Lilian Hall-Davis in Hitchin? A continuing mystery

Almost two years ago I wrote a post about an exhibition of Gerard Ceunis’ paintings in Hitchin, probably in the 1950s, which included a portrait of the English silent film star, Lilian Hall-Davis, who tragically took her own life in 1933. Shortly afterwards, a monochrome reproduction of the portrait was included in a package of items kindly sent to me from Belgium by the artist’s great niece, Elise De Cuyper.

Portrait of Lilian Hall-Davis by Gerard Ceunis

I already knew that the Belgian poet and novelist Johan Daisne (the pen name of Herman Thiery, 1912 – 1978), who had visited the Ceunis family at their home in Gosmore Road, Hitchin, in the summer of 1929 and developed a lifelong, unrequited passion for Gerard and Alice’s daughter Vanna, was also somewhat obsessed with Lilian Hall-Davis. Together with Vanna, and a number of idolised and idealised women, she had featured in his novels Lago Maggiore and Six Dominoes for Women.

Johan Daisne (via en.wikipedia.org)

Later, thanks to Johan Vanhecke’s comprehensive biography of Daisne, I learned more about the latter’s lifelong fascination with Hall-Davis. Johan also kindly sent me some extracts from Daisne’s book Filmathiek, a collection of his writings on cinema, which included further information, as well as some of the poems that Daisne had written about the actress. In that post, I recounted the astonishing story of how Daisne had written an article about Hall-Davis in a Belgian newspaper, which Gerard Ceunis came across purely by accident, after a copy was used to wrap an object sent to him by a shop in Ghent, and how Ceunis then wrote to Daisne to inform him  that the film star’s only son, Grosvenor Pemberton, was actually a neighbour and friend of the Ceunis family in Hitchin. Lilian Hall-Davis had married fellow actor Walter Icke Pemberton in 1918 and their son Grosvenor Charles was born in 1919. The Pemberton family’s origins were in Shropshire, and Grosvenor was apparently named after his grandfather Grosvenor Hooke Pemberton.

Apparently, Grosvenor Pemberton then sent Daisne some information about his late mother which the latter planned to include in a book about her, which sadly he never quite got around to writing. The most surprising piece of information that Daisne gleaned from these communications was that, according to him, Lilian Hall-Davis had actually been living in Hitchin, close to the Ceunis home, when he visited in 1929. In Daisne’s words:

She spent the last years of her life in Hitchin; she was there that time when I stayed at my friends’ villa; as I roamed around Hitchin, beside her garden hedge, perhaps under her weary gaze.

My own research has failed to find any evidence to confirm that Lilian Hall-Davis ever lived in Hitchin. The only Hertfordshire address I’ve been able to find for her is a cottage that she once owned in the village of Amwell, near Ware, some 20 miles from Hitchin. Nevertheless, I remain intrigued by the possibility that she lived here and retain a hope that, somehow, it might turn out to be true.

Searching for information on Ancestry and other websites, I discovered that Grosvenor Pemberton lived at 2 Waltham Villas, which the records describe as being on St Johns Road in Hitchin, but which is actually on the corner of that road and what is now Eynsford Court. It’s just a short walk from there to ‘Salve’, the former home of Gerard Ceunis, and would have been even quicker before the Park Way bypass and Three Moorhens roundabout sliced through the latter’s former garden.

2 Waltham Villas, Hitchin (via google.co.uk/maps)

According to the records I’ve found, Grosvenor Charles Pemberton, then 23 and serving with the Royal Artillery, married Cynthia Joyce Orson, 22, who was working at a ‘radio works’ and living with her parents at 2 Waltham Villas, at Hitchin Register Office on 6^th December 1942.  Cynthia’s father William Harold Orson was a clerk with the Post Office.

I’ve also found evidence that Grosvenor and Cynthia Pemberton had a son, Berkeley William Howard Pemberton, who was born at 2 Waltham Villas on 27th November 1943. I wonder if the name ‘Berkeley’ was another Pemberton family throwback? Berkeley Pemberton seems to have been married twice. In 1971 he married Loraine Batchelor in Hampstead, and in 1979 he married Cynthia Rose Newman at Hitchin Register Office. Both bride and groom were said to have had their previous marriages dissolved. On both occasions, Berkeley Pemberton is described as a ‘publishing executive’. His second wife, Cynthia, is described as a ‘circulation manager (publishing)’, so one assumes that they met through their work. In both 1971 and 1979 Berkeley was living at the Pemberton family home at 2 Waltham Villas in Hitchin.

Grosvenor Pemberton died in 1973 and his wife Cynthia in 1991, both in Hitchin. Coincidentally, the other Cynthia Pemberton, Berkeley’s second wife, also died in 1991, but that was in Ermine, Lincolnshire. Despite extensive searches, I’ve found no further information about Berkeley himself, either about his professional life, or about his family: for example, did he and Cynthia, or he and his first wife, Loraine, have any children, and if so, are they (or perhaps Berkeley himself) still living? I suppose it’s possible that Berkeley discarded his rather unusual first name and used a different name in his professional life?

I would be very interested to hear from anyone with any information about or memories of the Pemberton family in Hitchin, and particularly from anyone who can help resolve the mystery as to whether Grosvenor’s mother, the tragic and enigmatic silent film star, Lilian Hall-Davis, ever lived in the town.