I suppose that he had that same expression of merry perversity when on the following day he told a newspaper reporter who called upon him to learn the outcome of his conversation with me, “Everything is all right. There is only one difference between Mr. Goldwyn and me. Whereas he is after art I am after money.”
Whatever the explanation, Mr. Shaw never came to America, nor did he do any work for the Goldwyn Company. I was no more fortunate in the result of my call upon Mr. H. G. Wells. He, like Mr. Shaw, had me at his home in London for tea. Here, however, the conversation focussed, not upon Ireland, but upon India, a direction determined by the fact that a young East-Indian was calling upon the author that afternoon.
The foreigner was very earnest in his expressions of admiration for Mr. Wells’s “Outlines of History,” and it was indeed a privilege to me, who had just read this presentment of history, to hear such first-hand comments by both the author and a representative of that mellow civilisation which Mr. Wells has compared so favourably with our Western achievements.
During the course of this conversation the Indian told the author that no other English writer held so high a place in his country as the one occupied by Mr. Wells. Although the latter must have spent many hours of his life in listening to similar tributes, he responded to it as gratefully as if this were a fresh experience.
When we came to talk of pictures I suggested to Mr. Wells that he visit California and write some stories for our company.
“Oh,” said he, “I should like to come, for I know I should enjoy the California sunshine and meeting Charlie Chaplin. The only trouble with me is that I never could write on order. I haven’t been able to do it for magazines or publishers and I should certainly fail abjectly when it came to doing it for the screen.”
I thereupon urged him to come to California as my guest, look over the situation. But, although I assured him that such a visit would leave him perfectly free to decide whether or not he cared to enter the picture lists, Mr. Wells did not accept my invitation.
As I left his home that day I remembered suddenly that twenty-five years before, I, who had just been entertained by the most celebrated of the younger English novelists, had wandered without home and without money through these very London streets. There was no self-congratulation in that swift contrast of present and future, but there was a deep wonder at the mysterious flux of life.
Another feeling dominated this wonder. It was my gratitude to the work which has so shaped and coloured my destiny. To motion-pictures I owe all the wide range of contacts which have made up to me for a boyhood handicapped by so many unfavourable circumstances. To it I owe also the greatest blessing which can befall any one of us—an impersonal interest so vivid and compelling that it survives any personal grief or maladjustment.
Almost every one who has been connected with picture-production understands the fascination which it exerts. I always think, indeed, of the answer which Charlie Chaplin once made to somebody who asked him what he most wanted from the future.