Charlie Chaplins Own Story

by Charlie Chaplin

  I felt little and alone. I did not know just

  what to do, but my father had told me to go

  out and sing Jack Jones, and I did not dare

  go back until I had done it.

  There was a great uproar beyond the foot-

  lights, and it confused me more, until I saw

  that the people were laughing and applauding.

  Then I remembered my singing on the table,

  with people all around and noise and light, and

  I saw that this was the same thing. I opened

  my mouth and sang Jack Jones with all my

  might.

  It was an old coster song my father had

  taught me. I sang one verse and started on

  the second, hurrying to get through. I was

  not afraid of the crowd, but the stage got big-

  ger and I got littler every minute, and I

  wanted to be with my mother.

  19

  There was a great noise which interrupted

  my song, and something hit me on the cheek.

  I stopped singing with my mouth open on a

  note, and something else hit the floor by my

  feet, and then a shower of things fell on the

  stage and one struck my arm. The audience

  was throwing them at me.

  I backed away a little, terrified, but I went

  on singing as well as I could, with my face

  quivering and a big lump in my throat. I

  knew I had to finish the song because my

  father had told me to. Great tears came up

  in my eyes, and I ducked my head and rubbed

  at them with my knuckles, and then I saw the

  floor of the stage. It was almost covered with

  pennies and shillings. Money ! It was money

  they were throwing at me!

  "Oh! Wait, wait!" I shouted, and went

  down on my hands and knees to gather it up.

  "It's money! Wait just a minute!"

  I got both hands full of it, and still there

  was more. I crawled around, picking it up

  and putting it in my pockets and shouted at

  the audience, "Walt till I get it all and I'll

  sing a lot !"

  20

  It was a great hit. People laughed and

  shouted and climbed on their seats to throw

  more money. It kept falling around me, roll-

  ing across the stage, while I ran after it,

  shouting with joy. I filled all my pockets

  and put some in my hat. Then I stood up and

  sang Jack Jones twice, and would have sung it

  again, but my father came out on the stage

  and led me off.

  I had almost three pounds in six-penny

  pieces, shillings, and even a few half-crowns.

  I sat on a box and played with it while my

  father did his act. I could not count it, but

  I knew it was money, and I felt rich. Then

  we went home, where my father set me upon

  the bed beside my mother, and I poured the

  money over her, laughing. She laughed, too,

  and my father took the money and bought us

  all a great feast, and let me drink some of the

  ale. I remember how I crowed over Sidney

  that night.

  My mother was able to go back to work next

  day, and Sidney and I were left in the rooms

  again. There was a quarrel before she

  went; my father swore, and mother cried and

  stamped her foot. She said, "No! No! No!

  He's too little yet." And I knew they were

  talking about me, and crawled away into a

  corner, where I kept very still.

  21

  After that I think we grew poorer and

  poorer. There were no more parties at night.

  My mother would come in alone, and when she

  waked me, tucking me in, I felt so sad it

  seemed as if my heart would break, because

  her face did not sparkle any more. Sidney

  and I played about in the daytime, and kept

  out of father's way. When he came in his

  face was red, and his breath was hot and strong

  with whisky. He used to throw himself on the

  bed without a word to mother and fall asleep

  with his mouth open. Then Sidney and I went

  quietly out and played on the stairs. Sidney

  was a wide-awake lively young person, always

  running about and shouting "Ship ahoy !" He

  wanted to be a sailor. I could not play with

  him long because it tired me. I liked to get

  into a corner by myself and think and dream

  of things I had seen and what I would do some

  day — vague dreams of making music and

  wearing velvet suits and bowing to immense

  audiences and having cream tarts for every

  meal and six white ponies to drive.

  22

  The worry and the unhappiness which

  seemed to grow like a cloud around us in those

  years made me sit sometimes and cry quietly

  to myself, not knowing why, but feeling mis-

  erable and sad. Then my great dreams faded

  and I felt little and lonely, and not even my

  mother could comfort me.

  So I came to be about ten years old, and all

  my memories of the years between my first ap-

  pearance on the stage and the day I met the

  red-faced man are vague recollections of these

  dreams and hurried trips from place to place,

  and the unhappiness, and my mother's face

  growing sadder. Then I remember clearly the

  night I went with her to the music-hall in Lon-

  don and ran away with the clog dancers.

  My mother took me with her because when

  it was time for her to go to work she could not

  find Sidney. He was almost fourteen and

  played a great deal in the streets, and used

  to go away for the whole day sometimes, which

  worried my mother. But she had to work and

  could not be with us or keep us together. It

  is my impression that my father was making

  very little money then, and spending all he got

  in bars, as he was a very popular man and had

  many friends who wanted him to drink with

  them. I know that we were living in very poor

  lodgings, and my mother cried sometimes when

  the landlady asked her for the rent.

  23

  I remember on this day standing beside my

  mother and watching a troupe of clog dancers

  who were working on the stage. Mother was

  wearing her stage dress, waiting to go on for

  her act, and she kept asking me where I had

  seen Sidney last, but I could hardly listen. I

  knew how to clog dance, for Sidney and I had

  done it with the boys in the streets, and I was

  impatient because my mother had her hand on

  my shoulder, and I wanted to do the steps with

  the others. I squirmed away from her and

  began dancing by myself. I did all the diffi-

  cult steps very proudly, and when the music

  stopped I saw that my mother looked proud,

  too. I looked around to see if any one else

  was admiring me, and saw the red-faced man.

  ...

  He was standing behind my mother, a fat

  man, with a double chin, and a wart on one of

  his lower eyelids. It fascinated me so I could

  not take my eyes from it. When my mother />
  went on for her act I still stood staring at it.

  24

  "I say, you're lively on your feet, young fel-

  ler," he said to me. "Could you do that every

  day, say?"

  "Oh, yes, I like to do it," I said.

  "Would you like to come along, now, with

  a nice troupe of fine little boys and do

  it for a fortnight or so?" he asked.

  "What's the screw?" I said, looking shrewd,

  as I had seen my father do. He laughed.

  "Three six a week," he said, "all for your

  own pocket money. And I'll buy you a velvet

  suit, and you can eat hearty — meat pies and

  pudding every meal."

  "And cream tarts?" I stipulated.

  "Up to your eyes in cream tarts if you like,"

  He said. "Come now, will you do it?"

  "Yes," I answered promptly.

  "All right, come along," he said, and led me

  out of the music-hall.

  CHAPTER III

  In which I join the clog dancers ; fail to

  get the cream tarts; and incur the wrath of

  Mr. Hawkins.

  WAITING just inside the door to the alley were

  the five boys who had been clog dancing. They

  were huddled together, not playing or talking,

  and when the red-faced man led me up to them

  they looked at me curiously, without a word.

  Each one had his stage dress in a brown paper

  bundle under his arm, and in the gas light they

  looked ragged and tired.

  "This 'ere's the new little boy what's a-going

  to come with us," said the red-faced man, hold-

  ing my hand so tight it hurt, and I squirmed.

  ...

  The other boys did not say a word. They

  looked at me, and all those staring eyes made

  me uncomfortable.

  "Speak up, there!" roared the man suddenly,

  and they all jumped. "Say 'Yes, sir, yes, Mr.

  'Awkins,' when I speak to you!"

  "Yes, sir, yes, Mr. 'Awkins!" they all said.

  26

  "Now step up, young fellers; we're going

  to our nice 'ome and 'ave cream tarts for our

  supper," Mr. Hawkins said. He nodded to

  the stage doorkeeper, a silent whiskered man

  who sat smoking a pipe, and we all filed out

  through the dark little alley into the street.

  ...

  It was a cold foggy night. The street lamps

  were weird ghostly-looking blurs in the mist,

  and our steps sounded hollow and muffled. I

  had never been out so late before, and the

  strange look of things in the fog and the emp-

  tiness of the streets, with only a cab rat-

  tling by now and then, made me shiver.

  The boys walked ahead, and Mr. Hawkins

  and I followed close behind. We walked for

  a long time, till my legs began to ache and

  my fingers stopped hurting and grew numb in

  Mr. Hawkins' hard grip. My mind was all

  a-muddle and confused, so that the only thing

  I thought of clearly was my mother, and how

  pleased she would be when I came home again

  rich, with three and sixpence and a velvet suit.

  ...

  We came at last to a doorway with a lamp

  burning dimly over it, and Mr. Hawkins

  herded the boys into it. A very fat dirty

  woman opened the door and said something

  shrill to us. Then we climbed many flights of

  dark stairs, and Mr. Hawkins let go my hand

  to open a door.

  27

  A damp musty smell came out as we stum-

  bled in. It was a poor dirty room, furnished

  with two beds and a long table with chairs

  about it.

  "Well, 'ere we are 'ome!" said Mr. Hawkins

  cheerfully. "Now for a nice 'ot supper, what!"

  The boys did not say a word. They sat down

  and watched him, looking now and then at the

  door. I rubbed my aching fingers and looked

  at him, too. The wart was still there on his

  lower eyelid, and I could not take my eyes

  from it.

  After a while the fat woman came in with

  our supper — chops and ale for Mr. Hawkins;

  plates of porridge and thick slices of bread for

  us. The boys all fell to eating hungrily, but

  I pushed my plate back and looked at Mr.

  Hawkins, who was eating his chops and drink-

  ing his ale with great enjoyment.

  "Where are the cream tarts?" I asked him.

  "Cream tarts! Who ever 'card of cream

  tarts for supper?" he shouted. "Cream tarts!"

  He chuckled and repeated it over and over,

  till I felt ashamed and confused. Then he

  thrust his great red face almost against mine

  and roared in a terrible voice, "That's enough,

  young feller I'll cream tart you! I'll jolly

  well cream tart you !" I shrank into my chair,

  frightened.

  "You don't want cream tarts," he said.

  "You want a caning. You want a good hard

  caning, don't you?"

  "No, sir," I said. "Oh, no, sir, please."

  "Oh, you don't, don't you? Yes, you do.

  You want a caning, that's what you want.

  Where's my cane?" he roared in a frightful

  voice. I crouched in my chair in such terrible

  fear I could not even cry out until his great

  hand gripped my shoulder. Then I shrieked

  in agony.

  He only shook me and flung me back in the

  chair, but from that moment I lived in terror

  of him — a terror that colored everything dur-

  ing the day and at night made my dreams hor-

  rible. The other boys were afraid of him, too.

  When he was with us we sat silent and wary,

  looking at him. He used to swing his cane

  as he walked up and down the room in the

  evenings, and we watched it in fearful fascina-

  tion, though I do not remember that he ever

  caned one of us. It was the constant fear of

  his doing it that was so terrible. Sometimes

  when he had locked us in the room and gone

  away in the morning the boldest boys used to

  make fantastic threats of the things they would

  do to him when he returned, but they said them

  under their breath, with an eye on the door,

  and the rest of us quaked as we listened.

  29

  In the evenings we were marched out before

  him to music-halls. These music-halls were

  different from the ones my mother sang in.

  They were large rooms, with rough wooden

  benches and tables arranged around a square

  in the center, where we danced. The air was

  thick with tobacco smoke and heavy with the

  smell of ale and stout, and the ugly bearded

  faces of hundreds of men staring at us con-

  fused me sometimes so that I could hardly

  dance. I was so little, so weary from hunger

  and the constant fear of Mr. Hawkins, that

  my feet felt too heavy to lift in the hard

  steps, and my head swam in the glare of the

  lights. I wanted so much to crawl away to

  a quiet dark place where I could rest and

  feel my mother's hand tucking in the covers,

  that sometimes I sobbed as I danced, but I

  n
ever stopped nor missed a step ; I did not

  dare.

  30

  For all the pain and fear in my childish heart

  I did the steps very well, so that often the

  crowd cheered "the young 'un" and called for

  more. Then, while they shouted and banged

  their mugs of ale on the tables, I would

  wearily dance again and again, until all my

  body ached. Sometimes they threw money to me,

  and then, after they let me go at last, Mr.

  Hawkins would go through my pockets for it

  and rap my head with his knuckles, under the

  suspicion that I had concealed some.

  All my memory of those weeks is colored by

  my terror of him. It never left me. When

  he was in the room I got as far as possible

  from him and sat quite still, staring at his

  face and the wart on his eyelid and his great

  cane. When he was gone I sat and brooded about

  him and shivered. At the table, hungry as I

  was, I could not swallow my porridge under

  the gaze of his awful eye.

  At last one night when we reached the music-

  hall where we were to dance we found it in

  great uproar. The audience was standing on

  benches and tables and shouting, "Slug 'im!"

  Slug 'im! Slug 'im!" in horrible waves of

  sound. In the center, where we were to dance,

  two men were fighting.

  31

  Mr. Hawkins pushed us before him through

  the crowd to a place close to them. I saw their

  strong naked bodies glistening under the gas

  flare and heard the terrible smashing blows.

  There was a sweetish sickening smell in the air

  which made me feel ill, and the roar of the

  crowd terrified me. Then one of the men

  reeled, staggered backward and fell. He was

  close to me and I saw his face, a shapeless

  mass of flesh, with no eyes, covered with

  blood, with blood running from the open mouth.

  The horror of it struck my childish mind so,

  after all those weeks of terror, that I fainted.

  ...

  I was revived in time to dance, and the

  crowd, excited by the fight, threw us a great

  deal of money. When he searched my pockets

  at the door, Mr. Hawkins stooped low, put his

  great face almost against mine and swore, but

  he did not rap me with his knuckles. I was

  in a kind of stupor, quivering all over, and

  could not walk, so he put me up on his shoul-

  der, as my father used to do, and started home.

  ...

  A long time afterward I knew I was standing

  between his knees, while he tipped my head

  back and looked closely at me.