My Autobiography (8 page)

It was difficult to get them quiet after that. I spoke in subdued whispers: ‘Hush, hush, you mustn’t make a noise or you’ll wake my Nelly.’

‘Louder! Louder! Speak up!’ shouted the audience.

But I went on feebly whispering, all very intimate; so intimate that the audience began to stamp. It was the end of my career as a delineator of Charles Dickens’s characters.

Although we lived frugally, life with the Eight Lancashire Lads was agreeable. Occasionally we had out little dissensions. I remember playing on the same bill with two young acrobats, boy apprentices about my own age, who told us confidentially that their mothers received seven and sixpence a week and they got a shilling pocket money put under their bacon-and-egg plate every Monday morning. ‘And,’ complained one of our boys, ‘we only get twopence and a bread and jam breakfast.’

When Mr Jackson’s son, John, heard that we were complaining, he broke down and wept, telling us that at times, playing odd weeks in the suburbs of London, his father only got seven pounds a week for the whole troupe and that they were having a hard time making both ends meet.

It was this opulent living of the two young apprentices that made us ambitious to become acrobats. So for several mornings, as soon as the theatre opened, one or two of us would practise somersaults with a rope tied round our waists, attached to a pulley, while one of us would hold the rope. I did very well turning somersaults in this fashion until I fell and sprained my thumb. That ended my acrobatic career.

Besides dancing we were always trying to add to our other accomplishments. I wanted to be a comedy juggler, so I had saved enough money to buy four rubber balls and four tin plates and for hours I would stand over the bedside, practising.

Mr Jackson was essentially a good man. Three months before I left the troupe we appeared at a benefit for my father, who had been very ill; many vaudeville artists donated their services, including Mr Jackson’s Eight Lancashire Lads. The night of the benefit my father appeared on the stage breathing with difficulty,
and with painful effort made a speech. I stood at the side of the stage watching him, not realizing that he was a dying man.

When we were in London, I visited Mother every week-end. She thought I looked pale and thin and that dancing was affecting my lungs. It worried her so much that she wrote about it to Mr Jackson, who was so indignant that he finally sent me home, saying that I was not worth the bother of such a worrying mother.

A few weeks later, however, I developed asthma. The attacks grew so severe that Mother was convinced I had tuberculosis and promptly took me to Brompton Hospital, where I was given a thorough examination. Nothing was found wrong with my lungs, but I did have asthma. For months I went through agony, unable to breathe. At times I wanted to jump out of the window. Inhaling herbs with a blanket over my head gave little relief. But, as the doctor said I would, I eventually outgrew it.

My memory of this period goes in and out of focus. The outstanding impression was a quagmire of miserable circumstances. I cannot remember where Sydney was; being four years older, he only occasionally entered my consciousness. He was possibly living with Grandfather to relieve Mother’s penury. We seemed to vacillate from one abode to another, eventually ending up in a small garret at 3 Pownall Terrace.

I was well aware of the social stigma of our poverty. Even the poorest of children sat down to a home-cooked Sunday dinner. A roast at home meant respectability, a ritual that distinguished one poor class from another. Those who could not sit down to Sunday dinner at home were of the mendicant class, and we were that. Mother would send me to the nearest coffee-shop to buy a sixpenny dinner (meat and two vegetables). The shame of it – especially on Sunday! I would harry her for not preparing something at home, and she would vainly try to explain that cooking at home would cost twice as much.

However, one lucky Friday, after winning five shillings at horse-racing, Mother, to please me, decided to cook dinner on Sunday. Amongst other delectables she bought a piece of roasting meat that could not make up its mind whether to be beef or a lump of suet. It weighed about five pounds and had a sign stuck in it: ‘For Roasting’.

Mother, having no oven, used the landlady’s and, being too
shy to keep going in and out of her kitchen, had haphazardly guessed the time needed to roast it. Consequently, to our dismay, our joint had shrunk to the size of a cricket ball. Nevertheless, in spite of Mother’s averring that our sixpenny dinners were less trouble and more palatable, I enjoyed it and felt the gratification of having lived up to the Joneses.

*

A sudden change came into our lives. Mother met an old friend who had become very prosperous, a flamboyant, good-looking, Junoesque type of woman who had given up the stage to become the mistress of a wealthy old colonel. She lived in the fashionable district of Stockwell; and in her enthusiasm at meeting Mother again, she invited us to stay with her during the summer. As Sydney was away in the country hop-picking, it took little inducement to persuade Mother, who, with the wizardry of her needle, made herself quite presentable, and I, dressed in my Sunday suit, a relic of the Eight Lancashire Lads, looked quite presentable for the occasion.

Thus overnight we were transported to a very sedate corner house in Lansdowne Square, ensconced in the lap of luxury, with a house full of servants, pink and blue bedrooms, chintz curtains and white bear-rugs; moreover, we lived on the fat of the land. How well I remember those large, blue, hothouse grapes that ornamented the sideboard in the dining-room and my feeling of guilt at their mysterious diminishing, looking more skeleton-like each day.

The household staff consisted of four women: the cook and three maids. In addition to Mother and me, there was another guest, a very tense, good-looking young man with a cropped red moustache. He was most charming and gentlemanly, and seemed a permanent fixture in the house – until the grey-whiskered Colonel appeared. Then the handsome young man would disappear.

The Colonel’s visits were sporadic, once or twice a week. While he was there, mystery and omnipresence pervaded the house, and Mother would tell me to keep out of the way and not to be seen. One day I ran into the hall as the Colonel was descending the stairs. He was a tall, stately gentleman in a frock-coat and
top hat, a pink face, long grey side-burns and a bald head. He smiled benignly at me and went on his way.

I did not understand what all the hush and fuss was about and why the Colonel’s arrival created such an effect. But he never stayed long, and the young man with the cropped moustache would return, and the house would function normally again.

I grew very fond of the young man with the cropped moustache. We would take long walks together over Clapham Common with the lady’s two beautiful greyhound dogs. Clapham Common had an elegant atmosphere in those days. Even the chemist’s shop, where we occasionally made a purchase, exuded elegance with its familiar admixture of aromatic smells, perfumes, soaps and powders – ever since, the odour of certain chemists’ shops has a pleasant nostalgia. He advised Mother to have me take cold baths every morning to cure my asthma, and possibly they helped; they were most invigorating and I grew to like them.

It is remarkable how easily one adapts oneself to the social graces. How genteel and accustomed one becomes to creature comforts! In less than a week I took everything for granted. What a sense of well-being – going through that morning ritual, exercising the dogs, carrying their new brown leather leashes, then returning to a beautiful house with servants, to await lunch served in elegant style on silver platters.

Our back garden connected with another house whose occupants had as many servants as we had. They were a family of three, a young married couple and their son, who was about my own age and who had a nursery stocked with beautiful toys. I was often invited to play with him and to stay for dinner, and we became very good friends. His father held some important position in a City bank, and his mother was young and quite pretty.

One day I overheard our maid confidentially conversing with the boy’s maid, who was saying that their boy needed a governess. ‘That’s what this one needs,’ said our maid referring to me. I was thrilled to be looked upon as a child of the rich, but I never quite understood why she had elevated me to this status, unless it was to elevate herself by inferring that the people she worked for were as well off and as respectable as the neighbours next door. After that, whenever I dined with the boy next door I felt somewhat of an impostor.

Although it was a mournful day when we left the fine house to return to 3 Pownall Terrace, yet there was a sense of relief in getting back to our own freedom; after all, as guests we were living under a certain tension, and, as Mother said, guests were like cakes: if kept too long they became stale and unpalatable. Thus the silken threads of a brief and luxurious episode snapped, and we fell again into our accustomed impecunious ways.

1899 was an epoch of whiskers: bewhiskered kings, statesmen, soldiers and sailors, Krugers, Salisburys, Kitcheners, Kaisers and cricketers – incredible years of pomp and absurdity, of extreme wealth and poverty, of inane political bigotry of both cartoon and press. But England was to absorb many shocks and indignations. A few Boer farmers in the African Transvaal were warring unfairly, shooting our red-coated soldiers, excellent targets, from behind boulders and rocks. Then the War Office saw the light, and our red coats were quickly changed to khaki. If the Boers wanted it that way, they could have it.

I was vaguely aware of war through patriotic songs, vaudeville sketches and cigarette pictures of the generals. The enemy, of course, were unmitigated villains. One heard dolorous news about the Boers surrounding Ladysmith and England went mad with hysterical joy at the relief of Mafeking. Then at last we won – we muddled through. All this I heard from everyone but Mother. She never mentioned the war. She had her own battle to fight.

Sydney was now fourteen and had left school and got a job at the Strand Post Office as a telegraph boy. With Sydney’s wages and Mother’s earnings at her sewing machine, our economy was almost feasible – although Mother’s contribution was a modest one. She worked for a sweat-shop doing piece-work, sewing blouses for one and sixpence a dozen. Even though the patterns were delivered already cut out, it took twelve hours to make a dozen blouses. Mother’s record was fifty-four blouses in a week, which amounted to six shillings and ninepence.

Often at night I would lie awake in our garret watching her bent over her sewing machine, her head haloed against the light of the oil-lamp, her face in soft shadow, her lips faintly parted
with strain as she guided the rapidly running seams through her machine, until the drone of it would send me off to sleep again. When she worked late this way, it was usually to meet a monetary deadline. There was always the problem of instalment payments.

And now a crisis had arisen. Sydney needed a new suit of clothes. He had worn his telegraph uniform every day in the week, including Sundays, until his friends began to joke about it. So for a couple of week-ends he stayed home until Mother was able to buy him a blue serge suit. In some way she managed to scrape together eighteen shillings. This created an insolvency in our economy, so that Mother was obliged to pawn the suit every Monday after Sydney went back to work in his telegraph uniform. She got seven shillings for the suit, redeeming it every Saturday for Sydney to wear over the week-end. This weekly custom became an habitual ceremony for over a year until the suit became threadbare. Then came a shock!

Monday morning, as usual, Mother went to the pawnshop. The man hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Chaplin, but we can’t lend you seven shillings any longer.’

Mother was astonished. ‘But why?’ she asked.

‘It’s too much of a risk; the trousers are threadbare. Look,’ he said, putting his hand in the seat of them, ‘you can see right through them.’

‘But they’ll be redeemed next Saturday,’ said Mother.

The pawnbroker shook his head. ‘The best I can do is three shillings for the coat and waistcoat.’

Mother rarely wept, but it was such a drastic blow that she came home in tears. She depended on that seven shillings to carry us through the week.

Meanwhile my own vestments were, to say the least, in disrepair. What was left of my Eight Lancashire Lads’ outfit was a motley sight. There were patches everywhere, on the elbows, trousers, shoes and stockings. And in this condition I ran smack into my nice little boy friend from Stockwell. What he was doing in Kennington I did not know and was too embarrassed to find out. He greeted me friendlily enough, but I could see him eyeing my deplorable appearance. To offset my embarrassment I assumed a
dégagé
manner and in my best, cultured voice told him
that I was wearing my old clothes because I had just come from a beastly carpentry lesson.

But the explanation had little interest for him. He began to look crestfallen and to cast his eyes aside to hide his embarrassment. He inquired after Mother.

I answered briskly that she was away in the country and turned the attention on him: ‘Are you living in the same place?’

‘Yes,’ he answered, surveying me as though I had committed some cardinal sin.

‘Well, I’ll run along,’ I said abruptly.

He faintly smiled. ‘Good-bye,’ he said, and we parted, he walking off sedately in one direction and I, furious and ashamed, running helter-skelter in the opposite one.

*

Mother had a saying: ‘You can always stoop and pick up nothing.’ But she herself did not adhere to this adage, and my sense of propriety was often outraged. One day, returning from Brompton Hospital, Mother stopped to upbraid some boys tormenting a derelict woman who was grotesquely ragged and dirty. She had a cropped head, unusual in those days, and the boys were laughing and pushing each other towards her, as if to touch her would contaminate them. The pathetic woman stood like a stag at bay until Mother interfered. Then a look of recognition came over the woman’s face. ‘Lil,’ she said, feebly, referring to Mother’s stage name, ‘don’t you know me – Eva Lestock?’