Beatrice Irwin (July 16, 1877, Dagshai, India - March 20, 1953, San Diego, California,) was an actress, poet, designer and promoter of the Baháʼí Faith. Born Alice Beatrice Simpson, she took Beatrice Irwin as her stage name and later adopted it as her real name.
After her family moved to Scotland and then to England, she attended Cheltenham Ladies' College where she graduated 1895 and took the Associate in Arts test in which she placed 5th for that year. She went on through a series of careers starting with being an actor in stage theatre which took her to Cape Colony, as it was known then, touring America, briefly in the then young country of Australia, and performed in Shanghai. Next she published a book of poetry and some poems were published in different venues. Neither careers were very successful but some of her work was considered pioneering particularly when she blended them with an intentional use of colored illumination. She met, admired, and was encouraged by, the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Having had some contact with theosophists before 1910 she then also encountered a Sufi leader, Inayat Khan, and then head of the Baháʼí Faith, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá, a religion she increasingly identified with. Her success with color led to a specialization and burgeoning career she named as an Illuminating Specialist including patenting a specific lighting fixture and writing a text The New Science of Colour partly relating to color psychology. After her Baháʼí pilgrimage in 1930 to see then head of the religion Shoghi Effendi, and his initiation of plans to implement the Tablets of the Divine Plan by ʻAbdu'l-Bahá for which she had already shown actions, she devoted much of her later years to promoting the religion in Central and then South America before going on to Mallorca in her last years before returning to San Diego where she died. While she was increasingly occupied with those endeavors, her work in color, particularly from the New Science of Colour, was taken in with great interest by some Australian artists - Roy de Maistre and most particularly Grace Cossington Smith - though largely from a theosophist understanding.
Biography
Early life Beatrice Irwin's maternal grandfather John Hall married Lucy Campbell Hackshaw in 1847. Hall was in the British Army and was a freemason. Their youngest daughter Alice, was born 1852 in what was then called Bombay, India, and she grew up and married Anglican minister Rev. William Simpson, then serving in India, in 1873. Simpson was born in Dublin perhaps 1829 and was thus over 20 years older than Alice. After several previous placements as a minister Simpson applied to serve in India in 1857. Together they served in several locations ultimately in Dagshai, India, in the far north in the border range of mountains before the Himalaya where both daughters were born. This was during the British Raj amidst the period of the Great Famine of 1876–1878 which began in regions to the south and west and spread north. Their second daughter, Alice Beatrice Simpson, later known as Beatrice Irwin, was baptized in nearby Kasauli in August, 1877, born July 16. Around the time of her birth William was appointed to serve in Roorkee, out of the foothills along the Himalayas and then in 1879 he retired though it is not clear where the family lived until they are known in Scotland in 1886 towards the end of the Victorian era with the birth of their last child Arthur John Simpson. In 1888 William came out of retirement to serve a church near Glasgow. In the winter holidays of 1891 they and Lucy Hall were all living in Glasgow. About then Alice Beatrice met Ellen Terry who recommended she consider the theatre after finishing her schooling.
William Simpson may have died . The family then moved to London and the sisters finished their education at Cheltenham Ladies' College, and lived on investments trusts for the ladies who then bought a house together and all the family lived there.
Mother Alice became a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn on 12 July 1895, and advanced a degree in 1899, followed by elder daughter Elaine in 1897 and Beatrice in 1899. Mother Alice met Aleister Crowley after his initiation in 1898. The organization was about to splinter and Crowley's actions involved mother and daughter Elaine, sister to Beatrice, and various expulsions took place in 1900 following which daughter Elaine was to be wed but their communications continued between them.
Meanwhile Beatrice had finished her education at Cheltenham by passing the "Senior Local, or A.A. Examination" for Oxford University held at Cheltenham when she was about 18 years old, which granted her the official title of Associate in Arts from Oxford University, but which was not a degree directly based on attending it. see also In fact of those who took the exam by the fall of 1895 she placed 5th overall and 65th in English. It remains unknown if she attended further work possibly with St. Hilda's College; Girton is also mentioned as thought of but not tried. But for 1897 she is remarked to have chosen theatre over further college and picked up the stage name "Beatrice Irwin". Perhaps as a beginning of her career Beatrice is visible with her stage name on a boat trip November 1897 from London to Canada. She had definitely entered theatre productions in England and then went to what was then called Cape Colony, a decade or so before becoming the Union of South Africa, under the productions of Henry Irving and Ellen Terry in some comedies and visible there as early as April, 1898, on into November with a good review in August in the play "The Importance of Being Earnest".
Theatre Irwin was returned to London by June 1899 in a theatre production. In October she was in the Irving-Terry theatre company from London coming to New York, during the presidency of William McKinley, (before his re-election and subsequent assassination,) performing with a set of plays. Bram Stoker was the company manager. Most of the company and material came over on the steamer Marquette shipping with sets for the suite of plays while a few came on the RMS Etruria. As the company productions moved to Washington, D.C., there were brief positive statements of Irwin's acting. The company continued performances touring into May, 1900.
While Irwin was touring America her sister and family moved to Hong Kong. By October in America the company had returned to London and Irwin was acting in another play, "Mrs Dane's Defence” in Wyndham's Theatre. Reviews were somewhat mixed: "Good acting one expects to find at Mr. Wyndham's theatre; and finds. Saving the impossible Scotch accent of Miss Beatrice Irwin, which is less characteristic of Miss Janet Colquhoun's reputed race than her general air of sense and steadiness,…" though her acting was again positively commented on as well. Irwin was also in another play "Still Waters Run Deep" in December. As the Victorian era ended with the death of Queen Victoria and the Edwardian era began, Irwin was in "Mrs. Dane's Defence" staged in London through May, 1901.
Many of the Simpson family including Beatrice gathered for the winter of 1901 in London, The play was then staged in New York but Irwin did not perform.
In February, 1902, Irwin was in another London play "The New Clown” in London with positive comments of her acting, though by March she was not in the play. She also returned to "Mrs. Dane's Defence" for performances. In July Irwin was noted in a forthcoming work "There's Many a Slip" to be produced by Charles Frohman coming from London to New York to start touring. The play had been staged in London - at the Haymarket Theatre - and there was a picture published of the play including Irwin in the Garrick Theatre. Irwin arrived in America on the SS Philadelphia (as it was called then) in late August. The play continued to make news in September partly with notice of the debut of the Earl of Rosslyn as an actor
with positive comment of Irwin's acting by Kate Carew and others. And there were other plays of the troupe.
In mid-October came news of Irwin's engagement to James Francis Harry St Clair-Erskine, that Earl of Rosslyn. Early coverage of the betrothal noted Beatrice Irwin was her stage name and her father was the former Rev. William Simpson of Scotland. Rumors of another suitor who left the play at the time also circulated. News of the betrothal was widespread,
and a reception was held. Another play of the time was "His excellency the Governor”. The troupe continued their tour though by November the Earl had left, while praise for the play and positive comment of Irwin continued.
There is occasional mention of her as Beatrice Simpson. In December the Earl took a trip on the Etruria from Liverpool back to New York at which time he was looking for another play to be in and said the betrothal was not firm. Meanwhile Beatrice's sister Elaine and her family moved to Shanghai during the year.
In January 1903 Irwin and company returned to New York with the next play - "The Unforeseen” - as part of the Empire Theatre Company, which again Kate Carew liked but was not overly impressed by, though it got a standing ovation, while the company continued touring widely. But news comes in mid-February Irwin resigned from the company and joined a company established by her beau, sometimes it is even said husband, and the first play is "The Young Miss Pettifer”.
The company made it into Canada and again Irwin was pictured in the newspaper. Some newspapers were still taking note of the stage name and family. However by mid-March she has declined the betrothal. She immediately left the company and sailed to England/Europe actually leaving just after mid-March, though he soon followed,
while word of the engagement was still spreading west.
Come August Irwin returned from Europe now in another play “The Admirable Crichton”. There was a break and then the return of Irwin in mid-October, and production of the play resumed. But she fainted twice in productions at the end of 1903 and early 1904, and resigned from the performance in February. In March and April 1905 that Earl announced being wedded to someone else.
Where Irwin was from spring 1904 to spring 1906 is as yet unstated. In later April 1906 Irwin was briefly mentioned seeking information on an Irvine family history from a home in eastern London. In June she is noted in the cast of a jubilee performance for Ellen Terry in London. Again a year passes without detail - until her grandmother Lucy died. News comes that July 1907 of Irwin joining a theatre troupe to perform in the young nation of Australia in the play "Brewster's Millions",