page_title: Florence Farr
section_title: Later life
hierarchical_section_title: Florence Farr / Later life
caption_attribution_description: Español: Florence Farr's last letter to W.B. Yeats
context_page_description: Florence Beatrice Emery Farr 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 modern woman".
context_section_description: After Farr severed her association with the Golden Dawn she joined the Theosophical Society of London, and went on to write and produce (with Olivia Shakespear) two Egyptian-themed plays, The Shrine of the Golden Hawk and The Beloved of Hathor. Farr was also involved in the performance, direction and musical composition of a number of plays for the Lyceum, Court and New Century Theatres in London, between 1902 and 1906. Besides collaborating with Yeats and his Abbey Theatre, Farr gave frequent performances of his poetry, which she set to the music of her psaltery. 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."
  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.
  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."
caption: Farr's last letter to Yeats
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