Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 2 (of 2)Alger, Horatio, Jr.
General
Life of Edwin Forrest, the American Tragedian. Volume 2 (of 2)
Alger, Horatio, Jr.
Forrest, Edwin, 1806-1872
chief fomenters of his domestic trouble, he inflicted severe personal
chastisement on him. The sufferer prosecuted his assailant, and secured
a verdict with damages of one dollar. Forrest brought a suit against
Willis for libel, and gained a verdict with five hundred dollars
damages.
In the divorce case a somewhat unexpected judgment was decreed against
Forrest, acquitting his wife and condemning him to pay costs and three
thousand dollars a year for alimony. He appealed, and was defeated, with
an added thousand dollars a year alimony. Five times he appealed,
carrying his case from court to court, and every time was baffled and
thrown. And it actually was not until 1868, after eighteen years of
unrelenting litigation,—years filled with irritation, acrimony, and
every species of annoyance, settling in many instances into a lodged
hatred,—that he finally abandoned further resistance and paid over the
full award. Sixty-four thousand dollars came to Mrs. Forrest, of which
sum the various expenses swallowed fifty-nine thousand, leaving the
pittance of five thousand,—an edifying example of the beauty of legal
controversies.
The writer is unwilling in any way to enter between the now long and
forever separated disputants or to go behind the rendering of the court.
The defendant is dead, and only requires for justice’s sake the
assertion that he believed himself to have been wronged, and that he
acted on that belief with the unforgivingness belonging to him. The
plaintiff has suffered fearfully enough for any imprudence or error, was
believed by her intimate and most honored friends to be innocent, was
vindicated by a jury after a most searching trial, and is now living in
modest and blameless retirement. She has a right to the benefit of her
acquittal, and shall be left unassailed to that unseen Tribunal which
alone is as just and merciful as it is infallible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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