W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

He lost the house on De Mille Drive. Much as he loved it, he refused to increase the rent when his lease expired, and the landlord promptly evicted him. "Will you rent another place, Mr. Fields?" Miss Michael asked him, as they sat in his lawn swing after receiving the fateful notice. Despite the turbulence of the day, his face, she thought, showed an odd kind of repose. "No, no," he said easily. "I think it's back to the sanitarium for the nonce." "We both knew what he meant," she says. "This was his last house — he would never leave the sanitarium." When they got up to walk back to the house, she noticed that his legs were unsteady. His motor impulses had been failing for weeks. His fingers had grown so arthritic that he could no longer juggle, and he frequently stumbled and fell. His sleep, fragmentary and shallow for years, had become wildly restless. He often tumbled out of bed. So disturbing was this symptom that he bought a gigantic antique cradle and substituted it for his four-poster. Many times in the night, Miss Monti would tiptoe in to see that, in thrashing about, he had not flung himself over the sideboards of even this sturdy bunk. Before they left the house for the last time, Fields made the old inspection tour of his grounds. The day was fine, everything was in order — no trespassers in sight. In his flower beds he appeared to be searching for something; at length they saw him scramble down the slope to his lily pool — a painful feat, since he could scarcely walk on level ground — and toss the largest of his red roses onto the waterless stone bottom. Then, gleaming with sweat, he came up to the car and they drove off toward Las Encinas. Once again he was established comfortably in the sanitarium. Miss Monti went with him; Miss Michael visited him several times a week. He made light of his condition, but he wanted his 335