My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (most read book in the world TXT) 📕

George was in bed. ‘My friend!’ he said, greeting me emotionally. ‘I am so glad you have come. I’ve never forgotten your sympathy and kindness at Dudley Malone’s party!’ Then he gave a perfunctory order to his secretary and we were left alone. As he never proffered any explanation about his departure from the States, I felt it would be indiscreet to ask him about it; besides, he was too interested in inquiring about his friends in New York. I was bewildered; I could not make sense of the situation; it was like skipping several chapters of a book. The dénouement came when he explained that he was now the purchasing agent for the Bolshevik Government and was in Berlin buying railway engines and steel bridges. I left with my $500 intact.

*

Berlin was depressing. It still had an atmosphere of defeat, with its tragic aftermath of armless and legless soldiers begging on almost every street corner. Now I began to receive telegrams from Miss Anne Morgan’s secretary, fraught with anxiety, for already the Press was announcing my appearance at the Troca-dero. I wired back that I had made no promise to attend, and that to keep faith with the French public I would have to apprise them of the fact.

Eventually a telegram arrived: ‘Have absolute assurance that you will be decorated if you are present, but it has been a veritable series of manoeuvres and crises – Anne Morgan.’ So after three days in Berlin I returned to Paris.

On the night of the Trocadero première I was in the box with Cécile Sorel, Anne Morgan and several others. Cécile leaned close to impart a deep secret. ‘Tonight you are going to be decorated.’

‘How wonderful!’ I said with modesty.

A dreary documentary film went on endlessly up to the intermission. After I had suffered interminable ennui the lights went up and two officials escorted me to the Minister’s box. Several journalists accompanied us; one, an astute American correspondent, kept continually whispering down my neck: ‘You’re getting the Legion of Honour, kid.’ As the Minister was delivering his encomium, my friend kept up a stream of whispering: ‘They’ve double-crossed you, kid; that’s the wrong colour – that’s what they give to school-teachers; you don’t get the smackeroos on the cheek for that one; you want the red ribbon, kid.’

Actually, I was very happy to be honoured in a class with school-teachers. The certificate stated: ‘Charles Chaplin, dramatist, artist, an Officier de l’Instruction Publique… ’ etc.

I received a charming letter of thanks from Anne Morgan and an invitation to lunch next day at the Villa Trianon, Versailles, saying that she would see me there. It was an affluent pot-pourri. – Prince George of Greece, Lady Sarah Wilson, the Marquis de Talleyrand-Périgord, Commandant Paul-Louis Weiller, Elsa Maxwell and others. Whatever incident or conversation took place on that matutinal occasion I do not remember, for I was too busy exercising my charm.

The next day my friend Waldo Frank came to the hotel with Jacques Copeau, the leader of a new movement in the French theatre. Together we went to the circus that evening and saw some excellent clowns, then later we supped with Copeau’s company in the Latin Quarter.

The day following I was due in London for a lunch with Sir Philip Sassoon and Lord and Lady Rocksavage, to meet Lloyd George. But the plane was forced to land on the French coast because of a fog over the Channel, and we arrived three hours too late.

A word about Sir Philip Sassoon. He had been official secretary to Lloyd George during the war. A man about my own age, he was a picturesque personality, handsome and exotic-looking. He had a seat in Parliament representing Brighton and Hove, and, although one of the wealthiest men in England, he was not satisfied to be idle, but worked hard and made an interesting life for himself.

When I first met him in Paris I had said that I was exhausted and needed to get away from people and was moreover extremely nervous, complaining that even the colour of the hotel walls was getting on my nerves.

He laughed. ‘What coloured walls would you like?’

‘Yellow and gold,’ I said jokingly.

He then suggested my going to his estate in Lympne, where I would be quiet and away from people. To my astonishment, when I arrived there I discovered my room had pastel curtains of yellow and gold.

His estate was extraordinarily beautiful, the house furnished with flamboyant daring. Philip could do this successfully because he had great taste. I remember how impressed I was with my luxurious suite: the lighted chafing-dish to keep soup warm in case I was hungry during the night and in the morning two stalwart butlers wheeling into the room a veritable cafeteria, with a choice of American cereals, fish cutlets, and bacon and eggs. I had remarked that since visiting Europe I missed American wheat-cakes, and there they were, brought to my bedside, all hot, with butter and maple syrup. It was something out of the Arabian Nights.

Sir Philip went about conducting his household affairs with one hand in his coat pocket, fingering his mother’s pearls – a string over a yard long, and each pearl the size of a thumbnail. ‘I carry them around to keep them alive,’ he said.

After I had recovered from my fatigue, he asked if I would accompany him to a hospital in Brighton to visit the incurable spastic cases who had been wounded during the war. It was terribly sad to look into those young faces and to see the lost hope there. One young man was so paralysed that he painted with a brush in his mouth, the only part of his body he could use. Another had fists so clenched that he had to be given an anaesthetic in order to cut his finger-nails to prevent them from growing into the palms of his hands. Some patients were in such a terrible state that I was not allowed to see them