Lillian to Nell, June 30, 1920:

Do you know that I am leaving Mr. Griffith? “Way Down East” that we are on, will be my last. I go with the Frohman Amusement Company, between the 1st and 15th of August. I am to make five pictures a year, for two years. If I make successful pictures, I shall make a lot of money. If I don’t, well, kismet—it’s all a gamble, anyway.

It was more of a “gamble” than she knew. Strictly speaking, there was no such thing as the “Frohman Amusement Company.” No Frohman—no amusement Frohman—had anything to do with it. That was just a part of the gamble. Griffith, apparently, thought it all right, and so did his brother, for it was the latter who made the connection. Had Lillian made inquiries on her own account, her eyes might have been opened sooner, and less expensively.

Griffith and Lillian parted on the friendliest terms. Griffith said to her:

“You know the business as well as I do. You should be making more money than you can make with me.” He did not say: “Stay with me and share in the prosperity which you have brought, and will bring me. No one can be more successful than we two together.” To a simple-minded literary person, this would seem to have been the wisest course. Lillian thinks he had perhaps grown tired of seeing her around.

She did not make five pictures for the Frohman company, or even one. She did begin one, “World’s Shadows,” by Madame de GrÉsac, who claims here a word of introduction:

Somewhat earlier, Lillian had met this gifted French lady, god-daughter of Victorien Sardou, wife of the singer, Victor Maurel, herself a dramatist who had written French, English and Italian plays for RÉjane, Duse, Marie Tempest, and others of distinction. Familiar with the best literary and art circles of Paris, considerably older than Lillian, small, red-haired, quick of speech—French, in the best meaning of the term—she was a revelation to the younger woman, who in spite of her years on the stage and screen, was a good deal of a primitive as to world knowledge, and art in its less obvious forms. The two were mutually fascinated: Madame de GrÉsac, dazed and delighted by Lillian’s gifts and innocence; Lillian, stirred and awakened, and sometimes shocked, by the French-woman’s brilliant mentality, her knowledge of life, her freedom of expression. In a brief time, they were devoted friends, confidantes.

When the so-called Frohman company wanted a picture for Lillian, Madame de GrÉsac agreed to prepare one. She did so, but about the time rehearsal was under way, Lillian’s first (and only) salary cheque from the company was returned from the bank, unpaid—“No funds.” They explained to her that certain backers had disappointed them. It may be so. At all events, there was a hitch somewhere, in this particular gamble. Lillian carried on, as a number of players had come with her from the Griffith staff, and as they seemed to be getting their money, she could not leave them in the lurch. But, of course, the end came. Their pay, also, stopped. The thing that had never really existed, ceased to function. It was all a fiasco—a tragedy ... so many tragedies in the show business.

“World Shadows” was discarded. It made no difference between the two friends. If anything, they were closer than before. The day was coming, not so many years ahead, when they would combine in another play—a success.

Madame’s husband, Victor Maurel, besides being a singer, had a passion for painting, and persuaded Lillian to pose for him. Lillian, with a view of sometime going back to the stage, greatly desired voice culture. They agreed that in exchange for half an hour’s posing, he would devote half an hour to training her voice. She had then finished “Way Down East,” which Maurel seemed to love. He watched it, time and again; then he had her go into a separate room, a dark room, and convey the feeling of it—paint the picture, as it were, with her voice. This was priceless training. It gave her voice a quality and value it had not possessed before. “From Maurel,” she said afterwards, “I got my consonants.”

Except for the triumph of “Way Down East,” a triumph not easy to understand in this more crowded, more inattentive day, that year of 1920 was hardly a cheerful one. For one thing, Mrs. Gish was in poor health. Dorothy had taken her to Italy, which might have been well enough but for the circumstances of their return.

It was the tragedy of Bobby Harron that brought them back. On September first, alone in his hotel room, Bobby shot himself. For years, he had been as one of the family. From the days of the Biograph company, he had taken part in pictures with both Lillian and Dorothy; he had shared the hardships and dangers of those days and nights of bomb and shrapnel, in London and France. He had been a brother to them—to Dorothy, for a time, at least, something more. Now, he was dead.

Exactly what happened will always be a mystery. Lillian, in Philadelphia, where they were opening “Way Down East,” wrote Nell:

These have been terrible days—the worst I have ever known. You have heard about it by this time, I imagine—about Bob: He was in his room, unpacking an old trunk, when a pistol fell out and exploded, the ball going through his lung. That was Sept, 1st, at 10:30 in the morning. He was taken to Bellevue, where he seemed to improve—we all held such high hopes—until Sunday morning, at 7:55, he breathed his last. Mother and Dorothy were some place in Italy—could get no word to them until Wednesday. They are taking the first boat home, which leaves today.

Bobby had been a Catholic, and when his mother and sister arrived, not knowing that he was dead, it fell to Lillian, with a priest, to meet them and break the news. Later, she took them home and looked after them for several weeks.