My Autobiography (17 page)

And after paying the driver to take her back to the Folies Bergère, I got out, a very sad and disillusioned young man.

We could have stayed at the Folies Bergère ten weeks, as we were a great success, but Mr Karno had other bookings. My salary was six pounds a week, and I spent every penny of it. A cousin of my brother’s, related to Sydney’s father in some way, made himself known to me. He was rich and belonged to the so-called upper class, and during his stay in Paris he showed me a very good time. He was stage-struck and even went so far as having his moustache shaved off in order to pass as a member of our company, so that he could be allowed back stage. Unfortunately, he had to return to England, where I understand he was hauled over the coals by his august parents and sent to South America.

Before going to Paris, I had heard that Hetty’s troupe were playing at the Folies Bergère, so I was all set to meet her again. The night I arrived I went back stage and made inquiries, but I learnt from one of the ballet girls that the troupe had left a week previously for Moscow. While I was talking to the girl a harsh voice came over the stairs:

‘Come here at once! How dare you talk to strangers!’

It was the girl’s mother. I tried to explain that I merely wanted information about a friend of mine, but the mother ignored me. ‘Never mind talking to that man, come up here at once.’

I was annoyed at her crassness. Later, however, I became better acquainted with her. She lived in the same hotel as I did with her two daughters, who were members of the Folies Bergère ballet The younger, thirteen, was the
première danseuse
, very pretty and talented, but the older one, fifteen, had neither talent nor looks. The mother was French, buxom and about forty, married to a Scotsman who was living in England. After we opened at the Folies Bergère, she came to me and apologized for being so abrupt. That was the beginning of a very friendly relationship. I was continually invited to their rooms for tea, which they made in their bedroom.

When I think back, I was incredibly innocent. One afternoon when the children were out and Mama and I were alone her attitude became strange and she began to tremble as she poured the tea. I had been talking about my hopes and dreams, my loves and disappointments, and she became quite moved. As I got up to put my tea-cup on the table, she came over to me.

‘You are sweet,’ she said, cupping my face with her hands and looking intensely into my eyes. ‘Such a nice boy as you should not be hurt.’ Her gaze became inverse, strange and hypnotic, and her voice trembled. ‘Do you know, I love you like a son,’ she said, still holding my face in her hands. Then slowly her face came to mine, and she kissed me.

‘Thank you,’ I said, sincerely – and innocently kissed her back. She continued transfixing me with her gaze, her lips trembling and her eyes glazed, then, suddenly checking herself, she went about pouring a fresh cup of tea. Her manner had changed and a certain humour played about her mouth. ‘You are very sweet,’ she said, ‘I like you very much.’

She confided in me about her daughters. ‘The young one is a very good girl,’ she said, ‘but the older must be watched; she is becoming a problem.’

After the show she would invite me to supper in her large bedroom in which she and her younger daughter slept, and before returning to my room I would kiss the mother and her younger daughter good-night; I would then have to go through a small room where the elder daughter slept. One night as I was passing through the room, she beckoned to me and whispered: ‘Leave your door open and I will come up when the family is asleep.’ Believe it or not, I threw her back on her bed indignantly and stalked out of the room. At the end of their engagement at the Folies Bergère, I heard that the elder daughter, still in her fifteenth year, had run off with a dog-trainer, a heavy-set German of sixty.

But I was not as innocent as I appeared. Members of the troupe and I occasionally spent a night carousing through the bordels and doing all the hoydenish things that youth will do. One night, after drinking several absinthes, I got into a fight with an ex-lightweight prize-fighter named Ernie Stone. It started in a restaurant, and after the waiters and the police had separated us he said: ‘I’ll see you at the hotel,’ where we were both staying. He had the room above me, and at four in the morning I rolled home and knocked at his door.

‘Come in,’ he said briskly, ‘and take off your shoes so we won’t make a noise.’

Quietly we stripped to the waist, then faced each other. We hit
and ducked for what seemed an interminable length of time. Several times he hit me square on the chin, but to no effect. ‘I thought you could punch,’ I sneered. He made a lunge, missed and smashed his head against the wall, almost knocking himself out. I tried to finish him off, but my punches were weak. I could hit him with impunity, but I had no strength behind my punch. Suddenly, I received a blow full in the mouth which shook my front teeth, and that sobered me up. ‘Enough,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to lose my teeth.’ He came over and embraced me, then looked in the mirror: I had cut his face to ribbons. My hands were swollen like boxing gloves, and blood was on the ceiling, on the curtains and on the walls. How it got there, I do not know.

During the night the blood trickled down the side of my mouth and across my neck. The little
première danseuse
, who used to bring me up a cup of tea in the morning, screamed, thinking I had committed suicide. And I have never fought anyone since.

One night the interpreter came to me saying that a celebrated musician wanted to meet me, and would I go to his box? The invitation was mildly interesting, for in the box with him was a most beautiful, exotic lady, a member of the Russian Ballet. The interpreter introduced me. The gentleman said that he had enjoyed my performance and was surprised to see how young I was. At these compliments I bowed politely, occasionally taking a furtive glance at his friend. ‘You are instinctively a musician and a dancer,’ said he.

Feeling there was no reply to this compliment other than to smile sweetly, I glanced at the interpreter and bowed politely. The musician stood up and extended his hand and I stood up. ‘Yes,’ he said, shaking my hand, ‘you are a true artist.’ After we left I turned to the interpreter: ‘Who was the lady with him?’

‘She is a Russian ballet dancer, Mademoiselle —’ It was a very long and difficult name.

‘And what was the gentleman’s name?’ I asked.

‘Debussy,’ he answered, ‘the celebrated composer.’

‘Never heard of him,’ I remarked.

It was the year of the famous scandal and trial of Madame Steinheil, who was tried and found not guilty of murdering her husband; the year of the sensational ‘pom-pom’ dance that showed couples indecently rotating together in a libidinous display;
the year incredible tax laws were passed of sixpence in the pound on personal income; the year Debussy introduced his
Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune
to England, where it was booed and the audience walked out.

*

With sadness I returned to England and began a tour of the provinces. What a contrast to Paris! Those mournful Sunday evenings in northern towns: everything closed, and the doleful clang of reprimanding bells that accompanied carousing youths and giggling wenches parading the darkened high streets and back alleys. It was their only Sunday evening diversion.

Six months had drifted by in England and I had settled down to my usual routine, when news came from the London office that made life more exciting. Mr Karno informed me that I was to take the place of Harry Weldon in the second season of
The Football Match
. Now I felt that my star was in the ascendant. This was my chance. Although I had made a success in
Mumming Birds
and other sketches in our repertoire, those were minor achievements compared to playing the lead in
The Football Match
. Moreover, we were to open at the Oxford, the most important music hall in London. We were to be the main attraction and I was to have my name featured for the first time at the top of the bill. This was a considerable step up. If I were a success at the Oxford it would establish a kudos that would enable me to demand a large salary and eventually branch out with my own sketches, in fact it would lead to all sorts of wonderful schemes. As practically the same cast was engaged for
The Football Match
, we needed only a week’s rehearsal. I had thought a great deal about how to play the part. Harry Weldon had a Lancashire accent. I decided to play it as a cockney.

But at the first rehearsal I had an attack of laryngitis. I did everything to save my voice, speaking in whispers, inhaling vapours and spraying my throat, until anxiety robbed me of all unctuousness and comedy for the part.

On the opening night, every vein and cord in my throat was strained to the utmost with a vengeance. But I could not be heard. Karno came round afterwards with an expression of mingled disappointment and contempt. ‘No one could hear you,’ he said reprovingly. I assured him that my voice would be better the next
night, but it was not. In fact it was worse, for it had been forced to such a degree that I was in danger of losing it completely. The next night my understudy went on. As a consequence the engagement finished after the first week. All my hopes and dreams of that Oxford engagement had collapsed, and the disappointment of it laid me low with influenza.

*

I had not seen Hetty in over a year. In a state of weakness and melancholy after the flu, I thought of her again and wandered late one night towards her home in Camberwell. But the house was empty with a sign: ‘To Let’.

I continued wandering the streets with no special objective. Suddenly out of the night a figure appeared, crossing the road and coming towards me.

‘Charlie! What are you doing up this way?’ It was Hetty. She was dressed in a black sealskin coat with a round sealskin hat.

‘I came to meet you,’ I said jokingly.

She smiled. ‘You’re very thin.’

I told her I had just recovered from flu. She was seventeen now, quite pretty and smartly dressed.

‘But the thing is, what are you doing up this way?’ I asked.

‘I’ve been visiting a friend and now I’m going to my brother’s house. Would you like to come along?’ she answered.

On the way, she told me that her sister had married an American millionaire, Frank J. Gould, and that they lived in Nice, and that she was leaving London in the morning to join them.

That evening I stood watching her dancing coquettishly with her brother. She was acting silly and siren-like with him, and in spite of myself I could not preclude a feeling that my ardour for her had slightly diminished. Had she become commonplace like any other girl? The thought saddened me, and I found myself looking at her objectively.

Her figure had developed, and I noticed the contours of her breasts and thought their protuberance small and not very alluring. Would I marry her even if I could afford to? No, I did not want to marry anyone.

As I walked home with her on that cold and brilliant night, I must have been sadly objective as I spoke about the possibility of
her having a very wonderful and happy life. ‘You sound so wistful, I could almost weep,’ she said.

That night I went home feeling triumphant, for I had touched her with my sadness and had made my personality felt.

Karno put me back into
Mumming Birds
and, ironically, it was not more than a month before I completely recovered my voice. Great as my disappointment was about
The Football Match
, I tried not to dwell on it. But I was haunted by a thought that perhaps I was not equal to taking Weldon’s place. And behind it all was the ghost of my failure at the Foresters’. As I had not fully retrieved my confidence, every new sketch in which I played the leading comedy part was a trial of fear. And now the alarming and a most resolute day came to notify Mr Karno that my contract had run out and that I wanted a raise.

Karno could be cynical and cruel to anyone he disliked. Because he liked me I had never seen that side of him, but he could indeed be most crushing in a vulgar way. During a performance of one of his comedies, if he did not like a comedian, he would stand in the wings and hold his nose and give an audible raspberry. But he did this once too often and the comedian left the stage and lunged at him; that was the last time he resorted to such vulgar measures. And now I stood confronting him about a new contract.

‘Well,’ he said, smiling cynically, ‘you want a raise and the theatre circuits want a cut.’ He shrugged. ‘Since the fiasco at the Oxford Music Hall, we’ve had nothing but complaints. They say the company’s not up to the mark – a scratch crowd.’
^*

‘Well, they can hardly blame me for that,’ I said.

‘But they do,’ he answered, pinning me with a steady gaze.

‘What do they complain about?’ I asked.

He cleared his throat and looked at the floor. ‘They say you’re not competent.’

Although the remark hit me in the pit of the stomach, it also infuriated me, but I replied calmly: ‘Well, other people don’t think so, and they’re willing to give me more than I’m getting here.’ This was not true – I had no other offer.

‘They say the show is awful and the comedian’s no good.
Here,’ he said, picking up the phone, ‘I’ll call up the Star, Bermondsey, and you can hear for yourself… I understand you did poor business last week,’ he said over the phone.

‘Lousy!’ came a voice.

Karno grinned. ‘How do you account for it?’

‘A dud show!’

‘What about Chaplin, the principal comedian? Wasn’t he any good?’

‘He stinks!’ said the voice.

Karno offered me the phone and grinned. ‘Listen for yourself.’

I took the phone. ‘Maybe he stinks, but not half as much as your stink-pot theatre!’ I said.

Karno’s attempt to cut me down was not a success. I told him that if he also felt that way there was no need to renew my contract. Karno in many ways was a shrewd man, but he was not a psychologist. Even if I did stink it wasn’t good business of Karno to have a man at the other end of the phone tell me so. I was getting five pounds and, although my confidence was low, I demanded six. To my surprise Karno gave it to me, and again I entered his good graces.