Part 19

At the prison, which stands up like a great fortress on a promontory, I introduced myself to Warden Johnston. He and Mrs. Johnston gave me lunch at their house above the flowered terraces, sunbathed, with its wonderful view of the bay. On their verandah two grey-flannelled prisoners were tying up the Bouganvillia creeper. Inside we were waited on at table by a Chinaman who has a life sentence. I asked his crime ... he was just a “Tongman.” After lunch the Warden handed me over to Miss Jackson who is in charge of the Women’s Section, and for an hour I sat and talked in their little sitting room, with a group of women prisoners. Their bedrooms were like cubicles in a girl’s school, small, simply furnished, full of personal knickknacks, and not at all suggestive of a prison cell. Their clothes were blue and white narrow striped linen, made pretty well as they liked. Miss Jackson, I found a most interesting character. Full of insight and clairvoyance, full of deep human sympathy, understanding and kindness. One realized how tremendously these caged souls were hers to help or hurt, and how much more terrible their fate would be if the Wardress were hard and without understanding. But Miss Jackson talked to me of some of them (before I met them) with real interest and even affection.

I asked her whether a life sentence case was as easy to manage as one who had done a lesser crime. Her reply was illuminating. She said that whereas a life sentence was pronounced on an individual who might be clean of character but for the one desperate deed, prompted by God knows what passionate provocation, the lesser criminal on the other hand might be an habitual petty malefactor who had merely chanced to be caught on the hundredth act!

Out of over 2,000 prisoners only about 25 or 27 were women, and of these about 10 came and talked to me in the sitting room, showed me their needle work and conversed animatedly about the world outside. They seemed in their hearts, almost unbeknown to themselves to be tremendous feminists, and we had quite a heated debate on the subject of whether men were intellectually superior to women, as a man asserted to me the day before at lunch. We all granted the physical superiority, but as to the rest ... well, happily we were all women and no man heard us!

We discussed the impending disarmament convention, and we agreed that it would most likely end, as the Versailles conference ended. We conjured up the picture of all the best brains in the world, gathered together for months and months, with all their retinue of secretaries, and their secretaries’ secretaries, and we were of unanimous opinion that women thus collectively could not have talked more, with less results. Indeed the result of Versailles is completely nil. Some of us dared to believe that women _might_ have done better! I like to think of even the women behind gaol bars, women of varying ages and nationalities, women with hardened or breaking hearts, putting aside now and then their personal griefs to watch, humorously, this conference of men who assemble for the second time, all seriously, to settle the problems of a perplexing and rebellious world.

At last I asked what I could do for them outside and the request was for books. New books, the latest publications, “something well written--and modern!” Classics they had in plenty. The Russian prisoner wanted “Confessions” by Tolstoi. The Italians, however, said they would read nothing, not even if I secured Italian editions! To the charming English girl, with a life sentence, I promised Margot Asquith’s diary, Strachey’s Queen Victoria and the Mirrors of Downing Street. Then Warden Johnston came and fetched me and showed me all he could of the rest of the prison.

I saw the library, the workshops, the chapel and the hospital, but he would not take me among the male prisoners. The sex problem is not without interest. One forgets, that to a man with a life sentence it is not very fair to parade women visitors. I sat up in the balcony with the guard and watched the men assemble in the yard for lockup. They were of such varied types and mostly so young. In front of them, like a giant patio, surrounded by the prison buildings was a huge parterre of brilliant dahlias all bathed in the setting sunlight. These flowers have gone forth into the outside world, and won prizes at the local flower shows. Hanging from the verandah roof in front of the upper story cells, baskets of growing flowers were suspended by wires, a curious contrast. There were a few negroes among the crowd. Some Chinese and one or two prisoners conspicuous by their wide striped uniforms. These were the men who had broken parole. One man I noticed who did clerk work in one of the prison offices, he walked across the patio at lockup time and he held his head high and walked with an almost insolent assurance. His hands were the hands of a man of breeding and he smoked a cigarette through a long amber holder--I pointed him out to the guard--“a forger--” he said, indifferently. I asked about the negroes--“I suppose they have done desperate things--?” The guard shook his head, “they’re not half such bad chaps, most of them, as some of the white men--”

I stayed till the big bell sounded and the motley humans were locked up for the night. Then I went back and talked to Warden Johnston. He is severe and looks hard, but his theory is to accomplish the regeneration of men’s souls through kindness and trust, and not the brutalization of a man into a stone. He hopes that most of these men when they come out may have a new chance in life and make a success. When I got home late for dinner, I told where I had been. Constance looked surprised and even perplexed. “Did you _want_ to see another prison--?” “Well, _such_ a prison, yes,” “How did you get from San Raffaele to the prison?” “In a taxi--” ... Exclamations--how did I dare trust myself to an unknown taxi, how did I know when I told the driver to go to St. Quentin prison three miles off that he was taking me there? I didn’t quite know what to say. But it seemed to me that if I wasn’t safe to go in a taxi from San Rafaele to St. Quentin this must be a far more dangerous country than Russia or Mexico and then she asked me this strange question in reply to my account!

“Did you _want_ to talk with the women prisoners for an hour--?” I thought of all the hours we had spent talking with women in the sheltered verandahs of Burlingame, and I did not dare to tell her that the women of St. Quentin had roused in me a desire to go to prison, so as to gain some human understanding.

OCTOBER 29, 1921. _Los Angeles._

I got back to Los Angeles yesterday morning. Instead of starting, as planned, for New York, my change of plans being due to a telegram from Mr. Lehr of the Goldwyn Company asking me if I would dine on Monday night next to meet Charlie Chaplin, who is due to arrive that day. And so of course I succumbed to another delay in my schedule. A month ago I should have been back in New York but time, they say, was made for slaves--.

This evening, at sunset, Dick and I drove past the flying field and watched the planes set out against the evening sky. Dick begged to be allowed to go up, but I was frankly afraid. This morning I was ashamed of my fear. I know that I was wrong. One should always trust people, things, Destiny. So Louise and Dick and I crushed into a small front seat and took a flight out over the sea. It was cool and it was steady. The green fields and the plough patches looked like little mats laid out to dry. The motors on the roads like small crawling beetles. We could see the mountains behind the mountains, and way down below us, on the earth, our little shadow followed us. Dick loved it--he wanted to fly on and on. It is a great privilege to be born in an age when one can get up and leave the earth the moment one is bored with it.

OCTOBER 31, 1921. _Los Angeles._

Charlie Chaplin arrived in Los Angeles today at noon, on his return from Europe. I met him at dinner. We were just a party of four at the Lehrs. It has been a wonderful evening--I seem to have been talking heart to heart with one who understands, who is full of deep thought and deep feeling. He is full of ideals and has a passion for all that is beautiful. A real artist. He talked a great deal about his trip to England. It had been, I gathered, one of the big emotions of his life. He left, as he said, “poor and unknown” to return 10 years later famous....

What made a great impression on him was the psychology of the English crowd, which seemed to him to contain such a spirit of real affection.

Of course Charlie is English--and England was welcoming her own. Besides, who has more right to public adulation than this man who has brought laughter and happiness to millions? But it was sad, he said, in England--something had happened, or was happening. He was not sure if it was a decay that had set in, or whether it was a reconstruction. But everyone looked as if they had suffered, and it saddened him to be there. A good country to belong to, we agreed, but not a country “for a creative artist,” he advised me to remain where I am. And then, in spite of his emotional, enthusiastic temperament, with a soundness of judgment that surprised me, he said: “Don’t get lost on the path of propaganda. Live your life of an artist ... the other goes on--always.”

One can see, in the sadness of the eyes--which the humor of his smile cannot dispel--that the man has suffered--has known things we do not dream. Has striven, hoped and aimed. Has reached his goal, yet he is not content. He feels there is more to do, and see, and know, more to attain. He believes in work and in producing always the best of one’s effort. He is not Bolshevik nor Communist, nor Revolutionary, as I had heard rumoured. He is an individualist with the artist’s intolerance of stupidity, insincerity, and narrow prejudice. He is sincere and absolutely without affectation. He has no illusions as to what the bourgeois world thinks of “movie actors--” and he has no intention of being patronized by the condescending. He has an almost feminine intuition about people, he knows at once if they are sincere or not. Before the evening was over we had discussed Lenin, Lloyd George, Carpentier, J. M. Barrie, and H. G. Wells. I found that he had each person pretty well summed up, and his opinions of them were not biased by the world’s opinion of them, nor clouded by their fame; and just what he thought (of those I knew) was right. In fact Charlie was a great deal more interesting to talk to than most of the people who are expected to be.

When he asked me about my work in this country, I explained that the United States had made of me a writer instead of a sculptor, and I told him my view of the American man who is so modest that he thinks it is a vanity to have his bust done.

“He does not mind having his portrait _painted_” I said, “he has grown accustomed to the idea. But he exaggerates the importance of a portrait bust. In fact he is quite un-simple, in his point of view, almost self-conscious--” and Charlie, looking at me half shyly, half humorously, as he sat tucked away in the sofa corner, under the light of the lamp: “I’m vain!” he said--“Thank goodness!” I said. And so we fixed it right away--that I will linger here until his bust is done.

On the way back to Hollywood Hotel where he dropped me in his car, we had a discussion on marriage. He has the chivalry, and the instinct to protect, I maintained my fanaticism of freedom.

He is a strange little man with a great big soul. He made me think of Francis Thompson’s essay on Shelley, in which he said that Shelley tired not so much of a woman’s arms, as of her soul. It seemed to me it was more a spiritual than a physical companionship that Charlie is subconsciously searching for, in his heart.

NOVEMBER 2, 1921. _Hollywood._

I have been with Charlie from midday to midnight. He has just left me. First we went to his studio, and Dick came along with us to see “The Kid” which I had never seen. He had it put on for me in his studio theatre, and now I realize the whole world of possibilities in films. Just as a “movie” can be stupid, boring, badly done, and irritating, as any bad bit of work must be, so too it can be very fine and very beautiful. Charlie has produced an exquisite story. It might so easily have been “soppy” and full of false sentiments--but it is not. It is simple, human and full of pathos.

Dick reacted to it in the most stirring way. When the moment came that the Kid was to be taken from Charlie and put in an orphan asylum, Dick clung round my neck and cried and sobbed. He said “I can’t bear it, I can’t look till the end.” He got so hysterical that Charlie was quite alarmed and had to reassure him by saying that it wasn’t true. “It’s only a play Dick! It will all come right in the end!” Charlie too was quite affected by Dick’s emotion.

Whenever we came to the pathos parts, Charlie tiptoed to the harmonium and played an accompaniment and when the lights went on Dick and I were shamefacedly mopping our eyes!

When we went up to his house and lunched, it was half past three! The house which is not his, but is rented, is Moorish and fantastic in design, the tortuous unsimplicity of which disturbs Charlie. But he loves the quiet of it and the isolation on a hill top with the panorama of the town extending for miles below to the sea. At night, as he says, it is just a fairy twinkling world when the town lights up. Later we went for a walk round the hilltop, and the air was hot and full of evening insect sounds. Dick scrambled wildly up the sloping banks, while Charlie and I more sedately walked round and round by the winding climbing path. He was trying to tell me what he thought was the ultimate aim of all our effort. He maintained that no artist would do great work until all petty ambition was obliterated.

“There must be no dreams of posterity, of immortality, no desire for admiration, for after all what are these worth ... at best 1,000 years hence people might walk round your immortal stone and say--it certainly is beautiful; yes, it is wonderful--(and Charlie acted the part)--Who did you say did it? Clare Sheridan 950 years ago”--“and then,” said Charlie, “in 5 minutes they will be saying ‘Where is that motor, I told him to be back in 35 minutes’”--There is nothing, he said, so beautiful that will make people forget their eggs and bacon for breakfast--as for admiration of the world--it’s not worth anything--there is in the end but oneself to please:--“You make something because it means something to you. You work, because you have a superabundance of vital energy, you find that not only you can make children but you can express yourself in other ways--in the end it is you--all you--your work, your thought, your conception of the beautiful, yours the happiness--yours the satisfaction; be brave enough to face the veil, and lift it, and see and know the void it hides, and stand before that void and know that within yourself is your world--”

I said rather feebly that I wanted my children someday to be proud of me--he made a repudiating gesture. “You should want them to love you--to love you in a perfectly primitive animal way. To love you because you are you--to love you whatever you are--to love you if you are wrong.”

I said that if he left me nothing to work for, no aim, no end, only my own satisfaction, I thought one might feel suicidal.

He was horrified at this. We stopped in our walk. Charlie looked at me: “How could anyone like you with so much vitality talk of suicide? Oh the glory of life, the glory of the world (he threw his arms wide to the horizon) it’s all so beautiful, and it’s all mine ...” and then we had to laugh at ourselves for becoming so desperately serious.

I had not meant to stay so long but he asked Dick if he would like to stay for tea, and Dick said yes, and that he’d like to stay the night as well. Dick likes Charlie. He says to him: “Charlie, you’re the funniest man there is ...” and in the car going home after tea, Dick said that as I had talked to Charlie all the afternoon it was only fair that he should have him all to himself until we arrived home. Finally Charlie and I went and dined together, and danced at the Ambassador Hotel. Everyone knew him, and seemed glad to see him back. The whole world is Charlie’s friend, no wonder Charlie loves the world!

Then, such a strange thing happened, there in that gay room full of jazz music we got to talking of our childhoods. Goodness knows how it came about, but I told him mine, and then he told me his. He told it with his wonderful simplicity, told it with detachment as if he were telling of some one else, not of him. It was a terrible bit of realism, and I though I rather love realism, I felt almost a desire to stop him from going on. It was more than one could bear to visualise.

It was a curious place in which to tell such things, but we were oblivious of everyone in the room. And now, stranger to me than ever is the psychology of this man, once a little child of sorrows, who has taught a whole world to laugh.

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1921. _Los Angeles._

I have worked the whole day on Charlie’s head, worked at his house. Today is Thursday and it has to be finished on Saturday because he wants to go to Catalina and fish.

It was a very peaceful day, and though the lovely Claire Windsor was there when I arrived, no one disturbed us during the remainder of the day. His moods varied with the hours. He started the morning in a brown silk dressing gown, and was serious. After having sat pretty quiet for some time, he jumped off the revolving stand and walked round the room playing the violin. Having thus dispelled his sober mood he went upstairs, changed his dressing-gown and reappeared in an orange and primrose one, and we went on with the work. He is perfectly right, one’s desire for color depends entirely on one’s mood.

Now and then we stopped for a cup of tea, for a tune on the piano, for a breath of air, on the sunbathed balcony and Charlie with his wild hair standing on end, and his orange gown dazzling against the white wall of his moorish house, would either philosophise or impersonate. He told me that when he was a young man in London, he longed to know people, but that now he knew so many and he felt lonelier than ever, and it is no use, he said, for artists to hope to be anything else. He then put on a gramaphone record and conducted an imaginary band. It was a very entertaining day, and the work got on awfully well.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 1921. _Hollywood._

Three whole days I have worked on that bust, with a concentration of effort that is exhausting. It is finished--I feel tonight the elation of a girl out of school. Moreover I can sleep without the anxiety due to an unfinished work. Charlie is pleased, and I--well I am never satisfied, but I am conscious of having accomplished my best. His friends who know his restless and capricious nature are surprised that he gave me those three whole days. I was fortunate of course in meeting him immediately in his return, before he was re-engulfed in work. Moreover, with some perception, I planted myself with my materials in his house, and as I wanted him bare throated I begged him not to dress. A man in pajamas and dressing-gown does not suddenly get a notion to order his motor and go off to some place. I had him fairly anchored. Nevertheless he has been difficult to do. There is so much subtlety in the face, and sensitiveness, and all his varying personalities arrayed themselves before me, and had to be embodied into one interpretation.

Charlie would get down from the model stand and observe the progress through half closed eyes. Once he said: “I wish this was not me, so that I could admire it as I please. I find him very interesting, this fellow you have made!” and then, after a close examination from all angles he added:

“It might be the head of a criminal, mightn’t it--?” and proceeded to elaborate a sudden born theory that criminals and artists were psychologically akin. On reflection we all have a flame. A burning flame of impulse, a vision, a side tracked mind, a deep sense of unlawfulness.

Later, as I was finishing, the Comte de Limur arrived. He is a young Frenchman who is studying the moving picture work, for France. He looked at the bust, and then at Charlie, and then slyly at me: “I see, it is Pan ...” and added with a chuckle: “one can never deceive a woman!”

As I needed to work until quite late, it was fortunate that Charlie had changed his mind about Catalina. He heard yesterday that the fishing season closed there on November 1st.

On receipt of this news he flashed a new idea: summoning by shouts “To-om!” his secretary, he asked: “Can you get some tents? Can you get some tinned foods? Can you find a location suitable for camping--can we start on Sunday morning?”

The reply was in the affirmative, unhesitatingly. “Shall we take a chef, or do our own cooking?” Charlie looked at me, I informed him that I couldn’t boil an egg. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. We’ll take a chef--” he said. And so my return to New York planned for Wednesday is again delayed.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1921.

We had planned to start in the morning at half past ten, but it was nearer half past twelve when we found ourselves en route, and Charlie had changed his mind. He said: “They found two locations for camp, one in the mountains, and one in the woods, but I have decided I want to go to the sea shore--we will go and look for a place ...”

“Then is no camp ready for us?” I asked in dismay. (Knowing something of the business of camping.) “Our tents are following us in a van,” he said and they surely followed.--What a “follow the leader game” for anything as cumbersome as a van! And a Ford followed us as well, containing the chef!

We stopped by the wayside for an ice-cream cone, and we lunched in a little town, where the proprietor addressed Charlie as “brother”--Charlie said it was quite habitual among the real Americans of that class. I said I thought it was very attractive as that one hardly needed a revolution to bring about comradeship, in a country where the waiter calls you “brother.” Charlie was rather scornful about the sentimentalism of my revolutionary ideals.

When we left the cafe, children had assembled in the streets and shouted “Goodbye Charlie” as we drove away. It was only his fondness for children that made him wave to them. Otherwise (I have observed) he has no desire to be recognized or lionized.

Who has ever seen an American country road on a Sunday, and not deplored the prosperity of the nation, especially within radius of Los Angeles? The road is like a smooth winding ribbon on which they race, they pursue, they overtake, the atmosphere is gas and dust, the surface is thick and oily. Any road that is a road at all is humming with the throb of machines. The only road that has no traffic in America is what is called a “dirt-road.” It isn’t “dirt” at all as we understand the word dirt in England. It is just Mother Earth, but these roads lead to nowhere, they end in a field on a farmhouse, as we discovered, and lost much time exploring and re-tracing. The macadam roads led down to the sea shore in places where crowds had gathered together to camp or picnic. That is peculiar about Americans, they love being together. I questioned Charlie: “Surely there must be lovely peaceful places unmarred by civilization?” and he said: “No--if there is a lovely place that is accessible, everyone will have found it....”

“Then,” I said, “we must content ourselves with a horrid place that nobody wants!”