After writing my post last year about the possible descendants of the silent film star Lilian Hall-Davis (the focus of a lifelong obsession for Gerard Ceunis’ friend, the Flemish novelist Johan Daisne), I sought information via a number of Hitchin-based Facebook groups. For some reason I never got around to posting the responses I received, but a recent comment on that last post has prompted me to do so, rather belatedly.
As I wrote back then, Lilian’s only son, Grosvenor Pemberton, married a woman from Hitchin by the name of Cynthia Orson and they lived at 2 Waltham Villas, which was on the corner of St John’s Road, just a short walk from the Ceunis home on Gosmore Road. Their only son, Berkeley William Howard Pemberton, was born there in 1943. Here are some of the responses I received to my request for information about him, which contradict some of my earlier tentative conclusions:
There was a Howard Pemberton who lived in St John’s Road. He was friends with my brother-in-law. He worked in Hitchin but left to live in South Africa, I last saw him in Jo’burg during the early 1990s…I know he went with a lady from the bakers in the High Street. He was an unusual character but I always found him very friendly…I think Jean Redman was with Howard in South Africa. (Anthony Bone)
I was at Bessemer School [in Hitchin] in the ‘50s and knew a Howard Pemberton, who I recall lived near St John’s Road. Could he have been related? We always thought of him as being ‘a bit posh’ at the time, but he was a great lad, full of energy!…I have a feeling he emigrated to South Africa. Another pupil from Bessemer…mentioned him when I was writing my book on Bessemer school. (Robert Prebble)
Howard came to my wedding in 1982 with Jean Redman…He was a regular fixture in The King’s Arms in the early 80s. Although I didn’t know him well he was a dapper and charming man in the old-fashioned sense. (Nick Stevens)
Howard Pemberton died in South Africa about 10 years ago…Never married. (Keith Porter)
So it would seem that, sadly, Lilian Hall-Davis has no surviving descendants who might help to solve the mystery of her possible residence in Hitchin…
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 Maggioreand 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 6th 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.
My last post, in which I translated some of the Belgian poet and novelist Johan Daisne‘s published writings about the silent film star Lilian Hall-Davis, included three poems dedicated to the actress. I mentioned that there was a fourth poem, included in Daisne’s collected verse, and among the works kindly sent to me recently by his biographer, Johan Vanhecke. Although this poem is only very indirectly related to my research on Daisne’s friend Gerard Ceunis, I’ve decided to translate it anyway, partly for the sake of completeness – and partly because I rather like it. As always, I have to apologise that my own feeble English version fails to capture the musicality and charm of the Dutch/Flemish original.
I was initially confused by Daisne’s repeated use of the word ‘gij’ as a form of address, when the usual word for ‘you’ in Dutch is either ‘u’ (formal) or ‘jij’ (informal). However, I understand that ‘gij’ is an archaic alternative form, rather like ‘thou’ in English, and although no longer used in the Netherlands, is retained in some Flemish dialects. I also have to confess to manipulating the sense of the last few lines of the poem in order to retain the closing rhyme: ‘rijs’ actually means ‘journey’, but I thought ‘way’ was close enough and made possible the rhyme with ‘grey’. What’s more, the fact that ‘roos’ in Dutch can mean both ‘rose’,the flower, and ‘pink’, the colour, makes possible the play on words in the last two lines of the original. Since this is impossible to bring over into English, I took the liberty of making the change you see below, without (I hope) losing the underlying sense of the original.
I’m a man who’s growing old,
but still, within me, there kneels before your image
In the previous post I mentioned that Johan Vanhecke, the author of a recent biography of Johan Daisne (1912 – 1978), had sent me copies of those pages of Daisne’s book Filmathiek (1956) in which the Belgian poet and novelist writes of his lifelong admiration for the English silent film actress Lilian Hall-Davis (1898 – 1933). I was initially interested in what Daisne had to say about Hall-Davis because of the possibility that it might throw on the mystery of how Gerard Ceunis came to paint the actress’ portrait. The more I’ve delved into the connections between Ceunis, Daisne and Hall-Davis, the more intrigued I’ve become, and the more determined to resolve the question of whether the troubled film star, who eventually committed suicide, was actually a neighbour of the Ceunis family in Hitchin towards the ends of her life, as some sources, including Daisne, suggest. As I noted in an earlier post, Johan Vanhecke described Gerard Ceunis’ daughter Vanna and Lilian Hall-Davis to me as Daisne’s two ‘secret loves from Hitchin’.
Lilian Hall-Davis in ‘Quo Vadis?’ (1925) (via wikimedia.org)
I decided to translate in full the sections of Daisne’s book which discuss Hall-Davis, partly in search of clues that might aid my quest, but also out of my growing interest in the silent film star’s own unhappy biography. In Daisne’s determination to bring to light the story of a forgotten artist, I recognised some similarities with my own attempts to rescue not only Gerard Ceunis, but also his fellow Hitchin artist, Theodor Kern, from undeserved neglect. Reading what Daisne writes about Hall-Davis brought to mind some of the frustrations that I’ve encountered in my own research, and also the sheer delight to be had when occasionally discovering an unexpected connection, as well as that uncanny sense one sometimes has that the departed artist is somehow directing one’s search from beyond the grave.
The inscription on the copy of Ceunis’ painting of Lilian Hall-Davis that I reproduced in the previous post claims that Johan Daisne dedicated Filmathiek to the actress. However, Johan Vanhecke tells me that in fact the book has a dual dedication: to Daisne’s son Evert ‘and to Grosvenor Pemberton as a tribute to the memory of his mother: Lilian Hall-Davis’. (As I mentioned in an earlier post, and as Daisne relates in this text, Gerard Ceunis’ neighbour, Grosvenor Pemberton, was Hall-Davis’ only surviving son.) The three sections of Daisne’s book which deal with Lilian Hall-Davis include three poems devoted to her. I’ve included the original Dutch/Flemish text of these, so that the reader can get a sense of the prosody of the original, which once again I’ve found difficult to reproduce in English. There’s a fourth poem dedicated to the film star which can be found in Daisne’s collected verse, but I’ll save that for another post. I’ve added some footnotes to illuminate some of the references in Daisne’s text.
LILIAN HALL-DAVIS (I)
Your memory won’t let go of me,
as if it’s twenty-five years ago
and I see you twice in a neighbourhood cinema:
seen, loved and avowed, when I was only a child.
.
Star of the silent film, once so blonde
your pale light shone across the screen,
the silent darkness of your mouth lives on,
while through night’s realm your tears still roam.
.
Turzhansky’s and Baroncelli’s star,
heroine of Nichevo and Volga-Volga,
why, when still as young as Annabel Lee,
did you follow the fate of the silent film?
.
When did you commit that desperate act?
Why? And where? How did they find you?
Everything has long been wiped away
from the records of your life throughout the world.
.
But your memory never let go of me,
and I’ll take a moment now to seek you,
your pale beauty and my blush,
on earth, and in the heavenly realm of books!
This poem of mine appeared in the Nieuw Vlaams Tijdschrift of June 1952 [1]. I also made a French translation of it, which was included in Le Journal des Poètes (III-1954) [2]. Thereupon Richard Minne was kind enough to publish an article on the ‘Spiritual Life’ page in Vooruit [3], dated January 16, 1954, illustrated with the photo from the cover of the novelisation of the film Nitchévo mentioned therein, and to which I had given the title: In search of a star, twenty years later, in the shroud of the silver screen. Because I wanted to stop that ‘seek’ from the last stanza of my poem becoming a redundant verb, and to call on the cooperation of all those still interested, via the most widely read medium, that of the newspaper.
It has since become a wonderful story, worthy of the muse with the magic lantern. But here’s the text of the article:
What I accomplished in literature before, in rescuing the talented Dutch (children’s) writer Tine van Berken (1870-99) from ungrateful oblivion [4], I have for some years been trying to do for the English stage and film actor Lilian Hall-Davis, the wonderful artist who was once beloved across our continent, who died in such an untimely and miserable fashion. At every opportunity I repeat her singing name; I brought her into in my Russian literary history From Nitsjevo to Chorosjo (for she was the Persian princess in Volga-Volga, the film based on the well-known ballad about the robber chieftain Stenka Razin); in the N.V.T. of June 1952 one can read my belated poem of mourning in her memory; and in a new novel in preparation, I recall her in the same way that I previously included Tine van Berken in The Stairway of Stone and Clouds, before bringing her authentically on stage in Tine van Berken. In the meantime, I continue to collect data about Lilian Hall-Davis, and in what follows I will probably begin to share some of that, to the extent it can serve my spiritual purpose. After all, ‘repetitio est mater studiorum’ may also apply in love.
Cover of the novelisation of ‘Nitchevo’, from ‘Filmathiek’
First, I recall the three most important of Lillian Hall-Davis’s films; three titles out of a few dozen others.
1.
Quo vadis? (1925) realised in Rome by Georg Jacoby (Marika Rokk’s husband), assisted by Gabriellino d’Annunzio (son of the poet) [5]. In it, Lilian Hall-Davis was the leading lady, alongside Emil Jannings (Nero). More than a quarter of a century before her compatriot Deborah Kerr, she already bestowed the same noble soft profile to the Christian Lygia [6]. Alan Arnold relates in his book Valentino (Hutchinson, London, 1925) how Rudolph Valentino and his wife, the artist Natacha Rambova, attended the filming while traveling through Europe, and how it was like an artist’s depiction of Babel, because of the dozen languages that were spoken at the same time on the sets: the English of the leading lady, Jannings’ German, as well as French, Italian of course, etc. It is a melancholy paradox, the way the talking film has suddenly muted that colourful sound from the heroic era.
2.
Nitchevo (1926). Screenplay and direction by Jacques de Baroncelli. Filming in Paris and at the scene of the action: the military port of Bizerte in Tunis. Here, Lilian Hall-Davis played the haunted role of delicate Russian émigré Sonia Cartier, in a beautiful setting that brought together the names of Suzy Vernon, Marcel Vibert and Charles Vanel. The Cinema-Bibliothèque of J. Tallandier, Paris, published a novel based on this film, drawn by René Jeanne and J. Baroncelli, and illustrated with photographs from the film (1926).
3.
Volga-Volga (1928) realized in Berlin under the director Viacheslav Turzhansky, with Hans Adalbert von Schlettow as Stenka Razin, the ataman, the rebellious Don-kozzaken from the ancient ballad.
I saw those films in the order listed above, and after the second one had already lost my heart so much to the virginal image of the girl Marquita [7], to whom I wrote via a film magazine, sending the required amount in stamps, requesting the address of the star, and begging her for a photo in exchange for my fifteen-year-old heart. The answer to my questions appeared a week later, and informed ‘Don X, in Ghent’ that Lilian Hall-Davis lived in the county of Middlesex, 91 College Road, Osterley Park, and that she would gladly send me her portrait free of charge, by contrast with Suzy Vernon, to whom 3 francs compensation should be sent for the costs.
That address with those comments was the first document for the Lilian Hall-Davis file in my film archive. I was so happy with it that I didn’t even request the picture. Three years later I spent a summer vacation at a villa in the gentle Hertfordshire countryside, just above London and Middlesex; but Don X (who, perhaps not everyone knows, is actually called Don Q, in Douglas Fairbanks Sr.’s second Zorro film) could only dream of making a visit. And when I thought I had cherished the clipping long enough, I learned that it was irretrievably too late to make use of the address.
Indeed, in 1950 (yes, poets can wait that long!) I learned from correspondence with RenéJeanne that Lilian Hall-Davis had voluntarily left this life years before. And Jeanne’s Histoire encyclopédique du cinema, part II, published by Laffont in Paris, came in 1953 to confirm this obituary, in the extensive ‘heroic’ filmography at the back of the book: Hall-Davis, Lilian: English actress… summary of her films… and the short funeral oration…Discarded by the studios following the advent of talking pictures, she committed suicide in 1934.
In vain I wrote to all the old-timers among the film connoisseurs known to me, and consulted every new or old biographical resource I could lay my hands on; no one remembered her name more than vaguely, and nowhere, nowhere was she mentioned.
The muse with the magic lantern, however, is not unsympathetic to truly infatuated poets, but she demands long mourning and fidelity. A few months ago, I leafed through the anniversary album The Elstree Story (Clerke & Cockeran, London, 1948?), published on the 21st anniversary of the studios of British International Pictures (now Associated British Pictures) in Elstree, Hollywood, England (in … Middlesex!). On pg. 4, Lilian Hall-Davis is commemorated with an image from the first film of the B.I.P. realised in Elstree (exteriors in Morocco): The White Sheik. The picture depicts Lilian Hall-Davis in a chaste embrace with Warwick Ward, and both as the ‘passion team, vintage 1927’.
And yesterday, by far greater coincidence, I found something again, specifically in the Who’s Who in the Theatre, compiled and edited by John Parker, published by Pitman & Sons, London, 1947. For the umpteenth time, I was in that thick alphabetical book to look for Miss Hall-Davis’ missing name. Annoyed, I decided to look up the address of John Parker in the general Who’s Who 1953, to finally write him a heartfelt letter. But Parker turned out to have passed away just a year ago. I picked up the first book again with shaky hands, and it fell open at the end of a list of ‘Theatrical wills’ that had hitherto eluded me. And yes, the beloved name suddenly smiled at me again.
That list, truly an (Anglo-Saxon) curiosity, gives in order of importance the sum of the estates of ‘a few well-known managers, actors, dramatic authors, composers and others’. The always flamboyant Phineas T. Barnum, showman, aged 80, up front, with £1,000,000. Last on the list comes Florenz Ziegfeld, manager, aged 64, also with a million pounds, but in debt! Douglas Edgar Wallace (age 57), famed detective novelist, £64,000 in debt. Oscar Wilde (46) was rich to the tune of £100 at his death…and Lillian Hall-Davis, just a few lines before him, £411. She was thirty-four years old…
See to what strange archaeology cinema sometimes devotes its soul. To those who are interested, I warmly appeal for all possible information and documentation (newspaper clippings, programmes, prints, photos) concerning Lilian Hall-Davis. I will gladly reimburse the costs, and try to repay the effort in literary terms. I could, of course, proceed more scientifically and formally: consult the Middlesex registry office, the History Committee of the British Film Institute, etc. But I hesitate. I prefer to collect scraps, from which a clearer image may arise. For anyone who wants to help me should only do it from the living memories of his heart, and that will be the best service of love that one can still render to this childlike artist – better to leave the great words Art and History to rest with that sleeping beauty.
LILIAN HALL-DAVIS (II)
The appearance of the above reprinted article has given me more pleasure than any other publication. I can still see myself buying the newspaper on a dreary winter morning, after taking my boy to school, and walking happily with it along the Leie [8], with my eyes caressing the capitalised name and the reproduced image of the disappeared one, and moved by a rare bliss of satisfaction, muttering over and over, ‘If only she knew…if only she knew!’ And she seems to have known.
First of all – I would not have dared to hope for this – I received letter after letter from my readers. Mostly unsigned sheets, but accompanied by faithfully preserved and generously donated clippings and photos, and even a letter from Prof. Dr. Herman Uyttersprot [9], with a touching word of remembrance, a surprise that no longer amazes me from that renowned Kafka specialist:
‘Coincidentally, I found your article about Lilian Hall-Davis in an issue of Vooruit... It also prompted me to search for information about her… If everything goes well for you, you will find in your impressions treasure from an apparently vast emotive youth, still have enough Mutterboden [10] for a powerful production… That you also managed to find the grave of the author of Mädchen in Uniform [11] in a small French cemetery, says more to me than long eulogies, and a good deal about the one who is bold enough to write. I believe that one day your work will also be regarded as a great song of Liebe und Tod…[12]’
Johan Daisne (right) with Herman Uyttersprot in 1961 (via Johan Vanhecke, ‘Johan Daisne: tussen magie en werkelijkheid,1912 – 1978’)
At the same time a friend returned from England, which she had visited for the Christmas holidays, and brought me as a New Year’s gift a bouquet of wild flowers behind glass, like those wall decorations that were very popular in the days of the Old West and are now coming into fashion again. My friend hadn’t read the article, but the magical realist that I am accepted the flowers – most likely from Lilian Hall-Davis’ region – as a greeting from the beloved dead.
At the beginning of February I also wrote in Vooruit:
Unexpectedly, there are many readers who have been moved to respond to my article about Lilian Hall-Davis. They wrote to me, in sometimes touching terms, to encourage me on my ‘quest’, and they sent me all kinds of interesting memories: clippings, photos, etc. In this way they made me very happy, by providing their personal, intimate proof, that the subject of the heroic film is and will always be topical, and that Lilian Hall-Davis has not yet died the death of oblivion (the worst for an artist). Therefore, on her behalf, thanks to everyone!
I have to follow this public route to make this acknowledgment, because my correspondents have been too modest: most have given neither name nor address. (Perhaps they consider a writer, especially in this age of the ball-point pen, an all too unreliable individual!) Nevertheless, that silence makes their gesture an even more beautiful mourning tribute. Let me then express my gratitude to them, also in my own name, with a few lines:
On 100,000 copies
after 20 long years dead,
your name is suddenly there in the paper!
.
Then someone brought from your land,
a heart-sized memento
full of flowers sprung from your grave.
.
So still there blooms, through the winter sadness,
the spring green, the summer red:
.
Of love that cannot forget,
and, God knows how, your grateful knowing!
LILIAN HALL-DAVIS (III)
And then, one February morning, the mail brought me two letters from England, one from London and one from Hitchin.
The letter from London answered the one I had finally sent, asking for official confirmation of Lilian Hall-Davis’ end.
It read as follows [13]:
‘Ambassador of Belgium
London, 20 February 1954.
Sir,
I have the honour of being charged with receiving your letter of the 5th of this month, which was forwarded to me by the secretary to the Lord Mayor of London concerning the English actress Lilian Hall-Davis.
According to the information with which I have been furnished, this artiste of the theatre and cinema made her debut on screen in 1915.
Date and place of birth: Hampstead London N.W., 1898.
Married to Walter Pemberton, actor.
She had a son who was aged 14 in 1933, and a brother, Henry Charles Davis, a postal engineer.
Lilian Hall-Davis committed suicide by cutting her throat with a razor on 25 October 1933 at Cleveland Gardens, Golders Green, London N.W.
Please accept, sir, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.’
I read this letter first. After all, I was expecting it and without knowing it, I also followed the right order in so doing. After this tragic nightmare of death there now awaited me the fairy tale of resurrection. Because the other letter, from Hitchin, as already mentioned, was from the Ghent-born writer and painter ‘Uncle’ Gerard Ceunis, who has lived in England since World War I and with whom I once spent that sweet summer vacation in the rolling Hertfordshire countryside as an eighteen-year-old. At that time, I wandered a good deal through that landscape, alone or with Vanna, and kept silent about both my inevitable love for her and about the name of Lilian Hall-Davis.[14]
The ‘rolling Hertfordshire countryside’, near the home of Gerard Ceunis in Hitchin (author’s photo)
And here’s the miracle. On New Year’s Eve, my uncle and aunt had ordered a work of art from a well-known shop in Ghent; it had been sent to them, wrapped in a newspaper, the Vooruit; they had read my article in it, and immediately translated it for a certain Mr. Pemberton, who has been coming to play bridge with them every week for years, and who they said would write to me without delay and send me whatever I wanted. Because Grosvenor’s mother was… Lilian Hall-Davis. 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. But now she has lifted that gaze and we talk to each other through her son.[15]
However, I want to reserve that material for my novel [16]. Let me conclude this reflection with a final poem, for cinematography is an epic lyric of the seventh art.
There is no coincidence in this life,
there is the blind logic of fate,
there are the miracles of God.
.
I have held back for a quarter of a century,
only dreaming of the departed beloved
and then – simply sobbing as I write to her.
.
And strange flowers from her land,
souvenirs from unknown hands
suddenly came to enrich us.
.
Even some wrapping paper,
in which the mourning verse was printed,
succeeded in reaching the son of the departed.
.
It’s no coincidence. It’s a token
that in a radiant logical realm
those we love still live.
.
They read our belated letters,
they pass them on with a smile,
and with a gentle blush enlighten us!…
Notes
‘New Flemish Magazine’, published between 1946 and 1983. See here.
French-language Belgian literary journal, launched in 1931. See here.
Literally ‘Forward’. Flemish left-wing newspaper. See here.
Tine van Berken, pseudonym of Anna Christina Witmond-Berkhout (1870 – 1899), Dutch children’s writer.
‘Son of the poet’, i.e. the Italian writer and Fascist sympathiser Gabriele D’Annunzio.
The British actress Deborah Kerr played the part of Lygia in the 1951 version of Quo Vadis?
‘Marquita’ was the name Daisne used to denote a particular feminine ideal, and to describe Vanna Ceunis, among others, in his collection Zes domino’s voor vrouwen. See this post.
The Leie, or Lys, is the river that runs through Ghent, Daisne’s home city.
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.
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
Johan Vanhecke (2014), Johan Daisne: tussen magie en werkelijkheid, 1912 – 1978, Antwerp/Utrecht, Houtekiet
All translations from Johan Vanhecke’s biography of Daisne included in this post are my own (with substantial assistance from Google Translate).
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.
Gerard Ceunis’ great niece, Elsie De Cuyper, has sent me a copy of the catalogue of an exhibition of the artist’s paintings that took place at Hitchin Museum. The document is undated, but since Ceunis died in 1964, I would assume that the exhibition took place in either the 1950s or the early 1960s, though of course it might be earlier. It can’t be earlier than the 1940s, which was when the artistic style known as ‘Tachism’, mentioned in Ceunis’ catalogue notes, came into vogue.
Part of the value of the catalogue is that it provides us with a list of what Ceunis himself considered to be his important works, assuming that he selected them for the show. Some of the titles are familiar and relate to pictures that have featured in previous posts on this site, but many are of paintings that are no longer in the public domain and which one would dearly love to see. Ceunis’ pictures of St Mary’s church and the market place in Hitchin can still be seen in the collection of what is now North Hertfordshire Museum, but it would be fascinating to see his depictions of other familiar places in the town, such as St Mary’s Square, Ickleford Mill and the lavender fields, all of which are included in this catalogue. A large number of the pictures in this exhibition – at least half of them, by my reckoning – take flowers as their subject, confirming that they were a favourite subject for the artist, even if they weren’t (pace the obituary quoted in a recent post) his ‘best work’.
Another valuable feature of the catalogue is the inclusion of Ceunis’ own introduction to his work, which provides us with some insight into his aesthetic outlook at this stage in his life. His pragmatism and disdain for artistic jargon are a world away from the passionate espousal of Symbolism and Aestheticism that characterised his youthful manifesto for Iris, the literary journal that he co-founded with a group of friends in Ghent in the early 1900s. However, the catalogue notes also reflect Ceunis’ sense of humour, and his obvious capacity to communicate his ideas to a general, non-specialist audience. The reference to a ‘dirty dustbin’ being as likely a subject of art as a ‘splendid cathedral’ recalls the obituary mentioned earlier, in which Ceunis was quoted as saying that ‘a dustbin and a dirty backyard’ might form as good a subject for a painting as a ‘pretty cottage’.
It’s interesting to see the range of prices attached to the list of paintings and, from a historical perspective, to see them given in guineas rather than pounds. (For younger readers: a guinea was equivalent to one pound and one shilling.) The cheapest painting is offered at 12 guineas, the most expensive at 50. If the exhibition took place in (say) 1955, then the lowest price would have been equivalent to about £500 and the highest about £1400 in today’s money.
Only two paintings in the catalogue do not have a price alongside their title, presumably because they were not for sale. One of these is ‘Tessa’, almost certainly a portrait of the artist’s granddaughter, the daughter of his only child, Vanna. Perhaps it was this ‘negative’ painting of Tessa, a copy of which Elsie De Cuyper sent me recently:
The other painting not for sale was apparently a portrait of ‘Mrs Lillian Hall-Davis.’ Regular readers of this blog may recall that she was mentioned in an earlier post. Lillian Hall-Davis was a popular actress of the silent screen era, and a resident for a while of Hertfordshire. In his account of the summer he spent with the Ceunis family in Hitchin in 1929, in the novel Lago Maggiore, the Belgian writer Johan Daisne notes that Hall-Davis lived ‘in a country house nearby’ [my translation].
Lillian Hall-Davis (via en.wikipedia.org)
But how did Gerard Ceunis come to paint the portrait of a former film star? The answer may lie in Johan Vanhecke’s exhaustive biography of Daisne, a copy of which I’ve just received from the author, and in which I see that Lillian Hall-Davis is mentioned more than once. I’ll have more to say on this when I’ve translated the relevant pages of Johan’s book.
The Quest for Ceunis 