Forrest

“ Forrest's personal appearance, one would with difficulty imagine him capable of looking the old man, fourscore and upwards, all the attributes of age and feebleness, the palsied head and tottering walk, are admirably assumed, and are never lost sight of throughout the performance. ”

“ Ballin rose.
"I'm not feeling well," he said simply; "when the young people have finished with you, Forrest, you will find me in the Signer's room." He left the table and the room, very pale and shaky, for by this time the full meaning of Forrest's incontestable claim had clarified in his brain. He saw himself as if struck down by sudden poverty—of too long leisure and too advanced Forrest finished as abruptly as he had begun and rose from the piano. But for a few charged moments even the twins were silent. ”

“ But the roof had fallen in, and between the fragments fern and salal crowded, waist-high from the earth floor.
Forrest had believed that all he needed was to be out-of-doors; to get in touch with the growing timber again; to ride or tramp all day through the great stillness; to have the opportunity to think over and outline, undisturbed, his contemplated work, and he would be himself once more. ”

“ It is no painted shadow you see in Forrest; no piece of costume; no sword or buckler moving along the line of light as in a procession; but a man, there to do his four hours' work; it may be sturdily, and with great outlay of muscular power, but with a big heart ”

“ By his fidelity in varied physical drill, Forrest had become a prodigy of strength and endurance. With vivid passions, enormous vitality, an ingenuous and sympathetic soul, a most attractive person, in the unconventional habits of the freest of the professions, few men were ever more beset within and without by the temptations to a dissipated and spendthrift course. ”

“ Still further, Forrest has a claim for posthumous justice as one who was wronged in important particulars of his life and misjudged in essential elements of his character. Outraged, as he conceived, in the sanctities of his manhood, he bore the obloquy for years with outward silence, but with an inner resentment that rankled to his very soul. Endowed with a tender and expansive heart, cultivated taste, and a scrupulous sense of justice, shrinking sensitively from any stain on his honor, he was in many circles considered a selfish despot addicted to the most unprincipled practices. ”

“ Right glad are we that we have seen this picture of Forrest, for it has an eloquent breath for our common humanity. It has given us a glimpse of his nature which long ago we should have rejoiced to see revealed, but whose richness we dreamed not was there. What a volume is a man's life! The heart's story,—always going on, always deepening the great drama of our being as it progresses to the mortal act,—this story, in a strong inveterate nature, writes in the public bearing and in all the features that falsehood as to his sensibilities which the dreadful pen of pride alone engraves. ”

“ Forrest has certainly improved, especially in the less showy passages of the play; and we admire him most in the quiet asides, the quick and clear directions as to the disposition of his troops, and any other portions of the dialogue that do not demand great emotion. In these he is natural and truthful. As before, when he comes to the delineation of the deeper passions of our nature, it is by energetic muscular action, and by the fierce shoutings or hoarse raving of his voice, that he conveys the idea,—not by any of the nicer touches of mental discrimination and expression. ”

“ Forrest as Spartacus was throughout admirable. His very figure and voice were in his favor, the one being strongly muscular, the other replete with a rough music befitting one who in his youth has dwelt, a free barbarian, among the mountains. He electrified his audience; indeed, we have not heard more enthusiastic bursts of applause shake the walls of an English theatre since Othello expired with poor Kean. The great recommendations of Mr. Forrest as a tragedian we take to be strong passion, and equally strong judgment. In the whirlwind of his emotions he never loses sight of self-control. ”

“ The dress of such a person is another self, corresponding in some sort with the outer man as his skin does with the inner man.
When Forrest came upon the stage with his bow and quiver, belted tunic and tight buskins, with free, elastic bearing, and high tread, deep-breathing breast, resounding voice, his whole shape and moving moulded to the robust and sinewy manners of the archer living in the free, open airs between the grass and the snow, he was an embodied picture of the legendary Swiss mountaineer. ”

“ There was fitness and significance in such a genius as his maturing and pouring itself out under the shade of the Western woods, rising up amid their grandeur clear and simple as a spring, till, fed and strengthened, it leaped forth fresh and thundering as a torrent.
In characterizing Forrest as a tragedian by the epithet American, it is necessary that we should understand what is meant by the word in such a connection. We mean that he was an intense ingrained democrat. Democracy asserts the superiority of man to his accidents. ”

“ If ever they have been united, the combination has not produced such a pleasing whole as Arthur Forrest, who, in spite of the knowledge of this world on which he prided himself, was above all things young and confiding. ”

“ Forrest understood that the crisis was upon him, and he always grasped the crucial moment. Riding swiftly in front of his forces through the jungles, he told his men that the time had come to win, that when the bugle sounded every man must leave cover, cross the open space, where it was open, and charge through the thickets where they prevailed, and rush their enemies. He rode like a centaur, giving his orders along the line. The comforting, encouraging word, the hardly pressed soldiers speaking bravely together, was ended now. Action, sharp and decisive, was the watchword. ”

“ Forrest had an aversion to society, a passion for individuals, and an intense ambition to excel in his art, which he loved for itself. It was quite natural that the friendship of men so unlike, to say nothing of their great disparity in years, should be streaked with coolnesses and gradually cease. ”

“ The first cause of the endless flings, aspersions, and belittling valuations of which Forrest was the subject is to be found in the mere fact of his success itself. Every one familiar with the workings of unregenerate human nature must confess the truth of this assertion, dark and sad as it is. ”

“ Provoked by such frightful wrongs as he had known, and enlarged by connection with a whole race similarly treated for ages, they appeal to the deepest instinct that sleeps in the crude blood of human nature,—the wild tooth-for-tooth and eye-for-eye justice of equivalent reprisals taken nakedly man to man. This indomitable basis of barbaric manhood, with all its dread traditions of even-handed retribution, was powerful in Forrest. ”

“ Forrest's Lear is, from beginning to end, a very masterly, intelligent, and powerful performance, giving evidence of the most careful and attentive study of the author's meaning, steering clear, at the same time, of all fine-drawn subtleties and tricky point-making, and affording a well-grasped and evenly-sustained impersonation of that magnificent and soul stirring creation. He is certainly a better Lear than any our own stage has afforded for some time. ”

“ Forrest saw the design and inwardly resented it, though he said nothing. He followed the wise course of trying to make the best he could of the part assigned him. He made a careful study of the peculiarities of age, in feature, in gait, in voice. He would often sit in places of public resort and critically watch every old man who came in or went out. Many a time when he had chanced to discover some striking example of power and dignity or of weakness and decrepitude in an old man he would follow him in the street and mentally imitate him, reproducing and fixing what he saw. ”

“ The fact that young Forrest, who, from the fastest, wildest young man in college had become the soberest, most reserved, and, as they fancied, most aristocratic member of his class, had attended Miss Fleming to the train, did not in the least lessen her in the estimation of the students who gathered round her so thickly. ”

“ And it is this which we have called the poem of Forrest's heart. A man of his intractable mould could not thus simulate. There is a limit to that sort of power which art cannot pass. In every detail this picture is so tenderly toned, so livingly brought from the canvas, that it must be a real revelation. ”

“ What can be more genuinely sensational than Niagara, Mont Blanc, the earthquake, the tempest, the forked flash of the lightning, the crashing roll of the thunder, the crouch of the tiger, the dart of the anaconda, the shriek of the swooping eagle, the prance of the war-horse in his proud pomp? And the attributes of all these belong to man, with additions of nameless grandeur, terror, and beauty beside, making him an incarnate representative of God on the earth. To see Forrest in Lear, or Salvini in Saul, is to feel this. ”

“ Among the most valued friends of the Forrest family at this time was an elderly Scotchman, of great cultivation of mind, gentle heart, and charming manners, who had seen much of the world, was an intense lover of nature, possessed of fine literary taste and a rare natural piety of soul. ”

“ We trust that this young gentleman will find the patronage to which his extraordinary ripeness of faculty and his modest deportment entitle him."
It is certainly interesting to find in this, the first criticism of the first regular appearance of Forrest, in the fifteenth year of his age, a distinct indication of his most prominent characteristics throughout his whole histrionic career, namely, his earnest realism, his noble voice, his accurate elocution, and his steady poise. ”

“ Firing ahead! That’s Forrest!” The marching Army took up the praise of Forrest. “Forrest! Forrest’s like Stonewall Jackson—always in front making personal observations.”—“Forrest! If I was a company in trouble I’d rather see Forrest coming on King Phillip than King Arthur or the Angel Gabriel!”—“Forrest! Did you ever see Forrest rally his men? Draws a pistol and shoots a retreating colour-bearer—takes the colours and says ‘Come on!’”—“Forrest’s had 409twenty-five horses killed under him.”—“Did you ever hear him address his men? He’s an orator born. It gets to be music. ”

“ Forrest had been keeping sharp watch on the hall entrance, and the moment that he saw the two Bells arrive and make their way toward the staircase, he watched for a chance to get a word in the ears of his family. A lull in the arrivals gave him his opportunity.
"Olive," he said coolly to his sister in an undertone, "I took the liberty of sending Jane and Peter Bell an invitation--and they 're here. I want you to brace up and give them just as nice a welcome as you 're giving the rest. Hold on! If you 're angry at anybody, it's at me, and you 've no right to take it out of them for that. ”

“ Forrest, never having seen the play performed, created his rôle afresh, and was the first actor who ever represented it in America. This drama, as is well known to the theatrical and reading world, is rich in eloquent language and in the varied movement and surprises of its plot, shifting from the still life of the peasant class to the pomp and clang of court and camp. The hero is the son of a poor gardener, who, in his humble garb and lot, has a soul full of poetry and aspiration. ”

“ Its genius is contemptuous of titular claims or extrinsic conditions in comparison with intrinsic truth and merit. Its glance pierces through all pompous circumstances and pretences, to the personal reality of the man. If that be royal and divine, it is ready to worship; if not, it pays no false or hollow tribute, no matter what outward prestige of attraction there may be or what clamor of threats. That is the proper temper and historic ideal of our republic; and that was Forrest in the very centre of his soul, both as a man and as an actor. ”

“ Forrest groaned. "I am undone. Trust to the unstrained quality of mercy possessed by Christian young women in the year 1914 who will vote some day if ever they grow up and do not marry foreigners. Consider my head off, Saint George. I am expired. Further deponent sayeth not."
And Forrest, with sobs and slubberings, with realistic shudders and kicks and a great jingling of spurs, lay down on the floor and expired.
Lute crawled out from under the piano, and was joined by Rita and Ernestine in an extemporized dance of the harpies about the slain. ”

“ They felt that he was a genuine piece of the country, and, in presence of his oak-ribbed strength of person and understanding, acknowledged that he belonged to the land he came from. Mr. Forrest is another of these; quite as good in his way; struck out of the very heart of the soil, and vindicating himself too clearly to be misunderstood, as a creature of its institutions, habits, and daily life. His biography is a chapter in the life of the country ”

“ As an actor, Mr. Forrest is fervent, passionate, and active: there is no child's play in whatever he does; but in the most serious, as in the slightest development of feeling, he puts his whole heart into the matter, and carries us away with him in either the subtlety or the strength of his emotion. With powers evidently enabling him to outroar a whirlwind, he is never extravagant,—he is never of 'Ercles' vein; his passion is always from the heart, and never from the lungs. His last two scenes were splendidly acted, from the strength, the self-abandonment of the performer ”