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seemed dreadfully doubtful and Carvill asked me again. At last I agreed to stand by and try to take a rehearsal if ever there was a let-down.
The first rehearsal was called and there was no conductor! Greatly dismayed, I took it on, and I held it for four years. We did Mikado first, then Patience, Ruddigore and Gondoliers. The joy of those adventures with that very clever producer, Miss ClaraDow, to take care of the acting, healed all my little wounds and cheered me up again.
But I must not allow myself to be tempted into reminiscences which cannot be of much interest now that they are divorced from films. So I am going to cut out several years which were unprofitable though not unhappy and jump to the time when, by chance, I slid back into the film-industry again.
First, however, I must tell of a curious incident, because recounting it is the only way in which I can discharge a debt of gratitude. I have said I was not unhappy and that was still true but I was in low water and slowly getting deeper and deeper and beginning to wonder a little where it was going to end. And then one morning at breakfast time I opened a registered envelope addressed to me: — nothing in it but a bank note for £100! There was no clue of any sort as to where it had come from — even the post-mark told me nothing. By no earthly means can I say thank-you except by this public acknowledgment. If the generous and understanding donor should chance to see this I hope it will be taken as a token of sincere gratitude for an act which did even more good than was perhaps expected of it.
For it was at this point that things did begin to look up again for me. Paul Kimberley had, of course, been stranded on the same shore by the same wave which took me there. We walked up the steep beach in different directions and I saw very little of him afterwards for a long time. He did in the end, however, get into a very good job as managing director of the English branch of an American film company, the National Screen Service Ltd. This international firm was formed with the object of making and supplying 'trailers' to advertise each week the film which was to be shown the following week in the picture theatres.
It will perhaps be remembered that the British Board of Film Censors, which I had a small share in forming in 19 12, was charged with the duty of deciding whether or not each film, produced here or imported, was fit to show in English picture
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