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I have no regrets about Warwick Court. On the whole I had a very happy time. I was with nice people and doing the sort of work I have always liked; doing it fairly successfully and being fairly paid. True, I had no other actual film to my credit but the one of the boat-race but I had the handling and printing of Joe Rosenthal's work and I picked up a lot of knowledge of the film business. I was the most surprised person you can possibly imagine when, one Monday morning, I found on my desk a short note enclosing a week's wages in lieu of notice and saying that my services were no longer required. Monty Wicks had a similar note.
I saw Urban and pointed out the unfairness of such a sudden action and tried to discover a reason for it. He could give no reason but did agree to allow us two weeks' salary instead of one. Then the question of the patented machine came up and he said he didn't want it, and I could have it and the patent too if I liked to reimburse the company for the patent fees so far incurred. Thus I got the sack from that job.
I have often wondered since what was the reason for that curt dismissal and the only one I can think of is that some time before I had asked for and been given — apparently without grudge — a royalty of a farthing a foot on all good work turned out on the machine. It would be a fairly big charge on modern machines but did not amount to much at that time. Or maybe Urban had been persuaded that the old method was better and cheaper in the end.
My young colleague and I decided that we would start again on our own. I went that same day to Thames Ditton where I had been the year before for a holiday and knew there a factory worked by electricity. I hoped to be able to buy a supply from them to run a small film-processing plant. They wouldn't or couldn't co-operate, however, and I walked on, abandoning the hope of buying electricity, to Walton-on -Thames. There in a little side-road with a dead end I found a small house which a gardener-landlord was willing to let for £36 a year. We took it. That was in 1899; — probably early summer.
The whole idea in taking up this litde house at Walton was to start again to do the work we had been doing in London for the past half-year or so: cinematograph film-processing, that is developing and printing. We proposed to work for the trade, although to be sure there was very little of that. It had been halfsuggested to us, for instance, that Urban himself might give us some to do and we felt that it was likely that other firms would be
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