And Forrest replies:

“My Dearest and Best of Friends,—Thanking you for your hearty letter, which has given me a real pleasure, I assure you you could not have enjoyed my visit more than I did. Your encouraging smiles and delicate attentions gave a daily beauty to my life while I was under the same roof with you. In my life I have had the fellowship of many goodly men, brave and manly fellows who knew not what it was to lie or to be afraid. I have never met one whose heart beat with a nobler humanity than yours. I am proud to be your friend and to have you for mine. God bless you, and keep us always worthy of one another.

Every summer for the last thirty years of his life Forrest made it a rule to spend a week or a fortnight with Oakes, when they either loitered about lovely Boston or went into the country or to the seaside and gave themselves up to leisurely enjoyment, “fleeting the time carelessly as they did in the golden world.” Then the days and nights flew as if they were enchanted with speed. These visits were regularly repaid at New York, at Fonthill, at Philadelphia. Whenever they met, after a long separation, as soon as they were alone together they threw their arms around each other in fond embrace with mutual kisses, after the manner of lovers in our land or of friends in more tropical and demonstrative climes.

A single forlorn tomato was the entire crop raised at Fonthill Castle in the season of 1851. As the friends stood looking at it, Oakes suddenly plucked, peeled, and swallowed it. The tragedian gazed for some time in open-eyed astonishment. At length with affected rage he broke out, “Well, if this is not the most outrageous piece of selfishness! an impudent and barbarous robbery! That was the tomato which I had cherished and depended on as the precious product of all the money and pains I have spent here. And now you come, whip out your jack-knife, and, at one fell swoop, gulp down my whole harvest. I swear, it is the meanest thing I ever knew done.” They looked each other in the eyes a moment, burst into a hearty laugh, and, locking arms, strolled down to the bank of the river.

When Forrest engaged his friend S. S. Smith to oversee the laying out of his estate of Forrest Hill, at Covington, opposite Cincinnati, he named one of the principal streets Oakes Avenue. When he purchased and began occasionally to occupy the Springbrook place he named the room opposite his own Oakes’s Chamber. In his Broad Street Mansion, in Philadelphia, there was a portrait of Oakes in the entry, a portrait of Oakes in the dining-room, a portrait of Oakes in the picture-gallery, a portrait of Oakes in the library, and a general seeming presence of Oakes all over the house. Early one summer day, while visiting there, Oakes might have been seen, wrapped in a silk morning-gown of George Frederick Cooke, with a wig of John Philip Kemble on his head and a sword of Edmund Kean by his side, tackled between the thills of a heavy stone roller, rolling the garden walks to earn his breakfast. Forrest was behind him, urging him forward. Henrietta and Eleanora Forrest gazed out of a window at the scene in amazement until its amusing significance broke upon them, when their frolicsome peals of laughter caused the busy pair of laborers below to pause in their task and look up.

Oakes was fond of being with Forrest during his professional engagements as well as in his vacations. And the hours they then spent together yielded them a keen and solid enjoyment. This experience was most characteristic of their friendship, and is worthy of description. Oakes would go to the play and watch with the most vigilant attention every point in the performance. Then he would go behind the scenes to the dressing-room. There the excited and perspiring actor, blowing off steam, stripped and put himself in the hands of his body-servant, who sponged him, vigorously rubbed him dry, and helped him to dress. Locking arms, and avoiding all hangers-on who might be in the way, the friends proceeded to their room at the hotel. Forrest would then throw off his coat and boots, and loosen his nether garments so as to be perfectly at ease, and call for his supper. It was his custom, as he ate nothing before playing, to refresh himself afterwards with some simple dish. His usual food was a generous bowl of cold corn-meal mush and milk. This he took with a wholesome relish, the abstinent Oakes sharing only in sympathy. Then was the tragedian to be seen in his highest social glory; for he threw every restraint to the wind and gave full course to the impulses of his nature. “Now here we are, my friend,” he would say, “and let the world wag as it will, what do we care? Is it not a luxury to unbutton your heart once in a while and let it all out where you know there can be no misunderstanding? Come, go to, now, and let us have a good time!” And a good time they did have. They recalled past adventures. They planned future ones. They gave every faculty of wit, humor, and affection free play, without heed of any law beyond that of their own friendly souls. Then, if he happened to be in the vein, Forrest would tell anecdotes of other players, and give imitations of them. He would take off with remarkable felicity the peculiarities of Irishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Englishmen, and, above all, of negroes. Very few comic actors at their best on the stage appear better in portraying ludicrous dialect characters or in telling funny stories than Forrest did on these occasions when giving himself full swing with his friend alone, thoroughly unbent from professional duty and social stiffness. No one who then saw him sitting on the floor mimicking a tailor at work, rolling on the bed in convulsions of laughter, or representing the double part of two negro woodsawyers who undertook to play Damon and Pythias, would dream that this was the man whom the world thought so grim and sour and gloomy. He used to say, “It is often the case that we solemn tragedians when off the stage are your jolliest dogs, while your clowns and comedians are dyspeptic and melancholy in private.” There was a genuine vein of humor in him very strong and active. He was extremely fond of indulging it. He read “Darius Green and his Flying Machine” with great effect. He said he would like very much to recite it to the author, Mr. Trowbridge, and then recite to him the “Idiot Boy,” that he might perceive the contrast of the humor in the one and the pathos in the other as illustrated by a tragedian.

Another feature in the friendship of Forrest and Oakes was their frequent co-operation in works of mercy to the suffering and of championship for the weak and wronged. In reading over their voluminous correspondence many cases have been brought to light in which they took up the cause of a poor man, an orphan, or an unfortunate widow, against cruel and rapacious oppressors. One instance of this was where a rich man was endeavoring by legal technicalities to defraud a widow and her children of all the little property they had. Forrest heard of it, and his just wrath was stirred. He wrote to Oakes to stand in the breach and defeat this iniquity, promising to furnish whatever money was needed to secure justice. It was a difficult case, and the poor woman was in despair. But Oakes stood by her with acute advice and sympathy and courage that never failed. After a hard and long fight, and a good deal of expense, the right was vindicated. Writing to Forrest an account of the result, and thanking him for his check, Oakes said, “This act is in such keeping with your magnificent soul, and joins so with a multitude of kindred deeds in reflecting lustre on you, that if my heart did not feel at least as much satisfaction for your sake as for my own I would tear it out and fling it at your feet.”

The following extract is from another letter:

“Your letter enclosing a hundred and fifty dollars reaches me this moment. In an hour it will be in the hands of the poor forlorn creature who indeed has no claim but the claim of a common humanity on either of us, but whose near death of disease ought not to be anticipated by a death of neglect, starvation, and cold. Your charity will now prevent that. Once this unhappy woman moved in a high circle, envied and admired by all. Now everybody deserts her death-garret. The Day of Judgment, if there ever is one, will uncover strange secrets. Among the shameful secrets dragged to light there will be glorious ones too,—like this your response to my appeal for a desolated, forgotten outcast.”

In 1856 Forrest had a severe illness which, in connection with his domestic sorrow and vexatious litigation, greatly depressed his spirit. Oakes, ever watchful and thoughtful for him, held it to be essential that he should take a prolonged respite from public life and labor. On purpose to persuade him to this course, to which he was obstinately averse, Oakes made a journey to Philadelphia. After their greetings he said, bluntly, “Forrest, I have come to ask a great favor.” Forrest broke in on his speech with these words: “Oakes, in all our long acquaintance never once have you asked anything of me in a selfish spirit; and often as I have followed your advice I have never yet made a mistake when I have allowed myself to be guided by you. Whatever the request is which you have to make, it is granted before you make it.” Oakes was deeply moved, but, commanding himself, he said, “Your professional life has been one of hard work. Your health is not good, and you are no longer young. You have money enough. You are now at the top notch of your fame. To keep your rank there you will have to make great exertions. You ought to have a good long rest. Now I want you to promise me that you will not act again for three years.” Forrest drew a long breath and dropped his head forward on his breast. In a minute he looked up and said, “Ah, my friend, you have tested me in my tenderest point. But it shall be so.” Nearly four years passed before he again confronted an audience from his theatrical throne and welcomed their applause.

A group of the most ardent admirers of Forrest combined and subscribed a handsome sum of money to secure a full-length marble statue of him in one of his classic characters. But he shrank from the long and tedious sittings, and refused to comply with their request. Oakes, who was doubly desirous of securing this memorial, first as a tribute to his illustrious friend, second as an important piece of patronage to a gifted artist then just entering his career, now undertook the work of persuasion. To his solicitation Forrest replied, “What troubles me is the weary sittings I must undergo. But since you put this matter on personal grounds, and ask me to endure the load for the sake of an old unselfish friendship,—which cannot appeal in vain,—I yield with pleasure to your request. Whenever Mr. Ball shall come to Philadelphia I will submit myself with alacrity to the torture.”

The name of Thomas Ball has acquired celebrity in art since that day, but this statue of Forrest in the character of Coriolanus will always stand as a proud landmark in his sculptured path of fame. It was a true work of love not less than of ambition. For in the long hours of their fellowship in the preparatory studying and sketching and casting the sitter and the artist grew friends. The sculptor took his model and sailed for Florence, there to produce the work he had conceived. And when a year and a half had gone by, the complete result, safely landed in Boston and set up for view in an art-gallery, greeted the eyes of Oakes and gladdened his heart. For it more than met his expectations, it perfectly contented him. He wrote to Mr. Ball, “I am glad the statue came unheralded to our shores, and am content to let the verdict of the public rest on the merits of the work. I congratulate you on an unequivocal and grand success. As a personal likeness of Forrest it is most truthful, and as an illustration of the Shakspearean conception of the Roman Consul it is sublime. For more than forty years I have known this man with an intimacy not common among men. Indeed, our friendship has been more like the devotion of a man to the woman he loves than the relations usually subsisting between men. In all my intercourse with the world I have never known a truer man or one with a nobler nature than Edwin Forrest, whose real worth and greatness will not be acknowledged by the world until he is dead. I rejoice that one of his own countrymen has given to posterity this true and magnificent portrait of him in immortal marble. The eloquence of this marble will outlive the malevolence of all the enemies and of all the critics who have assailed him.”

Forrest was indeed fortunate in the peaceful and time-enduring victory achieved for him by the artist in this sculptured Coriolanus, whose haughty beauty, and right foot insupportably advanced with the planted weight of all imperious Rome, will speak his quality to generations yet unborn. What a melancholy contrast is suggested by the words of Mrs. Siddons after seeing the marble counterfeit of John Philip Kemble: “I cannot help thinking of the statue of my poor brother. It is an absolute libel on his noble person and air. I should like to pound it into dust and scatter it to the winds.”

The Coriolanus is colossal, eight feet and a half in height and weighing six tons. The forms and muscles of the neck, the right side of the chest, the right arm, left forearm, feet, and lower portion of the left leg, are delineated in perfection, the remaining parts being concealed by the folds of the mantle which is drawn around the left shoulder, while the head is slightly turned to the right. The face and head are superbly finished and seem pregnant with vitality. The whole expression is one of massive and imperious strength, adamantine self-sufficingness, reposeful, yet animated and resolute. It represents him at that point in the play where he repels the intercessions of his mother and wife, and says,—

So much pleased was Forrest with the statue, as his lingering gaze studied it and drank in its majestic significance reflected on him from the superb and classic pomp of marble, that he begged the privilege of purchasing it from the subscribers. And so it now stands in the Actors’ Home founded by his will. The enthusiastic and efficient zeal of Oakes in securing this work drew his friend to him with an increased feeling of obligation and of attachment, which he frankly expressed in an eloquent letter of thanks.

Forrest and Oakes had from time to time many pleasing adventures together. A specimen or two may be related. Strolling in a quiet square in Baltimore, they came upon a company of boys who were playing marbles. “My little fellows,” said the tragedian, with his deep voice of music, “will you lend me a marble and let me play with you?” “Oh, yes,” said a barefoot, smiling urchin, and held up a marble in his dirty paw. Forrest took it, sank on one knee, and began his game. In less than half an hour he had won every marble they had, and the discomfited and destitute gang were gazing at him in astonishment. “Don’t you see,” he then said, “how dangerous it is for you to play with a stranger, about whose skill or whose character you are wholly ignorant? Boys, as you grow up and mix in the fight of life it will always be useful to you to know in advance what kind of a fellow he is with whom you are going to deal.” One of the boys, who had been sharply eying him, whispered to another, “I guess he is Mr. Forrest, the play-actor, you know, at the theatre.” The other replied, “Well, I should like to go there and see if he can playact as well as he plays marbles.” “Yes,” said Forrest, “come, all of you. I want you to come. I will do my best to please you.” And he wrote an order of admission for them, gave them back their marbles, and bade them good-morning.

Once when he was filling an engagement in Boston, Oakes told him a story of a humble mechanic whose landlord had compelled him to pay a debt twice over, under circumstances of cruelty which had brought out proofs of a most heroic honesty and refined sensibility in the poor man. Forrest listened to the narrative with rapt attention. At its close he exclaimed, “That landlord is a stony-hearted brute, and this mechanic is a man of a royal soul! I must go and see him and his family before I leave Boston.” Thanksgiving Day came that week. A friend of Oakes had sent him for his Thanksgiving dinner an enormous wild turkey, weighing with the feathers on twenty-seven and a half pounds. He showed this to Forrest on Wednesday and told him they were to feast on it the next day. “No, old chap,” replied Forrest; “you and I will dine on a beefsteak, and take the wild turkey to the noble fellow who paid Shylock his money twice.” Immediately after breakfast on Thanksgiving Day a barouche was ordered, the big black turkey, looking nearly as large as a Newfoundland dog, placed on the front seat, and Forrest and Oakes took the back seat. They drove to the theatre. Forrest accosted the box-keeper: “Mr. Fenno, I want for to-night’s performance six of the best seats in the house, for an emperor and his family who are to honor me by their presence.” Fenno gave him the tickets and declined to take pay for them. He insisted on paying for them, saying, “They are my guests, sir.” They then rode over to East Boston to the house of the honest man, found him, announced their names, explained the cause and object of their visit, and were invited in by him and introduced to his wife and four children. Forrest kissed each one of the children. He brought in the huge turkey and laid it on the table. Then, turning to the wife, he said, “We have brought a turkey for your Thanksgiving dinner; and if you and your noble husband and children enjoy as much in eating it as my friend and myself do in offering it you will be very happy. And I am sure you deserve great happiness, and I have faith that God will give it to you all.” He then presented the tickets for the play of Metamora, saying, “I shall look to see if you are all in the seats before I begin to act.” Not one of them had ever been inside of a theatre. The sensations that were awaiting them may be imagined. When the curtain rose and Metamora appeared on the stage amidst that tumultuous applause which in those times never failed to greet his entrance, he walked deliberately to the front, fixed his eyes on the little family, bowed, and then proceeded. Throughout the play he acted for and at that group, who seemed far happier than any titular royalty could have been. Though this happened twenty years before his death, he never forgot when in Boston to inquire after the American emperor! The honest man is still living, and should this little story ever meet his eye he will vouch for its entire truth.

A few extracts taken almost at random from the letters of these friends will clearly indicate the substantial earnestness and warmth of their relation. Letters when honest and free reveal the likeness of the writer, photographing the features of the soul, a feat which usually baffles artistic skill and always defies chemical action.

“You will doubtless receive this note to-morrow,—my birthday,—when, you say, you will think of me. Tell me the day, my dear friend, when you do not think of me! God bless you! Last night I acted at Washington in Damon and Pythias. The sound of weeping was actually audible all over the house as the noble Pythagorean rushed breathlessly back to save his friend and then to die. What a grand moral is told in that play! What sermon was ever half so impressive in its teaching! Had Shakspeare written on the subject he had ‘drowned the stage with tears.’”

“I cannot let this day pass without sending to you a renewed expression of the esteem and high regard with which through so many years my heart has unceasingly honored you. A merry Christmas to you, my glorious friend, and a happy New Year, early in which I hope again to take you by the hand.”

“As the years go by us, my noble Spartacus, many things slip away never to return, and many things that stay lose their charm. But one thing seems to grow ever more fresh and precious,—the joy of an honest friendship and trust in manly worth. May this, dear Forrest, never fail for you or for me, however long we live.”

“God bless you, Oakes, for your kindly greeting on the New Year’s day! Though I was too busy to write, my soul went out to you on that day with renewed messages of love, and with thanks to Almighty God that he has quickened at least two hearts with an unselfish and unwavering devotion to each other, and that those two hearts are yours and mine.”

“You are almost the only intimate friend I have had who never asked of me a pecuniary favor, and to whom I am indebted for as many personal kindnesses as I ever received from any. I will send you my portrait to hang in your parlor, with my autograph, and with such words as I have not written, and will never write, upon another.”

“It gives me great pleasure, my much-loved friend, to know that in a few days more I shall see you again, and reach that haven of rest, the presence of a true friend, where the storms of trouble cease to prevail.”

“And now, my friend, permit me to thank you for all the delicate attentions you so considerately showed me during my late visit, and for your noble manly sympathy for me in the wound I received from the legal assassins of the Court of Appeals, who by their recent decision have trampled upon law, precedent, justice, and the instinctive honor of the human heart.”

On the eve of his professional trip to California, Forrest wrote to Oakes, “My dear friend, how much I should like, if your business matters would permit, to have you accompany me to California! I would right willingly pay all your expenses for the entire journey, and I am sure you would enjoy the trip beyond expression. Is it not possible for you to arrange your affairs and go with me? It would make me the happiest man in the world.”

The scheme could not be realized, and after his own return he wrote, “Yes, in a few days I will come to you in Boston, my dear friend. We will talk of scenes long gone, and renew the pleasant things of the past in sweet reflections on their memory. We will hopefully trust in the future that our friendship may grow brighter with our years, and cease, if it must cease then, only with our lives.”

In 1864 he had written, “I think we both of us have vitality enough to enjoy many happy years even in this vale of tears; but then we must occupy it together. For

There was a partial change in his tone four years later, when he wrote, “I think with you that we ought not to live so much asunder. Our time is now dwindled to a span; and why should we not together see the sinking sun go brightly down on the evening of our day? What a blessed thing it would be to realize that dream of Cuba I named to you when we last met!”

In 1870 Oakes determined to retire from business, and Forrest wrote to him from Macon, Georgia,—

“I am glad to hear you are about to close your toils in the ‘Old Salt House’ and give your much-worn mind and body the quiet repose they need. In this way you will receive a new and happy lease of life, enlarge your sphere of usefulness to your friends, and be a joy to yourself in giving and taking kindnesses. I look forward with a loving impatience to the end of my professional engagements this season, that I may repair to Philadelphia, there to effect a settlement of such comforting means as shall make the residue of your life glide on in ceaseless ease. Do not, I beg you, let any pride or sensitiveness stand in the way of this my purpose. It is a debt which I owe to you for the innumerable kindnesses I have experienced at your hands, and for your unwearied fidelity to all my interests.”

Oakes rejected the proposition, though keenly feeling how generous and beautiful it was. Argument and persuasion from friendly lips, however, at length overcame his repugnance, and the noble kindness—so uncommon and exemplary among friends in our hard grasping time—was finally as gratefully accepted as it was gladly bestowed. This gift was the most effective stroke of real acting that ever came from the genius of the player. Taken in connection with his traits of generous sweetness and his clouded passages of ferocious hate, it reveals a character like one of those barbaric kings who loom gigantic on the screen of the past, dusky and explosive with the ground passions of nature, but wearing a coronet of royal virtues and blazing all over with the jewelry of splendid deeds. It shows in him such a spirit in daily life as would enable him to utter on the stage with no knocking rebuke of memory the proud words of the noble Roman:—

To anticipate here the sequel and earthly close of the friendship of Forrest and Oakes would be to detract too much from the proper interest of the last chapter of this biography. The story may well be left for the present as it stands at this point, where a half-century of unfaltering love and service was repaid not only by a heart full of gratitude but also with a munificent material Philadelphia, there to effect a settlement of such comforting means as shall make the residue of your life glide on in ceaseless ease.

When the hand that wrote these tender words had been nigh four years mouldering in the tomb the survivor was heard to say, “Every year, every month, every day, I more and more appreciate his noble qualities and miss more and more his precious companionship. And I would, were it in my power, bring him back from the grave to be with me as long as I am to stay.”

In ending this chapter of the friendships of Forrest, the justice of history requires a few words more. For there are several names of friends, who were long very dear to him and to whom he was very dear, which should be added to those set down above. The reason why no account of their relationship has been embodied here, is simply that the writer had not knowledge of any incidents which he could so narrate as to make them of public interest. Yet the friendships were of the most endeared character, full of happiness, and never marred or clouded. The names of the Rev. Elias L. Magoon, Colonel John W. Forney, and Mr. James Rees should not be omitted in any list of the friends of Edwin Forrest. And still more emphatic and conspicuous mention is due to that intimate, affectionate, and sustained relation of trust and love with Daniel Dougherty, on which the grateful actor and man set his unquestionable seal in leaving him a bequest of five thousand dollars and making him one of the executors of his will and one of the trustees of his estate.