Florence Farr

Florence Beatrice Emery (née Farr; 7 July 1860 – 29 April 1917) was a British West End leading actress, composer and director. She was also a women's rights activist, journalist, educator, singer, novelist, and leader of the occult order, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. She was a friend and collaborator of Nobel laureate William Butler Yeats, poet Ezra Pound, playwright Oscar Wilde, artists Aubrey Beardsley and Pamela Colman Smith, Masonic scholar Arthur Edward Waite, theatrical producer Annie Horniman, and many other literati of London's fin de siècle era, and even by their standards she was "the bohemian's bohemian". Though not as well known as some of her contemporaries and successors, Farr was a "first-wave" feminist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries; she publicly advocated for suffrage, workplace equality, and equal protection under the law for women, writing a book and many articles in intellectual journals on the rights of "the new woman".

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. 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, who doubtlessly influenced his daughters' attitudes in their later lives.

Her family sent her to school at Cheltenham Ladies' College in 1873. One of her childhood friends was May Morris, the daughter of Jane Morris, the renowned Pre-Raphaelite artist's model, who introduced her to the artistic and intellectual circles of London society. Farr, May Morris and other friends posed for Sir Edward Burne-Jones' Pre-Raphaelite painting "The Golden Stairs" when she was 19 years old. The painting is exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London. From 1877 to 1880, Farr attended Queen's College, the first women's college in England. After leaving college, she took a teaching position, but soon her aspirations turned to theatre.

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 J. L. Toole at Toole's Theatre in King William IV Street near Charing Cross. She adopted the stage name Mary Lester in deference to her father's wishes, who did not want the Farr name associated with the theatre. Her first professional stage appearance was as "Kate Renshaw", a schoolgirl, in Henry J. Byron's Uncle Dick’s Darling.

In 1883 her father died, leaving her a modest inheritance to live on. 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. 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) by her involvement with Yeats in the secret occult society The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn.

Golden Dawn

The Golden Dawn is based on an initiated lodge system similar to that of Freemasonry; however women are admitted on an equal basis with men. Farr was initiated into the Isis-Urania Temple of the Order of the Golden Dawn in London by Yeats in July 1890 taking the magical motto Sapientia Sapienti Dona Data (Latin: "Wisdom is a gift given to the wise"). Annie Horniman was also a member of Isis-Urania Temple, which led to Farr's theatrical collaborations with her and Yeats. Farr became Praemonstratrix of the temple in 1894, taking charge of the educational system, and giving classes in tarot divination, scrying and Enochian magic. Spiritualism and Theosophy were very popular in the late Victorian Era but, unlike some of her contemporaries, Farr practiced magic, including the classic mystical techniques of invocation and evocation.

She published her first philosophical paper, A Short Inquiry concerning the Hermetic Art by a Lover of Philatethes in 1894 This initiative continued with the Thomas Sturge Moore's Literary Theatre Society, again working with Gwendolen Bishop. Farr toured in Great Britain, Europe and America in 1906 and 1907 to take the 'new art' of Irish literary theatre to wider audiences. While in America she met and collaborated with scenic painter and Tarot card artist Pamela Colman Smith, who worked as Farr's stage manager.

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. 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."

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.

Through the Theosophical Society she had met Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, a spiritual teacher and future member of the Tamil parliament in Ceylon. Farr was greatly impressed by his plans for the education of young women in his native country, and she committed herself to helping him when he was ready.

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.

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.

frame|Farr's last letter to Yeats

In his poem "All Souls' Night", Yeats wrote:

Works

Florence Farr (2022) The Egyptian Rituals Holythorn Press ISBN 9781838445317