Remembering Noel Stoker

Bram and Florence moved from Dublin to London in 1878. Noel was born the following year. He attended Summer Fields, Winchester College and New College, Oxford. The memoir associates his departure from Oxford with the pressure on the family’s finances as the Lyceum’s fortunes declined.

Noel trained as a chartered accountant and became a partner in Williams Stoker & Co. His grandson remembers a successful practice and an individual approach to choosing articled clerks: an examination based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Wrong Box. This is the memoir’s account of his working life.

The memoir recalls the grandparents taking responsibility for their two young grandsons’ upbringing and education, supporting them with affection and generosity. Both boys followed Noel to Winchester.

Richard Noel Dobbs summed up the connection between the family’s literary inheritance and his own schooling: “I always said I was educated thanks to Dracula.” The phrase expresses a grandson’s gratitude; it is not a financial account of particular royalties.

The memoir also traces a continuing family connection with the Worshipful Company of Skinners. Richard Noel Dobbs recalls that Bram helped arrange Noel’s apprenticeship to the Company, where he enjoyed dining for fifty years. Both grandsons, Richard Noel and Jamie, later became Skinners; Richard Noel served as Master in 1989–90.

This account preserves a family connection across generations, alongside the shared experience of education at Winchester. The details here are drawn from Richard Noel Dobbs’s recollections of 1 May 2020.

During the Second World War, the boys lived with their grandmother Neelie in Seaview on the Isle of Wight. The memoir remembers the indoor air-raid shelter, the beach and a childhood protected by their grandparents. Noel had moved his office out of London and visited at weekends.

Seaview remained a place for family holidays after the war. Those memories bring the history beyond Bram’s lifetime and show how his son’s care shaped another generation.

Noel loved books, read French fluently and collected used railway tickets in specially made cabinets. His grandson remembers him reading Walter Scott aloud and taking him by overnight train to Scotland.

On that journey, Richard Noel Dobbs thought the cloak keeping him warm had belonged to Bram. His wording is tentative: “I think he gave me Bram’s cloak”. The recollection is preserved as a possible family association, not a verified identification of a surviving object.

Another interest was naval history. His grandson recalls that Noel researched ships’ logs at the Records Office, probably between the wars, typed up his findings and kept them in loose-leaf files. The memoir gives no further details about the research.

The portrait is affectionate and particular: a tall, slender man, a habitual reader, fond of dogs and railways, who continued working into old age. The author remembers his calmness during poor health and his kindness towards the boys.

According to his grandson Richard Noel Dobbs, Noel apparently boycotted The Times because it had published a poor review of Dracula. He instead read the Daily Telegraph and did its crossword. This is a family recollection; the memoir does not identify the review.

The memoir also offers interpretations of family relationships before the author’s own childhood. These are valuable as family memory, but should not be confused with contemporary evidence about Bram, Florence or Henry Irving.

Source: Richard Noel Dobbs, Memories of Irving Noel Thornley Stoker and his wife Neelie, dated 1 May 2020, supplied to the Estate. This is an edited selection and original summary, rather than publication of the complete family document. The move to London is dated here to 1878, as confirmed by the Estate.

Noel’s family profile · Bram and the sea · Family objects · Florence Stoker