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

room in the hope of finding an old prop that might give me an idea: remnants of old sets, a jail door, a piano or a mangle. My eye caught a set of old golf-clubs. That’s it! The tramp plays golf – The Idle Class.

The plot was simple. The tramp indulges in all the pleasures of the rich. He goes south for the warm weather, but travels under the trains instead of inside them. He plays golf with balls he finds on the golf-course. At a fancy-dress ball he mingles with the rich, dressed as a tramp, and becomes involved with a beautiful girl. After a romantic misadventure he escapes from the irate guests and is on his way again.

During one of the scenes I had a slight accident with a blowtorch. The heat of it went through my asbestos pants, so we added another layer of asbestos. Carl Robinson saw an opportunity for publicity and gave the story to the Press. That evening I was shocked to read headlines that I had been severely burnt about the face, hands and body. Hundreds of letters, wires and telephone calls swamped the studio. I issued a denial, but few newspapers printed it. As a consequence amongst my English mail was a letter from H. G. Wells, stating that it affected him with a great deal of shock to read of my accident. He went on to say how much he admired my work and how regrettable it would be if I were unable to continue. I immediately wired back stating the true facts.

At the completion of The Idle Class I intended starting another two-reeler and toyed with an idea of a burlesque on the prosperous occupation of plumbers. The first scene was to show their arrival in a chauffeured limousine with Mack Swain and me stepping out of it. We are lavishly entertained by the beautiful mistress of the house, Edna Purviance, and after she wines and dines us we are shown the bathroom, where I immediately go to work with a stethoscope, placing it on the floor, listening to the pipes, and tapping them as a doctor would a patient.

This was as far as I got. I could concentrate no further. I did not realize how tired I was. Besides in the last two months I had developed an insatiable desire to visit London – I had dreamed about it, and H. G. Wells’s letter was an added inducement. And after ten years I had received a letter from Hetty Kelly. She wrote: ‘Do you remember a silly young girl’.… She was now married and living in Portman Square, and if ever I came to London would I look her up? The letter was without tone and could arouse little, if any, emotional resurgence. After all, in the interim of ten years I had been in and out of love several times. However, I would certainly look her up.

I told Tom to pack my things, and Reeves to close the studio and give the company a holiday. I intended going to England.

seventeen

THE night before sailing from New York, I gave a party at the Élysée Café for about forty guests, among them Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Madame Maeterlinck. We played charades. Douglas and Mary acted the first one. Douglas, a street-car conductor, punched a ticket and gave it to Mary. For the second syllable they pantomimed a rescue, Mary screaming for help and Douglas swimming to her and bringing her safely to the side of the river. Of course, all of us yelled: ‘Fairbanks!’

As the evening grew merry Madame Maeterlinck and I did the death scene from Camille, Madame Maeterlinck playing Camille and I playing Armand. As she was dying in my arms, she started coughing, slightly at first, then with increasing momentum. Her coughing became so infectious that I caught it from her. Then it became a coughing contest between us. Eventually it was I who did the dying in Camille’s arms.

The day of sailing I was painfully awakened at eight-thirty in the morning. After a bath, I was rid of all dissipation and filled with excitement, leaving for England. Edward Knoblock, my friend, author of Kismet and other plays, was leaving on the Olympic with me.

A crowd of newspaper men came aboard and I had a depressing feeling that they were going to remain with us throughout the voyage – two of them did, but the others got off with the pilot.

At last I was alone in my cabin which was stocked with flowers and baskets of fruit from my friends.… It had been ten years since I had left England, and on this very boat with the Karno Company; then we had travelled second class. I remember the steward taking us on a hurried tour through the first class, to give us a glimpse of how the other half lived. He had talked of the luxury of the private suites and their prohibitive price, and now I was occupying one of them, and was on my way to England. I had known London as a struggling young nondescript from Lambeth; now as a man celebrated and rich I would be seeing London as though for the first time.

A few hours out and the atmosphere was already English. Each night Eddie Knoblock and I would dine in the Ritz restaurant instead of the main dining-room. The Ritz was à la carte, with champagne, caviar, duck à la presse, grouse and pheasant, wines, sauces, and crêpes suzette. With time on my hands I enjoyed the nonsense of dressing each evening in black tie. Such luxury and indulgence brought home to me the delights of money.

I thought I would be able to relax. But there were bulletins on the Olympic notice board about my anticipated arrival in London. Half-way across the Atlantic an avalanche of telegrams with invitations and requests began piling up. Hysteria gathered like a storm. The Olympic bulletin quoted articles from the United News and