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Chaplin's 1921 trip abroad 141
tain greater success and asserted that to live after such an ovation would be an anticlimax. The artistic thing to do would be to die. What a magnificent end! Chaplin's answer included some characteristic, blasphemous remarks which shocked the Catholic Geraghty.
Chaplin then let some of the others in on his intentions before he went to the window. Opening it he hurled defiances at the sky. There was a lightning flash and a crash of thunder; Chaplin screamed, stiffened, and fell. "My God! It's happened!" exclaimed Geraghty, dropping his whiskey glass. Chaplin was carried into the next room, from which Donald Crisp emerged to announce that he was dead. Geraghty walked slowly toward the window and had to be restrained from jumping out. Then Charlie appeared in a sheet, with pillowcases on each arm for wings, to end his little farce.
Knoblock suggested a call on Bernard Shaw whom he knew well. When Chaplin and he reached Shaw's house, which overlooked the Thames Embankment, Chaplin hesitated, in a revealing reaction, as Knoblock was about to lift the knocker. He exclaimed that movie actors, abroad, invariably visited Shaw. "I do not desire to ape others. And I want to be individual and different. And I want Bernard Shaw to like me. ... I don't want to force myself upon him. . . . No, I don't want to meet him." Knoblock was surprised and annoyed. "Some other time. We won't call today." Not until ten years later was Chaplin to meet the great playwright.
Chaplin made a number of sentimental journeys through London. Almost every step revived memories. He found some remembered old peddlers still hawking their wares; old derelicts still at their favorite stands. He revisited Baxter's Hall where he had gone to see penny magic-lantern shows, forerunners of the movies; Kennington Gate, his meeting place with Hetty; and various houses where he had lived. He was on the very site of