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CHAPTER 20
I am not prepared to deny that the gradual and final collapse of the business which had been the major part of my life was not a very real grief to me. It certainly was. But I was not broken by it, except, of course, financially, and even that was not complete. In fact from the time when failure began to loom as a probability, if not a certainty, I always had at the back of my mind that I still had personal assets in the form of experience and reputation which should be fairly readily saleable. It was only a thin consolation for the loss of so very much I held dear, but I felt that it would be there when I needed it.
It was a poor conceit but I did feel that if the worst should happen and it became known in the trade that I was free to consider engagement as a film director there would not be much lack of opportunities for me to choose from. But no such opportunity offered. I dare say my many friends among my former competitors were sorry to see me go under but they did not throw me a line. Maybe it was a sense of delicacy that restrained them. Maybe if / had gone to them it would have been different, but I did not think of that until it was too late to try it. Perhaps that was my last false step.
I had long ago taken into my own keeping the negatives which I had made personally of certain historical subjects, like the visit of Queen Victoria to Dublin, the Queen's funeral and so on, and when all the trouble was over, and I had plenty of time on my hands, I cut up and re-arranged all these, with suitable titling, into an historical film which I called Through Three Reigns. I tradeshowed it on my own in a London theatre and it was very well received. If it had not been for the still-remaining evil of 'advance booking' I should probably have made a nice little bit of money with it. But in the meantime, 'Sound Pictures' burst like a bomb upon the silent film industry. All the theatres were feverishly 'wired for sound' and silent films which had not already got their
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