When I was ten years old or somewhere near that age, I remember my father (Charles Chaplin) telling me that I had Gypsy blood running through my veins. I asked him for more details and he told me he was 1/8 Gypsy, which would make all his children 1/16 romany Gypsy.



 

This piece of information was very pleasing to my ears and left an echo of romance ringing in my imagination every time I thought about it even though I had yet to fall under the charm of fierce rhythm and sweeping melodies of Gypsy jazz.



He was later to mention this Gypsy heritage in his autobiography where he wrote that his grandmother on his mother's side was "half Gypsy" and went on to add: "This fact was the skeleton in our family cupboard (...) I remember her as a bright little old lady who always greeted me effusively with baby talk. She died before I was six. She was separated from Grandpa, for what reason neither grandparent would tell. But according to Aunt Kate there was a domestic triangle in which Grandpa surprised Grandma with a lover".

 

But there was more Gypsy blood running in my father's veins than he was aware of. For there was another skeleton hiding in the cupboard on his father's side, this father he was hardly aware of and who he never remembered living with his mother and himself.

It was David Robinson, my father's biographer, who after my father's death came across a marriage certificate where Spencer Chaplin, my father's grandfather on his father's side, is said to have married Ellen Elisabeth Miller, 17 years old and described as Romany Gypsy. She gave birth to Charles Chaplin senior, my father's father.

 

So this shows that there was a good dose of Gypsy blood circulating in Charlie Chaplin's veins, some he knew about and some he was most probably not aware of.

In 1975, after  the publication of my father's autobiography, he received a letter from a place called Smethick, a small suburban town just outside Birmingham. By then I was no longer living at home and was not in contact with my father, so I don't know if he talked to anyone about this letter. Perhaps he showed it to my mother, perhaps not.

 

This letter was only found 15 years after my father died, just after my mother's death, when all their belongings were shared out between my brothers and sisters and myself.

It was locked away in the drawer of my father's bedside table. As no key could be found a locksmith was called to open this drawer and inside it, was this letter written by a man named Jack Hill. In the letter Jack Hill claims that my father was born on Black Patch, a Gypsy caravan site in Smethick, one of the largest such sites in Great Britain at that time ( the late 1800's).

In this extraordinary letter Jack Hill, who was also part Romany Gypsy, suggests something deeper than just the mere place of birth of my father: "the answer to a question you have always wanted to know about yourself" as he writes. Then, in a series of seemingly disconnected sentences, he suggests that there is something about Charlie's mother that he overheard in the Gypsy Queen's caravan on Black Patch one night in a conversation between her and his own mother, that could reveal to Charlie who he really was. He says he was lying in that caravan pretending to be asleep on the night he overheard that conversation. This was the caravan of the Gypsy Queen, the same caravan in which he claims Charlie was born.



 

The Gypsies are very secretive people by nature, or at least with that part of society they consider not to belong to their world, but Jack Hill must have considered that he belong to their world. Jack Hill must have considered that he was writing to a fellow 'Romany' when he wrote that letter to my father, giving him enough enticing bits of information that he hoped would push my father to answer his letter and ask for more details. I don't suppose my father did ever write back to him, but he did keep Jack Hill's letter, singled out from the many hundreds of letters he received during his lifetime from all over the world, locked away in the drawer of his bedside table.



Why did he keep it so safely hidden away from the rest of the world and yet in such intimate proximity to himself?
Was it there to nourish his dreams at night, or was it because what was written in that letter pointed to something he already half knew or suspected and was now given some kind of vague confirmation?

 

​

Perhaps it was for both these reasons.

 

 

Michael Chaplin.