[Image available.]LENIN, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.p. 114.
LENIN, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.p. 114.
LENIN, FROM A PHOTOGRAPH.
p. 114.
[Image available.]BUST OF LENIN.p. 114.
BUST OF LENIN.p. 114.
BUST OF LENIN.
p. 114.
of Lenin or any one else should be done, the theory being that the cause, not the individuals, should count. The humblest person who suffers privation for the cause is equally as important as any of the legislators, she explained, and proceeded to assure me that no picture or bust of herself existed, nor ever should. Happily I had not asked her to sit for me. She practically told me that I was doing Lenin’s head to take back to England to show to the idle curious. I corrected her by saying that, so far as the public was concerned, I only wished to enable those who had him at present represented by a photograph, to substitute a bust. She was equally vehement about the photograph. Perhaps she expects to alter human nature.
Before I got out of the car, she assured me that her tirade was in no way personal and would I, please, not misunderstand her.
October 14th.
Michael Borodin found me after breakfast, miserably wrapped in my rug, shivering with cold and depression, and with tears irrepressibly streaming down my face. I had several grievances which had been accumulating for some days, and at last my patience had come to a head. The fact is I had heard of a courier having arrived yesterdayfrom London, and no one had taken the trouble to find out if there were any letters for me. Ever since I left England on September 11th I have not had one word of news, nor answers to two telegrams that Kameneff sent for me asking after the children. Secondly, I had not been given the coat that Kameneff had ordered for me, so it was impossible to go out as it was too cold.
Michael for the first time seemed really moved. He wrapped me round in his fur coat, went off to the garden and fetched up a load of wood for me (I had never known him do such a thing before), and lit my fire himself. Then he telephoned to the Foreign Office. There were no letters for me, but some bundles for Kameneff. He also got hold of Comrade Alexandre on the telephone to know when I was going to have the promised coat, and altogether was very helpful. His journey to Madrid has been delayed daily, but he is to start to-morrow. It seems to me that in Russia one only knows about ten minutes beforehand what one is going to do! They are divinely vague.
October 15th.
I went to the Kremlin to meet Comrade Alexandre there at midday: he was to bring me a soldier as a model. Not feeling brave enough to go and review a platoon and make my ownselection, I had described exactly what I wanted: not the bloodthirsty savage Bolshevik of English tradition, but the dreamy-eyed young Slav who knows what he is fighting for, and such as I passed every day on the parade ground. I waited in my studio impatiently till 2 o’clock, and then Alexandre arrived accompanied by a soldier who was typically neither Russian, nor military, nor intellectual, nor even fine physically. He was small, white,chétif, and had a waxed moustache. It was a bad moment. I tried to hide my disappointment and my amusement. I missed lunching in order to work on him, and began something that was not in the least like my model, but was the product of my imagination. At 5 I came home tired and hungry and cold. I lay down on my sofa and watched the dusk crawl up behind the Kremlin. At 8.30 I was called down to the telephone, which is in the kitchen. It was Borodin speaking from the Foreign Office. He said “good-bye” in his abrupt manner. “This is the right way,” he said. “This is the way it should be.” The maid was throwing her broom around the kitchen, making as much noise as possible, and a strange man glared at me out of the gloom. I found it difficult to concentrate my attention. Michael knows that I do not believe in “futures,” butnevertheless we said “someday,” and I wonder very much if that strange Communist-Revolutionary, with his mask-like face and deep voice, will ever cross my path again. To-night I regret him, but then I am lonely for the moment—friendless, and this is a place where one needs friends.
At 9 o’clock, not having eaten since 10 a.m., I went downstairs to round-up some food. There, to my surprise, I met Litvinoff, who had been in Moscow since the day before yesterday. Our pleasure at seeing each other again was mutual and spontaneous. He is coming to stay at our house, and will occupy the vacated room of Borodin.
October 16th.
Comrade Alexandre came to see me at 9 p.m., to tell me that he could not arrange with Trotsky for sittings. I gathered that Trotsky had been emphatic and brusque in his refusal, but after all, I have done Lenin, and he is the one who counts most. I can go back to England without the head of Trotsky, but I could not have gone without the head of Lenin. Ihaveaccomplished what I came for, and so to hell with Trotsky!
Alexandre said he could only stay ten minutes, but he left at midnight. He talked Communism the whole time. Now Borodin unfurled his Communist spirit to me slowly, because he knew me, and to what I belonged, and he realised that the thing hurled at me in a crude mass would stagger me. He led me up to it with great caution. Alexandre, on the other hand, with no understanding or sympathy, took all my inborn prejudices and just broke them, stamped on them, metaphorically spat on them, and gave me a big feed of unadulterated Communism. He is a fanatic, and left me breathless and wondering. All was well until we got to the children part: he said that his wife had to work, so their baby, who is six weeks old, has to go by day to the Crèche.
“Are you satisfied with the care it gets at the Crèche?” I asked him. He shrugged his shoulders, said that collectively they could not receive the same attention as they would if they were cared for individually. He then volunteered the information that of course the baby was more liable to get ill and even die if it was in the Crèche, but that it was a chance, and after all his wife’s life was not going to be reduced to feeding, washing, and dressing a baby. That was no sort of existence, and so, what alternative was there except the Crèche?
It was the cold, dispassionate way in which he said it that gave me the creeps.
“What is your wife’s work?” I said.
“Politics, same as mine,” he said.
“Are you fond of your baby?”
“Yes.”
“Is your wife fond of it?”
“Yes.”
I thought to myself that she has not had to pray for a baby, and weep because the months went by. She has not had to wait, and wait—it is not infinitely precious to her, her baby.
He then counter-questioned me:
“What did you do with your children when you became a widow and had no home?”
“My parents took them.”
“And if you had had no parents who could take them? How could you have worked?”
It is true that there must be thousands of women who earn their living and have no family in the background on whom to plant the baby. What happens in a country where there is no paternal State? In Russia the State will clothe, feed and educate them from birth until fourteen years of age. They may go to the Crèche for the day or permanently. Children may go to the State school for the half day, whole day, or to board. Their parents may see them, or give them up for ever, as they choose, and there is no difference made between the legitimate and
[Image available.]TROTSKY, FROM A DRAWING.p. 129.
TROTSKY, FROM A DRAWING.p. 129.
TROTSKY, FROM A DRAWING.
p. 129.
the illegitimate child. Moreover, according to the labour laws, no woman may work for eight weeks before the baby is born, nor for eight weeks after birth. She is sent away to a resthouse in the country, always of course at the State’s expense. On application she is given the necessary layette for the new born. It is difficult to preserve one’s maternal sentimentality in the face of this Communistic generosity.
October 17th.
I stayed in bed all day as I felt ill, and there was nothing better to do. Litvinoff came in to see me in the afternoon and was surprised that I had not begun to work on Trotsky. I explained to him that, through Comrade Alexandre, Trotsky had flatly refused to let me do him. Litvinoff could not understand this, but said he had seen Trotsky last night. It was then decided that Litvinoff would see Trotsky again during the day, and telephone to me what arrangements he could make. He then left me, to come back again in a few minutes bringing something preciously in both hands. It was a hen’s egg. As I have not seen one since I have been in Moscow, I stifled my instinctive aversion to accepting valuable presents from men and had the egg fried for dinner.
October 18th.
Trotsky’s car came for me punctually at 11.30 a.m. (usually the cars that are ordered are an hour late, and people keep their appointments two hours late. Trotsky and Lenin are, I hear, the only two exceptions to the rule). I made Litvinoff come and tell the chauffeur that he was first to go to the Kremlin with me to fetch my things. When we got to the big round building in the Kremlin in which I have my studio, I took the chauffeur to the pass office and explained by signs by showing my own pass that I required one for the chauffeur. This was done. It is satisfactory to have arrived at the stage when I get the pass for someone else, instead of someone else getting it for me. Kameneff told me the other day that I walk into the Kremlin with the air of one who belonged to it.
Trotsky’s chauffeur, myself, and the plaster moulder who was there working, carried the things down to the car, and I was driven to a place some way off, the War Ministry, I think. Getting in was not easy, as I had no pass, and there was an altercation with the sentry. I understood the chauffeur explaining: “Yes, yes, it’s the English sculptor,” but the sentry was adamant. He shrugged his shoulders, said hedidn’t care, and made a blank face. I had to wait until a secretary came to fetch me. He took me upstairs, through two rooms of soldier-secretaries. In the end room there was a door guarded by a sentry, and next to that door a big writing table from which someone telephoned through into the next room to know if I could come in. Unlike Lenin’s, not even his secretaries go in to see Trotsky without telephoning first for permission. It was not without some trepidation, having heard how very intractable he is, and knowing his sister,[7]that I was ushered in—I and my modelling stand and my clay together.
I had instantly the pleasurable sensation of a room that is sympathetic, big, well-proportioned and simple.
From behind an enormous writing table in one corner near the window came forth Trotsky. He shook hands with me welcomingly, though without a smile, and asked if I talked French.
He offered courteously to assist me in moving my stand into the right place, and even to have his mammoth table moved into some other position if the light was not right.
The light from the two windows was certainly very bad, but although he said: “Move anything and do just whatever you like,” there wasnothing one could do that would help. The room, which would have made a beautiful ballroom, loomed large and dark. There were huge white columns which got in my way and hampered the light. My heart sank at the difficulties of the situation. I looked at my man, who was bending down, writing at his desk. Impossible to see his face. I looked at him and then at my clay, in despair. Then I went and knelt in front of the writing table opposite him, with my chin on his papers. He looked up from his writing and stared back, a perfectly steady, unabashed stare. His look was a solemn, analytical one, perhaps mine was too. After a few seconds, realising the absurdity of our attitudes, I had to laugh, and said: “I hope you don’t mind being looked at.” “I don’t mind,” he said. “I have myrevanchein looking at you, and it is I who gain.”
He then ordered a fire to be lit because he thought it was cold for me. It was not cold, it was overheated, but the sound and sight of the fire were nice. A matronly peasant-woman with a handkerchief tied round her head came and lit it. He said he liked her because she walked softly, and had a musical voice. Curious that he should admire in another what is so characteristic of himself; his voice is unusually melodious.
[Image available.]NICHOLAS ANDREV.
NICHOLAS ANDREV.
NICHOLAS ANDREV.
Seeing that he was prepared to be amiable, I asked him if I could bother him with measurements. “Tout ce que vous voudrez,” he said, and pointed out to me how unsymmetrical his face is. He opened his mouth and snapped his teeth to show me that his underjaw is crooked, and as he did so he reminded me of a snarling wolf. When he talks his face lights up and his eyes flash. Trotsky’s eyes are much talked of in Russia, and he is called “the wolf.” His nose also is crooked and looks as though it had been broken. If it were straight he would have a very fine line from the forehead. Full-face he is Mephisto. His eyebrows go up at an angle, and the lower part of his face tapers into a pointed and defiant beard. As I measured him with calipers, he remarked: “Vous me caressez avec des instruments d’acier.” He talks very rapid, and very fluent French, and could easily be mistaken for a Frenchman. I dragged my modelling stand across the room to try for a better light on the other side. He watched me with a weary look, and said: “Even in clay you make me travel, and I am so tired of travelling.” He explained to me that he is not as desperately busy as usual because there is Peace with Poland, and good news from the South. I told him that I had nearly gone to the Southern front with Kalinin,who wanted to take me, but that Kameneff wouldn’t let me go because it was a troop train. Without hesitating a moment he answered:
“Do you want to go to the front? You can come with me.”
He was thoughtful for awhile, and then asked me: “Are you under the care here of our Foreign Office?”
I said I was not.
“But who are you here with? Who is responsible for you?”
“Kameneff,” I said.
“But Kameneff is at the front.”
“Yes.”
“Then you are alone? H’m, that is very dangerous in a revolutionary country. Do you know Karahan, Tchicherin’s secretary?”
“Yes; he is living in our house, so is Litvinoff.”
“Ah, Litvinoff, I will ring him up.”
He did ring him up, but what he said I could not understand. Litvinoff told me later that Trotsky had asked him if I was all right, and if it would be indiscreet or not to show me the front. Litvinoff gave me a good character.
At 4 o’clock he ordered tea, and had some with me. He talked to me about himself, and of his wanderings in exile during the war, and how, finally, at the outbreak of the Revolution, hesailed on a neutral ship from the United States to return to Russia; how the British arrested him and took him to a Canadian concentration camp. He was detained a few months, until the Russian Government succeeded in obtaining his release.
He was particularly incensed at the British interfering with the movements of a man who was not going to Britain, nor from a British colony, nor by a British ship: “But I had a good time in that camp,” he said. “There were a lot of German sailors there, and I did some propaganda work. By the time I left they were all good revolutionaries, and I still get letters from some of them.”
At 5 I prepared to leave. He said that I looked tired. I said I was tired from battling with my work in such a bad light. He suggested trying by electric light, and we agreed on 7 o’clock the next evening. He sent me home in his car.
October 19th.
Trotsky’s car came at 6.30. Nicholas Andrev had been having tea with me, and I offered to give him a lift, as he lives somewhere near the War Ministry. It was snowing hard and there was a driving wind, which lifted up the frozen snow and blew it about like white smoke.The car had a hood, but no sides. In the Red Square we punctured. For some time we sat patiently watching the passers-by falling down on the slippery pavement, and the horse-carts struggling up the hill. Winter has come very suddenly and one month too soon. The horses have not yet been shod for the slippery roads, consequently they can hardly stand up. This morning I counted four down all at the same moment. In London a fallen horse attracts a good deal of attention, and a crowd collects, but here no one even turns his head to look. I have been much laughed at because I stop to watch, but the method of getting the horse up amuses me. The driver (man or woman, as the case may be) gets behind and pushes the cart. The horse, so weak that he has no resisting power, impelled forward by the shafts, struggles to his feet in spite of himself. No unharnessing is necessary. This evening, when I became too cold to be interested any longer by the passers-by falling in the square, I asked the chauffeur if he had nearly finished. He answered “Sichas” which literally translated is “immediately,” but in practice means to-morrow, or next week! So I pulled up the fur collar of my inadequate cloth coat, put my feet up lengthways on the seat, and let Andrev sit on them to keep themwarm. I arrived at Trotsky’s at 7.30. He looked at me and then at the clock. I explained what had happened. “So that is the reason of your inexactitude,” he said; an inexactitude which could not in the least inconvenience him as he did not have to wait for me. He kissed my frozen hand, and put two chairs for me by the fire, one for me and one for my feet. When I had melted and turned on all the lights of the crystal candelabra he said: “We will have an agreement, quite businesslike; I shall come and stand by the side of your work for five minutes every half hour.” Of course the five minutes got very enlarged, and we talked and worked and lost all track of time. When the telephone rang he asked: “Have I your permission?” His manners are charming. I said to him: “I cannot get over it, how amiable and courteous you are. I understood you were a very disagreeable man. What am I to say to people in England when they ask me: ‘What sort of a monster is Trotsky?’”With a mischievous look he said: “Tell them in England, tell them——” (but I cannot tell them!) I said to him: “You are not a bit like your sister.” The shadow of a smile crossed his face, but he did not answer.
I showed him photographs of my work and hekept the ones of the “Victory.” Among the portraits he liked “Asquith” best, and said that that one was worked with more feeling and care than any of the others. He took for granted that Asquith must like me, which is not necessarily the case, and said half-laughingly: “You have given me an idea—if Asquith comes back into officesoon(there is a rumour that he might bring in a Coalition with Labour, and recognise Russia) I will hold you as a hostage until England makes peace with us.” I laughed: “What you are saying humorously is what a British official told me seriously, only he said it à propos of Winston. As a matter of fact, I’d be proud if I could be of any use in the cause of Peace. But if you said you would shoot me, Winston would only say ‘shoot,’”—which is, to my mind, the right spirit, and exactly the spirit that prevails among the Bolsheviks. They would not hesitate to shoot me (some of them have told me so) if it were necessary, even if they liked me as a woman. Winston is the only man I know in England who is made of the stuff that Bolsheviks are made of. He has fight, force and fanaticism.
Towards the end of the evening, as Trotsky said nothing more about the project of my going to the front, I asked him if he had decided to take me or not. He said: “It is for you todecide if you wish to come—but I shall not start for three or four days.” It was getting late and he looked very tired. He was standing in front of the clay with his back to it, so that I had the two profiles exactly in line. His eyes were shut and he swayed. For a moment I feared he was going to faint. One does not think of Trotsky as a man who faints, but anything may happen to a man who works as he does. My thought was of my work, and I said to him: “Do not fall backward, or you fall on my work.” He answered quickly: “Je tombe toujours en avant!” I asked him to order the motor, having realised that unless he sends for it I have to wait outside in the cold or look for it in the garage. While the car was coming round he sent for a reproduction of a portrait of himself by an artist friend of his, to show me that the same difficulties that I am having with his jaw and chin, were experienced also by the draughtsman who only succeeded in this, the last of a great many sketches. It is evidently one that Trotsky likes, for it is reproduced in colour in almost every office one goes into. I told him I wanted it and he wrote upon it “Tovarisch,” which means Comrade “Clare Sheridan,” and signed it. This has its effect on the Bolsheviks who have been into my room and seen it.
October 20th.
Comrade Alexandre telephoned that he would fetch me at 1 o’clock to go to the fur store. I suppose the intense cold had at last moved either his pity or his anxiety for me. Before I left Vanderlip said that if there were any choice, and I was fool enough not to choose a sable coat, he would never speak to me again. The threat left me unmoved. It is only on occasions of necessity, when we exchange valuable presents (say a new tooth brush for a box of pills), that we have an armistice. On the way to the fur store Alexandre picked up another man, unknown but very nice, with whom I talked a mixture of English and German. We went to one of the biggest store-houses in Moscow, which, like all the rest, had been a private firm, but has been requisitioned by the Government. It was a cave-like building, dark and stone cold. We went up in a cage lift to what seemed to be the attic. It was low and long and dark, and an arc-light barely lit up the corner. Coats hung from the ceiling like so many hundred Bluebeard wives.
I took off mine to try on. An old man who looked like Moses and spoke German showed me the best and told me to make my choice. Alexandre looked on with a grim smile, and asked if I were the proverbial woman, or whetherI would make my choice within reasonable limits of time. It was not easy. The coats dated back three years, and some were even too old-fashioned for Moscow. I liked a brown Siberian pony lined with ermine, but the moth had got into the pony. I liked a broadtail, but it was thin as cloth; they offered to have it fur-lined for me, but my need was immediate. There was a mink, but it had an old-fashioned flounce. There were astrachans, but everyone in Moscow has astrachan, it seemed too ordinary. I felt bewildered. My attention then wandered to a row of shubas: big sleeveless cloaks of velvet, that wrap around one, and descend to one’s feet. There was a dream lined with blue fox, and another with white. My friends put one round my shoulders, it was lined with sable: light as a feather, and warm as a nest. I despairingly voiced the fact that I could not walk about the streets of Moscow in a wine coloured velvet and sable cape. They said I could, but then they were wrong. “I look much too bourgeoise, I shall be shot!”
“You won’t be shot, and sable is good enough for a good worker.” I showed a sable stole to Alexandre and told him it was the blackest and most beautiful bit of sable one could find. He shrugged his shoulders with perfect indifference,and said he knew nothing about it. Finally I walked out in a very practical black Siberian pony lined with grey squirrel, divinely warm, though rather heavy, and Alexandre said to me: “Now you can say that you have shared in the Government distribution of bourgeois property to the people.”
At 7.30 pm. Trotsky sent his car for me, but a soldier stopped us before we even reached the block where the War Ministry is. The whole bit of road was being especially guarded. The reason for this is that foreign papers have announced an impending counter-Revolution, but if there is any such plot their warning has been given most obligingly in time, and steps have been taken to deal with it. The town is placarded with notices that inhabitants must not be out after midnight. It gave one just a small thrill, and there have been none so far. This evening when I arrived Trotsky stood by the fire while I was warming, and I asked him for news. He says that the German workers have voted in favour of joining the Moscow International which is very important. “England is our only real and dangerous enemy,” he said. “Not France?” I asked. “No, France is just a noisy, hysterical woman, making scenes: but England—that is different altogether.” He talked about the persistence of the foreign Pressin decrying the stability of the Soviet Government. All the governments of Europe, he said, had undergone changes in the last three years, he pointed to France, Italy, the Central Powers, Turkey, and finally Poland. The British Government was holding out longer than any other, but that was pretty rocky, and its ministers were constantly changing their posts. The Soviet Government was the oldest government in Europe, and the only one in which the ministers retained their posts and displayed any unity, and this is spite of every effort on the part of the world to dislodge them.
He then busied himself at his table with papers. I worked for an hour and we never spoke, but he never disregarded me as Lenin did. I could walk round Lenin and look at him from all sides, he remained absorbed in his reading, and apparently oblivious of my presence. Whenever I go near Trotsky he looks up from his work sharply with piercing eyes and I forget which part of his face I was intent upon. Towards the end of the evening, when even my tiptoe stalking had aroused him, he asked me: “Avez vous besoin de moi.” I replied yes, as always. He came and stood by the clay, but he is very critical, and watches it and me all the time, and makes me nervous. I undid and did over again a gooddeal. The room was hot, and the clay got dry, it was uphill work. Never have I done anyone so difficult. He is subtle and irregular. At one moment the bust looked like Scipio Africanus, and I could see he was dissatisfied, then when I had altered it and asked him what he thought he stood for some time in silence with a suppressed smile before he let himself go: “It looks like a French bon bourgeois, who admires the woman who is doing him, but he has no connection with Communism.”
Happily the peasant woman came in with tea, and I sat down wearily with my head in my hands, utterly dispirited and discouraged. Only the fierce determination to make it come right roused me and I went at it again. He said, as he watched me: “When your teeth are clenched and you are fighting with your work,vous êtes encore femme.” I asked him to take off his pince-nez, as they hampered me. He hates doing this, he says he feelsdésarméand absolutely lost without them. It seemed akin to physical pain taking them off—they have become part of him and the loss of them completely changes his individuality. It is a pity, as they rather spoil an otherwise classical head.
While he was standing there helplessly with half-closed eyes, he remarked on my name being
[Image available.]TROTSKY AT THE FRONT.
TROTSKY AT THE FRONT.
TROTSKY AT THE FRONT.
spelt in the same way as that of the playwright. I explained that I had married a direct descendant. He was interested and said, “The School for Scandal” and “The Rivals,” had been translated and were occasionally acted here in Russian. He then got on to Shakespeare. I wish I could recall the words in which he described his appreciation, exclaiming finally: “If England had never produced anything else, she would have justified her existence.” We disagreed as to Byron and Shelley. He, like others I have met here, preferred Byron, and insisted in spite of my assertions to the contrary that Byron was the greater Revolutionary of the two. He was surprised that I loved Swinburne. He said he would have thought me too much of this world to love the spirituality of Swinburne. I said: “One has one’s dreams.” He gave a sigh. “Yes,” he said, “we all have our dreams——”
When, at the end of the evening, I was dissatisfied with my work and feeling suicidal I asked him:
“May I come back and work to-morrow night?”
“And the night after,” he answered, and added laughing, that he would rig the place up as a studio for me, and that I could do General Kameneff after I’d finished him.General Kameneff (who is no relation to Leo Kameneff) is the Commander-in-Chief, and was a very distinguished Tsarist officer. I hear that he strongly warned the War Ministry against advancing too far towards Warsaw, and foretold the débâcle that has since been fulfilled. But he was not listened to, perhaps because of his Tsarist tradition. Probably his opinion is more respected now. Trotsky asked me if I would like to do Tchicherin, and I explained that never before had I worked under such difficult conditions, and that although I had made efforts for Lenin and himself I did not feel like doing it again for anyone else. He was quite indignant and said: “What difficulty have you had in working here?” True it was a perfectly good room and excellent light, but Tchicherin would not move out of his Commissariat and that would mean new conditions to adapt oneself to, nor does anyone understand the difficulties of moving the finished work back to the Kremlin. Trotsky swept my excuses aside: “Of course you must do Tchicherin—it is almost a diplomatic obligation on his part to be done.”
It was a quarter to midnight when I prepared to stop work and looked desperately at the clock: “What about this order—how am I to be home
[Image available.]BUST OF TROTSKY.p. 147.
BUST OF TROTSKY.p. 147.
BUST OF TROTSKY.
p. 147.
at midnight?” I asked. He said, “I will take you myself.” At about half after midnight we left. A man in uniform joined us and sat next to the driver. He had in his hands a very big leather holster. We started off by going in the opposite direction to the right one, and I had to try and describe the way to them. We turned back, and crossing the bridge we were stopped by five soldiers. The man with the holster had to show our papers by the light of the car lamp. It delayed us several minutes. I said to Trotsky: “Put your head out of the window and say who you are.” “Taisez-vous,” said Trotsky peremptorily. I sat rebuked and silent until we were able to pass on unrecognised. He explained afterwards that he did not want them to hear a woman’s voice in the car talking English. I was talking French as we always do together, and did not see that it mattered to anyone in this country whether there is a woman in a Government car or not—but I did not argue.
October 21st.
I did very little during the day, so as to be fresh for my night’s work, though I went to see my friend the plaster-moulder who is working for so many thousand roubles a day in my studio. He is making piece moulds of the busts, so thatI can leave duplicates when I go. I asked Andrev why he had to be paid so much. Andrev explained that he is the only moulder in Moscow, so he can ask what he likes: “He says he will work for this and not for that,” and Andrev held a thousand rouble note in one hand and a hundred rouble note in the other. “But it is all the same really, only it is a different pattern,” and he laughed. Certainly money has no value here, and no meaning. At 8 o’clock I went back again to the War Commissariat in Trotsky’s car. On arrival I told him that I had got to get this work right to-night, and that he was not to be critical and look at it all the time and make me nervous.
He was surprised; said that he had no idea that he had that effect on me, that all he wanted was to help: “Je veux travailler cela avec vous.” His criticism, he said, was caused by intense interest, and that for nothing in the world would he be discouraging. He promised, however, to be good, and offer no opinion until asked. It was a better night for work; I felt calmer and it went pretty well.
The worst difficulties were surmounted. Trotsky stood for me in a good light and dictated to his stenographer. That was excellent. His face was animated and his attention occupied. I got allone side of his face done. Then came the question of the other side. He laughed, suggested another dictation, offered to stand in another position, and called back his stenographer. When we were alone again he came and stood close beside the clay and we talked while I went on working. We talked a little about myself.
He said I should remain in Russia awhile longer, and do some big work, something like my “Victory.” An emaciated and exhausted figure, but still fighting; that is the allegory of the Soviet.
I answered him that I could get no news of my children, and therefore must go back.
“I must return to my own world, to my own conventional people whose first thought is always for what the world will think. Russia with its absence of hypocrisy and pose, Russia with its big ideas, has spoilt me for my own world.”
“Ah! that is what you say now, but when you are away——” and he hesitated.
Then suddenly turning on me, with clenched teeth and fire in his eyes, he shook a threatening finger in my face: “If, when you get back to England,vous nous calomniezas the rest have, I tell you that I will come to Englandet je vous——” He did not say what he would do, but there was murder in his face.
I smiled: “That is all right. Now I know how to get you to England.” Then (to fall in with his mood): “How can I go back and abuse the hospitality and the chivalrous treatment I have received?”
He said: “It is not abusing, but there are ways of criticising even without abuse. It is easy enough here to be blindedpar les saletés et les souffrancesand to see no further than that, and people are apt to forget that there is no birth without suffering and horror, and Russia is in the throes of a greataccouchement.”
He talks well, he is full of imagery and his voice is beautiful.
We paused for tea, and I talked to him of things I had heard about the schools. In reply he said he had heard no adverse reports of the co-education scheme for boys and girls. There might be an individual case of failure, though even of such a case he had not heard. He then compared the present system with that of boy colleges of his own day, and he said that his own boy of fourteen had nicer ideas about girls, and far less cynicism, than he had at the same age. The boy apparently confides in his mother, so he knows something about it.
To-night he sent me home alone in his car; he excused himself, saying it was the only timeit was possible for him to walk. He kissed my dirty hand and said that he would always preserve a memory of “une femme avec une auréole de cheveux et des mains très sales.”
October 22nd.
Finished!
I worked until half after midnight. I think it is a success. He said so; but it has been such a struggle.
About half way through the evening, the electric lights went out. A secretary lit four candles. On the telephone Trotsky learnt that the lights had gone out all over the town.
I asked him hopefully if it could possibly be the outburst of a counter-Revolution.
He laughed and asked if that was what I wanted.
I said that I thought it would break the monotony.
Until the lights went on I read the leading article on Bolshevism inThe Timesof, I think, October 4th. He had several English papers on his desk and we read together with much amusement that he (Trotsky) had been wounded, and that General Budienny had been court-martialled. There were even descriptions of barricades in the streets of Moscow: someone must have mistakenthe stacks of fuel that the tramcars are bringing in and unloading every day. When the lights went on I worked hectically until half after midnight, with the desperation of knowing it was the last sitting.
At midnight he was standing by the side of the work, rather tired and very still and patient, when suddenly I had the thought of asking him to undo his collar for me. He unbuttoned his tunic and the shirt underneath, and laid bare a splendid neck and chest. I worked like a fury for half an hour which was all too short. I tried to convey into my clay some of his energy and vitality. I worked with the desperation that always accompanies last moments. When I left he said to me: “Eh bien! on ira ensemble au front?” But something tells me that we shall never meet again. I feel that it is almost worth while to preserve the impression of our hours of individual work, collaboration and quietude, silently guarded by a sentry with fixed bayonet outside the door. To let in the light of day would be to spoil it.
There is a French saying: “On n’est pas toujours né dans son pays.” It equally follows that all are not born in their rightful sphere. Trotsky is one of these. At one time, in his youth, what was he? A Russian exile in ajournalist’s office. Even then I am told he was witty, but with the wit of bitterness. Now he has come into his own and has unconsciously developed a new individuality. He has the manner and ease of a man born to a great position; he has become a statesman, a ruler, a leader. But if Trotsky were not Trotsky, and the world had never heard of him, one would still appreciate his very brilliant mind. The reason I have found him so much more difficult to do than I expected, is on account of his triple personality. He is the cultured, well-read man, he is the vituperative fiery politician, and he can be the mischievous laughing school-boy with a dimple in his cheek. All these three I have seen in turn, and have had to converge them into clay interpretation.
October 23rd.
I went in the morning to fetch away the bust and take it to my room in the Kremlin. I went at 11, before Trotsky had got there. His motor was at my disposal and three men to convey the precious work away. These are the moments that take years off my life! It arrived, however, undamaged, which was little short of a triumph. When my plaster-moulder saw it he exclaimed with pleasure. Apparently it is very like, and everyone is pleased. As Trotsky is adored, Itake it as a great compliment to my work that it is considered good enough.
The relief of having accomplished him as well as Lenin is indescribable. I wake up in the night and wonder if it is true or a dream. Now I am completely happy. I have achieved my purpose. I have proved myself to these people, and they in return have proved their belief in me by their trouble and courteousness. I am no longer harassed by anxieties and fears. Those who discouraged me in the early days treat me now with respect, consideration and even admiration. I am happy, I am happy! I sing when I wake in the morning, I sing when I wash in cold water, I come down to my breakfast of black bread with a lighter step!
I breakfast every morning with Litvinoff. By coming down at 11 the others have finished, so we can talk. If Rothstein is present the conversation becomes Russian. If Vanderlip is there he talks all the time about America (he usually leaves the room with boredom if conversation is on any other subject). It is the fashion in Europe to vilify Litvinoff and to regard him as a terribly dangerous man. I suppose that he is an astute diplomatist. Whatever he is, he is better than he pretends, and though he gets no credit for it, he has done agood deal for the British prisoners here. He has unfortunately an abrupt manner, and a way of refusing to do things by pretending that they are no concern of his, but straightway he will go off and do a kindness to the very people who are damning him for having refused. To me he is charming, frank, outspoken, and always ready to help.
October 24th.
We have all been very much saddened by the death from typhus of John Reed, the American Communist. Everyone liked him and his wife, Louise Bryant, the War Correspondent. She is quite young and had only recently joined him. He had been here two years, and Mrs. Reed, unable to obtain a passport, finally came in through Murmansk. Everything possible was done for him, but of course there are no medicaments here: the hospitals are cruelly short of necessities. He should not have died, but he was one of those young, strong men, impatient of illness, and in the early stages he would not take care of himself.
I attended his funeral. It is the first funeral without a religious service that I have ever seen. It did not seem to strike anyone else as peculiar, but it was to me. His coffin stood for some days in the Trades’ Union Hall, the walls of whichare covered with huge revolutionary cartoons in marvellously bright decorative colouring. We all assembled in that hall. The coffin stood on a daïs and was covered with flowers. As a bit of staging it was very effective, but I saw, when they were being carried out, that most of the wreaths were made of tin flowers painted. I suppose they do service for each Revolutionary burial.
There was a great crowd, but people talked very low. I noticed a Christ-like man with long, fair curly hair, and a fair beard and clear blue eyes; he was quite young. I asked who he was. No one seemed to know. “An artist of sorts,” someone suggested. Not all the people with wonderful heads are wonderful people. Mr. Rothstein and I followed the procession to the grave, accompanied by a band playing a Funeral March that I had never heard before. Whenever that Funeral March struck up (and it had a tedious refrain), everyone uncovered; it seemed to be the only thing they uncovered for. We passed across the Place de la Révolution, and through the sacred gate to the Red Square. He was buried under the Kremlin wall next to all the Revolutionaries his Comrades. As a background to his grave was a large Red banner nailed upon the wall with the letters in gold: “The leaders die, but the cause lives on.”
When I was first told that this was the burying ground of the Revolutionaries I looked in vain for graves, and I saw only a quarter of a mile or so of green grassy bank. There was not a memorial, a headstone or a sign, not even an individual mound. The Communist ideal seemed to have been realised at last: the Equality, unattainable in life, the Equality for which Christ died, had been realisable only in death.
A large crowd assembled for John Reed’s burial and the occasion was one for speeches. Bucharin and Madame Kolontai both spoke. There were speeches in English, French, German and Russian. It took a very long time, and a mixture of rain and snow was falling. Although the poor widow fainted, her friends did not take her away. It was extremely painful to see this white-faced, unconscious woman lying back on the supporting arm of a Foreign Office official, more interested in the speeches than in the human agony.
The faces of the crowd around betrayed neither sympathy nor interest, they looked on unmoved. I could not get to her, as I was outside the ring of soldiers who stood guard nearly shoulder to shoulder. I marvel continuously at the blank faces of the Russian people. In France or Italy one knows that in moments of sorrow the people are deeplymoved, their arms go round one, and their sympathy is overwhelming. They cry with our sorrows, they laugh with our joys. But Russia seems numb. I wonder if it has always been so or whether the people have lived through years of such horror that they have become insensible to pain.
Happily no salute was fired. The last time the machine guns rattled at a burial I heard them in my studio, which is just the other side of the wall. On that occasion the old porter who takes care of me at the Kremlin told me that his wife nearly died of heart failure—she thought the “Whites” had come. Probably it affects other jumpy people in the same way.
Here the terror of the Whites is as great as is, on the other side, the terror of the Reds! The poor people do not want any more fighting. I think they are quite indifferent as to who rules them, they want only Peace.
When I got back I found Maxim Litvinoff, who also had been at the funeral and had looked for me in the crowd in vain. He says that he has arranged with Tchicherin that I am to begin him to-morrow. I have not asked to do him, but if it is all arranged for me I am only too delighted. But I do not look forward to working at the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.It is the Hotel Metropole, in the Place de la Révolution, and although it will not be necessary to have a pass, and there will be none of the sentry difficulties as with Lenin and Trotsky, the drain-smells are such that one climbs the stairs two at a time holding one’s breath! There are bits of the Kremlin that are enough to kill the healthiest person, but the Metropole baffles all description. Inside the offices it is all right, but the double windows everywhere are hermetically sealed for the winter, and I wonder that people do not die like flies. Litvinoff tells me that a new building is almost ready and that the next time I come to Moscow there will be a beautiful Commissariat. It is curious that in Moscow, which was one of the richest cities in the world and contained more rich merchants than almost any other, something more was not done for sanitation. Last year owing to lack of fuel most of the pipes in the town burst. No wonder there was an epidemic of typhus. This year things are better organised, and if there is Peace on the two fronts, conditions may be enormously improved.
This evening Comrade Alexandre took me to a play. He gave me my choice, and I decided that “La Fille de Madame Angot,” being an Operetta, would be more amusing that “Twelfth Night” in Russian. It was at the Théâtre des Arts, where Tchekov’s plays used to be produced. Tchekov is no longer acted; he wrote for a class that is temporarily extinct; the workers and peasants would not understand it. Afterwards, coming home in the motor, I noticed a tremendous glare in the sky, it obviously meant a fire, and I insisted on going to look for it. If the fire, when found, was disappointing, at least the search for it was interesting, and revealed to me the unsuspected size of Moscow. We drove through miles of deserted streets, where we met only a few soldiers wearily trudging through the mud. We shouted to them: “Tovarischi, where is the fire?” There is something very pleasant in hailing a complete stranger as a Comrade—one feels at once a link of friendship. The Tovarischi, however, only waved vaguely onwards, which is the only instruction one ever gets in Moscow when one asks the way. On we bumped and jolted and skidded. There was an icy wind blowing and we had no rug. We seemed to cross two rivers, or they may have been river branches. Everything looked very beautiful in the twilight. There was no parapet to the river edge, only some tortuous tree-stems.
Finally we arrived upon the scene to find that some building in a big clearing had burnt to thefoundations, and was still burning brightly. Having got out of the car and waded through the mud, I could not get anywhere near, and abandoned the quest. A party of men returning from the fire, surprised at our having a motor, asked Alexandre for his identification papers. Happily he is a member of the Communist party. On the way home he was anxious lest the bad road should cause some damage to the car. If it broke down, he explained cheerfully, there was no other car to be had in these parts, and no telephone to call one up, and it was too far to walk home. It was snowing and we got back at 1 a.m. after losing the way many times.
In the hall I was met by Litvinoff, who, while I was having supper, told me that he had had a message from Trotsky who asked if I would be ready to go off to the front on the morrow at 4 p.m. I had to make up my mind. We discussed the plan in all its aspects. Litvinoff was splendid, he advised me neither way, he merely said he would make all arrangements if I decided to go. I knew that going would involve cold and discomfort and I guessed that I should not really see much of the front, and as the only woman I should be most conspicuous. Yet—what a temptation. Finally about 3 a.m. for various reasons I decided to preserve Trotsky as a memory.Then for the first time Litvinoff said: “I am so glad.”
October 25th.
Litvinoff was most kind and helped me to move my clay and stand from the Kremlin to the Foreign Office. I would have liked a snapshot of our procession—the moulder carrying the clay block, Litvinoff, in his fur-lined coat and sealskin cap armed with the modelling stand, and I following with the bucket of clay and cloths.
On arrival at the Foreign Office we were greeted by the Chinese General in uniform and all his staff. Litvinoff, who is likely to be the Soviet representative in China, was rather taken aback by thisrencontrebut the Chinese were enormously amused.
Later, at 9 p.m. I returned with Litvinoff to Tchicherin’s office to begin work. While Litvinoff went inside I waited in the secretary’s room, and while I was waiting a man hurried through the office. He was a little man in brown trousers and a coat which did not match. With small steps he shuffled hastily along. It might have been a night watchman; it was Tchicherin.
Still I waited, and the length of my wait began to annoy me, and then I began to feel that