Reading Weekly | Reading – My Childhood Story

I was born on April 16, 1889 at 8 p.m. on East Street in the Volvos district. Shortly thereafter, our family moved to West Square on St. George's Road in lambeth. According to my mother, my life was happy at that time. Our family was well-off, and the family lived in three elegantly furnished rooms. I still remember that every night before going to the theater, my mother always let me and Snowy sleep in a comfortable bed, lovingly tucked the quilts away for us, and then entrusted us to a maid. When I was three and a half years old, I had a bad time. Four years older than me, Snowy played tricks, swallowing a coin and taking it out from the back of my neck, and not to be outdone, I also swallowed a half-penny coin, so that my mother had to go to the doctor.

My mother was a comedian in the miscellaneous theater, when she was nearly thirty years old, and she was petite and delicate, her face was white, her eyes were blue-purple, and her long light brown hair was hanging down to her waist. Snowy and I both loved our mother. Although in fact, she is not a beautiful person who has fallen into the country, we all think that she is as beautiful as a heavenly immortal. Years later, people who knew her told me that she was delicate and lovely at the time, with a charming charm. She used to proudly dress up the two of us and go hiking together on Sundays, with Snowy wearing Eton College student clothes and trousers, and I wearing a blue velvet top with a pair of blue gloves. We strolled along Kennington Road and got into the limelight along the way.

In those days, everything in London was so unhurried. The beat of the action is calm; even the horse-drawn railcar, running down Westminster Bridge Road, takes a calm step, and then, at the end of the bridge, on the spinning wheel, calmly turns the corner. In those days when my mother became popular, we also lived on Westminster Bridge Road. The people there are cheerful and kind, and the streets are full of attractive shops, taverns and concert halls. This is the London of my childhood, the London of my growing emotions and the beginning of my thoughts: remembering the trivial things; remembering how I sat on the top floor of the public carriage with my mother and trying to touch the lilac branches that had been swept by; remembering the roses that had just been sprinkled, and their scents in the wetness evoked my trance-like melancholy; I remembered the penny mother's boats, which gently knocked down the chimneys as they sailed under the bridge. I believe that my soul grew in all these trifles.

Some of the objects in our living room also affected my mood: the life-size portrait of my mother, Reil Gwen, which disgusted me; the long-necked water bottles on the cutlery rack, which made me feel melancholy; the enamel surface of the small circular music box painted with angels in the clouds, which I saw with joy and confusion. What I love is the toy chair that I bought from a gypsy for 6p, and it gives me a special feeling of possession.

Some of the extraordinary events I remember were: one trip to the Royal Aquarium with my mother to watch juggling and saw "her", a living woman, sticking out her head and smiling at people in the midst of the raging fire. We also spent 6p of touches, and my mother held me up to the mouth of a large vat full of wood chips and asked me to touch a bag of unexpected things from it, which turned out to be a whistle candy that could not be blown out, and a toy ruby brooch. Another time was on a trip to the Canterbury Amusement Park, where I sat in a red velvet chair and watched my father perform...

Later, when it was dark, I sat on the roof of a carriage with four horses, and my mother wrapped me in a travel blanket with some friends from her troupe. Our trumpeters blew their trumpets, and the hooves of the horses and the clanging of their harnesses. We drove down Kennington Road, and I soaked up their joy and laughter.

Then something happened. A month after the incident, and perhaps a few days later, I suddenly realized that my mother's actions were not quite right with the situation outside. She was out with a female friend all morning that day, and she was so excited when she got home. I was playing on the floor, realizing that the atmosphere hanging over me was extremely tense, and I seemed to be listening to something under the well. Mother was crying and shouting, and she repeatedly mentioned a guy named Armstrong—Armstrong said this, Armstrong said that, look at Armstrong this beast! She was unusually agitated and nervous, so I cried, and cried so hard that my mother had to pick me up and coax me. It was a few more years before I knew what that afternoon was for. It turned out that her mother had just returned from the court, and she sued her father for not raising her children, but the lawsuit did not go well. Armstrong was my father's lawyer.

I don't quite know I have a father or that he ever lived with us. He is also a comedian with a quiet temperament, penitential heart, and dark eyes. His mother said he looked like Napoleon. He also has a loud voice and is recognized as a good entertainer. In those days, he was also able to earn a high salary of £40 a week. But he was so drunk that, according to his mother, the two divorced for this reason.

In those days, it was difficult for cabaret actors not to drink alcohol, because all theaters sold alcohol. After the actors finished acting, they always had to go to the bar attached to the theater and the patrons to drink. Some theater bars make more money than they do at the box office. Many celebrities get paid a lot not only because they have the talent to sing, but also because they spend most of their money in theater bars. Many artists have ruined their lives in tinctures, and my father is one of them. He died of excessive drinking and died at the age of thirty-seven.

Mother always spoke of things about him in a tone of humor and resentment. He was very grumpy when he drank, and once he was furious, his mother ran to Brighton with a few friends, and his father, enraged, made a telegram: "What are you going to do?" Instant power recovery! Her call back was: "Going to dance, party, picnic, honey!" ”

I don't know how deeply she felt for my father, but every time she talked about him, she didn't have a tone of resentment, and it made me suspect that she was very calm and objective at the time, and she was not deeply involved in the love network. Sometimes she recounted things about her father in a sympathetic tone, and sometimes she talked about how he drank and used force. In the years to come, whenever she was angry with me, she always said sadly, "You will die as poor as your father." ”

She had known her father before she went to Africa. The two fell in love with each other and co-starred in an Irish melodrama, Summers O'Brien. At the age of sixteen, she had already begun to play the leading role. While touring the troupe, she met a middle-aged lord and fled with him to Africa. When she returned to England, her father and she relived their old love, so they married. Three years after marriage, I was born.

I don't know anything unpleasant other than alcoholism, only that my parents divorced a year after I was born. At that time, the mother did not apply for alimony. She is qualified to be a red horn and earns £25 a week to sustain herself and her two children. It was only later that bad luck did she ask for relief, otherwise she would not have gone to court.

Her throat had long since lost its moistness. Her throat was already susceptible to infection, and if she suffered a little wind chill, she would suffer from laryngitis, and she would be sick for a few weeks, but she had to continue singing, so her voice became worse and worse. She was no longer sure of her voice. Halfway through the song, it would become hoarse, suddenly low as if it were whispering softly, and the audience would laugh and start to make a noise. She was worried about her voice, which affected her health and caused her to collapse mentally. As a result, she performed less and less in the troupe, and finally did not perform at all.

Chaplin's Autobiography, by Charlie Chaplin/ Ye Dongxin/Translation, Translation Lin Press, 2022

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