My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin (find a book to read .txt) 📗

a worshipper of the foolhardy and the melodramatic, a dreamer and a moper, raging at life and loving it, a mind in a chrysalis yet erupting with sudden bursts of maturity. In this labyrinth of distorting mirrors I dallied, my ambition going in spurts. The word ‘art’ never entered my head or my vocabulary. The theatre meant a livelihood and nothing more.

Through this haze and confusion I lived alone. Whores, sluts and an occasional drinking bout weaved in and out of this period, but neither wine, women nor song held my interest for long. I really wanted romance and adventure.

I can well understand the psychological attitude of the teddy boy with his Edwardian dress; like all of us he wants attention, romance and drama in his life. Why should he not indulge in moments of exhibitionism and horseplay, as does the public-school boy with his gadding and ragging? Is it not natural that when he sees the so-called better classes asserting their foppery he wants to assert his own?

He knows that the machine obeys his will as it does the will of any class; that it requires no special mentality to shift a gear or press a button. In this insensate age is he not as formidable as any Lancelot, aristocrat or scholar, his finger as powerful in destroying a city as any Napoleonic army? Is not the teddy boy a phoenix rising from the ashes of a delinquent ruling class, his attitude perhaps motivated by a subconscious feeling: that man is only a half-tame animal who has for generations governed others by deceit, cruelty and violence? But, as Bernard Shaw said: ‘I am digressing as a man with a grievance always does.’

I eventually obtained work with a vaudeville sketch. Casey’s Circus, doing a burlesque on Dick Turpin, the highwayman, and ‘Dr’ Walford Bodie. With ‘Dr’ Bodie I had a modicum of success, for it was more than just low comedy; it was a characterization of a professorial, scholarly man, and I conceived the happy idea of making up to look exactly like him I was the star of the company, and earned three pounds a week. It included a troupe of kids playing at grown-ups in an alley scene; it was an awful show, I thought, but it gave me a chance to develop as a comedian.

When Casey’s Circus played in London, six of us boarded in the Kennington Road with Mrs Fields, an old widowed lady of sixty-five, who had three daughters: Frederica, Thelma and Phoebe. Frederica was married to a Russian cabinet-maker, a gentle but an extremely ugly man, with a broad Tartar face, blond hair, blond moustache and a cast in his eye. The six of us ate in the kitchen, and we got to know the family very well. Sydney when working in London also lived there.

When eventually I left Casey’s Circus, I returned to Kennington Road and continued to board with the Fields. The old lady was kindly, patient and hard-working and her sole income came from renting rooms. Frederica, the married daughter, was supported by her husband. Thelma and Phoebe helped with the housework. Phoebe was fifteen and beautiful. Her features were long and aquiline, and she had a strong appeal for me both physically and sentimentally; the latter I resisted because I was not quite seventeen and had only the worst of intentions about girls. But she was saintly and nothing ever came of it. She grew fond of me, however, and we became very good friends.

The Fields were an intensely emotional family and would occasionally break out into passionate quarrelling with each other. The basis of contention was usually whose turn it was to do the housework. Thelma, who was about twenty, was the lady of the family and the lazy one, and always claimed that it was Frederica’s or Phoebe’s turn. This would develop from an argument into a brawl, in which buried grievances and family skeletons were hewed up and cast about for all to view, Mrs Fields revealing the fact that since Thelma had run off and lived with a young Liverpool lawyer she thought she was a lady and that she was too good to do housework, climaxing her tirade by saying: ‘Well, if you’re such a lady, clear out and go back and live with your Liverpool lawyer – only he won’t have you.’ And for final emphasis Mrs Field would pick up a teacup and smash it on the floor. During this Thelma would sit at the table, ladylike and unperturbed. Then calmly she would take a cup and do likewise, lightly dropping it on the floor, saying: ‘I too, can lose my temper,’ dropping another cup, then another, then another and another until the floor was strewn with broken crockery. ‘I, too, can make a scene.’ And the poor mother and the sisters would look on helplessly. ‘Look at her! Look what she’s doing!’ moaned the mother. ‘Here! Here’s something else you can smash,’ handing Thelma the sugarbowl, and Thelma would take it and calmly drop it.

On these occasions Phoebe was the arbitrator. She was fair and just and had the respect of the family, and she would usually end the argument by offering to do the work herself, which Thelma would not allow her to do.

I had been out of work for almost three months and Sydney had been supporting me, paying Mrs Fields fourteen shillings a week for my board and lodgings. He was now a leading comedian with Fred Karno, and had often spoken to Karno about his talented young brother, but Karno turned a deaf ear, because he thought I was too young.

At the time Jewish comedians were all the rage in London, so I thought I would hide my youth under whiskers. Sydney gave me two pounds, which I invested in musical arrangements for songs and funny dialogue taken from an American joke-book, Madison’s Budget. For weeks I practised, performing in front of the Fields family. They were attentive