Spotlight on Lily Davison Cancellor
Adela Curtis' greatest friend, collaborator and supporter
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In today’s post, Lily Davison Cancellor, Adela Curtis’ greatest friend, is brought into the spotlight. Lily was a collaborator with Adela in all her major ventures and was styled her ‘alter ego’ by someone who knew them both for a number of years. She doesn’t make a loud entry into the narrative because so far no writing of hers has been discovered - we do not know her ‘voice’ but we do know from what others have said that she was a major player and key supporter.
Lily Davison Cancellor, nee Chamberlin (1864 - 1938)
Lily’s family background and early life
Lily Davison Chamberlin was a few years older than Adela Curtis, having been born in 1864 in Surbiton in Surrey, into a family well established in the middle classes. Lily’s father, Frederick Chamberlin, gentleman, was the son and grandson of successful and wealthy linen and woollen merchants based in Norfolk. Lily’s middle name, Davison, was a link back to Elizabeth Davison, her grandmother on her maternal side. Elizabeth’s father, Crawshaw Davison, had been a merchant with business interests in the West Indies, including ownership of slaves and he had been one of those slave owners recompensed by the government when slavery was abolished. It is not known if Lily knew of this part of her family history. Her upbringing was comfortable: in 1871, at the age of six, she was living in Gold Hill House, Frensham in Surrey. Her parents had three young children, and the household was looked after by five servants. However, there was also tragedy, for her mother Mary died when Lily was only 12.
In 1888, Lily married Henry (known as Harry) Cancellor, who had just qualified as a barrister-at-law. They did not have children and Lily was unusual for a married woman of her background in that she had a career for much of her life: she would become a bookseller, and for a number of years, would run the business jointly with Adela Curtis.
Adela Curtis’ ‘alter ego’
Lily and Adela had met and become friends before the turn of the century. In her Chronicle, Phil (Adela’s niece) described Lily as the only person Adela accepted as her equal. In many ways it would seem the deep friendship that grew between them was an attraction of opposites: it was Nathalie Tingey, known as Sister Unity, who wrote of Lily as Adela’s ‘alter ego’. In describing Adela first, she commented on the one hand on her brilliant mind and excellence at speaking, and on the other, how she could be ‘at times devastating in her analysis of her students’ lack of understanding’. Further, she noted that Adela was someone of ‘innate fastidiousness and detachment from all human contacts’, with the exception of Lily ‘her one great human contact’. By contrast, Sr Unity wrote that Lily was
‘a magnificent woman, overflowing with humour and affection for all and sundry, gently deflating [Adela] when she became too dogmatic, sheltering her like a dragon from over-enthusiastic adherants [sic]… all who knew her loved her enthusiastically – you couldn’t help it…’
It was Lily who enabled Adela’s entree into ‘drawing room society’ where she began by giving lectures on English literature and then together they set themselves up as booksellers in Kensington in the early years of the 20th century. Their bookshop was called ‘At the Sign of the Sibyl’. It wasn’t long before they met Dr James Porter Mills and encountered New Thought, a North American spiritual movement which he introduced from the States and this in turn led to the establishment in 1907 of Adela’s teaching and healing centre, The School of Silence in Kensington. Then in around 1914, Adela’s most ambitious experiment, the School of Silence Settlement was created at Cold Ash in Berkshire. Lily was thoroughly involved in all of these ventures, alongside Adela.
At Burton Mere
Having flourished for a few years, sadly, Cold Ash failed and by the early 1920s, Adela was living in Dorset, in a wooden bungalow (hut) she had erected in a field overlooking the sea, on the Coast Road east of Burton Bradstock.
In 1924, Adela Curtis gave Lily a couple of plots of land at the eastern end of the field. Lily bought two houses from the Ideal Homes Exhibition and had them brought down to Dorset and erected on these plots. One she called Burton End, which was for her and her husband to use for holidays and the other, Green Hill, was originally intended for a working family to live in. Later, when Lily died, these two dwellings were left to Adela in her will.
In the 1920s and 30s, Lily still had her work in London as a bookseller. By the 1930s the shop was based in Ladbroke Road and it was at this time, through Lily, that Marian Dunlop, the eventual founder of The Fellowship of Meditation, came to establish a first London base for her work. She had also been a student of Dr Porter Mills years before, but after Adela and Lily’s time in his classes. This is how Marian remembered being helped by Lily Cancellor in the 1930s:
Few people could have had more spheres of interest or greater joie de vivre than she… many of our members had cause to be grateful to her; and to me she gave encouragement of a kind I had not so far met in my efforts to spread the practice of Meditation. [Jeremy Harvey, Marian Dunlop, Teacher and Healer: her life glimpsed (George Mann Publications 2000) 108]
And Marian also gives us an important insight into Lily’s own teaching and healing practices:
Mrs Cancellor was not a teacher in the ordinarily accepted sense of the word - she herself had always said she had never wanted to “speak” - and, indeed, students found her talks sometimes rather confusing till they learnt to let go and simply receive the subconscious enlightenment she was so supremely able to give, for she was meditating all the time she spoke. Her healing work, though never advertised in any way, was quite remarkable, so great was her faith; and it was impossible to be with her and not to realise what it meant to apply the teaching of Meditation to all the aspects of daily life spontaneously and happily. [Harvey, Marian Dunlop, Teacher and Healer 107]
Death
Lily died suddenly on October 30 1938. Adela publicly expressed her feelings for Lily a few weeks later, on the front page of the Christian Contemplatives’ Charity Deed of Trust:
“I wish to place on record my deep and thankful appreciation of the inspiring help given me for nearly forty years by my beloved friend and colleague Lily Davison Cancellor, whose title in the Community was that of the Warden Christiana, by whose unexpected death our Council hereinafter mentioned has been deprived of its most honoured name, although every Member of the Community is joyfully aware of the continuity of her spiritual presence.”
Adela also captured her more private reflections in her diary on 27 January 1939, recounting an experience of joy on waking:
First second of consciousness more amazing than can be uttered. One moment only but of such unspeakable Joy as makes life seem like a pit. Twice this has come on waking & is gone like a flash of lightning, beyond recalling except as an awe-inspiring memory, & anticipation of the next Life. And I believe it to be the answer to my intense prayer to know Lil’s present state, not as theory but as my own experience now. It is indescribable: beyond the reach of words: more real than anything on earth. May it come again & again till it be forever! It leave [sic] a speechless thankfulness & wonder.
I have known ever since Oct 30 that Lil was “closer than breathing, Nearer than hands & feet”: in “the Unity of the Spirit”: & that I am learning through her more than ever the Truth of Love to get rid of all ugliness, sourness & dregs in me.
Theirs was clearly a very deep, loving friendship - the question will be asked as to whether it had been expressed sexually. No evidence has been found to suggest this kind of relationship between them. Adela was almost certainly naturally ascetic and intuitive, and in her writing she had encouraged others to channel sexual desire into love of God.
During the early part of 1939, Lily’s memorial tablet was the first one to be erected in the new chapel at Burton and it was positioned so that it was above the place where Lily had sat for the chapel’s dedication in early 1938. The bible quotation “In Thy Presence is Fulness of Joy” is from Psalm 16, verse 11. It also resonates with the brief experience of joy Adela describes above in her diary.
Lily was clearly a very significant figure in Adela’s life and her death was a blow not only to Adela but to the community as a whole. Lily had been the one who could pour oil on troubled waters and be an encouragement to Adela when the latter was feeling low. Phil commented that after Lily’s death, Adela ‘never seemed so buoyant’.
The following moving entry from Adela’s diary in July 1939 is a fitting conclusion to this post - in it she recorded her response on seeing Lily’s lilies growing in the grounds:
Double row of Lil’s White lilies so lovely! Flowers of sweetness & light, like her! They bring her very near, and, as always, with the deep unearthly joy that came in her ministries, unlike anything else.
Nothing languid in a Madonna lily: straight, strong, upright, radiant: the very memory of them, when indoors away from the sight & scent of them, is an inspiration of courage, a call to the heights, a reminder never to go down to my suggestion of failure, disappointment or sadness.
I wonder if there are lilies still growing at Burton? Or if not would it be an idea to plant some that could be seen from the quiet room window. Thank you for your interesting information 🙏x Paul
Liz - what a wonderful portrayal of a beautiful soul, and of Lil’s impact on Adela’s life and work. Thank you. xx