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

wife, she suddenly remarked during a game of draughts (incidentally, she always won): ‘Why don’t you shed yourself of all these annoyances? Take a trip to the Orient and enjoy yourself.’

I was surprised and asked her what she meant.

‘All this heckling in the Press about your private affairs,’ she said.

I laughed. ‘What do you know about my private affairs?’

She shrugged. ‘If you weren’t so diffident, I might be able to give you a little advice.’

Such remarks she would let slip and say no more.

She often came to the house in Beverly Hills to see my children, Charlie and Sydney. I remember her first visit. I had just built the house, which was nicely furnished and fully staffed – butlers, maids, etc. She looked about the room, then out of the window at the distant view of the Pacific Ocean four miles away. We waited for her reaction.

‘It’s a pity to disturb the silence,’ she said.

She seemed to take my wealth and success for granted, never once commenting on them, until one day we were alone on the lawn; she was admiring the garden and how well it was kept.

‘We have two gardeners,’ I told her.

She paused and looked at me. ‘You must be quite rich,’ she said.

‘Mother, as of this moment I’m worth five million dollars.’

She nodded thoughtfully. ‘So long as you’re able to keep your health and enjoy it,’ was her only comment.

Mother enjoyed good health for the next two years. But during the making of The Circus I received a message that she was ill. She had suffered a previous gall-bladder attack and had recovered. This time the doctors warned me that her relapse was serious. She had been taken to Glendale Hospital, but the doctors thought it advisable not to operate because of the weak condition of her heart.

When I arrived at the hospital, she was in a semi-coma, having been given a drug to relieve the pain. ‘Mother, this is Charlie,’ I whispered, then gently took her hand. She responded feebly by squeezing mine, then opened her eyes. She wanted to sit up, but was too weak. She was restless and complained of the pains. I tried to assure her that she would get well. ‘Perhaps,’ she said wearily, then squeezed my hand again and lapsed into unconsciousness.

The following day in the middle of work I was told that she had passed on. I was prepared for it, for the doctor had warned me. I stopped work, took off my make-up, and with Harry Crocker, my assistant director, went to the hospital.

Harry waited outside, and I entered the room and sat in a chair between the window and the bed. The shades were half drawn. The sunlight outside was intense, as was the silence of the room. I sat and gazed at that small figure on the bed, the face tilted upwards, the eyes closed. Even in death her expression looked troubled, as though anticipating further woes to come. How strange that her life should end here, in the environs of Hollywood, with all its absurd values – seven thousand miles from Lambeth, the soil of her heart-break. Then a flood of memories surged in upon me of her life-long struggle, her suffering, her courage and her tragic, wasted life… and I wept.

It was an hour before I could recover and leave the room. Harry Crocker was still there and I apologized for keeping him waiting so long; of course he understood, and in silence we drove home.

Sydney was in Europe, ill, at the time and unable to attend the funeral. My sons, Charlie and Sydney, were there with their mother, but I did not see them. I was asked if I wanted her cremated. Such a thought horrified me! No, I preferred her buried in the green earth, where she still lies, in Hollywood Cemetery.

I do not know if I have given a portrait worthy of Mother. But I do know that she carried her burden cheerfully. Kindness and sympathy were her outstanding virtues. Although religious, she loved sinners and always identified herself with them. Not an atom of vulgarity was in her nature. Whatever Rabelaisian expression she used, it was always rhetorically appropriate. And in spite of the squalor in which we were forced to live, she had kept Sydney and me off the streets and made us feel we were not the ordinary product of poverty, but unique and distinguished.

*

When Clare Sheridan, the sculptress, who created quite a sensation with her book From Mayfair to Moscow, came to Hollywood, Sam Goldwyn gave a dinner for her and I was invited.

Clare, tall and good-looking, was the niece of Winston Churchill and wife of a direct descendant of Richard Brinsley Sheridan. She was the first Englishwoman to enter Russia after the Revolution, and had been commissioned to do busts of the principal heads of the Bolshevik party, including Lenin and Trotsky.

Although pro-Bolshevik, her book aroused only mild antagonism; Americans were confused by it because the writer was reputed to be an English aristocrat. She was entertained by New York society and did several busts of them. She also did busts of Bayard Swope and Bernard Baruch and others. When I met her she was lecturing across the country, her son Dicky, six years old, travelling with her. She complained that in the States it was difficult earning a living sculpting. ‘American men don’t mind their wives sitting for busts, but are reluctant to pose themselves, they are so modest.’

‘I’m not modest,’ I said.

So arrangements were made to bring her clay and tools to my house, and after lunch I would sit for her into the late afternoon. Clare had a faculty of stimulating conversation and I found myself intellectually showing off. Near the completion of the bust, I examined it. ‘This could be the head of a criminal,’ I said.

‘On the contrary,’ she answered with mock solemnity, ‘it’s the head of a genius.’

I laughed and developed a theory about the genius and the criminal being