I
Charlie Cliapliii as camera-man
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S
OWN STORY
BEING THE FAITHFUL RECITAL OF A ROMANTIC CAREER,
BEGINNING WITH EARLY RECOLLECTIONS OF BOY-
HOOD IN LONDON AND CLOSING WITH THE
SIGNING OF HIS LATEST MOTION-
PICTURE CONTRACT
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
/m/
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1916
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
The subject of this biography takes great pleasure
in expressing his obligations and his thanks to Mrs.
Rose Wilder Lane for hi valuable editorial assistance.
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
PRINTERS AMO BOOKBINDERS
vBHOOKLYN, N. Y.
XR7
CONTENTS
Chapter Page
I In whicli I relate my experiences up to the
age of five; and describe ttie occasion of
my first public appearance on any stage . 11
11 In which I make my first public appearance
on the stage and my first success; and
meet the red-faced man 19
III In which I join the clog dancers; fail to get
the cream tarts; and incur the wrath of
Mr, Hawkins 26
IV In which I feel very small and desolate; en-
counter once more the terrible wrath of
Mr. Hawkins; and flee from it into the
unknown perils of a great and fearful
world 34
V In which I have an adventure with a cow;
become a lawless filcher of brandysnaps;
and confound an honest farmer ... 43
VI In which I come home again; accustom my-
self to going to bed hungry; and have an
unexpected encounter with my father . 50
VII In which I see my father for the last time;
learn that real tragedy is silent; and go
out into the world to make my own way . TJ
VIII In which I take lodgings in a barrel and find
that I have invaded a home; learn some-
thing about crime; and forgot that I was
to share in nefarious profits .... CO
Chapter
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
CONTENTS— Continued
In wliich I trick a Covent Garden coster; get
glorious news from Sidney; and make a
sad trip to tlie hospital
In which Sidney comes home to find father
dead, mother too ill to recognize him and
me half starved and in rags ....
In which I vainly make the rounds of the
theatrical agents; almost go to sea; and
at last get the chance for which I have
long been yearning
In which I rehearse the part of the boy hero
of the thrilling melodrama. From Rags to
Riches; and start off on a tour of the
provinces
Page
73
81
88
96
In which I encounter the diflBculties of a
make-up box; make my first appearance
in drama; and learn the emptiness of suc-
cess with no one to share it ... . 103
In which I taste the flavor of success; get
unexpected word from my mother; and
face new responsibilities 110
In which I understand why other people
fall; burn my bridges behind me; and re-
ceive a momentous telegram .... 117
In which I journey to London; meet and
speak with a wax-works figure; and make
my first appearance in a great theater . 125
In which I play with a celebrated actor;
dare to look at the royal box; pay a pen-
alty for my awful crime; gain favor with
the public; and receive a summons from
another famous star 133
Chapter
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
CONTENTS— Continued
In which I refuse an offer to play in the
provinces; make my final appearance as
Billy at the Duke of York's Theater; and
suffer a bitter disappointment
Page
140
In which my fondest hopes are shattered by
cold reality; I learn the part played by
luck on the Strand; and receive an unex-
pected appeal for help 147
In which I try to drown my troubles In
liquor and find them worse than before;
try to make a living by hard work and
meet small success; and find myself at
last in a hospital bed, saying a surprising
thing 154
In which I encounter the inexorable rules of
a London hospital, causing much conster-
nation; fight a battle with pride; and un-
expectedly enter an upsetting situation . 162
In which I attempt to be serious and am
funny instead; seize the opportunity to
get a raise in pay; and again consider
coming to America 170
In which I startle a promoter; dream a great
triumph in the land of skyscrapers and
buffalo; and wait long for a message . 178
In which I discover many strange things in
that strange land, America; visit San
Francisco for the first time; ajid meet an
astounding reception in the offices of a
cinematograph company 186
In which I find that the incredible has hap-
pened; burn my bridges behind me and
CONTENTS— Continued
Chapter Page
penetrate for the first time the myste-
rious regions behind the moving-picture
film 194
XXVI In which I see a near-tragedy which is a
comedy on the films; meet my fellow
actors, the red and blue rats; and prepare
to fall through a trap-door with a pie . 201
XXVII In which, much against my will, I eat three
cherry pies; see myself for the first time
on a moving-picture screen and discover
that I am a hopeless failure on the films . 209
XXVIII In which I introduce an innovation in mo-
tion-picture production; appropriate an
amusing mustache; and wager eighty dol-
lars on three hours' work 217
XXIX In which I taste success in the movies; de-
velop a new aim in life; and form an am-
bitious project 225
XXX In which I see myself as others see me;
learn many surprising things about my-
self from divers sources; and see a bright
future ahead .- ... 232
XXXI In which the moving-picture work palls on
me; I make other plans, am persuaded to
abandon them and am brought to the
brink of a deal in high finance . . . 239
XXXII In which I see success in my grasp; proudly
consider the heights to which I have
climbed; and receive an unexpected shock 247
XXXIII In which I realize my wildest dreams of for-
tune; ponder on the comedy tricks of
life and conclude without reaching any
conclusion 253
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S
OWN STORY
CHAPTER I
In which I relate my experiences up to the age of
five; and describe the occasion of my first public
appearance on any stage.
Life itself is a comedy — a slap-stick comedy
at that. It is always hitting you over the head
with tlie unexpected. You reach to get the
thing you want — slap I hang ! It's gone ! You
strike at your enemy and hit a friend. You
walk confidently, and fall. Whether it is trag-
edy or comedy depends on how you look at it.
There is not a hair's hreadth between them.
When I was eleven years old, homeless and
starving in London, I had big dreams. I was
a precocious youngster, full of imagination
and fancies and pride. My dream was to he-
come a great musician, or an actor like Booth.
Here I am to-day, becoming a millionaire be-
ll
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
cause I wear funny shoes. Slap-stick comedy,
what?
Still, there is not much laughter in the
world, and a lot of that is cynical. As long
as I can keep people laughing good chuckling
laughs I shall be satisfied. I can't keep it up
long, of course. The public is like a child;
it gets tired of its toys and throws them away.
When that happens I shall do something else,
and still be satisfied. I always knew that some
day I would have my share of the spot-light,
and I am having it, so after all I have realized
my ambitions.
My mother is proud of it. That is another
of life's slap-stick comedies — ^that my mother,
one of the proudest, most gentle women in
England, should hope for twenty years that
some day I would be a great tragic actor, and
now should lie in an English hospital, glad
that I am greeted with howls of laughter when-
ever I appear in comedy make-up on the mov-
ing-picture screen.
When I was two or three years old my
mother began to be proud of my acting. After
she and my father came back from their work
in the London music-halls they used to have
12
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
little parties of friends for supper, and father
would come and pull me out of bed to stand
on the table and recite for them.
]My father was a great, dark, handsome man.
He would put me upon his shoulder to bring
me out, and I did not like it, because his rough
prickly -cheek hurt me. Then he would set
me upon the table in my nightgown, with the
bright lights hurting my eyes, and every one
would laugh and tell me to sing for the drops
of wine in their glasses. I always did, and
the party applauded and laughed and called
for more. I could mimic every one I had ever
seen and sing all the songs I had heard.
They would keep me doing it for hours, un-
til I got so sleepy I could not stand up and
fell over among the dishes. Then mother
picked me up and carried me to bed again.
I remember just how her hair fell down over
the pillow as she tucked me in. It was brown
hair, very soft and perfumed, and her face was
so full of fun it seemed to sparkle. That was
in tlie early days, of course.
I do not know my mother's real name. She
came of a good respected family in London,
and when she was sixteen she ran away and
13
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
married my father, a music-hall actor. She
never heard from her own people again. She
drifted over England and the Continent with
my father, and went on the music-hall stage
herself. They never made much money, and
my father spent it all. Most of the time we
lived very poorly, in actors' lodgings, and my
mother worried ahout food for us. Then there
would be a streak of luck, and we all had new
clothes and lived lavishly for a few days.
My brother Sidney was four years old when
I w^as bom in a little town in France, between
music-hall engagements. As soon as my
mother could travel we went back to London,
and she went to work again. Her stage name
was Lillie Harley, and she was very popular
in English music-halls, where she sang char-
acter songs. She had a beautiful sweet voice,
but she hated the stage and the life. Some-
times at night she came into my bed and cried
herself to sleep with her arms around me, and
I was so miserable that I wanted to scream,
but I did not dare, for fear of waking my
father.
He was Charles Chaplin, the singer of de-
scriptive ballads. His voice was a fine bari-
14
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
tone, and he was a great music-hall success and
is still remembered in England. My mother
and he were always laughing and singing to-
gether, and my mother was very fond of him,
but a little afraid, too. Wlien he was angry
she grew white and her hands shook. She had
thin delicate hands, which reminded me of the
claws of some little bird when she dressed me.
In spite of the hit-and-miss life we led, al-
ways moving from town to town, and my
mother's hard work on the stage and our lack
of money, she took pride in keeping my brother
and me beautifully dressed. At night, after
her music-hall work was done and the party
had gone, I woke and saw her pressing out
our little white Eton collars and brushing our
suits, while every one was asleep.
One day, when I was about five years old,
Sidney and I were playing on the floor when
my mother came in, staggering. I thought
she was drunk. I had seen so many persons
drunk it was commonplace to me, but seeing
my mother that way was horrible. I opened
my mouth and screamed in terror. I screamed
and screamed ; it seemed as if I could not stop.
Sidney ran out of the room. My mother
15
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
did not look at me; she stumbled across the
room and tried to take off her hat. All her
hair came tumbling down over her face, and
she fell on the bed.
After a while I crawled over and touched
her hand, which hung down. It was cold, and
it frightened me so I could not make a sound.
I backed under the bed, little by little, until
I reached the wall, and sat there, still, staring
at my mother's hand.
After a long time the door opened and I
saw my father's boots walk in. I heard him
swearing. The boots came over and stood by
the bed. I smelled whisky, and after a while
I heard my mother's voice, very weak.
"Don't be a hysterical fool. You've got to
work to-night. We need the money," my
father said.
"I can't. I'm not up to it. I'm sick," I
heard my mother say, sobbing.
My father's boots stamped up and do^^Ti the
room.
"Well, I'll take Charlie, then," he said.
"Where's the brat?"
I backed closer to the wall, and kept still.
With no reason, I was terrified. Then the
16
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
door opened again, my father's boots tramped
out and down the stairs, and I heard my
mother calling me. I came slowly out from
under the bed.
^ly mother said she wanted me to go on the
stage in her place that night and sing my very
best. I said I would. Then she had me bring
her a little new coat she had made for me, and
a fresh collar. She still lay on the bed, and
my chin barely came above the edge of it, so
it took her a long time to dress me and to get
my hair combed to suit her. She was still busy
with it when my father came back.
Then she kissed me in a hurry and told me
to do my best. My faiher took my hand and
we started to tlie music-hall. We were at Al-
dershot, a garrison town, and soldiers were
everywhere. I kept tipping my head back to
see their uniforms as they passed us, and my
father was jerking me along at such a rate my
neck nearly snapped in two.
We were late when we reached the music-
hall. I had never seen one before ; my mother
had always put us to bed before she went to
work. My father took me down a little alley,
through a bare dim place, to one end of the
17
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
stage. I saw a big crowd on the otiier side
of it — just hundreds of heads massed together.
There were music and noise, and the stage was
a glare of light.
A girl in tights and shiny spangles came
and put grease paint on my cheeks, and when
I wanted to rub it off they would not let me.
Then it was time for my mother's act, and my
father faced me toward the stage and gave me
a little push.
"Go out and sing Jack Jones" he said.
CHAPTER II
In which I make my first pubhc appearance on the
stage and my first success ; and meet the red- faced
man.
I WALKED uncertainly out on the stage. The
glare of the lights dazzled me so I stumbled.
The stage seemed a great empty place, and
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 rememl>ered 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
tauffht me. I sun"- one verse and started on
the second, liurrying to get througli. I was
19
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
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.
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
20
'I iIkIm'I (1(1 a thing"
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
the audience, ".Walt till I get it aU and I'll
sing a lot 1'*
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, shout-
ing 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-pemiy
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
21
CHAKLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
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.
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
22
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
audiences and having cream tarts for every
meal and six white ponies to drive.
The worry and the unliappiness which
seemed to grow like a cloud around us in those
years made me sit sometimes and cry quietly
to myself, not knowing w^hy, 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.
]\Iy 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 motlier. Rut she had to work and
could not 1x3 with us or keep us together. It
is my impression that my father was making
23
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
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.
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
24
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
not take my eyes from it. Wlien my mother
went on for her act I still stood staring at it.
"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.
tt
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
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"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
liad 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 rattling 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
27
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
shrill to us. Then we climbed many flights of
dark stairs, and Mr. Hawkins let go my hand
to open a door.
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 *omeI" said Mr. Hawkins
cheerf ullj^ "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 ]\Ir.
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,
28
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWX STORY
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 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 fascuia-
29
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
tlon, 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 tlii-eats 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.
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 some-
30
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
times I sobbed as I danced, but I never stopped
nor missed a step; I did not dare.
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, INIr.
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
mv 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.
AVhen 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!
31 '
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Slug 'im! Slug 'im!" in horrible waves of
sound. In the center, where we were to dance,
two men were fighting.
Mr. Hawkins pushed us before him through
the crowd to a place close to them. I saw their
strong naked bodies glistening xmder 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 hor-
ror 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 stand- j
32 I
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
ing between his knees, while he tipped my head
back and looked closely at me.
"Hingratitude, that's wot it is," he said
fiercely. "Speak up, young 'un. Don't you
'ave a-plenty to eat of good 'olesome porridge?
Don't you 'ave a good kind master wot never
canes yer?"
"Oh, yes, sir," I said, in a panic of fear.
"Then don't you go a-being ungrateful, and
a-dying on my 'ands, like young Jim done,"
he roared at me furiously. "You 'ear? Stub-
bornness, that's wot it is. I won't 'ave it I"
CHAPTER IV
In which I feel very small and desolate; encounter
once more the terrible wrath of Mr. Hawkins ; and
flee from it into the unknown perils of a great
and fearful world.
"It's stubbornness, that's wot it is! I won't
'ave it!" ]Mr. Hawkins said fiercely, and
reached for his cane.
I struggled in the grip of his great knees,
and cried in terror that I did not mean it, I
was sorry, I would be good. I begged him not
to beat me. Even when he let me go I could
not stop screaming.
It must have been some time next day that
I woke in a hot tumbled bed. I thought my
mother had been there, with her hair falling
over the pillow and her face all sparkling with
fun. I put up my arms with a cry, and she
was gone. A strange ugly girl, with a broom
in her hand, was leaning over me.
"Coom, coom," she said crossly, shaking my
shoulder. "Wark's to be done. No time to be
lyin' a-bed."
34
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I struggled to get away from her heavy
hand, and sobbed that I wanted my mother,
I wanted to go home. I was so little and so
miserable and wearj'' that the grief of missing
m}^ mother seemed almost to break my heart.
"She's gone," the girl said, still pulling at
me. "She willna be vexed wi' a girt boy, weep-
ing like a baaby."
"No ! No !" I screamed at her. "JNIy mother
hasn't gone away. My mother hasn't left me."
"Yus, she has," the girl told me. "She's
gone."
I let her lift me from the bed then, and sat
limp on the floor where she put me, leaning
my aching head against the bedpost. All my
childish courage and hope was gone, and I was
left very little and alone in a terrible black
world where my motlier did not care for me
any more. I sat there desolate, with great
tears running down my cheeks, and did not
wish to stir or move or ever see any one again.
Long hours later, after it had been dark a
long time, Mr. Hawkins came in with the boys,
and I had no strength even to fear him. Wlien
he roared at me I still sat there and only trem-
bled and turned my head away. I remember
35
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
his walking up and down and looking at me
a long time, and I remember his holding a mug
of ale to my lips and making me swallow some,
but everything was confused and vague, and
I did not care for anything, only wanting to be
left alone.
It may have been the next day, or several
days later, that we were all walking over rough
cobbled streets, veiy early in the morning, in
a cold thick fog. I walked unsteadily, because
my legs felt limp, and INIr. Hawkins held my
hand tight, so that my arm ached. We were
all going to a fair in the country. I was in-
terested in that, because my mother had once
taken Sidney and me to a meadow, where we
all played in the grass and found cowslips and
ate cakes from a basket under a tree.
After we had walked a long time Mr. Haw-
kins took us into an eating-house, where we
had a breakfast of sausages and I drank a big
mug of hot coffee. When we came out the
sun was shining and we walked down a wide
white road, past many great houses with grass
and trees about them. I had never imagined
such places, and with the delight of seeing
them, and the sunlight and the good breakfast,
36
it.
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY ,
I felt better, and thought I could walk by my-
self if ]yii\ Hawkins would let go my hand,
though I dared not speak of it.
As we walked on, the road grew busy with
carriages coming and going and farmers' wag-
ons coming in to market, and after a time a
coster's cart overtook us, and Mr. Hawkins
bargained with the driver to carry us.
Then I began to be almost happy again, as
I sat in the back of the cart with my legs dan-
gling and saw the road unrolling backward be-
tween the wheels. It was a warm morning;
the road was thick with white dust, and the
smell of it and of the green fields, to which
we came presently, and all the country sights
and sounds, were pleasant. We drove for miles
between the hedgerows, and I grew quite ex-
cited looking for the five-barred gates in them,
through which we caught glimpses of the
farms on either side. So at last we came to
Bamett, where the fair was to be.
The village looked bright and clean, with
red brick buildings standing close to the nar-
row street, and shining white cobblestones.
We all climbed down before the inn, and I
looked eagerly for meadows, but there were
87
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
none. ]Mr. Hawkins hurried us to the field
where the fair had already begun. It was
crowded with tents and people, and there was
a great noise of music and shouting and cries
of hokey-pokey men and venders.
"Step lively now, young 'uns," ordered Mr.
Hawkins in an awful voice. " 'Ustle into them
velveteen smalls, and get your jackets on in a
'urry, or I'll show you wot's wot!"
We dressed in mad haste in a little tent,
and he had us into a larger one and hard at
work dancing in no time. We heard his voice
outside, shouting loud over the uproar of the
crowd, " 'Ere! 'Ere! This way for the Lun-
non clog dancers! Only a penny! See the
grite Lunnon clog dancers!" A few people
came in, then more, and more, till the tent was
full of them, coming and going.
It was hard work dancing; my feet felt
heavy to lift and my stomach ached with hun-
ger, but I did not dare stop a minute. I
danced on and on, in that hot and stuffy place,
with a fearful eye on the tent-flap, where now
and again Mr. Hawkins' red face appeared
and glared at us, and we saw his hand with
the cane gripped in it.
38
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Over and over we did the steps, while the
tent grew hotter, and laughing people came
and stared and went away, until my breath
came in gasps and my head swam and grew
large, and larger, and then very tiny again,
in a most confusing manner. Then everything
went black and I must have fallen, for Mr.
Hawkins was shaking me where I lay on the
ground, and saying to some one, " 'E's all
right. 'E's only wilful; 'e wants a good can-
ing, 'e does.'*
After that I was dancing again, but I did
not see the crowd any more. I only danced,
and longed for the time when I might stop.
It came after a long, long while. The tent
was cooler and empty when Mr. Hawkins came
in and took me by the shoulder, and my head
cleared so that I saw I need dance no more.
My weary muscles gave way and I sat on the
floor, looking at him fearfully while he wiped
his face with his handkerchief.
"You, with yer woite faces!" he roared
hoarsely. " 'Ow many times 'ave I told yer
to look cheery while you dance? I've a mind
to cane the lot of yerl" We trembled. "Hut
I won't," he said, after a dreadful j^ause.
30
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"We're all a-goin' hover to the inn and 'ave
bread and cheese."
He took my hand again and we dragged
wearily over to the inn, a bright clean place,
with sawdust on the floor. It was crowded
with men, and they greeted us with loud voices
as we came in,
" 'Ere's the Lunnon clog dancers, come to
dance for bread and cheese," JNIr. Hawkins said
cheerfully. He looked at the barmaid, who
nodded, and a place was cleared for us to begin
our weary dancing again.
My tired little legs would hardly hold me
up, and I stumbled in the steps. Under the
terrible eye of Mr. Hawkins I did my best,
panting with fear, but I could not dance. I
stopped at last, and leaned against the bar.
Mr. Hawkins reached for me, but as I shrank
back with a cry I felt warm arms around me.
It was the barmaid who held me, and after
one look at her red cheeks, so close, I began
to cry on her shoulder.
"Pore little dear, Vs tired," she said, hold-
ing me tight from Mr. Hawkins. " 'E shall
'ave his bread and qheese without 'is dancing."
40
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
te n
'E's a wilful, perverse hungrateful
creetur!" ]Mr. Hawkins said, but she did not
seem to mind. She took me behind the bar
and gave me a scorching drink of something
and a great piece of bread which I was
too weary to eat. Afterward Mr. Hawkins
took me back to the fair, jerking me furiously
along b}^ the arm. He took me to the little
tent where we had dressed and put me inside.
"I'll tike the 'ide off you when I come back,"
he said hoarsely, bending to bring his red face
close to mine. "I'll give you a caning wot is
a caning, I will. I've been too gentle with you,
I 'ave. You stay 'ere, and wait."
With these dreadful words and a horrible
oath he went away, and I could hear him shout-
ing before the other tent above the sounds of
tlie evening's merrymaking. "'Ere! 'Ere!
This way to the Lunnon clog dancers! Only
a penny!"
I was left in such a state of misery and
wretchedness, shaking with such fear, that not
even my great weariness would let me sleep.
I sat there in the dark for a long time, trem-
bling, and then, driven by terror of Mr. Ilaw-
41
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
kins' return, I crawled beneath the edge of the
tent and set out blindly to get beyond the reach
of his voice.
When I came to the edge of the crowd I ran
as fast as I could.
r'harlic ("liaiiliii
CHAPTER V
In which I have an adventure with a cow ; become a
lawless filcher of brandysnaps ; and confound an
honest farmer.
I RAN for a long time in the darkness, blindly,
not caring where I went, only that I escaped
from Mr. Hawkins. The pounding of my
heart shook me as I plunged across fields and
scrambled under gates in my way, until at last
I came to a comer of two hedges, and had no
strength to go farther. I curled myself into
as small a space as possible, close to the hedges,
and lay there. It seemed to me that I was
hidden and safe, and I was quite content as I
went to sleep.
Early in the morning I was awakened by
a curious swishing noise, and saw close to my
face the great staring eyes of a strange animal.
It was a cow, but I liad never seen one, and I
thought it was one of the giants my mother
had told about. I saw its tongue, lapping up
43
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
about its nose, and as I stared it licked mv
face. The moist sandpapery feeling of it
startled me and I howled.
At the sound it backed away with a snort,
and so we remained, staring at each other for
a long time. It was a bright morning, with
birds singing in the hedgerows, and if it had
not been for my hunger and an uneasiness lest
the cow meant to lick me again I would have
been quite happy, so far from Mr. Hawkins.
Then between me and the cow came a woman
with a big bucket on her arm, carrying a three-
legged stool. Quite fearlessly she slapped the
great animal, and it turned meekly and stood,
while she sat on the stool and began to milk.
It was the strangest thing I had ever seen,
and I went over to her side and stood watching
the thin white stream pattering on the bottom
of the bucket. She gave a great start and cried
out in surprise when she saw me.
"Lawk a mussy!" she said, and sat with her
mouth open. I must have been a strange sight
in that farmyard, a thin little child — for I was
only ten and very small for that age — in vel-
veteen smalls and a round jacket with tinsel
braid on it.
44
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"Where did you coom from?" she asked.
"I come from London. I am an actor," I
said importantly. "What are you doing?" and
pointed to the hucket.
She laughed at that and seeing, I suppose,
that I looked hungry, she held the bucket to
my lips, and I tasted the fresh warm milk. I
drank every drop, in great delight. I had
never tasted anything so delicious before.
"Are you hungry?" she asked me, and I told
her solemnly, believing it, that I had had noth-
insT to eat for a week. Her consternation at
that was so great she dropped the bucket, but
hastily picking it up, she sat down and milked
again until she had another huge draught for
me. Then she finished the milking in a hurry
and took me into the farmliouse kitchen, a
bright place, with shining pans on the wall and
a pleasant smell of cooking.
The tale I told the farmer's wife I do not
remember, but she took me up in her arms, say-
ing, "Poor httle lad! Poor little lad!" over
and over, while she felt my thin arms, and I
squirmed, for I did not like to be pitied, and
besides, I saw the breakfast on the ta))lc and
wished she would let me have some. When she
45
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
set me down before it at last I could hardly
wait to begin, while, to my surprise, she tied
a napkin around my neck.
It was a mighty breakfast — porridge and
eggs, with a rasher of bacon and marmalade,
and the maid who had milked the cow was cut-
ting great slices of crusty bread and butter.
But before I had taken up a spoon the farmer
came in. He was a big bluff man, and at sight
of me he began to ask questions in a loud voice.
"Well, my lad, where did you come from?"
he said.
"From the fair, sir," I answered, eager to
be at the food, and not thinking what I said.
"Oh, 'e's the little lad wi' the clog dancers
I told you of, Mary," he said. "GI' him break-
fuss, if you like, and I'll be takin' him back to
his master as I go to the village."
At the terrible thought of Mr. Hawkins,
whom I had almost forgotten, panic took me.
I sat there trembling for a second, and then,
before a hand could be reached to stay me, I
leaped from my chair and fled from the kitchen,
through the farmyard and out the gate, the
napkin fluttering at my neck. A long way
down the lane I stopped, panting, and looked
46
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
to see if any one was following me. No one
was.
I wandered on for some time, growing hun-
grier with every step and regretting passion-
ately the loss of that great breakfast before I
saw the girl with the brandysnaps. She M^as a
fat round-cheeked little girl, with her hair in
braids, and she was swinging on a gate, hum-
ming to herself and nibbling a cookie. Others
were piled on the gatepost beside her. I
stopped and looked eagerly at them and at
her. Badly as I wanted some I would not ask
for them, and she looked at me round-eyed and
said nothing.
So we eyed each other, until finally she made
a face and stuck out her tongue at me. Then
she opened her mouth wide and popped in a
brandysnap. It was too much. With a yell
I sprang at her and seized the cookies. She
tumbled from the gate, and as she fell she
howled appallingly. At the sound a great
shaggy dog came bounding, and I fled in
panic, clutching the brandysnaps.
The dog pursued me as I ran, in great leaps,
my ears filled with the fearful sound of his
barks. I sped around a turn in the lane and
47
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
saw before me a farmer's wagon going slowly
along. The dog was hard on my heels. I
caught a glimpse of his great red mouth and
tongue. With a last panting effort I clam-
bered upon the tail of the wagon and dived
beneath the burlap which covered the load.
There, lying in the dimness among green
vegetables, I consumed the brandysnaps to the
last crumb, listening to the farmer's bewildered
expostulation with the honest dog, which con-
tinued barking at the wagon until the farmer
dismounted and pursued him down the road
with his whip. Then, as the wagon went on-
ward again, I ate a number of radishes and a
raw potato, and experimentally bit the squash
and marrows until, with a contented stomach,
I curled up among the lettuce and fell asleep.
I was awakened by the stopping of the
wagon and heard the farmer, busied with the
horse, exchanging jovial greetings with other
fgruff voices. Undecided what to do, I lay still
until I heard him speaking loudly almost over
my head.
"I lay these are the finest vegetables ever
come to market," he said proudly, and tore the
burlap covering from me. I sat up.
48
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
There never was a more surprised farmer.
He stood open-mouthed. While the men
around him laughed, I scrambled from among
the vegetables over the wagon's edge and dived
into the uproar of Covent Garden market.
Horses, donkeys, wagons, men, women and
children crowded the place ; on every side were
piles of vegetables and bright fiiiit, and there
was a clamor of laughter, shouts and the cries
of hucksters.
I ran about, happy in all the confusion, and
glad to feel London about me again. After
a while I met a man who gave me a penny for
helping him unload his vegetables, and I wan-
dered out of the market and down the dirty
cobbled streets outside. There was a barrel
organ which I followed for a time, and then I
met a hokey-pokey man and spent my penny
for his sweets. I felt as rich as a lord as I sat
on the curb in the sunshine eating them.
CHAPTER VI
In which I come home again; accustom myself to
going to bed hungry ; and have an unexpected en-
counter with my father.
As I sat there in the sunshine eating the hokey-
pokey for which I had spent my only penny
all my old dreams came back to me. I imag-
ined myself rich and famous, howing before
cheering audiences, wearing a tall silk hat and
a cane, and buying my mother a silk dress.
It was a rough dirty street, swarming with
ragged children and full of heavy vans driven
by swearing drivers, but reality did not inter-
fere with my dreams. It never has.
When I had licked the last sweetness of the
cream from my fingers I rose and walked with
a haughty swagger, raising my eyebrows dis-
dainfully. It was difficult to look down on
a person whose waistband was on a level with
my eyes, but I managed it. Then I amused
myself walking behind people and imitating
them, until I heard a barrel organ and followed
it, dancing with the other children.
I was adventurous and gay that morning,
50
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORYi
with no cares in the world. What did it mat-
ter that I had no food nor shelter nor friends
in all London? I did not tliink of that.
It was late that afternoon, and I had wan-
dered a long way, when my increasing hunger
began to damp my spirits. ]My feet dragged
before the windows of pastry shops, and the
fruit on the street stands tempted me. When
it grew dark and the gas lamps were lighted
I felt very little and lonely again and longed
to cry. The streets were crowded with people
hurrying home — women with market baskets,
and rough men, but no one noticed me. I was
only a ragged hungry child, and there are
thousands of them in London.
At last I stood forlorn before a baker's win-
dow looking at the cakes and buns inside and
wanting them with all my heart. I stood there
a long time, jostled by people going by, till
a woman stopped beside me to look in also.
Something about her skirt and shoes gave me
a wild hope, and I looked up. It was my
mother. My mother!
I clasped her about the knees and screamed.
Then I felt her arms tiglit about me and she
was kneeling beside me while we sobbed to-
51
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
gether. My mother, my dear mother, at last.
She had not gone away ; she had not forgotten
me ; she wanted me as much as ever. I clutched
her, shaking and sobbing, as if I could never
let go, until, little as she was, she picked me
up and carried me home.
She was not living in actors' lodgings any
more; she had a poor little room in Palermo
Terrace, Kensington — a room little better than
the dreadful one where Mr. Hawkins had kept
me — but it was like Heaven to me to be there,
with my mother. I clung to her a long time,
hysterical when she tried to take my arms from
her neck, and we laughed and cried together
while she petted and comforted me.
Neither my father nor Sidney was there, nor
was there any sign that they were expected.
When I was quieter, sitting on her lap eating
a bun and tea, my mother said that they were
gone. On the day I ran away with Mr. Haw-
kins, Sidney had gone to sea. My mother had
a note from him, telling her about his grand
place as steward's assistant on a boat going
to Africa, and promising to bring her back
beautiful presents and money. ;She had not
heard from him again.
52
CHxiRLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
She undressed me with her tiny hands that
reminded me of hirds' claws and tucked me
in bed, just as I had dreamed so often, with
her soft hair falling over the pillow, and I
went to sleep, my heart almost bursting with
happiness at being home again.
When I woke in the morning, so early that
it Avas not yet light, I saw her sitting beside a
lamp, sewing. All my memories of my mother
for weeks after that are pictures of her sitting
sewing, her sweet thin face, with dark circles
under the eyes, bending over the w^ork and her
fingers flying. She was making blouses for
a factory. There were always piles of them,
finished and unfinished, on the table and bed,
and she never stopped work on them. When
I awoke in the night I saw her in the lamp-
light working, and all day long she worked,
barely stopping to eat. When she had a great
pile of them finished I took them to the factory
and brought back more for her to do.
I used to climb the long dark stairs to the
factory loft with the bundle and w^atch the
man who took the blouses and examined them,
hating him. He was a sleek fat man, with
rings on his fingers, and he used to point out
53
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
every stitch which was not just right, and claim
there were spots on the blouses, though there
were none at all, and then he kept out some
of the money. My mother got half a croA^ni
^ — about fifty cents — for a dozen blouses, and
by working all week without stopping a minute
she earned about five shillings.
I would keep out three and six for the rent
money, and then go bargaining at the market
stalls for food. A pound of two-penny bits
of meat, with a pennyworth of pot-herbs, made
us a stew, and sometimes I got a bit of stale
bread besides. Then I came panting up the
stairs to my mother with the bundles, and gave
her the rent money, warm from being clutched
in my hand, and she would laugh and kiss me
and say how well I had done.
The stew had to last us the w^eek, and I laiow
now that often my mother made only a pre-
tense of eating, so that there would be more
for me. I was always hungry in those days
and used to dream of cakes and buns, but Ave
were very happy together. Sometimes I would
do an errand for some one and get a penny,
and then I proudly brought it to her and w^e
would have bmis, or even a herring, for supper.
54
'Oil joy!"
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Rut she was uneasy when I was away, and
wanted me to sit by her and read aloud while
she worked, so I did not often leave her.
At this time she was passionately eager to
have me study. She had taught me to read
before, and now while she sewed she talked to
me about history and other countries and peo-
ples, and showed me how to draw maps of the
world, and we played little spelling games.
She had me read the Bible aloud to her for
hours at a time. It was the only book we had.
Rut most of all she taught me acting. I had
a great gift for mimicry, and she had me mimic
every one I saw in the streets. I loved it and
used to make up little plays and act them for
her.
Remembering the first time I had danced
on tlie stage, and the money I made, I wanted
to go back to the music-halls, but she roused
almost into a fury at the idea. All her most
painful memories were of the music-hall life,
and she passionately made me promise never
to act in one. I could not have done it in any
case, because at this time there was a law for-
bidding children under fourteen to work on
the stage. I was only eleven.
55
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
My mother grew thinner and more tired. She
complained sometimes of a pain in her head,
and her beautiful hair, like long, fine silk, had
threads in it that shone like silver. I loved
to watch them when she brushed it at night.
But she was always gay and sweet with me,
and I adored her. I had no life at all separate
from her; all my dreams and hopes were of
making her happy and buying her beautiful
things, and taking her to a place in the country
where she could rest and do nothing but play
with me.
Then one day while I was coming from the
factory with the money clutched in my hand I
passed a barroom. I had never been in one,
or cared to, but something seemed to attract
me to this one. I stood before the swinging
doors, thinking with a fluttering heart of going
in, and wanting to, and not wanting to, both at
once. Finally I timidly pushed the doors apart
and looked in. There, at a little table, drink-
ing with some men, I saw my father.
CHAPTER VII
In which I see my father for the last thne; learn
that real tragedy is silent; and go out into the
world to make my own way.
It gave me a great shock to recognize my
father in the man who sat there drinking. I
quivered as I looked at him. He was changed ;
his dark handsome face had reddened and
looked swollen and flabby ; his eyes were blood-
shot. He did not see me at first. The man
with him appeared to be urging something,
and my father cried with an oath that he would
not. I caught the word "hospital," and saw
his hands shake as he pounded the table. Then
some one coming in pushed me into the room
and he saw me.
"Hello, here's the little tike!" he cried.
"Blast me, he hasn't grown an inch I Here,
come here to your daddy!"
I went over to the table and stood looking
at him, the bundles under my arm. He was
very boisterous, calling all the men in tlic bar
to see me, and boasting of how I could dance.
57
<(
it
CHAHLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
He swung me to the table-top, crying, "Come,
my beauty, show 'em what j^ou can do!" and
they began to clap. I danced for them, and
then I mimicked them one by one until the
room was in an uproar.
He's his father's own son!" they cried.
Little Charlie Chaplin!"
My father was very proud of me and kept
me at it until I was tired, and, remembering
that my mother was waiting, I climbed down
from the table and picked up my bundles.
"Going without a drink?" cried my father,
and offered me his glass, but I pushed it away.
I did not like the smell of it. ]My father seemed
hurt and angry ; he drained the glass and put it
on the table with a slam, and I saw again how
his hand shook.
Just like his mother!" he said bitterly.
Despises his own father! I'm not good
enough for his little highness. She's taught
him that."
"It's not true!" I cried, enraged. "My
mother never says a word about you!"
"Oh, don't she?" he sneered, but his lip
shook. He stared moodily at the table, drum-
ming on it with his fingers, and then he turned
58
it
CHAHLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
to me with a dreary look in his eyes. "Well,
then, come home with me," he said. "I'll take
good care of you and give you a fine start in
the profession and clothes that aren't rags. I
can do that, yet. I'm not done for, whatever
they say. Come, will you do it?"
"No," I said. "I want to stay with my
mother."
"We'll see about that!" he shouted angrily.
He seized my arm and shook it. "You'll come
with me, if I say so. You hear?" He glared
at me and I looked back at him, frightened.
"You hurt! I want to go home to my
mother!" I cried.
He held me a minute and then wearily
pushed me away. "All right, go and be
damned !" he said. "It's a hell of a life." Then,
with a sudden motion, he caught my hand and
put a sovereign in it. I dodged through the
crowd and escaped into the street, eager to
take the money to my mother.
The next week, as we were sitting togetlier,
my mother sewing and I j)ainfiilly spelling out
long words in my reading, the landlady came
puffing up the stairs and knocked at tlie door.
"Your mister's took bad and in the Iiospital,'*
59
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
she said to my mother. "He's sent a message
'e wants to see you."
My mother turned whiter and rose in a hurry
to put on her bonnet, while I picked the bits
of thread from her gown. Then she kissed me,
told me to mind the stew and not go out till
she came back, and went away.
There seemed a horror left in the room when
she was gone. I could not keep my thoughts
from that word "hospital," which all the poor
of London fear and dread. I wandered about
the room, looking from the window at the
starving cats in the court and at the brick wall
opposite till it grew dark. Then I ate a small
plate of the stew, leaving some for my mother,
and went miserably to bed.
Late in the night my mother woke me and
I saw that her face was shining almost as it
used to do.
"Oh, my dear!" she cried, hugging me. "It's
all right. We are going to be so happy again!'*
She rocked back and forth, hugging me, and
her hair tumbled down about us. Then she
told me that when my father was well we were
all going to leave London and go far away
together — ^to Australia. We were going to
60
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
have a farm there, in the country, with cows,
and I was to have milk and cream and eggs,
and she would make butter, and my father
would never drink again. She poured it all
out, in little bursts of talk, and her wami tears
fell on my face.
When at last she left me to brush out her
hair she hummed a little song and smiled at
herself in the tiny mirror.
*'I wish my hair was all brown as it used
to be," she said. "It hurt him so to see it white.
I will get fat in the country. Do you remem-
ber how handsome your father was and how
jolly? Oh, won't it be fun?" After she had
put out the light we lay a long time in the
dark talking, and she told me tales of the pleas-
ant times they had when I was little and asked
if I remembered them.
After that my mother went every day to the
hospital. She did not sew any more, and she
bouglit bunches of flowers and fruit for my
father and cakes for me. At night, when she
tucked me in, her face was bright with hope,
and hearing her laugh, I remembered how sel-
dom she had done it lately. We were both
very happy.
Gl
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Then one day she came in slowly, stumbling"
a bit. ]My heart gave a terrible leap when I
saw her face — gray, with a blue look about her
lips. I ran to her, frightened, and helped her
to a chair. She sat there quite still, not answer-
ing me at first, and then she said in a dull voice,
"He's dead. He's dead. He was dead when
I got there. It can't be true. He's dead."
]My father had died suddenly the night be-
fore. There was some confusion about the bur-
ial arrangements. ]My mother seemed dazed
and there was no money. People came and
talked with her and she did not seem to under-
stand them, but it seemed that the music-hall
people were making the arrangements, and
then that somebody objected to that and un-
dertook them — I gathered that it was my fath-
er's sister.
Then one day my mother and I dressed veiy
carefully and went to the funeral. It was a
foggy cold day, late in autumn, with drops of
rain falling slowly. At one end of the grave
stood a thin angular woman with her lips
pressed together tight, and my mother and I
stood at the other. My mother held her head
proudly and did not shed a tear, but her hand
62
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
in mine was cold. There were several carriages
and people from the music-halls with a few
flowers. When the coffin was lowered into the
grave the thin hard-looking woman dropped
some flowers on it. ]My mother looked at her
and she looked at my mother coldly. We had
no flowers, but my mother took from my pocket
a little handkerchief of hers which she had
given me — a little handkerchief with an em-
broidered border which I prized very much — !
and put it in my hand.
"You can put that in," she said, and I
dropped it into the open grave and watched it
flutter down. !My heart was almost breaking
with grief for my mother.
Then we went back to our cold room alone,
and my mother went at once at her sewing.
We had no more talks or study, and she did
not seem to hear when I read aloud, so after
a time I stopped. She sat silently, all day,
sewing at the blouses, and I hunted for eiTands
in the streets, and made the stew, and tried to
get her to cat some. She said she did not care
to eat because her head ached, she would rather
I had it.
At this time I looked everywhere for work,
63
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
but could not seem to find any. I was so small
and thin that people thought I could not do it
well. I picked up a few pennies here and there
and learned the ways of the streets, and wished
I were bigger and not so shabby, so that I
might go on the stage. I was sure I could
make money there.
Then one day I came home and found my
mother lying on the floor beside her chair, gray
and cold, with blue lips. I could not rouse her.
I screamed on the staircase for the landlady,
and she came up and we worked over my
mother together. After a while the parish doc-
tor came — a busy bustling little man. He
pursed up his lips and shook his head. "In-
firmary case!" he said briskly. "Looks bad!'*
A wagon came and they took my mother
away, still gray and cold. She had not moved
or spoken to me. When she had gone I sat at
the top of the staircase in blank hopeless mis-
ery, thinking of the grave in which they had
buried my father, and that I would never see
my mother again. After a while the landlady
came up with a broom.
"Well, well," she said crossly. "I 'ave my
room to let again. It's a 'ard world. I'm a
64
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
poor Avoman, you know; you can't stay
'ere."
'Yes, I know. I have other lodgings," I
said importantly, so that she should not see
how miserable I was. I went into the room
with her and looked around. I had nothing
to take away but a comb and a collar. I put
them in my pocket and left.
"VYlien I was on the stairs the landlady called
to me from the top.
"You know I'd like to keep you 'ere if I
could," she said.
"Yes, I know. But I can look out for my-
self," I said. I put my hands in my pockets
and whistled to show her I needed no pity, and
went out into the street.
CHAPTER VIII
In which I take lodgings in a barrel and find that
I have invaded a home; learn something about
crime ; and forget that I was to share in nefarious
profits.
It was a cold wet evening in the beginning of
winter and the rain struck chilly through my
thin clothes as I walked, wondering where I
could find shelter. Probably in America a
homeless, hungry child of eleven would find
friends, but in London I was only one of thou-
sands as wretched as I, Such poverty is so
common there that people are accustomed to it
and pass by with their minds full of their own
concerns.
I wandered aimlessly about for a long time,
watching the gas lamps flare feebly, one by
one, and make long, glimmering marks on the
wet pavements. I could not whistle any more,
there was such an ache in my throat at the
thought of my mother, and I was so miserable
and forlorn. At last I found an overturned
66
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
barrel with a little damp straw in it in an alley,
and I curled up in it and lay there hearing the
raindrops muffled, hollow, beating above me.
After a while I must have fallen into a dose,
for I was awakened by something crawling
into the barrel. I thought it was a dog and i^ut
out my hand, half afraid and half glad of the
company. It was another boy.
"Hello, 'ere !" he said. "Wot are you up to?
This 'ere is my 'ome!"
"I don't care, I'm here and I'm going to stay
here," I said. "Say what you like about that!"
"Ho, you are, are j^ou? I'll punch your
bloomin' 'ead off first!" he answered.
"I won't go, not for twenty punchings," I
said doggedly. There was not room to fight
in the barrel and I was sure he could not get
me out, because I knew by the feel of his wet
shoulder in the dark that lie was smaller than I.
" 'Ere's a pretty go, a man carn't 'ave 'is
own 'ome!" he said bitterh% after m-c had sat
breathing hard for a minute. "Wot's yer
name?"
I told him who I was and how I had come
there and promised to leave in the morning.
He was much interested in hearing that I had
67
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
a mother and asked what she was like, assum-
ing at once a condescending air. He had never
had a mother, he said importantly ; he knew his
way about, he did.
"You can stye 'ere if you like," he said
grandly. " 'Ave you 'ad grub?"
I told him no, that I had not been able to find
anything to eat.
"Hi know, the cats get to it first," he said.
"But hi 'ave my wye, hi 'ave. 'Ere's 'arf a bun
for yer." He put into my hand a damp bit of
bread and I ate it gratefully while he talked.
His name was Snooper, he said, and he could
show me about — how to snatch purses and
dodge the bobbies and have larks.
At last we went to sleep, curled in the damp
straw, with an understanding that the next
day we should forage together for purses.
Next morning I was awakened by a terrific
noise, and crawling from the barrel found
Snooper standing outside kicking it. He was
a wizened, small child, not more than nine years
old, wearing a ragged coat too small for him
and a man's trousers torn off at the knee. He
wore his cap on one side with a jaunty air and
whistled, his hands in the rents in his coat.
68
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
We started off together to Covent Garden
market, where he said we would find good pick-
ings, and seeing the knowing cock of his eye
and his gay manner, I too managed to whistle
and walk with a swagger, though my heart was
still hea^y with missing my mother, and I was
very hungry. It was early when we came to
the market, but the place was crowded with
farmers' wagons and horses and costers' carts.
We wandered about and Snooper, with great
enterprise, filled the front of his blouse with
raw eggs, which we ate in a near-by alley.
When we returned to the market it was begin-
ning to fill with purchasers. Snooper, with his
finger at his nose and a cock of his eye, pointed
out one of them, a fat woman In black, carry-
ing a big market basket on her arm and clutch-
ing a fat leather purse.
"When I glom the leather you hupset the
heggs at 'er feet," he said to me in a hoarse
whisper, and we edged closer to her through
the crowd. She was standing before a
vegetable stand with a bunch of herbs in her
liand arguing with tlie farmer.
"Thri[)pence," said the farmer firmly.
"Tuppence ha'penny, not a farthing more,"
69
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
she said.. "It's robbery, that's wot it is." We
edged closer,
"Worth fourpence by rights," said the
farmer. "Take 'em for thrippence or leave
'em."
"Tuppence ha'penny," she insisted. "They're
stale. Tuppence ha' — ow!" Snooper had
snatched her purse.
With a yell she leaped after him, stumbled
and fell in the crate of eggs. The farmer, rush-
ing from behind his stand, overturned the
pumj)kins, which bounced among the crowd.
There was great uproar. I fled.
Diving under wagons and dodging among
the horses and people, I had gone half-way
down the big market when I encountered a per-
spiring, swearing farmer, who was trying to
unload his wagon and hold his horse at the
same time. The beast was plunging and rear-
ing.
"Hi, lad!" the farmer called to me. "Want
a ha'penny? 'Old 'is bloomin' 'ead for me and
I'll gi' you one."
I gladly seized the halter, and a few minutes
later I had the halfpenny and a carrot as well.
I liked the market, with all its noise and bustle
70
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
and the excitement of seeing" new things, and
while I wandered through the crowd munching
my carrot I decided to stay there. Snooper had
said he would wait for me at the barrel and
divide the contents of the purse, but among all
the interesting sights and sounds of the market
I forgot that, and although I looked for him
several days later, I never saw him again.
Before noon I had earned another ha'penny
and an apple, only partly spoiled. I had not
eaten an apple since the old days when I was
very little and mother used to bring home treats
to Sidney and me. The loneliness of my mother
still lay at the bottom of my heart like a dull
ache, and I determined to take the apple to her.
The parish doctor who had taken her away had
said I might be able to see her at the hospital
that afternoon.
I held the apple carefully all the long way
through the London streets to the hospital. It
was a big bare i^lace, with very busy people
coming and going, and for a long time I could
not get any one to tell me where my mother
was. At last a woman all in black, with a wide,
flaring white cap on her head, took my hand
and led me past a great many beds with moan-
71
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
ing people in them to the one where my mother
lay.
They had cut away all her beautiful hair,
and her small bare head looked strange upon
the pillow. Her eyes were wide open and
bright, but they frightened me, and though she
was talking rapidly to herself, she did not say
a word to me when I stood beside her and
showed her the apple.
"Mother, mother, see, I've brought you
something," I said, but she only turned her
head restlessly on the pillow.
"One more. Are the bottonlioles finished?
Nine more to make the dozen, and then a dozen
more, and that's a half-crown, and thread costs
so much," she went on to herself.
"What's the matter with my mother? Why
don't she speak to me?" I asked the woman in
the white cap.
"It's the fever — she's out of her head, poor
thing," the woman said.
"Won't she ever be able to speak to me?" I
asked her, and something in the way she shook
her head and said she didn't know made me
cold all over. Then she led me out again and
I went back to Covent Garden market.
72
CHAPTER IX
In which I trick a Covent Garden coster ; get glorious
news from Sidney; and make another sad trip to
the hospital.
I SLEPT that night in Covent Garden market,
cuddled close to the back of a coster's donkey,
which was warm, but caused me great alarm at
intervals by wheezing loudly and making as if
to turn over upon me. Then I scurried out of
the straw and wandered about in the empty,
echoing place, feeling very small in the vast
dimness among the shadows, until the donkey
was quiet again and I could creep back beside
him.
In the strange eery chill of the morning,
while the gas lamps in the streets were still
showing dimly through in the fog, the farmers
began to come in with their wagons. I hurried
about in the darkness of the market, asking
each one if I miglit help him imload the
vegetables or hold the horse for a halfpenny,
73
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
or even for a carrot or raw potato. The horses
were large, heavy-footed beasts and their
broad, huge-muscled chests towered over me
as I held the halters, while every toss of their
heads lifted me from the floor. But I held on
bravely, very hungry, thinking of the bun I
might buy with a halfpenny, and indeed, before
the market was light I had two halfpennies
and a small assortment of vegetables.
I ate these, and then I went out into the
dirty, cobbled streets about the market where
the heavy vans were already beginning to
rumble by and found an eating-house where,
for my penny, I bought not only two buns, but
a big mug of very hot cofl*ee as well. As I sat
on a stool drinking and taking bites from the
buns, the waiter leaned his elbows on the
counter and asked me where I had come from
and who I was.
"I am an actor," I told him, for this idea
was always in the back of my mind. He
laughed heartily at this, and I swallowed the
rest of the coffee in a hurry, scalding my
throat, for I resented his laughing and wished
to get away. I put the bits of bun in my pocket
and slipped down from the stool, but before I
74
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
had reached the door the man came around the
counter with another bun in his hand.
" 'Ere, me pore lad, tike this," he said kindly
enough, putting the bun in my pocket. I let
him do it, feeling confused and resentful, and
ate the bun later, sitting on a box in the market,
but I never went back to that eating-house
again. I hated to be pitied.
All the months I lived in Covent Garden
market I was hungry. I ate eagerly every bit
of spoiled fruit or partly decaj^ed vegetable I
could find, and sometimes the farmers, amused
by my dancing for them while they were eat-
ing, would give me crusts from their baskets,
but my stomach was never satisfied. The
people who came to Covent Garden market
were poor, and halfpennies were scarce, though
I hunted all day long for small jobs that I
could do. Very early in the morning when the
farmers first came in was the best time to find
them, but sometimes days went by when all I
could earn was raw vegetables.
After a time, when the market people knew
me, I had permission to sleep in one of the
coster's carts, with a sack over me for warmth,
but at first I curled up in the straw beside the
75
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
donkeys. One of the donkeys in particular
was quite sleek and fat. His owner took great
pride in him, feeding him every day a large
portion of carrots, and fondly swearing at him
while he ate them. I used to look enviously at
that donkey and finally I evolved a great plan.
When the donkey had first begun to munch
the carrots, I would scream from the tail of the
cart, "Thieves! Thieves! Catch 'im!" and
spring away, overturning boxes and making a
great commotion. The coster would leave his
donkey and come running, excited, and while
he was wondering what had happened I would
steal slyly up on the other side of the donkey
and filch the carrots. The poor beast looked
reproachfully at me, wagging his ears and
sometimes braying frightfully, but I ran glee-
fully away, and sitting concealed beneath a
wagon, ate his dinner for him to the last bite.
The stupid coster, amazed, would scratch his
head and marvel at the donkey's appetite, but
I do not remember that he ever failed to run
at the cry of "Thieves!" or that I ever failed
to make way with the carrots.
Several times that winter I screwed up my
76
F
(«■
Covcnt Garden on Market Day
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
courage to attempt getting work on the stage,
but after I had walked a long way in the foggy,
dripping streets, I would be so cold and wet
and so conscious of my rags and of my dirty
collar that I turned back to the market again.
Sometimes at long intervals the people at the
hospital let me see my mother, but I could not
bear to look at her, she was so altered and
seemed so strange. She lay quite still, some-
times, and would not speak or answer me when
I called to her, so that I thought she was dead,
and a great black misery came over me. Some-
times she turned her head from side to side on
the pillow and talked to herself in a quick, clear
voice about blouses, dozens and dozens of
blouses. She never looked at me or seemed to
know that I was there, and I came away from
the hospital so wretched that I wished never to
go back.
Still I went again, as often as they would
let me, and one day a marvelous thing hap-
pened. The nurse with the flaring white cap
took me into a little office and showed me a
letter.
"A woman brouglit it here from the lodg-
77
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
ings where your mother lived," she said. "We
read it to your mother, but she could not under-
stand, so we saved it for you."
She gave it to me and I read it in great
excitement. .
"Dear mother," it read. "I am coming
back from Africa. I will be home for Christ-
mas Day, with thirty pounds saved, and I am
bringing grand presents for you, but I will not
tell you what they are. Tell Charlie to look
out for his big brother, I have presents for him,
too. I will be home two months from to-day,
at Waterloo station at nine o'clock. Be sure
to have a Christmas pudding ready. Hoping
you are all well, I am your dutiful son,
"Sidney.
"Postscript — It is a shawl, and there are ear-
rings, too, but I will not tell you what else."
My heart gave a great leap and seemed to
choke me, and I trembled so I could not speak.
I had not thought of Sidney for a long time,
and now he was coming home with money and
presents! And thinking of my poor mother,
who was so ill and could not understand the
great news, tears came into my eyes so that I
had to rub them not to let the nurse see. Then
78
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I saw how dirty I was, and ragged, and was
ashamed to have Sidney see me.
The nurse kindly told the day, and compar-
ing it with the date of the letter, I saw it was
that very evening that Sidney would reach
London.
Quivering with excitement, I begged to see
my mother again and tell her about it, and
when they said I might, I could not walk down
the long ward, but must run in my eagerness.
"^Mother! IMother! Sidney's coming home!
With presents for you — a shawl, and ear-
rings!" I cried. But it was no use. My
mother lay there with her thin drawn face quite
still and would not even open her eyes.
So, with a heavy heart, wondering how I was
to tell Sidney of all that had occurred, I came
out of the hospital and tried to make ready for
going to Waterloo station.
I washed my face and hands carefully in a
puddle and dried them upon some straw. Then
I took some mud and blacked my shoes as well
as possible, and the toe which showed so that
it would not be so conspicuous. Then my hands
must be washed again and my hair combed. I
smoothed out my wrinkled clothes as well as I
79
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
could and tucked in the torn lining of my cap
so that it would not show.
All this took much time, so that it was almost
dusk before I started to meet Sidney, and I ran
most of the way, not to be late, hoping that I
would not miss him in all the confusion of the
station.
I
I
CHAPTER X
In which Sidney comes home to find father dead,
mother too ill to recognize him and me half starved
and in rags.
When at last I arrived, panting, at Waterloo
station the lamps were already lighted and all
the place was bright with them. There was
such a noise of people coming and going and
so much confusion that, used as I was to the
turmoil of the market, I hardly knew where to
go or what to do. Besides, the manner of these
people was so different and their clothes so
good that I felt more than ever ashamed of my
raggedness and doubtful what Sidney would
think when he saw me.
However, I was so determined not to miss
him that I got up courage to ask the way to
the trains and was waiting there trembling with
excitement and eagerness when the nine o'clock
express came in. I had not quite courage
enough to run forward, but hung back a little,
keeping my broken shoe with the hole in it
81
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
where my toe showed behind the other and
looking" carefully at each man that passed in
the hope that he might be Sidney.
At last I saw him. He was almost seventeen
then ; big, well-dressed and healthy looking as
he swung along with his cap pushed back look-
ing eagerly at every woman in sight, expect-
ing, I knew, to see my mother. He went by
me without a glance and I saw his bright clean
boots and the new glove he wore on the hand
that held his bag. They seemed to put such a
distance between us that I let him go past, not
daring to stop him. I stood there stupidly
looking at his back.
Then I realized that he was going, that I
was losing him, and I ran after him and
desperately touched his arm. He looked down
at me impatiently.
"No, lad," he said sharply, "I will carry the
bag."
He went on through the station still watch-
ing for my mother, and I followed him,
ashamed to speak to him again, ragged and
dirty as I was, and yet not being able to let
him go. At last he gave up hope of my
mother's coming to meet him and went outside,
82
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
where he hailed a cab. I stood there beside
him trying to speak to him and choking while
the driver opened the cab door and he got in.
Then I could bear it no longer. I seized the
door handle and clmig to it desperately.
'*0h, Sidne}^ don't you know me?" I cried.
"I'm Charlie."
He looked at me a minute, surprised, before
he recognized me. Then his face went white
and he pulled me into the cab, calling to the
driver to go on, anywhere.
"For God's sake, what has hajppened?" he
asked.
"Father's dead and mother's in the parish
hospital, and I haven't had anywhere to sleep
or to wash," I blurted out.
Sidney did not speak for a minute. His face
seemed to set and harden as I watched it, while
the cab bumped over the cobbles.
"How long has this been going on?" he said
at last, choking over the words.
"About three months," I said. Then I told
him as much as I could, tangling it up because
there was so much to say — about father's dcatli,
and how my mother had sewed, and why I was
so dirty ])ccause I Iiad no soap and had to sleep
83
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
in the cart, and that I could not make mother
understand that his letter had come.
"And I've been — saving my money!" he
said, once, like a groan, and his hand shook.
Then he became very brisk and spoke sharply
to the driver, ordering him where to go.
I sat in the cab while he got out to see about
rooms and then he came back and took me into
a place that seemed as beautiful as a palace —
a suite of rooms with lace curtains, and carpets,
and a piano, and a fireplace. I stood on some
papers and undressed, while Sidney drew the
bath for me, and it seemed as unreal as a f airv
tale.
"Good heavens, you're starving!" Sidney
cried when he saw how thin I was, and he sent
out for hot milk and biscuits. Then, leaving
me happy with the hot water and soap and
plenty of clean soft towels, he went out, taking
my rags done in a bundle.
When he came back I was sitting wrapped
in his bathrobe, curling my toes before the fire,
as happy as I could possibly be. He brought
new clothes for me, warm underwear and a
Norfolk suit and new shoes. When I was
dressed in them, with my hair combed and a
84)
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
briffht silk tie knotted under a clean white
collar, I walked up and down, feeling cocky
enough to speak to n king, except when I saw
Sidney's white set face and thought of my
poor mother.
"I got a permit to see her to-night," Sidney
said. "I have the cab waiting. I thought
maybe when she saw the presents I brought—
and saw you looking so well — she always liked
you best — "
So we set out in the cab again for the hos-
pital. I felt quite grand coming up the steps
in my new clothes and walked among the
nurses, who did not recognize me at first, with
a superior air, speaking to them confidently. I
led Sidney down the long ward I knew so well,
holding my head high, but all my new impor-
tance left me when I saw my mother.
She lay there with her eyes closed and her
sweet face so thin, with deep hollows in the
cheeks and dark marks under her lashes, that
the old fear hurt my heart and I trembled.
*'Is she — is she alive?" I asked the nurse.
"Yes. Speak to her and rouse her if you
can," she said. Sidney and I leaned over the
])cd and called to her.
85
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
''Mother, look! Here's Sidney home ! Look,
mother!" I said cheerily. ,
*'3ee, mother dear — all the beautiful pres-
ents. Wake up and see — it's Christmas!"
Sidney said, taking her hand. She did not
seem to hear at first, and then she turned her
head on the pillow and opened her eyes.
"Here we are, mother!" we cried happily.
"All the hard times are over — we'll have
Christmas together — look at the lovely things
Sidney's brought — see Charlie's new clothes."
We tumbled the words together, excited and
eager.
"Is — it — morning?" mother said painfully.
"Three dozen more to sew. He shouldn't keep
out the money for spots, there were no spots at
all. TAvelve make a dozen, and that's a half-
crown, and then a dozen more, and then a
dozen more, and then a dozen more — =" She
did not know us at all.
Sidney spread over the bed the beautiful
shawl he had brought for her and put the ear-
rings in her hand and showed her the comb of
brilliants for her hair, which the nurses had cut
away, but she only turned her head restlessly
86
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
on the pillow and talked wildly until the nurse
told us we must come away.
AVe rode back to the rooms, not saying a
word. Sidney sat with his arm about my
shoulders and his eyes were hard and bright.
When we were home again he ordered up a
great supper of chops and a meat pie and
pudding. We sat down and he piled my plate
high with food. Then suddenly he put his
arms down on the table and began to sob.
It was terrible. He could not stop. I tried
to speak to him, but could not, so after a
moment I got up and went over to the window,
I stood there leaning mj^ forehead against the
glass, looking at the lights outside, so miserable
tliat I could not cry. What was the good of all
this comfort without our mother?
Sidney came over after a while and we stood
together not saying anything for a long
time. Then he drew a deep breath and said:
"Well, all we can do is to go on. I suppose we
must look up a berth for you after you have
been fed up a bit. What do you want to do?"
*'I want to be an actor," I answered dully.
"u\\\ right. We'll see what we can do to-
morrow," he said.
87
CHAPTER XI
In which I vainly make the rounds of the theatrical
agents ; almost go to sea ; and at last get the chance
for which I have long been yearning.
Nothing, I believe, makes so much difference,
not only with the appearance of a man, but with
the man himself, as good clothes and a well-
filled stomach, and this is even more true of a
boy, who is more sensitive to impressions of
every sort.
Wlien I was dressed next morning in my
new clothes, which already had almost ceased
to feel strange to me, and had eaten a breakfast £
so large that Sidney's eyes widened with alarm
while he watched me, I did not feel at all like
the shabby boy of the day before. I did a few
dance steps, in high spirits, and mimicked for
Sidney's benefit a great many of the market
people and the coster who had fed his donkey
carrots. I even assumed a little of my old
patronizing attitude toward Sidney, who had
88
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
never been considered the clever one of the fam-
ily, and promised him large returns for all he
had done for me as soon as I should become a
famous actor.
This matter of cleverness I believe now to be
greatly overrated. The clever person is too
apt to let his cleverness excuse the absence of
most of the solid qualities of character, and to
rely on facility and surface brilliance to supply
the want of industry and prudence. All my
life I have been going up like a rocket, all
sparks and a loud noise, and coming down like
one again, but Sidney has always been the
steady stand-by of the family, ready to pick
me out of the mud and start me up again. He
is the better man of the two.
That morning, though, after I had eaten his
breakfast, I could not imagine myself ever in
need of help again and my mind was full of
future success on the stage. I could hardly
wait while he dressed to go with me to the
agents, and when we were in the streets I
walked ^vith a swagger, and pointed out the
siglits as if he were only a provincial and I at
least a capitalist of London.
I was just twelve tlicn and the law was strict
89
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
against the employment on the stage of chil-
dren under fourteen, but I do not remember
that I ever had any difficulty in convincing the
agents that I was over the legal age. My self-
confidence and my talent for mimicry were so
strong that they overcame the impression of
my small size, and I suppose the month of
hunger and suffering for my mother had given
my face an older look.
In the weeks which followed Sidney's home-
coming we visited dozens of agents. I climbed
the long stairs to their offices in a fever of
expectation and hope; I talked to each agent
quite confidently, and when he had taken my
name and address and said he had nothing for
me at present, I came down again in the depths
of gloom, so despondent that only a good
dinner and a visit to the theater would cheer
me. I always felt that I could play the parts
much better than any actor I saw, and so I
came away in high spirits again.
Every day we went to see my mother, and
the nurses said she was a little better, but she
never knew us or spoke to us and we could not
see any change. This sadness because she could
not be happy with us made our rooms seem
90
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
gloomy when we returned to them, and I know
that Sidney felt it always. Often, planning
what we should do when she was well again,
and how proud she would be of my success
when I was a great actor, I almost believed it
all true and was as happy as if it were. My
imagination has always seemed truer to me
than facts.
Christmas came and went and I did not have
an offer of a place on the stage. Sidney must
go back to sea. Nearly all of his savings were
gone and he felt he must leave some money to
buy little delicacies for my mother. The prob-
lem of what to do with me bothered him, and
when he spoke of it, as he did sometimes, all
my dreams faded suddenly and I felt so deso-
late that if I had been smaller I would have
wept in despair.
At last he arranged with his company to
take me on the ship as cabin-boy. He said it
would not be half bad, I might grow to like the
sea, and althougli I hated the thought of it, it
seemed better than going back to Covcnt Gar-
den market again. We were to sail sometime
in January, bound for Africa. As a last resort
we made the rounds of the theatrical agents
91
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
again, but there was nothing in sight for me,
and so it was settled that I must go to sea.
Sidney bought me a little bag and packed it
with the things I should need on shix3-board.
We gave up the lodgings and paid a last visit
to mother. This time she was quieter and
looked at us several times almost as if she recog-
nized us. It nearly broke my heart to leave
her so, but we could not think of anything else
to do.
The morning of our last day in London my
breakfast almost choked me. Our bags were
packed, waiting beside our chairs, and it
seemed to me that everything in the world was
wrong. I knew I should not like the sea. The
maid had brought in a few letters, with the bill
for the lodgings, and Sidney was looking them
over. Suddenly he looked at me queerly and
threw a card across the table to me.
"Seems to be for you," he said. I turned it
over in a hurry and read it. It said, "Call and
see me, Frank Stern, 55 the Strand." Frank
Stern was a theatrical agent.
I leaped from my chair with a shout of
excitement.
"What price the sea now?" I cried. "I've
92
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
got a place worth the whole of it ! Where's my
hat?"
"Go slow, go slow, lad," said Sidney. *'You
haven't got the place yet, j^ou know."
"I've as good as got it," I retorted, tearing
open the hags to find my comb and a clothes
brush. "Come, now, Sidney, lend me your
cane? An actor has to have a cane, you know."
Sidnej^ lent me his cane, and I leaped dowii"
the stairs three steps at a time.
A tram would not do, I must have a cab to
go in a style suiting my new position. All the
way I gave myself the airs of a great actor,
looking haughtily from the cab-window at the
common Londoners and thinking how the audi-
ences would applaud when I strode down the
stage.
Frank Stern was a little man, plump and
important, with a big diamond on his finger,
and he began by clearing his throat in an im-
pressive manner and looking me over very
sharply, but I sat down with a careless air,
swinging Sidney's cane and asked him in an
offhand way if he had anything particularly
good. At tlie moment so great was the power
of my imaginings on my own mind I felt
93
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
quite careless as to whether I got the place or
not and was resolved not to take any small part
unworthy my talents.
"It's the leading part with a provincial com-
pany From Rags to Miches^ he said. "Our
lead's fallen sick and we need a new one in a
hurry. Think you can do it?"
"E — Er — provincial company," I said
doubtfully. "I had not thought of leaving
London. Still — what's the screw?"
' "One pound ten a week," he answered.
"Impossible!" I said. "I could not think
of it."
"Well — we might make it two pounds. We
need some one in a hurry. If you are a quick
study and make a good showing at rehearsal — '
say two pounds. Yes, I'll make it two pounds."
"It's a small salary — a very small salary," I
said gruffly. I, who had been glad to steal a
donkey's carrots only a few weeks earlier! But
I did not think of that. I thought of my great
talents, wasted in a provincial company. "I'll
think it over," I told the agent, seeing he would
not increase the amount.
"No. I must know right now," he replied
firmly.
94
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I wrinkled my brows with an air of inde-
cision and thought for a minute.
"All right, I'll do it," I said.
"Rehearsal to-morrow at ten," Frank Stern
said, giving me the address in a quite common-
place manner.
CHAPTER XII
In which I rehearse the part of the boy hero of the
thrilling melodrama, From Rags to Riches; and
start off on a tour of the provinces.
I SAW Sidney off on the ship for Africa, having
induced him to give me the cane, and as I stood
waving at him I was so elated with success that
I felt almost intoxicated. I was an actor at
last — a real actor, with a rehearsal in prospect !
I strutted up and down on the dock a bit after
Sidney was gone feeling sorry for all the
people about, who little realized what an im-
portant person they were passing so heedlessly.
iThen I took a cab again, as due to my position,
and gave the driver the address of the rooms
Sidney had taken for me in Burton Crescent.
I was not only an actor, but a man with an
income of my own and bachelor chambers. I
was very haughty with the char-woman who
brought in the coals for my iire, and I sat
frowning for some time in an attitude of deep
thought, pondering whether I should have
cream tart or apple -and -blackberry pudding
96
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
for dinner. At last I decided on both and ate
them in state before my own fire. It was a
great evening.
Next morning I was divided between my
eagerness to hurry to the rehearsal and my feel-
ing that it would more accord with my im-
portance if I should arrive a little late. It was
not until the cab began to rattle over the cobbles
about Covent Garden market that a sense of
strangeness began to come over me, and I real-
ized that I had never acted before and should
not quite know what to do at the rehearsal. I
looked from the w^indows of the cab at the
costers' donkeys and thought what a short time
ago I had envied them, woebegone and hungry
as they were.
The rehearsal was in a room over a public
house in Covent Garden, and as I climbed the
stairs I began to feel small and a bit uncertain.
When I went in the room was full of people
standing about or sitting on boxes, and they
all looked at me with interest. At one end,
near the rough stage, was a little table with
three important-looking men standing beside
it, and after a look around I walked up to them.
"I am Charles Chai)liri," I said, wishing I
97
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
were taller. "I am, I believe, to play leading
man in your production."
They looked me over as JNIr. Stern had done,
rather sharply, and then introduced themselves.
The man in the dirty plaid waistcoat was Joe
Baxter, manager of From Rags to Riches^ and
also the villain in the piece. The company had
been playing for a ten-weeks' round of the
suburbs and was now about to go into the
provinces. They were already delayed by the
illness of the lead, which ]Mr. Baxter cursed
roundly, and his chief interest in me was the
hope that I was a quick study. I assui'ed him
that I was, and without any further talk he
began to read the play to me.
It appeared that I was to play the boy hero,
an earl's son, defrauded of my rights b}^ the
villain after my mother had pitifully died in
the streets of London with property snow sifted
on her from the flies. I wandered in rags
through three acts, which contained a couple of
murders, a dozen hair-breadth escapes, and
comic relief by the comedian, and I came tri-
umphantly into my own in the foiu'th act,
where the villain died a terrible death.
Now whether my liking for mimicry came to
98
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
my aid or whether my own experiences, so
much like those of the part I was to play, had
given me material which I used unconsciously,
I do not know, but when JNIr. Baxter gave me
my part and asked me to read it, I did it well.
JSIr. Baxter stood chewing his cigar when I had
finished, and the look on his face was less dis-
contented.
"Orl right," he said briskly. "Now, ladies
and gents, ready! First act, second scene.
Lord Plympton's droring-room! You walk
through this and read your part," he said to me.
*'Xo time for study, got to play Sweetbay to-
morrow night. Do the best you can with it."
The woman who was to play my mother came
m'cr while I stood waiting with the part in my
hand. She was a thin sallow woman in a
bright red waist and a hat with blue and yellow
feathers.
"Have a toffy?" she said, holding out a bag.
*'Xo, thanks. I left off eating them years
ago," I answered, swinging my cane.
"Horrid play, aren't it?" she went on.
"Beastly life, on tour. How do you like your
part?" '
"Oh," I answered carelessly, "it's not much
99
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
of a part, but I do what I can with it. I won't
mind the provinces for a season. I'm tired of
London."
"Here you, Reginald — Chaplett, whatever
your name is — come on!" ]Mr. Baxter yelled,
and I started forward on to the stage. INIr.
Baxter uttered such a sound, between a groan
and a roar, that I stopped, startled.
"Good Gawd !" he moaned. "That's the win-
dow, you idiot! Come through the door!
Come through the door! Wliat do you think
you are, a bloomin' bird ?"
It was hard work, rehearsing on the bare
stage, with no idea what the scenery was to be,
and ]Mr. Baxter went from rage to profanity
and from that to speechlessness and groans
while he drove us through the parts. We
worked all day and late into the night and he
did not let me sto]3 a minute, although I grew
hungry and the smell of the fried fish the other
actors ate while I was on the stage took my
mind from the work. At last he let me go, with
a groan.
"It couldn't well be worse!" he said grimly.
"Now, ladies and gents, Waterloo station
eleven sharp to-morrow, ready fer Sweetbay!"
100
Siipcnilioiis C.'harlii'
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I came very wearily down the flight of stairs
holding the bundle of manuscript and my cane
while the words of my i^art and all the stage
directions buzzed together in my brain. I had
not money enough for a cab ; if we were to go
to Sweetbay the next day I must walk back to
my rooms. It was a cold foggy night and my
steps sounded loud and echoing on the pave-
ments as I hurried along, tired and hungry,
almost ready to wish for a coster's cart that I
might crawl into and rest. But I held as firmly
as I could to the thought that I was an actor,
though finding small comfort in it, and when at
last I had reached my rooms I had persuaded
myself that I was driven by the duties and
ambitions of a great position. So I scowled
fiercely at my reflection in the mirror over the
mantel, and tying a towel about my head so
as to look the character of a diligent student, I
sat all night reading the words of my part and
committing them to memory.
Next morning, when I reached the station
with my bag, the rest of the company was wait-
ing, very draggled and weary looking, while
Mr. Baxter bustled about, swearing loudly.
My spirits rose at the noise and excitement of
101
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
the starting, and when I saw the compartment
labeled, "Reserved: From Rags to Riches
company," I held my head proudly again, hop-
ing that passers-by would notice and say to
each other, "See! He must be the leading
man."
I lingered on the platform until the last
minute, looking as important as I could and
thinking how well the cane carried out the
effect, and then, as the engine began to puif
and the train slowly started, I swung myself
^5 board and walked into the compartment where
the company was settling itself for the trip to
Sweetbay.
CHAPTER XIII
In which I encounter the difficulties of a make-up
box ; make my first appearance in drama ; and
learn the emptiness of success with no one to
share it.
The rest of the company were very glum on
that journey to Sweetbay, sitting hunched up
any way in their seats and looking drearily
from the windows, not even glancing at me as
I strode up and down the compartment, mur-
muring the words of my part to myself and
hoping ]Mr. Baxter was noticing how studious
I was.
"Well enough for you, old man," I said to
myself, seeing him absorbed in a copy of
Floats and not even looking in my direction/
"Wait till 3'ou see me act I" But I felt my
spirits somewhat dampened by his indifFerence,
nevertheless.
Wlien the train stopped at Sweetbay I
stepped to the platform Avith a lively air and
stood looking around while tlie others dragged
down the steps. It was raining a little, very
103
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
few people were about and they were not at all
interested in us, which seemed to me a personal
affront.
"Hustle, now ! No time to look for lodgings
till after matinee!" Mr. Baxter said briefly, and
set off at a brisk pace, the rest of us straggling
behind him through the streets.
I walked as jauntily as possible, swinging
my cane with an air, but the gloom of it all
depressed me. I wished myself older than
twelve years, and larger, so that I would not
have to look up at the others, and I wondered if
I could do the make-up right, but determined
not to ask any one how it was done. I had
bought a make-up box and experimented a bit
before my mirror, but I was doubtful of the
effect on the stage.
When we reached the Theater Royal, a dark
smelly place, with littered, dirty dressing-
rooms, I felt quite helpless before the problem.
It appeared that all the men were to share one
dressing-room, and I crowded into the tiny
place with the others and opened my make-up
box, ashamed of its new look. The comedian
and Lord Plympton, who behind the scenes was
a sallow gloomy individual with a breath
10-1
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
smelling of beer and onions, sat down at once
in their shirt-sleeves before the small cracked
mirrors and began smearing their faces with
gi-ease-paint, for we were late, and already the
lights had gone on in front and a few people
were shuffling in.
I made shift with the make-up as best I
might and hurried into the ragged suit I was
to wear in the first scene, pinning it up in small
folds about me, for it was the costume worn by
the former lead and too large for me. How-
ever, I hoped to make it do, and when, by the
glimpses I could get of myself in the mirror,
it seemed to be all right, I left the dressing-
room and wandered into the wings, feeling
well satisfied witli myself.
The stage was shadowy and dark behind the
big canvas scenes. "A street in a London
slums" was already set, and the scene shifters,
swearing in hoarse whispers, were wheeling
Lord Plympton's drawing-room into position
for a quick change. I made my way warily
around tliis and encountered Mr. Baxter, who
was rusliing about in a frenzy, roundly cursing
everything in sight. When he saw me he
stopped short.
105
CHAKLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"Good GordI" he cried. "Going on like
this?"
"What's wrong?" I asked, startled.
"Wrong? Wrong? Why was I ever a
manager?" moaned Mr. Baxter, seizing his
head in both hands. "You gory idiot 1" he ex-
ploded, and seemed to choke.
"What's the row, Joe?" the woman who was
to play my mother asked, coiliing over to us,
while I stood very uneasy and doubtful what
to say.
"Look at 'im!'* roared Ur, Baxter. "How
many times have I told him he's pathetic —
PATHETIC! And here he comes with a
face like a bloomin' cranberry! And he goes
on in six minutes!"
"I'll look out for the lad," the woman said,
kindly enough, and taking me by the hand she
led me into the women's dressing-room, where
she made up my face with her own paint and
powder and I squirmed with humiliation.
"It's your first shop, aren't it?" she said,
drawing the dark circles under my eyes, and
I drew myself up with as much dignity as pos-
sible in the circumstances and said stiffly,
106
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"This is my first engagement with a provincial
company."
Then I returned to the wings and waited
with beating heart for my cue. ]Mr. Baxter,
made up as the villain now, stood beside me
giving me last orders, but my head whirled so
I could hardly hear him, and all the lights made
a dazzling glare in my eyes. Then my cue
came — my mother, on the stage, moaned
piteously, and ]Mr. Baxter gave me a little
push. I stimibled out on the stage, crying,
"See, mother dear, here is a crust!"
The blinding glare in my eyes and the con-
fusion in my brain were over in a minute. The
strangeness of it all fell away from me, and, in
a manner I can not explain to one who is not
an actor, I was at the same time the ragged,
hungry child, starving in Covent Garden mar-
ket, and the self-conscious actor playing a part.
I wept sincerely for the suffering of my poor
mother, who moaned at my feet, and at the
same time I said to myself, proudly, "\yhat, hoi
noiv they see how pathetic I am, what?" When
I did not remember the words I made them up,
paying no heed to the villain's anxious prompt-
107
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
ing behind his hand, and I defied him vigor-
ously at the close of the act, crying, "You shall
touch my mother only over my dead body!"
with enthusiasm. The curtain fell and there
was a burst of applause behind it.
"Not half bad, what?" I said triumphantly
to Mr. Baxter, while my stage mother scram-
bled to her feet, and he replied moodily, "Don't
be so cocky, young 'un. There's three acts yet
to go."
But I was warmed up to the work now and
I enjoyed it, wandering forlorn through my
imitation griefs and at last coming grandly
into my rights as the earl's son and wearing the
s^^lendor of the velvet suit with great aplomb
in the last act, although I was obliged sur-
reptitiously to hold up the trousers with one
hand because I could not find enough pins in
the dressing-room to make them fit me. I felt
that I was the hit of the piece and rushed out
of the theater afterward to find lodgings and
eat a chop before the evening performance
with all the emotions of an actor who had
arrived at the pinnacle of fame. I could not
forbear telling the waiter who served me the
chop, a grimy little eating house not far from
108
CHAKLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
the theater, that I was the leading man of the
From Rags to Riches company and must be
served quickly, as pressing duties awaited me
at the theater before the evening performance.
He looked down at me with a broad grin on
his fat face and said, "You don't say, now!" in
a highly gratifying tone, although I wished he
had said it more solemnly.
That night, sitting alone in my bed-sitting-
room in actors' lodgings, I was greatly pleased
with myself and wished only that my mother
were there to see me. I wrote her a long letter,
telling her how well I had done and promised
to send her at least ten shillings, and perhaps a
pound, when I was paid on Saturday. Then
I went out into tlie dark silent streets where the
rain fell mournfully to post it. The night was
very gloomy. After all, I was only twelve and
had no friends anywhere except Sidney, who
had gone to Africa. I thought of my mother
lying alone in the hospital and perhaps not able
to understand my glad news when it should
arrive, and sucli a feeling of sadness and loneli-
ness came over me tliat I hurried back to my
room and crawled into bed without lighting the
gas, very unhappy, indeed.
109
CHAPTER XIV
In which I taste the flavor of success ; get unexpected
word from my mother; and face new responsibil-
ities.
However, though I never entirely forgot my
mother in London, I enjoyed the life on tour
with the From Mags to Riches company, with
all the excitement of catching trains and find-
ing different lodgings in each town, and I
never understood the grumblings of the others
when we traveled all night and had to rush
to a matinee without resting. I liked it all;
I liked the thrill of having to pause in a scene
while the audience applauded, as they did
pretty often after I became used to the stage.
I liked standing with the others after the Sat-
urday matinees, when Mr. Baxter came around
giving each one his salary, and I had great
fun afterward jingling the two pounds in my
pocket and feeling very wealthy and important
when I spent sixpence for a copy of Floats.
110
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Best of all I like lying late in bed Sunday
mornings, as I could do sometimes, and look-
ing for my name in the provincial journals —
"Charles Chaplin, as Reginald, showed an ar-
tistic appreciation which gives promise of a
brilliant future," or "Charles Chaplin, the tal-
ented young actor, plays the part of Reginald
with feeling."
Then, though no one could see me, I would
pretend great indifTerence, yawning w^earily
and saying: "Oh, very wtII for a provincial
journal, but wait till we get to London l" But
I always saved the clippings.
I became friendly with the comedian, who
was a fat good-humored fellow enough, and
always got a laugh in the third act by sitting
on an egg. I sometimes treated him to oysters
after the show on Saturday nights, and he used
to grumble about the stage, saying: "It's a
rotten life, lad, a rotten life. You'd be wtII
out of it." Then he would shake his head
mournfully and stop a great sigh by popping
an oyster into his mouth.
"It suits me, old top," I would reply, with
a wave of my hand, tliinking that when I was
his age I would have London at my feet.
Ill
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I did not care much for the others in the
company, as I felt they greatly underrated
my importance, and I especially shunned Cora,
the woman who played my mother, because she
was inclined to make a small boy of me behind
the scenes, and would inquire if my socks were
darned or if my underwear were warm, no mat-
ter who was present.
In the spring the tour of From Rags to
Riches came to an end. For the last time I
clutched my stage mother while the paper snow
was sifted on us from the flies; for the last
time I defied the villain and escaped the mur-
derer and wore the velvet suit, very shabby
now, but fitting better, when I came back to
Lord Plympton's drawing-room.
I felt very depressed and lonely when I came
off the stage. The company was breaking up,
most of them were gone already, and the
"Street in a London Slum" had been loaded
into a wagon with "The Thieves' Den" and
"The Thames at Midnight." No one was in
sight but the grubby scene shifters, who were
swearing while they struggled with Lord
Plympton's drawing-room, and the dressing-
room was deserted by all but the comedian,
112
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWX STORY
who was very drunk, and said mournfully:
"It's a rotten life, it's a rotten life."
I dressed quickly and went back to my lodg-
ings, wondering with a sinking heart what I
should do next. I had seen enough of stage
life by that time to realize that it was not easy
to get a hearing on the Strand, and for the
first time I took small comfort in the thought
of my pile of clippings from the provincial
journals. ]My rooms were cold and dark, but
no gloomier than my mood when I went in,
hunting in my pockets for a match to light the
gas.
When the gas flared up I saw a letter
propped against the cold pasty set out for my
supper. I took it up, surprised, for it was the
first letter I had ever received, and then I saw
on tlie envelope the name of the parish hos-
pital where I had left my mother.
I tore it open quickly, but my hands were
shaking so it seemed a long time before I could
get the slicet of paper out of the envelope. I
held it close to the gas and read it. It said
that my mother had asked tliem to write and
say slie was glad I was doing so well. She
was able to leave the hospital now if I could
113
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
take her away, or should they send her to the
almshouse, as she was not strong enough to
work?
I could not eat or sleep that night. Some
time about dawn the landlady came knocking
at my door and spoke bitterly through the pan-
els about my wasting her gas, threatening to
charge it extra on the bill. I said I was pack-
ing, paid her for the lodging, and told her to
go away. Then I went out with my bags, in
a very dark and chilly morning, when the early
carts were beginning to rattle through the
empty streets. I rode up to London on the
first train, my mind torn between joy and a
sort of panic, confused with a dozen plans, all
of which seemed valueless.
]My mother was sitting up in bed with Sid-
ney's shawl wrapped about her when I was al-
lowed to see her. Her hair was longer and
curled about her face, but there were dark cir-
cles under her eyes and she looked very little,
almost like a child.
"JNIy, my, what a great lad you've growTi!'*
she said, and then she began to cry. The least
excitement made her sob, and her hands trem-
bled all the while I was there.
114
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"Never j^oii mind, mother; I'll take care of
you!" I said briskly, and I told her what a
great success I had become on the stage. It
was the first pose I had ever taken which did
not deceive myself, for I wondered, miserably,
while I talked, what we should do if I could
get no engagement. I promised to take her
soon to beautiful lodgings, and the words
sounded hollow to me as I said them, but she
seemed pleased and was greatly cheered when
I left her. Without stopping to look for lodg-
ings for mj^self, I hurried at once to the Strand,
eager to see the agents.
Now in the success or failure of an actor a
great deal depends on luck, as I was very wil-
ling to admit later when it turned against me,
although in the early days I ascribed all my
good fortune to my own great merit. On that
day when I walked down the Strand I passed
dozens of actors wlio had been struggling for
years to find a footliold on the stage, going
from one small part to another, with monilis
of starvation between, fiirbl.sliing up their
.sliabljy clothes and walking endless miles up
and down the stairs to the agents' offices in
vain. The numbers of them appalled me.
115
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STOKY
Frank Stern's outer office was full of them
and they did not leave off watching his door
with hungry eyes to look at me when I walked
in and gave my card to the office boy.
"Can't see you," he said briefly, without
looking at it. "No use the rest of you wait-
ing, either," he said raising his voice. "Jle
won't see nobody else to-day."
They rose and began to straggle out, some
of them protesting with the office boy, who only
looked at them contemptuously, repeating,
"He won't see nobody." I was following them
when Frank Stern's door opened and he ap-
peared. "^
Oh, hello, my lad!" he said genially.
You're just the chap I want to see. Come
in, come in!" He ushered me into his inner
office, clapping me on the shoulder.
CHAPTER XV
In which I understand why other people fall ; burn
my bridges behind me ; and receive a momentous
telegram.
This time I sat in Frank Stern's office with
no inflated opinion of my own importance, only
hoping, with a fast-beating heart, that he
would offer me some place with a salary. I
could hardly hear what he said for thinking of
the few coins in my pocket and my mother in
the hospital waiting for me to come back and
take her to the beautiful lodgings I had prom-
ised to engage.
"Joe Baxter tells me you did fairly well on
tour," the agent said, after an idle remark or
two. "He's taking out Jim, the Romance of
a Cockney in a few weeks. How would you
like the lead?'*
"I'd like it," I said eagerly, and realized the
next minute I had done myself out of a raise
in the pay by not asking first how much it
would be. liut the relief of having a part was
so great that I did not much care.
117
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I came whistling down the stairs after I had
left Frank Stern, and in the Strand I looked
with a different eye on the actors I passed,
beginning to think that, after all, they must
lack real merit such as I had, or else they
drank or were not willing to work. I saw the
comedian from the From Rags to Riches com-
pany, looking very seedy, and was passing him
with a nod when he stopped me.
"How's tricks?" he asked of me. "Shopped
yet?"
"Oh, 5^es, I have an engagement," I replied
carelessly, swinging my cane. "Only a pro-
vincial company, but not so bad."
"I say, not realty?" he said, surprised.
"You're in luck. Look here, old chap, could
you lend me five bob ?"
"Well, no," I answered. "No, I'm afraid
not. But I hope you're shopped soon. You
ought to quit drinking, you know — you'd do
better."
"Well enough for you to talk, my lad.
You'll think different when you've been
tramping the Strand for twenty years, like I
have, and never a decent chance in the^whole
of them. You're on top now, but you'll find
118
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
it's not all beer and skittles before vou've done.
I say, make it three bob — or two?" ^
I gave him a shilling and he begged me to
say a word to Baxter for him, which I meant
to do, but later forgot. Then I went search-
ing lodgings for my mother. I found them
in a private home for convalescents in Burton
Crescent — very decent rooms with a little bal-
cony overlooking a small park, and Mrs.
Dobbs, the landlady, seemed a pleasant persoh
and promised to look out for my mother while
I was on tour.
]My mother was delighted when she saw the
place, laughing and crying at the same time,
while I wrapped her in Sidney's shawl and
made her comfortable with some cushions on
the couch before the fire. We had tea together
very cozily, and I told her I should soon be
a great London actor, which she firmly be-
lieved, only saying I was too modest and made
a mistake in going on tour when I should have
at least a good part in a West End theater.
By closest economy I managed to send her
a pound every week during that season with
Jim^ the Romance of a Cockney, though some-
times going without supper to buy the en-
119
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
velope and stamp; and because it is not pov-
erty, but economy, which teaches the value of
a penny, I learned it so thoroughly that year
that I have never forgotten it. The only part
of the tour which I enjoyed was the time I
spent on the stage, when I forgot my constant
thought of money and lived the romantic joys
and griefs of Jim. I played the part so well,
perhaps for this reason, that I was becoming
kno^^Ti as one of the most promising boy actors
in England, and I used to clip every mention
of my acting which I could find and send it
to my mother in the Saturday letter.
When I came back to London at the close
of the season I expected nothing less than a
rush of the managers to engage me. I walked
into Frank Stern's office very chesty and im-
portant with not even a glance for the office
boy or the crowd of actors patiently waiting
and knocked on his door with my cane. Then
I pushed it open and went in.
Frank Stern was sitting with his feet on his
desk, smoking and reading Floats in great con-
tentment. He leaped to his feet when he heard
me walk in, but when he saw who it was he
welcomed me boisterously.
120
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORYi
"Glad to see you back, glad to see you!" lie
said jovially. "Sit do^\Ti."
"Xo, thanks. I just dropped in to see what
3^ou had to offer for next season," I said care-
lessly. "It must be something good this time,
you know."
His cordiality dropped like a mask; he
looked at me very sternly.
"There's a part in His Mother Left Him
to Starve/' he said. "We could use you in
that."
'How much salary?'" I asked.:
'Two pounds," he answered sharply.
'Xo, thanks," I said airily. "ThougK T
won't say I mightn't consider it for four."
"Then I'm afraid I haven't anything," he
said, and turned back to his desk as though
he were very busy. I went out whistling, so
sure of my value that I was careless of offend-
ing him. And indeed when, ten days later,
I was offered the part of Billy, the page, in
Sherlock Holmes, at a salary of thirty shil-
lings, I was sure that I had acted astutely,
and gave myself credit for good business sense
as well as great talent. I even had some
thoughts of holding out for a part in the Lon-
121
"]
(I-
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
don company, and if I had had a few shillings
more, or any money to pay for my mother's
lodgings, I might have been foolish enough
to do it.
As it was, I walked into the rooms where
the company was rehearsing with a feeling that
it was a condescension on my part to go on
tour again, and marching briskly up to the
prompter's table, laid my cane upon it— a
breach of theatrical etiquette at which the com-
pany stood aghast. I never did it again, for
that day's work with a real stage manager
gave me my first idea of good acting, and I
left late that night with my vanity smarting
painfully.
" *Act natural!"* I said to myself, bitterly
mocking the stage manager. " 'Talk like a,
human being!' My eye, what do they think
the people want? I act like an actor, I talk
like an actor, and if they don't like it they can
jolly well take their old show! I can get bet-
ter!"
Nevertheless, I went back next day an3
v/orked furiously under the scathing sarcasm
and angry oaths of the manager until I had
learned the part passably well and forgotten
122
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
most of the stage tricks I had found so effective
in From Bags to Riches. The night before
we went on tour I had dinner with my mother,
who was still in the care of ^Irs. Hobbs, so
thin and nervous that it worried me to see her,
and she was fluttering with excitement and
overjoyed at my being a great actor, but for
the first time I doubted it.
However, the press notices speedily brought
back my self-confidence. In almost every town
they praised my work so highly that the actor
who played Holmes gave me cold glances
whenever he saw me and even cut bits of my
part. Then, though complaining bitterly, I
knew I had really "arrived," and I openly
grinned at him before the company, and de-
manded a better dressing-room.
Just before the close of the tour I was stand-
ing in the wings one evening confiding to one
of the actresses my intention of placing a bent
pin in Holmes' chair on the stage next eve-
ning, where I calculated it would have great
effect, owing to his drawing his dressing gown
tight around him with a dignified air just be-
fore sitting down, when a boy came up and
gave me a telegram. I tore it open, fearing
123
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORYl
bad news from mj mother, and read it. It
said:
"William Gillette opens in Sherlock Holmes
here next week. Wants you for Billy. Charles
Frohman."
William Gillette! Charles Frohman!
CHAPTER XVI
In 'which I j ourney to London ; meet and speak witK
a wax-works figure ; and make my first appearance
in a great theater.
I DO not know how I got through my act that
night. I was in such a flurry of excitement and
so jubilant over the great news that I missed
my cues and played with only half my wits
on my work, careless how Holmes frowned
at me. Every one in the company had heard
of my telegram from Frohman before the end
of the second act, and I knew they were watch-
ing me enviously from the wings. I rushed
past them, in wild haste to get to the dressing-
room and take off my make-up as soon as my
last scene was finished, and I was half dressed
while the}'- were taking the curtain call.
I met Holmes and the manager just outside
the dressing-room and resigned my j)lace in
their company with great haughtiness.
"Of course — er — you understand that I — »
er — can not do justice to my art as long as
I am supported by merely provincial actors,"
125
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I said, looking at Holmes as majestically as
I might from a height two feet less than his.
Then I drew the manager aside and said
kindly, *'0f course, old man, I appreciate all
you've done, and all that — any time I can do
anything for you with Frohman, you under-
stand, you've only to say the word."
The entire company, excepting only
Holmes, was at the station to see me off next
morning, and since in the meantime my first
vainglory had diminished and I felt more my
usual self, there was a jolly half -hour before
the train left. Every one wished me luck and
promised to come to see me act in London,
while I assured them I would not forget old
friends, and the manager clapped me heartily
on the back and said he'd always known I
would do great things. They gave a great
cheer when the train started and I waved at
them from the back platform. Then I was off,
to London and fame.
Early the next afternoon, dressed in a new
suit with new shirt and tie to match, I arrived
at the Duke of York's Theater in the West
End and inquired for the stage manager. I
had to wait for him a minute on the dim stage
126
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
and I stood looking out over the rows of empty
seats in the big dark house, thrilling to think
that before long they would be filled with scores
of persons watching me act. Then Mr. Post-
ham came hurrying up, a very busy man with a
quick nervous voice. I told him who I was,
and he gave me the manuscript of my part in
a hurried manner.
"That's all. Rehearsal here, nine to-mor-
row," he said. Then, as I was turning away,
he added, "Like to see Mr. Gillette?"
"I would, yes," I answered eagerlj^ and
tried to clutch at my self-possession, which I
had never lacked before, while the boy led me
through the dim passages to Mr. Gillette's
dressing-room. The boy knocked at the door
of it, said loudly, "Mr. Chaplin to see Mr. Gil-
lette," and left me standing there, breathing
hard.
An instant later the door opened and a lit-
tle Japanese, perfectly dressed in the clothes
of an English man-servant, popped into the
aperture. I liad never seen a Japanese servant
before, and his appearance so confounded me
that I could only look at him and repeal what
the boy had said, while I fumbled in my pocket
127
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
for a card and wondered if it would be proper
to give it to him if I should find one. It ap-
peared that it was not necessary'-, for he opened
the door wider. I stepped in.
William Gillette was sitting before his dress-
ing-table, busy with make-up. He rose to
meet me — a very tall stately man, his face en-
tirely covered with dead white paint. The
whole place was white — the walls, the dressing-
table, even the floor, as I remember it — and the
whiteness was intensified by a glare of strong
^^'hite light. In that bright glare, and under
the mask of white paint, Mr. Gillette did not
seem like a real man. He seemed like some
fantastic curio in a glass case.
"You're to play Billy, I understand," he
said, looking keenly at me through narrow,
almost almond, eyes. "How old are you?"
"Fourteen, sir," I answered as if hypnotized,
for I was now telling every one that I was six-
teen.
"I hear you*re a very promising young
actor," he said. "I hope you'll make a good
Billy — what did you Avant to see me about?"
'I just wanted to see you," I replied.
'Well, I'm very glad weVe met," he said,
128
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
looking amused, I thought. "If I can be any
help to you, come again, won't you?"
I think I replied suitably as I backed out.
I reach.ed the street before I quite recovered
from the effect of his strange appearance in
that white room. I had met one of the great-
est actors on the English stage, and I felt as
though 1 had seen a figure in a wax-works and
it had spoken to me.
Then, when I stood on the curb in all the
noise of the London traffic, I realized that the
events of that momentous day were all real.
I was engaged to play with William Gillette
in the finest of West End theaters; I held the
manuscript of my part in my hand. Excited
and jubilant, I ruslied off to tell my mother
the great news, and then to engage lodgings
of my own, where I spent all that evening
walking up and down, rehearsing the part of
Billy, only pausing now and then, with a
whoop, to do a few dance steps or stand on my
head.
The next morning I was one of the first to
reach the theater for rehearsal. I had risen
early to take a few turns up and down the
Strand, hoping to meet some one I knew to
129
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
whom I could mention casually that I was with
Frohman now, but every one I passed was a
stranger and I had to content myself with
looking haughtily at them and saying to my-
self: "You wouldn't half like to be on your
way to rehearsal with William Gillette, would
you now? What, ho!"
Mr. Postham proved to be different from the
stage managers I had known before. He was
nervous and excitable, but no matter how badly
an actor read his lines, !Mr. Postham never
swore at him.
"No," he said quietly. ''This way, 'I'll do
it, sir.' No, not 'I'll do it, sir,' but 'I'll do it,
sir.' Try it again. No, that's a little too em-
phatic. Listen, 'I'll do it, sir.' Not quite so
self-confident. Again, 'I'll do it, sir.' Once
more, please." He never seemed to grow tired.
He kept us at it for hours, watching every
detail, every inflection or shade of tone, and
his patience was endless. It was new work
to me, but I liked it; and after rehearsal I
would practise for hours in my rooms, liking
the sound of my voice in the different tones.
William Gillette had come to London witK
a play called Clarice , which had not gone well, x
130
William (iillitlc as Slirrlnrk llalnu-s
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
He was putting on Sherlock Holmes to save
the season and rushing rehearsals in order to
have the new play ready in the shortest possible
time. We worked all day, and twice were
called for midnight rehearsals, after Clarice
was off the boards. Two weeks after I reached
London we were called at seven in the morning
for dress rehearsal. Sherlock Holmes was to
be put on that night.
Everything went wrong at the dress re-
hearsal. We were overworked and nervous;
we missed our cues; some of the properties
were lost ; ]Mr. Postham was intensely quiet. I
was very well pleased by it all, for every East
End actor knows that a bad dress rehearsal
means a good first performance, but the man-
ager and ]Mr. Gillette did not seem to share
my opinion, and the company scattered gloom-
ily enough when at last they let us go, with
admonitions to be early at the theater that
night.
I was made up and dressed for the first
scene early, and hurried out to the peep-hole
in the curtain, hoping to catch a glimpse of
my mother in the audience. I had got tickets
for her and Mrs. IIob])s and ordered a carriage
131
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
for them, as my mother was not strong and
could not come in a tram. The house was fill-
ing fast. Behind the scenes there was tense
breathless excitement; scene shifters and stage
carpenters were hurrying back and forth ; there
was a furious scene over something mislaid.
Every one's nerves were strained to the break-
ing point.
The curtain went up. From the wings,
where I stood waiting for my cue and saying
my lines over and over to myself with a tight
feeling in my throat, I saw Mr. Gillette open-
ing the scene. I listened carefully to every
word he spoke, knowing that every one brought
my entrance nearer. Suddenly Mr. Postham
touched my shoulder.
"Royalty's in front,'* he said. "Whatever
you do, don't look at the royal box."
Then, on the stage, Mr. Gillette spoke my
cue. I put back my shoulders, cleared my
throat, and stepped out on the stage, my brain
repeating, "Don't look at the royal box.'*
CHAPTER XVII
In which I play with a celebrated actor; dare to look
at the royal box ; pay a penalty for my awful
crime; gain favor with the public; and receive a
summons from another famous star.
My nerves were stretched tight, like badly
tuned violin strings, and I seemed to feel them
vibrate when I stepped on the stage and spoke
my opening line, with Gillette's eyes upon me
and the packed house listening. ^My brain was
keyed to a high pitch, working smoothly, but
it did not seem in any way attached to my body,
and I heard the words as though some one else
had spoken them. They were clear, firm, the
accent perfect. I felt myself stepping three
steps forward, one to the right, and turning
to ]\Ir. Gillette; heard my second line spoken,
with the emphasis placed properly on the third
word.
"Don't look at the royal box," I said to my-
self.
Then I was in the swing of the scene. JNIr.
Gillette spoke; I answered him; the situation
came clearly into my mind. I realized that
133
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I was playing opposite William Gillette, that
the eyes of London were on me, and royalty
itself listening. I threw myself into the work,
quivering with the strain of it, but determined
to play up to the big moment. I was doing
well. I knew it. I saw it in the relaxation
of ]Mr. Gillette's anxious watching. He was
abandoning himself to his part, ti*usting me to
play up to him.
"Now, l^ill}^ listen to me carefully," he said.
I turned my head to the right angle, felt the
muscles of my face quiver with the exact ex-
pression that should be there.
"Yes, sir," I replied, with the exact tone of
eagerness I had practised so often. Gillette
took up his lines. The scene was going well.
The house hung breathless on every word.
"Don't look at the royal box," I repeated
to myself, feeling an almost irresistible long-
ing to turn my head in that direction, and stif-
fening my neck against it.
I did not know who was in the box and
would have been no wiser if I had looked, for
I had never seen the royal family, but I learned
later. The late King Edward himself was
present, with Queen Alexandria, the King of
134
r
CHAKLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Greece, Prince Christian and the Duke of Con-
naught. Prince Christian, who was a personal
friend of William Gillette, came often to see
him act, but this was an unusually brilliant
party.
I stood tense, waiting for my cue. It came
at last.
"Billy, I want you to watch the thieves,"
said Sherlock Holmes.
It was a thrilling moment in the play. I
must be silent just long enough — not too long
— before I spoke. I heard my heart beat in
the pause; the audience waited, tense. The
house was silent.
Then, in the stillness, we heard a murmur
from Prince Christian, and an impatient stage
whisper in reply from the King of Greece.
"Don't tell me — don't tell me ; I want to see
it," he said. "Jove, watch that youngster!"
The tension of my nei'ves broke. William
Gillette, in an effort to save tlie dramatic mo-
ment of tlie scene, repeated, "Billy, I want you
to watch tlic thieves." And, while the house
gazed at mc, I turned my head and looked full
at the royal box.
The audience was stunned. It sat dumb, in
135
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
frozen horror. There was an awful silence,
while I stood helpless, gazing at the King of
Greece, and he stared back at me with slowly
widening eyes. Then his face broke into little
lines; they ran down from his eyes to his
mouth; it widened into a smile. A sudden
chuckle from King Edward broke the terrible
stillness. Again we heard the voice of the
King of Greece:
"By Jove! Ha! Ha!"
I tore my eyes away and continued the scene
through a haze. We finished it before a silent
house. The curtain fell. Then, led by the
royal box, a storm of applause arose. We took
our curtain call — I was on the stage of a great
West. End theater, bowing before applauding
crowds, in the company of one of the greatest
actors in London. The voice of royalty itself
had been heard speaking of my acting. I was
dizzy with exultation.
The curtain fell for the last time and I
strutted proudly from the stage, looking from
one to another of the company, eager to meet
their envious looks. They hurried to their
dressing-rooms without a glance at me. No
one spoke. There was a strained chill feeling
136
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
in the atmosphere. I passed Mr. Postham and
he hurried by me as if I were not there.
A feeling of trouble and loneliness grew
upon me while I touched up my make-up for
the second scene, though I told myself as con-
fidently as possible that my looking at the
royal box could not have been so bad, since the
King of Greece had smiled and Mr. Postham
had said nothing. Yet I would have been more
at ease if he had sworn at me.
I threw myself into the work of the remain-
ing scenes with all the skill I had learned, and
I felt that I was doing them well, but the cold
feeling of uncertainty and doubt grew upon
me. At last the final curtain fell. Then for
the first time that evening the eyes of the whole
company turned on me. They lingered on the
stage, waiting. Mr. Postham walked slowly
out and looked at me quietly.
"Well, it went well, didn't it?" I said cockily
to him, saying savagely to myself that I had
been the hit of the evening. My words fell
on a dead silence, while ]Mr. Postham contin-
ued to look at me, and little by little I felt
myself growing very small and would have
liked to go away, but could not.
137
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"I suppose you realize what you did," Mr.
Postham said, after a long time, and paused.
I opened my mouth, but could not say a word.
"It is fortunate — very fortunate — that His
Majesty — was pleased — to overlook it," Mr.
Postham continued slowly. He paused again.
"Fined three pounds," he said briskly, then,
and walked away. So I went meekly from
the scene of my first appearance in a good the-
ater under the scornful and surprised glances
of the other actors, who had expected to see
the part taken from me, and I said bitterly to
myself that if this was the reward of talent on
the stage — !
I did good work that season with William
Gillette, as all the press notices showed. Every
morning, Jying luxuriously in bed in my lodg-
ings, I pored over the London journals, seiz-
ing eagerly on every comment on my acting,
reading and rereading it. I was the "most
promising young actor on the English stage,"
I was "doing clever work," I was "the best
Billy London has seen yet." To me, as I
gazed at these notices, William Gillette was
merelv "also mentioned." I felt that I alone
was making the play a success and I walked
138
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
afterward up and down the Strand in a glow
of pride and self-confidence, dressed in all the
splendor money could buy, swinging my cane,
nodding carelessly to the men I knew and pic-
turing them saying to each other after I had
passed, "He is the great actor at the Duke of
York's Theater. I knew him once."
The season was drawing to a close and,
learning that William Gillette was returning
to America, I confidently expected nothing less
than an invitation to return with him, when
one day I arrived at the theater early and
found a note awaiting me. I tore it open care-
lessly and read :
"Will you please call at St. James' Theater
to-morrow afternoon? I should like to see you.
"Mrs. Kendall."
"Oh, ho! INIrs. Kendall!" I said to myself.
"Well, she will have to offer something good
to get me!"
CHAPTER XVIII
In which I refuse an offer to play in the provinces ;
make mj final appearance as Billy at the Duke
of York's Theater ; and suffer a bitter disappoint-
ment.
I ASSUMED a slightly bored air while I glanced
through the note again. Oh, yes, jNIrs. Ken-
dall! The greatest actress in London. Well,
I would call on her if she liked; I would just
drop in and see what she had to offer. Some-
thing good, no doubt, but I should soon show
her that it would have to be something very
good indeed if she hoped to get me,
I flipped the note under the dressing-table
and began to make up, wondering what Amer-
ica would prove to be like, picturing to myself
the enthusiasm of American reporters when it
was known that William Gillette was bringing
England's greatest boy actor to New York
with him.
"Curtain!" cried the call boy down the cor-
ridors, I called him in, hastily scribbled off a
note to Mrs. Kendall, saying that I would call
at twelve next day, and gave it to the call boy
140.
if
u
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
to post. Then I went out, nodding affably
to the other actors, and took my place in the
wings to await my cue.
*'Too bad the season's closing, isn't it?" said
Irene Vanbrugh, who stood beside me.
"Oh, it's been a pleasant season enough, as
seasons go," I replied carelessly. "The deuce
of it is, there's no rest between 'em when one
has made a hit. Rehearsals and all that."
*Y-yes," she said, looking at me queerly.
'And it's such a bore, so many people after
one," I continued. "Now, there's Mrs. Ken-
dall, very pleasant woman and all that — had
another note from her just now. Suppose I'll
have to run around and see her again."
"Oh, I say, Mrs. Kendall— not really I" Miss
Vanbrugli cried, in such a tone of awe that it
annoyed me. IVIrs. Kendall was well enough,
I said to myself, but I was the greatest boy
actor in England. I took my cue confidently,
glad not to be bothered with any more of Miss
Vanbrugh 's conversation.
The next day at noon I arrived at Mrs. Ken-
dall's liotcl, humming a bit and swinging a new
cane, very well pleased with myself, for the
notices in the London journals had been very
141
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
good indeed that day. I noticed that the lift
boy recognized me and seemed properly im-
pressed, and I stepped into JMrs. Kendall's sit-
ting-room disposed to be quite affable to her.
She was not there. I waited five minutes
and still she had not come. I began to be irri-
tated. What, keeping me waiting! I glanced
at my watch, walked up and down a minute,
very much bored with such lack of considera-
tion on her part. Then I determined to leave
and show her I was not to be trifled with in
such a manner. Just as I took up my cane
the door opened and Mrs. Kendall entered.
She was a j)leasant matronly-looking woman
with tired lines around her eyes and a quiet
gentle manner.
*'I'm afraid I have just a minute," I said,
ostentatiously looking at my watch again.
*'I'm very sorry to have kept you waiting,"
she answered in a soft low voice. "We under-
stand your season with Mr. Frohman is ending
next week. JMr. Kendall and I have seen your
work. We are taking out a company for a
forty-weeks' tour in the provinces, and there
is a part with us which we think you would fill
very well."
142
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I looked at her with raised eyebrows.
"In the provinces?" I said coldly. "I am
very sorry, madam, but I could not think of
leaving London." I took up my cane again
and rose briskly.
Mvs. Kendall looked at me a moment with
a tired smile about her lips. Then she rose,
said that in that case she regretted having
taken up my time, and told me good-by very
pleasantly.
"She sees she can not offer me anything!"
I said proudly to myself, j)utting back my
shoulders importantly as I came down in the
lift. I walked through the hotel lounging-
room with a quick brisk step, called a cab and
said to the driver in a loud voice, so the by-
standers might guess who I was, "Duke of
York's Theater, and be quick about it, my
man!"
I awaited confidently an offer from Froh-
man to bring me to New York with William
Gillette, determining when it came to insist on
an increase in salary. Kvery evening I ex-
pected to find a note from him in my dressing-
room, and I met the gloomy glances of the
other actors witli a wise smile and a knowing
143
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
look. They might be troubled with the pros-
pect of an uncertain future, I said to myself,
but I was secure. I had made the hit of the
piece, as the nightly applause showed.
The last week of Sherlock Holmes drew to
a close, and with a sinking heart I realized
that no oifer had come from Frohman. I
played my part every night with all the skill
I knew, and hearing the house echo and echo
again with loud applause, I said to myself,
''Now Frohman will see how badly he needs
me!" Rut still there was no word from him.
The last night came, and behind the scenes
there was such a deep gloom that one could
almost feel it like a fog. There was no joking
in the dressing-rooms, the actors moodily made
up and walked about the corridors afterward
with strained anxious faces or laughed in a
manner more gloomy than silence. The com-
pany was breaking up, no one loiew what part
he might find next, and all faced the prospect
of wearily walking the Strand again, strug-
gling to get a hearing with the agents, hoping
against hope for a chance, growing shabbier
and hungrier as they waited and hoped and saw
the weeks going by.
144
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
For the last time I played Billy; for the
last time I met JVIr. Gillette's kindly glance and
felt him pat my shoulder, saying, "Well done,
Billy!" while the audience applauded. We
stood together on the stage, bowing and smil-
ing, while the curtain rose and fell and rose
again and applause came over the footlights
in crashing waves. Then the curtain fell for
the last time.
"It's over," said Mr. Gillette, his shoulders
drooping with weariness. Then he spoke a
word or two of farewell to each of us and went
to his dressing-room. The actors hurriedly
took off their make-up and scattered, calling
to one another in the corridor. "Well, so long,
old man!" "See you later, Mabel, tata!"
"Wait a minute, I'm coming!" "Good luck
old fellow!"
I dressed slowly, unable to believe that this
was the last night and that there was no offer
from Mr. Froliman. Mr. Gillette was still in
his dressing-room. I walked up and down
outside his door debating whether or not to tap
on it and ask him if there had not been a mis-
take.
"I was the hit of the play, wasn't I?'* I said
145
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
defiantly to myself, but a great wave of doubt
and depression had come over me and I could
not bring myself to knock on that door. Sud-
denly it opened and Mr. Gillette came out
dressed for the street. Behind him I saw the
Japanese servant carrjang a bag.
"Mr. Gillette," I said boldly, though my
knees were unsteady. "Aren't you taking any
of the company to America with you?" ,
"Er — oh, it's you!" he said, startled, for he
had almost stumbled against me in the gloom.
"No; oh, no; I'm not taking any one with me.
You were a very good Billy, Charles. I hope
you get something good very soon. Good-by."
/
CHAPTER XIX
In which my fondest hopes are shattered by cold real-
ity ; I learn the part played by luck on the Strand ;
and receive an unexpected appeal for help.
I STOOD there watching Mr. Gillette's back re-
ceding- down the corridor. I felt stunned,
unable to realize that he was really going. I
could not believe that it was all over, that he
did not mean to take me to America after all.
He stopped once and my heart gave a great
leap and began to pound loudly, but he only
spoke to some one he met and then went on.
He turned a corner, the little Japanese servant
turned the corner after him, carrying the bag.
They were gone.
I went back into my dressing-room then and
made a little bundle of my stage clothes and
make-up box. The stage hands had finished
clearing the stage; it was bare and dim when I
crossed it and came out tlu'ough the stage door
for the last time. A cold gray fog was drift-
ing down tlie deserted street and I wished to
take a cab, but it came to me suddenly that I
147
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
had no part now and could not afford it. I
tucked my bundle under my arm and set out
on foot for my lodgings.
All the way it seemed to me that I was in a
bad dream — a dream where I must walk on
and on and on mechanically through an unreal
world of blurred lights and swirling grayness.
I climbed the stairs to my lodgings at last, still
with a dull hazy feeling of unreality, lighted
the gas and sat down on my bed with the
bundle beside me. Then it came upon me
sharply that it was all true. The season was
over. I was not going to America. I had
only a few pounds and no prospect of getting
another part.
I unfolded the little suit I had worn as
Billy and looked at it for a long time, suffer-
ing as only a sensitive boy of fifteen can when
he sees all his brightest hopes come to nothing.
I walked up and down, clenching my hands
and wishing tliat I might die. It was almost
dawn when I folded the little suit, put it away
in the farthest corner of a closet and crawled
miserably to bed.
Next morning I felt brighter. After all, I
had made a big hit as Billy; there must be
148
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
any number of managers in London who would
be glad to get me. There were no letters for
me in the mail, but I said to myself that I must
give them time. I would put an advertisement
in The Strand^ mentioning that I was "rest-
ing," and they would come around all right. I
wrote it out carefully, dressed my best and
took it down to The Strand office myself so
there would be no delay. Then I went to see
my mother and told her lightly that I had not
decided just what offer to accept. I could not
trouble her, for she had not recovered her
strength fully and could only lie on her couch
and smile happily at me, proud of my great
success.
All that month my hopes gradually faded
while I went from agent to agent trying to get
a part. At first my name got me an interview
with the agent immediately, but each one I saw
told me quite courteously, quite briskly, that he
had nothing M'hatcver to offer me and I came
out of each office with a sinking heart, holding
my haughty pose with difficulty.
I got up early every morning to see as many
agents as possible during the day, and although
before the other actors I still kept my pose of
149
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STOKY
being a great success, merely dropping in to
pass the time of day with the agent, I felt panic
growing within me. ISly small stock of money
was gone. I pawned my watch, my clothes, at
last even my bag, and hoarded the pennies
desperately, dining in small, dirty eating
houses on two-pence worth of stew.
I still bravely made a show of importance
and success when I met the other actors tramp-
ing the Strand, lying miserably to them as they
lied to me while we spent hours in the outer
offices of the agents, bullied by the office boy,
waiting hopelessly for a chance to see the
agents. The season was far advanced and
chances for a part grew smaller daily, but it
was incredible to me that I should not find
something — I who had made such a hit with
William Gillette! Every morning I started
out saying to myself that surelj" I should get
something that day, and every night I crawled
wearily into my lodgings, tired and discour-
aged, avoiding the landlady.
One day I determined to stand it no longer.
I carefully trimmed my frayed collar and
cuffs, brushed my suit and hat and went to the
offices of the biggest agent of all, INIr. Braithe-
150
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
waite. He was a courteous gentleman and had
always welcomed me politely. I walked in
with my most important air.
*']Mr. Braithewaite, I must have a part," I
said briskly. "You know my work. You
know I made a big hit with William
Gillette. Now, I'll take anything you
can give me, I don't care how small it is or what
it pays. Haven't you something in a provincial
company — even a walking-on part?"
He thought it over for some time in silence,
while I heard my heart beating. Then he said
slowly, "Well, there is a part — I will see. You
come in to-morrow."
I came out whistling merrily, stepping high
with a dizzy feeling that the pavement was
unsteady under my feet. I was sure by his
manner that he meant to have a part for me
and all my self-complacency was restored. I
flipped my cane as I passed the doors of the
other agents, saying to myself, "Oh, ho! You'll
see what you have missed!" and thinking that
I would carelessly drop in and tell those who
had treated me worst how well I was doing as
soon as I should have the part. That night I
spent one of my last two shillings for dinner,
151
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
feasting on tripe and onions and ale in great
spirits.
Next day, nervous with hope, I hurried to
Mr. Braithewaite's offices and walked in con-
fidently, so wrapped in my own thoughts that
I did not notice that no actors were waiting as
usual. I said briskly to the office boy, trying
to keep my voice natural and steady, "Tell Mr.
Braithewaite I am here. I have an appoint-
ment."
He looked at me with a long shrill whistle
of surprise. Then, with great enjoyment in
telling startling news, he said, "Don't tell me
you 'aven't 'card ! 'E was shot by burglars last
night. 'E's 'anging between life and death
right now."
I remember I stumbled on the stairs once or
twice, feeling numb all over and not able to
walk steady. The bright sunlight outside
seemed to jeer at me. ]My last hope was gone.
I could not muster courage to start again on
the endless tramp up and down the Strand or
to face the other actors. I went back to my
lodgings. The landlady met me on the stairs
and looked steadily at me with tight lips and
an eye which said, "I know you have only a
152
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
shilling; what are you going to do about the
rent?" I went hurriedly past her and climbed
up to my room bitterly humiliated.
There Avas a letter waiting for me on the
m.antel. I seized it and tore it open, wild
thoughts that at last I had an offer whirling
in my brain. It was dated Paris. I looked at
the signature — Sidney! Good old Sidney, I
said to myself; he will help me. Then I read
the letter.
"Dear Charlie," it said. "Your press notices
are received and no one is gladder than I am.
You know we always knew you would be a
great success. How does it feel to have all
London applauding? I wager you enjoy cut-
ting a dash on the Strand, what? Well,
Charlie, I am in the profession now, and not
so great a success as you yet, but I have a pros-
pect of a part in a couple of weeks perhaps.
You know how it goes. Can you lend me five
pounds, or even three, till I get a part? Love
to mother and congratulations again to the
clever one of the family.
"Your brother, Sidney."
CHAPTER XX
In which I try to drown my troubles in liquor and
find them worse than before ; try to make a living
by hard work and meet small success ; and find
myself at last in a hospital bed, saying a surpris-
ing thing.
I STARED stupidly at Sidney's letter for a
minute and then I reread it slowly. It seemed
like a horrible mockery — "cutting a dash on
the Strand" — "The clever one of the family."
And he wanted to borrow five pounds — or
three — when I had only a shilling in the world.
It was the most bitter humiliation of my life.
I who had always been so sure of my talent,
who had patronized Sidney and promised so
grandly to help him if he ever needed it and
sent him the press notices of my great success
with a condescending little note saying that it
made no difference to me, I remembered him
as fondly as ever — I could not send him a
penny, or even buy food for myself.
After a w^hile I took out a sheet of paper and
154
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
tried to write to him, but I could not manage
it. I made several beginnings and chewed my
pen a long time, while my shame and misery
grew until I could bear it no longer. I put
on m}^ hat and went out.
Then, having made so many mistakes already
and lost so much by them that I could not
endure my o^\ti thouglits, I tried to make mat-
ters better by making them worse. A little way
down the street was a barroom. Its windows
were brightly lighted, casting a warm shining
glow out into the foggy twilight, and I could
hear men laughing inside. I went in, threw my
shilling on the bar and called for whisky. It
^vas strong raw stuff and made my throat
burn, but standing there by the bar I felt a
little self-esteem come back and said to myself
that I was not beaten yet. I pushed the change
back to the bartender and asked for another
glass of the same.
I remember telling some one loudly who I
was and declaring that I was the greatest actor
in I^ondon. Somebody paid for more drinks
and I drank again and told very witty stories
and became amazingly clever and successful,
laughing loudly and boasting of my dancing.
155
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I did dance, and there was great applause, and
more drinks and a great deal of noise, and I
became fast friends with some one whom I
I)romised to give a fine part in my next play
and we drank again. In a word, I got glori-
ously drunk.
I woke up some time the next day in an alley,
feeling very ill and more discouraged and de-
pressed than before. When I slowly realized
what had happened and that I had not a cent
in the world, nor anything else but the rumpled,
dirty clothes I wore, I sat with my head in my
hands and groaned and loathed the thought of
living. I did not want ever to stir again, but
after a while I got up dizzily and managed to
come out into the street. I knew I must do
something.
I was in the North End of London. The
dingy warehouses and dirty cobbled streets,
through which the heavy vans rumbled, drawn
by big, clumsy-footed horses, reminded me of
the days in Covent Garden market, and I
thought of the way I had lived there and won-
dered if I could find something to do there now.
The thought of the Strand, where I had walked
so many weeks, was hideous to me. I hated it.
156
"( )li ^;() oil !"
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I said to myself then that I would never be an
actor agam.
I found a watering trough and washed in it,
splashing the cold water over my head until
I felt refreshed. I determined not to go back
to my lodgings, the few things I had left there
w^ould settle the small score and I did not want
to face the landlady. The thought of my
mother was more than I could face, too, but I
said to myself that JNIrs. Dobbs would keep
her until I could get some work and send her
the rent. Then I set out to hunt for a job.
I found one that afternoon. It was hard
work, rolling heavy casks from one end of a
warehouse to the other and helping to load
them on vans. I was about fifteen at the time
and slight, but some way I managed to do the
work, though aching in every muscle long be-
fore the day was over. I got ten shillings a
week and permission to sleep in the vans in the
court behind the warehouse. I held the place
almost a week before the foreman lost patience
with me and found some one else to take my
place.
I had made friends with several of the men,
and one of them got me a place as driver for
15T
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
a milk company. This was easier work, though
I had to be at it soon after midnight, driving
through the cold dark morning, the horses
almost pulling my arms from the sockets with
every toss of their heavy heads, and delivering
the milk in dark area-ways, where I stumbled
sleepily on the steps. I had money enough
now to pay for lodging in a dirty room without
a window in a cheap lodging house, and I
breakfasted and lunched on buns and stolen
milk. I could not bring myself to visit my
mother, but I sent her a few shillings in a letter
and wrote that I was well and busy, so that she
need not worry.
Then one morning the loss of the stolen milk
was discovered. I had been unusually hungr}^
and drunk too much of it. The boss swore at
me furiously, and again I was out of a job. I
was wandering up the street wondering what
I could do next when I saw a great crowd about
the door of a glass factory. It was still early,
about four o'clock in the morning, but hundreds
of men and boys were massed there waiting.
I pushed mj'' way into the crowd and asked
what had happened.
JMost of the boys locked at me sullenly and
158
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
would not answer, but one of them showed me
an advertisement. It read: "Boy wanted to
work in glass factory. Seven shillings a week."
jMy heart gave a leap, I might be the lucky one !
I pushed as close to the door as I could and
waited. At seven o'clock the door opened and
the crowd began to sway in excitement, each
one crying out eager words to the man in the
doorway.
I climbed nimbly up the back of the man be-
fore me, and gripping his neck with my knees,
called vigorously, "Here I am, sirl" My
theatrical training had taught me how to use
my voice, the man heard me above the uproar
and looked at me.
"I want an experienced boy in the cooling
room," he said. "Had any experience?"
"Oh, yes, sir!" I answered, while the man on
w^hose back I crouclied tried to pull me down.
"All right, come in and I'll try you," the
man in the doorway answered, and while the
others fell back, disappointed, I crushed
through the crowd and ruslied in.
The work proved to be carrying bottles from
the fin-nace I'oom to the cooling place. I went
at it with a will, hurrying from the terrifically
159
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
heated room into the cold air with the heavy
trays and back again as fast as I could. No
matter how fast I ran there were always more
bottles waiting than I could get out in time and
the half -naked men, sweltering in the furnace
heat, swore at me while I jumped back and
forth. At noon, too exhausted to eat, I lay
down in a corner to rest, but before my aching
muscles had stopped throbbing the afternoon
work began and the foreman was calling to me
to hurry.
My head ached w^ith a queer jumping pain
and I was so dizzy that I dropped a tray of
bottles and blundered into the edge of the door
more than once, but I shut my teeth tight and
kept on. I did not mean to lose that job. It
meant nearly two dollars a week.
I kept at it till late that afternoon, dripping"
Vv'ith perspiration while my teeth chattered and
my legs grew more unsteady with every trip.
Then, as I bent before a furnace to pick up a
tray there was a sudden glare of light and heat,
a tremendous, crashing explosion. Ever}i:hing
swirled into flame and then into darkness.
When I came to myself again I was in an
infirmary bed, just a mass of burning pain
160
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
wrapped in bandages, and I heard myself say-
ing vigorously, while some tried to quiet me,
"I am the greatest actor in London. I tell you
I am the greatest actor in London."
CHAPTER XXI
In which I encounter the inexorable rules of a Lon-
don hospital, causing much consternation ; fight a
battle with pride; and unexpectedly enter an up-
setting situation.
I DID not find the hospital unpleasant, for I had
enough to eat there, and although my bums
were painful, it was a delight to be in a clean
bed. I lay there three weeks, quite contented,
and all day long, and when I could not sleep
at night, I thought over my stage experience
and the mistakes I had made in it and finally
grew able to laugh at myself. It is the only
valuable thing I have ever learned.
Life trips people up and makes them fall on
their noses at every step. It takes the very
qualities that make success and turns them into
stumbling blocks, and when we go timibling
over them the only thing to do is to get up and
laugh at ourselves. If I had not been a pre-
cocious, self-satisfied, egotistic boy, able to
imagine unreal things and think them true, I
could never have been a success on the stage,
162
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
and if I had been none of those things I would
not have thrown away the opportunity Mrs.
Kendall gave me and been a failure. That is
an Irish bull, but life must have its little joke,
and there you are.
At the end of the three weeks my burns were
sufficiently healed, and one day the nurse came
and told me that I could leave the hospital.
"Very well," I said, ''but how? I have no
clothes."
"]My goodness !" she said. "I — but you can't
stay here, you know."
"Will you lend me a sheet?" I asked. "I
must wear something."
"Oh, no; we couldn't do that," she replied,
and went away, dazed by the problem. I lay
there grinning to myself and ate my supper
with good appetite. The next day the doctor
came and looked at me and scratched his head
and said testily that I was well enough to go
and must go ; I must get some clothes.
"How can I get clothes unless I go and earn
them, and how can I earn them if I don't have
any?" I asked him.
"Isn't there any way to get this lad any
clothes?" he said to the nurse. She said she did
163
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
not know, there had never been a case just hke
it before. She would ask the superintendent.
She came back with the superintendent, and all
three of them looked at me. The superin-
tendent said firmly that I must go, that it was
against the rules for me to stay any longer. I
replied firmly that I would not go into the
streets of London without any clothes. The
superintendent shut her lips firmly and went
away.
There was a great sensation in the hospital.
]My own garments had been destro5^ed in the
explosion. The rules demanded that I go, but
the rules provided no clothes for me ; I would
not go without clothes, and no one could feel
my position unreasonable. The hospital swayed
under the strain of the situation.
The next afternoon a representative of the
Society for the Relief of the Deserving Poor
called to see me. She asked a dozen questions,
wrote the answers in a book and went away.
Another day passed. The nurses were pale
with suspense. No clothes arrived.
!Wild rumors circulated that I was to be
wrapped in a blanket and set out in the night,
but they were contradicted by the fact that the
164
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
rules did not provide for the loan of the blanket.
Friendly patients urged me to be firm, kindly
nurses told me not to worry, the superintendent
was reported baffled by the rules of the char-
itable organizations, which did not provide for
clothing patients in the charity hospitals.
Some natural resentment was felt against
me for not fitting any rules, but the food came
regularly and I ate and slept comfortably. On
the fourth day, when it was felt that something
desperate must be done, the situation suddenly
cleared. Sidney arrived.
The representative of the S. R. D. P. had
called at my mother's address in the course of
her investigations as to my worthiness and
found him there. He was playing in an East
End theater and very much worried about my
disappearance. On hearing of my plight he
had hastened to the rescue and cut short mv
life of ease and plenty under the unwilling shel-
ter of the hospital rules. He brought me
clothes, and I departed, to the disappointment
of the other patients wlio felt it an anti-climax.
Well fed and rested, and with the stimulus
of Sidney's encouragement, I started again my
seardi for a part. Much as I had hated the
165
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Strand at times, it was like coming home again
to be tramping up and down the agents' stairs
and exchanging boasts with the other actors
while I waited in the outer offices. Usually I
waited long hours, only to be sent awaj'' at last
with the office boy's curt announcement that
the agent would see no one, and when some-
times I did penetrate into the inner offices I
met always the same, "Nothing in sight.
Things are very quiet just now. Drop in
again." Then I came out, with my old jaunty
air hiding my bitter disappointment and
tramped do^vn the stairs and along the Strand
and up to another office, to wait again.
Mrs. Dobbs, my mother's landlady, moved
to Sweetbay, and being fond of my mother and
her sweet gentle ways, had consented to take
her there for a moderate rate. Sidney and I
lived together in a bed-sitting-room in Alfred
Place on very scant fare and I hated to face
him at night.
"Well, any news?" he always asked, pleas-
antly enough, but I dreaded the moment and
having to say, "No, not yet." It hurt my pride
terribly, and after several months of it the
misery of that first moment of meeting Sidney
166
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
drove me into hurting my pride even more in
another way.
"Look here, what's all this talk about play-
ing lead and being with William Gillette worth
to j^ou?" an agent said to me one day. "You'll
take anything you can jolly well get, no matter
what it is, won't you? Well, Dailey, over at
the Grand, is putting out a comedy next week
with Casey's Circus. There's fifteen parts,
none of 'em cast yet. Go and see what you
can do."
I came out of his office in an agony of inde-
cision, for while it was true that I had said to
myself many times that I would take anj^ part
I could get, I had never imagined myself act-
ing in Casey's Circus. All the pride that had
survived those months of discouragement
writhed at the idea — I who had been a hit in a
West End theater acting a low vulgar comedy
in dirty fourth-rate houses — why, it was not
so good a chance as my part in Rags to Hiclies!
I said savagely that I would not do it. Then
I thought of Sidney and bit my lips and hesi-
tated.
In the end, burning with shame and resent-
ment, I went to see Dailey. At least a bund red
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWX STORY
third-rate actors packed the stairs to his office
and more were blocking the street and sitting
on the curbs before his door opened. I was
crushed in the crowd of them, smothered by
rank perfume and the close thick air of the
dirty stairs, and I hated myself and the situa-
tion more every minute of the three hours I
waited there, but I stayed, half hoping he
would not give me a part. At least I could
feel then that I had done all I could.
At last my turn came. I straightened my
hat, squared my shoulders and marched in,
determined to be very haughty and dignified.
Mr. Dailey, a fat red-faced man, with his
waistcoat imbuttoned, sat by a desk chewing
a big cigar.
"Mr. Dailey," I said, "I " I don't know
how it happened. My foot slipped. I tried
to straighten up, slipped again, fell on all fours
over a chair, which fell over on me, and sat up
on the floor with the chair in my lap. |
" want a part," I finished, furious. |
Mr. Dailey howled and laughed and choked, |
and held his sides and laughed again and
(choked, purple in the face.
"You'll do," he said at last, "Great
168
.•■■ '
.%
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY!
entrance I Great! Ten shillings a week and
railway fares; what do you say to that, my
lad?"
"I won't take it," I retorted.
CHAPTER XXII
In which I attempt to be serious and am funny in-
stead ; seize the opportunity to get a raise in
pay ; and again consider coming to America.
Mr. Dailey would not let me go, but, still
wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, began
shilling by shilling to raise his offer. ]My en-
tirely unintentional comedy entrance had
pleased him mightily, and indeed, as soon as I
saw he took it as a deliberate effort on mj'' part,
I began to be not a little proud of it myself. It
was not every one, I said to myself, who could
fall over a chair so comically as that!
Cheered and emboldened by this reflection,
I drove a shrewd bargain, and at last, per-
suaded by the offer of a pound a week and a
long engagement if I could keep on being
funny, I consented to become a member of
Casey's Circus, and returned whistling to our
lodgings, able to face Sidney A\dth some degree
of pride because I had an engagement at last.
170
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
We began rehearsals next day in a very-
dirty dark room over a public house — fifteen
ragged, hungry-looking, sallow-faced boys
desperately being funny under the direction of
a fat greasy-looking manager who smelled
strongly of ale. It was difficult work for me at
first. Being funny is at best a hard job, and
being funny in those conditions, which I heart-
ily detested, seemed at first almost impossible.
]More than once, when the manager swore at
me more than usual, I felt like throwing the
whole thing up and would have done so but for
the dread of going back to the endless tramp-
ing up and down the Strand and being a bur-
den on Sidney.
Casejfs Circus was putting on that season a
burlesque of persons in the public eye, and I
was cast for the part of Doctor Body, a patent-
medicine faker, Mho was drawing big crowds
on the London street corners and selling a
specific for all the ills of man and beast at a
shilling the bottle. Watching him one after-
noon, I was seized witli a great idea. I would
let the manager reliearse me all he jolly well
liked, but wlien the opening night came I
would play Doctor Body as he really was — I
171
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STOKY
would put on such a marvelous character de-
lineation that even the lowest music-hall
audience would recognize it as great acting and
I would be rescued by some good manager and
brought back to a West End theater.
The idea grew upon me. Despising with all
my heart the cheap, clap-trap burlesque which
the manager tried to drill into me, I paid only
enough attention to it to get through rehearsals
somehow, hurrying out afterward to watch
Doctor Body and to practise before the mirror
in our lodgings my own idea of the part. I
felt that I did it well and thrilled with pride at
the thought of playing it soon with the eye of
a great manager upon me.
The night of the opening came and I Hurried
to the dirty makeshift dressing-room in a
cheap East End music-hall with all the sensa-
tions of a boy committing his first burglary. I
must manage to make up as the real Doctor
Body and to get on the stage before I was
caught. Once on the stage, without the bur-
lesque make-up which I was supposed to wear,
I knew I could make the part go. I painted
my face stealthily among the uproar and
quarrels of the other fourteen boys, who were
172
'* ^ ^
"Can you l>cat it?"
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
all In the same dressing-room fighting over the
mirrors and hurling epithets and make-up
boxes at one another.
The air tingled with excitement. The dis-
tracted manager, thrusting his head In at the
door, cried with oaths that Casey himself was
in front and he'd stand for no nonsense. We
could hear him rushing away, swearing at the
scene shifters, who had made some error in
placing the set. The audience was In bad
humor; we could faintly hear It hooting and
whistling. It had thrown rotten fruit at the
act preceding ours. In the confusion I man-
aged to make up and to get Into my clothes,
troubled by the size of the high hat I was to
wear, which came down over my ears. I stuffed
it with paper to keep It at the proper angle on
my head, and trembling with nervousness, but
sure of myself when I should get on the stage,
I stole out of the dressing-room and stationed
myself In the darkest part of the wings.
The boy who appeared first was having a
bad time of It, missing his cues and being
hissed and hooted ])y the audience. The man-
ager rushed up to me, caught sight of my
make-up and stopped aghast.
173
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
a 5-1
'Ere, you can't go on like that!" he said in
a furious whisper, catching my arm.
*'Let me alone; I know what I'm doing!" I
cried angrily, wrenching myself from him. My
great plan was not to be spoiled now at the last
minute. The manager reached for me again,
purple with wrath, but, quick as an eel, I
ducked under his arm, seized the cane I was to
carry and rushed on to the stage half a minute
too soon.
Once in the glare of the footlights I dropped
into the part, determined to play it, play it
well, and hold the audience. The other boy,
whose part I had spoiled, confused by my un-
expected appearance, stammered in his lines
and fell back. I advanced slowly, impressively,
feeling the gaze of the crowd, and, with a care-
fully studied gesture, hung my cane — I held
it by the wrong end I Instead of hanging on
my arm, as I expected, it clattered on the stage.
Startled, I stooped to pick it up, and my high
silk hat fell from my head. I grasped it, put
it on quickly, and, paper wadding falling out,'
I found my whole head buried in its black
depths.
A great burst of laughter came from the
174
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
audience. AAHien, pushing the hat back, I went
desperately on with my serious lines, the crowd
roared, held its sides, shrieked with mirth till it
gasped. The more serious I was, the funnier
it struck the audience. I came off at last, pur-
sued by howls of laughter and wild applause,
which called me back again. I had made the
hit of the evening.
"That was a good bit of business, my lad,"
Mr. Casey himself said, coming behind the
scenes and meeting me in the wings when
finally the audience let me leave the stage the
second time. "Your idea?"
"Oh, certainly," I replied airily. "Not bad,
I flatter myself — er — but of course not what I
might do at that." And, seizing the auspicious
moment, I demanded a raise to two pounds a
week and got it.
The next week I was headlined as "Charles
Chaplin, the funniest actor in London," and
Casey's Circus packed the liouse wherever it
was played. I had stumbled on the secret of
being funny — unexpectedly. An idea, going
in one direction, meets an opposite idea sud-
denly. "Ha! Ha!" you shriek. It works
every time.
175
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY.
I walk on to the stage, serious, dignified,
solemn, pause before an easy chair, spread my
coat-tails with an elegant gesture — and sit on
the cat. Nothing funny about it, really, espe-
cially if you consider the feelings of the cat.
But you laugh. You laugh because it is un-
expected. Those little nervous shocks make
you laugh; you can't help it. Peeling onions
makes you weep, and seeing a fat man carrying
a custard pie slip and sit down on it makes you
laugh.
In the two years I was with Casey's Circus
I gradually gave up my idea of playing great
parts on the dramatic stage. I grew to like
the comedy work, to enjoy hearing the bursts
of laughter from the audience, and getting the
crowd in good humor and keeping it so was
a nightly frolic for me. Then, too, by degrees
all my old self-confidence and pride came back,
with the difference, indeed, that I did not take
them too seriously, as before, but merely felt
them like a pleasant inner warmth as I walked
on the Strand and saw the envious looks of
other actors not so fortunate.
One day, walking there in this glow of suc-
cess, swinging my cane with a nonchalant air
176
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
and humming to myself, I met the old come-
dian who had been with the Rags to Riches
company.
"I say, old top," he said eagerly, falling into
step with me, "do a chap a favor, won't you
now? There's a big chance with Carno — I
have it on the quiet he's planning to take a
company to America, and half a dozen parts
not cast. Good pickings, what? I can't get a
word with the beggar, but he'd listen to you.
See what you can do for yourself and then say
a good word for me, won't you, what?"
CHAPTER XXIII
In which I startle a promoter; dream a great tri-
umph in the land of skyscrapers and buffalo ; and
wait long for a message. . fjj
America ! Fred Carno !
The words went off like rockets in my mind,
bursting into thousands of sparkling ideas.
Fred Carno, the biggest comedy producer in
London — a man who could by a word make me
the best-known comedian in Europe ! I could
already see the press notices — "Charlie Chap-
lin, the great comedian, in the spectacular
Carno production — ." And America, that
strange country across the sea, where I had
heard men thought no more of half-crowns
than we thought of six-pences; New York,
where the buildings were ten, twenty, even
thirty floors high, and the sky blazed with
enormous signs in electric light; Chicago,
where the tinned meat came from, and, be-
tween, vast plains covered with buffalo and
wild forests, where, as the train plunged
through them at tremendous speed, I might
178
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
see from the compartment window the Amer-
ican red men around their camp-fires! The
man at my side was saying that there was a
chance to go to America with Carno!
"Go see him, old chap; please do," the old
comedian begged me. "He'll see you, quick
enough, though he keeps me waiting in his
offices like a dog. And say a good word for
me; just get me a chance to see him. I've put
you on to a good thing, what? You won't for-
get old friends, will you now?"
*'Er — certainly not, certainly not I" I assured
him loftily. "Now I think of it, Freddie was
mentioning to me the other day something
about sending a company to America. Next
time I see him — the very next time, on my
word — I'll mention your name. You can de-
pend on it."
Then, waving away his fervid thanks and
declining kindly his suggestion to have a glass
of ])itters, I hailed a cab and drove away, eager
to be alone and think over the dazzling pros-
pect. My own small success seemed flat enougli
beside it. America — Fred Carno! After all,
why not? I asked myself. I could make people
laugh; Carno did not have a man who could do
179
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
it better. Just let me have a chance to show
him what I could do !
So excited that I could feel the blood beat-
ing in my temples and every nerve quivering,
I beat on the cab window with my cane and
called to the driver to take me to Carno's offices
quick. "An extra shilling if you do it in five
minutes!" I cried, and sat on the edge of the
seat as the cab lurched and swayed, hoping
only that I could get there before all the parts
were gone.
I walked into Carno*s offices with a quick
assured step, hiding my excitement under an
air of haughty importance, though only a great
effort kept my hand from trembling as I gave
my card to the office boy. I swallowed hard
and called to mind all the press notices I had
received in the two years with Casey's Circus
w^hile I waited, trying to gain an assurance I
did not feel, for Carno was a very big man, in-
deed. When the office boy returned and
ushered me into the inner office I felt my knees
unsteady under me.
"Ah, you got here quickly," Mr. Carno said
pleasantly, waving me to a chair, and this un-
expected reception completed my confusion.
180
CHAKLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"Oh, yes. I was — I haj)pened to be going
by," I replied, dazed.
INIr. Carno leaned back in his chair, careful-
ly fitting his finger tips together and looked at
me keenly with his lips pursed up. I said
nothing more, being doubtful just what to say,
and after a minute he sat up ver}^ briskly and
spoke.
"As I mentioned in my note," he began, and
the office seemed to explode into fireworks
about me. He had sent me a note. He wanted
me, then. I could make my own terms. "And
perhaps I could use you for next season," he
finished whatever he had said.
"Yes," I said promptlj^ "In your Ameri-
can company."
"My American company? Well, no. That
is still very indefinite," he replied. "But I can
give you a good part with Itepairs in the
provinces. Tliirty weeks, at three pounds."
"No, I v/ould not consider that," I answered
firmly. "I will take a part in your American
company at six pounds." Six pounds — it was
an enormous salary; twice as much as I had
ever received. I ^vas agliast as I heard Mic
words, but I said doggedly to myself that I
181
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STOKY
would stand by them. I was a great comedian ;
Fred Carno himself had sent for me; I was
worth six pounds.
"Six pounds I It's unheard of. I never pay
it," Mr. Carno said sharply.
"Six pounds, not a farthing less," I insisted.
"In that case I am afraid I can't use you.
Good morning," he answered.
"Good morning," I said, and rising prompt-
ly I left the office.
That night I played as I had never played
l)efore. The audience howled with laughter
from my entrance till my last exit and recalled
me again and again, until I would only how
and back off. I carried in a pocket of my stage
clothes the note from Mr. Carno, which I had
found waiting at the theater, and I Avinked at
myself triumphantly in the mirror while I took
off my make-up.
"He'll come around. Watch me!" I said
confidently, and not even Sidney's misgivings
nor his repeated urgings to seize the chance
with Carno at any salary could shake my de-
termination.
"I'm going to America," I said firmly.
"And I won't go under six pounds. Living
182
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
costs terrifically over there; all the lodgings
have built-in baths and they charge double for
it. I stand by six pounds and I'll get it, never
fear."
In my own heart I had misgivings more than
once in the months that followed without an-
other message from Carno, but I set my teeth
and vowed that, since I had said six pounds,
six pounds it should be. And I worked at
comedy effects all day long in our lodgings,
falling over chairs and tripping over my cane
for hours together, till I was black and blue,
but prepared, when the curtain went up at
night, to make the audience hold their sides and
shriek helplessly with tears of laughter on
their cheeks.
"Any news?" Sidney began to ask again
every evening, but I managed always to say,
"Not yet!" with cocky assurance. "He'll send
for me, never fear," I said, warmed with the
thought of the applause I was getting and the
press notices.
The season with Casey's Circus was ending
and I took care not to let any liint of my inten-
tion to leave reacli tlie ears of tlie manager, but
I refused to believe that I would be obliged to
183
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
fall back on him. I looked eagerly every day
for another note from Carno.
"Don't worrj^ I'll see you get your bit
Avhen the time is ripe," I told the old comedian
whenever he importuned me for news, as he
did frequently. "You know how it is, old top
— you have to manage these big men just
right."
At last the note came. It reached me at my
lodgings early one morning, having been sent
on from the theater, and I trembled with ex-
citement while I dressed. I forced myself to
eat breakfast slowly and to idle about a bit
before starting for Carno's offices, not to reach
them too early and appear too eager, but when
at last I set out the cab seemed to do no more
than crawl.
"Well, I find I can use you in the American
company," ]\Ir. Carno said.
"Very well," I replied nonchalantly.
"And — er — as to salary — ," he began, but
I cut in.
"Salary?" I said, shrugging my shoulders.
"Why mention it ? We v/ent over that before,"
and I waved my hand carelessly. "Six
[pounds," I said airily.
184
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
He looked at me a minute, frowning. Then
he laughed.
"All right, confound you I" he said, smiling,
and took out the contract.
Three weeks later, booked for a solid year in
the United States, looking forward to playing
on the Keith circuit among the Eastern sky-
scrapers and on the Orpheum circuit in the
Wild West among the American red men, I
stood on the deck of a steamer and saw the
rugged sky-line of New York rising from the
sea.
CHAPTER XXIV
In which I discover many strange things in that
strange land, America ; visit San Francisco for
the first time ; and meet an astounding reception in
the offices of a cinematograph company.
Now, since I was twenty at the time, four
years ago, when I stood on the deck of the
steamer and saw America rising into view on
the horizon, it may seem strange to some per-
sons that I had no truer idea of this country
than to suppose just west of New York a wild
country inhabited by American Indians and
traversed by great herds of buffalo. It is
natural enough, however, when one reflects that
I had spent nearly all my life in London, which
is, like all great cities, a most narrow-minded
and provincial place, and that my only school-
ing had been the little my mother was able to
give me, combined later with much eager read-
ing of romances. Fenimore Cooper, your own
American writer, had pictured for me this
country as it was a hundred years ago, and what
186
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
English boy would suppose a whole continent
could be made over in a short hundred years?
So, while the steamer docked, I stood quiver-
ing with eagerness to be off into the wonders
of that forest of skyscrapers which is New
York, with all the sensations of a boy trans-
ported to JNIars, or any other unknown world,
where anything might happen. Indeed, one
of the strangest things — to my way of think-
ing — which I encountered in the New World,
was brought to my attention a moment after I
landed. At the very foot of the gangplank
^Ir. Reeves, the manager of the American com-
pany, who was with me, was halted by a very
fat little man, richly dressed, who rushed up
and grasped him enthusiastically by both
hands.
"Velgome! Yelgome to our gountry!" he
cried. "How are you, Reeves? How goes it?'*
Mr. Reeves replied in a friendly manner, and
the little man turned to me inquiringly.
"A^Hio's the kid?" he asked.
"This is I\Ir. Chaplin, our leading comedian,"
Mr. Reeves said, while I bristled at the word
"kid." The fat man, I found, was Marcus
Loew, a New York theatrical producer. He
187
CHAKLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
shook hands with me warmly and asked imme-
diately, "Veil, and vot do you think of our
gountry, young man?"
"I have never been in ^Berlin," I said stiffly.
"I have never cared to go there," I added
rudely, resenting his second reference to my
youth.
"I mean America. How do you like Amer-
ica? This is our gountry now. We're all
Americans together over here !" Marcus Loew
said with real enthusiasm in his voice, and I
drew myself up in haughty sui'prise. "My
word, this is a strange country," I said to my-
self. Foreigners, and all that, calling them-
selves citizens ! This is going rather far, even
for a republic, even for America, where any-
thing might happen.
That was the thing which most impressed
me for weeks. Germans, it seemed, and Eng-
lish and Irish and French and Italians and
Poles, all mixed up together, all one nation — ■
it seemed incredible to me, like something
against all the laws of nature. I went about
in a continual wonder at it. Not even the high
buildings, higher even than I had imagined,
nor the enormous, flaming electric signs on
188
V,
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Broadway, nor tlie high, hysterical, shrill sound
of the street traffic, so different from the heavy
roar of London, v/as so strange to me as this
mixing of races. Indeed, it was months before
I could become accustomed to it, and months
more before I saw how good it is, and felt glad
to be part of such a nation myself.
We "were playing a sketch called A Night in
a London 2Iusic-IIall^ which probably many
people still remember. I w\as cast for the part
of a drunken man, who furnished most of the
comedy, and the sketch proved to be a great
success, so that I played that one part contin-
uously for over two years, traveling from coast
to coast with it twice.
The number of American cities seemed end-
less to me, like the little bores the Chinese make,
one inside the other, so that it seems no matter
how many you take out, there are still more
inside. I had imagined this country a broad
wild continent, dotted sparsely with great cities
— New York, Chicago, San Francisco — with
wide distances between. The distances were
there, as I expected, but there seemed no end
to the cities. New York, RufFalo, Pittsburgli,
Cincinnati, Colum])us, Indianapolis, Cliicago,
180
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
St. Louis, Kansas City, Omaha, Denver — and
San Francisco not even in sight yet! No In-
dians, either.
Toward the end of the summer we reached
San Francisco the first time, very late, because
the train had lost time over the mountains, so
that there was barely time for us to reach the
Orpheum and make up in time for the first
performance. My stage hat was missing,
there was a wild search for it, while we held
the curtain and the house grew a little impa-
tient, but we could not find it anywhere. At
last I seized a high silk hat from the outraged
head of a man who had come behind the scenes
to see Reeves and rushed on to the stage. The
hat was too loose. Every time I tried to speak
a line it fell off, and the audience went into
ecstasies. It was one of the best hits of the
season, that hat.
It slid back down my neck, and the audience
laughed ; it fell over my nose, and they howled ;
I picked it up on the end of my cane, looked at
it stupidly and tried to put the cane on my
head, and they roared. I do not know the feel-
ings of its owner, who for a time stood glaring
at me from the wings, for when at last, after
190
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
the third curtain call, I came off holding the
much dilapidated hat in my hands, he had gone.
Bareheaded, I suppose, and probably still very
angry.
After the show I came out on the street into
a cold gray fog, which blurred the lights and
muffled the sound of my steps on the damp
pavement, and, drawing great breaths of it
into my lungs, I was happy. "For the lova
Mike!" I said to Reeves, being very proud of
my American slang. "This is a little bit of
all right, what? Just like home, don't you
know! What do you know about that!" And
I felt that, next to London, I liked San Fran-
cisco, and was sorry we were to stay only two
weeks.
We returned to New York, playing return
dates on the "big time" circuits, and I almost
regretted the close of tlie season and the re-
turn to London. The night we closed at
Keith's I found a message waiting for me at
the theater.
"We want you in tlie pictures. Come and
see me and talk it over. Mack Sennett."
"^Vho's :Mack Sennett?" I asked Reeves,
191
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWX STORY
and he told me he was with the Keystone mo-
tion-picture company. "Oh, the cinemato-
graphs!" I said, for I knew them in London,
and regarded them as even lower than the mu-
sic-halls. I tore up the note and threw it away.
"I suppose we're going home next week?"
I asked Reeves, and he said he thought not;
the "little big time" circuits wanted us and he
was waiting for a cable from Camo.
Early next day I called at his apartments,
eager to learn what he had heard, for I wanted
very much to stay in America another year,
and saw no way to do it if Carno recalled the
company. I did not think again of the note
from Sennett, for I did not regard seriously
an offer to go into the cinematograjDhs. I
was delighted to hear that we were going to
stay, and left Xew York in great spirits, with
the prospect of another year with A Night in
a London Music-Hall in America.
Twelve months later, back in New York
again, I received another message from oMr.
Sennett, to which I paid no more attention
than to the first one. We were sailing for
London the following month. One day, while
I was walking down Broadway with a chance
192
CHARLIE CHAPLIX'S OWX STORY
acquaintance, we passed the Keystone offices
and my companion asked me to come in with
him. He had some business with a man there.
I went in, and was waiting in the outer office
when ^Ir. Sennett came through and recog-
nized me.
"Good morning, ^Ir. Chaplin, glad to see
you! Come right in," he said cordially, and,
ashamed to tell him I had not come in reply
to his message, that indeed I had not meant
to answer it at all, I followed him into his
private office. I talked vaguely, waiting for
an opportunity to get away without appearing
rude. At last I saw it.
"Let's not beat about the bush anj^ longer,"
Mr. Sennett said. "What salary will you take
to come with the Keystone?" This was my
chance to end the interview, and I grasped it
eagerly.
"Two hundred dollars a week," I said, nam-
ing the most extravagant price which came into
mv head.
"All right," he replied promptly. "When
can you start?"
CHAPTER XXV
In which I find that the incredible has happened;
burn my bridges behind me and penetrate for
the first time the mysterious regions behind the
moving-picture film.
"But — I said two hundred dollars a week," I
repeated feebly, stunned by ]Mr. Sennett's un-
expected response. Two hundred dollars a
week — forty pounds — he couldn't mean it! It
was absolutely impossible.
"Yes. That's right. Two hundred dollars
a week," ]Mr. Sennett said crisply. "When can
you begin work?"
"Why — you know, I must have a two-years'
contract at that salary," I said, feeling my
way carefully, for I still could not credit this
as a genuine offer.
"All right, we'll fix it up. Two years, two
hundred — " he made a little memorandum on
a desk pad, and something in the matter-of-
fact way he did it convinced me that this in-
credible thing had actually happened. "Con-
tract will be ready this afternoon, say at four
194
Mack Sciinctt
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
o'clock. That will suit you? And we'd like
you to start for California as soon as possible."
"Certainly. Oh, of course," I said, though
still more confounded by this, for I did not
see the connection between California and the
cinematograph. More than anything else,
however, I felt that I needed air and an op-
portunity to consider where I stood anyway,
and what I was going to do.
I walked down Broadway in a daze. An
actor for a cinematographic company — my
mind shied at the thought. How were the con-
founded things made, anyhow? Still, two hun-
dred dollars a week — what would happen if I
could not do the work? I tried to imagine
what it would be like. Acting before a ma-
chine — how could I tell whether I was funny
or not? The machine would not laugh. Then
suddenly I stopped short in a tangle of cross-
street traffic and cried aloud, "Look here, you
could have got twice the money!" But in-
stantly tluit tliouglit was swept away again by
my speculations a])out the work and my con-
cern as to whctlier or not I could do it.
At four o'clock I returned to tlie Keystone
offices, in a mood ])etween exultation and
195
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
panic, and signed the contract, beginning with
a feeble scratch of the pen, but ending in a
bold black scrawl. It was done ; I was a mov-
ing-picture actor, and heaven only knew what
would happen next!
"Can you start for California to-night?"
Mr. Sennett asked, while he blotted the con-
tract.
*'I can start any time," I said a little uncer-
tainly. "But shouldn't I rehearse first?"
He laughed. "You don't rehearse moving
[pictures in advance. You do that as they are
being taken," he replied. "They'll show you
all that at the studios. You'll soon catch on,
and you'll photograph all right, don't worry."
Still with some misgivings, but becoming
more jubilant every moment, I hurried away
to get my luggage and to announce to Mr.
[Reeves that I was not going back to London
with Carno's company. He began to urge me
to change my mind, to wait while he could
cable to Carno and get me an offer from him
for the next season, but I triumphantly pro-
duced my contract, and after one look at the
figures he was dumb.
"Two hundred dollars — Holy Moses I" he
196
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
managed to ejaculate after a moment, and I
chuckled at the thought of Mr. Carno's face
when he should hear the news.
"It's not so bad, for a beginning,'* I said
modestly, trying my best to speak as though
it were but a trifle, but unable to keep the
exultation out of my voice. A dozen times, in
the hurry of arranging my affairs and catching
the train, I stopped to look at the contract
again, half fearful that the figures might have
changed.
JNIy high spirits lasted until I was settled in
the Chicago Limited, pulling out of New York
with a great noise of whistles and bells, and
steaming away into the darkness toward Cali-
fornia and the unknown work of a moving-pic-
ture actor. Then misgivings came upon me in
a cloud. I saw myself trying to be funny be-
fore the cold eye of a machine, unable to speak
my lines, not helped by any applause, failing
miserably. How could I give the effect of
ripping my trousers without the "r-r-r-r-r-rip!"
of a snare-drum? \^nien I slipped and fell on
my head, how could the audience get the point
without the loud hollow "boom I" from the or-
chestra?
197
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Every added mile farther from London in-
creased my doubts, hard as I tried to encourage
myself with thoughts of my past successes.
IMoving-picture work was different, and if I
should fail in California I would be a long,
long way from home.
I reached Los Angeles late at night, very
glad that I would not have to report at the
Keystone studios until morning. I tried to
oversleep next day, but it was impossible; I
>was awake long before dawn. I dressed as
slowly as possible, wandered about the streets
as long as I could, and finally ordered an
enormous breakfast, choosing the most expen-
sive cafe I could find, because the more ex-
pensive the place the longer one must wait to
be served, and I was seizing every pretext for
delay. When the food came I could not eat
it, and suddenly I said to myself that I was
behaving like a child; I would hurry to the
studios and get it over. I rushed' from the
cafe, called a taxi and bribed the chauffeur
to break the speed laws and get me there quick.
When I alighted before the studio, a big
new building of bright unpainted wood, I took
a deep breath, gripped my cane firmly, walked
198
CHARLIE CHAPLIX'S OWX STORY
briskly to the door — and hurried past it. I
walked a block or so, calling mj^self names,
before I could bring myself to turn and come
back. At last, with the feeling that I was
dragging myself by the collar, I managed to
get up the steps and push open the door.
I was welcomed with a cordiality that re-
stored a little of my self-confidence. The di-
rector of the company in which I was to star
had been informed of my arrival by telegraph
and was waiting for me on the stage, they
said. An office boy, whistling cheerfully, vol-
unteered to take me to him, and, leading me
through the busy offices, opened the stage door.
A glare of light and heat burst upon me.
The stage, a yellow board floor covering at
least two blocks, lay in a blaze of sunlight,
intensified by dozens of white canvas reflectors
stretched overhead. On it was a wilderness of
"sets" — drawing-rooms, prison interiors, laun-
dries, balconies, staircases, caves, fire-escapes,
kitchens, cellars. Hundreds of actors were
strolling about in costume; carpenters were
hammering away at new sets; five companies
were playing l)eforc five clicking cameras.
There was a roar of confused sound — screams,
199
CHARLIE CHAPLIX'S OW]N' STORY
laughs, an explosion, shouted commands,
pounding, whistling, the bark of a dog. The
air was thick with the smell of new lumber in
the sun, flash-light powder, cigarette smoke.
The director was standing in his shirt-sleeves
beside a clicking camera, holding a mass of
manuscript in his hand and clenching an mi-
lighted cigar between his teeth. He was bark-
ing short commands to the company which was
playing — "To the left ; to the left, Jim ! There,
hold it! Smile, Maggie ! That's right. Good!
Look out for the lamp!"
The scene over, he welcomed me cordially
enough, but hurriedly.
"Glad to see you. How soon can you go
to work? This afternoon? Good! Two
o'clock, if you can make it. Look around the
studio a bit, if you like. Sorry I haven't a
minute to spare; I'm six hundred feet short
this week, and they're waiting for the film.
G'by. Two o'clock, sharp!" Then he turned
away and cried, "All ready for the next scene.
Basement interior," and was hard at work
again.
CHAPTER XXVI
In which I see a near-tragedy which is a comedy on
the films ; meet my fellow actors, the red and blue
rats ; and prepare to fall through a trap-door with
a pie.
The little self-confidence I had been able to
muster failed me entirely when the director dis-
missed me so crisply. The place was so strange
to my experience, every one of the hundreds
of persons about me was so absorbed in his
work, barely glancing at me as I passed, that
I felt helpless and out of place there. Still,
the studio was crowded with interesting things
to see, and I determined to remain and learn
all I could of this novel business of producing
cinema film before my own turn came to do
it. So I assumed an air of dignity, marred
somewhat by the fact that my collar was be-
ginning to wilt and my nose burning red in
the hot sunlight, and strolled down the stage
behind the clicking cameras.
At a little distance I saw the front of a three-
story tenement, built of brick, with windows
201
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
and fire-escape all complete, looking quite nat-
ural in front, but supported by wooden scaf-
folding behind. Near it, on a high platform,
was a big camera, and a man with a shade over
his eyes busy adjusting it, and a dozen men
were stretching a net such as acrobats use. A
number of actors were hurrying in that direc-
tion, and I joined them, eager to see what was
to happen.
"What's all the row?" I asked a girl in the
costume of a nurse, who stood eating a sand-
wich, the only idle person in sight.
"Scene in a new comedy," she answered
pleasantly but indifferently.
"Ah., yes. That's in my own line,'* I said
important^. "I am Charles Chaplin."
She looked at me, and I saw that she had
never heard of me.
"You're a comedian?" she inquired.
"Yes," I answered sharply. "Er — do you
go on in this?"
"Oh, no. I'm not an actress," she said, sur-
prised. "I'm here professionally." I did not
understand what she meant. "In case of acci-
dents," she- explained, plainly thinking me stu-
pid. "Sometimes nothing happens, but you
202
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
never can tell. Eight men were pretty badly
hurt in the explosion in the comedy they put
on last week," she finished brightly.
I felt a cold sensation creep up my spine.
In the "set" before us there was a great bus-
tle of preparation. A long light ladder was
set up at a sharp angle, firmly fastened at the
bottom, but with the upper end unsupported,
quivering in the air.
JMen were running about shouting directions
and questions. Suddenly, balancing precari-
ously on the narraw platform behind the cam-
era operator, the director appeared and clapped
his hands sharply. "All ready down there?"
he called.
'All ready!" some one yelled in reply.
'Let 'er go!"
The windows in tlie brick wall burst out-
ward with a loud explosion and swirling clouds
of smoke. Up the swaying ladder ran a po-
liceman and at the same instant, caught up
by invisible wires, another man soared througli
the air and met him. On the top rung of the
ladder they balanced, clutching each other.
"Fight! Fight! Put some life into it!"
yelled the director. "Turn on the water, Jim !"
203
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
My eyes straining in their sockets, I saw
the two men in the air slugging each other
desperately, while the ladder bent beneath
them. Then from the ground a two-inch
stream of water rose and struck them— held
there, playing on them while they struggled.
"Great! Great! Keep it up!" the director
howled. "More smoke!" Another explosion
answered him; through the eddying smoke I
could see the two men still fighting, while the
stream from the hose played on them.
"Let go now. Fall! Fall! I tell you, fall !"
the director shouted. The two men lurched,
the wires gave way, and, falling backward,
sheer, from a height of twenty-five feet, the
comedian dropped and struck the net. The net
broke.
The scene broke up in a panic. The nurse
ran through the crowd, a stretcher appeared,
and on it the comedian was carried past me,
followed by the troubled director and a physi-
cian. "Not serious, merely shock; he'll be all
right to-morrow," the physician was saying,
but I felt my knees shaking under me.
"So this is the life of a cinema comedian!"
I thought, breathing hard.
204
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I did not feel hungry, some way, and besides,
I felt that if I left the studio for luncheon I
would probably be unable to bring myself back
again, so I picked out the coolest place I could
find and sat down to await two o'clock. I was
in a dim damp "basement set," furnished only
with an overturned box, on which I sat. After
a time a strange scratching noise attracted my
attention, and looking down I saw a procession
of bright red and blue rats coming out between
my feet. I leaped from the box with my hair
on end and left, saying nothing to any one.
At two o'clock, quivering with nervousness,
I presented myself to the director. He was
brisk and hurried as before and plunged imme-
diately into a description of the part I was
to play, pausing only to mop his perspiring
forehead now and tlien. The heat had in-
creased ; under the reflectors the place was like
a furnace, but my spine was still cold with ap-
prehension.
*'Is it an acrobatic part?" I asked, as soon
as I could force myself to inquire.
"No, not this one. You're a liungry tramp
in the country. We'll take the interiors here,
and for the rest we'll go out on 'location,' " tlie
205
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
director answered, ruffling the pages of the
^'working script" of the play. "We'll do the
last scene first — basement set. Let's run
through it now; then you can make up and
we'll get it on the film before the light's gone."
He led the way to the basement set and be-
gan to instruct me how to play the part.
"You fall in, down the trap-door," he said.
"Pick yourself up, slowly, and register sur-
prise. Don't look at the camera, of course.
You have a pie under your coat. Take it out,
begin to eat it. Register extreme hunger.
Then you hear a noise, start, set down the pie,
and peer out through the grating. When you
turn around the rats will be eating the pie.
Get it?"
I said I did, and while the director peered
through the camera lens I rehearsed as well as
I could. I had to do it over and over, because
each time I forgot and got out of the range
of the camera lens. At last, however, with the
aid of a five-foot circle of dots on the floor, I
did it passably well, and was sent to make up
in one of dozens of dressing-rooms, built in a
long row beside the stage. Mj'- costume, sup-
plied by the Keystone wardrobe, was ready,
206
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
and I was reassured by the sight of it and the
make-up box. Here at last was something I
was quite famihar with, and I produced a
make-up of which I was proud.
Allien I returned to the stage the camera
operator was waiting, and a small crowd of
actors and carpenters had gathered to watch
the scene. The director "was inspecting the col-
ored rats and giving orders to have their tails
repainted — quick, because the blamed things
had licked the color off and would register tail-
less. A stage hand was standing by with a
large pie in his hand.
"Ready, Chaplin?" the director called, and
then he looked at me.
"Holy IMoses, where did you get that make-
up?" he asked in astonishment, and every one
stared. "That won't do; that won't do at all.
Look at your skin, man; it will register gray
■ — and those lines — you can't use lines like that
in the pictures. Roberts, go show him how to
make up."
I thouglit of my first appearance in Rags
to Riches, and felt almost as humiliated as I
had then, while Rol^erts went with me to the
dressing-room and slio^ed me how to coat my
. 207
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
face and neck with a dull brick-brown paint,
and to load my lashes heavily with black. The
character lines I had drawn with such care
would not do in the pictures, I learned, because
they would show as lines. I must give the
character effect by the muscles of my face.
Feeling very strange in this make-up, I went
back the second time to the stage. The di-
rector, satisfied this time, gave me a few last
directions and the pie, and I mounted to the
top of the set.
"Remember, don't look at the camera, keep
within range, throw yourself into the part and
say anything that comes into your head," the
director said. "All ready? Go to it."
The camera began to click; I clutched the
pic, took a long breath, and tumbled through
the trap-door.
CHAPTER XXVII
In which, much against my "vvill, I eat three cheriy
pies ; see myself for the first time on a moving-
picture screen and discover that I am a hopeless
failure on the films.
"Register surprise! Register surprise!" the
director ordered in a low tense voice, while I
struggled to get up without damaging the pie.
I turned my head toward the clicking camera,
and suddenly it seemed like a great eye watch-
ing me. I gazed into the romid black lens,
and it seemed to swell until it was yards across.
I tried to pull my face into an expression of
surprise, but the muscles were stiff and I could
only stare fascinated at the lens. The clicking
stopped.
"Too bad. You looked at the camera. Try
it again," said the director, making a note of
the number of feet of film spoiled. He was
a very patient director; he stopped the camera
and placed the pie on top of it for safety, while
I fell through tlie trap-door twice and twice
played the scene through, using the pie tin.
209
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
Then the pie was placed under my coat again,
the camera began to click, and again I started
the scene. But the clicking drew my attention
to the lens in spite of myself. I managed to
keep from looking directly at it, but I felt that
my acting was stiff, and half-way through the
scene the camera stopped again.
"Out of range," said the camera man care-
lessly, and lighted a cigarette. I had forgotten
the circle of dots on the floor and crossed them.
I had eaten a large piece of the pie. There
was a halt while another was brought, and the
director, after an anxious look at the sun, used
the interval in playing the scene through him-
self, falling through the trap-door, registering
surprise and apprehension and panic at the
proper points, and impressing upon me the
way it was done. Then I tried it again.
All that afternoon I worked, black and blue
from countless falls on the cement floor, per-
spiring in the intense heat, and eating no less
than three large pies. They were cherry pies,
and I had never cared much for them at any
time. '
When the light failed that evening the di-
rector, with a troubled frown, thoughtfully
210
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
folded the working script and dismissed the
camera man. jNIost of the actors in the other
companies had gone; the wilderness of empty
sets looked weird in the shadows. A boy ap-
peared, caught the rats by their tails, and
popped them back into their box.
"Well, that's all for to-day. We'll try it
again to-morrow," the director said, not look-
ing at me. "I guess you'll get the hang of it
all riglit, after a while."
In my dressing-room I scrubbed the paint
from mj'' face and neck with vicious rubs. I
knew I had failed miserably and my self-es-
teem smarted at the thought. Even if I had
succeeded, I said bitterly, what was the fun
in a life like that? No excitement, no applause,
just hard work all day and long empty eve-
nings with nothing to do.
Only two considerations prevented me from
canceling my contract and quitting at once —
I was getting two hundred dollars a week, and
I would not admit to mj^self that I — I, who
had been a success with AVilliam Gillette and
a star with Carno — was a failure in tlie fihns
Nevertheless, I was in a black mood that night,
and when after dinner the waiter, bending (k'f-
211
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
erentially at my elbow, insinuated politely,
"The cherry pie is very good, sir," he fell back
aghast at the language I used.
Work at the studio began at eight next
morning, and I arrived very tired and ill-tem-
pered because of waking so early. We began
immediately on the same scene, and after I
had ruined some more film by unexpectedly
landing on a rat when I fell through the trap-
door, we managed to get it done, to my re-
lief. However, all that week, and the next,
my troubles increased.
We played all the scenes which occurred in
one set before we went on to the next set, so
we were obliged to take the scenes at hap-
hazard through the play, with no continuity or
apparent connection. The interiors were all
played on the stage, and most of the exteriors
were taken "on location," that is, somewhere in
the country. It was confusing, after being
booted through a door, to be obliged to appear
on the other side of it two days later, with the
same expression, and complete the tumble be-
gun fifteen miles away. It was still more con-
fusing to play the scenes in reverse order, and
I ruined three hundred feet of film by losing
212
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
my hat at the end of a scene, when the succeed-
ing one had already been played with my hat
on.
At the end of the second week the comedy
was all on the film and the director and I were
being polite to each other with great effort.
I was angry with every one and everything,
my nerves worn thin with the early hours and
unaccustomed work, and he was worried be-
cause I had made him a week late in producing
the film. The day the negative was done INIack
Sennett arrived from New York, and I met
him with a jauntiness which was a hollow
mockery of my real feeling.
"Well, they tell me the film's done," he said
heartily, shaking my hand. "Now you're go-
ing to see yourself as others see you for the
first time. Is the dark room ready? Let's go
and see how vou look on the screen."
The director led the way, and the three of
us entered a tiny perfectly dark room. I could
hear my heart beating while we waited, and
talked nervously to cover the sound of it. Then
there was a click, the shutter opened, and the
picture sprang out on the screen. It was the
negative, which is always shown before the real
213
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
film is made, and on it black and white were
reversed. It was several seconds before I real-
ized that the black-faced man in white clothes,
walking awkwardly before me, was myself.
Then I stared in horror.
Funny ? A blind man couldn't have laughed
at it. I had ironed out entirely any trace of
humor in the scenario. It was stiff, wooden,
stupid. We sat there in silence, seeing the pic-
ture go on, seeing it become more awkward,
more constrained, more absurd with every
flicker. I felt as though the whole thing were
a horrible nightmare of shame and embarrass-
m^ent. The only bearable thing in the world
was the darkness ; I felt I could never come out
into the light again, knowing I was the same
man as the inane ridiculous creature on the film.
Half-way through the picture Mr. Sennett
took pity on me and stopped the operator.
"Well, Chaplin, you didn't seem to get it
that time," he said. "What's wrong, do you
suppose?"
"I don't know," I said.
"Yes, it's plain we can't release this," the
director put in moodily. "Two thousand feet
of film spoiled."
214
'"■W
■Ma
^^^"^
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"Oh, damn your film!" I burst out in a fury,
and rising with a spring which upset my chair
I slammed open the door and stalked out.
"Well, here is where I quit the pictures," I
thought.
Mr. Sennett and the director overtook me
before I reached my dressing-room and we
talked it over. I felt that I would never make
a moving-picture actor, but JSIr. Sennett was
more hopeful. "You're a cracker jack come-
dian," he said. "And you'll photograph well.
All you need is to get camera-wise. We'll try
you out in something else ; I'll direct you, and
you will get the hang of the work all right."
The director brought out a mass of scenarios
which had been passed up to him by the scena-
rio department and JNIr. Sennett picked out one
and ordered the working script of it made im-
mediately. Next day we set to work together
on it ; ^Ir. Sennett patient, good-liumorcd, con-
siderate, coaching me over and over in every
gesture and expression; I with a hard tense
determination to make a success this time.
We worked another week on this second
play, using every hour of good daylight. It
was not entirely finished then, but enough was
215
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
done to give an idea of its success, and again
the negative was sent to the dark room for re-
view.
I went to see it with the sensations of dread
and shrinking one feels at sight of a dentist's
chair, and my worst fears were justified. The
film was worse than the first one — utterly stu-
pid and humorless.
CHAPTER XXVIII
In which I introduce an innovation in motion-picture
production ; appropriate an amusing mustache ;
and wager eighty dollars on three hours' work.
"Well, what are we going to do about it?"
JNIr. Sennett asked, when the flicker of the sec-
ond film had ceased and we knew it a worse
failure than the first. "Looks hopeless,
doesn't it?"
"Yes," I said, with a sinking heart, for after
all I had had a flicker of hope for success this
time. We had both worked hard, and now we
were tired and discouraged. I went alone to
my dressing-room, shut the door and sat down
to think it over.
The trouble with the films, I decided, was
lack of spontaneity. I was stiff"; I took all
the surprise out of the scenes by anticipating
the next motion. When I walked against a
tree, I showed that I knew I would hit it, long
before I did. I was so determined to 1x3 funny
that every muscle in my body was stiff* and
serious with the strain. And then that con-
217
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
founded clicking of the camera and the effort
it took to keep from looking at it — and the
constant fear of spoiling a foot of film.
"So you're a failure," I said, looking at my-
self in the mirror. "You're a failure ; no good;
down and out. You can't make a cinema film.
You're beaten by a click and an inch of cellu-
loid. You are a rotter, no mistake!"
I was so furious at that that I smashed the
mirror into bits with my fist. I walked up and
down the dressing-room, hating myself and the
camera and the film and the whole detestable
business. I thought of haughtily stalking out
and telling INIr. Sennett I was through with
the whole thing ; I was going back to London,
where I was appreciated. Then I knew he
would be glad to let me go; he would say to
himself that I w^as no good in the pictures,
and I would always know it was true. ]My
vanity ached at the thought. No matter how
much success I made, no matter how loud the
audience applauded, I would always say to
myself, "Very well for you, but you know you
failed in the cinemas."
With a furious gesture I grabbed my hat
and went out to find ]Mr. Sennett. He was
218
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
on the stage watching the work of another com-
pany. I walked up to him in a sort of cold
rage and said, "See here, Mr. Sennett, I can
succeed in this beastly work. I know I can.
You let me have a chance to do things the way
I want to and I'll show you."
"I don't know what I can do. You've had
the best scenarios we've got, and we haven't
hurried you," he said reasonably. "You know
the rest of the companies get out two reels a
week, and we've taken three weeks to do what
we've done with you — about a reel and a half."
"Yes, but the conditions are all wrong," I
hurried on. "Rehearsing over and over, and
«
no chance to vary an inch, and then that click-
ing beginning just when I start to play. And
I miss a cane. I have to have a cane to be
funny."
It must have sounded childish enough. Mr.
Sennett looked at me in surprise.
"You can have a cane, if that's what you
want, l^ut I don't know how you are going
to make pictures without rehearsing and with-
out a camera," he said.
"I want to make up my own scenarios as I
go along. I just want to go out on the stage
219
CHARLIE CHAPJLIN'S OWN STORY
and be funny," I said. "And I want the cam-
era to keep going- all the time, so I can forget
about it."
"Oh, see here, Chaplin, you can't do that.
Do you know what film costs? Four cents a
foot, a thousand feet of film. You'd waste
thousands of dollars' worth of it in a season.
You see that yourself. Great Scott, man, you
can't take pictures that wayl"
"You give me a chance at it, and I'll show
you whether I can or not," I replied. "Let me
try it, just for a day or so, just one scene. If
the film's spoiled, I'll pay for it myself.^'
We argued it out for a long time. The no-
tion seemed utterly crazy to j\Ir. Sennett, but
after all I had made a real success in comedy,
and his disappointment must have been great
at my failure on the films. Finally he con-
sented to let me try making pictures my way,
on condition that I should pay the salary of the
operator and the cost of the spoiled film.
That night I walked up and down the street
for hours, planning the outlines of a scenario
and the make-up I would wear. ^ly cane, of
course, and the loose baggy trousers which are
always funny on the stage, I don't know why.
220
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I debated a long- time about the shoes. My;
feet are small, and I thought perhaps they;
might seem fumiier in tight shoes, under the
baggy trousers. At last, however, I decided
on the long, flat, floppy shoes, which would
trip me up unexpectedly.
These details determined upon, I was re-
turning to my hotel when suddenly I discov-
ered I was hungry, and remembered that I had
eaten no dinner. I dropped into 'a cafeteria
for a cup of coffee, and there I saw a mustache.
A little clipped mustache, w^orn by a very dig-
nified solemn gentleman who was eating soup.
He dipped his spoon into the bowl and the mus-
tache quivered appreliensively. He raised the
spoon and the mustache drew back in alarm.
He put the soup to his lips and the mustache
backed up against his nose and clung there.
It was the funniest thing I had ever seen.
I choked my coffee, gasped, finally laughed
outright. I must have a mustache like that!
Next day, dressed in the costume I had
chosen, I glued the mustache to my lip before
the dressing-room mirror, and shouted at the
reflection. It was funny; it was uproariously
funny! It waggled wlien I laughed, and I
221
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
laughed again. I went out on the stage still
laughing, and followed by a shout of mirth
from every one who saw me. I tripped on my
cane, fell over my shoes, got the camera man
to shouting with mirth. A crowd collected to
watch me work, and I plunged into my first
scene in high spirits.
I played the scene over and over, introduc-
ing funnier effects each time. I enjoyed it
thoroughly, stopping every time I got out of
the range of the camera to laugh again. The
other actors, watching behind the camera, held
their sides and howled, as my old audiences had
done when I was with Carno. "This," I said
to myself triumphantly. "This is going to be
a success!'*
When the camera finally stopped clicking
all my old self-confidence and pride had come
back to me. "Not so bad, what?" I said, tri-
umphantly twirling my cane, and in sheer good
spirits I pretended to fall against the camera,
wringing a shout of terror from the operator.
Then, modestly disclaiming the praises of the
actors, though indeed I felt they were less than
I deserved, I went whistling to my dressing-
room.
222
CH^^JlLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
*'How soon do you want to see the film, ]Mr.
Chaplin?" the operator asked, tapping at my
door while I was changing into street clothes.
"Just as soon as you can have it, old top,'*
I replied cheerfully. "Oh, by the way, how
many feet did we use?"
"Little over two thousand," he called back,
and I heard the sound of his retreating feet.
A little over two thousand! At four cents
a foot! Eighty dollars! I felt as though a
little cold breeze was blowing on my back.
Nearly a month's salary with Carno wagered
on the success of three hours' work ! After all,
I thought, I was not sure how the film would
turn out; the beastly machine might not see
the humor of my acting, good as it had been.
I finished dressing in a hurry, and went out
to find ]Mr. Sennett and show him the film in
the dark room.
I sat on the edge of my chair in the dark
room, waiting for the picture to flash on the
screen, thinking of that eighty dollars, which
alternately loomed large as a fortune and sank
into insignificance. If the picture was good —
But suppose it, too, was a failure! Then I
would be stranded in California, thousands of
223
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
miles from home, and where would I get the
eighty dollars?
The shutter clicked open and the negative
began to flicker on the screen. I saw myself,
black-faced, with a little white mustache and
enormous white shoes, walking in great dignity
across the patch of light. I saw myself trip
over my shoes. I saw the mustache quiver
with alarm. I saw myself stop, look wise,
twirl my cane knowingly, and hit myself on
the nose. Then, suddenly in the stillness, I
heard a loud chuckle from JNIr. Sennett. The
picture was good. It was very good.
"Well, Chaplin, you've done It! By George,
you've certainly got the comedy! It's a
corker!" Mr. Sennett said, clapping me heartily
on the back as we came out of the dark room.
"You've wasted a lot of film, but hang the
film! You're worth It! Go on and finish this
up. I'd like to release It next week."
CHAPTER XXIX
In which I taste success in the movies ; develop a new
aim in life ; and form an ambitious project.
"We'll use the third scene," Mr. Sennett
said to the camera operator. "How long will
it run?"
"About two hundred feet," the operator re-
plied.
"Well, keep it and throw away the rest.
Think you can finish two good reels this week?"
Mr. Sennett asked, turning to me.
"Watch me!" I responded airily, and my
heart gave a great jump. They were paying
me two hundred dollars a week and were will-
ing to throw away thousands of feet of film in
addition to get my comedies. "There's a
fortune in this business! A fortune!" I
thought.
JNIy ambition soared at that moment to
dazzling heights. I saw myself retiring, after
five or ten years in the business, with a fortune
of ten thousand pounds — yes, even twenty
thousand !
225
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
The comedy was finished that week; I
worked every day, during every moment when
the light was good, not stopping for luncheon
or to rest. I enjoyed the work; the even click-
click-click of the camera, running steadily, was
a stimulant to me; my ideas came thick and
fast. I sketched in my mind the outlines of a
dozen comedies, to be played later. I remem-
bered all the funny things I had seen or heard
and built up rough scenarios around them. I
woke in the night, chuckling at a new idea that
occurred to me.
When my first comedy was released it was a
great success. The producers demanded more,
quicklj^ I was already working on Caught in
the Rain. I followed it the next week with
Laughing Gas. They all went big.
Every morning when I reached the stage in
make-up the actors who were to play with me
stood waiting to learn what their parts were to
be. I myself did not always know, but when I
had limbered up a bit by a jig or clog dance
and the camera began to click, ideas came fast
enough.
I told the other actors how to play their
parts, played them myself to show how it
226
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
should be done; played my own part enthusi-
astically, teased the camera man, laughed and
whistled and turned handsprings. The click-
ing camera took it all in ; later, in the negative
room, we chose and cut and threw away film,
picking out the best scenes, rearranging the
reels, shaping up the final picture to be shown
on the screens. I liked it all ; I was never still
a minute in the studio and never tired.
The only time I was quiet was while I was
making up. Then I thought sometimes of my
early days in England, of Covent Garden, and
my mother and my year with William Gillette.
"Life's a funny thing," I said to myself. Then
I made up as a baker, ordered a wagonload of
bread-dough and flour and went out and
romped through it hilarious, shouting with
laughter whenever I was out of range of the
camera. The result was Dough and Dyna-
mite ^ and it clinched what I then thought was
my success in the movies.
At first when my pictures began to appear
in the moving-picture houses I took great de-
light in walking among the crowds in front of
the doors, idly twirling my cane and listening
to the comments on my comedies. I liked to
227
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
go inside, too, and hear the audiences laugh at
the comical figure I cut on the screen. That
was the way I got my first real ambition in
moving-picture work. I still have it. I want
to make people chuckle.
Audiences laugh in two ways. Upon the
stage, in all the tense effort of being funny be-
hind the footlights, I had never noticed that.
But one night, packed with the crowd in a
small, dark moving-picture house, watching
the flickering screen, listening for the response
of the people around me, I suddenly realized it.
I had wedged into a crowded house to see
my latest film. It was a rough-and-tumble
farce; the audience had been holding its sides
and shrieking hysterically for five minutes.
"Oh, ho!" I was saying to myself. "You're
getting 'em, old top, you're getting 'em!"
Suddenly the laughter stopped.
I looked around dismayed. I could see a
hundred faces, white in the dim light, intent on
the picture — and not a smile on any of them.
I looked anxiously at the screen. There was
Charlie Chaplin in his make-up standing still.
Standing still in a farce! I wondered how I
had ever let a thing like that get past the
228
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
negative. The house was still; I could hear
the click of the um-olling film.
Then on the screen I saw myself turn slowly ;
saw my expression become grim and resolute ;
saw myself grip my cane firmly and stalk
away. I was going after the husky laborer
who had stolen my beer.
Then it came — a chuckle, a deep hearty
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" It spread over the crowd
like a wave ; the house rocked with it.
"That's it! That's what I want, that's what
I want !" I said. I got out quickly to think it
over. I had to crowd past the knees of a dozen
people to do it, and not one of them glared at
me. They were still chuckling.
I walked bac^: to my hotel with my cane
tucked under my arm and my hands in my
pockets. That was the thing — the chuckle!
Any kind of laughter is good; any kind of
laughter will get the big salaries. But a good,
deep, hearty chuckle is the thing that warms a
man's heart ; it's the thing that makes him your
friend ; it's the thing that shows, when you get
it, that you have a real hold on your audience.
I have worked for it ever since.
After that I visited tlie j)icturc houses night
229
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWX STORY
after night, watching for that chuckle, plan-
ning ways to get it. I was never recognized by
strangers, and more than once some one asked
me what I thought of Charlie Chaplin. I do
not recall that I ever told the truth. In fact,
I was not thinking much about Charlie Chaplin
in those days ; I was thinking of his work and
his success and his growing bank-account.
I had come into the business at the height of
its first big success. Fortunes were being made
overnight in it; producers could not turn out
film fast enough to satisfy the clamoring pub-
lic. The studios were like gambling houses in
the wild fever of play. ]Money was nothing;
it was thrown away by hundreds, by thousands.
"Give us the film, give us the film! To hell
with the expense!" was the cry. I heard of
small tailors, of street-car motormen, who had
got into the game with a few hundred dollars
and now were millionaires. In six months I
was smiling at my early notion of making fifty
thousand dollars.
Sidney, who was still in vaudeville, came to
Los Angeles about that time, and I met him at
the train with one of the company's big auto-
mobiles. The same old reliable Sidney witK
230
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWX STORY
his sound business sense. He had figured out
the trend of affairs and was already neo^otiat-
ing with the Essanay company for a good
contract with them, going dehberately into the
work I had blmidered into hv accident.
"There's a fortune in this if it's handled
right, Charlie," he said.
"A fortune? If this holds out, if I can
keep up my popularity, I'll have a cool half
million before I quit, my lad! Keep your eye
piped for your Uncle Charlie I" I said gaily.
CHAPTER XXX
In which I see myself as others see me ; learn many sur-
prising things about myself from divers sources ;
and see a bright future ahead.
Sid laughed.
"Well, have it your way, old top!" he said.
"What will you do when you get your half
million?'*
"Do? I'll quit. I'll be satisfied," I said.
"You can't keep 'em coming forever, and I
don't expect it. I'll give them the best I have
as long as I can, and then — curtains! But I
wager we keep out of the Actor's Home,
what?"
Sid laughed again. "There's money in the
movies, Charlie," he said. "Half a million?
You wait a year. Your popularity hasn't be-
gun."
He was right. In a world where so many
people are troubled and unliappy, where
women lead such dreary lives as my mother
did when I was a boy, where men spend their
days in hard unwilling toil and children starve
as I starved in the London slums, laughter is
232
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
precious. People want to laugh ; they long to
forget themselves for half an hour in the hearty
joy of it. Every night on a hundred thousand
motion-picture screens my floppy shoes and
tricky cane and eloquent mustache were mak-
ing people laugh, and they remembered them
and came to laugh again. Suddenly, almost
overnight, Charlie Chaplin became a fad, a
craze.
^ly first idea of it came one night when I
was returning from a hard day's work at the
studio. It had been a hot day; I had worked
thirteen hours in a mask of grease paint under
the blazing heat of tlie Southern California
sun intensified by a dozen huge reflectors be-
fore the inexorable click-click-click of the
camera, driven by the necessity of finishing the
reel wliile the light lasted. My exuberance of
spirit had waned by noon; by four o'clock I
was driving myself by sheer will-power,
doggedly, determinedly being funny. At
seven we finished the reel. At nine we had got
the film in sliape in the negative room, and I
had notliing to do till next morning but get my
ideas together for a new comedy.
233
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I was slumped in a heap in the tonneau of
the director's car hurrying to my hotel -and
thinking that the American system of built-in
baths had its advantages, when we ran up to a
crowd that almost stopped street traffic. The
sidewalk was jammed for half a block; men
were standing up in automobiles to get a better
view of whatever was happening. ^ly chauf-
feur stopped.
"What's the row?" I asked one of the men
in the crowd.
"Charlie Chaplin's in there!" he said excit-
edly, jumping on the running-board and cran-
ing his neck to look over the heads of the men
in front of him.
"Really?" I said. I stood up and looked.
There in front of a moving-picture theater was
Charlie Chaplin, sure enough — shoes, baggy
trousers, mustache and all. The chap was
walking up and down as well as he could in the
jam of people, twirling his cane and tripping
over his shoes. Policemen were trvinff to clear
the sidewalk, but the crowd was mad for a
glimpse of him. I stood there looking at him
with indescribable emotions.
"That's funnv," I said after a minute. The
234
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
man on the running-board had only half heard
me.
'Tunny? I should say he is! He's the
funniest man in America!" he said. "They
say he gets a hundred dollars a day and only
works Avhen he's stewed."
"Well, weU! Really!" I said.
*'I guess that's right, too," he went on. "He
acts like it on the screen, don't he? Say, have
you seen his latest picture? ^lan, it's a knock-
out! A'NHien he fell into that sewer — ! They
faked the sewer, of course, but say — ! I like
to of fell out of my seat !"
We had not faked the sewer. It was a
thoroughly real sewer. But I drove on to my
hotel without explaining. The whole situation
was too complex.
Within a week half the motion-picture houses
in Los Angeles had the only original and
genuine Charlie Chaplin parading up and
down before them. I grew so accustomed to
meeting myself on the street that I started in
surprise every time I looked into a mirror with-
out my make-up. Ovcrnlglit, too, a thousand
little figures of Cliarlie Chaplin in plaster
sprang up and crowded the shop windows. I
23.5
CHARLIE CHAPLIjST'S OWN STORY
could not buy a tooth-brush without reaching
over a counter packed with myself to do it.
It was odd, walking up and down the streets,
eating in cafes, hearing Charlie Chaplin talked
about, seeing Charlie Chaplin on every hand
and never being recognized as Charlie Chaplin.
I had a feeling that all the world was cross-
eyed, or that I was a disembodied spirit. Rut
that did not last long. A plague of reporters
descended on the studios soon, like whatever it
was that fell upon Egypt. Then the world
seemed more topsy-turvy than ever, for here
I was, an actor, dodging reporters !
Not that I have any dislike of reporters.
Indeed, in the old days I asked nothing better
than to get one to listen to me and often
planned for days to capture one's attention.
But that's another of life's little jokes. A man
who tries hard enough for anything will always
get it — after he has stopped wanting it.
I had to turn out the film, hundreds of feet
of it every week, and it must be made while the
light lasted. The gambling fever had spent
itself in the picture business; directors were
beginning to count costs. To stop my company
half an hour meant a waste of several hundred
236
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
dollars. And every morning half a dozen re-
porters waited for me to give them "Just a few
minutes, Mr. Chaplin!"
I took to dodging in and out of the studio
like a hunted man. Did I stop to give a harried
and unwary opinion upon something I knew
nothing whatever about, next Sunday I beheld
with staring eyes a full-page story on my
early life, told in the first person. At last, in
the pressure of getting out two new comedies
in a hurry, I escaped interviews for nearly three
weeks. We were working overtime ; it was late
in the fall, when the weather was uncertain and
the light bad. We would start at five in the
morning to get to our "location" in the country
by smirise, only to have the morning foggy.
Then we hurried back to the studio to work
under artificial light, and the afternoon was
sunny. It was a hard nerve-racking three
weeks and our tempers were not improved
when, at the end of the last day, we tried out
the negative as usual and found the camera had
leaked light and ruined nearly a reel of film.
JIurrying oiF the stage to get a qyick sup-
per, so tliat I could return and make up as
much lost time as possiljle that night, I en-
237
<((
ii^
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY;
countered on the studio steps a thin young
man in a derby, who did not recognize me.
'Say, is it true Chaplin's crazy?" he asked.
'Crazy?" I said.
'Yes. He hasn't released a film for over a
month and I can't get hold of him here. They
say he's raving crazy, confined in an asylum."
"He is not," I said. Then the humor of the
thing struck me. "He isn't violent yet," I said,
"but he may be, any minute."
Half an hour later two morning papers tele-
phoned the director for confirmation of the
report, which he denied emphatically and pro-
fanely. No story appeared in the papers, but
I have since been solemnly told by a hundred
people who "have it straight" that Chaplin is,
or has been, confined in the California Hospital
for the Insane.
Behind all this flurry of comment and con-
jecture I was working, working hard, turning
out the best film I could devise, with my mind
always on the problem of getting that deep,
hearty chuckle from the audience. I did not
always get it, but I did get laughs. And my
contract with the Kej'-stone company was run-
ning out; I saw still brighter prospects ahead.
288
CHAPTER XXXI
In which the moving-picture work palls on me; I
make other plans, am persuaded to abandon them
and am brought to the brink of a deal in high
finance.
The reorganization among the producers of
motion pictures, which followed the era of
mushroom companies sprung up overnight,
making fabulous fortunes, wildly, in the first
scramble for quick profits and going down
again in the general chaos, was still under way
when my contract with the Keystone company
expired.
Millions of laughs, resounding every night
in hundreds of moving-picture theaters had set
producers to bidding for me. I received offers
of Incredible sums from some companies; lavish
promises of stock from others. The situation,
I felt, required the mind of a financier. I
called In Sidney.
After a great deal of consideration, we de-
cided to accept the offer of the Essanay com-
239
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
pany, as combining' in due proportion size of
salary and security of its payment. ]My con-
tract called for a thousand dollars a day, also
a percentage on my jSlms.
A thousand dollars a day! Two hundred
pounds every twenty-four hours! At the
moment of signing the contract a feeling of
unreality came over me. It seemed incredible.
Only five years ago I had been cockily con-
gratulating myself on wringing ten pounds a
[week from Carno !
I returned to Los Angeles in the highest
spirits and set to work again. A small com-
pany, three actors and a score of "supers,"
was got together for me. The stage, a rough
board structure large enough for a dozen
**sets," built near the bridge of the street rail-
way between Los Angeles and Pasadena, was
tm-ned over to me and my company. Here,
on a little side street of tumble-down sheds half
buried in tangles of dusty woods, I shut myself
in behind the high wooden wall of the studio
through the long hot summer and worked at
being funny.
Every morning, as soon as the light was
right for the pictures, I arrived at the studio
240
CHARLIE CHAPLIX'S OWN STORY
and got into my make-up, racking my brain
the while for a funnj'' idea. The company stood
waiting in the white-hot glare of the big canvas
reflectors; the camera was ready; at the other
end of the long-distance wire the company
clamored for film, more film and still more. I
must go out on the stage and be funny, be
funny as long as the light lasted.
"The whole thing's in your hands, Chaplin,'"
the managers said cheerfully. "Give us the
film, that's all we ask."
I gave them the film. AH day long,
tumbling down-stairs, falling into lakes, collid-
ing with moving vans, upsetting stepladders,
sitting in pails of wall-paper paste, I heard it
click-click-clicking ]3ast the camera shutter.
At night, in the negative room, I checked and
cut and revised it. And all the time I searched
my mind for funny ideas.
Ts^ow, nothing in the world is more rare than
an idea, except a funny idea. The necessity of
working out a new one every day, the responsi-
bility of it and the labor so wore upon me that
by fall I had come to a stern determination. I
would leave the moving pictures. I would
leave them as soon as I had a million dollars.
241
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
"If this keeps up another year I will be a
millionaire," I said to myself one evening,
lying on the cement floor of the basement set,
where I had gone in my search for a cool spot
to rest. "Then I'll quit. I will quit and write
a book. I never have written a book, and I
might as well. But not a funny book. Ye
gods, no!'*
After all, I had had my share of the lime-
light, as I had always known, even in my worst
days, that I would some day. I had made my
success on the legitimate stage with William
Gillette. I had made my success and my
monej'- in the moving pictures in America. I
was still in my twenties. "WHiy not leave the
stage altogether, settle down on some snug
little ranch and write? It might be jolly fun
to be an author. By jove, I'd do it!
My arrangement with the Essanay people
had been for only a year — Sidney's prudent
idea. The contract was expiring in a few
months; already I was receiving offers from
other companies. I would refuse them all;
yes, I would quit with less than a million dol-
lars. Three-quarters of a million would be
plenty. Lying there on the cool cement floor,
242
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
still in my baggy trousers, with the grease
paint on my face, I stretched my legs and
waggled my floppy shoes contentedly. Jove,
the relief of never being funny again!
*'Charlie, old boy, don't be a gory idiot!" Sid
protested, when I told him my project. "Why,
3^ou can make a fortune at this. Hutchinson,
of the INIutual, is in town right now; I was
talking to him last night. They'll make you an
offer — you can get fifty ofl'ers that will beat
anji:hing you've dreamed about. You can be
the highest-paid movie actor in the world.'*
"What's a million more or less, old man?"
I said airily, though I began to waver. "I've
made my pile. I want to write a book."
"How do you know you can write a book?"
Sidney returned. "Of all the bally rot ! D'you
want to go off somewhere and never be heard
of again? Or have you got another notion
that William Gillette's going to take you to
America?"
It was the first time Sidney had ever men-
tioned that affair since the day he had bought
me clotlies and so got me out of the London
hospital and taken me home. I had told him
all about it then.
243
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
It struck me lie was probably right. It has
been my experience that he usually is.
"All right," I said. "Your contract's up
with the Essanay, too. Come over and manage
things for me and I'll stay with the moving
pictures."
He agreed and we began to consider which
cx)mpany I should choose. The moving-picture
business is standardized now; a few big com-
panies practically divide the field between
them. The various departments of the work
have been segregated also, a producing com-
pany turning its films over to a releasing
company which markets them. ^Vliat we most
desired was to make a connection with a big
releasing company, since if I got a percentage
of the profits which we meant to stand out for,
the marketing of the films was most important.
I felt greatly relieved when my contract
expired and I drove away from the studio for
the last time, free for some weeks from the
obligation of being funny. Sidney was busily
negotiating with several companies, consider-
ing their offers and their advantages from our
view-point. I was idle and care-free ; I might
do what I liked. I whistled cheerfully to my-
2U
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
self, swinging my cane as I walked down to
dinner that night, facing the prospect before
me with happy anticipation.
In a week I discovered that the one thing I
most wanted to do was to be acting. A thou-
sand bright ideas for comedy situations rushed
into my mind ; I longed to put on my make-up
again, to smxcll the piny odor of the studio in
the hot sun, to hear the click of the camera. I
looked regretfully at the old signs on the movie
theaters; no new Chaplin pictures were being
released. I was eager to be back at work.
Each night I discussed more eagerly with
Sidney the different companies we were con-
sidering. At last, after a great many talks
with ]Mr. Hutchinson, we privately decided on
the ]Mutual as offering the best advantages.
This decision, however, we prudently refrained
from mentioning until after ]Mr. Caulfield, the
personal representative of the Mutual's presi-
dent, ]\Ir. Freuler, should come to Los Angeles
and make us a definite money offer.
!Mr. Caulfield promptly arrived, and Sidney
undertook the negotiations with him, keeping
me in reserve to bring up at the proper time.
I relied a great deal upon Sidney; I knew
245
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
myself entirely capable in handling theatrical
managers, but I had greater confidence in Sid-
ney's handling of business men. I awaited
somewhat nervously my share in the arrange-
ments.
One night my cue came. Sidney telephoned
up from down-stairs. "I'm bringing Caulfield
up," he said. "He offers ten thousand a week
and royalties. I'm holding out for two hun-
dred and fifty thousand dollars bonus on sign-
ing the contract. Stick at that if you can, but
whatever you do, don't take less than one hun-
dred and twenty-five thousand dollars."
CHAPTER XXXII
In which I see success in my grasp; proudly con-
sider the heights to which I have chmbed; and
receive an unexpected shock.
Sidney came in a moment later, bringing IMr.
Caiilfield. Like Mr. Hutchinson, like, indeed,
most of the men handling the affairs of the big
motion-picture corporations, Mr. Caulfield is
a keen, quick-witted business man. Producing
and selling moving-picture films is now a busi-
ness as matter of fact as dealing in stocks and
bonds; there is nothing of the theatrical man-
ager about the men who control it.
"Well, ]\Ir. Chaplin, your brother and I
have been reaching an agreement about your
contract with us," he said briskly. "We will
give you a salary of ten thousand dollars a week
and royalties that should double that figure."
He mentioned the per cent, agreed upon, as I
assented.
"More than that, we arc planning to create
a separate producing company, subsidiary to
247
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
the Mutual, which will be its releasing com-
pany, and to call the new concern the Lone
Star company — you to be the lone star. The
new company will build its own studios at
Santa Barbara, and it will give you the finest
supporting cast that money can hire." He
mentioned a few of the actors he had in mind,
and I agreed heartily to his suggestions. They
were good actors ; I knew I could do good work
with them.
"That is the offer as it stands,'* he concluded.
"Half a million dollars in salary, another half-
million, probably, in royalties. That depends
on the amount of film the Lone Star company
turns out. We'll give you every facility for
producing it; the JNIutual will handle the re-
leases. We will be ready to start work as soon
as you sign the contract."
"Then," I said pleasantly, "we need only
decide the amount of the bonus to be paid me
for signing it."
"Frankly, ]Mr. Chaplin, I am not authorized
to offer you a bonus," he replied. "We don't
do that. And we feel that in organizing your
own company, building studios, giving you
such a supporting cast, we are doing all that
248
k
"W lial do \()ii know ulioiit lliiili'"
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
is possible, in addition to the record-breaking
salary and royalties we are willing to pay you."
"On the other hand, you must consider that
I have other ofFers," I answered. "Frankly,
also, I imagine the size of the bonus paid me
will decicZe v.hich company I choose. I want
two hundred and fifty thousand. We both
know I am worth it to any company."
It was a deadlock. The old thrill of my
dealing with Carno came back to me while we
talked. In the end he left, the matter still un-
decided.
There were many interviews after that. I
still believe that it might have been possible, by
holding out longer, to get that amount, but I
was eager to begin work again, and besides, as
INIr. Caulfield pointed out, the sooner we began
releasing films the sooner the royalties would
begin coming in.
In tlie end we compromised on a cash bonus
of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and
an agreement on my part to secure the com-
pany for tliat payment by allowing them to
insure my life for half a million dollars. We
made application for tlie insurance policy and
I was examined by the insurance company's
249
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
physician, so that there might be no delay in
closing the arrangements with the ^Mutual and
beginning work.
"Fit as a fiddle, sir ; fit as a fiddle !" the doctor
said, thumping my chest. He felt the muscles
of my arms approvingly. "Outdoor life, out-
door life and exercise, they're the best medicine
in the world. What is your occupation, sir, if
I may ask?" •
"I'm a sort of rough-and-tumble acrobat,"
I said. "A moving-picture actor."
"Well, bless my soul! Chaplin, of course!
I didn't get the name. Yes, yes, I see the re-
semblance now. I'm glad to meet you, sir.
That last comedy of yours — when you fell into
the lake — " He chuckled.
In great good spirits, then, we set out for
New York, where the contract was to be signed
by Mr. Freuler and myself and the final de-
tails settled.
Ten years ago I had been a starving actor
on the Strand, a percocious youngster with big
dreams and an empty stomach. Now I was on
my way to New York and a salary of five hun-
dred and twenty thousand dollars a year. Then
I had been hungry for the slightest recognition ;
250
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I had schemed and posed and acted a part with
every one I met, craving a glance of admira-
tion or envy to encourage my really tremulous
hopes of one day succeeding; I had deceived
myself with flattery to keep up my spirits.
Now my name was known wherever moving
pictures were shown throughout the world; a
million hearty laughs applauded me every day.
I felt that I had arrived and I was happy.
From New York I hastened to cable my
mother the dazzling news — my poor, pretty
little mother, older now and never really strong
since the terrible days when we starved together
in a London garret. She can not come to
America because she can not stand the sea trip,
but from the first I had written her at great
length about my tremendous success, and when
my comedies appeared in England she went for
the first time to the cinema houses, and wrote
that it was good to see me again and my comedy
work was splendid ; she was proud of me.
We were to sign the contract in the offices of
the INIutual company in New York. When we
stepped into that suite of richly furnished
rooms, to be ushered at once into the presence
of the president of this multi-million-dollar
251
CHARLIE CHAPLIlSr'S OWN STORY
parent corporation, I had one fleeting thought
of myself, ten years before, wearily tramping
the Strand from agent's oflice to agent's office,
the scorn of the grimiest cockney office boy.
The curious twists and turns of chance in
those old days should have prepared me for
the shock I received when I met Mr. Freuler,
but they had not done so. I felt so secure, so
satisfied with myself and the world as I stepped
into his private office.
"I'm sorry, ]Mr. Chaplin," he said when Mr.
Caulfield had introduced us and we were
seated. "I'm afraid there will be a hitch in the
paying of that bonus. The insurance company
has refused to issue your policy."
CHAPTER XXXIII
In which I realize my wildest dreams of fortune ; pon-
der on the comedy tricks of life and conclude
without reaching any conclusion.
"Refused to issue — impossible!" I cried, start-
ing in my chair. With the swiftness of a knife
stab I saw myself stopped at the very moment
of my greatest success, fighting, struggling,
hoping — and dying swiftly of some inexorable,
concealed disease. Why, I had never felt bet-
ter in my life !
*'Yes, we received their refusal only this
morning. On account of your extra-hazardous
occupation they will not carry a policy for such
a large sum," said ]Mr. Freuler. "I'm sorry,
but I'm afraid it will hold matters up until we
have found a company which will insure you
or distributed the amount among a number of
companies."
I laughed. I felt that Fate had shot her last
bolt at me and missed. Extra-liazardous, of
course! I had grown accustomed to the staff
of nurses waiting at every large studio during
253
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
thrilling scenes. I had trained myself by long
practise to come comically through every dan-
gerous mishap with as little danger of broken
bones as possible. That was part of the work
of being funny.
"Oh, very well," I said. ""V^Hiat shall we do
to arrange the matter?"
It was a question which occupied our
thoughts for several days. No large company
would insure my life against the hazards of my
comedies. We did, however, finally hit upon a
way of solving the problem, and at last, worth
nearly half a million dollars to the ^Mutual
company if I died and much more if I lived, I
signed the contract and received my check for
one hundred and. fifty thousand dollars.
I did it, as was fitting, to the sound of a
clicking camera, for the JMutual company, with
great enterprise, filmed the event, that audi-
ences the world over might see me in my proper
person, wielding the fateful pen. It was a
moment during which I should have felt a de-
gree of emotion, that moment at which the pen
point, scrawling "Charles Chaplin," made me
worth another million dollars. But the click-
click-click of the camera as the operator turned
254
ii
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
the crank made the whole thing unreal to me.
I was careful only to register the proper ex-
pression.
"Well — it's finished. What about your half-
million now?" Sidney said affectionately when,
my copy of the contract safely tucked into my
breast pocket, we set off down the street to-
gether. "You'll quit, will you, with half a
million! You'll never leave the moving pic-
tures, my lad!"
Have it your own way, old scamp," I said.
You would, anyway. Just the same I would
like to write a book. I wager I could do it, wdth
half a chance. By the way, there's another
thing I'd Hke to do—"
Then I had all the pleasure and delight of
feeling rich, of which the camera had robbed
me while I signed my contract. At last I had
an opportunity to repay Sidney the money part
of the debt I have owed him since he came to
my rescue so many times when we were boys.
He could not refuse half of the bonus money
which he had worked so hard to get for me, and
that check for seventy-five thousand dollars
gave me more pleasure than I can recall receiv-
ing from any other money I have ever handled.
255
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
So I came back to the Pacific coast to begin
my work with the ]Mutual comx^any. I am now
an assured success in moving-picture comedy
work and I am most proud of it. There is
great cause for pride in keeping thousands of
persons laughing. There is the satisfaction,
also, of having attained, through lucky chance
and accident, the goal on which I set my eyes
so many years ago.
But I have no golden rule for such attain-
ment to offer any one. I have worked — yes, to
the limit of my ability — but so have many other
men who have won far less reward than I,
Whether you call it chance, fate or providence,
to my mind the ruling of men's lives is in other
hands than theirs.
If Sidney had not returned to London I
might have become a thief in the London
streets. If William Gillette had brought me
to America I might have become a great tragic
actor. If the explosion in the glass factory had
been more violent I might have been buried in
a pauper's grave. Now, by a twist of public
fancy, which sees great humor in my best work,
and less in the best work of other men who are
toiling as hard as I, I have become Charlie
256
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWX STORY
Chaplin, "the funniest man in America," and
a millionaire.
What rules our destinies in this big comedy,
the world? I do not know. I know only that
it is good, whatever happens, to laugh at it.
INIeantime, I am working on a new comedy.
I am always working on a new comedy. I have
a whole stage to myself, a stage of bare new
boards that smell of turpentine in the hot sun-
shine, covered wdth dozens of sets — drawing-
rooms, bedrooms, staircases, basements, roofs,
fire-escapes, laundries, baker-shops, barrooms
- — everything.
As soon as the light is strong enough I
arrive in my big automobile, falling over the
steps when I get out to amuse the chauffeur.
I coat my face with light brown paint, paste
on my mustaclie, get into my floppy shoes,
loop my trousers up about my waist, clog-dance
a bit. Then the camera begins to click and I
begin to be funny. I enjoy my comedies; they
seem the funniest things on earth while I am
playing them. I laugli, the other actors laugli,
the director fans himself with liis straw hat and
laughs ; tlie camera man chuckles aloud.
Dozens of ideas pop into my mind as I i)lay ;
257
CHARLIE CHAPLIN'S OWN STORY
I play my parts each with a fresh enthusiasm,
changing them, inventing, devising, accident-
ally producing unexpected effects, carefully
working out others, enjoying every moment
of it.
When the light falls in the evening I may
sit a while, for coolness, in the basement set,
where the glare of the reflectors has not beat
all day. Then sometimes I think of the tricks
fate has played with me since the days I clog-
danced for Mr. Hawkins, and I wonder why
and what the meaning of it all may be. But I
never decide.
THE END
University Of California. Los Angeles
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