[Image available.]LITVINOFF AND HIS SON MISHA AT KRISTIANIA.p. 45.
LITVINOFF AND HIS SON MISHA AT KRISTIANIA.p. 45.
LITVINOFF AND HIS SON MISHA AT KRISTIANIA.
p. 45.
settled, and to-morrow the boat leaves at 4 o’clock so that there is not much time. I feel pretty confident that all will end well. It is not possible that there can be any other ending.
We were a big party lunching in the restaurant and attracted a good deal of attention. After lunch we all went to Skansen and had tea there.
In the evening, Kameneff had to go out and keep an appointment, and while he was away I wrestled on the telephone with reporters, trying to ward off interviews until the morrow. At 10 p.m., Kameneff came back and we dined in the sitting-room; he was pretty dead beat. Even then a reporter came to the door and asked for an interview, but I insisted that hemustbe put off until the next day, and Kameneff, rather willingly I think, gave in.
September 16th.
This morning I telephoned to the Palace and asked for the Crown Prince. Kameneff asked me if I were right to risk it. He said that I might be very ill received in view of the company I was in, but I explained that he was one of the most democratic Princes in Europe.
Prince Gustav’s surprise was indeed pretty great. He was enormously interested and amused,and asked me to lunch, and to come at midday so as to get a good talk first.
Kameneff listened to our conversation with some amusement. He told me afterwards that he liked “the tone.” I wonder whether he had expected me to be different.
I asked the Prince as a favour that Princess Margaret’s maid, Amy, might come out shopping with me. She came and fetched me, and was a tremendous help, as she knew where to take me, and did all the talking in Swedish.
I left her to collect my parcels, as it was nearly midday, got a taxi, and told him to drive to “The Palace.” He looked vague, and did not understand. I said: “Palace! Kronprinzen.” He nodded assent and drove off in a direction that I knew was not towards the Palace. We fetched up in a street in front of the Kronprinzen Hotel. It was hopeless to argue—I plunged into the hotel and asked for someone who spoke English and explained my dilemma, to the intense amusement of the hotel officials, and of the taxi driver when it was explained to him.
The Prince looked very lonely in those big rooms, and they were extraordinarily vibrant and reminiscent ofher. He made me sit down and tell him all about my plans and my adventure, and fell thoroughly into the spirit of the thing.He said that I was quite right, if my exhibition at Agnew’s for October was all organised, not to sacrifice the chance of this experience on that account. He thought the expedition a dangerous one, but sensibly admitted that that was my concern and no one else’s.
He asked me, of course, a number of questions as to what sort of men Kameneff and Litvinoff were. I could not help being perfectly frank, and telling him my sincere impressions.
While I was there Kameneff telephoned to say that the Consulate of Esthonia had given me my visa.
At luncheon, the lady-in-waiting and the A.D.C.’s seemed rather bewildered. It certainly must have appeared fantastic to them, accustomed to the dull routine of Court life, to be entertaining someone who was on the way to Russia with Kameneff to model the heads of Lenin and Trotsky.
The Prince was overwhelming in his desire to help my material comforts. He telephoned for biscuits, and two large tins arrived, also cigarettes. He wrote out his prospective trip, with dates, to Athens and Italy, in hopes that possibly we may meet if I come back that way.
Finally he escorted me to the taxi that awaited me in the court-yard, and wished me luck and God-speed.
I returned to the Grand Hotel, and found an alarming crowd of Comrades lunching with Kameneff in his sitting-room, but we had to leave almost immediately to catch our boat for Reval.
September 17th.Hango, Finland.
It is evening, we have just put in at Hango, a Finnish port. No one is allowed off the ship, by order of the Port authorities. Finland is not yet at peace with Russia, and Kameneff would probably be arrested if he set foot on shore. The last time that he walked into Finnish territory in 1917, not knowing that the Whites were in possession of the town, he was put in prison for three months, and by a miracle was not shot. So far we have had a pretty good journey; the little boat has hugged the coast of the Aland islands. We have had to put into Hango for the night, because we can only steam by day on account of the floating mines between here and Reval that have not yet been cleared.
I have spent half the day in my cabin sleeping, the other half on deck talking. I have lost all track of days and dates; we seem to have been journeying for ever.
There are no pleasure trippers or any of the idle curious on board. Everyone practically isbound for Russia, and we look at one another curiously, wondering what each other’s mission is. There are Comrades returning, and there are journalists, traders and bankers; people who hope to get through from Reval, people who probablywill, and others who certainly will not.
Kameneff is watched by everyone, and we have made innumerable acquaintances. Already there is around us a little group of friends, whom one has the feeling of having known a long time. To-morrow we go on to Reval. It seems to me too wonderful and unbelievable that I am really on this boat of fears and dreams: fears of not getting on board, and dreams of the world into which it would sail with me.
September 18th.Reval, Esthonia.
At dawn we left Hango, but there was such a wind blowing that the ship anchored just at the entrance of the harbour, and for a few hours we swung round. No one complained of delay and no one seemed to be in a hurry. There was no attempt to keep a scheduled time: a calm atmosphere of fatalism, which is probably Russian, seemed to hang over us.
The sun was shining brilliantly when we finally set out to sea, and I was having a most interestingconversation with Mr. Aschberg, a Swedish banker, who did me the compliment of talking to me on political economy, of which I understood nothing. He told me interesting things about Bolshevik business transactions with Germany, in which it seemed that the Bolsheviks were alienating the German workers by negotiating with the German capitalists.
In my own mind I did not see how they could do otherwise, but my ignorance on these things is so great, that I try to learn all I can without giving myself away by asking too many questions. It is a slow process, but I have hopes. The mere fact of being under the wing of a man like Kameneff, and bound for Russia, seems to make people talk to me as if I were a man. It is a great comfort no longer to meet people on a social or superficial ground. There were people even who talked to me on most obscure subjects, and asked for my intercession for them with Kameneff!
At sunset we steamed into Reval, where the pointed towers and the sound of old bells as in Italy awakened one to a new atmosphere that was no longer Scandinavian. A motor met us at the quay, the only motor there, and a man who had crossed with us, and whom I suspected of being a British agent, said to me ironically as he droveaway in a droshki: “How very smart and distinguished of you to have a motor——”
Kameneff’s boy of twelve met us, and there were two small children as well, belonging to Gukovski, the Soviet representative at Reval. They took up most of the room that was needed for luggage. Alexandre Kameneff had to stand on the step outside, and a soldier of the Red Army on the other. Thus our curious car-load made its way, hooting loudly through mediæval tortuous streets.
What followed is rather nebulous in my mind. I was very tired and the town very dark; there were stars overhead, but no street lamps. We drove to some bleak building called the Hotel Petersbourg, which seemed to be the Bolshevik G.H.Q. It was dirty and grim, and full of strange-looking people who talked no language that I understood. They looked at me strangely; a great many hands shook mine. Kameneff was too busy to explain to me what our plans were, or what was going to happen next, or maybe he forgot that I could not understand. He was too surrounded for me to be able to ask him any questions, so I just looked vague, waited about and followed, relying on my eyes to convey the explanations that my ears were denied. Kameneff was the centre of perpetual discussionsin which everyone spoke at the same moment, very quickly and very loud. At first I suspected a most agitating State Council, but it turned out to be merely a discussion as to where we should have supper. Finally it was decided that we should go to the apartment in an hotel where the wife of a Comrade would look after us. Off we went on foot over cobblestones. The streets were full of people who moved like shadows, and one could only see faces when they passed the glare of a lighted doorway. We followed along in couples. At my side was Alexandre Kameneff, a nice boy and friendly, but he could only talk Russian.
We got to the hotel (such an hotel, more like a wayside inn). We were taken to the Comrade’s apartment, where his wife received us with great cordiality and talked to me in good French.
There was a samovar, and we had excellent tea with lemon in it, and some cold smoked salmon on thick slices of buttered bread. Kameneff and the two Comrades were too absorbed in their discussion to eat anything. One Comrade was telling something, Kameneff took notes, and our host, a small nervous man, rolled bread pellets.
Madame, in an even voice, plied me with questions:
“When did you leave London?”
“How long did you take from Stockholm to Reval? Oh, dear, a day and a half late! We have no news here, tell me some.”
“Is Comrade Kameneff reallychasséfrom England?”
“Is it true that Krassin will soon follow?”
“What pretty hair you have, mademoiselle. Is it naturally that colour? Does it curl naturally so?”
“Is there a famine in England? I hear there is no longer sugar or butter? But there will be a famine when your strike begins?”
“What, you have not a macintosh with you?”
“Nor an umbrella?”
“Nor thicker shoes than that?”
“But do you not know there is nothing to be had in Russia?”
“You have goloshes? That is good.”
“And soap? Yes, they will do your washing if you give them soap to do it with——”
Kameneff left us to attend a meeting elsewhere. It was now pretty late, and I was tired; the room was small, and full of smoke and food. When I had finished my tea, Alexandre Kameneff and the soldier who had not left us since our arrival, took me back to the headquarters. I did not know what was to become of me, andno one understood me. The dimly-lit corridors were crowded with strange loungers. I was shown into a grim room where portraits of Lenin and Trotsky adorned the walls, and there I sat silently among people I could not talk with. After awhile, to my intense relief, Kameneff appeared. In this strangemilieuin which I was so utterly lost, Kameneff seemed to me the oldest and the only friend I had in the world, and I metaphorically clung to him as a drowning man to a straw. Somebody in the crowd, taking pity on my helplessness, or else wondering what I was asking for in three unknown languages, had sent him to me. He asked what on earth I was doing there. As if I knew! I followed him to another room, bigger and fuller of people, who all looked very serious and sat in a circle. The meeting went on, and I sat obscurely in a corner wondering whether, if I understood Russian, I should be allowed to be there. At last, bored by watching them and learning nothing from it, I got out a pencil and paper from the hand-case I had with me and wrote a letter to Dick. It was the last place from which I could post a letter and the last time I could write letters uncensored. I wrote to Dick from my heart, thinking of him at that moment in bed, so very far away, looking so round and pink, and with one arm outside thebedclothes. In spirit I was kneeling by his bedside and kissing the little bare arm. Dick and Margaret both know that when I am away from them I come in spirit in the night, and they often find a rose petal or a bud, or maybe a tiny feather, something very light, that I leave on the pillow to prove that I have been. Never had I been more with them in spirit than this night, when I felt so lonely and bewildered. Later on I wrote an apology to F. E., explaining why I had not turned up at Charlton to do his bust. It was one of the things that I felt rather badly about, for I had left England the very day that I was due at the Birkenheads’. I could not at that time explain, and they must have thought me so very rude. It is funny that none of these people, not even Kameneff have heard of F. E., either as Smith, Lord Birkenhead, or Lord Chancellor. Chancellor of the Exchequer they understand, but no other Chancellor.
When at last the meeting was over, I was introduced to Gukovski, and gathered that we were in his room. He is a little bent man, who broke his back some time past in a motor accident. He has red hair and beard, and small narrow eyes that look at one with close scrutiny, and give one a shivery feeling. He asked me what my mission was, and when I had told him he said:“Do you think that you are going to get Lenin to sit to you?” I did think so, and his eyes twinkled with merriment. “Well you won’t!” he said and chuckled.
Kameneff went off to converse on the telephone with Tchicherin at Moscow, and did not come back. I waited and waited, and Gukovski began packing a trunk; he was evidently coming with us. I watched him, a man’s packing is always a rather interesting and pathetic sight, but even that ceased to interest me after awhile, and I became conscious of a feeling bordering on tears and sleep. Where on earth was Kameneff, and why didn’t he come back, or else explain to me how long this waiting was to go on. After awhile I discovered that Gukovski’s secretary, a young man called Gai, could speak perfectly good English. From him I learnt that our train was leaving “about midnight” for Moscow, and that I could go to it any time I liked and find my sleeper. I ought to have known this long before as it was already nearly midnight. I made Alexandre Kameneff and the soldier take me to the station immediately. Of course when I got there the train was nowhere to be found—it was in a siding—and I sat down on a stone step and waited, thankful at least for the fresh air and the absence of glaring lights. When our “wagon-de-luxe” finally
[Image available.]BRIDGE BLOWN UP BY YUDENITCH.p. 61.
BRIDGE BLOWN UP BY YUDENITCH.p. 61.
BRIDGE BLOWN UP BY YUDENITCH.
p. 61.
appeared it was the best that I have ever seen. It had been the Special of the Minister for Railways, and was very spacious and comfortable. As soon as Kameneff, Gukovski and his little girl joined us, the train started and we had a midnight supper of tea and caviare.
September 19th.
All night we have journeyed, and all day. It is now evening. Our special train has stopped at a wayside station for three hours to await the Petrograd train, on to which we shall link for Moscow. Then we shall travel again all night and arrive at our destination to-morrow morning.
It has been a beautiful day of sunshine. I crossed the frontier riding on the engine. The front of our car has a verandah from which one can get a beautiful view. We crossed two wide rivers on temporary bridges, as the original ones lay in débris below us, having been blown up by Yudenitch in his retreat last year after his attack on Petrograd. The woods on either side of the river were full of trenches, dug-outs and barbed wire. I had tea and bread and caviare at 9 a.m. and the same thing at 3 p.m. and again at 7. There is no restaurant car; we have brought our food with us in a hamper. There are other things to eat besides caviare, only I cannot eat them.There is cheese, and some ham which is not like any ham that I have ever known, and there is a sort of schnitzel sausage and some apples.
The soldier who was with us yesterday and is still with us, and whose name is Marinashky, is a chauffeur. I thought he was an officer. He eats with us, smokes with us, joins in the discussions and kindly lays the table for food and clears away for us. It sounds odd, but it seemed quite natural until I heard that he was a chauffeur. My bourgeois bringing-up is constantly having surprises! Marinashky has a nice clear-cut face, and square jaw like the Americans one saw during the war.
This afternoon we got out of the train and walked up the line, as there were three hours to dispose of. I led the way because there was a wood I wanted to go to. It was extremely pretty, and the moss sank beneath one’s feet. The children collected berries and scarlet mushrooms, which they brought to me as offerings.
On the way back Kameneff and his boy and I found a dry place covered with pine needles, where we lay down, and to the sound of father and son talking softly in Russian I went fast asleep. The sun was setting when they woke me up. In the heart of Russia, in the company of Bolsheviks, I had spent an Arcadian hour.
[Image available.]GUKOVSKI, HIS DAUGHTER, KAMENEFF AND MARINASHKY.p. 62.
GUKOVSKI, HIS DAUGHTER, KAMENEFF AND MARINASHKY.p. 62.
GUKOVSKI, HIS DAUGHTER, KAMENEFF AND MARINASHKY.
p. 62.
September 20th.Moscow, The Kremlin.
Yesterday evening after we had started, Kameneff left us to go and talk to Zinoviev who was on the Petrograd train, travelling also to Moscow. Zinoviev is President of the Petrograd Soviet (and also of the Third International). I did not see Kameneff again that evening, but at 2 a.m. he knocked at my door and awakened me with many apologies to tell me news he thought I should like to hear. Zinoviev had just told him that the telegram announcing his arrival with me came in the middle of a Soviet Conference. It caused a good deal of amusement, but Lenin said that whatever one felt about it there was nothing to do but to give me some sittings as I had come so far for the purpose. “So Lenin has consented and I thought it was worth while to wake you up to tell you that.” Kameneff was in great spirits; Zinoviev had evidently told him things he was glad to hear, especially, I gathered, that no blame or censure was going to be put upon him for having failed in his mission to England.
We reached Moscow at 10.30 a.m. and I waited in the train so that Kameneff and his wife could get their tender greetings over without my presence. I watched them through the window: the greeting on one side, however, wasnot apparent in its tenderness. I waited and they walked up the platform talking with animation. Finally Mrs. Kameneff came into the compartment and shook hands with me. Mrs. Philip Snowden in her book has described her as “an amiable little lady.” She has small brown eyes and thin lips. She looked at the remains of our breakfast on the saloon table and said querulously, “We don’t livechiclike that in Moscow.” Goodness, I thought, not even like that! There was more discussion in Russian between the two, and my expressionless face watched them. I have become reconciled to not being unable to understand.
As we left the train she said to me: “Leo Kameneff has quite forgotten about Russia, the people here will say he is a bourgeois.” Leo Kameneff spat upon the platform in the most plebeian way, I suppose to disprove this. It was extremely unlike him.
We piled into a beautiful open Rolls-Royce car and were driven at full speed with a great deal of hooting through streets that were shuttered as after an air raid. Mrs. Kameneff said to me: “It is dirty, our Moscow, isn’t it?” Well, yes, one could not very well say that it was not.
We came to the Kremlin. It is high up and dominates Moscow and consists of the main
[Image available.]MARINASHKY AND THE MINISTERIAL ROLLS-ROYCE.p. 64.
MARINASHKY AND THE MINISTERIAL ROLLS-ROYCE.p. 64.
MARINASHKY AND THE MINISTERIAL ROLLS-ROYCE.
p. 64.
palace, some other palaces, convents, monasteries, and churches encircled by a wall and towers. The sun was shining when we arrived and all the gold domes were glittering in the light. Everywhere one looked there were domes and towers.
We drove up to a side entrance under an archway, and then made our way, a solemn procession, carrying luggage up endless stone stairs and along stone corridors to the Kameneff apartments. A little peasant maid with a yellow handkerchief tied over her head ran out to greet us, and kissed Kameneff on the mouth. Then ensued the awkward moment of being shown to no room. After eleven days travelling one felt a longing for peace, and to be able to unpack, instead of which the Russian discussion was resumed, and I sat stupidly still with nothing to say.
For breakfast I was given coffee and an over-helping of dry tepid rice. When for a moment I found myself alone with Kameneff I asked him what was to become of me and begged him to send me to an hotel. But there are no hotels; everything belongs to the Government. There are however, guest-houses, but he was averse to my going to one, as he said that I should be lonely and strange. He told me to leave the matter entirely to him and he would decide in two hours.
Meanwhile I went for a walk in the Kremlin grounds with Alexandre and took a lot of photographs. The beauty of it all was a wonderment, and I was quite happy not to go outside the walls, which I could not do as I had no pass. Then I came back and waited and waited for Kameneff to come and tell me where I was to go. As the day passed by I felt more and more lonely. For lack of another book I read de Maupassant’s “Yvette,” but hated it, and thanked God that Bolshevism had at least wiped out that vile world of idle men. At sunset I sat on the ledge of the open window, and listened to the bells that were ringing from all the domes in Moscow. Below me was an avenue of trees that reached up to me with autumn colours. I thought of Dick and that to-day is his birthday. I knew he must be asking, “Where is ‘Meema’; why doesn’t she come? How long will she be?”
When it was dark I was still looking out, and Anna Anrevna, the little maid, came in softly in her string soled shoes and put her arms round me. She told me in broken German that I must nottraurig sein.
Kameneff came in at half-past ten, he was very tired and precluded all further discussion by saying that it was too late to go anywhere else, and that I must stay for the night. Mrs.
[Image available.]THE KREMLIN, SHOWING ENTRANCE TO THE KAMENEFFS’ APARTMENTS.p. 65.
THE KREMLIN, SHOWING ENTRANCE TO THE KAMENEFFS’ APARTMENTS.p. 65.
THE KREMLIN, SHOWING ENTRANCE TO THE KAMENEFFS’ APARTMENTS.
p. 65.
Kameneff came in from her work a little later. She sank into a chair and drew her hand across her brow in the most approved way to betoken physical exhaustion. I was given Alexandre’s room, through which they have to pass to get to their’s, and I have to pass through their’s to get to the wash-room, as there is no washstand in my bedroom. I suppose Alexandre slept on a sofa. Kameneff went back to his Soviet meeting at eleven, and I heard him pass through my room when he came home at 4 a.m.
September 21st.
I awakened, feeling much better. The sunshine was too wonderful. Both the Kameneffs went off to their respective work, she at 10, and he at 11. I went out into the Kremlin grounds with Alexandre, and while he played football with Serge Trotsky I sat among the columns of the Alexander Memorial and indulged in a kaleidoscope of thought. Serge is the twelve year old son of Trotsky, and is a fine little boy with a broad chest and a straight back. He looks like the heir to a throne in the guise of a peasant.
At 1 o’clock a cousin of Leo Kameneff’s who can speak French and English came to fetch me. Outside the Kremlin gate an old man, who lookedlike a peasant, stopped me and asked in English if I were Sylvia Pankhurst.
Hearing I was not he asked: “But you are English and I hope a good Communist?” I did not answer, I just pressed his hand.
We went to the Musée Alexandre III, the garden of which is strewn with large bronze eagles thrown down from the pediment. They are very emblematic of the mighty who are fallen.
The Museum contains replicas of classics of which the originals are in many cases in the British Museum. But the arrangement and the backgrounds are so good, that it gives one more pleasure to look at the Greek and Assyrian replicas here than to see the originals in London.
A school of boys and girls, extremely well fed and well dressed, was being shown round, and there was also a magnificent old peasant with long hair and aquiline nose, who told us that he wanted before he died to see what a museum was like. Both he and the schoolmaster asked us if we could explain things to them as there were no guides. Even had I been able to speak the language, I should have been at a loss to explain the Parthenon Temple which we were facing at that moment. The children probably, and the peasant surely, had never heard of the Parthenon, nor of Greek mythology; where would one begin? One could only have said: “Isn’t it beautiful, don’t you see how beautiful it is?” and hope that they did see it. Since I heard a guide explaining Rodin at South Kensington to Australian soldiers, I have felt sure that Art can be felt, but not explained.
In the end we procured a guidebook and sent the old peasant off with the children’s school, and left the master to do his best. When I got back it was to find no one at home. I ate some food, as I was hungry, and concluded that I was still to be a guest at the Kremlin. Late in the afternoon I found my way alone through the maze of corridors and staircases, out into the grounds alone. I wandered about, still hypnotised by the beauty of the sun-reflecting domes, and by the dead stillness which seemed to protest from the Royal stones. Over the Tsar’s palace crows pecked at the flagstaff where once the Royal Standard had flown. There is a clock in a tower at the Kremlin Gate and it has a complaining and depressing chime. It complains once at the quarter, four times at the hour. It seemed to say, “My people are gone! and I am sad, and I am sad.” It doubtless complained when Napoleon took possession, and again in Tsarist days, and probably will always lament; some people are never satisfied.
I have a sort of feeling that I am staying at Versailles just after Louis XVI. My emotions and impressions are too deep, too many, and too bewildering to be measured in words.
In the evening Alexandre took me to a play at the Théâtre des Arts. A big theatre and well filled. The piece was very well staged. The play, which is adapted from an old Polish legend called “Corrodine,” was well acted, so that without understanding a word I gathered some of the sense. In front of us sat Madame Zinoviev with a Comrade and I was glad when they talked to me in French. It was not until afterwards that I learnt who she was, much to my amusement, remembering that I had told her my errand, and that Zinoviev was among the heads promised to me. She asked me if I would not have to go to Petrograd to do him, but I said that I thought not, as he was in Moscow at the moment, and that if I could only find a place to work in, he would sit to me at once. I wondered why she laughed.
September 22nd.Moscow, The Guest House.
Mrs. Kameneff went to her work as usual at 10 a.m. At breakfast half an hour later Leo Borisvitch, as he is called, promised not to do any work or keep any engagement until he had taken me to my new headquarters in a
[Image available.]BIG BELL, KREMLIN.
BIG BELL, KREMLIN.
BIG BELL, KREMLIN.
[Image available.]COLONNADES OF THE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL.p. 67.
COLONNADES OF THE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL.p. 67.
COLONNADES OF THE ALEXANDER MEMORIAL.
p. 67.
guest-house. We were delayed in starting by John Reed, the American Communist, who came to see him on some business. He is a well-built good-looking young man, who has given up everything at home to throw his heart and life into work here. I understand theRussianspirit, but what strange force impels an apparently normal young man from the United States? There also arrived to waylay us a painter called Rosenfeld, who wore canvas shoes like a peasant, and kissed Kameneff on his arrival. He offered to show me museums and things, but our only medium was German, and his was a good deal worse than mine, which was a great drawback. At midday, however, we broke free, and started off with my luggage. I bade farewell to the Kremlin, and we drove across the river to a guest-house on the opposite bank facing the Tsar’s Palace. The guest house is the requisitioned house of a sugar king. It is inhabited by various Foreign Office officials, also by Mr. Rothstein and an American financier, Mr. W. B. Vanderlip. A beautiful bedroom and dressing-room are mine, with walls of green damask. It looks more like a drawing-room than a bedroom. The house is more or less exactly as the sugar king left it, full of a mixture of good and bad things. It is partly modern Gothic and partly German Louis XVI.The ceiling of one of the big rooms is painted by Flameng, but the best pictures (there were some Corots) have been taken to a museum. One is extremely grateful for its comfort and hospitality, even if its taste in decoration is not of the best.
Moreover, one can enjoy it lightheartedly, for the exiled sugar king, it is rumoured, had other palaces abroad, and never came to Moscow except for a few weeks in the year. He also has money invested abroad and is not in want, and can well spare his Moscow palace for so good a purpose. His old manservant waits upon us, and takes the tenderest care of the house in the belief that the old régime will return, bringing the owners of the house with it. He says openly that he is not a Bolshevik, and takes much pride in changing our plates a great many times, and making the most of our humble fare. He insists that so far as it depends upon him we shall behave like perfect ladies and gentlemen and be treated as such.
I stayed at home all day unpacking at last, and settling down into my temporary home. Kameneff promised to come back in the course of the day, but he didn’t. He telephoned however, and arranged that I should be taken to the Ballet with the party from this house. Wesat in the Foreign Office box. The ballet was “Coppelia,” beautifully produced, and the orchestra one of the finest that I ever heard. The theatre is the size of Covent Garden, and is decorated with crimson and gold. There are boxes all round the first tier, and the house was packed throughout.
The audience consisted of working people, who had admission free through the distribution of tickets to certain unions. They were a motley crowd, chieflyen blouse. In the Royal box, reserved for Commissars and their wives, there was a man with a cloth cap. The women were eating apples. In the box next to ours there was an old woman with a shawl over her head.
It was intensely moving to see the absorbed attention of the audience. People leaned their elbows on the ledges of the boxes and watched the ballet with an almost devouring interest. There was not a cough nor a whisper. Only when Coppelia came to life as the mechanical doll, there were delicious low ripples of controlled laughter from the children. At the ends of the acts people left the stalls to rush, not for the exits to the foyer, but to the front of the gangways nearest the stage to see the dancers close to, and to applaud them. The people were tired people, who had worked all day and had earneda good evening and were enjoying it to the full.
My only contretemps was with a little stenographer from the Foreign Office who was in our box. She observed that I had on the red enamelled star of Communism, and that I wore white gloves. One, she said, contradicted the other; the white gloves were bourgeois. I argued that it only mattered what was in my heart, and not what was on my hands. But she would not be pacified, so I removed the gloves. Considering that my costume was a red tweed skirt with a red, wool jersey and a tight-fitting cap, I had thought that gloves would not make me over-dressed.
If my evening’s pleasure was neutralised by the concentrated aroma which arose from the great unwashed, it is only fair to observe that there is no soap in the country, and most people have, for two years or so, only had the one suit of clothes in which they stand up. No wonder——! In the car coming home I met Mr. Rothstein, who is living in the same house. I wished I could recall the abusive article which I read about him in an English newspaper, but all I remember is that he is not to be readmitted to England. He seems to be an energetic and forceful little man. I expect he is pretty clever. We had supper together after the theatre, and conversation
[Image available.]SERGE TROTSKY AND ALEXANDRE KAMENEFF.p. 67.
SERGE TROTSKY AND ALEXANDRE KAMENEFF.p. 67.
SERGE TROTSKY AND ALEXANDRE KAMENEFF.
p. 67.
drifted on to that eternal comedy, the Nationalisation of women. I happened to say that this had done more to harm the Bolshevik cause than almost anything, and, moreover, that quite serious people still believed it. Mr. Rothstein interposed rather sharply, “Well, a little select circle which reads theMorning Postperhaps believes it.”
Is it possible, I wonder that he is right, and that the “little select circle” do not count as much as I have all my life taken for granted that they did?
September 23rd.
I wasted a lot of time this morning trying to fix things up without the help of Kameneff. As things have turned out I might have saved myself the trouble. John Reed told me that I never would begin work unless I arranged everything for myself, and depended on no one here. On the other hand Mr. Vanderlip told me to keep calm, as his experience was that everything came in time. Thoroughly impatient however, I got hold of Mr. Rosenfeld who arrived simultaneously with Alexandre Kameneff and a motor. Rosenfeld took me studio hunting. The Art Schools seemed to be very far away from the parts of Moscow that are familiar to me, andalthough everyone was willing to help, there seemed to be little accommodation available. In the Academia, which I believe is only just re-opening, they offered me a place to work in—a gallery which obviously was not suitable. We went on to the Strogonoff School, where Mr. Konenkoff, one of their most distinguished sculptors, offered me of his best. It was like an empty kitchen looking into a bleak courtyard. The two students who followed us round were not very sympathetic. No doubt they thought it presumptuous of me to come to Russia and expect to model Lenin! They certainly did not seem to think he would sit to me. Kameneff had warned me that most of the artists I should meet would not be Bolsheviks, so that probably the students I met were not, but thought that I was. One of them, a girl and more friendly than the rest, said to me in French: “If you are a friend of those in power I suppose you will get some food; we are expected to work here all day from 9 in the morning till 6 at night without any.” I asked why she did not bring her food with her, and received some jumbled explanation about rations and distribution and State Control and no shops, which was so bewildering that I avoided further discussion. It was obvious that I did not understand the
[Image available.]BRONZE EAGLE AT THE MUSÉE ALEXANDRE III.p. 68.
BRONZE EAGLE AT THE MUSÉE ALEXANDRE III.p. 68.
BRONZE EAGLE AT THE MUSÉE ALEXANDRE III.
p. 68.
condition of things, and that I looked rather stupid in consequence. Another one said to me: “Madame, we are waiting for deliverance. For two years we have waited. We do not know how it is to come, but we just hope that some morning we may wake up to find the nightmare over.” I said feebly that there had been six years of war, and a blockade, but I felt it was no business of mine to put up a defence for their system. I came home thoroughly depressed and disheartened, having accomplished nothing. At 10 p.m. I was sitting in the gilded drawing-room with Mr. Vanderlip when the telephone rang: it was Kameneff. He announced that he had a room for me at the Kremlin and that I must work there because all the people I had to model were there, and that it was the only way to get them as they were very busy. He promised to send someone for me in the morning to take me there. He asked if I were lonely, resentful, or bored, and pleaded his inability to get to me owing to stress of work. He begged me to be patient and good, and promised that all would come right. I went to bed feeling really better.
September 24th.
Madame Kameneff’s secretary fetched me at 10 a.m. and we found a Comrade waiting forus at the Kremlin gateway. He was a painter, young and bearded, who could speak only Russian. We got our passes to get into the big round building which used to be the Courts of Justice, and where the conferences are now held. It is the chief building, and the Red flag flies above it. Once inside we walked for ever as it seemed, along stone corridors full of busy people. We went to the room of Comrade Unachides, one of the most magnificent men that I have ever seen, a real Mestrovic type, strong features and bushy red hair. Unfortunately he also could only speak Russian. He showed me the room which is placed at my disposal. It is big and nearly empty, semi-circular in shape, with bare white-washed walls. In one corner a formidable iron door with round peep-holes in it leads into a small cell which contains a safe. The safe is sealed up with Soviet seals. The cell, I was told, was a disused prison. This probably accounted for the atmosphere of depression and grimness which persisted in spite of the sunlight which in the afternoon flooded my three big windows. Opposite, across the courtyard, is the Arsenal, and all along the Arsenal walls are ranged the masses of cannon with their “N” surrounded by the laurel wreath, which leaves one in no doubt as to their origin.
[Image available.]BIG GUN AT THE KREMLIN.
BIG GUN AT THE KREMLIN.
BIG GUN AT THE KREMLIN.
While I was looking round, Kameneff turned up; he told me to make a list of my requirements, and then carried me off in a car and was able to stay with me until 2 o’clock. These moments together snatched in between work are so rare that one almost values them. He told me I was to go to a meeting at the theatre in the evening, and promised that I should be in a box near the stage so that I could see well. He was to address the meeting on the subject of his visit to England.
The party from our house were late in starting. We got to the theatre after the meeting had begun, and were put in the Tsar’s box. This was already crammed full to overflowing, and all the chairs were occupied by Turks, Chinese and Persians. No one attempted to offer me a place. Mr. Vanderlip and I stood for some time, while people moved in and out and Turks and Persians (I shall never want to smell geranium again) pushed us about in their impatient efforts to get past or over us. All my British blood was boiling, and I realised that for the time being, at all events, I could not regard the Turks and Persians and Chinese as my brothers.
After awhile Mr. Vanderlip and I were moved to the stage box. This too was full, but not of the same kind of people. Anyway, it was nearer, and one got a better view. Clara Zetkin,the German Socialist, was speaking, spitting forth venom, as it sounded. The German language is not beautiful, and the ferocious old soul, mopping her plain face with a large handkerchief, was not inspiring. It sounded very hysterical and I only understood an outline of what she was saying. Then Trotsky got up, and translated her speech into Russian. He interested me very much. He is a man with a slim, good figure, splendid fighting countenance, and his whole personality is full of force. I look forward immensely to doing his head. There is something that ought to lend itself to a fine piece of work. The overcrowded house was as still as if it were empty, everyone was attentive and concentrated.
After Trotsky Mme. Kolontai spoke. She has short dark hair. Perhaps she spoke well, but of that I could not judge. Tired of standing and of not understanding I left the theatre at the moment when a great many repetitions of Churchill’s and Lloyd George’s names were rocking the house with laughter.
September 25th.
I feel very discouraged. Everyone I meet asks me what I have come to Moscow for. They assure me that there is no chance of modelling Lenin, and still less of doing Dzhirjinsky, who is a