Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Readjusting to Britain
- 2 Crim. Con.
- 3 On the Road Again
- 4 Stockholm
- 5 The Second Continental Tour
- 6 Pest and Buda
- 7 A Short Break
- 8 The Third Continental Tour
- 9 Home Again
- 10 The Fourth Continental Tour
- 11 The Fifth Continental Tour
- 12 The Sixth Continental Tour
- 13 Taking a Break
- 14 The Seventh Continental Tour
- 15 Another Break
- 16 The Eighth Continental Tour
- 17 The Ninth Continental Tour
- 18 Final Acts
- 19 Postmortem
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Readjusting to Britain
- 2 Crim. Con.
- 3 On the Road Again
- 4 Stockholm
- 5 The Second Continental Tour
- 6 Pest and Buda
- 7 A Short Break
- 8 The Third Continental Tour
- 9 Home Again
- 10 The Fourth Continental Tour
- 11 The Fifth Continental Tour
- 12 The Sixth Continental Tour
- 13 Taking a Break
- 14 The Seventh Continental Tour
- 15 Another Break
- 16 The Eighth Continental Tour
- 17 The Ninth Continental Tour
- 18 Final Acts
- 19 Postmortem
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
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.
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- Ira AldridgeThe Last Years, 1855-1867, pp. 254 - 268Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015