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

She told me that since lecturing about Russia she had felt ostracized. I knew Clare was no pamphleteer, nor a political fanatic. ‘You wrote a very interesting book about Russia – let it go at that,’ I said. ‘Why enter the political arena? You are bound to get hurt.’

‘I am lecturing for a living,’ she said, ‘but they don’t want to hear the truth, and when I speak spontaneously I can only be guided by truth. Besides,’ she added airily, ‘I love my darling Bolsheviks.’

‘My darling Bolsheviks,’ I repeated and laughed. Nevertheless, I felt that underneath Clare had a clear, realistic attitude about her circumstances, for when I met her later in 1931 she told me she was living outside Tunis.

‘But why do you live there?’ I asked.

‘It’s cheaper,’ she answered quickly. ‘In London, with my limited income, I would be living in two small rooms in Blooms-bury, but in Tunis I can have a house and servants, with a beautiful garden for Dicky.’

Dicky died at the age of nineteen, a sad and terrible blow from which she never recovered. She became a Catholic and lived for a while in a convent, turning to religion, I suppose as a solace.

I once saw on a tombstone in the South of France a photograph of a smiling young girl of fourteen, and engraved below, one word: ‘Pourquoi?’ In such bewilderment of grief it is futile to seek an answer. It only leads to false moralizing and torment – yet it does not mean that there is no answer. I cannot believe that our existence is meaningless or accidental, as some scientists would tell us. Life and death are too resolute, too implacable to be accidental.

The ways of life and death – genius cut down in its prime, world upheavals, holocausts and catastrophes – may seem futile and meaningless. But the fact that these things have happened are demonstrable of a resolute, fixed purpose beyond the comprehension of our three-dimensional minds.

There are philosophers who postulate that all is matter in some form of action, and that in all existence nothing can be added or taken away. If matter is action, it must be governed by the laws of cause and effect. If I accept this, then every action is preordained. If so, is not the scratching of my nose predestined as much as a shooting star? The cat walks round the house, the leaf falls from the tree, the child stumbles. Are not these actions traceable back into infinity? Are not they predestined and continuous into eternity? We know the immediate cause of the fallen leaf, the child stumbling, but we cannot trace its beginning or its end.

I am not religious in the dogmatic sense. My views are similar to those of Macaulay, who wrote to the effect that the same religious arguments were debated in the sixteenth century with the same philosophical astuteness as they are today; and in spite of accumulated knowledge and scientific progress, no philosopher, past or present, has contributed any further illuminating facts on the matter.

I neither believe nor disbelieve in anything. That which can be imagined is as much an approximation to truth as that which can be proved by mathematics. One cannot always approach truth through reason; it confines us to a geometric cast of thought that calls for logic and credibility. We see the dead in our dreams and accept them as living, knowing at the same time they are dead. And although this dream mind is without reason, has it not its own credibility? There are things beyond reason. How can we comprehend a thousand billionth part of a second? Yet it must exist according to the system of mathematics.

As I grow older I am becoming more preoccupied with faith. We live by it more than we think and achieve by it more than we realize. I believe that faith is a precursor of all our ideas. Without faith, there never could have evolved hypothesis, theory, science or mathematics. I believe that faith is an extension of the mind. It is the key that negates the impossible. To deny faith is to refute oneself and the spirit that generates all our creative forces.

My faith is in the unknown, in all that we do not understand by reason; I believe that what is beyond our comprehension is a simple fact in other dimensions, and that in the realm of the unknown there is an infinite power for good.

*

In Hollywood I was still a lone wolf, working in my own studio, so I had little chance of meeting people from other studios; therefore it was difficult to make new friends. Douglas and Mary were my social salvation.

Since their marriage they were extremely happy. Douglas had rebuilt his old house and had refurbished it attractively and had added several guest-rooms. They lived in grand style, and had excellent service, excellent cuisine, and Douglas was an excellent host.

At the studio he had elaborate quarters, a dressing-room with a Turkish bath, and a swimming pool. It was there that he entertained the illustrious, lunching them at the studio, taking them on a sight-seeing tour round the lot, showing them how movies were made, then inviting them to a steam bath and a swim. Afterwards they sat around his dressing-room, wrapped in bath towels like Roman senators.

It was indeed odd to be presented to the King of Siam just as one had emerged from the steam-room and was about to plunge into the swimming pool. In fact I met many eminent gentlemen in the Turkish bath, including the Duke of Alba, the Duke of Sutherland, Austen Chamberlain, the Marquis of Vienna, the Duke of Panaranda and many others. When a man is stripped of all worldly insignia, one can appraise him for what he is truly worth – the Duke of Alba went up a great deal in my estimation.

Whenever Douglas was visited by these potentates I was invited, for I was one of the