Ceunis in the kitchen?

On a recent visit to North Hertfordshire Museum, we discovered that Gerard Ceunis has received an important accolade: one of his paintings (of Hitchin market place) has been turned into a souvenir tea towel!

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.

Gerard and Alice Ceunis at ‘Findagrave’

Last week I was contacted by Mike Gallagher who lives in Gosmore and had come across my research on Gerard Ceunis via a local website. Like me, Mike is a keen family historian and, in his words a ‘prolific user’ of the genealogical community website Findagrave, where you can search for the location of your ancestors’ burial. The website relies on individual researchers adding details of graves they have identified, which usually includes copies of inscriptions and photographs of tombstones.

Mike had noticed that there was no entry on Findagrave for either Gerard or Alice Ceunis, and at the same time had seen my photographs on this blog of their grave in the churchyard of St Ippolyts church. He asked whether he might use those photographs to create an entry on the website.

I was only too happy to oblige, and Mike has now created separate entries for Gerard and Alice, marking Gerard’s as belonging to a famous person. You can access the entry for Gerard here and for Alice here.

I’m grateful to Mike for making this information about Gerard and Alice more widely available and for helping to ensure that they are not forgotten.

The shop in the square revisited

This image, a reproduction of a postcard of Hitchin, showing the market square in 1922, was recently posted on a local Facebook group. I was immediately struck by the fact that the distinctive black-and-white design on the frontage of the shop in the centre of the photograph, which would become ‘Maison Gerard’, owned and managed by Gerard and Alice Ceunis, was already in existence at this date.

In the last post, I shared what appears to be the 1921 census record for the Ceunis family, placing them at a farm in Essex, where Gerard (for some reason using the pseudonym Ernest) was working as a groom and Alice as a housekeeper. It seems unlikely that they would have opened their shop in Hitchin within a year of this, and therefore my pet theory that the shop frontage was designed by Gerard is somewhat undermined.

Hitchin market square – with ‘Maison Gerard’ clearly visible – undated but possibly 1950s?

Gerard Ceunis, ‘Hitchin Marketplace’ (North Hertfordshire Museum)

In another earlier post, I shared my discovery of records which tracked Gerard Ceunis’ ownership of various premises in London in the 1920s and early 1930s. In June 1922, he and an erstwhile business partner dissolved their dressmaking concern in Rathbone Place in the West End, while a commercial directory from 1930 mentions Gerard’s ladies’ dress shop in Church Street, Enfield. However, an Enfield electoral register from the same year gives Ceunis’ home address as 7 Market Place, Hitchin – the site of Maison Gerard. By 1932, his home address had changed to ‘Salve’, the house Gerard built for himself and his family on Gosmore Road, Hitchin, though in 1935 he was still on the register in Enfield, suggesting that he kept his shop there even after opening Maison Gerard in Hitchin.

The site of ‘Maison Gerard’ today

From all of this, it seems likely that Gerard opened Maison Gerard in Hitchin market square in the late 1920s, or by 1930 at the latest. If the date on the postcard is correct, it means that the characteristic frontage, which can still be seen on the premises today, must have been erected by a previous owner. I wonder who that was?

A Merry Ceunis Christmas

Wishing all my readers and followers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

As 2021 draws to a close, I’d like to thank all those who have helped with my research this year, and especially Tessa Cathcart, Elsie De Cuyper, Frank Roger, Johan Vanhecke, Kirmen Uribe, Elizabeth Macklin, Jackie Sablan, Rid Burnett and Ros Allwood.

(Thanks also to Elsie De Cuyper for the images in this post)

Portrait of a silent star

In a recent post, I wrote about the intriguing connections between Gerard Ceunis, the Belgian writer Johan Daisne, and the English silent film actress Lilian Hall-Davis. My interest had been sparked by discovering a reference to a portrait of the actress in the catalogue to an exhibition of Ceunis’ paintings, . It was one of only two paintings in the exhibition (the other being a portrait of the artist’s granddaughter Tessa) which was not for sale. Until this weekend, all my efforts to track down a copy of the painting had come to nothing. However, yesterday I received a parcel, kindly sent to me by Elsie De Cuyper, Ceunis’ great niece, which included a number of items relating to the artist – including a monochrome reproduction of the painting:

The more I look at this reproduction, the more I’m struck by the way it conveys the character and charm of its subject, particularly through the eyes, so that one catches a glimpse of what so enchanted the young Johan Daisne. The painting also displays Ceunis’ skill as a portraitist, as is also evident in his paintings of his friend Reginald Hine and of Daisne himself.

I’m still curious to know how it was that Gerard Ceunis came to paint the portrait of the silent film star, who died by her own hand in 1933. From Johan Daisne’s own account, as reproduced in Johan Vanhecke’s biography of the writer, we know that in later life Gerard and Alice Ceunis befriended Hall-Davis’ son Grosvenor Pemberton, who lived near them in Hitchin. But is it true, as Daisne also claims, that Lilian herself had been a neighbour of the Ceunis family, towards the end of her life? I’m still searching for any evidence that would confirm this. In the meantime, it has been useful to learn, from the inscription on the copy of the portrait sent to me by Elsie, that Ceunis painted the portrait in 1958, twenty-five years after the actress’ death. This suggests that it was painted from a photograph, rather than from life, unless of course it was based on a much earlier sketch. The full inscription, when translated into English, reads as follows:

LHD (Lilian Hall-Davis): film actress (London, 1898- 1933)

Painting (copy) by Gerard CEUNIS , 1958

(until her early death she was a neighbour of the Ceunis family in Hitchin, Hertfordshire)

J.D. dedicated his ‘Filmathiek’ to her.

I don’t have any information about the origin of the copy now in my possession. However, the inscription suggests it might be from a book or article about Johan Daisne, since he is referred to here simply by his initials. Filmathiek, published in 1956, is a collection of Daisne’s writings on cinema. Johan Vanhecke has kindly sent me copies of the pages devoted to Lilian Hall-Davis, which include a number of poems dedicated to the actress. I plan to discuss them in a future post.

‘The beauty of never again’: another account of Johan Daisne’s summer in Hitchin

In my last post I drew upon Johan Vanhecke’s biography of the Belgian novelist and poet Johan Daisne as a key resource to explore the intriguing connections between Daisne, Gerard Ceunis and the silent film actress Lillian Hall-Davis. The section of Johan’s book from which I quoted in that post occurs in the chapter entitled ‘Marquita’. The paragraphs immediately preceding the discussion of Lillian Hall-Davis provide a detailed account of the summer vacation that Daisne, whose real name was Herman Thiery, spent as a young man at the home of Gerard and Alice Ceunis in Hitchin, in 1929, and of the writer’s unrequited passion for the Ceunisses’ daughter Vanna. Although the account contains a good deal of information that is already familiar from Daisne’s own writings, and indeed occasionally quotes from those texts, it also contains a number of fresh and interesting insights. Vanhecke’s narrative begins on page 79 of the book (as before, all translations from the biography are my own):

With peace of mind he [i.e. Daisne] goes to England for the summer to spend the holiday in Villa Salve on Gosmore Road in Hitchin in Hertfordshire with Uncle Gerard and Aunt Lisa, the painter Gerard Ceunis and his wife Lieze Vandamme, one of the best friends of Augusta de Taeye from the time when they belonged to the group of friends known as the Flinken. Daisne tells the story of that summer at length in Aurora. Herman had got to know their daughter Vanna a year before on the beach at Knokke ‘and immediately found her very sympathetic and no less interesting. She also liked me from the beginning, I saw it, I don’t know how, in the softening of her sea-grey eyes.’

Johan Daisne (Herman Thiery) as a young man

Gerard Ceunis’ wife’s first name was actually Alice, but according to Daisne, she was known to friends and family as ‘Lisa’, ‘Lize’ or ‘Lieze’. Augusta de Taeye was Daisne’s mother: see earlier posts for further information about Augusta, Alice and the ‘Flinken’. The reference to Daisne and Vanna meeting for the first time on the beach at Knokke, presumably on a return visit to Belgium by the Ceunis family, confirms – and provides a specific location for – the story, related by Daisne in Aurora, which was eventually included in his Zes domino’s voor vrouwen of 1944. Knokke, on the Belgian coast near Zeebrugge, had been a favourite location for outings by the ‘Reiner Leven‘ and ‘Flinken’ groups, which included both Daisne’s parents and Gerard and Alice Ceunis, in their youth. In Aurora, Daisne provides further details of this initial encounter with the girl he there calls ‘Vavane’ [my translation]:

Vavane! I had met her by the sea, in a cloud of English cigarette smoke: a beautiful, tall girl, with a blonde pageboy haircut, a spoiled rich kid, wild and lazy, who wasted her time or frittered it away with horseback riding and dancing during the holidays, and during the year, at her ‘college’, with novels and chocolates. At first sight our characters appeared to be two extremes, but at the same time we resembled each other, because of I know not what warm sympathy.

Photograph of Vanna Ceunis, c.1938, in the Johan Daisne archive at the Letterenhuis, Antwerp

Venhecke’s biographical account continues:

Vanna was born in Ghent and named after a character from a play by Maeterlinck. Her father, Gerard Ceunis, had taken some steps in literature himself, with a play that was published in 1909 with a foreword by André de Ridder, The Captive Princess, and previously appeared in Vlaamsche Arbeid, and with The Simple Room. A Gothic Fairy Tale, which appeared in Flandria’s Novellesbibliotheek a year later. At the start of the First World War, he crossed over to England, since he was a member of the Civil Guard, and set up a second-hand fashion store with his wife. Now that it is running well, he has turned to painting.

As I’ve noted before, the young Gerard Ceunis was a great admirer of the plays of Maurice Maeterlinck and named his daughter after the eponymous heroine of Maeterlinck’s 1902 play ‘Monna Vanna’. One of the frequent criticisms of Ceunis’ own youthful dramatic output was that it was a pale imitation of Maeterlinck’s style. I quoted from one hostile contemporary review of The Captive Princess in this post. I’ve yet to see the text of Ceunis’ Gothic fairy tale, and this is the first time that I’ve seen its full title cited. For more information about Flandria’s Novellesbibliotheek, including Ceunis’ illustrations for its covers, see this post.

I’ve mentioned before that Ceunis’ membership of the Civil Guard appears to be one of the main reasons behind his decision to flee to England, after the German invasion of Belgium in 1914. Vanhecke’s account above contains the first suggestion that I’ve come across that Ceunis sold ‘secondhand’ [tweedehands] clothing in his stores: I think this may be a mistake.

Moreover, the suggestion in the next sentence that Ceunis ‘turned to painting’ following his success in business is perhaps slightly misleading. In fact, this ‘turn’ took place when he was still a young man living in Belgium. After his failure to break through as a poet and playwright, Gerard Ceunis began to study art at the Ghent Academy and exhibited in his home country before emigrating. It is, however, accurate to say that his later success in business gave him the leisure to devote himself, as Christophe Verbruggen puts it, to ‘painting and philosophising’.

Hitchin railway station, c. 1930 (via https://sunnyfield.co.uk)

The next section of Vanhecke’s narrative draws heavily on Daisne’s own accounts, both in Aurora and in his obituary for Gerard Ceunis:

The holiday starts badly, because in London Daisne misses his train connection to Hitchin. He sends a telegram in a combination of French and English, and fortunately finds Vanna on the platform hours later. It will be an adventurous and at times romantic holiday, with all kinds of tours, on foot and by car.

One evening they return so late from a movie (Desert Song, with John Boles) that they hardly dare ring the bell, for fear of Vanna’s mother’s reaction. Seeing a light in the bathroom, they throw pebbles against the window and are let in by Uncle Gerard in his pyjamas. Vanna loves the music of Ravel. In the afternoons they would listen to the Bolero and Daisne decides to translate the Pavane. ‘And on one of the last evenings, alone in the drawing room, we would read on the sofa, both of us wearing plaid. We took turns reading aloud, she English poets, I French, until we wearily let the book rest on our knees, secretly smoked a cigarette together, stared into the fire and finally lost ourselves blushing into each other’s eyes.’ Herman also introduces her to his beloved Les Miserables, which he has of course brought with him, and from Vanna receives Wuthering Heights, which he will not read until two years later.

Herman Thiery is in love and draws positive energy from this. Or as he puts it much later in Lago Maggiore: ‘The air of that summer was so filled with the scents of love that I thought I had found its object in Cousin Vanna’s blonde figure and grey look. And indeed, with the immediate image of that companion in mind, I then began my studies at the [university] with all the power of infatuation.’

But on the morning that he has to leave England, Vanna is sick in bed. He says goodbye to her, but does not dare to kiss her and is quite frustrated about it. Everything else he relates in the story Aurora about Vanna is strictly true (except that she doesn’t have a son but a daughter).

In fact, as well as getting the sex of Vanna’s child wrong, Daisne would (deliberately?) add another fictional detail in Aurora, describing ‘Vavane’s’ husband erroneously as ‘an English earl’.

The next section of the biography includes two stanzas from Daisne’s plaintive poem ‘Vanna’. My attempt at an English translation of the whole poem (which I draw on below) can be found in this post.

After her marriage in 1936 to a London lawyer, as a result of which he writes the poem ‘Salve’, there is no direct contact between Herman and Vanna, but Herman does maintain a correspondence with Aunt Lisa and Uncle Gerard.

When the latter dies in the 1960s, Vanna begins to write to him again, which inspires him to write the poem ‘Vanna’, of which he sends her a French translation in early 1974. He somewhat reproaches her for never expressing herself clearly but confesses that he has always loved her.

We were eighteen, long ago,

and you so tall and blonde and slim.

Sometimes you still write back with love

when I’ve sent you some nice thing.

.

But neither of us ever dared to say…

Shall I do it here and now?

Know this, by my eyes I swear:

I always loved you, to the end.

‘Salve’ today (via rightmove.co.uk)

I’ve yet to see a copy of Daisne’s poem ‘Salve’: in fact, this is the first reference to it that I’d come across, and I’d be very interested to read it. The next section includes an extract from an early version of Aurora which provides further insight into Daisne’s feelings of regret over his unfulfilled relationship with Vanna Ceunis:

However, he is very clear with himself in Chisinau, the first version of Aurora:

I did not respond, I was the little boy who did not dare, I was never clear, I who thought to lay all future hopes in barely veiled, brilliant words, which should be words of thanks, confessions, words of promise, and were only hopeless and bumbling obscurities. I alone have been dark, I alone am guilty, innocently guilty, because then I didn’t know any better and I couldn’t help it.

How clear were Vavane’s letters, how clear her dedication and her marginal notes in Stevenson’s ‘Virginibus et Puerisque’, my first and last Christmas present from her, after that English summer. How clear, above all, her last letter…

Vanhecke then offers an intriguing insight into Johan Daisne’s mixed feelings about the Ceunisses, and his resentment at having to rely on his friend Robert Mussche as an intermediary with them:

Herman may have had a problem with the general atmosphere at the Ceunis family home. He regularly talks about this with Robert Mussche, who stays in Hitchin in the summer of 1931: ‘I doubt whether you understand my feelings for them correctly […], they are also so difficult: in theory I love them, but in practice I can’t show it, because sometimes it moves me too much & furthermore, mainly, because I’m critical of their behaviour, cold condescension & capricious “grande geste”.’

In August 1933 he even had Robert Mussche provide her with the text of an article he had written about ‘Romanticism & Rationalism’: ‘The thoughts from it will probably best explain my attitude. Tell her above all about the distinction I make between our theoretical all-encompassing feelings of friendship and love & the practical attitude of criticism existing with it and alongside it.’

Robert keeps in regular contact with Vanna, but doesn’t like to talk about this with Herman.

On the weekend of March 10, 1934, this led to an almighty quarrel: ‘I have become accustomed to the fact that I always have to ask you if I want to know anything about the Ceunisses […] but the fact that you did not inform me on your own initiative of Vanna’s engagement, you must have understood that was anything but OK.’

Robert Muscche as a young man (via Johan Vanhecke’s biography of Daisne)

I’ve written elsewhere about Daisne’s friendship with the poet Robert Mussche (which is the main subject of the Basque novelist Kirmen Uribe’s docu-fiction Mussche) and about Mussche’s own visit to Hitchin, at his friend’s suggestion, and their rival affections for Vanna. I knew that the two friends temporarily fell out over this, and also as a result of Daisne’s apparently unflattering depiction of Mussche in Aurora. However, I hadn’t realised that Robert acted as a conduit for information about Vanna, nor was I aware of Daisne’s ambivalent feelings about his ‘uncle’ and ‘aunt’ in Hitchin. He writes about them elsewhere with such affection, that his use here of terms like ‘cold condescension’ comes as something of a shock.

Vanhecke adds a final detail about Daisne’s stay with the Ceunisses, drawing once again principally on the novelist’s own account in Aurora:

A small detail of the stay in Hitchin should not go unmentioned. One morning at the villa, Herman makes an important discovery. ‘There was no one down yet, the sun rose in the drawing-room and then by inspiration I followed the one ray that fell in that library, on a small item, it was called “La belle que voila” and standing up, strangely moved, I read that little, gripping story of unforgettable childhood love.

Liette, beautiful name!…I was still completely silent at breakfast, people asked what it was, and as I looked at Vavane’s sea-grey eyes, my heart became so soft that I was once again tempted into making a joke of it: I said I had a dream and told a variant of “La belle que voila.”’ Louis Hemon’s book is a real revelation. Herman immediately wants to translate it into Dutch, but after a few pages he gives up, because his Dutch seems too clumsy to him. Only thirty years later does he feel ready for a re-creation: The beauty of never again [De schone van nooit weer]… Whenever he rereads the story, he thinks back to England.

‘The beauty of never again…’ A phrase that nearly encapsulates Johan Daisne’s lifelong feelings of nostalgia and regret when recalling the magical summer he spent with Gerard, Alice, and above all Vanna Ceunis, in Hitchin.

Summer sunset over Priory Park, Hitchin: the view from near ‘Salve’

Gerard Ceunis, Johan Daisne and Lillian Hall-Davis

In the previous post, I mentioned that one of the paintings on display in an exhibition of Gerard Ceunis’ work held in Hitchin during his lifetime was a portrait of the silent film star Lillian Hall-Davis. I noted also that the actress’ name occurs in the Belgian writer Johan Daisne’s account of his stay with Gerard and Alice Ceunis in Hitchin in the summer of 1929 (during which he developed an unrequited passion for their daughter Vanna):

In a country house nearby lived a film star that I loved to watch, the delicate Lilian Hall-Davis. I didn’t find this out until much later, when she had long since met her tragic end. But I must have sensed something of her proximity. 

(Johan Daisne, Lago Maggiore: De roman van een man; de roman van een vrouw, 1957; my translation)

I’m intrigued by the mystery of how Gerard Ceunis came to be painting Lillian Hall-Davis’ portrait. However, since writing the last post I think I’ve made some progress towards solving the mystery.

Earlier this week, I took delivery of a copy of Johan Vanhecke’s biography of Johan Daisne (whose real name was Herman Thiery), kindly sent to me from Belgium by its author, who is head of archive processing at the Letterenhuis in Antwerp [1]. The book includes a number of intriguing references to Lillian Hall-Davis and provides some clues as to the possible connection between the actress and Gerard Ceunis. Before examining those references, it might be useful to summarise what we know about Hall-Davis, her career, and her sad demise. The following information is from a website devoted to Classic Actresses:

Lillian Hall-Davis (via imdb.com)

She was born on June 23, 1898 in London, England. Her father Charles was a taxi driver and she had three younger siblings. Lillian started her career acting on the London stage. She made her film debut in the 1917 French drama La p’tite du sixième. The following year she appeared in the British film The Admirable Crichton. She married stage actor Walter Pemberton and had a son in 1919 named Grosvenor. During the early 1920s Lillian appeared in numerous movies including The Hotel Mouse, Afterglow, and The Passionate Adventure directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Her performance in the 1924 western Quo Vadis brought her to the attention of American audiences. She was now earning $150 a week and newspapers called her ‘one of the most beautiful actresses to ever grace the screen’. Hitchcock was so impressed with her that he gave her leading roles in two more of his films – The Ring and The Farmer’s Daughter.

Although she had become a popular British star Lillian had trouble making the transition to sound films. Her final role was in the 1931 comedy Many Waters. By this time her health was deteriorating and she had a nervous breakdown. Sadly she began suffering from severe depression and neurasthenia (a condition caused by emotional disturbances). Lillian and her family moved to a modest house in the Golders Green area of London. She told friends that was feeling suicidal but they didn’t think she was serious. Tragically on October 25, 1933 she committed suicide by slashing her throat with a razor and turning on the gas in her kitchen. Lillian was only thirty-five years old. When her fourteen-year-old son came home from school he found a note she left that said ‘The kitchen door is locked. Don’t try to get in, but go over the road to Mrs. Barnard’. She was buried at Hendon cemetery in Hendon, England.

Johan Vanhecke kindly signed my copy of his book, inscribing it ‘in memory of Vanna Ceunis and Lilian Hall-Davis, Daisne’s secret loves from Hitchin’, and it’s clear that the actress had a special place in the heart of the Belgian magic-realist writer. One of the early chapters of the biography is entitled ‘Marquita’. As Johan explains [2]:

Around the same time, [Daisne] falls in love with a blonde girl from the neighbourhood, Mariette Cleppe. He sees her for the first time in August 1925 during the Ghent Festival and calls her ‘Marquita’, after the popular tune he heard over and over that summer from the street musicians in Blankenberge and of which he will later collect countless recordings.

The pages that follow discuss Daisne’s love of cinema, and of one film in particular:

The most important film of that time for him, however, is Nitchevo (1926) by Jacques de Baroncelli. He goes to that movie because he was given the programme by his beloved classmate Jacques Lorre.

Still image from ‘Nitchevo’ (via mubi.com)

A long quotation from Daisne’s own writing follows, explaining that this film was especially important to him

because the lead role, that of the soft, anguished, even secretive Russian emigrant, [Sonia], was played by Lilian Hall Davies [sic], who looked so poignantly like Marquita. So much so that [I] have danced and cheered for days on end and imitated in every way the poses and gestures of Charles Vanel, who played her husband the naval officer. I remember a delightful little scene where Vanel wants to light a cigarette before leaving his wife. [Sonia] gently takes it out of his mouth, slides it between her lips, sucks it alight, then returns it with a tender smile. Don’t laugh, reader, it was so beautiful. [3]

Vanhecke’s narration continues:

Daisne is so captivated by the resemblance to Marquita that he asks a film magazine for the address of Lilian Hall-Davis. Although he signs the letter with ‘Don X, in Ghent’, he nevertheless receives the address with the declaration that she would be happy to send her portrait free of charge. He is so overjoyed that he doesn’t even ask for the portrait any more.

However, the key passage in the biography for our purposes occurs later in the same chapter, coming at the end of the description of Daisne’s 1929 summer vacation with the Ceunis family, at ‘Salve’, their home in Gosmore Road, Hitchin:

This holiday in England grows another magic-realist tail in relation to the Marquita-like movie star Lilian Hall-Davis. When in the 1950s Daisne discovered that she had committed suicide, shortly after the emergence of talking pictures, he wrote an article in the newspaper Vooruit dedicated to her memory, illustrated with her portrait. He asks readers to contact him if they have any further documentation. An answer comes from England. Gerard Ceunis and his wife ordered a vase from the Dangotte art gallery (Aunt Céline) in Ghent, which was sent to them, wrapped in the issue of Vooruit that included Daisne’s article. In their letter they write that their neighbour, whom Herman must have seen in her garden almost 25 years ago during his English holiday, was Mrs. Pemberton, alias Lilian Hall-Davis. Her son Grosvenor is a family friend, who often comes to play cards with the Ceunis family. He is flattered and deeply moved by Herman’s article. From this Grosvenor, Daisne acquires a good deal of intimate information about his once famous mother. This provides inspiration for a novel about Lilian Hall-Davis, which remains unfinished, just as a play about her remains trapped in his pen.

Reiner Leven / Flinken outing in 1907 or 1908. Left to right: Augusta de Taeye, Melanie Lorein, Lisbeth Verwest, Raymond Limbosch, Céline Dangotte, Gerard Ceunis and Alice Van Damme. See this post.

Céline Dangotte was a member of the ‘Flinken’, the group of Ghent feminists to which Gerard Ceunis’ wife Alice Van Damme belonged as a young woman, and which was closely linked to the radical ‘Reiner Leven’ group with which Gerard was for a time associated. Céline, who was also responsible for introducing her family’s lodger, Mabel Elwes, the future wife of George Sarton, to the ‘Flinken’, belonged to the Dangotte family of interior designers. She married the poet Raymond Limbosch, another member of ‘Reiner Leven’. They were all friends of Johan Daisne’s (aka Herman Thiery’s) parents, Leo Michael Thiery and Augusta de Taeye, and (as with the Ceunisses), he was in the habit of referring to them as his aunts and uncles.

The coincidence of Gerard and Alice coming upon Daisne’s article in the wrapping of an article purchased from a mutual acquaintance, and of their having a connection with Lillian Hall-Davis, is like something from one of Daisne’s own magic-realist novels.

2 Waltham Villas, St John’s Road, Hitchin (via google.co.uk/maps)

As for the information that they shared in their letter to Daisne, I’ve discovered that Lillian Hall-Davis’ son with her husband Walter Pemberton, was indeed named Grosvenor: this is the same son, who as a boy, had the traumatic experience of discovering what was, in effect, his mother’s suicide note. I’ve found a record of Grosvenor Charles Pemberton’s marriage in 1942 to Cynthia Joyce Orson. The wedding took place in Hitchin, which was Cynthia’s home town: she was the daughter of William Orson, a postman, and his wife Vera. In 1939, according to the register for that year, the Orsons were living at 2 Waltham Villas, just off St John’s Road, Hitchin, and Cynthia, then aged 19, was working as a cake maker at a confectionery factory. It would seem that Grosvenor and Cynthia lived with her parents following their marriage and eventually inherited the house, since Grosvenor’s probate record, following his death in 1973, gives 2 Waltham Villas as his last address.

Grosvenor and Cynthia Pemberton’s modest semi-detached house, just opposite the town cemetery in St John’s Road, would have been a short walk of no more than five minutes from the Ceunisses’ home in Gosmore Road. The question that remains unanswered, though, is whether their friendship was simply the result of proximity, or whether there was a prior connection between Gerard and Alice Ceunis and Grosvenor’s mother, Lillian Hall-Davis.

Gerard and Alice’s letter to Johan Daisne, as reported by Johan Vanhecke, certainly suggests the latter. They describe the late ‘Mrs Pemberton’, i.e. Lillian Hall-Davis, as their former ‘neighbour’ (‘buurvrouw’ in the original Dutch). Their statement that Herman (i.e. Daisne) would have been able to see her in her garden when he visited them a quarter of a century before suggests that she was actually quite a close neighbour. However, I’ve yet to come across any firm evidence that Lillian Hall-Davis ever lived in Hitchin. The only connection to Hertfordshire I can find for the actress is a suggestion that at one time she had a house in the village of Great Amwell, near Ware, but that’s about twenty miles from Hitchin. But then how did her son Grosvenor come to be living in Hitchin and to meet and marry a local woman? Was this simply coincidence, or was he returning to the town where he had spent at least part of his childhood, even if by the time of his mother’s death the family had moved back to London?

One further, less important question: why is Gerard Ceunis’ portrait of the famous actress labelled ‘Mrs Lilian Hall-Davis’? Surely she was either Miss Hall-Davis or Mrs Pemberton?

I shall continue to search for answers to these questions. In the meantime, if anyone reading this has any knowledge of the Pemberton or Hall-Davis families, or perhaps memories of Grosvenor or Cynthia Pemberton (who died in 1991), which might throw some light on these mysteries, I’d love to hear from you.

Finally, as Johan Vanhecke notes, despite the help offered him by Grosvenor Pemberton, Johan Daisne’s plans to write either a novel or a play about Lilian Hall-Davis came to nothing. In the 1960s he was still planning to write a play, for which he had assembled copious notes, and in his own words, ‘also actual documents, copy of her marriage certificate, coroner’s report on her death etc.’ Daisne added: ‘She was the mistress of Charles Vanel, the old French movie actor, but she won’t let go of me.’

Notes

1. Johan Vanhecke (2014), Johan Daisne: tussen magie en werkelijkheid, 1912 – 1978, Antwerp/Utrecht, Houtekiet
2. All translations from Johan Vanhecke’s biography of Daisne included in this post are my own (with substantial assistance from Google Translate).
3. In addition to Daisne’s misspelling of ‘Davis’ here, it should be noted that, throughout the biography, the actress’ first name is spelt ‘Lilian’. In my own commentary, I’ve kept to the more usual spelling, with a double ‘l’ in the middle of her name.

Christmas cards by Ceunis

The most recent batch of items generously shared with me by Elsie De Cuyper, Gerard Ceunis’ great niece, includes two Christmas cards sent by the artist and his wife Alice to their relatives in Belgium. Both are illustrated with drawings by Gerard.

I’m particularly fond of this first one (above), labelled ‘Churchyard, Hitchin’ and depicting the approach to St Mary’s church in Gerard’s adopted home town on a snowy day. You can almost feel the heavy, laboured movement of the solitary figure trudging through the thick snow. The uniform black of the anonymous walker contrasts both with the delicate cross-hatching on the buildings behind, and even more so with the lighter shading of the church and sky, further in the background, wreathed in falling snow. I notice that, rather than the trademark signature ‘Ceunis’ to be found on other works by the artist, this drawing displayed his interlocking initials – ‘G.C’ – in the same pattern that can be seen on his decoration of the ‘Crocodile House’ in Bridge Street, Hitchin.

Those who know Hitchin will be aware that the viewpoint from which this picture was composed is very close to the building on the corner of the market square that now houses ‘Starbucks’, but was formerly ‘Maison Gerard’, Ceunis’ own clothing store – its familiar external wall decoration (the artist’s own design?) clearly visible in the recent photograph below. The photo also shows how, despite the recent introduction of coffee shops and vegan cafés, the view is substantially unchanged from when Ceunis drew his picture, more than half a century ago.

The second Christmas card sent by Gerard and Alice shows the front door of their house, ‘Salve’, in Gosmore Road, Hitchin, with its distinctive arched doorway and gargoyle-like faces around the outside. The doorway and the faces are still there today, though the house is no longer called ‘Salve’ and its artistic original owner, obviously a man with a great sense of fun, is sadly no longer with us.

The artist, his wife and their dog, at home in Hitchin

Elsie De Cuyper, Ceunis’ great niece, has kindly sent me some more photographs and documents relating to Gerard and his family. Among them is a photo of Gerard’s wife Alice and their dog, Jerry, standing in the back garden of their house, ‘Salve’, in Gosmore Road, Hitchin, framed against a view of the house. I suspect that the picture was taken by Gerard: there’s something about the composition that suggests an artist’s eye. I remember their granddaughter, Tessa Cathcart, telling me that she remembers her grandmother as a very fashionable lady, and this is certainly reflected in Alice’s dress and pose here.

I’m not sure when the photograph of Alice and Jerry was taken, but the picture below of Gerard and his dog has an inscription on the back, informing us that it dates from 1961, when the dog was 7 ½ years old and its owner 76. Gerard would live for another three years, dying in 1964. The photo seems to have been taken from the front of ‘Salve’, looking towards Gosmore Road and the trees that border Priory Park.

Since there is still so little information about Gerard Ceunis in the public domain, and so few photographs of him and Alice, particularly in later life, it’s wonderful to have these pictures, and I’m very grateful to Elsie for taking the time and trouble to share them with me.

Update

Gerard Ceunis’ granddaughter, Tessa Cathcart, tells me that she took the photo of her grandfather with his dog, Jerry. Tessa adds: ‘Jerry loved racing around their garden (larger then) but was really too strong for my grandparents to take for a walk, so my arrival was much welcomed by all!’