A shower of bravos broke out, bouquets were thrown upon the stage, and the actor slowly withdrew, crowned with the applauses of the people like a victorious Roman in the Capitol.
As the years passed on, Forrest came to take an ever keener interest in accumulating wealth. A good deal of his time and thought was devoted to the nursing of his earnings. He showed great shrewdness in his investments, which, with scarcely a single exception, turned out profitably. He was prudent and thrifty in his ways, but not parsimonious or mean. He lived in a handsome, generous style, without ostentation or extravagance, keeping plenty of servants, horses, and carriages, and a table generous in wholesome fare but sparing of luxuries. This love of money, and pleasure in amassing it, though it became a passion, as, with his bitter early experience of poverty and constant lessons of the evils of improvidence, it was natural that it should, did not become a vice or a disease; for it never prevented his full and ready response to every claim on his conscience or on his sympathy. And within this limit the love of accumulation is more to be praised than blamed. In final refutation of the gross injustice which so often during his life charged upon him the vice of a grasping penuriousness, a few specimens of his deeds of public spirit and benevolence—not a list, but a few specimens—may fitly be recorded here. To the fund in aid of the Democratic campaign which resulted in the election of Buchanan as President he sent his check for one thousand dollars. He gave the like sum to the first great meeting in Philadelphia at the outbreak of the war for the defence of the Union. In 1867, when the South was in such distress from the effects of the war, he gave five hundred dollars to the treasurer of a fund in their behalf, saying, “God only knows the whole suffering of our Southern brethren. Let us do all we can to relieve them, not stopping to question what is constitutional; for charity itself fulfils the law.” He subscribed five hundred dollars towards the relief of the sufferers by the great Chicago fire in 1871. The ship “Edwin Forrest” being in distress on the coast, the towboat “Ajax,” from New York, went to her assistance, having on board three pilots. The “Ajax” was never heard of afterwards. To the widows of the three lost pilots Forrest, unsolicited, sent one thousand dollars each. On two separate occasions he is known to have sent contributions of five hundred dollars to the Masonic Charity Fund of the New York Grand Lodge. These acts, which were not exceptional, but in keeping with his nature and habit, are not the acts of an unclean slave of avarice. The jealousy too often felt towards the rich too often incites groundless fault-finding.
It is true that an absorbing passion for truth, for beauty, for humanity, for perfection, is more glorious and commanding than even the most honorable chase of riches. But it is likewise true that reckless idlers and spendthrifts are a greater curse to society, breed worse evils, than can be attributed to misers. Self-indulgence, dependence, distress, contempt, the worst temptations, and untimely death, follow the steps of thriftlessness. Self-denial, foresight, industry, manifold power of usefulness, wait on a well-regulated purpose to secure pecuniary independence. Money represents the means of life,—the command of the best outer conditions of life,—food, shelter, education, culture in every direction. In itself it is a good, and the fostering of the virtues adapted to win it is beneficial alike to the individual and the community, despite the enormous evils associated with the excessive or unprincipled pursuit of it. Sharp and exacting as he was, the absolute honesty and honor of Forrest in all pecuniary dealings were so high above suspicion that they were never questioned. Although often wrongfully accused of a miserly and sordid temper, he never was accused of falsehood or trickery. The large fortune he obtained was honorably earned, liberally used, and at last nobly bestowed. He had a good right to the deep, vivid satisfaction and sense of power which it yielded him. His fortune was to him a huge supplementary background of support, a wide border of the means of life surrounding and sustaining his immediate life.
An extract from a letter written by him to his biographer may fitly be cited to complete what has been said above. Under date of August 28th, 1870, he wrote. “The desire I had for wealth was first fostered only that I might be abler to contribute to the comforts of those whose veins bore blood like mine, and to smooth the pathway to the grave of the gentlest, the truest, the most unselfish friend I ever knew—my mother!—and so, from this holy source, to widen the boundaries of all good and charitable deeds,—to relieve the wants of friends less fortunate than myself, and to succor the distressed wherever found. In early life, from necessity, I learned to depend solely upon myself for my own sustenance. This self-reliance soon gave me power in a small way to relieve the wants of others, and this I never failed to do even to the extent of my ability. So far did I carry this feeling for the distress of others that I have frequently been forced to ask an advance of salary from the theatre to pay the current expenses of my own frugal living. And this I have done when in the receipt of eight thousand dollars a year. I have been very, very poor; but in my whole life I have never from need borrowed more than two hundred dollars in all. I have lent two thousand times that sum, only an infinitesimal part of which was ever returned.”
In 1851 Forrest moved from New York to Philadelphia, and took his three sisters to live with him. But he paid frequent visits to his romantic castle on the Hudson. During one of these visits an incident occurred which presents him to the imagination in real life in a light as picturesque and sensational as many of those scenes of fiction on the stage in which he had so often thrilled the multitude who beheld him. The steamboat “Henry Clay,” plying on the Hudson between New York and Albany, when opposite Fonthill was suddenly wrapt in flames by an explosion of its boiler, and sunk with a crowd of shrieking passengers. The New York “Mirror” of the next day said, “We are informed that while the unfortunate wretches were struggling, Edwin Forrest, who was then at his castle, seeing their condition, rushed down to the river, jumped in, and succeeded in rescuing many from a watery grave, as well as in recovering the bodies of several who were drowned.”
In 1856 Forrest sold Fonthill to the Catholic Sisterhood of Mount Saint Vincent, for one hundred thousand dollars. For the devout and beneficent lives of the members of this order he had a profound reverence; and immediately on completing the sale he made to the Mother Superior a present of the sum of five thousand dollars. And so ended all the dreams of domestic peace and bliss his fancy had woven on that enchanted spot, still to be associated with memories of his career and echoes of his name as long as its gray towers shall peer above the trees and be descried from afar by the sailers on the lordly river below.
In 1857 Forrest received an unparalleled compliment from the State of California. The Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, Secretary, Treasurer, and Comptroller of the State, twenty-seven members of the Senate, with the Secretary and Sergeant-at-Arms, the Speaker and forty-eight members of the House of Representatives, sent him a letter of invitation to make a professional visit to the Golden Coast. It read as follows:
“State Capitol, Sacramento, April 20th, 1857.
“Respected Sir,—The undersigned, State officers and members of the Senate and Assembly, a small portion of your many admirers on the coast of the Pacific, avail themselves of this, the only mode under their control, of signifying to you the very high estimation, as a gentleman and an actor, in which you are generally and universally held by all who have a taste for the legitimate drama. Genuine taste and rigid criticism have united with the verdict of impartial history to pronounce you the head and leader of the noble profession to which you have consecrated abilities that would in any sphere of life render you eminent. We believe that so long as Shakspeare is remembered, and his words revered, your name, too, will be remembered with pride by all who glory in the triumphs of our Saxon literature.
“In conclusion, permit us to express the hope that your existing engagements will so far coincide with our wishes as to permit us, at an early day, to welcome you to the shores of the Pacific, assuring you of a warm and sincere reception, so far as our efforts can accomplish the same, and we feel that we but express the feelings of every good citizen of the State.”