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LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST, THE AMERICAN TRAGEDIAN.
BY
WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER.
"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players."
PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1877.
The newspaper in some countries has been a crime and in others a luxury. In all civilized countries it has now become a necessity. With us it is a duty. It is often corrupted and degraded into a nuisance. It ought to be cleansed and exalted into a pure benefaction, a circulating medium of intelligence and good will alone. Certainly it is far from being that at the present time. It is true that our newspapers are an invaluable and indispensable protection against all other tyrannies and social abuses; and their fierce vanity, self-interest, and hostile watchfulness of one another keep their common arrogance and encroachments pretty well in check. If they were of one mind and interest we should be helplessly in their power. From the great evils which so seriously alloy the immense benefits of the press, Forrest suffered much in the latter half of his life. The abuse he met irritated his temper, and left a chronic resentment in his mind. Two specimens of this abuse will show something of the nettling wrongs he encountered.
A Philadelphia newspaper stigmatized him in the most offensive terms as a drunkard. Now it was a moral glory of Forrest that, despite the temptations to which his professional career exposed him, he was never intoxicated in his life. The newspaper in question, threatened with a libel suit, withdrew its words with an abject apology,--a poor satisfaction for the pain and injury it had inflicted.
The other instance was on occasion of the driving of Macready from the stage of the Astor Place Opera House. A New York newspaper, in language of studied insolence, called Forrest the instigator and author of the outrage. "Mr. Forrest succeeded last night in doing what even his bad acting and unmanly conduct never did before: he inflicted a thorough and lasting disgrace upon the American character." "To revenge himself on Mr. Macready he packed the house and paid rowdies for driving decent people away." "With his peculiar tastes he will probably enjoy the infamy and deem it a triumph." Forrest, instead of cowhiding the writer of this atrocious slander,--as some men of his high-spirited nature would have done,--sent a letter, through his legal friend Theodore Sedgwick, demanding immediate retraction and apology. The editor assented to the request, confessing that he had spoken with no knowledge of facts to justify him!
From the time of his first appearance on the stage, Forrest was a careful reader of the criticisms on his performances. He generally read them, too, with a just mind, discriminating the valuable from the worthless, quick to adopt a useful hint, indignant or contemptuous towards unfairness and imbecility. There were three classes of persons whose comments on his performances gave him pleasure and instruction. He paid earnest attention to their remarks, and was always generous in expressing his sense of indebtedness to them.
The first class consisted of those who had a personal friendship for him, combined with a strong taste for the drama, and who studied and criticised his efforts in a sympathetic spirit for the purpose of encouraging him and aiding him to improve. Such men as Duane and Chandler and Swift in Philadelphia, Dawson in Cincinnati, Holley at Louisville, Canonge in New Orleans, Leggett and Lawson in New York, and Oakes in Boston, gave him the full benefit of their varied knowledge of human nature, literary art, and dramatic expression. Their censure was unhesitating, their questionings frank, their praise unstinted. Among these friendly critics the name of James Hunter, of Albany, one of the editors of "The Daily Advertiser," in the important period of young Forrest's engagement there, deserves to be remembered. He was one of the best critics of that day. He used to sit close to the stage and watch the actor with the keenest scrutiny, not allowing the smallest particular to escape his notice. Then at the end of the play he would in a private interview submit to his prot?g? the results of his observation, carefully pointing out every fault and indicating the remedy. He lived to see the favorite, who profited so well from his instructions, reach the proudest pitch of success and fame. When Mr. Hunter died, Forrest interrupted an engagement he was filling in a distant city in order to attend the funeral, and followed the remains of his old benefactor to the tomb as one of the chief mourners.
The second class of commenters on the playing of Forrest from whose judgments he received satisfaction and help was composed of that portion of the writers of dramatic criticism for the press who were comparatively competent to the task they undertook. They were men who were neither his friends nor his foes, but impartial judges, who knew what they were writing about and who recorded their honest thoughts in an honorable spirit and a good style. Among the many thousands of articles written on the acting of Forrest during the fifty years of his career there are hundreds written in excellent style, revealing competent knowledge, insight, and sympathy, and marked by an unexceptionable moral tone. They suggest doubts, administer blame, and express admiration, not from caprice or prejudice, but from principle, and with lights and shades varying in accordance with the facts of the case and the truth of the subject. These articles have an interest and a value in the highest degree creditable to their authors, and they go far to redeem the dramatic criticism of our national press from the severe condemnation justly provoked by the greater portion of it. Did space allow, it would be a pleasure to cite full specimens of this better class of dramatic critiques from the collected portfolios left behind him by the departed actor. Enough that he profoundly appreciated them, and that in various directions they did good service in their day.
The third class whose words concerning his performances Forrest gladly heeded were men who simply gave truthful reports of the impressions made on themselves, not professing to sit in judgment or to dogmatize, but honestly declaring what they felt and what they thought. Free from prejudices and perversities, fair average representatives of human nature in its ordinary degrees of power and culture, their experiences under his impersonations, ingenuously expressed, were always interesting and instructive, throwing light on many secrets of cause and effect, on many points of conventional falsity and of natural sincerity, in histrionic portrayals. Often while the newspaper writer who pretends to know the most about the dramatic art is so full of conceit and biases that his verdict on any particular representation has neither weight nor justice, the instincts of the bright-minded and warm-hearted boy or girl, the native intelligence and sympathy of the unsophisticated man or woman, whose soul is all open to the living truth of things, are almost infallible. Nobody knew this better than our tragedian, or was readier to act on it.
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