Cecil M. Hepworth — Came the Dawn — Epilogue (1951) 🇬🇧
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Now that it is all over, I am sometimes assailed by little whispering doubts — a very slight murmuring, as of a conscience awakening too late and faintly suggesting that this and that might have been done to turn aside the hand of fate. It is then that I wonder whether I ought to have foreseen the catastrophe and taken steps to avert it; whether I ought to have realised that we were in for a slump which would probably be only temporary and might have been better met by heaving-to and trying to ride out the storm in inactivity, or even running before the wind under bare poles.
In other words, ought I, much earlier, to have disbanded the stock -company I was so proud of, and laid off the staff who had always been so loyal to me, and just sat down and waited for better times? I don’t know. I don’t know. The onset of the trouble was so desperately gradual and we were so involved in new ventures, which would have been very difficult to abandon before the necessity for doing so became clear and indisputable, that I cannot tell whether to blame myself or not. Even after the event, when it is proverbially so much easier to be wise, I still cannot see where there was a false step which should have been avoided.
Did I devote too much thought to my yachting and allow my eyes to stray from the danger threatening on land? Ought I now to be adapting the old lament: ‘Had I but served my job as I have served my ship, it would not have brought my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave.’
But, hang it all! Who can tell? And anyway, I wasn’t in the grave then and I am not now. My hair wasn’t grey — it’s only partly grey now, and I am not ‘in sorrow’ either. There are many things I am sorry about; many things I ought to have done and didn’t, and many others I might have done better. But I am not worrying over spilt milk: I am not ‘in sorrow.’
I have a dear, good wife; happy, loving children, and a fairly important job of work in which I am very interested and do thoroughly enjoy. Could any man say more in the evening of his life?
And I remember always one beautiful incident, which I promised to tell about when I came to the end of my story.
It was when matters were looking very black indeed that I called my staff around me and told them I had no choice but to sack half of them and try to carry on with the other half till things looked up again. They didn’t say anything; just quietly slipped away. Next day they came back at me with a ‘round robin’ signed by all of them. It asked me to give up the idea of keeping half the staff at full wages and instead keep them all on at half-pay. I was glad to agree to this, for it seemed to me to be a very fine and generous gesture.
But the day came, and not so very long after, when I had to tell them that there was no money left and with bitter regret I must part with all of them, in spite of the fine thing they had done to help me try to save the sinking ship. It is difficult to believe how they met that final blow.
They sent a small deputation to me to ask whether I could find money to buy enough paint to paint the factory. I said it was not impossible, but why?
They bought the paint, plenty of it, and without a penny of pay they set to and painted the whole factory, inside and out: the women and girls painted the inside and the men the exteriors. It took a long time but they kept on until it was well and truly finished. That was their tribute. Even after all these years my eyes, are smarting as I write of it.
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‘Thou wear a lion’s hide: Doff it for shame,
And hang a calf’s skin on those recreant limbs’
When the first studio was built at Walton-on-Thames, the owners proudly cut their monogram upon a stone tablet and set it firmly into the wall of a gable end.
when the full range of studios and laboratories was completed, it stood there for all to see, though it was no longer a ‘trade mark,’ only an emblem.
When the company folded up and the complete building was sold, the new owners obliterated the symbol by covering it in with boarding.
But when time laid a cruel hand upon great extravagances and closed up most of the studios, wind and weather were allowed to work their will; the boarding wore away and the emblem stood revealed again.
End
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16
Above: The Choreutoscope Movement Below: Modern Projector Movement
J2, Cantelowes Road, Camden Square
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Patent No. 11,892. June 19th, 1895.
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Patent No. 13,315. June 14th, 1898.
First Laboratory and Studios at Walton-on-Thames
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Mma Taylor and Henry Ainley in ‘Iris”
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1 Patent application No. 10417. April 28th, 1910.
160
Stewart Rome, Warwick Buckland and Violet Hopson in ‘The Chimes’
Stewart Rome in ‘Barnaby Ridge’
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There’s Alma, Paul Kimberley, his missus, and me.’ We found the shop: it did serve breakfasts, but if black looks
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Harry Royston in ‘Oliver Twist’
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Many Illustrations
Came the Dawn
Memories of a Film Pioneer
by Cecil M. Hepworth
Hon. Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, of the British Kinematograph Society and of the British Film Academy.
Chairman, History Committee, British Film Institute
Illustrated with drawings by the author
Phoenix House Limited London
It may not be reproduced either whole or in part without written permission. Application should be made in the first place to Phoenix House.
Made 1951 in Great Britain
Printed at Letchworth by The Garden City Press Limited for Phoenix House Limited, 38 William IV Street, Charing Cross, London, WC2
First published 1951
Page 184: Proposed new additions to the Hepworth Studios, 1922
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