Screenland (Sept 1922–Feb 1923)

1 WOUVWOOO CAUfOHMIA Kp) "Syd" and myself all over the walls, in character and straight. The place is packed tonight. It must be a very popular resort. "What will you have?" I feel breezy. "Give the whole saloon a drink." Aubrey whispers : "Don't let them know you are here." He says this for me. But I insist. "Introduce me to all of them." I must get him more custom. He starts quietly whispering to some of his very personal friends: "This is my cousin. Don't say a word." I speak up rather loudly. "Give them all a drink." I feel a bit vulgar tonight. ' I want to spend money like a drunken sailor. Even the customers are shocked. They hardly believe that it's Charlie Chaplin, who always avoids publicity, acting in this vulgar way. To the house for dinner, after which some one brings forth an old family album. It is just like all other family albums. "This is your great-grandunclc and that is your greatgrandmother. This is Aunt Lucy. This one was a French general." Aubrey says : "You know we have quite a good family on your father's side." There are pictures of uncles who are very prosperous cattle ra'nchers in South Africa. Wonder why I don't hear from my prosperous relations. Aubrey has children, a boy of 12, whom I have never met before. A fine boy. I suggest educating him. We talk of it at length and with stress. "Let's keep up family tra^itio". He may be a member of Parliament or perhaps president. He's a brieht boy." We dig up all the family and discuss them. The uncles in Spain, why, we Chaplins have populated the earth. When I came I told Aubrey that I could stay only two hours, but it is 4 a. m., and we are still talking. As we leave, Aubrey walks with me toward the Ritz. w E hail a Ford truck on the way and a rather dandified young Johnny, a former officer, gives us a lift. "Right you are. Jump on." A new element, these dandies driving trucks. Some of them graduates of Cambridge and Oxford, of good families, most of them, impecunious aristocrats. Perhaps it is the best thing that could happen to such families. This chap is very quiet and gentle. He talks mostly of his truck and his marketing, which he thinks is quite a game. He has been in the grocery business since the war and has never made so much money. We get considerable of his story as we jolt along in the truck. He is providing groceries for all his friends in Bayswater, and every morning at 4 o'clock he is on his way 34 to the market. He loves the truck. It is so simple to drive. "HALF a mo." He stops talking and pulls up for gas at a pretty little white-tiled gas station. The station is all lit up, though it is but 5 a. m. "Good morning. Give me about five gal." "Right-o !" The lad recognizes me. And greets me frankly, though formally. It seems so strange to me to hear this truck driver go along conversing in the easiest possible manner. He spoke of films for just a bit and then discreetly stopped, thinking perhaps that I might not like to talk about them. And, besides, he liked to talk about his truck. He told us how wonderful it was to drive along in the early morning with only the company of dawn and the stars. He loved the silent streets, sleeping London. He was enterprising, full of hopes and ambitions. Told howhe bartered. He knew how. His was a lovely business. He was smoking a pipe ^^^^^^^^^^ and wore a Trilby hat, with a sort of frock coat, and his neck was wrapped in a scarf. I figured him to be about 30 years of age. I NUDGED my cousin. Would he accept anything ? We hardly know whether or not to offer it, though he is going out of his way to drive me to the Ritz. He has insisted that it is no trouble, that he can cut through to Covent Garden. No trouble. I tell the gas man to fill it up and I insist on paying for the gas. We cut through to Piccadilly and pull up at tb? Ritz in a Ford truck. Quite an arrival. ~ The lad bids us good-by. "Delighted to have met you. Hope you have a bully time. Too bad you are leaving. Bon voyage. Come back in the spring. London is charming then. Well, I must be off. I'm late. Good morning." We talk him over on the steps as he drives away. He is the type of an aristocrat that must live. He is made of the stuff that marks the true aristocrat. He is an inspiration. He talked just enough, never too much. The intonation of his voice and his sense of beauty as he appreciated the dawn stamped him as of the elite— the real elite, not the blue-book variety. LoVING adventure, virtuous, doing something all the time, and loving the doing. W7hat an example he is ! He has two stores. This is his first truck. He loves it He is the first of his kind that I have met: This is my last night in England. I am glad that it brought me this contact with real nobility. (The concluding installment will appear in the December issue Of SCREENLAND.) C? Fraternizing With other celebrities was Charlie's greatest delight while abroad. It wtu while dining a t a cafe in the Latin Quarter of Paris that Georges Carpenticr scrawled, this fantastic autograph, to represent a fist encased in a boxing glove. Above. Georges Carpenticr, Cami, the French cartoonist and Chariot Chaplin, s