Part 11

The picture was shown, but I did not see much of it. There was too much to be seen in that audience.

At the end of the picture there came a messenger from the Minister:

"Would I come to his box and be decorated?" I almost fell out of my box.

I grew sick. What would I say? There was no chance to prepare. I had visions of the all-night preparation for my speech in Southampton. This would be infinitely worse. I couldn't even think clearly. Why do I pick out stunts like that? I might have known that something would happen.

But the floor would not open up for me to sink through and there was no one in this friendly audience who could help in my dilemma, and the messenger was waiting politely, though I imagined just a bit impatiently, so, summoning what courage I had, I went to the box with about the same feeling as a man approaching the guillotine.

I am presented to everybody. He makes a speech. It is translated for me, but very badly. While he was speaking I tried to think of something neat and appropriate, but all my thoughts seemed trite. I finally realised that he was finished and I merely said "_Merci_," which, after all, was about as good as I could have done.

And believe me, I meant "_Merci_" both in French and in English.

But the applause is continuing. I must say something, so I stand up in the box and make a speech about the motion-picture industry and tell them that it is a privilege for us to make a presentation for such a cause as that of devastated France.

Somehow they liked it, or made me believe they did. There was a tremendous demonstration and several bearded men kissed me before I could get out. But I was blocked in and the crowd wouldn't leave. At last the lights were turned out, but still they lingered. Then there came an old watchman who said he could take us through an unknown passage that led to the street.

We followed him and managed to escape, though there was still a tremendous crowd to break through in the street. Outside I meet Cami, who congratulates me, and together we go to the Hotel Crillon to see Doug and Mary.

Mary and Doug are very kind in congratulating me, and I tell them of my terrible conduct during the presentation of the decoration. I knew that I was wholly inadequate for the occasion. I keep mumbling of my _faux pas_ and they try to make me forget my misery by telling me that General Pershing is in the next room.

I'll bet the general never went through a battle like the one I passed through that night.

Then they wanted to see the decoration, which reminded me that I had not yet looked at it myself. So I unrolled the parchment and Doug read aloud the magic words from the Minister of Instruction of the Public and Beaux Arts which made Charles Chaplin, dramatist, artist, an _Officier de L'instruction Publique_.

We sit there until three in the morning, discussing it, and then I go back to my hotel tired but rather happy. That night was worth all the trip to Europe.

At the hotel there was a note from Skaya. She had been to the theatre to see the picture. She sat in the gallery and saw "The Kid," taking time off from her work.

Her note:

"I saw picture. You are a grand man. My heart is joy. You must be happy. I laugh--I cry.

"SKAYA."

This little message was not the least of my pleasures that night.

Elsie De Wolf was my hostess at luncheon next day at the Villa Trianon, Versailles, a most interesting and enjoyable occasion, where I met some of the foremost poets and artists.

Returning to Paris, I meet Henry Wales, and we take a trip through the Latin Quarter together. That night I dine with Cami, Georges Carpentier, and Henri Letellier. Carpentier asks for an autograph and I draw him a picture of my hat, shoes, cane, and moustache, my implements of trade. Carpentier, not to be outdone, draws for me a huge fist encased in a boxing glove.

I am due back in England next day to lunch with Sir Philip Sassoon and to meet Lloyd George. Lord and Lady Rocksavage, Lady Diana Manners, and many other prominent people are to be among the guests, and I am looking forward to the luncheon eagerly.

We are going back by aeroplane, though Carl Robinson lets me know that he prefers some other mode of travel. On this occasion I am nervous and I say frequently that I feel as though something is going to happen. This does not make a hit with Carl.

We figure that by leaving at eight o'clock in the morning we can make London by one o'clock, which will give me plenty of time to keep my engagement.

But we hadn't been up long before we were lost in the fog over the Channel and were forced to make a landing on the French coast, causing a delay of two hours. But we finally made it, though I was two hours late for my engagement, and the thought of keeping Lloyd George and those other people waiting was ghastly.

Our landing in England was made at the Croydon aerodrome, and there was a big automobile waiting outside, around which were several hundred people. The aerodrome officials, assuming that the car was for me, hustled me into it and it was driven off.

But it was not mine, and I found that I was not being driven to the Ritz, but the Majestic Theatre in Clapham.

The chauffeur wore a moustache, and, though he looked familiar, I did not recognise him. But very dramatically he removed the moustache.

"I am Castleton Knight. A long time ago you promised me to visit my theatre. I have concluded that the only way to get you there is to kidnap you. So kindly consider yourself kidnapped."

I couldn't help but laugh, even as I thought of Lloyd George, and I assured Mr. Knight that he was the first one who had ever kidnapped me. So we went to the theatre, and I stayed an hour and surprised both myself and the audience by making a speech.

Back to my hotel Sir Philip meets me and tells me that Lloyd George couldn't wait, that he had a most important engagement at four o'clock. I explained the aeroplane situation to Sir Philip and he was very kind. I feel that it was most unfortunate, for it was my only opportunity to meet Lloyd George in these times, and I love to meet interesting personages. I would like to meet Lenin, Trotsky, and the Kaiser.

This is to be my last night in England, and I have promised to dine and spend the evening with my Cousin Aubrey. One feels dutiful to one's cousin.

I also discover that this is the day I am to meet Chaliapin and H. G. Wells. I 'phone H. G. and explain that this is my last day, and of my promise to my cousin. H. G. is very nice. He understands. You can only do these things with such people.

My cousin calls for me at dusk in a taxi and we ride to his home in Bayswater. London is so beautiful at this hour, when the first lights are being turned on, and each light to me is symbolical. They all mean life, and I wish sometimes I could peer behind all these lighted windows.

Reaching Aubrey's home I notice a number of people on the other side of the street standing in the shadows. They must be reporters, I think, and am slightly annoyed that they should find me even here. But my cousin explains hesitatingly that they are just friends of his waiting for a look at me.

I feel mean and naughty about this, as I recall that I had requested him not to make a party of my visit.

I just wanted a family affair, with no visitors, and these simple souls on the other side of the street were respecting my wishes. I relent and tell Aubrey to ask them over, anyway. They are all quite nice, simple tradesmen, clerks, etc.

Aubrey has a saloon, or at least a hotel, as he calls it, in the vicinity of Bayswater, and later in the evening I suggest that we go there and take his friends with us. Aubrey is shocked.

"No, not around to my place." Then they all demur. They don't wish to intrude. I like this. Then I insist. They weaken. He weakens.

We enter a bar. The place is doing a flourishing business. There are a number of pictures of my brother Syd and myself all over the walls, in character and straight. The place is packed to-night. It must be a very popular resort.

"What will you have?" I feel breezy. "Give the whole saloon a drink."

Aubrey whispers, "Don't let them know you are here." He says this for me.

But I insist. "Introduce me to all of them." I must get him more custom.

He starts quietly whispering to some of his very personal friends: "This is my cousin. Don't say a word."

I speak up rather loudly. "Give them all a drink." I feel a bit vulgar to-night. I want to spend money like a drunken sailor. Even the customers are shocked. They hardly believe that it's Charlie Chaplin, who always avoids publicity, acting in this vulgar way.

I am sure that some of them don't believe despite many assurances. A stunt of my cousin's. But they drink, reverently and with reserve, and then they bid me good night, and we depart quietly, leaving Bayswater as respectable as ever.

To the house for dinner, after which some one brings forth an old family album. It is just like all other family albums.

"This is your great-granduncle and that is your great-grandmother. This is Aunt Lucy. This one was a French general."

Aubrey says: "You know we have quite a good family on your father's side." There are pictures of uncles who are very prosperous cattle ranchers in South Africa. Wonder why I don't hear from my prosperous relations.

This is the first time that I am aware of my family and I am now convinced that we are true aristocrats, blue blood of the first water.

Aubrey has children, a boy of twelve, whom I have never met before. A fine boy. I suggest educating him. We talk of it at length and with stress. "Let's keep up family tradition. He may be a member of Parliament or perhaps President. He's a bright boy."

We dig up all the family and discuss them. The uncles in Spain. Why, we Chaplins have populated the earth.

When I came I told Aubrey that I could stay only two hours, but it is 4 a.m. and we are still talking. As we leave Aubrey walks with me toward the Ritz.

We hail a Ford truck on the way and a rather dandified young Johnny, a former officer, gives us a lift.

"Right you are. Jump on."

A new element, these dandies driving trucks, some of them graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, of good families, most of them, impecunious aristocrats. Perhaps it is the best thing that could happen to such families.

This chap is very quiet and gentle. He talks mostly of his truck and his marketing, which he thinks is quite a game. He has been in the grocery business since the war and has never made so much money. We get a good bit of his story as we jolt along in the truck.

He is providing vegetables and fruit for all his friends in Bayswater, and every morning at four o'clock he is on his way to the market. He loves the truck. It is so simple to drive.

"Half a mo." He stops talking and pulls up for petrol at a pretty little white-tiled petrol station. The station is all lit up, though it is but 5 a.m.

"Good morning. Give me about five gal."

"Right-o!"

The cheery greeting means more than the simple words that are said.

The lad recognises me and greets me frankly, though formally. It seems so strange to me to hear this truck driver go along conversing in the easiest possible manner. A truck driver who enjoyed truck driving.

He spoke of films for just a bit and then discreetly stopped, thinking, perhaps, that I might not like to talk about them. And, besides, he liked to talk about his truck.

He told us how wonderful it was to drive along in the early morning with only the company of dawn and the stars. He loved the silent streets, sleeping London. He was enterprising, full of hopes and ambitions. Told how he bartered. He knew how. His was a lovely business.

He was smoking a pipe and wore a trilby hat, with a sort of frock coat, and his neck was wrapped in a scarf. I figured him to be about thirty years of age.

I nudged my cousin. Would he accept anything? We hardly know whether or not to offer it, though he is going out of his way to drive me to the Ritz.

He has insisted that it is no trouble, that he can cut through to Covent Garden. No trouble. I tell the petrol man to fill it up and I insist on paying for the petrol.

The lad protests, but I insist.

"That's very nice of you, really. But it was a pleasure to have you," he says, as he gets back in his seat.

We cut through to Piccadilly and pull up at the Ritz in a Ford truck. Quite an arrival.

The lad bids us good-bye. "Delighted to have met you. Hope you have a bully time. Too bad you are leaving. Bon voyage. Come back in the spring. London is charming then. Well, I must be off. I'm late. Good morning."

We talk him over on the steps as he drives away. He is the type of an aristocrat that must live. He is made of the stuff that marks the true aristocrat. He is an inspiration. He talked just enough, never too much. The intonation of his voice and his sense of beauty as he appreciated the dawn stamped him as of the élite--the real élite, not the Blue Book variety.

Loving adventure, virtuous, doing something all the time, and loving the doing. What an example he is! He has two stores. This is his first truck. He loves it. He is the first of his kind that I have met. This is my last night in England. I am glad that it brought me this contact with real nobility.

XV.

BON VOYAGE

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."