The bodied soul this life, who doubts the soul will live?
Robert T. Conrad.
Public and private banquets were given in honor of the actor by distinguished men in all parts of the country, occasions drawing together brilliant assemblages and yielding the highest enjoyment to every faculty of sense and soul. To meet around the social table, decked with everything that wealth and taste can command, the most eminent members of the learned professions, artists, authors, statesmen, the leaders of the business world, beautiful and accomplished women, and pass the hours in friendly converse seasoned with every charm of culture and wit, is one of the choicest privileges society can bestow in recognition and reward of worth and celebrity. Among the more notable of these honors may be mentioned as especially brilliant and locally conspicuous at the time a dinner given him at Detroit by General Lewis Cass, one at Cincinnati by his old friend James Taylor, one at New Orleans by a committee of the leading citizens, including some of his early admirers, and, later, one at Washington by his intimate and esteemed friend Colonel Forney, then Clerk of the House of Representatives. During one of his engagements in Washington he dined with a distinguished company under the princely auspices of Henry Clay. The great Kentuckian, in allusion to Pierre Soulé, a Louisiana Senator, who was a passionate orator but wanting, perhaps, in sobriety of judgment and steadiness of character, said to one of the guests, “A mere actor, sir, a mere actor!” At that instant chancing to catch the eye of Forrest, he promptly added, with the courteous grace of self-possession and winsome eloquence native to his thoroughbred soul, “I do not allude, Mr. Forrest, when I use the word actor thus demeaningly, to those men of genius who impersonate the great characters of Shakspeare and the other immortal dramatists, holding the very mirror of truth up to nature; I refer to the man who in real life affects convictions and plays parts foreign to his soul.”
At a banquet given in honor of John Howard Payne, the first vice-president, Prosper M. Wetmore, an old and dear friend of Forrest, paid him a compliment which, received as it was by the brilliant company with three times three enthusiastic cheers, must have given him a proud pleasure. Mr. Wetmore said, “Before mentioning the name of the gentleman whose health I am about to ask you to drink, I take this opportunity to say a word in relation to the generosity of his heart and the richness of his mind. He was one of the very first who took an interest in the festival of Thursday last, and kindly offered his name and services to add to the attractions of the evening. He has always been the foremost to do his share in honoring our sons of genius; and his purse has never been shut against the meritorious who stood in need of his bounty. His talents as an actor you all know and appreciate. Allow me to give you—Edwin Forrest:
“His health; and would on earth there stood
Some more of such a frame,
That life might be all poetry,
And weariness a name.”
Such as above described were the satisfactions afforded to Forrest by his fame. They are what thousands have vainly wished to win, fondly believing that if they could gain them they should be happy indeed. But to these advantages there are drawbacks, corresponding to these prizes there are penalties, which were experienced by Forrest in all their varieties of bitterness. The evils which dog the goods of public life, as their shadows, went far to disenchant him, to sour him, to make him turn sadly and resentfully into himself away from the lures and shams of society.
To any man of honorable instincts, clear perceptions, and high principles, the incompetency, corruption, and selfish biases of many of those who assume to sit in judgment on the claims of the competitors for public favor and glory, the shallowness and fickleness of the average public itself, the contemptible means successfully used by ignoble aspirants for their own advancement and the defeat of their rivals, the frequent reaction of their own modesty and high-mindedness to obscure and keep down the most meritorious, have a strong influence to rob ambition of its power, destroy all the relish of its rewards, and make fame seem worthless or even odious. Critics write in utter ignorance of the laws of criticism or standards of judgment, and even without having seen the performance they presume to approve or to condemn. Claqueurs are hired to clap one and to hiss another irrespective of merit or demerit. Wreaths, bouquets, rings, jewelled snuff-boxes, are purchased by actors or actresses themselves, through confederates, to be then presented to them in the name of an admiring public. A vase or cup or watch has been known to go with a popular performer from city to city to be presented to him over and over with eulogistic addresses of his own composition. A brazen politician, successful in compassing a nomination and election by shameless wire-pulling, mendacity, and bribery, then receives the tribute of an ostentatious testimonial of which he is himself the secret originator and prime manager. No one who has not had long experience of the world and been admitted behind the scenes, with the keys for interpreting appearances, can suspect how common such things are. They are terribly disheartening and repulsive to a generous soul. They destroy the splendor and value of the outward prizes of existence, and thus paralyze the grandest motives of action. When fools, charlatans, and swindlers carry off honors, then wisdom, genius, and heroism are tempted to despise honors. When the owl is umpire in a contest of song between the donkey and the nightingale, and awards the prize to the brayer, the lark and the mocking-bird may well decline to enter the lists.