Florence Farr
Florence Farr | |
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Ceylon (Sri Lanka) | |
Other names | Mary Lester |
Florence Beatrice Emery (
Early life
Florence Beatrice Farr was born in Bickley, Kent, England (nowadays a suburb of Greater London), in 1860, the youngest of the eight children of Mary Elizabeth Whittal and Dr. William Farr.[4] She was named after nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale by her father, a physician and hygienist who was a friend and colleague of Nightingale's. Dr. Farr was known as an advocate of equal education and professional rights for women,[5] who doubtlessly influenced his daughters' attitudes in their later lives.
Her family sent her to school at
Theatrical career
Farr's first acting experience was in amateur productions with the Bedford Park Dramatics Club, in which her sister Henrietta and brother-in-law Henry were active members. Beginning in 1882, Farr served an eight-month apprenticeship under actor-manager
In 1883 her father died, leaving her a modest inheritance to live on.[5] She continued taking minor roles at the Folly, but changed her stage name back to Florence Farr when she began performing at the Gaiety Theatre in May. Her commanding presence and beautiful speaking voice were noted by George Bernard Shaw. She soon attained modest success on London's West End stages. In 1884 she married fellow actor Edward Emery. It turned out to be a disastrous marriage, and she chafed under the restrictions expected of a Victorian wife.[6] In 1888, her husband left for an extended tour of America, and they never saw each other again. She eventually obtained a divorce in 1895 on the grounds of abandonment and never remarried.[3]
In early 1890, Farr moved in with her sister, Henrietta, and brother-in-law, painter and stage designer
While in Bedford Park, Farr starred in the play A Sicilian Idyll: A Pastoral Play in Two Scenes by John Todhunter (an associate of Yeats and fellow member of the Golden Dawn) in the part of "Priestess Amaryllis", who summons the Goddess Selene to wreak revenge on her unfaithful lover. Shaw was in the audience to review the play, which he called "an hour's transparent Arcadian make-believe",[8] but was greatly impressed with Farr's performance, as well as her "startling beauty, large expressive eyes, crescent eyebrows, and luminous smile."[7]
Shaw wished to mold her into his idealized vision of "The New Woman" and be the star of his plays. Shaw wrote that she reacted vehemently against Victorian sexual and domestic morality and was dauntless in publicly championing unpopular causes such as campaigning for the welfare of prostitutes.[5] In a letter to Shaw she wrote, "…a race is likely to become degenerate so long as the sex question resolves itself ultimately into the question of how women can make the best bargain and, in so doing, deny themselves the liberty of free choice."[9]
For Yeats she was, like Maud Gonne, a poetic muse, whose resonant voice was perfect for reciting his poetry. He found in her "a tranquil beauty like that of Demeter's image near the British Museum reading-room door, and an incomparable sense of rhythm and a beautiful voice, the seeming natural expression of the image."[10] In his review of A Sicilian Idyll, Yeats wrote, "Mrs. Edward Emery (Florence Farr) …won universal praise with her striking beauty and subtle gesture and fine delivery of the verse. Indeed her acting was the feature of the whole performance that struck one most, after the verse itself. I do not know that I have any word too strong to express my admiration for its grace and power…I have never heard verse better spoken."[6] Both men wrote leading parts in their plays for Farr, who used her influence with Annie Horniman to have them produced.
Farr was also the first woman in England to perform in
Producer and director
In 1893, Horniman anonymously financed Farr's first venture as a director, a series of plays at the Avenue Theatre on the Embankment. She commissioned her friend, artist Aubrey Beardsley, to create the poster for the season. Farr had starred as Blanche, a slumlord's daughter, in Shaw's first play, Widowers' Houses, and she approached both Shaw and Yeats to write plays for her production at the Avenue. Yeats delivered the short play The Land of Heart’s Desire, but Shaw had not finished his play in time for the series opening. A Comedy of Sighs by John Todhunter was quickly substituted, with Farr in the leading role, but the play was badly received and the entire venture was nearly a disaster.[3]
After receiving a desperate cable from Farr, Shaw delivered his
Throughout the 1890s, Yeats used Farr's 'golden voice' as part of his quest to encourage the rebirth of spoken poetry. In 1898, in Yeats' The Countess Cathleen, she played Aleel, a bard and seer who could see into the spirit realm, and sang all of her lines in verse while accompanying herself on the psaltery. Farr became a regular contributor to the performance of Yeats' metrical plays, and in 1898 he made her the stage manager for his Irish Literary Theatre.[3] But during that same period of her life Farr was sidetracked from her theatrical career, much to the chagrin of Shaw ("...and now you think to undo the work of all these years by a phrase and a shilling's worth of esoteric Egyptology," he wrote her in 1896)[11] by her involvement with Yeats in the secret occult society The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.
Golden Dawn
Part of a series on the |
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn |
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The Golden Dawn is based on an initiated lodge system similar to that of
She published her first philosophical paper, A Short Inquiry concerning the Hermetic Art by a Lover of Philatethes in 1894[5] and wrote several of the Order's secret instruction papers, called the "Flying Rolls". With the resignation in 1897 of William Wynn Westcott, one of the co-founders of the Order, Farr replaced him as "Chief Adept in Anglia", becoming the leader of the English lodges, and the official representative of Samuel MacGregor-Mathers, the only remaining founder, who lived in Paris.[3]
By the end of 1899, personal disputes arose within the Golden Dawn, which Farr described as an 'astral jar' between other senior members (
Later life
After Farr severed her association with the Golden Dawn she joined the
Farr also wrote regular articles during this time, particularly about women's rights, theatre and ancient Egyptian religion, in the British journal of art and politics, The New Age, and for Theosophical journals, some of which have been anthologized into books.[21] In her essay "Our Evil Stars" (New Age, October 1907), Farr writes that reformation of public health and marriage laws are not enough to liberate women. "We must kill the force in us that says we cannot become all we desire, for that force is our evil star that turns all opportunity into grotesque failure....So let us each recognise the truth that our first business is to change ourselves, and then we shall know how to change our circumstances."[9]
Farr lectured at the Leeds Arts Club, in 1906 with Yeats on the art of speaking to a psaltery and in 1908 on 'The Theatre and the Arts' where she talked about the practical considerations of designing and building a theatre, the history of Greek theatre and read poems by Yeats and Homer accompanied by the psaltery.[21]
Through the Theosophical Society she had met
In 1912, Farr learned that Ramanathan had established his Uduvil Ramanathan Girls College, and at the age of fifty-two, she sold all her possessions and moved to Ceylon, returning to her first vocation, that of a teacher. Farr was appointed Lady Principal by Ramanathan and the administration of the school was turned over to her. Certainly the organizational skills she learned as the Praemonstratrix of the Golden Dawn served Farr in her new position, and due to her tolerance and respect for the Tamil traditions, the school thrived under her administration. Farr also kept up her correspondences with Yeats, and sent him her translations of Tamil poetry.[3]
Then in 1916, a lump in her breast was diagnosed as cancer, and she underwent a mastectomy. In Farr's final letter to Yeats, she included a humorous drawing of herself with her mastectomy scar, and wrote: "Last December I became an Amazon and my left breast and pectoral muscle were removed. Now my left side is a beautiful slab of flesh adorned with a handsome fern pattern made by a cut and 30 stitches." But the cancer had spread, and Florence Farr died a few months later at the age of 56 in a hospital in Colombo, in April 1917. In accordance with her wishes, her body was cremated and the ashes scattered by Ramanathan in the sacred Kalyaani River.[7]
In his poem "All Souls' Night", Yeats wrote:
On Florence Emery I call the next,
Who finding the first wrinkles on a face
Admired and beautiful,
And by the foreknowledge of the future vexed;
Diminished beauty, multiplied commonplace;
Preferred to teach a school
Away from neighbor or friend,
Among dark skins, permit foul years to wear
Hidden from eyesight to the unnoticed end.[22]
Works
- Florence Farr (2022) The Egyptian Rituals Holythorn Press ISBN 9781838445317
- Florence Farr (December 1995). The Dancing Faun. Elkin Mathews. ISBN 978-1-872189-76-5.
- Florence Farr. Egyptian Magic: Occult Mysteries in Ancient Egypt. Kessinger. ISBN 978-1-56459-322-1.
- "The Mystery of Time: A Masque". Theosophical Review. 36 (211): 9–19. 1905.
- "A Dialogue of Vision". Theosophical Review. 39 (229): 77–84. 1906.
- "The Tetrad, or Structure of the Mind". Occult Review. 8 (1): 34–40. 1908.
- "Egyptian Use of Symbols". Occult Review. 7 (3): 46–149. 1908.
- "On the Kabalah". Occult Review. 7 (4): 213–218. 1908.
- "On the Play of the Image-Maker". Occult Review. 8 (2): 87–91. 1908.
- "The Philosophy Called Vedanta". Occult Review. 7 (6): 333–338. 1908.
- "The Rosicrucians and Alchemists". Occult Review. 7 (5): 259–264. 1908.
- The Music of Speech. London: Elkin Mathews. 1909. OCLC 11703141.
- Modern Woman: Her Intentions. Frank Palmer. 1910.
- The Solemnization of Jacklin: Some Adventures on the Search for Reality. London: A.C. Fifeld. 1912.
- Darcy Kuntz, ed. (April 1996). The Enochian Experiments of the Golden Dawn. Golden Dawn Studies. Holmes. ISBN 978-1-55818-340-7.
- The Way of Wisdom: An Investigation of the Meanings of the Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet Considered As a Remnant of the Chaldean Wisdom. Holmes. 2001. ISBN 978-1-55818-290-5.
- Florence Farr (2001). Darcy Küntz (ed.). The Magic of a Symbol. Holmes. ISBN 978-1-55818-337-7.
- Florence Farr; Olivia Shakespear (September 2002). The Serpent's Path: The Magical Plays of Florence Farr. Holmes. ISBN 978-1-55818-414-5.
- Florence Farr (March 2005). La Magia Egipcia (in Spanish). Obelisco. ISBN 978-84-7720-911-9.
- The Book of the Grand Words of Each Mystery in Egyptian Magic. Kessinger. 2005. ISBN 978-1-4253-0233-7.
- The Gnostic Magic of Egypt. Kessinger. 2005. ISBN 978-1-4253-0232-0.
- The Legend of Ra and Isis. Kessinger. 2005. ISBN 978-1-4253-0231-3.
References
Footnotes
- ^ Kiberd, Declan (9 November 2018). "Sodom and Begorrah". Times Literary Supplement. 6032: 32.
- ^ King 1989, page 41
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Greer (1994)
- ^ Wise, Caroline. "Florence Farr, Priestess and Adept". Fellowship of Isis. Retrieved 29 August 2020.
- ^ a b c d e University College of London bio
- ^ a b c Boisseau (2004)
- ^ a b c d Johnson (1974)
- ^ a b Jayawardena (1995)
- ^ a b Litz (1996)
- ^ Peters (1980)
- ^ Bax (1971)
- ^ King 1978, page 24
- ^ F.King, 1989, pages 51–52
- ^ King, 1989, page 52
- ^ King, 1989, page 66
- ^ a b c King 1989 page 67
- ^ Wilson, page 54
- ^ King 1989 page 68
- ^ King 1989 page 69
- ^ Gilbert (1998)
- ^ a b Steele, Tom (2009). Alfred Orage and the Leeds Arts Club 1893-1923. The Orage Press. pp. 126–128, 148–149.
- ^ Yeats, The Collected Poems
Bibliography
- Boisseau, Robin Jackson (5 May 2004). "The Women of the Abbey Theatre, 1879-1925". University of Maryland. Archived from the original on 13 June 2007. Retrieved 16 August 2007.
- Farr, Florence. "Farr, Florence". Administrative/Biographical History, Reference code(s): GB 0096 MS 982. University of London, Senate House Library Collection. Archived from the original on 17 February 2006. Retrieved 31 August 2007.
- Farr, Florence; Yeats, W. B.; Shaw, G.B. (1971). Clifford Bax (ed.). Florence Farr, Bernard Shaw and W. B. Yeats. (Letters). Shannon, Irish University Press. OCLC 148919.
- Gilbert, R. A. (September 1998). The Golden Dawn Scrapbook: The Rise and Fall of a Magical Order. Weiser Books. ISBN 978-1-57863-037-0.
- Greer, Mary K. (1996). Women of the Golden Dawn: Rebels and Priestesses. Park Street Press. ISBN 978-0-89281-607-1.
- Howe, Ellic (1972). Magicians of the Golden Dawn: A Documentary History of a Magical Order, 1887-1923. Red Wheel Weiser. ISBN 978-0-87728-369-0.
- Jayawardena, Kumari (1995). The White Woman's Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia During British Rule. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-91105-4.
- Johnson, Josephine (1975). Florence Farr: Bernard Shaw's New Woman. Colin Smythe. ISBN 978-0-901072-15-3.
- King, Francis (1989). Modern Ritual Magic: The Rise of Western Occultism. ISBN 978-1-85327-032-1.
- King, Francis (1977). The Magical World of Aleister Crowley. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. ISBN 978-0-297-77423-5.
- Litz, A. Walton (1996). "Florence Farr: A Transitional Woman". In Maria DiBattista & Lucy McDiarmid (eds.). High and Low Moderns: Literature and Culture, 1889-1939. Oxford University Press, USA. ISBN 978-0-19-508266-1.
- Peters, Margot (1980). Bernard Shaw and the Actresses. Doubleday & Co. ISBN 0-385-12051-6.
- Tully, Caroline (2009). "Florence and the Mummy". Women's Voices in Magic. Megalithica Books. pp. 15–243.
- Wilson, Colin (2005). Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast. Aeon Books. ISBN 978-1-904658-27-6.
- Yeats, William Butler (1996). "All Souls' Night". In Richard J. Finneran (ed.). The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (2nd ed.). Scribner. p. 132. ISBN 978-0-684-80731-7.
External links
- Works by or about Florence Farr at Internet Archive
- Florence Farr's papers at Senate House Library, University of London
- Excerpts from M.K. Greer's Women of the Golden Dawn
- The National Library of Ireland's exhibition on Yeats features much about their collaboration and Farr's own Psaltery. Archived 3 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- Biography at the Golden Dawn