“I will read Forster’s Life of Walter Savage Landor, of which you speak, at my first leisure; though I consider Forster personally to be a snob. You will find among my papers in your possession exactly what I think of him. For Landor, even as a boy, I had a great admiration. I sate with wonder while I quaffed instruction at the shrine of his genius. There is a book just published in England which I shall devour with an insatiable mental appetite. It is called ‘Benedict Spinoza, his Life, Correspondence, and Ethics.’ It is the first time that his works have been collected and published in English. So that I shall have a rare treat. His Ethics I have read in a French translation which I found in Paris years ago; and its perusal divided my time between the pleasures of the town and the intellectual culture which the study of his sublime philosophy gave me. It was called ‘Spinoza’s Ethics; or, Man’s Revelation to Man of the Dealings of God with the World.’”
Yes, his library was indeed his sure refuge from care and sorrow, a sweet solace for disappointment and vacancy and heartache. Here, in the glorious fellowship of the genius and worth of all ages, he fully gratified that love of reading without whose employment he would hardly have known how to bear some of the years of his checkered life. An anecdote will illustrate the strength of this habit in him and afford an interesting glimpse of the interior of the man. In his library one summer afternoon, the notes of birds in the trees and the hum of bees in his garden languidly stealing in at the open window, he sat, with the precious Shakspeare folio in his lap, conversing with his biographer. He said, “If I could describe how large a space Shakspeare has filled of my inward life, and how intense an interest I feel in his personality, no one would believe me. I would this moment give one hundred thousand dollars simply to read—even if the instant I had finished its perusal the manuscript were to be destroyed forever—a full account of the first eighteen years of the life of Shakspeare,—such an account as he could himself have written at forty had he been so minded, of his joys and sorrows, hopes and fears, his aspirations, his disappointments, his friendships, his enmities, his quarrels, his fights, his day-dreams, his loves; in short, the whole inward and outward drama of his boyhood.” It was certainly one of the most striking tributes ever paid to the genius of the immortal dramatist. A thorough familiarity with the works of Shakspeare is of itself an education and a fortune for the inner man. There all the known grades of experience, all the kinds of characters and styles of life seen in the world, are shown in their most vivid expressions. There all the varieties of thought and sentiment are gathered in their most choice and energetic forms of utterance. There are stimulus and employment for every faculty. There is incitement for all ambition, solace for all sorrow, beguilement for all care, provocation and means for every sort and degree of self-culture. Shakspeare is one of the greatest teachers that ever lived, and those players who have character, docility, and aspiration are his favorite pupils. Betterton, who was born in 1635, only twelve years after the death of Shakspeare, made a journey from London to Warwickshire on purpose to gather up what traditions and anecdotes remained of him. Garrick was the author of the remarkable centennial celebration of his memory. And the voice of Kemble faltered and his tears were visible as in his farewell speech on the stage he alluded to the divine Shakspeare.
Anecdotes of the conduct and expressions of a man when he is off his guard and unstudiedly natural give a truer picture of his character than elaborate general statements. And three or four brief ones may be given to close this chapter with an impartial view of the inner life of Forrest in its contrasted aspects of refinement and even sublimity at one time, and of rude severity and coarseness at another.
One summer evening, when he was paying a visit to his friend Oakes, they were at Cohasset, sitting on a piazza overhanging the sea. Mr. John F. Mills, one of the best men that ever lived, whose beautiful spirit gave pain to his host of friends for the first time only when he died, was with them. There had been a long storm, and now that it had subsided the moaning roar of the sea was loud and dismal. Forrest addressed it with this extemporaneous apostrophe, as reported by Mr. Mills: “Howl on, cursed old ocean, howl in remorse for the crimes you have committed. Millions of skeletons lie bleaching on your bed; and if all our race were swallowed there to-night you would not care any more for them than for the bursting of a bubble on your breast. There is something dreadful in this inhumanity of nature. Therefore I love to hear you groan, you heartless monster! It makes you seem as unhappy as you make your victims when they empty their stomachs into you or are themselves engulfed. Gnash your rocky teeth and churn your rage white. Thank God, your cruel reign will one day end, and there will be no more sea.”
The next evening they sat in the same place, but the moon was up, and his mood was different, more placid and pensive than before. The swell and plunge of the billows on the beach made solemn accompaniment to the guttural music of his voice. There was a mournfulness in the murmur of his tones as elemental and sad as the tremendous sighing of the sea itself. “This world,” he said, “seems to me a penal abode. We have all lived elsewhere and gone astray, and now we expiate our bygone offences. There is no other explanation that I can think of for the tangled snarl of human fates. True, since we are ignorant of these sins, our punishment seems not just. But then we may some time recover memory of all and so understand everything clearly. It is all mystery now, but if there is any explanation I am convinced we are convicts working out our penances, and hell is not hereafter but here. Just hear those breakers boom, boom, boom. Do they not seem to you to be drumming the funereal Rogue’s March for this Botany Bay of a world?”
A stranger to Forrest, merely to gratify his vanity by drawing the attention of a company to his speech, said he had seen the celebrated actor drunk in the gutter. The friend who reported this to Forrest would not reveal who the man was. But one day he pointed him out on the opposite sidewalk. The outraged and angry tragedian went quietly over and accosted the slanderer; “Do you know Edwin Forrest, and do you say you once saw him drunk in the gutter?” On receiving an affirmative reply he broke out in the strong vernacular of which he was a master, “Now, you sneaking scoundrel and lying calumniator, I am Edwin Forrest. I ache all over to give you the damnedest thrashing you ever tasted. But it is against my principles. I should be ashamed of myself if I stooped to take such advantage of your cowardly weakness. But, while I will not do it with my body, in my mind I kick and spit on you. Now pass on, and relish yourself, and be damned, you human skunk.”
Although Forrest used much profane language, his real spirit was not an irreverential one. His profanity was but an expletive habit, a safety-valve for wrath. When expostulated with on the custom, he said, “I never knowingly swear before ladies or clergymen, lest it should shock or grieve them. But at other times, when it is necessary either for proper emphasis or as a vent for passion too hot and strong, why I let it rip as it will.”
In connection with the Broad Street mansion which he occupied at the time of his death, Forrest built and fitted up a handsome private theatre. John Wiser, a scenic artist, arranged and painted it. At its completion Forrest seated himself in a large chair, and, after expressing his pleasure at the effect, said, “John, do you know what would be the most delightful sight in the world, eh? If I could only see this room filled with children, and a company of little boys and girls playing on that stage.”
One day when Forrest was walking with a friend in Brooklyn a beggar accosted them. Tears were in his eyes, and he had a ragged exterior as well as a tottering form and a pale and sunken look. With a plaintive voice he said, “For the love of heaven, gentlemen, give me a trifle for the sake of my starving family. You will not feel it, and it will relieve a half a score of hungry ones. Will you not aid me?” Forrest looked at the man for a moment as if reading his very soul, and then said, while placing a golden eagle in his hand, “Yes, my friend, you are either a true subject for charity or else the best actor I ever saw.”
Forrest always carried his professional humor and docility with him. He gave a ludicrous description of an amateur grave-digger who lived in Philadelphia. He was worth fifty thousand dollars, yet whenever a grave was to be made he liked to have a hand in it. His nose was so turned up that his brains might have been seen, had he possessed any. And his voice was a perfect model for the second grave-digger in Hamlet, saying, “The crowner hath set on her, and finds it Christian burial.”