Free My Autobiography by Charles Chaplin Page A

plates and for hours I would stand over the bedside, practising.
    Mr Jackson was essentially a good man. Three months before I left the troupe we appeared at a benefit for my father, who had been very ill; many vaudeville artists donated their services, including Mr Jackson’s Eight Lancashire Lads. The night of the benefit my father appeared on the stage breathing with difficulty,and with painful effort made a speech. I stood at the side of the stage watching him, not realizing that he was a dying man.
    When we were in London, I visited Mother every week-end. She thought I looked pale and thin and that dancing was affecting my lungs. It worried her so much that she wrote about it to Mr Jackson, who was so indignant that he finally sent me home, saying that I was not worth the bother of such a worrying mother.
    A few weeks later, however, I developed asthma. The attacks grew so severe that Mother was convinced I had tuberculosis and promptly took me to Brompton Hospital, where I was given a thorough examination. Nothing was found wrong with my lungs, but I did have asthma. For months I went through agony, unable to breathe. At times I wanted to jump out of the window. Inhaling herbs with a blanket over my head gave little relief. But, as the doctor said I would, I eventually outgrew it.
    My memory of this period goes in and out of focus. The outstanding impression was a quagmire of miserable circumstances. I cannot remember where Sydney was; being four years older, he only occasionally entered my consciousness. He was possibly living with Grandfather to relieve Mother’s penury. We seemed to vacillate from one abode to another, eventually ending up in a small garret at 3 Pownall Terrace.
    I was well aware of the social stigma of our poverty. Even the poorest of children sat down to a home-cooked Sunday dinner. A roast at home meant respectability, a ritual that distinguished one poor class from another. Those who could not sit down to Sunday dinner at home were of the mendicant class, and we were that. Mother would send me to the nearest coffee-shop to buy a sixpenny dinner (meat and two vegetables). The shame of it – especially on Sunday! I would harry her for not preparing something at home, and she would vainly try to explain that cooking at home would cost twice as much.
    However, one lucky Friday, after winning five shillings at horse-racing, Mother, to please me, decided to cook dinner on Sunday. Amongst other delectables she bought a piece of roasting meat that could not make up its mind whether to be beef or a lump of suet. It weighed about five pounds and had a sign stuck in it: ‘For Roasting’.
    Mother, having no oven, used the landlady’s and, being tooshy to keep going in and out of her kitchen, had haphazardly guessed the time needed to roast it. Consequently, to our dismay, our joint had shrunk to the size of a cricket ball. Nevertheless, in spite of Mother’s averring that our sixpenny dinners were less trouble and more palatable, I enjoyed it and felt the gratification of having lived up to the Joneses.
    *
    A sudden change came into our lives. Mother met an old friend who had become very prosperous, a flamboyant, good-looking, Junoesque type of woman who had given up the stage to become the mistress of a wealthy old colonel. She lived in the fashionable district of Stockwell; and in her enthusiasm at meeting Mother again, she invited us to stay with her during the summer. As Sydney was away in the country hop-picking, it took little inducement to persuade Mother, who, with the wizardry of her needle, made herself quite presentable, and I, dressed in my Sunday suit, a relic of the Eight Lancashire Lads, looked quite presentable for the occasion.
    Thus overnight we were transported to a very sedate corner house in Lansdowne Square, ensconced in the lap of luxury, with a house full of servants, pink and blue bedrooms, chintz curtains and white bear-rugs; moreover, we lived on the fat of the land. How well