Of the appreciation Forrest had of the genius of the great comedian William E. Burton, he gave a striking expression in the last year of his life. He had been confined to his bed for several weeks in great agony. Oakes was sitting by him. Their talk turned upon the unrivalled gifts and charm of old Joseph Jefferson. Forrest poured out his heart warmly, as he always did, on this favorite theme. He then spoke of the wonderful pathos and instructiveness which might be thrown into the humblest comic characters, and added in close, “I would give twenty thousand dollars to have Burton alive again for ten years to go over the country and play the fools of Shakspeare!”
All who knew Forrest with any intimacy were well aware of his enthusiastic appreciation of the genius and affection for the memory of Kean. He never tired of expatiating on this subject. And he always felt a sharp pleasure in the recollection that when his friend Hackett, the incomparable American Falstaff, called on Kean in London, only a few days before his death, the first words of the dying tragedian were a kind inquiry after the welfare of Edwin Forrest. In his library one day, showing a friend a superb steel engraving of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portrait of John Philip Kemble, he said earnestly and with a regretful tone, “I would give a thousand dollars in gold for a likeness of Kean as good as this is of Kemble.” He was familiar with the principal histories of the stage and biographies of players, and felt the keenest interest in their characters, their styles of acting, their personal fortunes. He also felt a pride in the fame and triumphs of his best contemporaries. He was always on kind terms with the elder Booth, to whom he assigned dramatic powers of a very extraordinary degree, although he believed that considerable of their effectiveness was caught from the contagious and electrifying example of Edmund Kean. In the last year of his life, when he was badly broken down in health and fortune, Booth said to Forrest one day, “I want to play the Devil.” “It seems to me,” said Forrest, “that you have done that pretty well all your life.” “Oh, I don’t mean that,” replied Booth; “I am referring to the drama of Lord Byron. I want to play Lucifer to your Cain. Would not that draw,—you cast in the character of Cain, I in that of Lucifer?” “I think it would,” remarked Forrest. “We must do it before we die,” replied Booth,—and went away, soon to pass into the impenetrable shadow, leaving this too with many another broken and unfulfilled dream.
Forrest assigned an exalted artistic rank to the very varied dramatic impersonations of Mr. E. L. Davenport, every one of whose rôles is marked by firm drawing, distinct light and shade, fine consistency and finish. His Sir Giles Overreach was hardly surpassed by Kean or Booth, and has not been approached by anybody else. His quick, alert, springy tread full of fire and rapidity, the whole man in every step, fixed the attention and made every one feel that there was a terrific concentration of energy, an insane possession of the nerve-centres, portending something frightful soon to come. An old play-goer on witnessing this impersonation wrote the following impromptu:
“While viewing each remembered scene, before my gaze appears
Each famed depictor of Sir Giles for almost fifty years;
The elder Kean and mighty Booth have held all hearts in thrall,
But, without overreaching truth, you overreach them all!”
It is a satisfaction to put on record this judgment of one artist concerning another whose merit transcends even his high reputation,—especially as a coolness separated the two men, Mr. Davenport having through a misapprehension of the fact of the publication of Jack Cade by Judge Conrad inferred that it had thus in some sense become the property of the public, and produced the play on the stage, while Forrest held it to be his own private property. He had been so annoyed by such proceedings on the part of other actors before, provoking him into angry suits at law, that his temper was sore. He wrote sharply to Mr. Davenport, who, even if he had made a mistake, had done no conscious wrong and meant no offence, and who replied in a calmer tone and with better taste. Here the matter closed, but left an alienation,—for Forrest when irritated was relentlessly tenacious of his point. Mr. Davenport is a man of gentle and generous character, respected and beloved by all his companions. He is also in all parts of his profession a highly accomplished artist and critic. Accordingly, when he expresses the conviction, as he repeatedly has both before and since the decease of his former friend and great compeer, that Forrest was beyond comparison the most original and the greatest actor America has produced, his words are weighty, and their spirit honors the speaker as much as it does the subject.
In a letter written to Forrest twenty-five years earlier, under date of October 10th, 1847, Mr. Davenport had said, “I have not words to express the gratification and pleasure I felt in witnessing your masterly performance. It was probably the last time I shall have an opportunity to see you for years; but I assure you, however long it may be, the remembrance will always live in my mind as vividly as now.”
The treatment also which Mr. John McCullough received from Forrest during his five years of constant service under him, the impression he made on his young coadjutor, and the permanent esteem and gratitude he secured from him, are all pleasant to contemplate. At the close of their business arrangement, Forrest said to McCullough, “I believe I have kept my agreement with you to the letter; but before we part I want to thank you for your strict fidelity to your professional duties at all times. And allow me to say that I have been most of all pleased to see you uniformly so studious and zealous in your efforts to improve. Continue in this course, firm against every temptation, and you will command a proud and happy future. Now, as a token of my esteem, I put in your hands the sum of five hundred dollars, which I want you to invest for your little boy, to accumulate until he is twenty-one years old, and then to be given to him.” McCullough says that with the exception of two or three unreasonable outbreaks, which he immediately forgave and forgot, Forrest was extremely kind and good to him, sparing no pains to encourage and further him. And in return the young man would at any time have gladly given his heart’s blood for his dear old imperious master, whom, in his enthusiasm, he held to be the most truthful and powerful actor that ever lived. Such an estimate by one of his talent and rank, making every allowance for the personal equation, is an abundant offset for the squeamish purists who have stigmatized Forrest as “a coarse ranter,” and the prejudiced critic who called him “a vast animal bewildered with a grain of genius.” It may well be believed that in the history of his country’s drama he will be seen by distant ages towering in statuesque originality above the pigmy herd of his imitators and detractors.