Background
Davidson came from a clerical family and could count 27 clergy relatives including an Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson. His father, the Reverend Francis Davidson, came from a wealthy Birmingham family but poured his money into building the new parish of St Mary's in Sholing, Southampton to which he had been appointed in 1866 and also on his wife who was severely ill all her life. There was little left to finance his son's studies. Davidson was educated at the Banister Court School in Southampton and the Whitgift School in Croydon, moving there to live with his maternal aunts and grandmother.
During his years at Whitgift he formed a small group of amateur actors with other boys and they would organise fundraising events for his father's parish and, later, for other churches in the Southampton area. When Davidson left Whitgift in 1894 he and his friends decided to spend their pre-university gap year becoming professional entertainers. They toured the provinces and were invited to appear at the Steinway Hall in London in 1895.
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