The Fun Factory

by Chris England

  “It’s Syd Chaplin’s brother, isn’t it?” Tilly said. “Go and say hello, I don’t mind.”

  “No, no,” I said, “we’re not really friends, exactly…” but then young Chaplin turned towards us and saw me gawping at him, so I pretty much had to go and pay my respects.

  As I approached his table I saw that he was getting on the outside of a really rather enormous repast, roast meat, vegetables, as if to say money was no object. He leapt to his feet to greet me like an old chum, looking really quite pleased that I had rolled up. I got the impression that the conversation had been suffering a little bit of a lull.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Dandoe!” he cried. “May I present Miss Hetty Kelly? Hetty? This is Arthur, one of my colleagues in Mr Karno’s company.”

  “Delighted,” I said, taking the girl’s hand. She couldn’t have been more than fifteen, slim and pretty enough, with pleasing features and nice brown eyes. She gave me a wan smile.

  “Hetty is one of Bert Coutts’ Yankee Doodle Dancers,” Chaplin beamed. “They’ve been rehearsing at the Montpelier, in the next room to us. I popped in to watch and was captivated by this vision of loveliness you see before you.”

  I’d seen these Yankee Doodlers, a group of kids, eight or nine of them, dressed in Stars and Stripes outfits, yodelling about the land of the brave down at the Streatham Empire. The appeal of the act had escaped me, frankly.

  “I see,” I said. “And are you yourself American, then, Miss Kelly?”

  “Naah,” she replied. “I’m from Camberwell. My sister’s going to America soon, though. She’s going to marry a millionaire.”

  This titbit brought a flash of life to the girl’s features for the first time, and it struck me that young Chaplin might have his work cut out matching up.

  “Well,” I said. “I mustn’t interrupt your meal. I just wanted to wish you a good afternoon, and meet your charming companion.”

  “Thank you, thank you, Arthur, most kind,” Chaplin gushed, and it seemed to me that he took my compliment to the girl as a compliment to his own good taste. I returned to my seat, where Tilly was all curiosity.

  “So?” she said. “What’s she like?”

  “She’s just a child,” I said. “He seems utterly besotted, though.”

  And he was. Shortly afterwards Chaplin came over to speak to us. I introduced him to Tilly, of course, whereupon he bowed, kissed her hand and said: “Enchanté…” in a rather oozy way which made her smile – amused, I remember hoping, rather than actually charmed.

  Chaplin turned to me. “What do you say, eh? Isn’t she the most radiant creature you ever laid eyes on? Hetty, I mean? Did you ever see such perfect teeth?”

  Which struck me as an odd thing to say outside of a horse fair, but still.

  “Well,” Tilly said, as Charlie swanned away. “She’s certainly got him hooked, if she wants him.”

  “Poor kid,” I snorted.

  “Poor kid? What do you mean?”

  “Well, all that ‘radiant creature’ nonsense. Must be quite hard to take, don’t you think?”

  “Hard to take?”

  “Yes, being, I don’t know … worshipped like that.”

  “Well, for goodness’ sake, man, what girl wouldn’t want to be worshipped?” Tilly was looking off into the distance thoughtfully, and I had the distinct feeling all of a sudden that I’d made a wrong step. I glanced over at young Hetty Kelly, who looked as though she’d had quite enough of being worshipped for one day.

  I noticed that Chaplin had left her alone. Just then there was something of a stir in the room, just a ripple, as though something had caught the collective attention. The musicians struck up with The Honeysuckle and the Bee, and a thin, reedy voice began to sing. I looked round, and of course it was Chaplin. He had a single rose clenched drippily in his two fists, and was tippy-toeing around the girl in what I imagine he thought was a bee-like fashion. She looked as though she wished the floor would open up and swallow her whole.

  “I’d like to sip the honey sweet from those red lips, you see-e-e-e…!” he trilled, and when he reached the end of the song, and presented Hetty with his single red rose, the room broke into delighted applause. I turned to Tilly, but the scornful remark I was about to make at this nauseating spectacle died on my lips as I saw her applauding even more enthusiastically than the rest.

  And for not quite the first time, and certainly not the last, I knew what it was like to be measured against Charlie Chaplin.

  14

  MUMMING BIRDS

  THERE were a couple of dozen of us hanging about the Fun Factory the next bright late-summer morning, waiting to be told what to do and where to go. We chatted lazily in groups of two or three, smoking our cigarettes, casually taking the rise out of one another.

  Charlie was beaming all over his little face, having waited for his Hetty early that morning and escorted her to her own rehearsal before heading on to ours. He described their stroll along Camberwell Road in terms that a romantic lady novelist would have baulked at – “walking in Paradise with an angel”, etc. – going on and on about the divine smell of the soap she had used to wash her face.

  I was only half-listening, as I was thinking about Tilly, who had cheerfully agreed that we should spend the following Sunday afternoon together.

  Suddenly the group stiffened, as if coming to attention, and Karno was amongst us. He nodded a wordless greeting to the group at large, and then lighted on yours truly and Charlie.

  “You two lads. A word, if you please.”

  Once in his office he left us standing while he shuffled through some paperwork, then he turned his most piercing gaze upon us, making us feel rather as though we’d been caught scrumping apples in his garden. That’s how I felt, anyway. Charlie was probably still thinking about soap.

  “Now then,” the Guv’nor began, after clearing his throat with a little cough. “You’ve been with me how long now?”

  “Just under a year,” Charlie said promptly, the keen little soldier.

  “Just over a year,” I said in turn, keen to remind the Guv’nor of my (slight) seniority.

  “Just so, just so,” Karno nodded, steepling his fingers. “And you’ve both learned most of the rep? London Suburbia, Jail Birds, Early Birds, The Casuals, Wontdetainia, The GPO, Perkins MP and so forth?”

  Chaplin and I nodded along as he ticked the sketch titles off.

  “Well then, I think the time has come to complete your heducation. There’s a company touring at the moment in Mumming Birds, and I’m going to pull a couple of lads out and stick you two in there, see how you go on. It’s Syd’s company…” Karno said, directing this remark particularly to Chaplin junior, “…so he’ll see you settle in all right. That’ll take us pretty much up to Christmas, and then we’ll see what’s to be done with you.”

  Another little cough, and Karno turned his attention back to his papers. The two of us stood a moment, unsure if we had been dismissed.

  “Don’t both thank me at once,” Karno said, without looking up.

  “Thank you, Guv’nor,” Charlie and I both immediately said, exactly together, as though we’d been rehearsing it for years, and I saw Karno smirk. He knew that was going to happen, you see.

  Outside the Guv’nor’s office we were gathered up by Alf Reeves and delivered to the Miracle, where a company were to be running through Mumming Birds for the week. We would learn the parts we were to play, plus all the other ones as was the Karno way, and then we’d be dispatched to slip into Syd Chaplin’s company like two freshly oiled cogs into a finely tuned engine.

  Now Mumming Birds, as I’m sure you know already if you have taken any interest in the halls at all, was then and remains to this day Fred Karno’s most successful offering.

  The idea came from a one-off evening’s gala entertainment put on by the Water Rats,6 at which the Shah of Persia was a distinguished guest. This turned out to be a knowing burlesque of a typical night out in a music hall, in which celebrated perform
ers did each other’s turns, and all barracked each other relentlessly like the worst imaginable Saturday night at the Star in Bermondsey.

  Most present will have forgotten the whole affair by the next morning, but not Karno. He turned it into a hit sketch, Mumming Birds, in which a music hall bill-within-a-bill was staged, featuring acts of excruciating awfulness, with the comedy coming from the raucous reactions and heckles of a fake audience, housed in two pairs of extra boxes constructed on either side of the stage.

  The principal comic part was that of an inebriated swell, who would stagger in late, disturbing the first act, and thereafter continually clamber into or fall out of one of the lower boxes. In one of the opposite boxes you would find a naughty boy dressed in an Eton suit and armed with buns and a peashooter, and his guardian, a dotty and indulgent old uncle (or aunt, if it was Johnny Doyle).

  The acts themselves, all introduced by a number man,7 would be something like the following. A hapless vocalist would recite The Trail of the Yukon, followed by a female singer known as the Swiss Nightingale, who would massacre a ditty entitled Come Birdie and Live With Me. A moustachioed conjuror, who insisted on the term “prestidigitateur”, would present a magic act of spectacular incompetence, and then there would be a “rustic glee club”, or a double act called Duff ’n’ Dire. Finally there was the Terrible Turkey, a self-styled champion wrestler, who would challenge all-comers to a bout for a small cash prize. Naturally, the inebriated swell would take him on, which was the excuse for the free-for-all climax.

  We can only imagine the chagrin with which the King of the Water Rats, Mr Wal Pink, realised that his one-off gala show had provided the inspiration for his rival’s greatest-ever success.

  Mumming Birds was like a rite of passage. Karno would have two, three, even four companies performing it around the country at any one time, and a couple more in America, and all the big names had played in it at one time or another, so you couldn’t be said to have truly arrived in the company until you had been ‘blooded’ in this sketch.

  Both Charlie and I were, naturally, highly delighted to be reaching this landmark in our careers, and soon discovered that pretending to be a bad music hall turn required nice judgement. Charlie proved an excellent mimic, and was able to replicate pretty much everything the established company we were rehearsing with were doing, adding little physical embellishments of his own. I was a little more concerned to force the various characters to resemble myself than vice versa, but by the end of the week we were both deemed ready to go out on the road. I was quietly hoping against hope that a significant part of the tour would be in and around the capital, so that I could see Tilly and fan the small flickering flame of our romance. At lunchtime on the Friday I asked Alf Reeves.

  “Alf?” I said. “Where are we due to play, do you know?”

  “Aberdeen,” he replied.

  My heart sank. Even I knew that Aberdeen was in Scotland.

  “And where after that?”

  Alf stroked his chin and rooted around for the list, finding it in an inside jacket pocket. “Ah … Greenock, Glasgow, Blackburn, then Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Ardwick, Warrington, Southport, Burnley and Birkenhead. Who’s a lucky boy then, eh?”

  Only one of those sounded even remotely promising. “Southport? That’s South, isn’t it? Sunny South coast? Quite handy for London?”

  “No, son,” Alf said, clapping a hand sympathetically on my shoulder. “Not even close. It’s near Liverpool.”

  Worse was to follow, though, as at the end of the day’s play Alf warned Charlie and me to be sure and pack our bags as we’d be leaving for Scotland the next evening on the overnight train. This threw me into a panic, as it meant I would not be able to see Tilly on the Sunday, nor even at pay night on the Saturday to warn her I wouldn’t be coming. And of course I didn’t have her address, or know what theatre she was at, because I was such an utter chump, so I was stumped.

  In the end I scribbled her a note, hoping that when I returned we would be able to continue where we were now being obliged to break off. It really wasn’t the world’s best or most romantic of notes, but the drafts I rejected were even worse.

  I was going to pin it to the noticeboard at the Fun Factory in the forlorn hope that Tilly might spot it there, but in the end, as I was leaving the Bells’ house in Streatham with my bag on the Saturday afternoon, I spotted Freddie K junior arriving next door to visit his mother (I still hadn’t asked him about that), and handed it to him.

  “Oh yes, of course, I know who you mean. Your wife…?”

  “My wife, yes, that’s the one. Thanks, Freddie.”

  I didn’t disabuse him. I was in a hurry. And anyway, I didn’t want him taking advantage while I was away, did I?

  Now, if you ever find yourself in a position where you are embarking on a professional rivalry with someone you don’t really know very well, then you could do worse than travel by train from London to Aberdeen with them. You’ll know them a whole lot better by the time you get there, I guarantee you that.

  Mind you, I thought at first I would be making the journey alone. In those days if you’d said to any of us that Charlie was a genius, we’d have thought you were referring to the particular kind of talent he had for missing trains, and it was only when we stopped at Rugby that I discovered he had managed to leap aboard the guard’s van at the very last instant.

  Now he was able to stroll along the outside of the train and find our compartment. He wasn’t a happy chap. He mumbled a greeting, stowed his bag, then slumped down by the window with his chin on his fist. He hadn’t shaved, his collar had come adrift at one side and his hair was all over the place.

  It was the girl, of course. He was being forced to part from the gorgeous creature whose praises he had been singing non-stop the whole week, boring us all to tears, and naturally that was getting him down.

  “It’s only three months, and then you’ll see her again,” I said.

  Charlie just grunted and stared out of the window, the very picture of melancholy. I thought he was overdoing it a bit, to be honest.

  Three months – actually that felt like a long, long time. Everything could have changed by then. As the fields rolled by I found myself bleakly imagining meeting up with Tilly again, and she’d have got married in the interim to a greengrocer (not sure why I thought that particularly) and be heavily pregnant (not practically possible in that short space of time), and pretty soon I’d made myself feel very nearly as fed up as my travelling companion.

  Chaplin perked up a bit when a steward popped his head in at the door to inform us that we could have supper now if we pleased, and he remarked that he had not eaten since breakfast the day before.

  “Why ever not?” I asked, and he sighed a heavy melodramatical sigh before leading the way to the dining carriage.

  As we waited for the main course to arrive, Charlie shoved bread rolls in his mouth and explained that it was not merely the thought of leaving Hetty behind in London that was the root of his depression; it was the fact that the budding romance was over entirely.

  “Over?” I said.

  “Dead. Dead. Dead as a door nail,” he lamented.

  “How so?”

  “It was two days ago. I asked her to marry me and she broke my heart in pieces.”

  I was astonished. “You asked her to marry you? How long have you known the girl?”

  “A week. It was the most profoundly affecting week of my life. I shall never forget her, and shall never again love so deeply nor so well.”

  “You asked her to marry you and you’ve only known her a week?”

  “Well, yes, it was a test to see if she loved me, a hypothetical case. I asked her, supposing she were to be compelled to marry somebody, would she marry me or somebody else, and she said she didn’t know, which is as much as to say she doesn’t love me, so I said perhaps it would be best if we didn’t see each other any more, again as a sort of test, and she agreed, can you believe it?”

  I coul
dn’t believe it. I wasn’t exactly a leading authority on dealing with the fairer sex, but I think I knew better than to behave as Charlie had done.

  “Then yesterday morning I arrived to escort her to work as usual,” he went on, “and her mother appeared at the door in her stead and told me that I was not to see Hetty again, and that she had plans for her daughter which did not include consorting with a ragamuffin stage monkey four years her senior. I begged to hear it from Hetty’s own sweet lips, and sure enough she was listening behind the parlour door and stepped forwards. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I’ve come to say goodbye again.’ And do you know what she said in return?”

  “‘Goodbye?’” I guessed, and do you know I was bang on the button.

  “Exactly!” Charlie cried, and shrugged, as if to say: “Women!” Which reminded him. “Hey, what about you and the girl you were with at the Trocadero?”

  “Oh,” I said, trying to put him off. “She’s just a super in one of the Guv’nor’s companies.”

  “You like her, though, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes, I like her well enough. I’ll probably see her when we get back to London.”

  “Probably?” he scoffed. “You should have pursued her night and day, as I did with Hetty!”

  We finally arrived in Aberdeen in the middle of the next afternoon, and Syd Chaplin was there to meet us. Well, to meet Charlie, of course. The brothers were obviously happy to see one another, and Syd plainly believed the sun shone out of Charlie’s backside, which chimed pretty neatly with Charlie’s view of the universe, so they had plenty in common.

  Charlie and I had begun to rub along in a pretty friendly fashion, and Syd’s attitude to me thawed accordingly over the next few weeks. That first afternoon, though, I just traipsed along behind their reunion, listening to their inconsequential catching up, and outside the station they merrily got into a cab to go off to the handsome digs they’d be sharing, while Syd squashed a piece of paper into my hand with the address of my lodgings scrawled upon it, and I was left standing alone on the pavement.