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This double compulsion serves in large measure to explain the accusations of cruelty and ingratitude that have been levelled against him; as it explains the sudden banishment of Edna Purviance after ten years of closest collaboration; of Carl Robinson, who was for sixteen years his confidential secretary; of Cami, devoted disciple from the first time Chaplin ever set foot in Paris. It serves to explain the otherwise inexplicable dismissal of colleagues in the middle of a film; his whole-hearted admirations and aversions; and his determination never to yield to the social or emotional pressure put upon him by those who mistakenly assume that they are indispensable to him.
His great love of power and its exercise may also be a factor in his repudiation of relationships — the quick vivid friendships swiftly ended and forgotten, the wilful destruction of the affection, or passion that he had himself provoked and fostered.
His is a paradoxical character. Everyone who has ever been associated with Chaplin has commented on his capacity for the wildest fooling, his spontaneous and wholehearted gaiety in any assembly, an ebullience of spirits that sweeps the crowd with him whenever he chooses — yet leaves behind it the impression of melancholy held in check.
No one who knows him is surprised when he turns morosely and silently away from the studio, or from a group of friends, suddenly engulfed in a despair that has no issue, a mood of despondency so acute that nothing, not even the exigencies of his work, have been known to lift it until it has run its course.
Quite apart from the loneliness of his youth, largely due to his own maladjustment, his desire for normal social relations has always been complicated by this essential solitude of the spirit, that is inescapable. This isolation is the cause of Chaplin's sadness, that from the beginning was the basis of his clowning. For Chaplin could neither endure nor change the awareness of solitude that had been his all his life, and from which he had never found relief in any companionship or any love affair. Contact with men and women, when it became close, served only to accentuate the hopelessness of any understanding between himself and others. His intelligence was great enough to make him aware of the full implication of his isolation; his sensibility caused him to suffer from it. His courage and his tremendous zest for living have forced him, over the years, to accept the intolerable.
This full acceptance of experience, to which he has always borne witness in his life and in his work, is part of Chaplin's astonishing vigour and positive attitude towards life, his joy and excitement in living.
"I'm an emotional cuss," Chaplin said of himself, and there is a
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