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

labour union organizer, was serving five years in Sing-Sing, and Frank wanted to see him. Larkin was a brilliant orator who had been sentenced by a prejudiced judge and jury on false charges of attempting to overthrow the Government, so Frank claimed, and this was proved later when Governor Al Smith quashed the sentence, though Larkin had already served years of it.

Prisons have a strange atmosphere, as if the human spirit were suspended. At Sing-Sing the old cell blocks were grimly medieval: small, narrow stone chambers crowded with four to six inmates sleeping in each cell. What fiendish brain could conceive of building such horrors! The cells were vacant for the moment, the inmates being in the exercise yard, except one, a young man, who leant against his open cell door looking mournfully preoccupied. The warder explained that new arrivals with long sentences spent the first year in the old cell blocks before occupying the more modern ones. I stepped past the young man into his cell and was appalled by the horror of claustrophobia. ‘My God!’ I said, quickly stepping out. ‘It’s inhuman!’ ‘You’re right,’ whispered the young man with bitterness.

The warder, a kindly man, explained that Sing-Sing was overcrowded and needed appropriations to build more cells. ‘But we are the last to be considered in that respect; no politician is too concerned about prison conditions.’

The old death-house was like a school-room, long and narrow with a low ceiling, with forms and desks for reporters and, facing them, a cheap wooden structure, the electric chair. A stark electric wire from the ceiling descended over it. The horror of the room was its simplicity, its lack of drama, which was more sinister than the grim scaffold. Directly behind the chair was a wooden partition. Here the victim was carried immediately after execution and an autopsy performed. ‘In case the chair hasn’t quite completed the job, the body is surgically decapitated,’ the doctor told us, and added that the temperature of the blood in the brain directly after execution was something like 212° Fahrenheit. We came away from the death-house reeling.

Frank inquired about Jim Larkin and the warder agreed that he could see him; although it was against the rules, he would make an exception. Larkin was in the shoe factory, and here he greeted us, a tall, handsome man, about six feet four, with piercing blue eyes but a gentle smile.

Although happy to see Frank, he was nervous and disturbed and was anxious to get back to his bench. Even the warder’s assurance would not allay his uneasiness. ‘It’s bad morally for the other prisoners if I’m privileged to see visitors during working hours,’ said Larkin. Frank asked him how he was treated and if there was anything he could do for him. He said he was treated reasonably well, but he was worried about his wife and family in Ireland, whom he had not heard from since his confinement. Frank promised to help him. After we left, Frank said it depressed him to see a courageous, flamboyant character like Jim Larkin reduced to prison discipline.

*

When I returned to Hollywood, I dropped by to see Mother. She seemed very gay and happy, and had heard all about my triumphant visit to London. ‘Well, what do you think of your son and all this nonsense?’ I said whimsically.

‘It’s wonderful, but wouldn’t you rather be yourself than live in this theatrical world of unreality?’

‘You should talk,’ I laughed. ‘You’re responsible for this unreality.’

She paused. ‘If only you had put your talent in the service of the Lord – think of the thousands of souls you could have saved.’

I smiled. ‘I might have saved souls but not money.’

On the way home Mrs Reeves, my manager’s wife, who adored Mother, told me that since I had been away Mother had been in excellent health and had rarely had any mental lapses. She was gay and happy, and had no sense of responsibility. Mrs Reeves enjoyed visiting Mother because she was so entertaining, and would have her in roars of laughter with anecdotes of the past. Of course, there were times when she was stubborn. Mrs Reeves told me of the day she and the nurse took Mother down town to fit her for some new dresses. A sudden whim possessed Mother: she would not get out of the car. ‘Let them come to me,’ she insisted. ‘In England they come to your carriage.’

Eventually she got out. A nice young girl waited on them, showing them several bolts of cloth; one was a drab brown colour which Mrs Reeves and the nurse thought suitable, but Mother hated it.

And in a most cultured English voice she said: ‘No, no! that’s a shit colour – show me something gayer.’

The startled young girl obeyed, not quite believing her ears.

Mrs Reeves also told me of taking Mother to the ostrich farm. The keeper, a friendly, courteous man, had shown them around the hatcheries. ‘This,’ he said, holding an ostrich egg, ‘is about to be hatched in the next week or so.’ Then he was called to the telephone, and, handing the egg to the nurse, excused himself. No sooner had he left than Mother snatched the egg from the nurse, saying: ‘Give it back to the poor bloody ostrich!’ and threw it over into the corral, where it exploded with a loud report. Quickly they bundled Mother out of the ostrich farm before the keeper returned.

‘On a hot sunny day,’ said Mrs Reeves, ‘she insists on buying the chauffeur and all of us ice-cream cones.’ Once, as they were slowly driving past a man-hole, a workman’s head popped up. Mother leaned out of the car intending to give the man her cone, but tossed it full in his face. ‘There, son, that’ll keep you cool,’ she said, waving back to him from the car.

Although I tried to keep my personal matters from her, she seemed to know all that was going on. During my domestic troubles with my second