Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
OFF TO EUROPE
Next morning there was work to do. My lawyer, Nathan Burkan, had to be seen. There were contracts and other things. Almost as much a nuisance as interviews. But I dare say they are necessary.
Poor old Nath! I love him, but am afraid of him. His pockets always bulge contracts. We could be such good friends if he were not a lawyer. And I am sure that there must be times when he is delightful company. I might fire him and then get acquainted.
A very dull day with him. Interrupted by ‘phones, invitations, parties, theatre tickets sent to me, people asking for jobs. Hundreds of letters camouflaged with good wishes and invariably asking favours. But I like them.
Calls from many old friends who depress me and many new ones who thrill me. I wanted some buckwheat cakes. I had to go three blocks to a Childs’ restaurant to get them.
That night I went to see “Liliom,” the best play in New York at the time and one which in moments rises to true greatness. It impressed me 27 tremendously and made me dissatisfied with myself. I don’t like being without work. I want to go on the stage. Wonder if I could play that part?
I went back behind the scenes and met young Skildkraut. I was amazed at his beauty and youth. Truly an artist, sincere and simple. And Eva Le Gallienne, I recall no one else on the stage just like her. She is a charming artist. We renewed our acquaintance made in Los Angeles.
The next morning provided a delightful treat. Breakfast for me, luncheon for the others, at the Coffee House Club, a most interesting little place where artists and artizans belong—writers, actors, musicians, sculptors, painters—all of them interesting people. I go there often whenever I am in New York. It was a brilliant party, Heywood Broun, Frank Crowninshield, Harrison Rhodes, Edward Knoblock, Condé Nast, Alexander Woolcott—but I can’t remember all the names. I wish all meals were as pleasant.
I received an invitation to dine with Ambassador Gerard and then go for a ride in the country. The motor broke down, as they usually do on such occasions, and I had to ‘phone and disappoint. I was sorry, because I was to meet some brilliant people.
I had luncheon next day with Max Eastman, one of my best friends. He is a radical and a poet and editor of The Liberator, a charming and sympathetic fellow who thinks. All of his doctrines I do not subscribe to, but that makes no difference in our friendship. We get together, argue a bit, and then agree to disagree and let it go at that and remain friends.
He told me of a party that he was giving at his home that evening and I hastened to accept his invitation to attend. His home is always interesting. His friends likewise.
What a night it was for me! I got out of myself. My emotions went the gamut of tears to laughter without artificiality. It was what I had left Los Angeles for, and that night Charlie Chaplin seemed very far away, and I felt or wanted to feel myself just a simple soul among other souls.
I was introduced to George, an ex-I. W. W. secretary. I suppose he has a last name, but I didn’t know it and it didn’t seem to matter when one met George. Here was a real personality. He had a light in his eyes that I have never seen before, a light that must have shone from his soul. He had the look of one who believes he is right and has the courage of his convictions. It is a scarce article.
I learned that he had been sentenced by Judge Landis to serve twenty year in the penitentiary, that he had served two years and was out because of ill-health. I did not learn the offence. It did not seem to matter.
A dreamer and a poet, he became wistfully gay on this hectic night among kindred spirits. In a mixed crowd of intellectuals he stood out.
He was going back to serve his eighteen years in the penitentiary and was remaining jovial. What an ordeal! But ordeal signifies what it would have been for me. I don’t believe it bothered him. I hardly believe he was there. He was somewhere else in the place from which that look in his eyes emanated. A man whose ideas are ideals.
I pass no opinion, but with such charm one must sympathise.
It was an amusing evening. We played charades and I watched George act. It was all sorts of fun. We danced a bit.
Then George came in imitating Woodrow. It was screamingly funny, and he threw himself into the character, or caricature, making Wilson seem absurdly ridiculous. We were convulsed with laughter.
But all the time I couldn’t help thinking that he must go back to the penitentiary for eighteen years.
What a party!
It didn’t break up until two in the morning, though clock or calendar didn’t get a thought from me.
We all played, danced, and acted. No one asked me to walk funny, no one asked me to twirl a cane. If I wanted to do a tragic bit, I did, and so did everyone else. You were a creature of the present, not a production of the past, not a promise of the future. You were accepted as is, sans “Who’s Who” labels and income-tax records.
George asks me about my trip, but he does not interview. He gives me letters to friends.
In my puny way, sounding hollow and unconvincing, I try to tell George how foolish he is. He tries to explain that he can’t help it. Like all trail blazers, he is a martyr. He does not rant. He blames no one. He does not rail at fate.
If he believes himself persecuted, his belief is unspoken. He is almost Christlike as he explains to me. His viewpoint is beautiful, kind, and tender.
I can’t imagine what he has done to be sentenced to twenty years. My thought must speak. He believes he is spoiling my party through making me serious. He doesn’t want that.
He stops talking about himself. Suddenly he runs, grabs a woman’s hat, and says, “Look, Charlie, I’m Sarah Bernhardt!” and goes into a most ridiculous travesty.
I laugh. Everyone laughs. George laughs.
And he is going back to the penitentiary to spend eighteen of the most wonderful years of his life!
I can’t stand it. I go out in the garden and gaze up at the stars. It is a wonderful night and a glorious moon is shining down. I wish there was something I could do for George. I wonder if he is right or wrong.
Before long George joins me. He is sad and reflective, with a sadness of beauty, not of regret. He looks at the moon, the stars. He confides, how stupid is the party, any party, compared with the loveliness of the night. The silence that is a universal gift—how few of us enjoy it. Perhaps because it cannot be bought. Rich men buy noise. Souls revel in nature’s silences. They cannot be denied those who seek them.
We talk of George’s future. Not of his past nor of his offence. Can’t he escape? I try to make him think logically toward regaining his freedom. I want to pledge my help. He doesn’t understand, or pretends not to. He has not lost anything. Bars cannot imprison his spirit.
I beg him to give himself and his life a better chance.
He smiles.
“Don’t bother about me, Charlie. You have your work. Go on making the world laugh. Yours is a great task and a splendid one. Don’t bother about me.”
We are silent. I am choked up. I feel a sort of pent-up helplessness. I want relief. It comes.
The tears roll down my cheeks and George embraces me.
There are tears in both our eyes.
“Good-bye, Charlie.”
“Good-bye, George.”
What a party! Its noise disgusts me now. I call my car. I go back to the Ritz.
George goes back to the “pen.”
Chuck Reisner, who played the big bully in “The Kid,” called the next day. He wants to go to Europe. Why? He doesn’t know. He is emotional and sensational. He is a pugilist and a song writer. A civil soldier of fortune. He doesn’t like New York and thinks he wants to get back to California at once.
We have breakfast together. It is a delightful meal because it is so different from my usual lonely breakfast. Chuck goes on at a great rate and succeeds in working up his own emotions until there are tears in his eyes.
I promise him all sorts of things to get rid of him. He knows it and tells me so. We understand each other very well. I promise him an engagement. Tell him he can always get a job with me if he doesn’t want too much money.
He is indignant at some press notices that have appeared about me and wants to go down to newspaper row and kill a few reporters. He fathers, mothers me in his rough way.
We talk about everybody’s ingratitude for what he and I have done for people. We have a mutual-admiration convention. Why aren’t we appreciated more? We are both sour on the world and its hypocrisies. It’s a great little game panning the world so long as you don’t let your sessions get too long or too serious.
I had a luncheon engagement at the Coffee House Club with Frank Crowninshield, and we talked over the arrangements of a dinner which I am giving to a few intimate friends. Frank is my social mentor, though I care little about society in the general acceptance of the term. We arranged for a table at the Elysée Café and it was to be a mixed party.
Among the guests were Max Eastman, Harrison Rhodes, Edward Knoblock, Mme. Maeterlinck, Alexander Woolcott, Douglas Fairbanks and Mary, Heywood Broun, Rita Weiman, and Neysa McMein, a most charming girl for whom I am posing.
Frank Harris and Waldo Frank were invited, but were unable to attend. Perhaps there were others, but I can’t remember, and I am sure they will forgive me if I have neglected to mention them. I am always confused about parties and arrangements.
The last minute sets me wild. I am a very bad organiser. I am always leaving everything until the last minute, and as a rule no one shows up.
This was the exception. For on this occasion everybody did turn up. And it started off like most parties; everybody was stiff and formal; I felt a terrible failure as a host. But in spite of Mr. Volstead there was a bit of “golden water” to be had, and it saved the day. What a blessing at times!
I had been worried since sending the invitations. I wondered how Max Eastman would mix with the others, but I was soon put at my ease, because Max is clever and is just as desirous of having a good time as anyone, in spite of intellectual differences. That night he seemed the necessary ingredient to make the party.
The fizz water must have something of the sort of thing that old Ponce de Leon sought. Certainly it made us feel very young. Back to children we leaped for the night. There were games, music, dancing. And no wallflowers. Everyone participated.
We began playing charades, and Doug and Mary showed us some clever acting. They both got on top of a table and made believe he was the conductor of a trolley car and she was a passenger. After an orgy of calling out stations en route the conductor came along to the passenger and collected her fare. Then they both began dancing around the floor, explaining that they were a couple of fairies dancing along the side of a brook, picking flowers. Soon Mary fell in and Douglas plunged in after her and pulled her up on the banks of the brook.
That was their problem, and, guess though we would, we could not solve it.
They gave the answer finally. It was “Fairbanks.”
Then we sang, and in Italian—at least it passed for that. I acted with Mme. Maeterlinck. We played a burlesque on the great dying scene of “Camille.” But we gave it a touch that Dumas overlooked.
When she coughed, I got the disease immediately, and was soon taken with convulsions and died instead of Camille.
We sang some more, we danced, we got up and made impromptu speeches on any given subject. None were about the party, but on subjects like “political economy,” “the fur trade,” “feminism.”
Each one would try to talk intelligently and seriously on a given subject for one minute. My subject was the “fur trade.”
I prefaced my talk by references to cats, rabbits, etc., and finished up by diagnosing the political situation in Russia.
For me the party was a great success. I succeeded in forgetting myself for a while. I hope the rest of them managed to do the same thing. From the café the party went over to a little girl’s house—she was a friend of Mr. Woolcott—and again we burst forth in music and dancing. We made a complete evening of it and I went to bed tired and exhausted about five in the morning.
I want a long sleep, but am awakened by my lawyer at nine. He has packages of legal documents and papers for me to sign, my orders about certain personal things of great importance. I have a splitting headache. My boat is sailing at noon, and altogether, with a lawyer for a companion, it is a hideous day.
All through the morning the telephone bell is ringing. Reporters. I listen several times, but it never varies.
“Mr. Chaplin, why are you going to Europe?”
“To get rid of interviews,” I finally shout, and hang up the ‘phone.
Somehow, with invaluable assistance, we get away from the hotel and are on our way to the dock. My lawyer meets me there. He has come to see me off. I tremble, though, for fear he has more business with me.
I am criticised by my lawyer for talking so sharply the first thing in the morning. That’s just it. He always sees me the first thing in the morning. That’s what makes me short.
But it is too big a moment. Something is stirring within me. I am anxious and reluctant about leaving. My emotions are all mixed.
It is a beautiful morning. New York looks much finer and nicer because I am leaving it. I am terribly troubled about passports and the usual procedure about declaring income tax, but my lawyer reassures me that he has fixed everything O.K. and that my name will work a lot of influence with the American officials; but I am very dubious about it when I am met by the American officials at the port.
I am terrified by American officials. I am extra nice to the officials, and to my amazement they are extra nice to me. Everything passes off very easily.
As usual, my lawyer was right. He had fixed everything. He is a good lawyer.
We could be such intimate friends if he wasn’t.
But I am too thrilled to give much time to pitying lawyers.
I am going to Europe.
The crowds of reporters, photographers, all sorts of traffic, pushing, shoving, opening passports, visés O.K.’d, stamped, in perfect, almost clocklike precision, I am shoved aboard.
The newspaper battery pictorial and reportorial. There is no original note.
“Mr. Chaplin, why are you going to Europe?”
I feel that in this last moment I should be a bit more tolerant and pleasant, no matter how difficult. I bring forth the “prop” smile again.
“For a vacation,” I answer.
Then they go through the standard interview form and I try to be obliging.
Mrs. John Carpenter is on the boat—was also invited to my party, but couldn’t attend—with her charming daughter, who has the face of an angel, also Mr. Edward Knoblock. We are all photographed. Doug and Mary are there. Lots of people to see me off. Somehow I don’t seem interested in them very much. My mind is pretty well occupied. I am trying to make conversation, but am more interested in the people and the boat and those who are going to travel with me.
Many of the passengers on the boat are bringing their children that I may be introduced. I don’t mind children.
“I have seen you so many times in the pictures.”
I find myself smiling at them graciously and pleasantly, especially the children.
I doubt if I am really sincere in this, as it is too early in the morning. Despite the fact that I love children, I find them difficult to meet. I feel rather inferior to them. Most of them have assurance, have not yet been cursed with self-consciousness.
And one has to be very much on his best behaviour with children because they detect our insincerity. I find there are quite a lot of children on board.
Everyone is so pleasant, especially those left behind. Handkerchiefs are waving. The boat is off. We start to move, the waters are churning. Am feeling very sad, rather regretful—think what a nice man my lawyer is.
We turn around the bend and get into the channel. The crowds are but little flies now. In this fleeting dramatic moment there comes the feeling of leaving something very dear behind.
The camera man and many of his brothers are aboard. I discover him as I turn around. I did not want to discover anyone just then. I wanted to be alone with sky and water. But I am still Charlie Chaplin. I must be photographed—and am.
We are passing the Statue of Liberty. He asks me to wave and throw kisses, which rather annoys me.
The thing is too obvious. It offends my sense of sincerity.
The Statue of Liberty is thrilling, dramatic, a glorious symbol. I would feel self-conscious and cheap in deliberately waving and throwing kisses at it. I will be myself.
I refuse.
The incident of the photographic seeker before the Statue of Liberty upset me. I felt that he was trying to capitalise the statue. His request was deliberate, insincere. It offended me. It would have been like calling an audience to witness the placing of flowers upon a grave. Patriotism is too deep a feeling to depict in the posing for a photograph. Why are attempts made to parade such emotions? I feel glad that I have the courage to refuse.
As I turn from the photographer I feel a sense of relief. I am to have a reprieve from such annoyances. Reporters for the while are left behind. It is a delicious sense of security.
I am ready for the new adjustment. I am in a new world, a little city of its own, where there are new people—people who may be either pleasant or unpleasant, and mine is the interesting job of placing them in their proper category. I want to explore new lands and I feel that I shall have ample opportunity on such an immense ship. The Olympic is enormous and I conjure up all sorts of pleasure to be had in its different rooms—Turkish baths, gymnasium, music rooms—its Ritz-Carlton restaurant, where everything is elaborate and of ornate splendour. I find myself looking forward to my evening meal.
We go to the Ritz grill to dine. Everyone is pleasant. I seem to sense the feel of England immediately. Foreign food—a change of system—the different bill of fare, with money in terms of pounds, shillings, and pence. And the dishes—pheasant, grouse, and wild duck. For the first time I feel the elegant gentleman, the man of means.
I ask questions and discover that there are really some very interesting people aboard. But I resent anyone telling me about them. I want to discover them myself. I almost shout when someone tries to read me a passenger list. This is my desert island—I am going to explore it myself. The prospect is intriguing. I am three thousand miles from Hollywood and three thousand miles from Europe. For the moment I belong to neither.
God be praised, I am myself.
It is my little moment of happiness, the glorious “to-day” that is sandwiched in between the exhausting “yesterday” of Los Angeles and the portentous “to-morrow” of Europe.
For the moment I am content.