My Autobiography (49 page)

He laughed. ‘If you were in England we’d cut your head off for that remark.’

An evening or so later he invited me to dinner in his suite at the hotel. Two other guests were there, also his son Randolph, a handsome stripling of sixteen, who was esurient for intellectual argument and had the criticism of intolerant youth. I could see that Winston was very proud of him. It was a delightful evening in which father and son bantered about inconsequential things. We met several times after that at Marion’s beach-house before he returned to England.

And now we were in London Mr Churchill invited Ralph and me to Chartwell for the week-end. We had a cold, bitter drive getting there. Chartwell is a lovely old house, modestly furnished, but in good taste, with a family feeling about it. It was not until this second visit to London that I really began to know Churchill. At this period he was a back-bencher in the House of Commons.

Sir Winston, I should imagine, has had more fun than most of us. On the stage of life he has played many parts with courage, zest and a remarkable enthusiasm. He has missed very few pleasures in this world. Life has been good to him. He has lived well and played well – and for the highest stakes and won. He has enjoyed power but has never been obsessed by it. In his busy life he has found time for hobbies: brick-laying, horse-racing and painting. In the dining-room I noticed a still-life painting over the fireplace. Winston saw me showing a keen interest in it.

‘I did that.’

‘But how remarkable!’ I said enthusiastically.

‘Nothing to it – saw a man painting a landscape in the South of France and said: “I can do that”.’

The next morning he showed me the walls around Chartwell which he himself had built. I was astonished and said something about brick-laying not being as easy as it looks.

‘I’ll show you how and you’ll do it in five minutes.’

At dinner the first night there were several young Members of Parliament who, metaphorically, sat at his feet, including Mr Boothby, now Lord Boothby, and the late Brendan Bracken, who became Lord Bracken, both charming and interesting talkers. I told them I was going to meet Gandhi, who was in London at that time.

‘We’ve catered to this man long enough,’ said Bracken. ‘Hunger strikes or no, they should put him in jail and keep him there. Unless we are firm we shall lose India.’

‘Jailing him would be a very simple solution if it would work,’ I interposed, ‘but if you imprison one Gandhi, another will arise. He is a symbol of what the Indian people want, and until they get what they want they will produce one Gandhi after another.’

Churchill turned to me and smiled. ‘You would make a good Labour Member.’

The charm of Churchill is in his tolerance and respect for other people’s opinions. He seems not to bear malice with those who disagree with him.

Bracken and Boothby left that first night and the next day I saw Winston intimately with his family. It was a day of political tumult, Lord Beaverbrook telephoning Chartwell all day and Winston being interrupted several times during dinner. This was during the election and in the midst of the economic crisis.

I was amused at meal-times, for Winston would politically perorate at the dinner table, while the family sat complacently unmoved. One felt it was a frequent procedure and they were used to it.

‘The Ministry talks of the difficulties of balancing the Budget,’ said Churchill, casting a furtive glance at his family, then at me, ‘of having reached the limit of its appropriations, of having nothing further to tax, when England is stirring its tea like syrup.’ He paused for the effect.

‘Is it possible that the Budget could be balanced by an additional tax on tea?’ I asked.

He looked at me and hesitated. ‘Yes,’ he answered – but not with conviction, I thought.

I was charmed by the simplicity and almost spartan taste at Chartwell. His bedroom was a combined library with an overflow of books stacked up against the walls on all sides. One side was
devoted entirely to Hansard’s Parliamentary Reports. There were also many volumes on Napoleon. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘I’m a great admirer of him.’

‘I hear you are interested in filming Napoleon,’ said he. ‘You should do it – great comedy possibilities: Napoleon taking a bath, his brother Jerome bursting in upon him, arrayed in gold-braided uniform, using the moment to embarrass Napoleon and make him acquiesce to his demands. But Napoleon deliberately slips in the tub and splashes the water all over his brother’s uniform, telling him to get out. He exits ignominiously – a wonderful comedy scene.’

I remember Mr and Mrs Churchill lunching at Quaglino’s restaurant. Winston sat looking boyishly disgruntled. I went over to their table to greet them. ‘You look as though you have swallowed the weight of the world,’ I said, smilingly.

He said he had just come from a debate in the House of Commons and did not like what was being discussed about Germany. I made an airy comment, but he shook his head. ‘Oh no, it’s very serious, very serious indeed.’

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I met Gandhi shortly after my stay with Churchill. I have always respected and admired Gandhi for his political astuteness and his iron will. But I thought his visit to London was a mistake. His legendary significance evaporated in the London scene, and his religious display fell short of impressiveness. In the cold dank climate of England, wearing his traditional loin-cloth, which he gathered about him in disorderly fashion, he seemed incongruous. It made his presence in London food for glibness and caricature. One’s impressiveness is greater at a distance. I had been asked if I would like to meet him. Of course I was thrilled.

I met him in a humble little house in the slum district off the East India Dock Road. Crowds filled the streets and the Press and the photographers packed both floors. The interview took place in an upstairs front room about twelve feet square. The Mahatma had not yet arrived; and as I waited I began to think of what I would say to him. I had heard of his imprisonment and hunger strikes, and his fight for the freedom of India, and vaguely knew of his opposition to the use of machinery.

When at last he arrived there was hooraying and cheering as he
stepped out of the taxi, gathering about him the folds of his loincloth. It was a strange scene in that crowded little slum street, that alien figure entering a humble house, accompanied by cheering throngs. He came upstairs and showed himself at the window, then beckoned to me, and together we waved to the crowds below.

The room was suddenly attacked by flash-lights from the cameras as we sat on the sofa. I was on the Mahatma’s right. Now came that uneasy, terrifying moment when I should say something astutely intelligent upon a subject I knew little about. Seated on my right was a persistant young lady telling me a long story of which I did not hear a word, but I nodded approvingly, wondering all the time what I would say to Gandhi. I knew I had to start the ball rolling, that it was not up to the Mahatma to tell me how much he enjoyed my last film, and so forth – I doubted if he had ever seen a film. However, an Indian lady’s commanding voice suddenly interrupted the verbose young woman: ‘Miss, will you kindly finish your conversation and let Mr Chaplin talk to Gandhi?’

The packed room grew suddenly silent. And as the Mahatma’s mask-like expression was one of waiting, I felt that all India was also waiting on my words. So I cleared my throat. ‘Naturally I am in sympathy with India’s aspirations and struggle for freedom,’ I said. ‘Nonetheless, I am somewhat confused by your abhorrence of machinery.’

The Mahatma nodded and smiled as I continued: ‘After all, if machinery is used in the altruistic sense, it should help to release man from the bondage of slavery, and give him shorter hours of labour and time to improve his mind and enjoy life.’

‘I understand,’ he said, speaking calmly, ‘but before India can achieve those aims she must first rid herself of English rule. Machinery in the past has made us dependent on England, and the only way we can rid ourselves of that dependence is to boycott all goods made by machinery. That is why we have made it the patriotic duty of every Indian to spin his own cotton and weave his own cloth. That is our form of attacking a very powerful nation like England – and, of course, there are other reasons. India has a different climate from England; and her habits and wants are different. In England the cold weather necessitates arduous industry and an involved economy. You need the
industry of eating utensils; we use our fingers. And so it translates into manifold differences.’

I got a lucid object lesson in tactical manoeuvring in India’s fight for freedom, inspired, paradoxically, by a realistic, virile-minded visionary with a will of iron to carry it out. He also told me that supreme independence is to shed oneself of unnecessary things, and that violence eventually destroys itself.

When the room cleared, he asked me if I would like to remain and see them at prayers. The Mahatma sat cross-legged on the floor while five others sat in a circle with him. It was a curious sight: six figures squatting on the floor in that small room, in the heart of the London slums, as a saffron sun was rapidly sinking behind the roof-tops, and myself sitting on a sofa looking down at them, while they humbly intoned their prayer. What a paradox, I thought, as I watched this extremely realistic man, with his astute legal mind and his profound sense of political reality, all of which seemed to vanish in a sing-song chant.

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At the opening of
City Lights
it rained torrents, but the goodly crowd was there and the picture went over very well. I took my seat in the circle next to Bernard Shaw, which caused much laughter and applause. We were made to stand up together and bow. This caused renewed laughter.

Churchill came to the première and to the supper party afterwards. He made a speech to the effect that he wished to toast a man who had started out as a lad from across the river and had achieved the world’s affection – Charlie Chaplin! It was unexpected and I was a little bowled over, especially when he prefaced his remark with ‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen.’ However, imbued with the formality of the occasion – besides other things – I responded in like manner: ‘My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, as my friend the late Chancellor of the Exchequer –’ I got no further. There was quite a gahoff. And I heard a booming voice repeating: ‘The late, the late! I like that, the late!’ Of course it was Churchill. When I recovered I remarked: ‘Well, it seems peculiar to say the “ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer”.’

Malcolm MacDonald, son of the Labour Prime Minister, Ramsay MacDonald, invited Ralph and me to meet his father and
spend the night at Chequers. We met the Prime Minister along the road as he was taking his constitutional walk in his plus-fours, his scarf, his cap, his pipe and walking stick, a typical country squire, the last person to look like a leader of the Labour Party. My first impression was of a gentleman of great dignity, extremely conscious of the burden of premiership, with a noble countenance which was not without humour.

The first part of the evening was somewhat restrained. But after dinner we went to the famous historical Long Room for coffee, and after viewing the original Cromwellian death mask and other historical objects we got down to a cosy chat. I told him that since my first visit there was a great change for the better. In 1921 I had seen much poverty in London, grey-haired old ladies sleeping on the Thames Embankment, but now those old ladies were gone; no more were derelicts sleeping there. The shops looked well stocked and the children well shod, and that, surely, must be to the credit of the Labour Government.

He wore an inscrutable expression and let me go on without interruption. I asked him if the Labour Government, which I understood to be a socialist government, had the power to alter basically the constitution of the country. His eyes twinkled and he replied humourously: ‘It should do, but that is the paradox of British politics: the moment one appropriates power one becomes impotent.’ He reflected a moment, then told the story of his being first called to Buckingham Palace as Prime Minister. Said His Majesty, greeting him cordially: ‘Well, what are you socialists going to do about me?’

The Prime Minister laughed and said: ‘Nothing but try to serve Your Majesty and the country’s best interest.’

During the election, Lady Astor invited Ralph and me to spend the week-end at her house in Plymouth and to meet T. E. Lawrence, who was also to spend the week-end there. But for some reason Lawrence did not show up. However, she invited us to her constituency and to a meeting at the dock-side where she was to speak before some fishermen. She asked if I would say a few words. I warned her that I was for Labour and could not really endorse her politics.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said; ‘it is only that they would like to see you, that’s all.’

It was an open-air meeting and we spoke from a large truck. The bishop of her constituency was there and seemed in a rather irritable mood and greeted us perfunctorily, I thought. After Lady Astor’s short introductory speech, I got up on the truck. ‘How do you do, friends,’ I said. ‘It’s all very well for us millionaires to tell you how to vote, but our circumstances are quite different from yours.’

Suddenly I heard an exclamation from the bishop. ‘Bravo!’ said he.

I continued: ‘Lady Astor and yourselves may have something in common – what it is I don’t know. I think you know better than I do.’

‘Excellent! Very good!’ exclaimed the bishop.

‘As to her politics and past record in representing this eh – eh – ’ ‘Constituency,’ said the bishop – any time I hesitated he would give me the word – ‘Lady Astor’s record must be very satisfactory,’ and I finished by saying that I knew her to be a very sweet and kindly woman with the best of intentions. When I stepped down, the bishop was all glowing and smiles and shook my hand heartily.

There is a strong sense of frankness and sincerity about the English clergy that is a reflection of England at its best. It is men like Dr Hewlett Johnson and Canon Collins and many other prelates that give vitality to the English Church.

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