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

one could get a cocktail until six in the evening. But Marion would gather her friends in her quarters, where cocktails were served surreptitiously.

The dinners were elaborate; the menu read like a Charles the First banquet. There was game of the season: pheasant, wild duck, partridge and venison. Yet amidst this opulence we were served paper napkins, and it was only when Mrs Hearst was in residence that the guests were given linen ones.

Mrs Hearst visited San Simeon annually, and nothing conflicted. The coexistence between Marion and Mrs Hearst was mutually understood: when it was nearing time for Mrs Hearst’s arrival, Marion and the rest of us would discreetly leave or return to Marion’s Santa Monica beach-house. I had known Millicent Hearst since 1916 and we were very good friends, so I had a visa to both establishments. When ensconced at the ranch with her San Francisco society friends, she would ask me for the week-end and I would show up as though it were my first visit of the season. But Millicent had no illusions. Although feigning ignorance of the recent exodus, she had a sense of humour about it. ‘If it weren’t Marion it would be someone else,’ she said. She often talked confidentially with me about the relationship of Marion and W.R., but never with bitterness. ‘He still acts as though nothing had ever happened between us and as if Marion doesn’t exist,’ she said. ‘When I arrive he is always sweet and charming, but never stays more than a few hours. And it’s always the same routine: in the middle of dinner the butler hands him a note, then he excuses himself and leaves the table. When he returns, he sheepishly mentions that some urgent business matter needs his immediate attention in Los Angeles, and we all pretend to believe him. And of course we all know he returns to join Marion.’

One evening after dinner I accompanied Millicent on a walk about the grounds. The château was drenched in moonlight, looking wondrous and ghostly against the wild setting of the seven mountain tops; the stars pierced an intensely clear sky. We stood a moment taking in the panoramic beauty. From the zoo the occasional roar of a lion could be heard and the continual scream of an enormous orang-outang, that echoed and bounced about the mountain tops. It was eerie and terrifying, for each evening at sundown the orang-outang would start, quietly at first, then working up to horrific screaming, which lasted on into the night.

‘That wretched animal must be insane,’ I said.

‘The whole place is crazy. Look at it!’ she said, viewing the château. ‘The creation of mad Otto… and he’ll go on building and adding to it till the day he dies. Then what use will it be? No one can afford to keep it up. As an hotel it’s useless, and if he leaves it to the State I doubt whether they could make any use of it – even as a university.’

Millicent always spoke of Hearst in a maternal way, which made me suspect she was still emotionally involved with him. She was a kindly, understanding woman, but in later years, after I became politically de trop, she snubbed me.

*

One evening when I arrived at San Simeon for a week-end, Marion met me, nervous and excited. One of the guests had been attacked with a razor as he was crossing the grounds.

Marion stuttered whenever excited, which added to her charm and gave her a lady-in-distress quality. ‘We d-d-don’t know yet who did it,’ she whispered, ‘but W.R. has several detectives searching the grounds, and we’re trying to keep the news away from the other guests. Some think that the attacker was a Filipino, so W.R. has had every Filipino put off the ranch until a proper investigation is made.’

‘Who is the man that’s been attacked?’ I asked.

‘You’ll see him this evening at dinner,’ she said.

At dinner I sat opposite a young man whose face was swathed in bandages; all that could be seen were his gleaming eyes and white teeth, which he bared in a perpetual smile.

Marion nudged me under the table. ‘That’s him,’ she whispered.

He seemed none the worse for the attack and had a very good appetite. To all inquiries about the matter he just shrugged and grinned.

After dinner Marion showed me where the assault had taken place. ‘It was behind that statue,’ she said, pointing to a marble replica of ‘Winged Victory’. ‘Here are the blood-stains.’

‘What was he doing behind the statue?’ I asked.

‘T-t-trying to get away from the a-t-t-tacker,’ she answered.

Suddenly out of the night our guest appeared again, his face dripping with blood, as he staggered past us. Marion screamed and I jumped three feet. In a moment twenty men from nowhere surrounded him. ‘I’ve been attacked again,’ he moaned. He was borne on the arms of two detectives and taken back to his room, where they questioned him. Marion disappeared, but I saw her in the main hall an hour later. ‘What happened?’ I asked.

She looked sceptical. ‘They say he did it himself. He’s a nut and just wants attention.’ Without further compunction the eccentric was bundled off the hill that night and the poor Filipinos returned to their work in the morning.

Sir Thomas Lipton was a guest at San Simeon and Marion’s beach-house, a delightful, verbose old Scotsman with a charming brogue. He talked interminably and reminisced.

Said he: ‘Charlie, you came to America and made good – so did I. The first time I arrived was in a cattle boat. And I said to myself: “The next time, I’ll arrive on my own yacht” – and I did.’ He complained to me that he was being robbed of millions of pounds in his Lipton tea business. Alexander Moore, Ambassador to Spain, Sir Thomas Lipton and I often dined together in Los Angeles, and Alex and Sir Thomas would reminisce, each in turn dropping royal names like cigarette butts, leaving me with the impression that royalty