My Autobiography (9 page)

Mother recognized her at once, an old friend of her vaudeville days.

I was so embarrassed that I moved on and waited for Mother at the corner. The boys walked past me, smirking and giggling. I was furious. I turned to see what was happening to Mother and, lo, the derelict woman had joined her and both were walking towards me.

Said Mother: ‘You remember little Charlie?’

‘Do I!’ said the woman, dolefully. ‘I’ve held him in my arms many a time when he was a baby.’

The thought was repellent, for the woman looked so filthy and loathsome. And as we walked along, it was embarrassing to see people turn and look at the three of us.

Mother had known her in vaudeville as ‘the Dashing Eva Lestock’ she was pretty and vivacious then, so Mother told me. The woman said that she had been ill in the hospital, and that since leaving it, she had been sleeping under arches and in Salvation Army shelters.

First Mother sent her to the public baths, then to my horror brought her home to our small garret. Whether it was illness alone that was the cause of her present circumstances, I never knew. What was outrageous was that she slept in Sydney’s armchair bed. However, Mother gave her what clothes she could spare and loaned her a couple of bob. After three days she departed, and that was the last we ever saw or heard of ‘the Dashing Eva Lestock ’!

*

Before Father died, Mother moved from Pownall Terrace and rented a room at the house of Mrs Taylor, a friend of Mother’s, a church member and devoted Christian. She was a short, square-framed woman in her middle fifties with a square jaw and a sallow, wrinkled face. While watching her in church I discovered she had false teeth. They would drop from her upper gums on to her tongue while she sang – the effect was hypnotic.

She had an emphatic manner and abundant energy. She had taken Mother under her Christian wing, and had rented her a front room, at a very reasonable rent, on the second floor of her large house which was next to a graveyard.

Her husband, a facsimile of Dickens’s Mr Pickwick, was a precision ruler maker and had his workshop on the top floor. The roof had a skylight and I thought the place heavenly, it was so peaceful there. I often watched Mr Taylor at work, fascinated as he peered intensely through his thick-lensed spectacles with a large magnifying glass, making a steel ruler that would measure one-fiftieth part of an inch. He worked alone and I often ran errands for him.

Mrs Taylor’s one desire was to convert her husband, who, according to her Christian scruples, was a sinner. Her daughter, whose features were of the same cast as the mother’s except that she was less sallow and, of course, much younger, would have been attractive but for her hauteur and objectionable manner. Like her father, she never attended church. But Mrs Taylor never
gave up hope of converting them both. The daughter was the apple of her mother’s eye – but not of my mother’s eye.

One afternoon, while on the top floor watching Mr Taylor at work, I heard an altercation below between Mother and Miss Taylor. Mrs Taylor was out. I do not know how it started, but they were both shouting loudly at each other. As I reached our landing, Mother was leaning over the banisters: ‘Who do you think you are? Lady Shit?’

‘Oh!’ shouted the daughter. ‘That’s nice language coming from a Christian!’

‘Don’t worry,’ said Mother quickly, ‘it’s in the Bible, my dear: Deuteronomy, twenty-eighth chapter, thirty-seventh verse, only there’s another word for it. However, shit will suit you.’

After that, we moved back to Pownall Terrace.

*

The Three Stags in the Kennington Road was not a place my father frequented, yet as I passed it one evening an urge prompted me to peek inside to see if he was there. I opened the saloon door just a few inches, and there he was, sitting in the corner! I was about to leave, but his face lit up and he beckoned me to him. I was surprised at such a welcome, for he was never demonstrative. He looked very ill; his eyes were sunken, and his body had swollen to an enormous size. He rested one hand, Napoleon-like, in his waistcoat as if to ease his difficult breathing. That evening he was most solicitous, inquiring after Mother and Sydney, and before I left took me in his arms and for the first time kissed me. That was the last time I saw him alive.

Three weeks later, he was taken to St Thomas’s Hospital. They had to get him drunk to get him there. When he realized where he was, he fought wildly – but he was a dying man. Though still very young, only thirty-seven, he was dying of dropsy. They tapped sixteen quarts of liquid from his knee.

Mother went several times to see him and was always saddened by the visit. She said he spoke of wanting to go back to her and start life anew in Africa. When I brightened at such a prospect, Mother shook her head, for she knew better. ‘He was saying that only to be nice,’ she said.

One day she came home from the hospital indignant over what
the Reverend John McNeil, Evangelist, had said when he paid Father a visit: ‘Well, Charlie, when I look at you, I can only think of the old proverb: “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap”.’

‘Nice words to console a dying man,’ said Mother. A few days later Father was dead.

The hospital wanted to know who would bury him. Mother, not having a penny, suggested the Variety Artists’ Benevolent Fund, a theatrical charity organization. This caused an uproar with the Chaplin side of the family – the humiliation of being buried by charity was repugnant to them. An Uncle Albert from Africa, my father’s youngest brother, was in London at the time and said he would pay for the burial.

The day of the funeral we were to meet at St Thomas’s Hospital, where we were to join the rest of the Chaplins and from there drive out to Tooting Cemetery. Sydney could not come, as he was working. Mother and I arrived at the hospital a couple of hours before the allotted time because she wanted to see Father before he was enclosed.

The coffin was enshrouded in white satin and around the edge of it, framing Father’s face, were little white daisies. Mother thought they looked so simple and touching and asked who had placed them there. The attendant told her that a lady had called early that morning with a little boy. It was Louise.

In the first carriage were Mother, Uncle Albert and me. The drive to Tooting was a strain, for she had never met Uncle Albert before. He was somewhat of a dandy and spoke with a cultured accent; although polite, his attitude was icy. He was reputed to be rich; he had large horse ranches in the Transvaal and had provided the British Government with horses during the Boer War.

It poured with rain during the service; the grave-diggers threw down clods of earth on the coffin which resounded with a brutal thud. It was macabre and horrifying and I began to weep. Then the relatives threw in their wreaths and flowers. Mother, having nothing to throw in, took my precious black-bordered handkerchief. ‘Here, sonny,’ she whispered, ‘this will do for both of us.’ Afterwards the Chaplins stopped off at one of their pubs for
lunch, and before leaving asked us politely where we desired to be dropped. So we were driven home.

When we returned there was not a particle of food in the cupboard except a saucer of beef dripping, and Mother had not a penny, for she had given Sydney her last twopence for his lunch money. Since Father’s illness she had done little work, and now, near the end of the week, Sydney’s wages of seven shillings as a telegraph boy had already run out. After the funeral we were hungry. Luckily the rag-and-bone man was passing outside and we had an old oil stove, so reluctantly she sold it for a halfpenny and bought a halfpenny worth of bread to go with the dripping.

Mother, being the legal widow of my father, was told the next day to call at the hospital for his belongings, which consisted of a black suit spotted with blood, underwear, a shirt, a black tie, an old dressing-gown, and some plaid house slippers with oranges stuffed in the toes. When she took the oranges out, a half sovereign fell out of the slippers on to the bed. This was a godsend!

For weeks I wore crêpe on my arm. These insignia of grief became profitable when I went into business on a Saturday afternoon, selling flowers. I had persuaded Mother to loan me a shilling, and went to the flower market and purchased two bundles of narcissus, and after school busied myself making them into penny bundles. All sold, I could make a hundred per cent profit.

I would go into the saloons, looking wistful, and whisper: ‘Narcissus, miss!’ ‘Narcissus, madame!’ The women always responded: ‘Who is it, son?’ And I would lower my voice to a whisper: ‘My father,’ and they would give me tips. Mother was amazed when I came home in the evening with more than five shillings for an afternoon’s work. One day she bumped into me as I came out of a pub, and that put an end to my flower-selling; that her boy was peddling flowers in bar-rooms offended her Christian scruples. ‘Drink killed your father, and money from such a source will only bring us bad luck,’ she said. However, she kept the proceeds, though she never allowed me to sell flowers again.

There was a strong element of the merchant in me. I was continuously preoccupied with business schemes. I would look at empty shops, speculating as to what profitable businesses I could make of them, ranging from fish and chips to grocery shops. It had always to do with food. All I needed was capital – but how does one get capital? Eventually I talked Mother into letting me leave school and get a job.

I became a veteran of many occupations. First I was an errand boy in a chandler’s shop. Between errands I was delightfully occupied in the cellar, immured in soap, starch, candles, sweets and biscuits, sampling all the sweetmeats till I made myself sick.

Then I was a doctor’s boy for Hool and Kinsey-Taylor, insurance doctors in Throgmorton Avenue, a job I inherited from Sydney, who recommended me. It was lucrative, and I was paid twelve shillings a week to act as receptionist with the duties of cleaning out the offices after the doctors had gone. As a receptionist I was a great success and charmed all the waiting patients, but when it came to cleaning up the offices my heart was not in it – Sydney was much better. I did not mind emptying the phials of urine, but cleaning those ten-foot office windows was indeed a gargantuan task; so that the offices grew dimmer and dustier until I was told politely that I was too small for the job.

When I heard the news I broke down and wept. Dr Kinsey-Taylor, married to a very wealthy lady with a large house in Lancaster Gate, took pity on me and said he would fit me in as a page-boy in his house. Immediately my heart lightened. A page-boy in a private house, and a very posh one at that!

It was a happy job, for I was the pet of all the housemaids. They treated me like a child and kissed me good night before I went to bed. But for Fate I might have become a butler. Madame wanted me to clean out a cellar in the area where there were packing cases and debris piled high that had to be sorted, cleaned and arranged. I was diverted from the task by my interest in an iron pipe about eight feet long, through which I blew like a trumpet. Just as I was enjoying myself, Madame appeared – and I was given three days’ notice.

I enjoyed working for W. H. Smith and Son, the newsagents and booksellers, but lost the job as soon as they found I was under age. Then for a day I was a glass-blower. I had read about glass-blowing at school and thought it romantic, but the heat overcame me and I was carried out unconscious and laid on a sand pile. That was enough; I never went back even to collect my day’s salary. Then I worked at Straker’s, the printers and stationers. I
tried to bluff them that I could run a Wharfedale printing machine – an enormous thing, over twenty feet long. I had seen it in action, looking into the cellar from the street, and the task looked easy and simple to do. A card read: ‘Boy wanted as layer-on for a Wharfedale printing machine.’ When the foreman brought me to it, it loomed up monstrously. To operate it, I had to stand upon a platform five feet high. I felt I was at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

‘Strike her!’ said the foreman.

‘Strike her?’

Seeing me hesitate, he laughed. ‘You’ve never worked on a Wharfedale.’

‘Just give me the chance, I’ll pick it up quite easily,’ I said.

‘strike her’ meant pull the lever to start the brute. He showed me the lever, then put the beast at half-speed. It started to roll, grind and grunt; I thought it was going to devour me. The sheets were enormous; you could have wrapped me in one. With an ivory scraper I fanned the paper sheets, picking them up by the corners and placing them meticulously against the teeth in time for the monster to clutch them, devour them and regurgitate until they rolled out at the rear end. The first day I was a nervous wreck from the hungry brute wanting to get ahead of me. Nevertheless, I was given the job at twelve shillings per week.

There was romance and adventure about getting out on those cold mornings, before daylight, and going to work, the streets silent and deserted except for one or two shadowy figures making their way to the beacon light of Lockhart’s tea-room for breakfast. One had a feeling of well-being with one’s fellow men, sipping hot tea in the glow and warmth of that momentary respite before a day’s work. And the printing job was not unpleasant; but for the heavy work at the end of the week, having to wash the ink off those tall, heavy, gelatine rollers weighing more than a hundred pounds each, the work was tolerable. However, after three weeks there, I came down with influenza, and Mother insisted that I return to school.

Sydney was now sixteen, and came home excited because he had obtained a job as a bugler on a Donovan and Castle Line passenger boat sailing to Africa. His duties were to blow the calls for lunch etc. He had learnt to play the bugle on the
Exmouth
training ship; now it was paying off. He was to receive two pounds ten a month, and tips from waiting at three tables in the second class. Thirty-five shillings he was to get in advance before sailing, which, of course, he would give to Mother. With such happy prospect, we moved into two rooms over a barber’s shop in Chester Street.

Sydney’s return from his first trip was the occasion for celebration, for he came back with over three pounds in tips and all in silver. I remember him pouring the money out of his pockets on to the bed. It seemed more money than I had ever seen in my life and I could not keep my hands off it. I scooped it up, dropped it, stacked it and played with it until both Mother and Sydney declared that I was a miser.