My Autobiography

by Charles Chaplin

  ‘Quite well,’ I said politely.

  ‘So many of our guests complain about the room being cold,’ he said innocently.

  ‘I wouldn’t say it was cold, just icy!’

  He laughed.

  A few more memories of that visit to H.G. His small, simple study dimmed by the shade of the trees outside, by the window his old-fashioned, slanting writing desk; his pretty, dainty wife showing me around an eleventh-century church; our talk with an old engraver who was taking brass impressions from some of the gravestones; the deer that roamed in herds near the house; St John Ervine’s remark at lunch about the thrilling aspect of coloured photography, and my expressing an abhorrence of it; H.G. reading a paper from a Cambridge professor’s lecture and my saying that its prolix style sounded as though a monk had written it in the fifteenth century; and Wells’s story about Frank Harris. Wells said that as a struggling young writer he had written one of the first scientific articles touching on the fourth dimension, which he submitted to several magazine editors without success. Eventually he received a note from Frank Harris requesting him to call at his office.

  ‘Although I was hard up,’ said Wells, ‘I had bought a secondhand top hat for the occasion. Harris greeted me with: “Where the hell did you get that hat? And why the hell do you think you can sell articles of this nature to magazines?” He threw my manuscript on the desk. “It’s too intelligent – there’s no market for intelligence in this business!” I had carefully placed my hat on the corner of his desk, and during the interview Frank kept slamming his hand on the desk for emphasis, so that my top hat bounced around. I was terrified that at any moment his fist might come down squarely on it. However, he bought the article and gave me other assignments.’

  In London I met Thomas Burke, author of Limehouse Nights. Burke was a quiet, inscrutable little man with a face reminding me of the portrait of Keats. He would sit immobile, rarely looking at the person talking. Yet he drew me out. I felt I wanted to unburden my soul to him, and I did. I was at my best with Burke, more than with Wells. Burke and I strolled around the streets of Limehouse and Chinatown without his saying a word. It was his way of showing them to me. He was a diffident man, and I never quite knew what he thought of me until three or four years later when he sent me his semi-autobiographical book The Wind and the Rain. His youth had been similar to my own. Then I knew he liked me.

  When the excitement tapered off I had dinner with my cousin Aubrey and his family, and a day later visited Jimmy Russell of the Karno days, who had a pub. Then I began to think about returning to the States.

  I had now reached the moment when I realized that if I stayed longer in London, I would begin to feel idle. I was reluctant to leave England. But celebrity could give me no more. I was returning with complete satisfaction – though somewhat sad, for I was leaving behind not alone the noise of acclaim or the accolades of the rich and celebrated who had entertained me, but the sincere affection and enthusiasm of the English and the French crowds that had waited to welcome me at Waterloo and at the Gare du Nord; the frustration of being hustled past them and bundled into a taxi without being able to respond hurt as if I were treading on flowers. I was also leaving behind my past. That visit to Kennington, 3 Pownall Terrace, had completed something within me; now I was satisfied to return to California and get back to work, for in work was orientation, all else was chimerical.

  eighteen

  WHEN I arrived in New York Marie Doro telephoned. Marie Doro telephoning – what that would have meant a few years ago! I took her to lunch and afterwards went to the matinée of the play in which she was performing: Lilies of the Field.

  In the evening I dined with Max Eastman, his sister Crystal Eastman, and Claude McKay, the Jamaican poet and longshoreman.

  The last day in New York, I visited Sing-Sing with Frank Harris. On the way he told me he was working on his autobiography, but thought he had left it too late. ‘I’m getting old,’ he said.

  ‘Age has its compensations,’ I ventured. ‘It is less apt to be brow-beaten by discretion.’

  Jim Larkin, the Irish rebel and labour union organizer, was serving five years in Sing-Sing, and Frank wanted to see him. Larkin was a brilliant orator who had been sentenced by a prejudiced judge and jury on false charges of attempting to overthrow the Government, so Frank claimed, and this was proved later when Governor Al Smith quashed the sentence, though Larkin had already served years of it.

  Prisons have a strange atmosphere, as if the human spirit were suspended. At Sing-Sing the old cell blocks were grimly medieval: small, narrow stone chambers crowded with four to six inmates sleeping in each cell. What fiendish brain could conceive of building such horrors! The cells were vacant for the moment, the inmates being in the exercise yard, except one, a young man, who leant against his open cell door looking mournfully preoccupied. The warder explained that new arrivals with long sentences spent the first year in the old cell blocks before occupying the more modern ones. I stepped past the young man into his cell and was appalled by the horror of claustrophobia. ‘My God!’ I said, quickly stepping out. ‘It’s inhuman!’ ‘You’re right,’ whispered the young man with bitterness.

  The warder, a kindly man, explained that Sing-Sing was overcrowded and needed appropriations to build more cells. ‘But we are the last to be considered in that respect; no politician is too concerned about prison conditions.’

  The old death-house was like a school-room, long and narrow with a low ceiling, with forms and desks for reporters and, facing them, a cheap wooden structure, the electric chair. A stark electric wire from the ceiling descended over it. The horror of the room was its simplicity, its lack of drama, which was more sinister than the grim scaffold. Directly behind the chair was a wooden partition. Here the victim was carried immediately after execution and an autopsy performed. ‘In case the chair hasn’t quite completed the job, the body is surgically decapitated,’ the doctor told us, and added that the temperature of the blood in the brain directly after execution was something like 212° Fahrenheit. We came away from the death-house reeling.

  Frank inquired about Jim Larkin and the warder agreed that he could see him; although it was against the rules, he would make an exception. Larkin was in the shoe factory, and here he greeted us, a tall, handsome man, about six feet four, with piercing blue eyes but a gentle smile.

  Although happy to see Frank, he was nervous and disturbed and was anxious to get back to his bench. Even the warder’s assurance would not allay his uneasiness. ‘It’s bad morally for the other prisoners if I’m privileged to see visitors during working hours,’ said Larkin. Frank asked him how he was treated and if there was anything he could do for him. He said he was treated reasonably well, but he was worried about his wife and family in Ireland, whom he had not heard from since his confinement. Frank promised to help him. After we left, Frank said it depressed him to see a courageous, flamboyant character like Jim Larkin reduced to prison discipline.

  *

  When I returned to Hollywood, I dropped by to see Mother. She seemed very gay and happy, and had heard all about my triumphant visit to London. ‘Well, what do you think of your son and all this nonsense?’ I said whimsically.

  ‘It’s wonderful, but wouldn’t you rather be yourself than live in this theatrical world of unreality?’

  ‘You should talk,’ I laughed. ‘You’re responsible for this unreality.’

  She paused. ‘If only you had put your talent in the service of the Lord – think of the thousands of souls you could have saved.’

  I smiled. ‘I might have saved souls but not money.’

  On the way home Mrs Reeves, my manager’s wife, who adored Mother, told me that since I had been away Mother had been in excellent health and had rarely had any mental lapses. She was gay and happy, and had no sense of responsibility. Mrs Reeves enjoyed visiting Mother because she was so entertaining, and would have her in roars of laughter with anecdotes of the past. Of course, there were times when she was stub
born. Mrs Reeves told me of the day she and the nurse took Mother down town to fit her for some new dresses. A sudden whim possessed Mother: she would not get out of the car. ‘Let them come to me,’ she insisted. ‘In England they come to your carriage.’

  Eventually she got out. A nice young girl waited on them, showing them several bolts of cloth; one was a drab brown colour which Mrs Reeves and the nurse thought suitable, but Mother hated it.

  And in a most cultured English voice she said: ‘No, no! that’s a shit colour – show me something gayer.’

  The startled young girl obeyed, not quite believing her ears.

  Mrs Reeves also told me of taking Mother to the ostrich farm. The keeper, a friendly, courteous man, had shown them around the hatcheries. ‘This,’ he said, holding an ostrich egg, ‘is about to be hatched in the next week or so.’ Then he was called to the telephone, and, handing the egg to the nurse, excused himself. No sooner had he left than Mother snatched the egg from the nurse, saying: ‘Give it back to the poor bloody ostrich!’ and threw it over into the corral, where it exploded with a loud report. Quickly they bundled Mother out of the ostrich farm before the keeper returned.

  ‘On a hot sunny day,’ said Mrs Reeves, ‘she insists on buying the chauffeur and all of us ice-cream cones.’ Once, as they were slowly driving past a man-hole, a workman’s head popped up. Mother leaned out of the car intending to give the man her cone, but tossed it full in his face. ‘There, son, that’ll keep you cool,’ she said, waving back to him from the car.

  Although I tried to keep my personal matters from her, she seemed to know all that was going on. During my domestic troubles with my second wife, she suddenly remarked during a game of draughts (incidentally, she always won): ‘Why don’t you shed yourself of all these annoyances? Take a trip to the Orient and enjoy yourself.’

  I was surprised and asked her what she meant.

  ‘All this heckling in the Press about your private affairs,’ she said.

  I laughed. ‘What do you know about my private affairs?’

  She shrugged. ‘If you weren’t so diffident, I might be able to give you a little advice.’

  Such remarks she would let slip and say no more.

  She often came to the house in Beverly Hills to see my children, Charlie and Sydney. I remember her first visit. I had just built the house, which was nicely furnished and fully staffed – butlers, maids, etc. She looked about the room, then out of the window at the distant view of the Pacific Ocean four miles away. We waited for her reaction.

  ‘It’s a pity to disturb the silence,’ she said.

  She seemed to take my wealth and success for granted, never once commenting on them, until one day we were alone on the lawn; she was admiring the garden and how well it was kept.

  ‘We have two gardeners,’ I told her.

  She paused and looked at me. ‘You must be quite rich,’ she said.

  ‘Mother, as of this moment I’m worth five million dollars.’

  She nodded thoughtfully. ‘So long as you’re able to keep your health and enjoy it,’ was her only comment.

  Mother enjoyed good health for the next two years. But during the making of The Circus I received a message that she was ill. She had suffered a previous gall-bladder attack and had recovered. This time the doctors warned me that her relapse was serious. She had been taken to Glendale Hospital, but the doctors thought it advisable not to operate because of the weak condition of her heart.

  When I arrived at the hospital, she was in a semi-coma, having been given a drug to relieve the pain. ‘Mother, this is Charlie,’ I whispered, then gently took her hand. She responded feebly by squeezing mine, then opened her eyes. She wanted to sit up, but was too weak. She was restless and complained of the pains. I tried to assure her that she would get well. ‘Perhaps,’ she said wearily, then squeezed my hand again and lapsed into unconsciousness.

  The following day in the middle of work I was told that she had passed on. I was prepared for it, for the doctor had warned me. I stopped work, took off my make-up, and with Harry Crocker, my assistant director, went to the hospital.

  Harry waited outside, and I entered the room and sat in a chair between the window and the bed. The shades were half drawn. The sunlight outside was intense, as was the silence of the room. I sat and gazed at that small figure on the bed, the face tilted upwards, the eyes closed. Even in death her expression looked troubled, as though anticipating further woes to come. How strange that her life should end here, in the environs of Hollywood, with all its absurd values – seven thousand miles from Lambeth, the soil of her heart-break. Then a flood of memories surged in upon me of her life-long struggle, her suffering, her courage and her tragic, wasted life… and I wept.

  It was an hour before I could recover and leave the room. Harry Crocker was still there and I apologized for keeping him waiting so long; of course he understood, and in silence we drove home.

  Sydney was in Europe, ill, at the time and unable to attend the funeral. My sons, Charlie and Sydney, were there with their mother, but I did not see them. I was asked if I wanted her cremated. Such a thought horrified me! No, I preferred her buried in the green earth, where she still lies, in Hollywood Cemetery.

  I do not know if I have given a portrait worthy of Mother. But I do know that she carried her burden cheerfully. Kindness and sympathy were her outstanding virtues. Although religious, she loved sinners and always identified herself with them. Not an atom of vulgarity was in her nature. Whatever Rabelaisian expression she used, it was always rhetorically appropriate. And in spite of the squalor in which we were forced to live, she had kept Sydney and me off the streets and made us feel we were not the ordinary product of poverty, but unique and distinguished.

  *

  When Clare Sheridan, the sculptress, who created quite a sensation with her book From Mayfair to Moscow, came to Hollywood, Sam Goldwyn gave a dinner for her and I was invited.

  Clare, tall and good-looking, was the niece of Winston Churchill and wife of a direct descendant of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She was the first Englishwoman to enter Russia after the Revolution, and had been commissioned to do busts of the principal heads of the Bolshevik party, including Lenin and Trotsky.

  Although pro-Bolshevik, her book aroused only mild antagonism; Americans were confused by it because the writer was reputed to be an English aristocrat. She was entertained by New York society and did several busts of them. She also did busts of Bayard Swope and Bernard Baruch and others. When I met her she was lecturing across the country, her son Dicky, six years old, travelling with her. She complained that in the States it was difficult earning a living sculpting. ‘American men don’t mind their wives sitting for busts, but are reluctant to pose themselves, they are so modest.’

  ‘I’m not modest,’ I said.

  So arrangements were made to bring her clay and tools to my house, and after lunch I would sit for her into the late afternoon. Clare had a faculty of stimulating conversation and I found myself intellectually showing off. Near the completion of the bust, I examined it. ‘This could be the head of a criminal,’ I said.

  ‘On the contrary,’ she answered with mock solemnity, ‘it’s the head of a genius.’

  I laughed and developed a theory about the genius and the criminal being closely allied, both being extreme individualists.

  She told me that since lecturing about Russia she had felt ostracized. I knew Clare was no pamphleteer, nor a political fanatic. ‘You wrote a very interesting book about Russia – let it go at that,’ I said. ‘Why enter the political arena? You are bound to get hurt.’

  ‘I am lecturing for a living,’ she said, ‘but they don’t want to hear the truth, and when I speak spontaneously I can only be guided by truth. Besides,’ she added airily, ‘I love my darling Bolsheviks.’

  ‘My darling Bolsheviks,’ I repeated and laughed. Nevertheless, I felt that underneath Clare had a clear, realistic attitude about her circumstances, for when I met her later in 1931 sh
e told me she was living outside Tunis.

  ‘But why do you live there?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s cheaper,’ she answered quickly. ‘In London, with my limited income, I would be living in two small rooms in Blooms-bury, but in Tunis I can have a house and servants, with a beautiful garden for Dicky.’

  Dicky died at the age of nineteen, a sad and terrible blow from which she never recovered. She became a Catholic and lived for a while in a convent, turning to religion, I suppose as a solace.

  I once saw on a tombstone in the South of France a photograph of a smiling young girl of fourteen, and engraved below, one word: ‘Pourquoi?’ In such bewilderment of grief it is futile to seek an answer. It only leads to false moralizing and torment – yet it does not mean that there is no answer. I cannot believe that our existence is meaningless or accidental, as some scientists would tell us. Life and death are too resolute, too implacable to be accidental.

  The ways of life and death – genius cut down in its prime, world upheavals, holocausts and catastrophes – may seem futile and meaningless. But the fact that these things have happened are demonstrable of a resolute, fixed purpose beyond the comprehension of our three-dimensional minds.

  There are philosophers who postulate that all is matter in some form of action, and that in all existence nothing can be added or taken away. If matter is action, it must be governed by the laws of cause and effect. If I accept this, then every action is preordained. If so, is not the scratching of my nose predestined as much as a shooting star? The cat walks round the house, the leaf falls from the tree, the child stumbles. Are not these actions traceable back into infinity? Are not they predestined and continuous into eternity? We know the immediate cause of the fallen leaf, the child stumbling, but we cannot trace its beginning or its end.