Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
HELLO, ENGLAND!
Everything sails along smoothly and delightfully until the night of the concert for the seaman’s fund. This entertainment is customary on all liners and usually is held on the last night out. The passengers provide the entertainment.
I am requested to perform. The thought scares me. It is a great tragedy, and, much as I would like to do something, I am too exhausted and tired. I beg to be excused, I never like making appearances in public. I find that they are always disappointing.
I give all manner of reasons for not appearing—one that I have no particular thing to do, nothing arranged for, that it is against my principles because it spoils illusion—especially for the children. When they see me minus my hat, cane, and shoes, it is like taking the whiskers off Santa Claus. And not having my equipment with me, I feel very conscious of this. I am always self-conscious when meeting children without my make-up for that very reason. I must say the officers were very sympathetic and understood my reasons for not wanting to appear, and I can assure you that the concert was a distinct success without me. There were music and recitations and singing and dancing, and one passenger did a whistling act, imitating various birds and animals, also the sawing of wood, with the screeching sound made when the saw strikes a knot. It was very effective.
I watched and enjoyed the concert immensely until near the end, when the entertainment chairman announced that I was there and that if the audience urged strongly enough I might do something for them. This was very disconcerting, and after I had explained that I was physically exhausted and had nothing prepared I am sure the audience understood. The chairman, however, announced that it did not matter, as they could see Charlie Chaplin at any time for a nickel—and that’s that.
The next day is to be the last aboard. We are approaching land. I have got used to the boat and everybody has got used to me. I have ceased to be a curiosity. They have taken me at my face value—face without moustache and kindred make-up. We have exchanged addresses, cards, invitations; have made new friends, met a lot of charming people, names too numerous to mention.
The lighter is coming out. The top deck is black with men. Somebody tells me they are French and British camera men coming to welcome me. I am up on the top deck, saying good-bye to Mme. Namara and her husband. They are getting off at Cherbourg. We are staying aboard.
Suddenly there is an avalanche. All sorts and conditions of men armed with pads, pencils, motion-picture cameras, still cameras. There is an embarrassing pause. They are looking for Charlie Chaplin. Some have recognised me. I see them searching among our little group. Eventually I am pointed out.
“Why, here he is!”
My friends suddenly become frightened and desert me. I feel very much alone, the victim. Square-headed gentlemen with manners different—they are raising their hats.
“Do I speak French?” Some are speaking in French to me—it means nothing, I am bewildered. Others English. They all seem too curious to even do their own business. I find that they are personally interested. Camera men are forgetting to shoot their pictures.
But they recover themselves after their curiosity has been gratified. Then the deluge.
“Are you visiting in London?”
“Why did you come over?”
“Did you bring your make-up?”
“Are you going to make pictures over here?”
Then from Frenchmen:
“Will I visit France?”
“Am I going to Russia?”
I try to answer them all.
“Will you visit Ireland?”
“I don’t expect to do so.”
“What do you think of the Irish question?”
“It requires too much thought.”
“Are you a Bolshevik?”
“I am an artist, not a politician.”
“Why do you want to visit Russia?”
“Because I am interested in any new idea.”
“What do you think of Lenin?”
“I think him a very remarkable man.”
“Why?”
“Because he is expressing a new idea.”
“Do you believe in Bolshevism?”
“I am not a politician?”
Others ask me to give them a message to France. A message to London. What have I to say to the people of Manchester? Will I meet Bernard Shaw? Will I meet H. G. Wells? Is it true that I am going to be knighted? How would I solve the unemployment problem?
In the midst of all this a rather mysterious gentleman pulls me to one side and tells me that he knew my father intimately and acted as agent for him in his music-hall engagements. Did I anticipate working? If so, he could get me an engagement. Would I give him the first opportunity? Anyway, he was very pleased to meet me. If I wanted a nice quiet rest I could come down to his place and spend a few days with my kind of people, the people I liked.
I am rescued by my secretaries, who insist that I go to my cabin and lie down. Anything the newspaper men have to ask they will answer for me. I am dragged away bewildered.
Is this what I came six thousand miles for? Is this rest? Where is that vacation that I pictured so vividly?
I lie down and nap until dinner time. I have dinner in my cabin. Now comes another great problem.
Tipping. One has the feeling that if you are looked at you should tip. One thing that I believe in, though—tipping. It gets you good service. It is money well spent. But when and how to tip—that is the question. It is a great problem on shipboard.
There’s the bedroom steward, the waiter, the head waiter, the hallboy, the deck steward, boots, bathroom steward, Turkish bath attendants, gymnasium instructor, smoking-room steward, lounge-room steward, page boys, elevator boys, barber. It is depressing. I am harassed as to whether to tip the doctor and the captain.
I am all excited now; full of expectancy. Wonder what’s going to happen. After my first encounter with fifty newspaper men at Cherbourg, somehow I do not resent it. Rather like it, in fact. Being a personage is not so bad. I am prepared for the fray. It is exciting. I am advancing on Europe. One o’clock. I am in my cabin. We are to dock in the morning.
I look out of the porthole. I hear voices. They are alongside the dock. Am very emotional now. The mystery of it out there in blackness envelops me. I revel in it—its promise. We are at Southampton. We are in England.
To-morrow! I go to bed thinking of it. To-morrow!
I try to sleep, childishly reasoning that in sleeping I will make the time pass more quickly. My reasoning was sound, perhaps, but somewhere in my anatomy there slipped a cog. I could not sleep. I rolled and tossed, counted sheep, closed my eyes and lay perfectly still, but it was no go. Somewhere within me there stirred a sort of Christmas Eve feeling. To-morrow was too portentous.
I look at my watch. It is two o’clock in the morning. I look through the porthole. It is pitch dark outside. I try to pierce the darkness, but can’t. Off in the distance I hear voices coming out of the night. That and the lapping of the waves against the side of the boat.
Then I hear my name mentioned once, twice, three times. I am thrilled. I tingle with expectancy and varying emotions. It is all so peculiar and mysterious. I try to throw off the feeling. I can’t.
There seems to be no one awake except a couple of men who are pacing the deck. Longshoremen, probably. Every once in a while I hear the mystic “Charlie Chaplin” mentioned. I peer through the porthole. It is starting to rain. This adds to the spell. I turn out the lights and get back to bed and try to sleep. I get up again and look out.
I call Robinson. “Can you sleep?” I ask.
“No. Let’s get up and dress.” It’s got him, too.
We get up and walk around the top deck. There is a curious mixture of feelings all at once. I am thrilled and depressed. I cannot understand the depression. We keep walking around the deck, looking over the side. People are looking up, but they don’t recognise me in the night. I feel myself speculating, wondering if it is going to be the welcome I am expecting.
Scores of messages have been arriving all day.
“Will you accept engagements?” “Will you dine with us?” “How about a few days in the country?” I cannot possibly answer them all. Not receiving replies, they send wireless messages to the captain.
“Mr. Lathom, is Mr. Chaplin on board?” “Has my message been delivered?”
I have never received so many messages. “Will you appear on Tuesday?” “Will you dine here?” “Will you join a revue?” “Are you open for engagements?” “I am the greatest agent in the world.”
One of the messages is from the Mayor of Southampton, welcoming me to that city. Others from heads of the motion-picture industry in Europe. This is a source of great worriment. Welcomed by the mayor. It will probably mean a speech. I hate speeches, I can’t make them. This is the worst spectre of the night.
In my sleeplessness I go back to my cabin and try to write down what I shall say, trying to anticipate what the mayor will say to me. I picture his speech of welcome. A masterpiece of oratory brought forth after much preparation by those who are always making speeches. It is their game, this speech-making, and I know I shall appear a hopeless dub with my reply.
But I attack it valiantly. I write sentence after sentence and then practise before the mirror.
“Mr. Mayor and the people of Southampton.” The face that peers back at me from the mirror looks rather silly. I think of Los Angeles and wonder how they would take my speech there. But I persevere. I write more. I overcome that face in the looking-glass to such an extent that I want a wider audience.
I call Carl Robinson. I make him sit still and listen. I make my speech several times. He is kind the first time and the second time, but after that he begins to get fidgety. He makes suggestions. I take out some lines and put in others. I decide that it is prepared and leave it. I am to meet the mayor in the morning at eight o’clock.
Eventually I get to bed and asleep, a fitful, tossing sleep. They wake me in the morning. People are outside my door. Carl comes in.
“The mayor is upstairs waiting for you.” I am twenty minutes late. This adds to my inefficiency.
I am pushed and tumbled into my clothes, then taken by the arm, as if I were about to be arrested, and led from my cabin. Good Lord! I’ve forgotten my slip—my speech, my answer to the mayor, with its platform gestures that I had laboured with during the long night. I believed that I had created some new gestures never before attempted on platform, or in pulpit, but I was lost without my copy.
But there is little time for regrets. It doesn’t take long to reach any place when that place is holding something fearful for you. I was before the mayor long before I was ready to see him.
This mayor wasn’t true to type. He was more like a schoolmaster. Very pleasant and concise, with tortoiseshell rims to his glasses and with none of the ornaments of chain and plush that I had anticipated as part of the regalia of his office. This was somewhat of a relief.
There are lots of men, women and children gathered about. I am introduced to the children. I am whirled around into the crowd, and when I turn back I can’t quite make out who is the mayor. There seems to be a roomful of mayors. Eventually I am dug from behind. I turn. I am whirled back by friendly or official assistance. Ah, here is the mayor.
I stand bewildered, twirling my thumbs, quite at a loss as to what is expected of me.
The mayor begins. I have been warned that it is going to be very formal.
“Mr. Chaplin, on behalf of the citizens of Southampton—”
Nothing like I had anticipated. I am trying to think. Trying to hear precisely what he says. I think I have him so far. But it is nothing like I had anticipated. My speech doesn’t seem to fit what he is saying. I can’t help it. I will use it anyhow, at least as much as I can recall.
It is over. I mumble some inane appreciation. Nothing like I had written, with nary a gesture so laboriously rehearsed.
There comes interruptions of excited mothers with their children.
“This is my little girl.”
I am shaking hands mechanically with everybody. From all sides autograph albums are being shoved under my nose. Carl is warding them off, protecting me as much as possible.
I am aware that the mayor is still standing there. I am trying to think of something more to say. All visions of language seem to have left me. I find myself mumbling. “This is nice of you” and “I am very glad to meet you all.”
Somebody whispers in my ear, “Say something about the English cinema.” “Say a word of welcome to the English.” I try to and can’t utter a word, but the same excitement that had bothered me now comes forward to my aid.
The whole thing is bewildering and thrilling and I find that I am pleased with it all.
But now strange faces seem to fade out and familiar ones take their places. There is Tom Geraghty, who used to be Doug Fairbanks’s scenario writer. He wrote “When the Clouds Roll By” and “The Mollycoddle.” Tom is a great friend of mine and we have spent many a pleasant hour in Doug’s home in Los Angeles. There is Donald Crisp, who played Battling Burrows in “Broken Blossoms,” a clubmate in the Los Angeles Athletic Club.
My cousin, Aubrey Chaplin, a rather dignified gentleman, but with all the earmarks of a Chaplin, greets me.
Heavens! I look something like him. I picture myself in another five years. Aubrey has a saloon in quite a respectable part of London. I feel that Aubrey is a nice simple soul and quite desirous of taking me in hand.
Then Abe Breman, manager of the United Artists’ affairs in England. And there is “Sonny,” a friend in the days when I was on the stage. I have not heard from him in ten years. It makes me happy and interested, the thought of reviving the old friendship.
We talk of all sorts of subjects. Sonny is prosperous and doing well. He tells me everything in jerky asides, as we are hustled about amidst the baggage and bundled into a compartment that somebody has arranged.
Somehow the crowds here are not so large as I had anticipated. I am a little shocked. What if they don’t turn up? Every one has tried to impress upon me the size of the reception I am to get. There is a tinge of disappointment, but then I am informed that, the boat being a day late, the crowd expected had no way of knowing when I would arrive.
This explanation relieves me tremendously, though it is not so much for myself that I feel this, but for my companions and my friends, who expect so much. I feel that the whole thing should go off with a bang for their sake. Yes, I do.
But I am in England. There is freshness. There is glow. There is Nature in its most benevolent mood. The trains, those little toy trains with the funny little wheels like those on a child’s toy. There are strange noises. They come from the engine—snorting, explosive sounds, as though it was clamoring for attention.
I am in another world. Southampton, though I have been there before, is absolutely strange to me. There is nothing familiar. I feel as though I am in a foreign country. Crowds, increasing with every minute. What lovely women, different from American women. How, why, I cannot tell.
There is a beautiful girl peering at me, a lovely English type. She comes to the carriage and in a beautiful, musical voice says, “May I have your signature, Mr. Chaplin?” This is thrilling. Aren’t English girls charming? She is just the type you see in pictures, something like Hall Caine’s Gloria in The Christian—beautiful auburn hair, about seventeen.
Seventeen! What an age! I was that once—and here, in England. It seems very long ago.
Tom Geraghty and the bunch, we are all so excited we don’t know just what to do or how to act. We cannot collect ourselves. Bursting with pent-up questions of years of gathering, overflowing with important messages for one another, we are talking about the most commonplace things. I find that I am not listening to them, nor they to me. I am just taking it all in, eyes and ears.
An English “bobby.” Everything is different. Taking the tickets. The whole thing is upside down. The locking us in our compartment. I look at the crowds. The same old “prop” smile is working. They smile. They cheer. I wave my hat. I feel silly, but it seems that they like it. Will the train never start? I want to see something outside the station.
I want to see the country. They are all saying things. I do not know what they all think of me, my friends. I wish they were not here. I would love to be alone so that I could get it all.
We are moving. I sit forward as though to make the train go faster. I want a sight of Old England. I want more than a sight.
Now I see the English country. New houses going up everywhere. New types for labouring men. More new houses. I have never seen Old England in such a frenzy of building. The brush fields are rather burned up. This is something new for England, for it is always so green. It is not as green as it used to be. But it is England, and I am loving every mile of it.
I discover that everything is Los Angeles in my compartment, with the exception of my cousin and Sonny. Here I am in the midst of Hollywood. I have travelled six thousand miles to get away from Hollywood. Motion pictures are universal. You can’t run away from them. But I am not bothering much, because I am cannily figuring on shaking the whole lot of them after the usual dinner and getting off by myself.
And I am getting new thrills every minute. There are people waiting all along the line, at small stations, waiting for the train to pass. I know they are waiting to see me. It’s a wonderful sensation—everybody so affectionate. Gee! I am wondering what’s going to happen in London?
Aubrey and the bunch are talking about making a strong-arm squad around me for protection. I intimately feel that it is not going to be necessary. They say: “Ah, you don’t know, my boy. Wait until you get to London.”
Secretly, I am hoping it is true. But I have my doubts. Everybody is nice. They suggest that I should sleep awhile, as I look tired. I feel that I am being pampered and spoiled. But I like it. And they all seem to understand.
My cousin interests me. He warns me what to talk about. At first I felt a little conscious in his presence. A little sensitive. His personality—how it mixes with my American friends. I sense that I am shocking him with my American points of view.
He has not seen me in ten years. I know that I am altered. I sort of want to pose before him a little. I want to shock him; no, not exactly shock him, but surprise him. I find myself deliberately posing and just for him. I want to be different, and I want him to know that I am a different person. This is having its effect.
Aubrey is bewildered. I am sure that he doesn’t know me. I feel that I am not acting according to his schedule. It encourages me.
I become radical in my ideas. Against his conservatism. But I am beginning not to like this performing for him. One feels so conscious. I am wondering whether he will understand. There are lots of other people I have got to meet. I won’t be able to devote all my time to him. I shall have a long talk with Aubrey later and explain everything. I doze off for a while.
But just for a moment. We are coming to the outskirts of London. I hear nothing, I see nothing, but I know it is so and I awake. Now I am all expectancy. We are entering the suburbs of the city.