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kidney pie, influenza and a cablegram were the triple alliance that is responsible for the whole thing," in the words that opened his lively book, My Wonderful Visit, the book he afterwards wrote concerning this first trip to Europe since he became famous.
Having started the film, he had found himself tired, ill, and depressed after a bout of influenza. In this mood, he accepted an invitation to dine at the home of Montagu Glass, who enticed him with steak and kidney pie; and the homely dinner party roused nostalgia, and made him restless. On his return, a cablegram from London was waiting for him, urging him to attend the premiere of The Kid, and quite suddenly he made up his mind to go. It seemed the answer to everything that was troubling him; and he had never yet attended a premiere of one of his films outside America.
His excitement as his boat docked at Southampton was enormous, and tinged with uncertainty and apprehension — he did not know how he would be received, after so long. He was used to being enthusiastically mobbed whenever he made a public appearance in the States. But this was his own country, and he the young Cockney lad returning after many years.
Nothing prepared him for the incredible reception he received in London; he was almost overborne by a mob that struggled and fought to reach him, that shouted blessings and messages of love and affection, that welcomed him as their own, returned at last, and greatly loved. He was moved to terror, and to a pleasure so intense that he could not contain it, but, catching excitement from the crowd, he began to throw down among them the flowers clustering everywhere in his rooms at the Ritz. In a moment, the police came to beg him not to, for fear of accidents, the crowd was so congested and so determined to get one of these souvenirs.
Mixed with his delight in such evidence of popularity was shame that he should have done so little to deserve it, and a desire to escape from it for a while.
It is typical of him that the very first thing he did after his arrival was to creep out by the back way and to go straight to Kennington, on a solitary pilgrimage that covered all the haunts of his youth. It made an extraordinary impression upon him. Part of him went out to the old familiar things; part shuddered in horror away from the memory of them. Above all, he realized that he had gone too far away in time and in condition ever to get back, however much he desired it, however hard he tried.
"Almost every step brought back memories, most of them of a tender sort. I was right here in the midst of my youth, but somehow I seemed apart from it. I felt as though I was viewing it under a glass.