heart of man.” Characterizing a religious discourse which much pleased him, he said, “Its logic is incontrovertible, its philosophy unexceptionable, and its humanity most admirable,—quite different from those homilies which people earth with demons, heaven with slaves, and hell with men.” On one occasion, alluding to the facts that Shakspeare when over forty attended the funeral of his mother, and that his boy Hamnet died at the age of twelve, he regretted that the peerless poet had not written out what he must then have felt, and given it to the world. His genius under such an inspiration might have produced something which would have made thenceforth to the end of time all parents who read it treat their children more tenderly, all children love and honor their parents more religiously. But, he added, it seemed contrary to the genius of Shakspeare to utilize his own experience for any didactic purpose. At another time he said, “Shakspeare is the most eloquent preacher that ever taught humanity to man. The sermons he uttered will be repeated again and again with renewed and unceasing interest not only in his own immortal pages, but from the inspired lips of great tragedians through all the coming ages of the world.”