“My dear Friend,—Where are you, and what are you doing? Are you ill or well? I have telegraphed to you twice, and one answer is that you are ill, another that you are much better. I called on Mr. Chickering during my recent visit to New York, and he assured me you could not be seriously ill, or he would have been advised of it; and so I calmed my fears. That you have greatly suffered in mind I have reason to know. The death of Colonel Wyman assured me of that. You must have felt it intensely. But he fell nobly, in the discharge of a most sacred duty which consecrates his name forever among the defenders of the Union of his country. I too have lost friends in the same glorious cause,—peace and renown to their ashes! Among them one, the noblest of God’s manly creatures, Colonel Samuel Black, of Pennsylvania. Enclosed you have a merited eulogy of him by our friend Forney, who knew him well. Let us prepare ourselves for more of the same sad bereavements. This unnatural war, which has already ‘widow’d and unchilded many a one,’ has not yet reached its fearfullest extent. The Union cemented by the blood of our fathers must and shall be preserved; this is the unalterable decree of the people of the Free States. Better that all the slaves should perish and the blood of all those who uphold the institution of slavery perish with them, than that this proud Temple, this glorious Union consecrated to human freedom, should tumble into ruins. Do you remember what Tom Paine, the great Apostle of Liberty, wrote to General Washington in 1796? ‘A thousand years hence,’ he writes, ‘perhaps much less, America may be what Britain now is. The innocence of her character, that won the hearts of all nations in her favor, may sound like a romance, and her inimitable virtue be as if it had never been. The ruins of that Liberty thousands bled to obtain may just furnish materials for a village tale. When we contemplate the fall of empires and the extinction of the nations of the Old World we see but little more to excite our regret than mouldering ruins, pompous palaces, magnificent monuments, lofty pyramids. But when the Empire of America shall fall the subject for contemplative sorrow will be infinitely greater than crumbling brass or marble can inspire. It will not then be said, here stood a temple of vast antiquity, a Babel of invisible height, or there a palace of sumptuous extravagance,—but here, oh painful thought! the noblest work of human wisdom, the greatest scene of human glory, the fair cause of Freedom rose and fell!’
“May God in his infinite wisdom avert from us such a moral desolation! Write to me soon, and tell me all about yourself. I have been ill of late and confined to my bed. I am now better.
“Edwin Forrest.
“James Oakes, Esq.”
The earnestness of the feeling of Forrest as an American exerted a profound influence in moulding his character and in coloring his theatrical representations. The satisfactions it yielded, the proud hopes it inspired, were a great comfort and inspiration to him. And he said that one of his greatest regrets in dying would be that he should not see the unparalleled growth, happiness, and glory of his country as they would be a hundred years hence.
Another source of unfailing consolation and pleasure to him was his love of nature. He took a real solid joy in the forms and processes of the material creation, the changing lights and shades of the world, the solemn and lovely phenomena of morning and evening and summer and winter, the gorgeous upholstery of the clouds, and the mysterious marshalling of the stars. His letters abound in expressions which only a sincere and fervent lover of nature could have used. Writing from Philadelphia in early October, when recovering from a severe illness, he says, “It is the true Indian summer. The sunbeams stream through the golden veil of autumn with a softened radiance. How gratefully I receive these benedictions from the Universal Cause!” And in a letter dated at Savannah, November, 1870, he writes to his biographer, “Ah, my friend, could the fine weather you boast of having in Boston make me feel fresh and happy, Heaven has sent enough of it here to fill a world with gladness. The skies are bright and roseate as in summer, the air is filled with fragrance drawn by the warm sun from the balsamic trees, while the autumnal wild-flowers waft their incense to the glorious day. All these things I have enjoyed, and, I trust, with a spirit grateful to the Giver of all good. Yet all these, though they may meliorate in a degree the sadness of one’s life, cannot bind up the broken heart, heal the wounded spirit, nor even, as Falstaff has it, ‘set a leg.’”
This taste for nature, with the inexhaustible enjoyment and the refining culture it yields, was his in a degree not common except with artists and poets. While acting in Cleveland once in mid-winter, he persuaded a friend to walk with him for a few miles early on a very cold morning. Striding off, exulting in his strength, after an hour and a half he paused on the edge of the lake, his blood glowing with the exercise, his eyes sparkling with delight, while his somewhat overfat companion was nearly frozen and panted with fatigue. Stretching his hand out towards the magnificent expanse of scenery spread before them, he exclaimed, “Bring your prating atheists out here, let them look on that, and then say there is no God—if they can!”
An eminent New York lawyer, an intimate friend of Forrest, who had spent his whole life in the city absorbed in the social struggle, was utterly indifferent to the beauties of nature. He had never felt even the loveliness of a sunset,—something which one would think must fill the commonest mind with glory. Walking with him in the environs of the city on a certain occasion when approaching twilight had caused the blue chamber of the west to blaze with such splendors of architectural clouds and crimsoned squadrons of war as no scenic art could ever begin to mock, Forrest called the attention of his comrade to the marvellous spectacle. “I have no doubt,” said the lawyer, “that I have seen a great many of these things; but I never cared anything about them.” The disciple of Shakspeare proceeded to discourse to the disciple of Coke upon Littleton on the charm of natural scenery, its soothing and delight-giving ministrations to a man of taste and sensibility, in a strain that left a permanent impression on his hearer, who from that time began to watch the phenomena of the outward world with a new interest.
But even more than in his professional triumphs, his increasing store of wealth, his animal health and strength, his patriotism, or his love for the works of God in nature, Forrest found during the last twenty years of his life a never-failing resource for his mind and heart in the treasures of literature. He gathered a library of between ten and fifteen thousand volumes, well selected, carefully arranged and catalogued, for the accommodation of which he set apart the finest apartment in his house, a lofty and spacious room running the whole length of the edifice. In this bright and cheerful room all the conveniences of use and comfort were collected. Beside his desk, where from his chair he could lay his hand on it, superbly bound in purple velvet, on a stand made expressly for it, rested his rare copy of the original folio edition of Shakspeare, valued at two thousand dollars. Around him, invitingly disposed, were the standard works of the historians, the biographers, the poets, and especially the dramatists and their commentators. Here he added to his shelved treasures many of the best new works as they appeared, keeping himself somewhat abreast with the fresh literature of the times in books like Motley’s Netherlands, Grimm’s Life of Michael Angelo, and Hawkins’s Life of Kean, which he read with a generous relish. Here, ensconced in an arm-chair by the window, or lolling on a lounge in the centre of the library, or seated at his study-table, he passed nearly all the leisure time of his lonely later years. Here he would occupy himself for many an hour of day and night,—hours that flew swiftly, laden with stingless enjoyment,—passing from volume to volume sipping the hived sweetnesses of the paradisal field of literature. Here, alone and quiet in the peopled solitude of books, he loved to read aloud by the hour together, listening to himself as if some one else were reading to him,—the perfection of his breathing and the ease of his articulation being such that the labor of utterance took nothing from the interest of the subject, while the rich music and accurate inflections of his voice added much. Here his not numerous intimates, with occasional callers from abroad,—Rees, Forney, and his particular favorite, Daniel Dougherty,—would often drop in, ever sure of an honest welcome and genial fellowship, and speed the time with wit and humor, reminiscence, anecdote, argument, joke, and repartee, vainly seeking to beguile him into that more general society which would have gladly welcomed what he could so richly give and take.
An extract from a letter of his written in June, 1870, is of interest in this connection: