Lady Florence Dixie
Journalist, Novelist, Playwright & Poet | 1818-1858
Florence Dixie (1855-1905), née Douglas, was an extraordinarily active writer. Born in Belgravia, she was the youngest, along with her twin, of seven children to Archibald William, 8th Marquis of Queensberry (1818-58) and Caroline Margaret Douglas, née Clayton (1821 – 1904). Her father died, by his own gunshot, when Dixie was three. Her brother, John Sholto, became 9th Marquis (remembered for the ‘Queensberry rules’); his son, Alfred Douglas, was Oscar Wilde’s ‘Bosie’. In 1861 Caroline Douglas converted to Catholicism, leading to threats to remove the children; she fled with the youngest three to France, where they lived for two years. Dixie’s later childhood was spent between Scotland, Belgravia and her grandparents’ ‘Harleyford’, where guests included Disraeli. Educated at convent school, Dixie would subsequently write for the Agnostic Journal and correspond with Darwin. A celebrated beauty, in 1875 she married Sir Alexander ‘Beau’ Dixie (1851 – 1924); his gambling caused the loss of their estate, Bosworth. With their sons, Sir George Douglas (1876 - 1948) and Albert Edward Wolston (1878 – 1940), the Dixies moved to Windsor and then to the Douglas estates in Annandale.
Dixie wrote novels for children and adults, travel books, drama and poetry and, as ‘Zululani’, was war correspondent in South Africa for the Morning Post. Across Patagonia (1880) describes a personal journey through lyrical, engaged sketches. The Stevensonian Songs of a Child (1902) sits alongside writing for children, like the ideologically-driven novel The Young Castaways (1899) and Utopian Little Cherie (1901). The Story of Ijaijn (1902) explores the confusing nature of religious doctrine for children and the play Isola (1904) suggests: ‘nothing Natural can be aught but right, for it is the offspring of Nature, the only true God’. Izra (1905) celebrates the ‘right to think’. Dixie’s own free-thinking politics led to an assassination attempt on her life.
Reviewing Izra, The Scotsman classed Dixie as ‘emancipated’, with ‘a reputation for unconventionality’: ‘wherever, in any part of the world, there are social offenders […] she’s got ‘em on the list’. It is a fair comment. She successfully canvassed for the repatriation of Cetewayo after the Zulu war. She wrote and spoke in favour of Home Rule for Scotland and Ireland, for animal rights – as in The Westminster Review (1892) – and women’s rights, in the Daily Chronicle (1891) and the fictional Gloriana and Aniwee (both 1890). In short Dixie was, as Frank Miller described her, a ‘restless intellect’: a major, spirited, writer.
Contributed by Valentina Bold.
Bibliography
Valentina Bold, “A Restless Intellect,” The Bottle Imp: A Scottish Studies Ezine 28 (2021).
Frank Miller, The Poets of Dumfriesshire (Glasgow: James Maclehose, 1910), pp.300-01.
Brian Roberts, The Mad Bad Line. The Family of Lord Alfred Douglas (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1981).