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Boots," Charles, in a dog make-up, brought down the house with some unrehearsed bits of sniffing and other "dog business." The act, on tour, lasted a year and a half. When it closed, Charles was sent to Hern Boys College near London for two years, while Sidney went to a school in Surrey to study for the sea. This was all the schooling Chaplin had.
He credited his mother with the major part of his education. Her powers of observation were uncanny. She could tell by a man's gait, the condition of his shoes, the expression on his face, and the fact that he entered a bake shop, that he had had a fight with his wife and left without breakfast. Whenever checked, her windowside observations would be corroborated. Her habit of studying people passed on to her son.
However, her mind began to fail. One day Charles returned to an empty home. He was told that "they" had taken his mother away. He was left all alone. Sidney had sailed off to Africa.
Before he secured another stage job he lived like a Dickens waif on the London streets. Some of these experiences have been preserved in "The Kid." He appears to have fed himself as a chore boy in Covent Garden market by dancing in the streets, selling paper boats, as a lather boy in a barber shop, and so on. His bedroom was the market or the park.
When Sidney returned from Africa with a little money saved and presents for his mother, she was unable to recognize her sons. Sidney, the businessman of the family, then conducted Charles around the theatrical agencies.
It is extremely difficult to establish the exact chronology of Chaplin's stage appearances since many were outside London. However, it is recorded that he played in "Giddy Ostend" at the London Hippodrome on January 15, 1900. He would then have been ten years old. He toured the provinces as the boy hero of an anglicized