Lewis Waller and Florence West, a couple of Victorian actors

 

I discovered the show business couple of Florence West and Lewis Waller thanks to a postcard posted on Twitter by MissHistoryGal.  Starting their careers a little earlier than the Edwardian actors I usually research I hadn’t been aware of their interesting lives.

Florence Isabella Brandon was born in Chiswick in December 1859, the eldest daughter of Horatio Brandon a successful solicitor. She had 6 sisters and 2 brothers. She was a keen amateur actress who decided to write to the famous comedian J L Toole to ask for employment with his theatrical company. Having convinced him that she was a serious actress he gave her a trial. Using the stage name of Florence West, she can be found on the billboards of Mr Toole’s company in London and touring England in 1882. In that same year she had quietly married William Waller Lewis, also a keen amateur actor. When a fellow cast member fell ill, she suggested her husband take the part. For several years, Florence continued using the stage name Florence West, perhaps not wanting to affect the matinee idol image which Lewis had acquired along with a host of young female fans. However they were frequently partners on stage.

Lewis was born William Waller Lewis in Bilbao Spain. His father William James Lewis was English, his mother Carlotta Vyse, Spanish. For 5 years he was employed in the city of London, but he always wanted to use, “his fine rich voice,” on stage. His romantic good looks soon made him popular in swashbuckling roles. Florence’s sister, (Constance) Margaret, who as Mrs Clement Scott became theatre critic of the John Bull magazine, described Lewis thus,

“He lived in Cloudland as an enthusiast, a romanticist, a bit of a Don Quixote, a splendid, honest, straightforward, virile man.”

Harry Esmond described Waller’s school of plays as, “The Sword and Caper drama.”

In the mid-1890s he was actor/manager of the Royal Haymarket Theatre and he later impressed with his Shakespearian characters.

The couple had two children, Edmund Lewis Waller born in 1884 who followed his father on stage and Nancy Waller born in 1896. 

In the 1890s as Mrs Lewis Waller, Florence started her own touring company of actors.  In 1904, Florence objected strongly to, “the advertisement of soaps and corsets,” between acts on the screened stage. “I object to half-dressed people being thrown on the screen.”  Such was her influence that the practice stopped during her performances. One of the actresses Florence employed was Ethel Warwick, a famous artists’ model. Ethel later married Edmund Waller Lewis but sadly the marriage ended in divorce.

Both Florence and Lewis died young, Florence, aged 53, in 1912, while her husband was in New York and Lewis of pneumonia, aged 55, in 1915 after a long tour of America, Canada and Australia, with his daughter Nancy by his side.