On the way to Manchester I stopped at Stratford-on-Avon, a place I had never visited. I arrived late Saturday night, and after supper took a walk, hoping to find Shakespeare’s cottage. The night was pitch-black but I instinctively turned down a street and stopped outside a house, lit a match and saw a sign: ‘Shakespeare’s Cottage’. No doubt a kindred spirit had led the way – possibly the Bard!
In the morning Sir Archibald Flower, the Mayor of Stratford, called at the hotel and conducted me over Shakespeare’s cottage. I can by no means associate the Bard with it; that such a mind ever dwelt or had its beginnings there, seems incredible. It is easy to imagine a farmer’s boy emigrating to London and becoming a successful actor and theatre-owner; but for him to have become the great poet and dramatist, and to have had such knowledge of foreign courts, cardinals and kings, is inconceivable to me. I am not concerned with who wrote the works of Shakespeare, whether Bacon, Southampton or Richmond, but I can hardly think it was the Stratford boy. Whoever wrote them had an aristocratic attitude. His utter disregard for grammar could only have been the attitude of a princely, gifted mind. And after seeing the cottage and hearing the scant bits of local information concerning his desultory boyhood, his indifferent school record, his poaching and his country bumpkin point of view, I cannot believe he went through such a mental metamorphosis as to become the greatest of all poets. In the work of the greatest of geniuses humble beginnings will reveal themselves somewhere – but one cannot trace the slightest sign of them in Shakespeare.
From Stratford I motored up to Manchester and arrived about three in the afternoon. It was Sunday and Manchester was cataleptic; hardly a soul stirred on the streets. So I was happy to get back to the car and be on my way to Blackburn.
When touring as a boy in Sherlock Holmes, Blackburn had been one of my favourite towns. I used to stay at a little pub there for fourteen shillings a week, board and lodging, and in the off hours play on their small billiard-table. Billington, England’s hangman, used to frequent the place and it was my boast that I had played billiards with him.
Although it was only five o’clock and quite dark when we arrived in Blackburn, I found my pub and had a drink there unrecognized. The ownership had changed hands, but my old friend the billiard-table was still there.
Later I groped my way to the market square, about three acres of blackness which could not have been lit by more than three or four street-lamps. Several groups were listening to political speakers. At the time it was the depth of England’s depression. I walked from one group to another, listening to the various speeches: some were sharp and bitter; one talked of socialism, another of Communism and another of the Douglas Plan, which, unfortunately, was too involved for the average worker to understand. Listening to the smaller groups that formed after the meeting, I was surprised to find an old Victorian conservative airing his views. Said he: ‘The trouble is that England has been living off our own fat too long; the dole is ruining England!’ In the dark I could not resist my twopence worth, so I piped in: ‘Without the dole there’d be no England,’ and I was supported by a few ‘hear, hears!’
The political outlook was cynical. England had almost four million unemployed – and the number was increasing – yet the Labour Party had little to offer that was different from the Conservative Party.
I went down to Woolwich and heard an election address by Mr Cunningham Reid on behalf of the Liberal contestant. Although he spoke a lot of political sophistry, he promised nothing and made little impression on that constituency. Shouted a young cockney girl, sitting next to me: ‘Never mind all that high-class chatter, tell us what you’re going to do for four million unemployed, then we’ll know whether to vote for your party or not.’
If she was an example of the political rank and file, there was hope for Labour winning the election, I thought – but I was mistaken. After Snowden’s speech over the radio, it was a landslide for the Conservatives and a peerage for Snowden. Thus I left England with a Conservative government on the way in and arrived in America with a Conservative government on the way out.
*
A holiday at best is an empty pursuit. I had dilly-dallied around the resorts of Europe too long – and I knew why. I was aimless and frustrated. Since the innovation of sound in movies, I could not determine my future plans. Although City Lights was a great triumph and had made more money than any talking picture at that time, I felt that to make another silent film would be giving myself a handicap – also I was obsessed by a depressing fear of being old-fashioned. Although a good silent film was more artistic, I had to admit that sound made characters more present.
Occasionally I mused over the possibility of making a sound film, but the thought sickened me, for I realized I could never achieve the excellence of my silent pictures. It would mean giving up my tramp character entirely. Some people suggested that the tramp might talk. This was unthinkable, for the first word he ever uttered would transform him into another person. Besides, the matrix out of which he was born was as mute as the rags he wore.
It was these melancholy thoughts that kept me on a prolonged holiday, but my conscience kept nagging at me: ‘Get back to Hollywood and work!’
After my trip up north, I returned to the Carlton in London, intending to make reservations for returning to California via New York, when a telegram from
