Free My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin

little lady pacing nervously up and down behind the scenes, irritable and apprehensive until the moment came for her to go on. Then she was immediately gay and relaxed.
    And Bransby Williams, the Dickens delineator, enthralled me with imitations of Uriah Heep, Bill Sykes and the old man of
The Old Curiosity Shop
. The legerdemain of this handsome, dignified young man making up before a rowdy Glasgow audience and transforming himself into these fascinating characters, opened up another aspect of the theatre. He also ignited my curiosity about literature; I wanted to know what was this immured mystery that lay hidden in books – these sepia Dickens characters that moved in such a strange Cruikshankian world. Although I could hardly read, I eventually bought
Oliver Twist
.
    So enthralled was I with Dickens characters that I would imitate Bransby Williams imitating them. It was inevitable that such budding talent could not be concealed for long. Thus it was that one day Mr Jackson saw me entertaining the other boys with an imitation of the old man of
The Old Curiosity Shop
. Then and there I was proclaimed a genius, and Mr Jackson was determined to let the world know it.
    The momentous event happened at the theatre in Middles brough. After our clog dance Mr Jackson walked on stage with the earnestness of one about to announce the coming of a young Messiah, stating that he had discovered a child genius among his boys, who would give an imitation of Bransby Williams as the old man of
The Old Curiosity Shop
who cannot recognize the death of his little Nell.
    The audience were not too receptive, having endured a very boring evening’s entertainment already. However, I came on wearing my usual dancing costume of a white linen blouse, a lace collar, plush knickerbocker pants and red dancing shoes, and made up to look like an old man of ninety. Somewhere, somehow, we had come into possession of an old wig – Mr Jackson might have bought it – but it did not fit me. Although I had a large head, the wig was larger; it was a bald-headed wig fringed withlong, grey, stringy hair, so that when I appeared on the stage bent as an old man, the effect was like a crawling beetle, and the audience endorsed the fact with their titters.
    It was difficult to get them quiet after that. I spoke in subdued whispers: ‘Hush, hush, you mustn’t make a noise or you’ll wake my Nelly.’
    ‘Louder! Louder! Speak up!’ shouted the audience.
    But I went on feebly whispering, all very intimate; so intimate that the audience began to stamp. It was the end of my career as a delineator of Charles Dickens’s characters.
    Although we lived frugally, life with the Eight Lancashire Lads was agreeable. Occasionally we had out little dissensions. I remember playing on the same bill with two young acrobats, boy apprentices about my own age, who told us confidentially that their mothers received seven and sixpence a week and they got a shilling pocket money put under their bacon-and-egg plate every Monday morning. ‘And,’ complained one of our boys, ‘we only get twopence and a bread and jam breakfast.’
    When Mr Jackson’s son, John, heard that we were complaining, he broke down and wept, telling us that at times, playing odd weeks in the suburbs of London, his father only got seven pounds a week for the whole troupe and that they were having a hard time making both ends meet.
    It was this opulent living of the two young apprentices that made us ambitious to become acrobats. So for several mornings, as soon as the theatre opened, one or two of us would practise somersaults with a rope tied round our waists, attached to a pulley, while one of us would hold the rope. I did very well turning somersaults in this fashion until I fell and sprained my thumb. That ended my acrobatic career.
    Besides dancing we were always trying to add to our other accomplishments. I wanted to be a comedy juggler, so I had saved enough money to buy four rubber balls and four tin