their noses at every step. It takes the very
qualities that make success and turns them into
stumbling blocks, and when we go tumbling
over them the only thing to do is to get up and
laugh at ourselves. If I had not been a pre-
cocious, self-satisfied, egotistic boy, able to
imagine unreal things and think them true, I
could never have been a success on the stage,
and if I had been none of those things I would
not have thrown away the opportunity Mrs.
Kendall gave me and been a failure. That is
an Irish bull, but life must have its little
joke, and there you are.
162
At the end of the three weeks my burns were
sufficiently healed, and one day the nurse came
and told me that I could leave the hospital.
"Very well," I said, "but how? I have no
clothes."
"My goodness !" she said. "I — but you can't
stay here, you know."
"Will you lend me a sheet?" I asked. "I
must wear something."
"Oh, no; we couldn't do that," she replied,
and went away, dazed by the problem. I lay
there grinning to myself and ate my supper
with good appetite. The next day the doctor
came and looked at me and scratched his head
and said testily that I was well enough to go
and must go ; I must get some clothes.
"How can I get clothes unless I go and earn
them, and how can I earn them if I don't have
any?" I asked him.
"Isn't there any way to get this lad any
clothes?" he said to the nurse. She said she
did not know, there had never been a case
just like it before. She would ask the super-
intendent. She came back with the superin-
tendent, and all three of them looked at me.
The superintendent said firmly that I must
go, that it was against the rules for me to
stay any longer. I replied firmly that I
would not go into the streets of London
without any clothes. The superintendent
shut her lips firmly and went away.
163
There was a great sensation in the hospital.
My own garments had been destroyed in the
explosion. The rules demanded that I go, but
the rules provided no clothes for me; I would
not go without clothes, and no one could feel
my position unreasonable. The hospital swayed
under the strain of the situation.
The next afternoon a representative of the
Society for the Relief of the Deserving Poor
called to see me. She asked a dozen questions,
wrote the answers in a book and went away.
Another day passed. The nurses were pale
with suspense. No clothes arrived.
Wild rumors circulated that I was to be
wrapped in a blanket and set out in the night,
but they were contradicted by the fact that
the rules did not provide for the loan of the
blanket. Friendly patients urged me to be firm,
kindly nurses told me not to worry, the super-
intendent was reported baffled by the rules
of the charitable organizations, which did
not provide for clothing patients in the
charity hospitals.
Some natural resentment was felt against me
for not fitting any rules, but the food came
regularly and I ate and slept comfortably. On
the fourth day, when it was felt that something
desperate must be done, the situation suddenly
cleared. Sidney arrived.
The representative of the S. R. D. P. had
called at my mother's address in the course of
her investigations as to my worthiness and
found him there. He was playing in an East
End theater and very much worried about my
disappearance. On hearing of my plight he
had hastened to the rescue and cut short my
life of ease and plenty under the unwilling
shelter of the hospital rules. He brought me
clothes, and I departed, to the disappointment
of the other patients who felt it an anti-climax.
...
Well fed and rested, and with the stimulus
of Sidney's encouragement, I started again my
search for a part. Much as I had hated the
Strand at times, it was like coming home again
to be tramping up and down the agents' stairs
and exchanging boasts with the other actors
while I waited in the outer offices. Usually I
waited long hours, only to he sent away at last
with the office boy's curt announcement that
the agent would see no one, and when some-
times I did penetrate into the inner offices I
met always the same, "Nothing in sight.
Things are very quiet just now. Drop in
again." Then I came out, with my old jaunty
air hiding my bitter disappointment and
tramped down the stairs and along the Strand
and up to another office, to wait again.
165
Mrs. Dobbs, my mother's landlady, moved to
Sweetbay, and being fond of my mother and
her sweet gentle ways, had consented to take
her there for a moderate rate. Sidney and I
lived together in a bed-sitting-room in Alfred
Place on very scant fare and I hated to face
him at night.
"Well, any news?" he always asked, pleas-
antly enough, but I dreaded the moment and
having to say, "No, not yet." It hurt my pride
terribly, and after several months of it the
misery of that first moment of meeting Sidney
drove me into hurting my pride even more in
another way.
"Look here, what's all this talk about play-
ing lead and being with William Gillette worth
to you?" an agent said to me one day. "You'll
take anything you can jolly well get, no matter
what it is, won't you? Well, Dailey, over at
the Grand, is putting out a comedy next week
with Casey's Circus. There's fifteen parts,
none of 'em cast yet. Go and see what you
can do."
I came out of his office in an agony of inde-
cision, for while it was true that I had said
to myself many times that I would take any
part I could get, I had never imagined myself
acting in Casey's Circus. All the pride that
had survived those months of discouragement
writhed at the idea — I who had been a hit in
a West End theater acting a low vulgar
comedy in dirty fourth-rate houses — why,
it was not so good a chance as my part in
Rags to Riches! I said savagely that I
would not do it. Then I thought of Sidney
and bit my lips and hesitated.
In the end, burning with shame and resentment,
I went to see Dailey. At least a hundred third-
rate actors packed the stairs to his office
and more were blocking the street and sitting
on the curbs before his door opened. I was
crushed in the crowd of them, smothered by
rank perfume and the close thick air of the
dirty stairs, and I hated myself and the situa-
tion
more every minute of the three hours I
waited there, but I stayed, half hoping he
would not give me a part. At least I could
feel then that I had done all I could.
...
At last my turn came. I straightened my hat,
squared my shoulders and marched in, determined
to be very haughty and dignified. Mr. Dailey,
a fat red-faced man, with his waistcoat un-
buttoned, sat by a desk chewing a big cigar.
...
"Mr. Dailey," I said, "I ____ " I don't know
how it happened. My foot slipped. I tried
to straighten up, slipped again, fell on all
fours over a chair, which fell over on me,
and sat up on the floor with the chair in
my lap.
" ______ want a part," I finished, furious.
...
Mr. Dailey howled and laughed and choked,
and held his sides and laughed again and
choked, purple in the face.
"You'll do," he said at last. "Great entrance !
Great! Ten shillings a week and railway
fares; what do you say to that, my lad?"
"I won't take it," I retorted.
168
CHAPTER XXII
In which I attempt to be serious and am funny
instead; seize the opportunity to get a raise
in pay ; and again consider coming to America.
...
MR. DAILEY would not let me go, but, still
wiping tears of laughter from his eyes, began
shilling by shilling to raise his offer. My
entirely unintentional comedy entrance had
pleased him mightily, and indeed, as soon as
I saw he took it as a deliberate effort on my
part, I began to be not a little proud of it
myself. It was not every one, I said to myself,
who could fall over a chair so comically as
that!
Cheered and emboldened by this reflection,
I drove a shrewd bargain, and at last, per-
suaded by the offer of a pound a week and a
long engagement if I could keep on being
funny, I consented to become a member of
Casey's Circus, and returned whistling to our
lodgings, able to face Sidney with some degree
of pride because I had an engagement at last.
170
We began rehearsals next day in a very dirty
dark room over a public house — fifteen
ragged, hungry-looking, sallow-faced boys
desperately being funny under the direction
of a fat greasy-looking manager who smelled
strongly of ale. It was difficult work for
me at first. Being funny is at best a hard
job, and being funny in those conditions,
which I heartily detested, seemed at first
almost impossible. More than once, when the
manager swore at me more than usual, I felt
like throwing the whole thing up and would
have done so but for the dread of going back
to the endless tramping up and down the
Strand and being a burden on Sidney.
Casey's Circus was putting on that season a
burlesque of persons in the public eye, and I
was cast for the part of Doctor Body, a patent-
medicine faker, who was drawing big crowds
on the London street corners and selling a
specific for all the ills of man and beast at
a shilling the bottle. Watching him one after-
noon, I was seized with a great idea. I would
let the manager rehearse me all he jolly well
liked, but when the opening night came I
would play Doctor Body as he really was — I
would put on such a marvelous character de-
lineation that even the lowest music-hall
audience would recognize it as great acting and
I would be rescued by some good manager and
brought back to a West End theater.
171
The idea grew upon me. Despising with all my
heart the cheap, clap-trap burlesque which the
manager tried to drill into me, I paid only
enough attention to it to get through rehear-
sals somehow, hurrying out afterward to watch
Doctor Body and to practise before the mirror
in our lodgings my own idea of the part. I
felt that I did it well and thrilled with
pride at the thought of playing it soon with
the eye of a great manager upon me.
The night of the opening came and I hurried
to the dirty makeshift dressing-room in a
cheap East End music-hall with all the sensa-
tions of a boy committing his first burglary.
I must manage to make up as the real Doctor
Body and to get on the stage before I was
caught. Once on the stage, without the bur-
lesque make-up which I was supposed to wear,
I knew I could make the part go. I painted
my face stealthily among the uproar and
quarrels of the other fourteen boys, who were
all in the same dressing-room fighting over
the mirrors and hurling epithets and make-up
boxes at one another.
172
The air tingled with excitement. The dis-
tracted manager, thrusting his head in at the
door, cried with oaths that Casey himself was
in front and he'd stand for no nonsense. We
could hear him rushing away, swearing at the
scene shifters, who had made some error in
placing the set. The audience was in bad
humor; we could faintly hear it hooting and
whistling. It had thrown rotten fruit at the
act preceding ours. In the confusion I man-
aged to make up and to get into my clothes,
troubled by the size of the high hat I was to
wear, which came down over my ears. I stuffed
it with paper to keep it at the proper angle on
my head, and trembling with nervousness, but
sure of myself when I should get on the stage,
I stole out of the dressing-room and stationed
myself in the darkest part of the wings.
The boy who appeared first was having a bad
time of it, missing his cues and being
hissed and hooted by the audience. The man-
ager rushed up to me, caught sight of my
make-up and stopped aghast.
173
" 'Ere, you can't go on like that!" he said
in a furious whisper, catching my arm.
"Let me alone; I know what I'm doing!" I cried
angrily, wrenching myself from him. My great
plan was not to be spoiled now at the last
minute. The manager reached for me again,
purple with wrath, but, quick as an eel, I
ducked under his arm, seized the cane I was to
carry and rushed on to the stage half a minute
too soon.
Once in the glare of the footlights I dropped
into the part, determined to play it, play it
well, and hold the audience. The other boy,
whose part I had spoiled, confused by my un-
expected appearance, stammered in his lines
and fell back. I advanced slowly, impressively,
feeling the gaze of the crowd, and, with a care-
fully studied gesture, hung my cane — I held
it by the wrong end ! Instead of hanging on
my arm, as I expected, it clattered on the s
tage.
Startled, I stooped to pick it up, and my high
silk hat fell from my head. I grasped it, put
it on quickly, and, paper wadding falling out,
I found my whole head buried in its black
depths.
A great burst of laughter came from the
audience. "When, pushing the hat back, I went
desperately on with my serious lines, the
crowd roared, held its sides, shrieked with
mirth till it gasped. The more serious I was,
the funnier it struck the audience. I came
off at last, pursued by howls of laughter and
wild applause, which called me back again. I
had made the hit of the evening.
174
"That was a good bit of business, my lad,"
Mr. Casey himself said, coming behind the
scenes and meeting me in the wings when
finally the audience let me leave the stage
the second time. "Your idea?"
"Oh, certainly," I replied airily. "Not bad,
I flatter myself — er — but of course not what
I might do at that." And, seizing the auspicious
moment, I demanded a raise to two pounds a week
and got it.
The next week I was headlined as "Charles
Chaplin, the funniest actor in London," and
Casey's Circus packed the house wherever it
was played. I had stumbled on the secret of
being funny — unexpectedly. An idea, going
in one direction, meets an opposite idea sud-
denly. "Ha! Ha!" you shriek. It works every
time.
175
I walk on to the stage, serious, dignified,
solemn, pause before an easy chair, spread my
coat-tails with an elegant gesture — and sit
on the cat. Nothing funny about it, really,
especially if you consider the feelings of
the cat. But you laugh. You laugh because it
is unexpected. Those little nervous shocks make
you laugh; you can't help it. Peeling onions
makes you weep, and seeing a fat man carrying
a custard pie slip and sit down on it makes you
laugh.
In the two years I was with Casey's Circus I
gradually gave up my idea of playing great
parts on the dramatic stage. I grew to like
the comedy work, to enjoy hearing the bursts
of laughter from the audience, and getting the
crowd in good humor and keeping it so was a
nightly frolic for me. Then, too, by degrees
all my old self-confidence and pride came back,
with the difference, indeed, that I did not
take them too seriously, as before, but merely
felt them like a pleasant inner warmth as I
walked on the Strand and saw the envious looks
Charlie Chaplins Own Story Page 12
