20 Things You Should Know About Bram Stoker's Wife

Florence Stoker (2 November 1880)

Who was Bram Stoker's wife? Why should we care about her? Stoker wrote Dracula, surely that makes him the interesting one. Nope.

1. Mrs. Stoker's friends called her Florrie.
2. Florrie's middle names were: Anne Lemon. How can we not love someone named for such a delightful citrus fruit?
3. Florrie was born Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe, the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe of 1 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, and wife Phillippa Anne Marshall.
4. Florrie's family were poor Irish Protestants.

   

   Sketch of Florrie
   by Oscar Wilde

5. Florrie was Oscar Wilde's first love, and he was hers. She never really got over him.
6. Florrie had to break up with Wilde when she got engaged to Stoker.
7. Joseph Pearce writes that: "In Wilde's art, Florence Balcombe's absence had proved far more potent than her presence. He was fully aware of the paradox and learned the lesson it taught. Thereafter, the paradox of pain and the creativity of sorrow would permeate his life and his work."
8. Florrie got married in Dublin in 1878.
9. One of the things that Stoker and Henry Irving first bonded over was the fact they had both married women named "Florence."
10. Their only child was born in 1879.
11. After the birth of their son, Florrie's marriage to Stoker was platonic.
12. To Bernard Partridge George du Maurier once said that the three most beautiful women he had seen were Mrs. Stillman, Mrs. John Hare, and Mrs. Bram Stoker.
13. Florrie wanted to be an actress.
14. There's evidence that Florrie made a stage debut 3 January 1881 because of a letter that Oscar wrote to Ellen Terry: "I send you some flowers - two crowns. Will you accept one of them, whichever you think will suit you best. The other - don't think me treacherous, Nellie - but the other please give to Florrie from yourself. I should like to think that she was wearing something of mine the first night she comes on the stage, that anything of mine should touch her. Of course if you think - but you won't think she will suspect? How could she? She thinks I never loved her, thinks I forget. My God how could I!"
15. That year, the census recorded Florrie's occupation as an "artist." 
16. Sadly, there's no evidence (that I can find) that Florrie continued acting, nor of any other art that she might have created.
    
17. Florrie did, however, keep a painting Wilde made for her for the rest of her life, and always referred to him as "Poor O."
18. The accomplishment history remembers her for was her attempt to destroy every copy of the film Nosferatu (1922) because it violate her copyright on the Dracula franchise.
19. Florrie outlived her husband by 25 years, and wanted her ashes mixed with those of her husband. They weren't.
20. When Florrie's son died in 1961, his ashes were added to his father's urn. Creepy?

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The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks

The Lyceum Theatre, in the 1890s, was best known for its stars: Ellen Terry and Henry Irving. Irving cultivated a reputation for himself as a serious professional. He purchased the theatre in 1878 and was the first actor ever knighted for his professional achievements in the performing arts. Irving's earnest reputation, however, was largely due to the earnest devotion of his manager, Bram Stoker, who, through Irving's success, also managed to maintain a place at the top of London Society. Although, Irving was wholeheartedly devoted to raising the status of the performing arts among his contemporaries, Stoker really did all of the earnest business work, leaving Terry free to slide down the bannister from her dressing room, when making an entrance, and Irving free to contemplate other things, like beefsteak!

The Lyceum was the centre of Irving's highly successful career, but was also a place where he gathered people to eat a lot of beef (and drink a lot of wine). The present-day Beefsteak Club is (intentionally?) located on Irving Street in London. In the 1890s, Irving had his Beefsteak Room behind the stage of the Lyceum theatre. He decorated it in the most elaborate gothic fashion and used it to hold star-studded events. Stoker organized most of these events, but Irving and Terry presided over them, "as if they were hosting a royal court."

With help from his friends, 18th-century actor, Richard Estcourt, established the first Beefsteak Club in 1705, but this club lasted less than ten years. Twenty years later, another actor, John Rich, established the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks. The Society was a big success within the performing arts community and was joined by Samuel Johnson in 1780. The Prince of Wales even joined in 1785. Members wore a blue coat and buff waistcoat with brass buttons, with a gridiron motif that read "Beef and liberty." And yes, together they sat around eating steak and potatoes. The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks met regularly until 1867.

Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, courtesy of "Supersizers Go: Regency"

The Sublime Society of Beefsteaks was revived as the Beefsteak Club in 1876. Initially, organizers wanted to rent the room at the Lyceum, but didn't get the chance, until Irving bought the Lyceum two years later. Beefsteakers were and are an odd bunch. Two features of the club were, and are, that all members and guests sit together at a single long table, and that by tradition the club steward and the waiters are all addressed as "Charles."

Curiously, the beefsteak was (and maybe still is) seen as a symbol of patriotic Whig concepts of liberty and prosperity. The beefsteak fit with Irving's vision for the Lyceum, where he hoped to establish a place of cultural importance that would firmly legitimize theatre as an art form. I suspect he was more fond of the famous historic figures, who once belonged to the Sublime Society of Beefsteaks, than he was of Whig concepts of anything, especially because he and Stoker established a strong relationship between the theatre and Tory Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone.

Though I'm not sure if Gladstone ever dined there, Irving liked to host intellectual celebrities, like Franz Lizst, as well as travelling celebrities and other actors, which is where and how the Actor's Benevolent Fund was formed.

In most accounts, Irving's Beefsteak Room is described in the most respectable of Victorian terms, but Irving had the occasional wild rumpus in this well-appointed room behind the stage in his theatre. Oscar Wilde's brother partook of some shenanigans there. And, sometimes, the police even had to break up a few ruckuses at the door. If not through having a good time with Beefeaters, I think Irving achieved his goals (with Stoker's help) through the Lyceum theatre.

As I already mentioned, Irving was knighted in 1895, the first ever accorded an actor. He was also the recipient of honorary degrees from the universities of Dublin (LL.D 1892), Cambridge (Litt.D 1898), and Glasgow (LL.D 1899). He also received the Komthur Cross, 2nd class, of the Saxe-Ernestine House Order of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Saxe-Meiningen.

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Poor O

One of the most romanticized stories of Oscar Wilde's life is that of his relationship with Bram Stoker's wife, whose maiden name was Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe. The story goes like this: Wilde and the future Mrs. Stoker were sweethearts; Wilde's mother asked Stoker to tutor Wilde in his studies at Trinity college; Stoker stole Wilde's girlfriend; brought her to London; and ran the most successful theatre in town, while Wilde wrote plays and married someone else, then started having sex with men.

Some suppose that Wilde began writing plays to renew Mrs. Stoker's affection for him because he knew she fancied herself an actress Sadly, so many pieces of the puzzle are missing, but I don't like how contemporary scholars demonize poor Florrie. Just now, I read in Barbara Belford's book that:

At the time of Wilde's trials in 1895, Florence was vainly preoccupied; her portrait by Walter Frederick Oscborne, a well-known Dublin artist, was shown at the Royal Academy's summer exhibition. "One of the very best portraits of the year, if not really the best,"The Atheneaum noted, "is that of Mrs. Bram Stoker, sitting upon a white bearskin, with a warm grey background and mainly in half-tone." Draped in fur, Florence looks positively feral. Stoker accepted congratulations all around: for Irving, for his brother, for his wife. For Wilde there was only silence.

Some details that I think are important, when we judge Mrs. Stoker on her treatment of Wilde, are:

• She was only seventeen, when both Wilde and Stoker were courting her. Her family was dirt poor and she had no dowry. Wilde was still in college and Stoker was 28, with a steady job that paid good money. I've heard speculation that her parents probably pressured her to marry Stoker.
• The Stokers' marriage was passionless, platonic basically. The couple stopped having sex when their son was born. Mrs. Stoker had her own room, which her friends claim, was adorned with mementos of "Poor O." She called him "Poor O," acknowledging the impropriety of a married woman thinking of another man. 
• We know, through a letter that Wilde wrote to their mutual friend, Ellen Terry, that Wilde was very covert in communicating with Mrs. Stoker, not wanting to cause any unhappiness, embarrassment or scandal, as much as he was still in love with her.
• The last written evidence of communication between the two was in 1893.
• The night before his trials began, Wilde considered having his own portrait done.
• Their friends speculated that if Wilde had married Mrs. Stoker, instead of Constance Wilde, he might not have got into any of the trouble that he did, fooling around with men.

I'm certainly not going to speculate or comment on that last point, except to say that I think that it acknowles that Wilde and Mrs. Stoker would have been a love match. I accept the premise that Mrs. Stoker was a vain social climber, but so was Wilde and nothing is ever that simple. Remember, Wilde almost had his portrait painted the night before he went to trial! It is a picture worth a million pounds!

I'll just linger a moment longer to imagine there is any significant correlation between the timing of Mrs. Stoker's portrait and the trials of Oscar Wilde. In today's world, bad news means high profits for the cosmetics industry; lipstick sales go through the roof, when people are depressed. Lipstick is an easy way for one to feel better about oneself, especially if you are a girl. If Mrs. Stoker was sad, don't you think having a portrait done for the Royal Academy's summer exhibition would cheer her up? I think it would.

I think it's possible that Poor Florrie's poor heart was breaking for Poor O and she had no way of expressing it. The trials themselves were an example of what could happen when one engaged in a love that dare not speak its name.

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"Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

The man believed to have uttered the phrase: "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) was considered, by many of his British contemporaries, to be the greatest explorer of Africa. On 26 June 1890, Bram Stoker was invited to a dinner by Edward Marston (his publisher) in honour of Stanley. For Bram, this was a night to remember. His recollections of the evening and of Stanley provide valuable insight into Bram and his perception of the world.

Bram's father believed his sons fortunes could lie in the exploration of Africa. Abraham Stoker Sr. was something of a pencil pusher and pushover. He didn't want his sons to grow up like him and the exploration of Africa was one of the many thing he dreamed of them doing. Bram never went to Africa, but his father's dreams probably put the continent somewhere on the list of places he would like to go.

The possibility of going to Africa crops up in Bram's reminiscence of the June 26th dinner, as does the way that he saw life and death in people that he met. Of that night, Bram wrote:

The dinner given to Stanley by Edward Marston, the publisher, on the eve of bringing out Stanley's great book, In Darkest Africa June 26, 1890 was a memorable affair. Marston had then published two books of mine, Under the Sunset, and the little book on America, and as "one of his authors " I was a guest at the dinner. Irving was asked, but he could not go as he was then out of town on a short holiday, previous to commencing an engagement of two weeks at the Grand Theatre, Islington, whilst the Lyceum was occupied by Mr. Augustin Daly's company from New York. 

At the dinner I sat at an inside corner close to Sir Harry (then Mr.) Johnston, the explorer and administrator, and to Paul B. du Chaillu, the African explorer who had discovered gorillas. I had met both these gentlemen before ; the first in London several times ; the latter in New York, in December 1884, in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Tailer, who that night were entertaining Irving and Ellen Terry. There we had sat together at supper and he had told me much of his African experience and of his adventures with gorillas. I had of course read his books, but it was interesting to hear the stories under the magic of the adventurer's own voice and in his characteristic semi- French intonation. 

In the course of conversation he had said to me something which I never have forgotten it spoke volumes : "When I was young nothing would keep me of out Africa. Now nothing would make me go there !" 

In reply to the toast of his health, Stanley spoke well and said some very interesting things : "In my book that is coming out I have said as little as possible about Emin Pasha. He was to me a study of character. I never met the same kind of character." Again : "I have not gone into details of the forest march and return to the sea. It was too dreary and too horrible. It will require years of time to be able to think of its picturesque side." 

At that time Stanley looked dreadfully worn, and much older than when I had seen him last. The six years had more than their tally of wear for him, and had multiplied themselves. He was darker of skin than ever ; and this was emphasised by the whitening of his hair. He was then under fifty years of age, but he looked nearer to eighty than fifty. His face had become more set and drawn had more of that look of slight distortion which comes with suffering and over-long anxiety. There were times when he looked more like a dead man than a living one. Truly the wilderness had revenged upon him the exposal of its mysteries.

Edward Marston, Harry Johnston, Paul B. du Chaillu, Ellen Terry... As you can see by this excerpt, Bram liked name-dropping. Bram uses Stanley's view to justify not going to Africa. The darkening of Stanley's skin could be a nod to a commonly held belief in environmental determinism. Moreover, this passage also recalls Bram's depictions of Dracula and how his age changed the more he fed.

In Stanley's defense, I've placed a photograph of him from 1890, the year of that dinner. His hair certainly is much whiter than pictured above, but he doesn't look that much older!