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My favourite autograph.

My Wonderful Visit

I.

I DECIDE TO PLAY HOOKEY

A steak-and-kidney pie, influenza, and a cablegram. There is the triple alliance that is responsible for the whole thing. Though there might have been a bit of homesickness and a desire for applause mixed up in the cycle of circumstances that started me off to Europe for a vacation.

For seven years I had been basking in California's perpetual sunlight, a sunlight artificially enhanced by the studio Cooper-Hewitts. For seven years I had been working and thinking along in a single channel and I wanted to get away. Away from Hollywood, the cinema colony, away from scenarios, away from the celluloid smell of the studios, away from contracts, press notices, cutting rooms, crowds, bathing beauties, custard pies, big shoes, and little moustaches. I was in the atmosphere of achievement, but an achievement which, to me, was rapidly verging on stagnation.

I wanted an emotional holiday. Perhaps I am projecting at the start a difficult condition for conception, but I assure you that even the clown has his rational moments and I needed a few.

The triple alliance listed above came about rather simultaneously. I had finished the picture of "The Kid" and "The Idle Class" and was about to embark on another. The company had been engaged. Script and settings were ready. We had worked on the picture one day.

I was feeling very tired, weak, and depressed. I had just recovered from an attack of influenza. I was in one of those "what's the use" moods. I wanted something and didn't know what it was.

And then Montague Glass invited me to dinner at his home in Pasadena. There were many other invitations, but this one carried with it the assurance that there would be a steak-and-kidney pie. A weakness of mine. I was on hand ahead of time. The pie was a symphony. So was the evening. Monty Glass, his charming wife, their little daughter, Lucius Hitchcock, the illustrator, and his wife—just a homey little family party devoid of red lights and jazz orchestras. It awoke within me a chord of something reminiscent. I couldn't quite tell what.

After the final onslaught on the pie, into the parlour before an open fire. Conversation, not studio patois nor idle chatter. An exchange of ideas—ideas founded on ideas. I discovered that Montague Glass was much more than the author of Potash and Perlmutter. He thought. He was an accomplished musician.

He played the piano. I sang. Not as an exponent of entertainment, but as part of the group having a pleasant, homey evening. We played charades. The evening was over too soon. It left me wishing. Here was home in its true sense. Here was a man artistically and commercially successful who still managed to lock the doors and put out the cat at night.

I drove back to Los Angeles. I was restless. There was a cablegram waiting for me from London. It called attention to the fact that my latest picture, "The Kid," was about to make its appearance in London, and, as it had been acclaimed my best, this was the time for me to make the trip back to my native land. A trip that I had been promising myself for years.

What would Europe look like after the war?

I thought it over. I had never been present at the first showing of one of my pictures. Their début to me had been in Los Angeles projection rooms. I had been missing something vital and stimulating. I had success, but it was stored away somewhere. I had never opened the package and tasted it. I sort of wanted to be patted on the back. And I rather relished the pats coming in and from England. They had hinted that I could, so I wanted to turn London upside down. Who wouldn't want to do that? And all the time there was the spectre of nervous breakdown from overwork threatening and the results of influenza apparent, to say nothing of the steak-and-kidney pie.

Sensation of the pleasantest sort beckoned me, at the same time rest was promised. I wanted to grab it while it was good. Perhaps "The Kid" might be my last picture. Maybe there would never be another chance for me to bask in the spotlight. And I wanted to see Europe—England, France, Germany, and Russia. Europe was new.

It was too much. I stopped preparations on the picture we were taking. Decided to leave the next night for Europe. And did it despite the protests and the impossibility howlers. Tickets were taken. We packed; everyone was shocked. I was glad of it. I wanted to shock everyone.

The next night I believe that most of Hollywood was at the train in Los Angeles to see me off. And so were their sisters and their cousins and their aunts. Why was I going? A secret mission, I told them. It was an effective answer. I was immediately under contract to do pictures in Europe in the minds of most of them. But then, would they have believed or understood if I had told them I wanted an emotional holiday? I don't believe so.

There was the usual station demonstration at the train. The crowd rather surprised me. It was but a foretaste. I do not try to remember the shouted messages of cheer that were flung at me. They were of the usual sort, I imagine. One, however, sticks. My brother Syd at the last moment rushed up to one of my party.

"For God's sake, don't let him get married!" he shouted.

It gave the crowd a laugh and me a scare.

The train pulled out and I settled down to three days of relaxation and train routine. I ate sometimes in the dining car, sometimes in our drawing-room. I slept atrociously. I always do. I hate travelling. The faces left on the platform at Los Angeles began to look kinder and more attractive. They did not seem the sort to drive one away. But they had, or maybe it was optical illusion on my part, illusion fostered by mental unrest.

For two thousand miles we did the same thing over many times, then repeated it. Perhaps there were many interesting people on the train. I did not find out. The percentage of interesting ones on trains is too small to hazard. Most of the time we played solitaire. You can play it many times in two thousand miles.

Then we reached Chicago. I like Chicago, I have never been there for any great length of time, but my glimpses of it have disclosed tremendous activity. Its record speaks achievement.

But to me, personally, Chicago suggested Carl Sandburg, whose poetry I appreciate highly and whom I had met in Los Angeles. I must see dear old Carl and also call at the office of the Daily News. They were running an enormous scenario contest. I am one of the judges, and it happens that Carl Sandburg is on the same paper.

Our party went to the Blackstone Hotel, where a suite had been placed at our disposal. The hotel management overwhelmed us with courtesies.

Then came the reporters. You can't describe them unless you label them with the hackneyed interrogation point.

"Mr. Chaplin, why are you going to Europe?"

"Just for a vacation."

"Are you going to make pictures while you are there?"

"No."

"What do you do with your old moustaches?"

"Throw them away."

"What do you do with your old canes?"

"Throw them away."

"What do you do with your old shoes?"