Lady Florence Dixie - Marriage and Children

Marriage and Children

On 3 April 1875, at the age of nineteen, Lady Florence Douglas married Sir Alexander Beaumont Churchill Dixie, 11th Baronet (1851–1924), known as "Sir A.B.C.D." or "Beau". His father of the same name, the 10th Baronet, had died in 1872. The young couple lived at first at Bosworth Hall, near Market Bosworth in Leicestershire. They had two sons, George Douglas (born 18 January 1876), who later became the 12th baronet, and Albert Edward Wolstan (born 26 September 1878, died 1940), whose godfather was the Prince of Wales. Sir Alexander Beaumont Dixie was High Sheriff of Leicestershire for 1876. In 1877, Lady Florence published her first book, Abel Avenged: a Dramatic Tragedy.

Husband and wife shared a love of adventure and the outdoor life, but a shadow was cast over them by his habit of gambling for high stakes; eventually his ancestral home and estate at Bosworth were sold to pay his debts. After this, in the 1880s, the couple moved to Glen Stewart, one of the houses on Lord Queensberry's Scottish estate of Kinmount, previously the home of Lady Florence's mother, the Dowager Marchioness.