I felt little and alone. I did not know just
what to do, but my father had told me to go
out and sing Jack Jones, and I did not dare
go back until I had done it.
There was a great uproar beyond the foot-
lights, and it confused me more, until I saw
that the people were laughing and applauding.
Then I remembered my singing on the table,
with people all around and noise and light, and
I saw that this was the same thing. I opened
my mouth and sang Jack Jones with all my
might.
It was an old coster song my father had
taught me. I sang one verse and started on
the second, hurrying to get through. I was
not afraid of the crowd, but the stage got big-
ger and I got littler every minute, and I
wanted to be with my mother.
19
There was a great noise which interrupted
my song, and something hit me on the cheek.
I stopped singing with my mouth open on a
note, and something else hit the floor by my
feet, and then a shower of things fell on the
stage and one struck my arm. The audience
was throwing them at me.
I backed away a little, terrified, but I went
on singing as well as I could, with my face
quivering and a big lump in my throat. I
knew I had to finish the song because my
father had told me to. Great tears came up
in my eyes, and I ducked my head and rubbed
at them with my knuckles, and then I saw the
floor of the stage. It was almost covered with
pennies and shillings. Money ! It was money
they were throwing at me!
"Oh! Wait, wait!" I shouted, and went
down on my hands and knees to gather it up.
"It's money! Wait just a minute!"
I got both hands full of it, and still there
was more. I crawled around, picking it up
and putting it in my pockets and shouted at
the audience, "Walt till I get it all and I'll
sing a lot !"
20
It was a great hit. People laughed and
shouted and climbed on their seats to throw
more money. It kept falling around me, roll-
ing across the stage, while I ran after it,
shouting with joy. I filled all my pockets
and put some in my hat. Then I stood up and
sang Jack Jones twice, and would have sung it
again, but my father came out on the stage
and led me off.
I had almost three pounds in six-penny
pieces, shillings, and even a few half-crowns.
I sat on a box and played with it while my
father did his act. I could not count it, but
I knew it was money, and I felt rich. Then
we went home, where my father set me upon
the bed beside my mother, and I poured the
money over her, laughing. She laughed, too,
and my father took the money and bought us
all a great feast, and let me drink some of the
ale. I remember how I crowed over Sidney
that night.
My mother was able to go back to work next
day, and Sidney and I were left in the rooms
again. There was a quarrel before she
went; my father swore, and mother cried and
stamped her foot. She said, "No! No! No!
He's too little yet." And I knew they were
talking about me, and crawled away into a
corner, where I kept very still.
21
After that I think we grew poorer and
poorer. There were no more parties at night.
My mother would come in alone, and when she
waked me, tucking me in, I felt so sad it
seemed as if my heart would break, because
her face did not sparkle any more. Sidney
and I played about in the daytime, and kept
out of father's way. When he came in his
face was red, and his breath was hot and strong
with whisky. He used to throw himself on the
bed without a word to mother and fall asleep
with his mouth open. Then Sidney and I went
quietly out and played on the stairs. Sidney
was a wide-awake lively young person, always
running about and shouting "Ship ahoy !" He
wanted to be a sailor. I could not play with
him long because it tired me. I liked to get
into a corner by myself and think and dream
of things I had seen and what I would do some
day — vague dreams of making music and
wearing velvet suits and bowing to immense
audiences and having cream tarts for every
meal and six white ponies to drive.
22
The worry and the unhappiness which
seemed to grow like a cloud around us in those
years made me sit sometimes and cry quietly
to myself, not knowing why, but feeling mis-
erable and sad. Then my great dreams faded
and I felt little and lonely, and not even my
mother could comfort me.
So I came to be about ten years old, and all
my memories of the years between my first ap-
pearance on the stage and the day I met the
red-faced man are vague recollections of these
dreams and hurried trips from place to place,
and the unhappiness, and my mother's face
growing sadder. Then I remember clearly the
night I went with her to the music-hall in Lon-
don and ran away with the clog dancers.
My mother took me with her because when
it was time for her to go to work she could not
find Sidney. He was almost fourteen and
played a great deal in the streets, and used
to go away for the whole day sometimes, which
worried my mother. But she had to work and
could not be with us or keep us together. It
is my impression that my father was making
very little money then, and spending all he got
in bars, as he was a very popular man and had
many friends who wanted him to drink with
them. I know that we were living in very poor
lodgings, and my mother cried sometimes when
the landlady asked her for the rent.
23
I remember on this day standing beside my
mother and watching a troupe of clog dancers
who were working on the stage. Mother was
wearing her stage dress, waiting to go on for
her act, and she kept asking me where I had
seen Sidney last, but I could hardly listen. I
knew how to clog dance, for Sidney and I had
done it with the boys in the streets, and I was
impatient because my mother had her hand on
my shoulder, and I wanted to do the steps with
the others. I squirmed away from her and
began dancing by myself. I did all the diffi-
cult steps very proudly, and when the music
stopped I saw that my mother looked proud,
too. I looked around to see if any one else
was admiring me, and saw the red-faced man.
...
He was standing behind my mother, a fat
man, with a double chin, and a wart on one of
his lower eyelids. It fascinated me so I could
not take my eyes from it. When my mother
went on for her act I still stood staring at it.
24
"I say, you're lively on your feet, young fel-
ler," he said to me. "Could you do that every
day, say?"
"Oh, yes, I like to do it," I said.
"Would you like to come along, now, with
a nice troupe of fine little boys and do
it for a fortnight or so?" he asked.
"What's the screw?" I said, looking shrewd,
as I had seen my father do. He laughed.
"Three six a week," he said, "all for your
own pocket money. And I'll buy you a velvet
suit, and you can eat hearty — meat pies and
pudding every meal."
"And cream tarts?" I stipulated.
"Up to your eyes in cream tarts if you like,"
He said. "Come now, will you do it?"
"Yes," I answered promptly.
"All right, come along," he said, and led me
out of the music-hall.
CHAPTER III
In which I join the clog dancers ; fail to
get the cream tarts; and incur the wrath of
Mr. Hawkins.
WAITING just inside the door to the alley were
the five boys who had been clog dancing. They
were huddled together, not playing or talking,
and when the red-faced man led me up to them
they looked at me curiously, without a word.
Each one had his stage dress in a brown paper
bundle under his arm, and in the gas light they
looked ragged and tired.
"This 'ere's the new little boy what's a-going
to come with us," said the red-faced man, hold-
ing my hand so tight it hurt, and I squirmed.
...
The other boys did not say a word. They
looked at me, and all those staring eyes made
me uncomfortable.
"Speak up, there!" roared the man suddenly,
and they all jumped. "Say 'Yes, sir, yes, Mr.
'Awkins,' when I speak to you!"
"Yes, sir, yes, Mr. 'Awkins!" they all said.
26
"Now step up, young fellers; we're going
to our nice 'ome and 'ave cream tarts for our
supper," Mr. Hawkins said. He nodded to
the stage doorkeeper, a silent whiskered man
who sat smoking a pipe, and we all filed out
through the dark little alley into the street.
...
It was a cold foggy night. The street lamps
were weird ghostly-looking blurs in the mist,
and our steps sounded hollow and muffled. I
had never been out so late before, and the
strange look of things in the fog and the emp-
tiness of the streets, with only a cab rat-
tling by now and then, made me shiver.
The boys walked ahead, and Mr. Hawkins
and I followed close behind. We walked for
a long time, till my legs began to ache and
my fingers stopped hurting and grew numb in
Mr. Hawkins' hard grip. My mind was all
a-muddle and confused, so that the only thing
I thought of clearly was my mother, and how
pleased she would be when I came home again
rich, with three and sixpence and a velvet suit.
...
We came at last to a doorway with a lamp
burning dimly over it, and Mr. Hawkins
herded the boys into it. A very fat dirty
woman opened the door and said something
shrill to us. Then we climbed many flights of
dark stairs, and Mr. Hawkins let go my hand
to open a door.
27
A damp musty smell came out as we stum-
bled in. It was a poor dirty room, furnished
with two beds and a long table with chairs
about it.
"Well, 'ere we are 'ome!" said Mr. Hawkins
cheerfully. "Now for a nice 'ot supper, what!"
The boys did not say a word. They sat down
and watched him, looking now and then at the
door. I rubbed my aching fingers and looked
at him, too. The wart was still there on his
lower eyelid, and I could not take my eyes
from it.
After a while the fat woman came in with
our supper — chops and ale for Mr. Hawkins;
plates of porridge and thick slices of bread for
us. The boys all fell to eating hungrily, but
I pushed my plate back and looked at Mr.
Hawkins, who was eating his chops and drink-
ing his ale with great enjoyment.
"Where are the cream tarts?" I asked him.
"Cream tarts! Who ever 'card of cream
tarts for supper?" he shouted. "Cream tarts!"
He chuckled and repeated it over and over,
till I felt ashamed and confused. Then he
thrust his great red face almost against mine
and roared in a terrible voice, "That's enough,
young feller I'll cream tart you! I'll jolly
well cream tart you !" I shrank into my chair,
frightened.
"You don't want cream tarts," he said.
"You want a caning. You want a good hard
caning, don't you?"
"No, sir," I said. "Oh, no, sir, please."
"Oh, you don't, don't you? Yes, you do.
You want a caning, that's what you want.
Where's my cane?" he roared in a frightful
voice. I crouched in my chair in such terrible
fear I could not even cry out until his great
hand gripped my shoulder. Then I shrieked
in agony.
He only shook me and flung me back in the
chair, but from that moment I lived in terror
of him — a terror that colored everything dur-
ing the day and at night made my dreams hor-
rible. The other boys were afraid of him, too.
When he was with us we sat silent and wary,
looking at him. He used to swing his cane
as he walked up and down the room in the
evenings, and we watched it in fearful fascina-
tion, though I do not remember that he ever
caned one of us. It was the constant fear of
his doing it that was so terrible. Sometimes
when he had locked us in the room and gone
away in the morning the boldest boys used to
make fantastic threats of the things they would
do to him when he returned, but they said them
under their breath, with an eye on the door,
and the rest of us quaked as we listened.
29
In the evenings we were marched out before
him to music-halls. These music-halls were
different from the ones my mother sang in.
They were large rooms, with rough wooden
benches and tables arranged around a square
in the center, where we danced. The air was
thick with tobacco smoke and heavy with the
smell of ale and stout, and the ugly bearded
faces of hundreds of men staring at us con-
fused me sometimes so that I could hardly
dance. I was so little, so weary from hunger
and the constant fear of Mr. Hawkins, that
my feet felt too heavy to lift in the hard
steps, and my head swam in the glare of the
lights. I wanted so much to crawl away to
a quiet dark place where I could rest and
feel my mother's hand tucking in the covers,
that sometimes I sobbed as I danced, but I
n
ever stopped nor missed a step ; I did not
dare.
30
For all the pain and fear in my childish heart
I did the steps very well, so that often the
crowd cheered "the young 'un" and called for
more. Then, while they shouted and banged
their mugs of ale on the tables, I would
wearily dance again and again, until all my
body ached. Sometimes they threw money to me,
and then, after they let me go at last, Mr.
Hawkins would go through my pockets for it
and rap my head with his knuckles, under the
suspicion that I had concealed some.
All my memory of those weeks is colored by
my terror of him. It never left me. When
he was in the room I got as far as possible
from him and sat quite still, staring at his
face and the wart on his eyelid and his great
cane. When he was gone I sat and brooded about
him and shivered. At the table, hungry as I
was, I could not swallow my porridge under
the gaze of his awful eye.
At last one night when we reached the music-
hall where we were to dance we found it in
great uproar. The audience was standing on
benches and tables and shouting, "Slug 'im!"
Slug 'im! Slug 'im!" in horrible waves of
sound. In the center, where we were to dance,
two men were fighting.
31
Mr. Hawkins pushed us before him through
the crowd to a place close to them. I saw their
strong naked bodies glistening under the gas
flare and heard the terrible smashing blows.
There was a sweetish sickening smell in the air
which made me feel ill, and the roar of the
crowd terrified me. Then one of the men
reeled, staggered backward and fell. He was
close to me and I saw his face, a shapeless
mass of flesh, with no eyes, covered with
blood, with blood running from the open mouth.
The horror of it struck my childish mind so,
after all those weeks of terror, that I fainted.
...
I was revived in time to dance, and the
crowd, excited by the fight, threw us a great
deal of money. When he searched my pockets
at the door, Mr. Hawkins stooped low, put his
great face almost against mine and swore, but
he did not rap me with his knuckles. I was
in a kind of stupor, quivering all over, and
could not walk, so he put me up on his shoul-
der, as my father used to do, and started home.
...
A long time afterward I knew I was standing
between his knees, while he tipped my head
back and looked closely at me.
Charlie Chaplins Own Story Page 2