BON VOYAGE
Chapter 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
I am off in the morning for Southampton, miserable and depressed. Crowds—the same crowds that saw me come—are there. But they seem a bit more desirable. I am leaving them. There are so many things I wish I had done. It is pleasant to be getting this applause on my exit.
I do not doubt its sincerity now. It is just as fine and as boisterous as it was when I arrived. They were glad to see me come and are sorry I am going.
I feel despondent and sad. I want to hug all of them to me. There is something so wistful about London, about their kind, gentle appreciation. They smile tenderly as I look this way, that way, over there—on every side it is the same. They are all my friends and I am leaving them.
Will I sign this? A few excited ones are shoving autograph books at me, but most of them are under restraint, almost in repose. They feel the parting. They sense it, but are sending me away with a smile.
My car is full of friends going with me to Southampton. They mean little at the moment. The crowd has me. Old, old friends turn up, friends that I have been too busy to see. Faithful old friends who are content just to get a glimpse before I leave.
There’s Freddy Whittaker, an old music-hall artist with whom I once played. Just acquaintances, most of them, but they all knew me, and had all shared, in spirit, my success. All of them are at the station and all of them understand. They know that my life has been full every minute I have been here. There had been so much to do.
They knew and understood, yet they had come determined just to see me, if only at the door of my carriage. I feel very sad about them.
The train is about to pull out and everything is excitement. Everyone seems emotional and there is a tenseness in the very atmosphere.
“Love to Alf and Amy,” many of them whisper, those who know my manager and his wife. I tell them that I am coming back, perhaps next summer. There is applause. “Don’t forget,” they shout. I don’t think I could forget.
The trip to Southampton is not enjoyable. There is a sadness on the train. A sort of embarrassed sentimentality among my friends. Tom Geraghty is along. Tom is an old American and he is all choked up at the thought of my going back while he has to stay on in England. We are going back to his land. We cannot talk much.
We go to the boat. Sonny is there to see me off. Sonny, Hetty’s brother.
There is luncheon with my friends and there are crowds of reporters. I can’t be annoyed. There is nothing for me to say. I can’t even think. We talk, small talk, joke talk.
Sonny is very matter-of-fact. I look at him and wonder if he has ever known. He has always been so vague with me. Has always met me in a joking way.
He leans over and whispers, “I thought you might like this.” It is a package. I almost know without asking that it is a picture of Hetty. I am amazed. He understood all the time. Was always alive to the situation. How England covers up her feelings!
Everybody is off the boat but the passengers. My friends stand on the dock and wave to me. I see everything in their glowing faces—loyalty, love, sadness, a few tears. There is a lump in my throat. I smile just as hard as I can to keep them from seeing. I even smile at the reporters. They’re darn nice fellows. I wish I knew them better. After all, it’s their job to ask questions and they have been merely doing their job with me. Just doing their jobs, as they see it. That spirit would make the world if it were universal.
England never looked more lovely. Why didn’t I go here? Why didn’t I do this and that? There is so much that I missed. I must come back again. Will they be glad to see me? As glad as I am to see them? I hope so. My cheek is damp. I turn away and blot out the sadness. I am not going to look back again.
A sweet little girl about eight years of age, full of laughing childhood, is coming toward me with a bubbling voice. Her very look commands me not to try to escape. I don’t think I want to escape from her.
“Oh, Mr. Chaplin,” gurgled the little girl, “I’ve been looking for you all over the boat. Please adopt me like you did Jackie Coogan. We could smash windows together and have lots of fun. I love your plays.”
She takes my hand and looks up into my face. “They are so clever and beautiful. Won’t you teach me like you taught him? He’s so much like you. Oh, if I could only be like him.”
And with a rapt look on her little face she prattles on, leaving me very few opportunities to get in a word, though I prefer to listen to her rather than talk.
I wave good-bye to my friends and then walk along with her, going up and looking back at the crowd over the rail.
Reporters are here. They scent something interesting in my affair with the little girl. I answer all questions. Then a photographer. We are photographed together. And the movie men are getting action pictures. We are looking back at my friends on shore.
The little girl asks: “Are they all actors and in the movies? Why are you so sad? Don’t you like leaving England? There will be so many friends in America to meet you. Why, you should be so happy because you have friends all over the world!”
I tell her that it is just the parting—that the thought of leaving is always sad. Life is always “Good-bye.” And here I feel it is good-bye to new friends, that my old ones are in America.
We walk around the deck and she discusses the merits of my pictures.
“Do you like drama?” I ask.
“No. I like to laugh, but I love to make people cry myself. It must be nice to act ‘cryie’ parts, but I don’t like to watch them.”
“And you want me to adopt you?”
“Only in the pictures, like Jackie. I would love to break windows.”
She has dark hair and a beautiful profile of the Spanish type, with a delicately formed nose and a Cupid’s bow sort of mouth. Her eyes are sensitive, dark and shining, dancing with life and laughter. As we talk I notice as she gets serious she grows tender and full of childish love.
“You like smashing windows! You must be Spanish,” I tell her.
“Oh no, not Spanish; I’m Jewish,” she answers.
“That accounts for your genius.”
“Oh, do you think Jewish people are clever?” she asks, eagerly.
“Of course. All great geniuses had Jewish blood in them. No, I am not Jewish,” as she is about to put that question, “but I am sure there must be some somewhere in me. I hope so.”
“Oh, I am so glad you think them clever. You must meet my mother. She’s brilliant and an elocutionist. She recites beautifully, and is so clever at anything. And I am sure you would like my father. He loves me so much and I think he admires me some, too.”
She chatters on as we walk around. Then suddenly. “You look tired. Please tell me and I will run away.”
As the boat is pulling out her mother comes toward us and the child introduces us with perfect formality and without any embarrassment. She is a fine, cultured person.
“Come along, dear, we must go down to the second class. We cannot stay here.”
I make an appointment to lunch with the little girl on the day after the morrow, and am already looking forward to it.
I spend the greater part of the second day in reading books by Frank Harris, Waldo Frank, Claude McKay, and Major Douglas’s “Economic Democracy.”
The next day I met Miss Taylor, a famous moving-picture actress of England, and Mr. Hepworth, who is a director of prominence in Great Britain. Miss Taylor, though sensitive, shy, and retiring, has a great bit of charm.
They are making their first trip to America, and we soon become good friends. We discuss the characteristics of the American people, contrasting their youthful, frank abruptness with the quiet, shy, and reserved Britisher.
I find myself running wild as I tell them of this land. I explain train hold-ups, advertising signs, Broadway lights, blatant theatres, ticket speculators, subways, the automat and its big sister, the cafeteria. It has a great effect on my friends and at times I almost detect unbelief. I find myself wanting to show the whole thing to them and to watch their reactions.
At luncheon next day the little girl is the soul of the party. We discuss everything from Art to ambitions. At one moment she is full of musical laughter, and the next she is excitedly discussing some happening aboard ship. Her stories are always interesting. How do children see so much more than grown-ups?
She has a great time. I must visit her father, he is so much like me. He has the same temperament, and is such a great daddy. He is so good to her. And she rattles on without stopping.
Then again she thinks I may be tired. “Sit back now.” And she puts a pillow behind my head and bids me rest.
These moments with her make days aboard pass quickly and pleasantly.
Carl Robinson and I are strolling around the top deck the next day in an effort to get away from everyone, and I notice someone looking up at a wire running between the funnels of the ship. Perched on the wire is a little bird, and I am wondering how it got there and if it had been there since we left England.
The other watcher notices us. He turns and smiles. “The little bird must think this is the promised land.”
I knew at once that he was somebody. Those thoughts belong only to poets. Later in the evening he joins us at my invitation and I learn he is Easthope Martin, the composer and pianist. He had been through the War and it had left its stamp on this fine, sensitive soul. He had been gassed. I could not imagine such a man in the trenches.
He is very frail of body, and as he talks I always imagine his big soul at the bursting point with a pent-up yearning.
There is the inevitable concert on the last night of the voyage. We are off the banks of Newfoundland, and in the midst of a fog. Fog horns must be kept blowing at intervals, hence the effect on the concert, particularly the vocal part, is obvious.
We land at seven in the morning of a very windy day, and it is eleven before we can get away. Reporters and camera men fill the air during all that time, and I am rather glad, because it shows Miss Taylor and Mr. Hepworth a glimpse of what America is like. We arrange to meet that night at Sam Goldwyn’s for dinner.
Good-byes here are rather joyous, because we are all getting off in the same land and there will be an opportunity to see one another again.
My little friend comes to me excitedly and gives me a present—a silver stamp box. “I hope that when you write your first letter you take a stamp from here and mail it to me. Good-bye.”
She shakes hands. We are real lovers and must be careful. She tells me not to overwork. “Don’t forget to come and see us; you must meet daddy. Good-bye, Charlie.”
She curtsies and is gone. I go to my cabin to wait until we can land. There is a tiny knock. She comes in.
“Charlie, I couldn’t kiss you out there in front of all those people. Good-bye, dear. Take care of yourself.” This is real love. She kisses my cheek and then runs out on deck.
Easthope Martin is with us that night at Goldwyn’s party. He plays one of his own compositions and holds us spellbound. He is very grateful for our sincere applause and quite retiring and unassuming, though he is the hit of the evening.
Following the dinner I carried the English movie folk on a sight-seeing trip, enjoying their amazement at the wonders of a New York night.
“What do you think of it?” I asked them.
“Thrilling,” says Hepworth. “I like it. There is something electrical in the air. It is a driving force. You must do things.”
We go to a café, where the élite of New York are gathered, and dance until midnight. I bid them good-bye, hoping to meet them later when they come to Los Angeles.
I dine at Max Eastman’s the next night and meet McKay, the negro poet. He is quite handsome, a full-blooded Jamaican negro not more than twenty-five years of age. I can readily see why he has been termed an African prince. He has just that manner.
I have read a number of his poems. He is a true aristocrat with the sensitiveness of a poet and the humour of a philosopher, and quite shy. In fact, he is rather supersensitive, but with a dignity and manner that seem to hold him aloof.
There are many other friends there, and we discuss Max’s new book on humour. There is a controversy whether to call it “Sense of Humour” or “Psychology of Humour.” We talk about my trip. Claude McKay asks if I met Shaw. “Too bad,” he says. “You would like him and he would have enjoyed you.”
I am interested in Claude. “How do you write your poetry? Can you make yourself write? Do you prepare?” I try to discuss his race. “What is their future? Do they——”
He shrugs his shoulders. I realise he is a poet, an aristocrat.
I dine the next evening with Waldo Frank and Marguerite Naumberg and we discuss her new system. She has a school that develops children along the lines of personality. It is a study in individuality. She is struggling alone, but is getting wonderful results. We talk far into the morning on everything, including the fourth dimension.
Next day Frank Harris calls and we decide to take a trip to Sing Sing together. Frank is very sad and wistful. He is anxious to get away from New York and devote time to his autobiography before it is too late. He has so much to say that he wants to write it while it is keen.
I try to tell him that consciousness of age is a sign of keenness. That age doesn’t bother the mind.
We discuss George Meredith and a wonderful book he had written. And then in his age Meredith had rewritten it. He said it was so much better rewritten, but he had taken from it all the red blood. It was old, withered like himself. You can’t see things as they were. Meredith had become old. Harris says he doesn’t want the same experience.
All this on the way to Sing Sing. Frank is a wonderful conversationalist. Like his friend Oscar Wilde. That same charm and brilliancy of wit, ever ready for argument. What a fund of knowledge he has. What a biography his should be. If it is just half as good as Wilde’s, it will be sufficient.
Sing Sing. The big, grey stone buildings seem to me like an outcry against civilisation. This huge grey monster with its thousand staring eyes. We are in the visiting room. Young men in grey shirts. Thank God, the hideous stripes are gone. This is progress, humanity. It is not so stark.
There is a mite of a baby holding her daddy’s hand and playing with his hair as he talks with her mamma, his wife. Another prisoner holding two withered hands of an old lady. Mother was written all over her, though neither said a word. I felt brutal at witnessing their emotion.
All of them old. Children, widows, mothers—youth crossed out of faces by lines of suffering and life’s penalties. Tragedy and sadness, and always it is in the faces of the women that the suffering is more plainly written. The men suffer in body—the women in soul.
The men look resigned. Their spirit is gone. What is it that happens behind these grey walls that kills so completely?
The devotion of the prisoners is almost childish in its eagerness as they sit with their children, talking with their wives, here and there a lover with his sweetheart—all of them have written a compelling story in the book of life. But love is in this room, love unashamed. Why are sinners always loved? Why do sinners make such wonderful lovers? Perhaps it is compensation, as they call it. Love is paged by every eye here.
Children are playing around the floor. Their laughter is like a benediction. This is another improvement, this room. There are no longer bars to separate loved ones. Human nature improves, but the tragedy remains just as dramatic.
The cells where they sleep are old-fashioned, built by a monster or a maniac. No architect could do such a thing for human beings. They are built of hate, ignorance, and stupidity. I understand they are building a new prison, more sane, with far more understanding of human needs. Until then these poor wretches must endure these awful cells. I’d go mad there.
I notice quite a bit of freedom. A number of prisoners are strolling around the grounds while others are at work. The honour system is a great thing, gives a man a chance to hold self-respect.
They have heard that I am coming, and most of them seem to know me. I am embarrassed. What can I say? How can I approach them? I wave my hand merely. “Hello, folks!”
I decide to discard conversation. Be myself. Be comic. Cut up. I twist my cane and juggle my hat. I kick up my leg in back. I am on comic ground. That’s the thing.
No sentiment, no slopping over, no morals—they are fed up with that. What is there in common between us? Our viewpoints are entirely different. They’re in—I’m out.
They show me a cup presented by Sir Thomas Lipton, inscribed, “We have all made mistakes.”
“How do we know but what some of you haven’t?” I ask, humorously. It makes a hit. They want me to talk.
“Brother criminals and fellow sinners: Christ said, ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.’ I cannot cast the stone, though I have compromised and thrown many a pie. But I cannot cast the first stone.” Some got it. Others never will.
We must be sensible. I am not a hero worshipper of criminals and bad men. Society must be protected. We are greater in number than the criminals and have the upper hand. We must keep it; but we can at least treat them intelligently, for, after all, crime is the outcome of society.
The doctor tells me that but a few of them are criminals from heredity, that the majority had been forced into crime by circumstances or had committed it in passion. I notice a lot of evil-looking men, but also some splendid ones. I earnestly believe that society can protect itself intelligently, humanly. I would abolish prisons. Call them hospitals and treat the prisoners as patients.
It is a problem that I make no pretence of solving.
The death house. It is hideous. A plain, bare room, rather large and with a white door, not green, as I have been told. The chair—a plain wooden armchair and a single wire coming down over it. This is an instrument to snuff out life. It is too simple. It is not even dramatic. Just cold-blooded and matter of fact.
Some one is telling me how they watch the prisoner after he is strapped in the chair. Good God! How can they calmly plan with such exactness? And they have killed as many as seven in one day. I must get out.
Two men were walking up and down in a bare yard, one a short man with a pipe in his mouth, walking briskly, and at his side a warden. The keeper announces, shortly, “The next for the chair.”
How awful! Looking straight in front of him and coming toward us, I saw his face. Tragic and appalling. I will see it for a long time.
We visit the industries. There is something ironical about their location with the mountains for a background, but the effect is good, they can get a sense of freedom. A good system here, with the wardens tolerant. They seem to understand. I whisper to one.
“Is Jim Larkin here?” He is in the boot department, and we go to see him for a moment. There is a rule against it, but on this occasion the rule is waived.
Larkin struts up. Large, about six feet two inches, a fine, strapping Irishman. Introduced, he talks timidly.
He can’t stay, mustn’t leave his work. Is happy. Only worried about his wife and children in Ireland. Anxious about them, otherwise fit.
There are four more years for him. He seems deserted even by his party, though there is an effort being made to have his sentence repealed. After all, he is no ordinary criminal. Just a political one.
He asks about my reception in England. “Glad to meet you, but I must get back.”
Frank tells him he will help to get his release. He smiles, grips Frank’s hand hard. “Thanks.” Harris tells me he is a cultured man and a fine writer.
But the prison marked him. The buoyancy and spirit that must have gone with those Irish eyes are no more. Those same eyes are now wistful, where they once were gay. He hasn’t been forgotten. Our visit has helped. There may be a bit of hope left to him.
We go to the solitary-confinement cell, where trouble makers are kept.
“This young man tried to escape, got out on the roof. We went after him,” says the warden.
“Yes, it was quite a movie stunt,” said the youngster. He is embarrassed. We try to relieve it.
“Whatever he’s done, he’s darn handsome,” I tell the warden. It helps. “Better luck next time,” I tell him. He laughs. “Thanks. Pleased to meet you, Charlie.”
He is just nineteen, handsome and healthy. What a pity! The greatest tragedy of all. He is a forger, here with murderers.
We leave and I look back at the prison just once. Why are prisons and graveyards built in such beautiful places?
Next day everything is bustling, getting ready for the trip back to Los Angeles. I sneak out in the excitement and go to a matinée to see Marie Doro in “Lilies of the Field,” and that night to “The Hero,” a splendid play. A young actor, Robert Ames, I believe, gives the finest performance I have ever seen in America.
We are on the way. I am rushing back with the swiftness of the Twentieth Century Limited. There is a wire from my studio manager. “When will I be back for work?” I wire him that I am rushing and anxious to get there. There is a brief stop in Chicago and then we are on again.
And as the train rushes me back I am living again this vacation of mine. Its every moment now seems wonderful. The petty annoyances were but seasoning. I even begin to like reporters. They are regular fellows, intent on their job.
And going over it all, it has been so worth while and the job ahead of me looks worth while. If I can bring smiles to the tired eyes in Kennington and Whitechapel, if I have absorbed and understood the virtues and problems of those simpler people I have met, and if I have gathered the least bit of inspiration from those greater personages who were kind to me, then this has been a wonderful trip, and somehow I am eager to get back to work and begin paying for it.
I notice a newspaper headline as I write. It tells of the Conference for Disarmament. Is it prophetic? Does it mean that War will never stride through the world again? Is it a gleam of intelligence coming into the world?
We are arriving at Ogden, Utah, as I write. There is a telegram asking me to dine with Clare Sheridan on my arrival in Los Angeles. The prospect is most alluring. And that wire, with several others, convinces me that I am getting home.
I turn again to the newspaper. My holiday is over. I reflect on disarmament. I wonder what will be the answer? I hope and am inclined to believe that it will be for good. Was it Tennyson who wrote:
When shall all men’s good
Be each man’s rule, and universal peace
Shine like a shaft of light across the lane,
And like a layer of beams athwart the sea?
What a beautiful thought! Can those who go to Washington make it more than a thought?
The conductor is calling:
“Los Angeles.”
“Bye.”
THE END.