Member-only story
Florence Stoker, the woman who copyrighted Dracula
Florence Anne Lemon Balcombe was one of five daughters born to Lt. Col. James and Phillipa Balcombe in 1858 in Ireland. Even without a dowry, at seventeen years of age, Florence caught the eye of fellow Dubliner, Oscar Wilde.
“She is just 17 with the most perfectly beautiful face I ever saw and not a sixpence of money.”
Considered tall at 5'8", with blue-grey eyes and light brown hair, and a slim physique, Florence fit the Victorian definition of female beauty. But with four other sisters coming of age and no money to entice a spouse, Florence knew she would have to choose a husband wisely. And quickly. In Dublin, there was an infamous hostess: Lady Jane Wilde, writer, feminist, and poet who wrote under the pen name “Speranza.” Florence attended her literary salons and met the elite artists of the day. It was an environment that would change her life
At that time, Lady Jane’s son, Oscar Wilde, was an eligible bachelor, traveling frequently between England and Ireland, occasionally making appearances at his mother’s soirees. During one of these trips home, he met Florence at her parent’s home, and accompanied her to church, later boasting of her beauty in a letter to a friend. Soon, they were attending social events together, either at his mother’s house or in town. Oscar was smitten enough to give her a gold cross with his initials engraved on it. He also sent, “Florrie,” as he called her, a painting he did while vacationing at his family’s summer home in County Mayo with his friend, Frank Miles. Perhaps his time would have been better spent courting her in person rather than sending her watercolors if he was at all serious about marrying Florrie.
However, Florence was seeing another person during their two-year courtship. While Oscar was out of town, there was another, more regular visitor to Lady Jane’s dinner table and literary salon: the drama critic, Bram Stoker. And so it came to pass that nineteen-year-old Florence Balcombe entered into an understanding with thirty-one-year-old Bram Stoker. Bram was, in addition to his writing free theatre reviews, working as a clerk at Dublin Castle.
