The few superfluities which appeal to Charlie Chaplin must have some association of romance. For example, he is very fond of mangoes, and every evening that a certain Los Angeles cafÉ has this delicacy the manager calls up Chaplin’s house. When Charlie sits down in front of a glass of this exotic fruit he is positively radiant.

“Lovely musty odor!” he will comment. To him the delicacy calls up visions of long-robed, wide-sleeved Eastern men, of caravans winding threadlike across the desert, and of incense rising in fretted temples from the feet of golden gods. Every bit of him goes out to meet this glamourous suggestion just exactly as every bit of him goes out to meet the broad, rollicking humor of the derby pulled off by the string.

Domesticity does not fit into my conception of his character. He is too individual, too much oppressed by threat of routine, to sustain any such close relationship. One can as easily imagine De Musset or Verlaine mowing the front lawn of his suburban home as Chaplin responding contentedly to like conditions.

My association of his name with these two great French poets is not accidental. For Chaplin is not a mere comedian. He is a poet—the great poet of the screen. His fierce rebellions against man-made fetters which would trammel the individual soul in its progress toward complete expression, his sensitiveness to impression, his strange combination of emotionality and complete detachment—these ally him in spirit with the youngest and fieriest of bards. Surely, too, his professional achievement is consistent with this spirit. For Chaplin has brought from the borderland of the subconscious mind those emotions which he sets before you. In that single small figure with the baggy trousers and the flopping shoes he reveals the loneliness and frailty, the lurking irresponsibility, the fears and aspirations—all the intermingled pathos and humour of the universal soul.

“Shoulder Arms,” for example. Here Chaplin bears for you the real Everyman at war. Stripped of his bombast and fine speeches, of the brave front which he presents to his fellows, the soldier stands stark before you. It is a poet’s realisation of those things buried beneath the surface of garb and manner and every-day speech, and it is all of a poet’s concrete expression of them.

One evening while I was dining with Chaplin in Los Angeles a very smartly dressed woman leading a small boy by the hand entered the restaurant. The moment that the latter caught sight of the comedian he rushed over to him and threw his arms about Chaplin’s neck. There was a look of rapture in the big brown eyes which I have never forgotten.

After the enthusiasm of this greeting had ebbed away Charlie introduced the pair. It was Jackie Coogan and his mother. When they had moved on from our table Chaplin turned to me.

“There’s a boy you ought to have,” he commented. “He’s a great actor.”

Possibly Chaplin never shone more brightly in any human relationship than he has in his association with Jackie Coogan. The tremendous love and tenderness which he expressed for “The Kid” on the screen had, in fact, a source of actual feeling. He really loved and does love this small boy. As to the latter, I have already indicated in my account of his greeting how touchingly Jackie returns this affection.

If you ask the tiny star to-day who is his best friend his answer is prompt: “Charlie Chaplin.” Equally loyal is the professional sting he gives to his friend. One day somebody asked him who was the greatest living actor.

“Charlie Chaplin, of course,” he retorted.

“And who is the second greatest?” persisted his interviewer.

“Jackie Coogan,” he answered with all the serenity of the critical mind that is unshaken by any personal consideration.

“And the third?”

“Oh,” said he, obviously somewhat impatient with the doggedness of this research, “I have told you the two greatest. What does it matter about the third?”

Even in that first casual greeting with this gifted boy I was struck by the perfect unconsciousness which sets Jackie apart from the ordinary stage child. He didn’t seem to realise in the least that he was a famous personage, and I hear that it has been kept from him always—the enormity of his earnings, the fact that he, a lad not quite eight years old, has already earned almost a million dollars. Certainly that evening he was just a kid radiant at seeing the grown-up who had played games with him much more absorbedly than any other small boy could have done. Indeed, I have always been told in Hollywood by people who knew the Coogans well that he is first of all a real boy possessing perhaps even more than the average boy’s affinity with dirt.

Not long ago a friend of mine dropped in to see the small star. It was during the production of “Oliver Twist,” and the set was pre-empted by some older members of the company. For a time Jackie, attired in blue overalls, listened to the director’s voice and watched the rival talent. Then, going over to his father, he caught the other’s hands and looked up appealingly into his face.

“Oh, Daddy,” he pleaded, “I’m not getting any kick out of this. Mayn’t I go outside and play?”

When this permission was granted Jackie availed himself of an opportunity to assemble his favourite playthings. These consist of a hammer, some old nails, and a plot of ground outside the studio. Here for half an hour the juvenile actor, who might recruit the most costly electrical toys—these have been showered upon him by people all over the world—squatted on the ground and hammered his beloved nails into stray pieces of wood.

While he was thus occupied the friend I have mentioned happened to refer to the gold chain she was wearing as looking like a royal decoration. “The Order of the Golden Fleece,” she added laughingly to the group of older people watching with her over Jackie’s recreation.

He stopped his hammering for an instant and quickly, with a look of most eager intelligence, he lifted his eyes to her face.

“The Golden Fleece,” he repeated. “Oh, I know all about that. It’s what Jason sailed after.”

I quote this to show the information already at the command of this astounding lad. All I have heard from Chaplin and from others convinces me, in fact, that his histrionic ability is accompanied by one of those childish minds which work in all directions, which positively have to be held back from learning too much.

One incident in connection with the production of “The Kid” throws into relief Chaplin’s feeling for his small co-star. He was directing the child in a particularly affecting scene when suddenly he turned to Jackie’s father.

“You direct him—I can’t stand it!” he said, turning away quickly. The child’s tears, even though histrionic ones, had been too much for the high-strung, emotional Chaplin.

Charlie’s devotion to Jackie Coogan is explicable to me after one glimpse of the child. So, too, are the words of a certain woman I know. “There is something about that boy,” says the latter, “that always makes me feel like crying. I don’t know why, for he seems so gay and happy.” I myself caught in an instant that same touching, even solemn, quality. What is it? Perhaps because in those wide childish eyes one feels a wisdom brought from some other world and not yet dimmed by that of this.

I feel that I can not bring my recollections of Chaplin to a close at a point more deeply significant of his artist’s nature than the account of my own preview of “The Kid.” When he finished with this picture, attended as it was by his conflict with Mildred Harris, he was in an abysmal state.

“Sam,” said he one day, “I wish when you have nothing else to do you’d come over to my studio and look at my new picture. I’d like to get your opinion of it—advice, too, if you have any to offer.”

“What do you think of it?” I asked him.

“Rotten!” he answered. “I’m awfully discouraged over it.”

I had heard such comments from him before on similar occasions, for by the time that he has finished a story he has so completely lost all sense of perspective that nobody can convince him that the production has one glimmering ray of merit. Consequently I attached no importance to this mood of his. Putting down his words to the divine discontent of genius, I went over that very day with Gouverneur Morris to see “The Kid.”

Even my prejudice in favour of anything that Charlie does did not prepare me for this supreme manifestation of his artistry. Just as the world was afterward to do, Morris and I laughed and cried and gasped as the wonderful story unrolled before us.

As for Charlie, he looked at us unbelievingly. He simply could not make himself understand that we were not feigning this appreciation.

“Charlie,” I said after it was all over, “if you never had done or never should do another picture your name would go down into history as the creator of ‘The Kid.’”

With that peculiarly eager, wistful expression of his he looked at me. “You really think it’s good then?” he asked. “You’re not just saying this to make me feel encouraged?”

“If you don’t believe me,” I answered, “I’ll call in a few others to help convince you. I tell you,” I added, “let me do something, won’t you? Let me give a dinner over at my studio and then we’ll show them ‘The Kid.’”

Very reluctantly he agreed. I thereupon sent out invitations, and I don’t suppose there was ever a more brilliant constellation of names represented at any Hollywood celebration than that afforded by this preview of “The Kid” at the Goldwyn Studio. Among authors we had Sir Gilbert Parker, Somerset Maugham, Elinor Glyn, Edward Knoblach, Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, Rupert Hughes, Rex Beach, and Rita Weiman. Among the many famous personalities of the screen were Elsie Ferguson and Pauline Frederick. As this group began to concentrate upon the picture, Charlie, who had been intensely nervous throughout the course of the dinner, seemed stricken with terror.

I have attended many previews in my life, but never have I seen anything like the enthusiasm with which “The Kid” was greeted by these distinguished people of pen and screen and stage. Tears streamed down the faces of many of the women and some of the men. Shouts of laughter were interspersed with cries of applause. Yet still little Chaplin sitting here beside me, could not believe in the miracle of success.

“Do you really think they like it—are you sure it’s going over?” he would whisper to me from time to time.

I doubt if he was convinced even after the performance when many of the women went up and threw their arms about him and when even the men forgot Anglo-Saxon reserve in their congratulations.

One amusing glint from this evening is struck by a word of Elinor Glyn’s. During the course of the dinner she happened to tell us all that she had never in her life seen more than one picture. But when at the end of the evening a newspaper man present asked Mrs. Glyn how she liked “The Kid” she answered with prompt soulfulness, “The finest picture I ever saw in my life.”

I have no doubt that by this time she had persuaded herself of broad facilities of comparison.