Forrest Divorce Case, The; with Review of the Forrest Divorce.
[Legal issues]. The Forrest Divorce Case. Catharine N. Forrest against Edwin Forrest. New York: 1852.
8vo.; some pages browned; printed wrappers.
Bound in blue cloth together with:
Review of the Forrest Divorce. Containing some remarkable disclosures of the secret doings of the jury. By an old lawyer. New York…: Stringer & Townsend…, 1852.
8vo.; some pages browned; printed wrappers.
First editions of these mass-market publications devoted to fueling public interest in this scandalous divorce case which “probably filled more space in the newspapers of the land than any similar trial before, or perhaps since” (DAB). The cover of the first booklet, dominated by a line-drawing of Catharine N. Forrest, claims the text was “fully and correctly reported by the reporter of the National Police Gazette; with opening and concluding arguments of counsel, charge of the court, letters from Mr. and Mrs. Forrest, and other persons of standing and influence, together with The Consuelo letter, and other interesting details, leading to this controversy” (cover text). The text closes with a half-page illustration of Edwin Forrest.
Edwin Forrest (1806-1872) became famous in the New York and London theatre as a young man, a student of the great English actor Edmund Kean and a passionate, volatile force both on and off the stage. On June 23, 1837, Forrest married Catherine Norton Sinclair; the marriage would last just over a decade, and would end in Catherine’s infidelity and the most sensational divorce scandal of the century.
During their marriage, Forrest continued to act at home and abroad. After years of tension between himself and an English actor, Macgready, came to a head in New York, legal, marital, and emotional difficulties kept him in the States until his death. Pride and jealousy had generated a public battle between Forrest and Macgready, and in 1849 an angry mob, sympathetic to Forrest’s claims, trashed a Broadway theatre where his rival was performing. After a bout with the local militia, twenty-two people were dead, and three dozen wounded. “Then the mob dispersed,” DAB reports, “leaving a wrecked theatre behind, and a black shadow on the reputation of Edwin Forrest from which he could never quite emerge. Hard on the heels of this trouble came the domestic difficulties which embittered the rest of his life, cost him many friends, and were a scandal in the nose of the nation for several years.” After he discovered that Catherine was having an affair, he agreed to separate from her quietly. But his pride got the better of him again when rumors circulated suggesting that she was the righteous party; he filed for divorce. She counter-sued to maintain appearances, and a trial that would capture the nation’s attention for six weeks began in December 1851.
The coarseness of speech and irascibility of temper to which Forrest was stung in the trial lost him hundreds of admirers, even friends. He assaulted the Puritan dandy, N.P. Willis, in Central Park because of some caustic comment the latter had made. Willis sued him and collected a dollar. He sued Willis for libel, and collected $500. Meanwhile the divorce case went against him, and he was assessed alimony and costs. With his fixed idea of his wife’s guilt, this seemed to him a bitter injustice, and five times he appealed the case, always losing, the final verdict eighteen years later assessing him $64,000, of which Mrs. Forrest had to pay $59,000 in various expenses! (DAB)
Forrest maintained his career erratically after that, interspersing profitable appearances—the publicity helped pack the theatres—with bouts of “retirement” in Philadelphia, “where, according to William Winter, he “brooded upon himself as a great genius misunderstood, and upon the rest of the world as a sort of animated scum.” He bequeathed the bulk of his estate as a home for aged players, a home which still stands today.
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