Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part One: The Life
- 1 Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius
- 2 Ira Aldridge (1860)
- 3 Men We Have Known: Ira Aldridge (1867)
- 4 “Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice”: 50 New Biographical Information on Ira Aldridge
- 5 Ira Aldridge's Swedish Wife
- 6 “African Tragedian” in Golden Prague: Some Unpublished Correspondence
- 7 A Garland of Love Letters
- Part Two: The Career
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
3 - Men We Have Known: Ira Aldridge (1867)
from Part One: The Life
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 October 2017
- Frontmatter
- Miscellaneous Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Part One: The Life
- 1 Memoir and Theatrical Career of Ira Aldridge, the African Roscius
- 2 Ira Aldridge (1860)
- 3 Men We Have Known: Ira Aldridge (1867)
- 4 “Nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice”: 50 New Biographical Information on Ira Aldridge
- 5 Ira Aldridge's Swedish Wife
- 6 “African Tragedian” in Golden Prague: Some Unpublished Correspondence
- 7 A Garland of Love Letters
- Part Two: The Career
- Notes on Contributors
- Index
- Miscellaneous Endmatter
Summary
A few weeks ago the telegraph announced the death of this distinguished actor. About the same time, “Satanella,” the vivacious and versatile, but not very veracious correspondent of the Morning Call, said he was in New York, under an engagement, but could get no white lady to perform with him. Since then our own correspondent, “L'Ouverture,” informed us that Mr. Aldridge was expected in New York, and “will bring an accomplished lady from England to support him.” Hence we inferred that “Satanella” was wrong, and Mr. Aldridge had not arrived. Recent intelligence confirmed that opinion, and we now learn that Mr. Aldridge died in Poland on the 10th of August, while fulfilling an engagement.
The Times of this city [San Francisco] on the 16th inst. gives the following sketch of this eminent histrion, copied in part from Appleton's Cyclopedia Americana:
Ira Aldridge was a mulatto, and was born at a village called Bellair, near Baltimore, Md., about 1810, and was apprenticed to a ship carpenter, learning his trade in the same yard with Molyneaux [sic], the notorious negro pugilist and prize fighter. From association with the German population—which is very large on the western shore of Maryland—he learned to speak the German language familiarly, and also picked up a degree of education rarely obtained by those of African descent where negro slavery exists. When Edmund Kean was in the United States, after the troubles which occurred in consequence of the Cox difficulties, Aldridge became his personal attendant, and accompanied him to England, where his natural talent for the stage was developed and cultivated. He returned to the United States after a short absence, and some time subsequent to the year 1830 appeared at Baltimore, at a theater then known as “The Mud Theater.”
The above sketch of Mr. Aldridge is remarkably correct, considering the source from whence it came. It contains a few immaterial errors. Ira Aldridge was not a mulatto, he was a jet black man; he was not born in Maryland in 1810, but was born in New York about the year 1806; he was not apprenticed to a ship carpenter, neither was he acquainted with Molyneaux. We do not think he knew anything about the Germanlanguage when he leftNewYork.Hedid not leaveNewYork with Edmund Kean in 1826, but with JamesW.Wallack, the elder, about 1824–25.
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- Information
- Ira AldridgeThe African Roscius, pp. 48 - 49Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2007