137 results
Tyrone August. Dennis Brutus: The South African Years. Cape Town: BestRed, 2020. Distributed in North America by Lynne Rienner Publishers. 358 pages. Notes. Photographs. $35.00. Paper. ISBN: 978-1928246343.
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Journal:
- African Studies Review / Volume 64 / Issue 2 / June 2021
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 19 May 2021, pp. 484-491
-
- Article
-
- You have access Access
- HTML
- Export citation
10 - Remembering Early Conversations with Ngũgĩ
- from Part II - Memories, Recollections & Tributes
-
- By Bernth Lindfors, Professor Emeritus of English and African literatures at the University of Texas, Austin.
- Edited by Simon Gikandi, Ndirangu Wachanga
-
- Book:
- Ngugi
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 27 July 2019
- Print publication:
- 21 December 2018, pp 63-65
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
James Ngũgĩ (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o) was the first African writer I ever met. This happened some time in 1962, while he was still an undergraduate at Makerere University College but was already contributing a fairly regular weekly or fortnightly column for Nairobi's Sunday Nation entitled ‘As I See It’, which was meant to represent an African point of view of Kenyan affairs, just as a parallel column under the same title by N. S. Toofan was intended to provide a voice for Kenya's Asians. Ngũgĩ had earlier published a few short stories in Penpoint, a campus literary magazine, as well as in the Kenya Weekly News, and he had completed the first draft of a longer story he called ‘The Black Hermit’, which he entered in a novel-writing competition sponsored by the East African Literature Bureau, but at the time I met him he was known primarily as a journalist.
I was then teaching English and History at a boys’ boarding school in Kisii, Western Kenya in a program called Teachers for East Africa, which had been set up by the U.S. Government to supply American teachers to East African secondary schools in need of qualified instructors. Those of us in the first wave of this program had had a six-week orientation at Makerere before going out to our schools, but I did not chance to meet Ngũgĩ at the university. It was only after some months of reading his newspaper commentary that I decided to seek him out on one of my trips to Nairobi. I found him at the Nation office, and we went off to have a chat at a hotel bar nearby.
I cannot recall everything we talked about, but much of it may have concerned local topics he had written about in the paper: education, politics, history, language (especially the importance of Kiswahili), women's issues, etc. We also discussed some of the new writing that was emerging in parts of Western and Southern Africa. I had started reading African novels, plays, and poetry while at Makerere, and I was curious to learn about his own literary education and the opinions he had formed of Western and African authors whose works he had read and studied.
African Holdings of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Journal:
- African Research and Documentation / Volume 133 / 2018
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 25 April 2022, pp. 14-19
- Print publication:
- 2018
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Last year the University of Texas at Austin celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of what was to become the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, an archive named after a former English professor who had risen rapidly up the university's administrative ranks, using his considerable budgetary authority as Dean, Vice President, Provost, President, and finally Chancellor of the entire fifteen-campus University of Texas system to fulfill his vision of establishing in Austin “a center of cultural compass, a research center to be the Bibliotheque Nationale of the only state that started out as an independent nation”. To get things started, on September 11,1957, in his position as Director of the university's Rare Book Collection, he wrote a formal letter to himself authorising the expenditure of $25,000 from Special Research Collections in Humanities “to purchase books and materials for the use of the humanities faculty in furthering their research”.
FEATURED ARTICLES Remembering Early Issues of African Literature Today
- from FEATURED ARTICLES
- Edited by Helen Cousins, Pauline Dodgson-Katiyo, Ernest N. Emenyonu
-
- Book:
- ALT 34 Diaspora & Returns in Fiction
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 08 April 2017
- Print publication:
- 18 November 2016, pp 213-218
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
African Literature Today, launched in print in the UK by Eldred Jones in 1968, was the successor to a Bulletin of the Association for African Literature in English that he had started editing in a modest cyclostyled format four years earlier in Sierra Leone as an outlet for scholarly commentary on the new literatures that were emerging in Anglophone Africa. The Bulletin wasn't the first journal published in Africa to carry literary criticism. It had been preceded by Black Orpheus in 1957, Transition in 1961, and Abbia in Cameroon in 1963, as well as by a number of campus magazines such as Penpoint at Makerere University in Kampala in 1958, The Horn at University College Ibadan in 1958, and The Muse at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka in 1963. But in these other journals, discourse on literature was a sideline, not the primary focus. Eldred Jones, one of the earliest university teachers of African literature, was also one of the earliest scholars to devote serious scrutiny to what African writers were producing. And through his pioneering editorial efforts he made it possible for others to express their ideas on this interesting new phenomenon too. His initiatives helped to turn African literary studies into a proper academic discipline.
But he was not the only one promoting this kind of cultural activity. Scholars elsewhere who were beginning to study the emergence of new English language literatures in areas of the world outside Britain and America were also engaged in developing vehicles for communication of their ideas. The 1960s saw the founding of a Journal of Commonwealth Literature in England in 1965 as well as a Conference on British Commonwealth Literature Newsletter in the United States in 1966, which in 1971 was expanded into a journal called World Literature Written in English. An older American journal, Books Abroad, founded as early as 1927, became World Literature Today in 1976. In addition, three Anglophone literature journals in India – The Literary Criterion, The Literary Half-Yearly, and The Commonwealth Journal – all published in Mysore, became increasingly international, and Canadians established Ariel in 1970 as their contribution to the broadening of English literary studies. In the process the word Commonwealth, a hangover from the British Empire, tended to be displaced by the word Postcolonial, which included non-British territories as well.
14 - The Seventh Continental Tour
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 204-218
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
A month later, Aldridge set out on his next extended Continental tour. A report in the Era said he was on his way “to fulfill engagements at St. Petersburg and other places in Russia.” When he passed through Paris en route, a local theater there offered to employ him, but he proceeded directly to Rybinsk, where an important market fair was being held. There he started performing during the last week in May.
At the conclusion of his run, he wrote to Amanda with disappointing news:
[Rybinsk], Russia
May 30, 1864
My dear Amanda,
I [gave] my first appearance (Othello) to a good but not great audience. Things are very bad in Russland at present and I intend please God, to finish as it will not be worth while returning, particularly as I am not allowed in St. Petersburg.
The weather is still warmer, but I have caught a bad cough. I have played six times and am now going straight to Astrakan [sic], so that I can make the return journey before the cold weather sets in. I am most [impatiently] waiting for a letter from you, my dearest Amanda.
The post goes for home from here three times a week. I am very miserable and quite alone all the time. Business was bad on Thursday. Has Angelina visited you.
My greetings to Madam Molte and her son.
Kiss my Luranah and Fritz for me. I hope the two of them are well and you also. I have [seen] a nice little dog who is very intelligent. If I had known things were so bad in Russia I would have stayed at home. I hope however, to do good business in Astrakan, but even so you must economise, and I must do the same.
I am very anxious to sell my equipage if it is possible.
Enclose your next letter in this envelope, so that it will not have to delay by first of all going to Moscow. Write me a long letter when you are able. Have you any news of Mr. Stirling, wife and friends. I have had no communications from one or the other, the Prince of Light is forgotten perhaps. I am anxious to hear from Luranah Villa.
16 - The Eighth Continental Tour
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 227-243
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Aldridge began his next Continental tour in November 1865, heading first to Odessa, more than a thousand miles away, where he had performed four years earlier with great success. On December 1, he sent the following letter to Amanda:
Semperkoff on the road to Odessa
My dear Amanda,
I received your last letters and I am glad to hear that you and the children are in health. I hope you received the money. I am in middling health. The travelling at present is dreadful such desperate roads and so cold and cheerless.
The English Engineer and his wife, a German who are leaving this country promised to call upon you and say they had seen me. When they do so ask them to Lunch and shew them any politeness you can. I will write when I get to my journey's end. I suppose the little stranger may be soon expected, God bless it. Keep a merry Christmas. Kiss Fred and Luranah for me. Best respects to Mademoiselle. I am glad that Simpson is to be with you, it will be less expensive and more comfortable.
Things are very indifferent in this country. The cattle plague has been very bad and trade generally, everything is dear in the extreme. I received a letter from Ira and expected one from Mr. Grist.
God bless you all,
I remain,
Affectionately yours,
Ira
The “little stranger” was the child Amanda was expecting. She was now about six months pregnant.
Aldridge wrote her again on January 2 with disturbing news:
My dear Amanda,
I have been for the last fifteen days unable to leave my room. I took cold and was very ill on the journey and on my arrival here was prostrate. I am now scarcely able to sit up but hope ere this reaches you to be enabled to resume my journey to Odessa. I do not know what the direction will do in the matter I am so much behind my time. I send you twenty pounds through Mr. Ray. I expect to find letters from you in Odessa.
I hope all are well with you. Kiss the children and I wish you all a happy New Year.
4 - Stockholm
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 47-66
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Aldridge had initially been invited to appear in Stockholm nearly three years earlier when he was touring the Continent. Newspapers in England had been following his travels with interest and curiosity, reporting on anything extraordinary that happened. On July 2, 1854, the Sunday Times told its readers:
“The African Roscius,” having made a most successful tour throughout Prussia, Bavaria, and Hungary, has recently appeared at some of the principal theatres in Switzerland, where he has been most favourably received. On the 24th of June he played at Soleure [Solothurn] in the presence of her Majesty the Queen of Sweden, who, at the conclusion of the performance, desired that Mr. Aldridge might be presented to her in the state box, when, after complimenting him upon his histrionic talent, she invited him to visit Stockholm during the ensuing season, assuring him of the protection and patronage of the court.
Aldridge may have been unable to accept this generous invitation at that time because he was too busy fulfilling back-to-back engagements at theaters in Germany, Prussia, Austria, and the Netherlands for the next nine months. On returning to London in the spring of 1855, he had rested for a few months and then had resumed performing at theaters throughout the United Kingdom.
Meanwhile, the Swedish royal family had not forgotten him. On March 3, 1857, the invitation to perform in Stockholm was offered again, this time through the office of Major Norman Pringle, the British consul there, who had received the following letter from Gunnar Olof Hyltén-Cavallius, the director of Stockholm's Royal Theatre:
The Royal Theatre at Stockholm gives ordinarily, by full houses a recett [box-office returns] of 1000 RB Swedish Banco.
The Expenses for every night are cirka [sic] 300 RB Bko.
The Direction offers to Mr Ira Aldridge 25L (resembling to nearly the half-part of the Netto-Recett, or 300 RB Swedish Bko) for every night he publicly appears on the Stage.
The number of representations cannot be limited forwards; but so many times as it will be worth the trouble.
Only one Character—Othello.
The time at the middle or between the middle and the end of the month Maji [May].
Answer is to be expected.—
Stockholm d. 3 Mars 1857.
8 - The Third Continental Tour
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 99-128
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Aldridge had performed in Prague with great success five years earlier, in the spring of 1853, so he was welcomed back enthusiastically by those who remembered the vivid impression he had made as Othello, Shylock, Macbeth, and Mungo—the same roles he was now to perform again at the Royal Theatre. They also remembered that he had formerly appeared with a mediocre British troupe, so they were relieved that he was now supported by an excellent Germanspeaking Czech group.
As usual, Aldridge opened as Othello, which many thought to be his best role:
It is extremely interesting when one sees a person forget everything around him, as it were, the moment he sets foot onstage, divesting himself of his own self and the audience and the consciousness that he is standing there as an actor and melding utterly with his role. When this Othello flies into a rage, one feels that his passion is madness; when he seizes his man, one trembles involuntarily for the victim and feels infected and carried away by the excitement of the actor, on whose body one sees the nerves playing and the muscles twitching. If one hears the mighty voice as well, which is equally accustomed to all tonalities from the softest meltingness to the thunder of passion, if one sees the bared snow-white teeth of the Negro stand out uncannily from the brownish face, one does indeed take away a lasting impression of a highly original phenomenon.
However, at least one critic considered his Jew superior to his Moor:
Aldridge performs Othello more with the overwhelming, passionate blood of his race than with the spirit of the artist; the nobility of his personality and the splendid wildness of his anger and pain capture our senses as if by magic, rather than capturing our hearts. And when the Moor drags Desdemona's corpse from her bed, kisses it insanely, and then lets it fall back like a senseless thing, the last emotion that remains with us is horror, not pity.
Mr. Aldridge's Shylock is a different matter.
15 - Another Break
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 219-226
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
We do not know the exact date of Aldridge's arrival in London on the completion of his seventh tour of Russia, but it must have been close to a year after the death of his wife Margaret at the end of March 1864. Aldridge was now ready to move on to a new phase of his life by marrying his paramour, Amanda, with whom he had already had two children, Irene Luranah Pauline and Frederick Olof.
The wedding took place at St. John the Evangelist Parish Church in Penge, a southern suburb of London not far from their house on Hamlet Road in that community (fig. 13). The witnesses were J. J. and Mary Sheahan, his old friends from Hull. On the marriage registration certificate, Aldridge was listed as a widower, histrionic actor, and son of Daniel Aldridge, a clerk (fig. 14). His bride was described as Amonda [sic] Pauline Von Brandt, a spinster and daughter of Uloff Von Brandt, a Baron of Sweden. There is no mention of Aldridge's illegitimate teenage son, Ira Daniel, as being present at the ceremony.
However, Ira Daniel wrote respectful letters of congratulation to both his father and new stepmother on the day they were married:
MY DEAR FATHER,—I write to congratulate you on the occasion of your marriage and to wish you and my dear stepmother every joy and happiness in your new relationship.
I am sure that you will find in Madame a true and loving wife, and one who will fill the lonely void so recently left in your home and your heart.
I shall use my best endeavor to continue to deserve your love and shall strive to the utmost of my power to win that of my stepmother by deference to her wishes and brotherly kindness to her children.
That you may be long spared to enjoy ever-increasing happiness is the most earnest wish of
Your dutiful and affectionate son,
IRA DANIEL ALDRIDGE
The letter to his stepmother was neatly tied with blue silk ribbon:
MY DEAR MADAM,—It is with great pride and happiness that I feel now able to address you as Step-mother and I hope most sincerely that you may be long spared to us.
6 - Pest and Buda
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 81-89
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Aldridge's second Continental tour was turning out to be the same kind of triumph his first Continental tour had been. Welcomed everywhere, he won full-throated praise and enthusiastic applause for his three principal roles. The comments were much the same as those voiced in 1853–55, when he began working exclusively with local troupes who performed in their own language while he continued to speak his lines in English. As Othello he was admired for the energy, passion, dignity, and deep understanding he brought to his interpretation of a noble but impulsive man who loved not wisely but too well. As before, the extreme emotion he displayed in jealous outbursts of pain, rage, and despair was “highly disconcerting” to some audiences but was thought to be justified by his “tropical temperament,”—that is, by the fact that he was an African playing an African. Such eruptions “are taken to the outer bounds of what is permissible—piercing, terrifying, and usually incredibly effective.” Yet a critic in Krakow, who had seen him perform the same role five years before, felt that there was now “a greater temperance in the outbursts of passion, an attempt to accommodate our views, our timid bourgeois sentiments, our civilized feelings.” He was the same Aldridge, giving the same stirring performance, but doing so now in a manner that cultured Europeans would find more tolerable.
There were suggestions that his interpretation of Shylock had changed too. He was still “every inch the Jew with his burning hatred of Christians and his insatiable thirst for revenge,” a Jew whose “harsh traits of character break through with a certain confident haughtiness,” yet who reminds us of his tribe's pathetic heritage of suffering. Aldridge deviated from Continental convention by making Shylock, despite his flaws, a sympathetic figure. A few critics pointed to a new feature of his performance: a tendency “to repeat the German words of his dialogue partner in German,” and to slip in “German phrases that naturally weren't learned well.” This was something he had not done before, and it had an estranging effect.
12 - The Sixth Continental Tour
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 189-195
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Aldridge, through his London agent J. W. Anson, had received a letter from a theater manager in Kharkov, proposing that he return to perform there at the end of May and also appear at other towns nearby:
Forgive me please that I did not give you any answer about your coming or your not coming to Kharkov but the reason was that I could nothing decide before I was sure I would become [manager of ] the Theater house at Pultawa [now Poltava, Ukraine]. Now I have taken the house notwithstanding the large sum I will be obliged to pay for it, being sure of the great income you will bring. I ask you then, my dear Sir, to come to Kharkov, Ekaterinoslav [now Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine] and Pultawa, but I fear that our arrangements require a little change. It will be utterly impossible to perform more than 6 times in Kharkov (I mean the fifth as your half benefit) and I ask of you to arrive for the 29th or 30th of May. For every performance I propose to you 200 r. (as we arranged it before) and Ekaterinoslav 7 performances your half benefit the 5th time every evening 100 rbls. At Pultawa 10 performances (the seventh evening your half benefit). I am afraid I am not able to propose to you more than 200 rbls. every performance as money matters are bad and the expenses are too great, as I am obliged to pay for the house 2,750 rbls. Forgive my changing our last arrangements but you will find yourself that I act so on the utter impossibility. If the houses are full every evening we may perhaps add a few performances on those or other conditions. Give me an answer to this letter by telegraph and write if you are bringing new pieces as you wanted to do.
Goodbye, my dear Sir, and receive mine and my whole family's cordial salutations.
Your truly and devoted,
Leonide Mangenkanihoff
Aldridge evidently accepted this proposal, for a few days later he mentioned these arrangements in a letter to his old fried J. J. Sheahan in Hull:
London 27th March 1863
I have once more returned to England but I return in about a fortnight please God to give ten representations at Moscow. I then proceed to Kharkoff Ekatorenaslav [sic] and Pultawa.
Index
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 333-351
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
19 - Postmortem
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 269-276
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
We can only speculate on what would have happened had Aldridge performed in New York and other cities in the United States only a few years after the Emancipation Proclamation and the conclusion of the Civil War. Shortly after the announcement of his impending arrival from Europe, the American press began to comment on some of the problems that he and his manager might face. The New Orleans Commercial Bulletin reported in July that “the manager who is to bring to this country on a starring tour Mr. Ira Aldridge, the coloured tragedian, finds a difficulty in getting a ‘leading lady’ to support him.” This was contradicted early in August in a more detailed account published in the New York Clipper:
IRA ALDRIDGE, the well known black tragedian, who has gained great notoriety [sic] all over Europe for his masterly tragic performances, has been secured by Charles M. Webb, father of the Webb Sisters, and T. Francis Gibbons of this city, for one hundred representations in this country. He is expected to sail from England about the middle of this month, and will make his debut in this city at the Academy of Music, about the first of September, as Othello. From the first mention being made of the actor's intended visit to this country, considerable doubt has existed as to the possibility of finding a leading lady or a first-class company that would support him, but we have seen letters from one of the best actresses in the country, who has expressed a wish to support him, and we are also informed that another popular leading lady can be secured, as well as any quantity of leading people for support.
The New York Times, without offering an opinion on the matter, said only, “We are curious to note his reception. His picture before us represents a full-blooded negro, with crinkly wool, flat nose, thick lips, and skin of the blackest hue, while the decorations on his breast prove him to be [the recipient of many distinguished awards]… . Thus balanced, he will appear before an American audience, and we doubt not the question of the day will be, ‘Have you seen Ira ALDRIDGE?’”
18 - Final Acts
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 254-268
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Aldridge's diary entries for April 8–10, 1867, reveal that he spent some of his time in London visiting old friends and associates, establishing contacts at the Italian Opera and Sadler's Wells, and calling at his family home at Luranah Villa. Before the end of that month he and Amanda were back in Paris, attending the Universal Exhibition. “Never had there been so resplendent an exhibition. There were 42,237 exhibitors—over three times as many as at the Crystal Palace [in 1851]—and the 11,000,000 visitors included two emperors and more than eighty other royal personages.”
On Tuesday, April 30, they happened to meet Hans Christian Andersen on the exhibition grounds, an event recorded in Andersen's autobiography:
One day as I went out there, there came an elegantly dressed lady with her husband, a negro. She addressed me in a mixed speech of Swedo- English-German. She was born in Sweden, but had lived abroad of late; she knew who I was from my portrait, she said, and introduced me to her husband, the famous actor, the negro Ira Aldridge, who was just now playing to the Parisians at the Odeon, where he took the rôle of Othello. I pressed the artist's hand, and we exchanged some friendly words in English. I confess it gave me great pleasure that one of Africa's gifted sons should greet me as a friend.
However, Andersen was mistaken about Aldridge's appearance at the Odeon. Jackson C. Boswell has discovered that “not a single paper in Paris recorded his appearance in any scheduled performance in any of the various theaters of the city” during this period. Apparently despite Aldridge's success at Versailles a few months earlier, Kuschnick had been unable to arrange an engagement for him in the capital, which must have been a great disappointment to Aldridge, who had been longing to perform there for at least fifteen years, ever since his first Continental tour.
Instead, he started playing Othello in a few towns about one hundred fifty miles north of Paris near the Belgian border—first at Boulogne-sur-Mer on May 9, then at Roubaix and Lille the following week, in all of which he played his part with his accustomed vigor, even though he was supported by mediocre companies.
17 - The Ninth Continental Tour
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 244-253
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
In the summer of 1852, when Aldridge was planning his first Continental tour, he had intended to make his debut in Paris with an experienced British company of actors and actresses he had recruited. Unfortunately, his arrangements with a theater there did not materialize, so he took his troupe to Brussels instead, and thereafter to Prussia and Germany, where he met with great success. However, in the years that followed, he retained a strong interest in performing in the French capital. Though he did occasionally receive tempting offers in the interim, it was not until November 1866 that he finally was able to fulfill his ambition of appearing before Parisian theatergoers.
But even this long-delayed satisfaction was spoiled to some extent for him, for he “searched in vain for a theater where he could show himself to the French public for the first time.” The best that could be done by the impresario handling his tour, Charles Joseph Kuschnick, who had been ridiculed in Le Figaro as a mahout (elephant- driver), was to arrange a performance for him for a single night, November 22, at the Grand Théâtre de Versailles that was preceded by a dinner for distinguished guests served in the dining room of Louis XV's mistress at the Hôtel des Réservoirs and followed by a “mouthwatering supper” in the same venue afterward. The guests included Alexandre Dumas père, the playwright Théodore Barriere, and about forty of the leading newspaper editors, theater critics, literary personalities, and caricaturists in Paris, all of whom had been conveyed to Versailles on a special train. This was a strategic ploy by Kuschnick, for it guaranteed extensive coverage on Aldridge in the press afterward. Some of these accounts were as much concerned with what happened at the banquet as with revealing what happened on the stage, but they at least gave Aldridge more exposure than he otherwise would have garnered in such a remote location.
7 - A Short Break
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 90-98
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Aldridge decided to spend the summer of 1858 in Britain, possibly for family reasons. His wife Margaret, at sixty years of age, was no longer a hardy traveler and had fallen ill in Pest. His eleven-year-old son Ira Daniel, who did not now accompany his parents on tour, had been enrolled at the Collegiate School of Camden Town, presumably as a boarding student, and he may have needed a home for the summer holidays. Also, Aldridge may have been feeling tired out and ready for a rest.
In early June London's Sunday Times announced that “Mr. Ira Aldridge has just returned to the metropolis after a most successful tour through the principal towns of Germany, Hungary, and Poland.” The report went on to describe his enthusiastic reception in these towns, the awards and testimonials he was given by resident royalty, especially in Saxe-Meiningen, and his induction as an honorary member of the Imperial and National Hungarian Histrionic Conservatorium in Pest and the Imperial Orphan Institution in Buda. “He returns again to the Continent by special engagement, after a lapse of a few months of repose and quiet.”
Aldridge was already busy seeking engagements for that next foreign tour, as this letter, written for him in German, attests:
London
76 Euston Road
St. Pancras
21 June 1858
Herr Director,
Next August I return to Germany to complete my farewell performances. I would certainly like to give two or three guest performances in Dusseldorf. I request half of the net receipts after the deduction of daily costs. I can send you the German roles. As you probably know already, I myself play in English.
The Roles: Othello, Macbeth, Lear, Shylock, Richard III, Muley Hassan etc Padlock.
Awaiting your worthy reply.
My respectful greetings
Ira Aldridge
African Tragedian
While resting in London, Aldridge nonetheless was quite willing to do a few favors for his friends. Samuel Lane, the lessee of the Britannia in Hoxton, was planning to rebuild, remodel, and vastly enlarge his theater, and he asked Aldridge to participate in a farewell benefit for one of his actresses, Miss C. Borrow, on June 23, the last night before he closed his theater so refurbishment could begin.
9 - Home Again
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 129-153
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
On arriving in London, Aldridge learned that a fellow British actor had gone to Berlin to perform, taking along a professional “company of twenty-five actors and actresses, complete with a stock of costumes and scenery.” Curious to know how they were faring, Aldridge wrote to a friend there, Gebrüder (Brother) Kohn, asking for information on their reception:
London. 76, Euston Road
St. Pancras 12th April/59
My Dear Sir,
Agreeably to your promise I write and will be obliged by your informing me if the English Gesellschaft [Company] have created an enthusiasm in Berlin, have they been more successful in Othello than I was? The papers here say they have not had a great success. I hope to see you in about three months. I have been confined to my room with rheumatism since my return to London, but am now a little better. Begging the favour of your early reply I Remain truly yours
Ira Aldridge
African Tragedian
Aldridge had good reason to be curious, for this rival Othello was not an ambitious amateur but rather Samuel Phelps, the actormanager who had run the Sadler's Wells Theatre for the past fifteen years, winning acclaim for having rescued it from degradation by improving its offerings and disciplining its audience. He had taken over the management in 1844, the year after passage of the Theatre Regulation Act, which had licensed all theaters in London and surrounding areas to act regular drama, a privilege that earlier had been reserved only for the city's patent theaters in the West End: Covent Garden, Drury Lane, and the Haymarket.
Phelps's first objective was to clean his house thoroughly, making it a fit place for elevated entertainment of the highest standard. In an essay published in Household Words in 1851, Charles Dickens had praised Phelps's complete transformation of this rather disreputable establishment:
Seven or eight years ago, Sadler's Wells Theatre was in the condition of being entirely delivered over to as ruffianly an audience as London could shake together. Without, the Theatre, by night, was like the worst part of the worst kind of Fair in the worst kind of town. Within, it was a bear-garden, resounding with foul language, oaths, cat-calls, shrieks, yells, blasphemy, obscenity—a truly diabolical clamour. Fights took place anywhere, at any period of the performance.
10 - The Fourth Continental Tour
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp 154-168
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Aldridge's friends and admirers in Germany and Prussia were indeed eager to welcome him back, but a notice soon appeared in Ferdinand Roeder's Theater-Moniteur saying, “Ira Aldridge has asked us to announce that due to an illness he will not be able to begin his guest-tour through Germany before the New Year.”
This must have been a great disappointment for Aldridge as well, but during the interval he continued to make preparations for his tour by refurbishing his costumes and props:
Aldridge's illness lasted nearly a month, but eventually a Hamburg paper reported that “According to a wired message the famous African actor Mr Ira Aldridge will arrive here, and he will soon open his interesting guest-performance as ‘Othello’ which he will continue with ‘The Merchant of Venice’ and ‘Macbeth.’” The City Theater in Altona, a suburb of Hamburg, was already preparing for his arrival in a festive manner. Ludwig Dessoir, in a series of comic performances which included a parody of “Ludwig Devrient, or the Actor as Matchmaker” as well as a farce, also featured an amusing recital by Dessoir of “Ira Aldridge as Freier [suitor, or customer of a prostitute].”
However, Aldridge evidently had a relapse, for he remained in London recovering for close to another three months. During his convalescence, he wrote to Octavian Blewitt, secretary of the Royal Literary Fund, seeking financial relief for a friend, J. H. Keane, a London correspondent for a Continental journal who had fallen on hard times. Keane had also been serving as Aldridge's private secretary, handling his communications with theaters abroad, particularly those in Germany and Prussia.
Wellington Lodge, Wellington Road
Kentish Town 13th Feb/61
Sir,
Being fully acquainted with the circumstances which have placed a literary man, Mr J. H. Keane, in sudden and unexpected embarrassment— circumstances not arising in any way from any fault or improvidence on his part—I beg to testify to the fact that a grant of fifteen or twenty pounds would come not only most opportunely to the present relief of himself and family, but would immediately enable him to retrieve his position.
List of Illustrations
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Book:
- Ira Aldridge
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015, pp ix-x
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
Ira Aldridge
- The Last Years, 1855-1867
- Bernth Lindfors
-
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 26 May 2021
- Print publication:
- 15 November 2015
-
Ira Aldridge The Last Years, 1855-1867, the fourth volume of Bernth Lindfors's definitive biography, places on record Aldridge's remarkable achievements and experiences in the final phase of his life, when he performed at theaters throughout Europe. His first Continental tour in 1852-1855 had been a spectacular success, and though he returned to Britain periodically afterwards, he spent much of the remainder of his career entertaining audiences in central and eastern Europe, mainly in Ukraine and Russia. His Shakespearean performances in St. Petersburg in 1858 and Moscow in 1862 were among his greatest triumphs and led to numerous appearances elsewhere in provincial cities and towns.
During his forty-three years on stage in Europe, Ira Aldridge traveled more widely and wonmore honors, decorations, and awards than any other actor of his day. He is remembered not only as a talented thespian but also as a very visible representative of his race, someone who changed European perceptions of black people through the sheer brilliance of his artistry on stage. And by doing so, he helped to humanize the image of Africans and their descendants in Europe at an important transitional moment in history, when the movement to abolish slavery was gathering force and winning international acceptance.
Bernth Lindfors is professor emeritus of English and African literatures at the University of Texas at Austin.