The story begins with the opera singer ‘Arturo Salvini’ who was born as Arthur Alexander Borrows in Glasgow. His family moved to New Zealand and in 1875, aged about 18, Arthur first performed in Sydney. In 1879 he went to Italy to study singing and he made his Italian debut as the tenor Arturo Salvani on 26 July 1881 in La Scala, Milan.
Following this success, he came to England and worked with the Royal Opera Company in Covent Garden. Here he met the actress and singer Agnes Delaporte and they married in Belfast while on tour in 1883. They had two daughters: Rita (Agnes Marguerite Borrows) who was born on 27 July 1884 at 83 Albert Street in Camden Town, and Enid (Lilian Enid Addelshaw Borrows), born on 30 July 1887 at Hersham Road, Tooting.
But the marriage was not a happy one, and by 1891 Arthur had left Agnes with the two young children and returned to New Zealand. Agnes and the daughters were living with her father at 6 Clifton Villas in St John’s Wood. In 1913 Agnes had not heard from Arthur and she had him legally presumed dead under the seven year rule, in order to marry Algernon William Stephen Temple-Gore, the 5th Earl Temple of Stowe. In the 1920s, Earl Temple was an early member of the British Fascists. He died in 1940 and Agnes died in 1941.
Arthur tried to make a living from his singing and took up music teaching to supplement his income but became bankrupt in 1893. At the hearing he provided a written statement which said:
‘I have been teaching singing in Dunedin for the past eight months. My average number of pupils has been about 12, varying from six to 18, at a fee of 3gns a quarter. During the preceding four months I was engaged in managing concerts in Dunedin, Invercargill, Oamarn, Timara, and Wellington. Except in Dunedin these concerts resulted in a loss, that in Wellington being particularly heavy’.
In 1898 he performed in San Francisco. By 1902 he was teaching music in Victoria Australia, and then in the 1920s he moved to Reno Nevada where he died in 1928. His obituaries in the American papers said that in addition to Enid and Rita, he was also the illegitimate father of a third daughter, the well-known actress Lily Elsie (1886 to 1962), who was born as Elsie Hodder in Leeds. Her biggest success was in the English version of The Merry Widow in 1907 at the Gaiety theatre. We have not been able to find if he was the father as no name appears on her birth certificate and several other names have been suggested.
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Enid and David
Enid and her sister Rita both became singers and actresses using the stage name of Leonhardt (a family name on their mother’s side). Rita first toured during 1902 in The Silver Slipper.
In 1904 Enid began as a chorus girl at the new Gaiety Theatre, before taking leading roles. In 1915 she was playing Trilby in the play of that name and touring with Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree.
George Edwardes (The Guv'nor), was very skilled at chosing actresses who became famous for their beauty and their talents, these were the Gaiety Girls.
David Wellesley Bell was born in 1888 in Stoke Newington. When his father, who was a colonial merchant died in 1902, David inherited a fortune of £100,000 (worth about £12M today). As a very rich ‘man about town’, he met Enid and they were married on 7 Sept 1908 at the Westminster Registry Office. They first lived at the Waldorf Hotel, then 7 Welbeck House Welbeck Street, 57 Connaught Street, and finally locally at 2 Belsize Road.
But the marriage did not work, and they split up in July 1913. David petitioned for divorce in December 1913. He hired private detectives to follow Enid and they reported her adultery with the American composer and singer Melville Gideon in September and October 1913.
Gideon was a child prodigy, performing on piano at Carnegie Hall when he was only 12. He wrote many popular songs including ‘Love is the Sweetest Thing’.
He went bankrupt in December 1913 saying he had lost £10,000 on horse racing.
At the divorce hearing Enid said David had insisted she gave up her career. She claimed that he drew her into his extravagant lifestyle, and he became an alcoholic suffered from Delirium Tremens in the early part of 1911. She said she had devoted herself to nurse him through the illness. Enid did not work as an actress for three years until her re-appearance in September 1911.
Some of their letters which give details of their relationship were shown at the divorce, where Enid called David by the nickname ‘Face’.
On 8 July 1913 Edith wrote:
Dear Face,
This is not a protest any more than it is an excuse. I simply refuse to finally to live with you under the conditions that have existed the past five years. I will not tolerate your abuse of my friends. You were ill-mannered enough to send a message about Dollie Levitt and Norman Trevor (fellow actors). I do not propose to give up any of my friendships I value to please your whims.
Were I to object to some of your friends you would have very few left. My work is all-important to me, inasmuch as I love it, and you know it, and in the pursuit of my work I shall always, as it is only natural, make many friends. There has scarcely been an instance when I have been invited out that you have not grumbled about. It is degrading and humiliating. I see no reason why my life should made unhappy by constant petty rows and squabbles.
Please forgive me, but I have been very miserable the last two years.
Enid.
In reply David wrote:
Dear Enid,
I was very grieved to get your letter. After all, I have always been the first to try and make up quarrels, and done my utmost to do everything in my power to make you happy. I am very upset to think I have failed and that you have been so miserable.
You must own that I have some grounds for complaint, as you have always followed your own wishes instead of mine, and, in my opinion, neglected my home. For the past three or four months I have practically seen nothing of you except two minutes in the morning and eight or ten minutes at night. As you know, I have felt this keenly. However, if you will make another try, and let us try and pull together and let us have a little give-and-take, it would make me very happy, but if you feel you cannot do this perhaps it will be best to finish this now.
You know what my feelings are for you.
Face
Enid replied:
Dear Face,
Thanks for your letter. I feel I cannot come back unless I can know whom I like, so I suppose it is no good.
Love, Enid
His solicitor visited Enid and tried to get her to return. But she would only return if she had a free hand to choose her friends and the places she visited. When David was told this he wrote (the letter not published in the newspapers), that he had a right to decide what acquaintances he considered desirable for her.
In September 1913 after David had been making enquiries about Enid who was ill, she wrote:
Dear Face,
It is sweet of you to inquire how I am. I’m not worth it, you know, but I never have been and I suppose I never will be; but, Face, if ever you are ill or in trouble, I will come to you. I have been very seedy – 103 temperature and peritonitis, but am better now. I played last night and it made me feel awful.
The following month she wrote again.
Dear Face,
This is a very difficult letter I am going to write. I told you that if ever I did anything I would tell you first. I have not as yet, but I have fallen in love with someone. I haven’t given way to it yet for one reason. Please don’t divorce me, as you know it would ruin me in my work, and I don’t want to be free, and I don’t think you would do it unless you wanted to marry again. Of course, that would be a different thing.
I have never been in love in my life before, and now I know what you must have suffered. I am sorry, but saying that is no good.
I just feel I am going to be happy. Don’t do me in. I know I deserve it, but forgive.
Write an answer to me, because I don’t want to do anything underhand and deceitful.
Enid
The divorce went ahead and a decree nisi was granted in May 1914, with a final decree in November 1914.
Soon after, David Wellesley Bell married Mollie Hunter in 1915, but it seems this did not last long. He died at 4 Pembroke Terrace St John’s Wood in June 1933.
IMDB shows Enid Bell appeared in two films, A Mothers’ Influence (1916), and Mother of Dartmoor (1917).
In 1918 Enid married D’Arcy Richard Baker. He was the manging director of Wembley Motors and when he died in 1932, he was the chairman of Fiat (England) Ltd. D’Arcy was a racehorse owner and Enid shared his love of horses. In 1922 her horse Test Match won at Cheltenham. They lived in Taplow.
Two years after D’Arcy Baker died, Enid secretly married the racehorse trainer Archie White in Maidenhead. She knew that her mother Agnes, now Countess Temple and a friend of Queen Mary, would disapprove. This was correct, and when Agnes eventually found out she cut Enid out of her will.
Enid said Archie was the love of her life and they lived happily together at Canopus, Chauntry Road in Maidenhead until he died in February 1961. Enid died, aged 88, in 1976 having spent her last years in a retirement home in Binfield Berkshire. In an obituary, a local paper called her ‘the last of the Gaiety Girls’.
Number 2 Belsize Road
When it was built Belsize Road joined Finchley Road, and Swiss Cottage Station was on the corner. Number 2 Belsize Road was a large house behind the station and was home to the famous magician and illusionist David Devant. (We wrote a previous story about him here).
After Devant left, David and Enid Bell moved in.
The house was destroyed by a German bomb on 12 November 1940, that killed one of the occupants. Other properties were also damaged, and the area was rebuilt in 1956 by Hampstead Council as the Harben Estate.
This story has looked at several musicians and theatre performers in the late Victorian and Edwardian period. It also involved the roles of men and women, class, wealth and bankruptcy.
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