My Wonderful Visit

by Charlie Chaplin

Another son comes in. He is more like his mother. We all decide to play charades and I am selected as one of the actors. I play Orlando, the wrestler, getting a lot of fun through using a coal hod as a helmet. Then Noah's Ark, with Junior imitating the different animals going into the ark, using walking sticks as horns for a stag, and putting a hat on the end of the stick for a camel, and making elephants and many other animals through adroit, quick changes. I played old Noah and opened an umbrella and looked at the sky. Then I went into the ark and they guessed.

Then H. G. Wells did a clog dance, and did it very well. We talked far into the night, and I marvelled at Wells's vitality. We played many mental guessing games and Junior took all the honours.

I was awakened next morning by a chorus outside my door: "We want Charlie Chaplin." This was repeated many times. They had been waiting breakfast half an hour for me.

After breakfast we played a new game of H. G.'s own invention. Everyone was in it and we played it in the barn. It was a combination of handball and tennis, with rules made by H. G. Very exciting and good fun.

Then a walk to Lady Warwick's estate. As I walk I recall how dramatic it had sounded last night as I was in bed to hear the stags bellowing, evidently their cry of battle.

The castle, with beautiful gardens going to seed, seemed very sad, yet its ruins assumed a beauty for me. I liked it better that way. Ruins are majestic.

H. G. explains that everyone about is land poor. It takes on a fantastic beauty for me, this cultivation of centuries now going to seed, beautiful in its very tragedy.

Home for tea, and in the evening I teach them baseball. Here is my one chance to shine. It is funny to see H. G. try to throw a curve and being caught at first base after hitting a grounder to the pitcher. H. G. pitched, and his son caught. As a baseball player H. G. is a great writer. Dinner that night is perfect, made more enjoyable for our strenuous exercise. As I retire that night I think of what a wonderful holiday I am having.

Next day I must leave at 2.30 p.m., but in the morning H. G. and I take a walk and visit an old country church built in the eleventh century. A man is working on a tomb-stone in the churchyard, engraving an epitaph.

H. G. points out the influence of the different lords of the manor on the art changes of different periods. Here the families of Lady Warwick and other notable people are buried. The tombstones show the influence of the sculpture of all periods.