Of the very large number of friends Forrest had, his intimacy continued to the end of life with but comparatively few. Fatal barriers and chill spaces of separation came between him and a great many of them, caused sometimes by mere lapse of time and pressure of occupation or removal of residence and change of personal tastes, sometimes by alienating disagreements and collisions of temper. These estrangements were so numerous that he acquired the reputation of being a quarrelsome man and hard to get along with, which was not altogether the fact.
One class of his earlier friends were in many cases converted into enemies on this wise. Boon companions are easy to have, but cheap, superficial, fickle. Genuine friendship, on the other hand, generous community of life and aspiration, co-operative pursuit and enjoyment of the worthiest ends, is a rare and costly prize, requiring virtues and imposing tasks. Multitudes therefore are tempted to put up with jovial fellowship in the pleasures of the table and let the desire for an ennobling intercourse of souls die out. The parasitic and treacherous nature of most pot-fellowship is proverbial. How well Shakspeare paints it in his version of Timon! When the eyes of the generous Athenian were opened to the selfishness of his pretended friends he became so rankling a misanthrope that the Greek Anthology gives us this as the epitaph sculptured on his sepulchre:
“Dost hate the earth or Hades worse! Speak clear!
Hades, O fool! There are more of us here.”
Forrest was not many years in learning how shallow, how selfish, how untrustworthy such comrades were. He had too much ambition, too much earnestness and dignity to be satisfied with a worthless substitute for a sacred reality. He would not let an ungirt indulgence of the senses in conviviality take the place of a consentient action of congenial souls in the enjoyment of excellence and the pursuit of glory. More and more, therefore, he withdrew from these scenes of banqueting, story-telling, and singing, and found his contentment more and more in books, in the repose and reflection of solitude, and in the society of a select few. The most of those whom he thus left to themselves resented his defection from their ways, and repaid his former favor and bounty with personal dislike and invidious speech.
Another class of his quondam friends he broke with not on the ground of their general principles and social habits but in consequence of some particular individual offence in their individual character and conduct. His standard for a friend—his standard of honesty, sincerity, and manly fairness—was an exacting one, and he brooked no gross deviation from it. When he believed, either correctly or incorrectly, that any associate of his had wilfully violated that standard, he at once openly repudiated his friendship and walked with him no more. In this way dark gaps were made in the ranks of his temporary friends by the expulsion thence of the satellites who preyed on his money, the actors who pirated his plays, the debauchees who dishonored themselves, the companions who betrayed his confidence and slandered his name. And thus the crowd of his revengeful assailants was again swelled. A single example in illustration of his conduct under such circumstances is marked by such racy vigor that it must be here adduced. A man of great smartness and of considerable distinction, with whom he had been especially intimate, but whom, having discovered his unworthiness, he had discarded, sought to reingratiate himself. Forrest wrote him this remarkable specimen of terse English:
“New York, January 14, 1859.
“I hope the motives which led you to address me a note under date of 13th inst. will never induce you to do so again. Attempts upon either my credulity or my purse will be found alike in vain. No person however malicious, as you assume to believe, could change my opinion of you. Your intention to write a book is a matter which rests entirely with yourself. May I, however, take the liberty of suggesting that at this late day such a thing is not really needed, to illustrate your character, to alter public opinion, nor to prove to the world how great a dust can be raised by an ass out of place in either diplomacy or literature? There is already enough known of your career to prove that your task of becoming the apologist for a prostitution which has girdled the globe is one congenial to your tastes, fitted to your peculiar abilities, and coincident with your antecedents even from your birth to the present day.
“Edwin Forrest.”
Furthermore, an important circle of his most honored friends fell away from Forrest under circumstances peculiarly trying to his feelings. All those who in the time of his domestic unhappiness and the consequent lawsuits sympathized with the lady and supported her cause against him he regarded as having committed an unpardonable offence. He would never again speak with one of them. It was a heavy defection. It inflicted much suffering on him and bred a bitter sense of hostility towards them, with a sad feeling of impoverishment. For the places they had occupied in his heart and memory were thenceforth as so many closed and sealed chambers of funereal gloom.