"No, I don't want to see any of them to-day." I am too tired. I find that it would be too much effort.
So I go home, after drinking in all the beauties of the evening, the twilight, and the loveliness of Adelphi Terrace. This requires no effort. I can just drift along on my own, let thoughts come and go as they will, and never have to think about being polite and wondering if I am holding my own in intelligent discussion that is sure to arise when one meets great minds. I wasted the evening just then. Some other time, I know, I am going to want Shaw and Barrie.
I drift along with the sight and am carried back a hundred years, two hundred, a thousand. I seem to see the ghosts of King Charles and others of Old England with the tombstones epitaphed in Old English and dating back even to the eleventh century.
It is all fragrant and too fleeting. We must get back to the hotel to dress for dinner.
Then Knoblock, Sonny, Geraghty, and a few others dine with me at the Embassy Club, but Knoblock, who is tired, leaves after dinner. Along about ten o'clock Sonny, Geraghty, Donald Crist, Carl Robinson, and myself decide to take a ride. We make toward Lambeth. I want to show them Lambeth. I feel as if it is mine—a choice discovery and possession that I wish to display.
I recall an old photographer's shop in the Westminster Bridge Road just before you come to the bridge. I want to see it again. We get out there. I remember having seen a picture framed in that window when I was a boy—a picture of Dan Leno, who was an idol of mine in those days.
The picture was still there, so is the photographer—the name "Sharp" is still on the shop. I tell my friends that I had my picture taken here about fifteen years ago, and we went inside to see if we could get one of the photos.
"My name is Chaplin," I told the person behind the counter. "You photographed me fifteen years ago. I want to buy some copies."
"Oh, we destroyed the negative long ago," the person behind the counter thus dismisses me.
"Have you destroyed Mr. Leno's negative?" I ask him.