[Image available.]SENTRY OUTSIDE THE GUEST-HOUSE.p. 161.
SENTRY OUTSIDE THE GUEST-HOUSE.p. 161.
SENTRY OUTSIDE THE GUEST-HOUSE.
p. 161.
something was wrong. Presently Litvinoff called me, but I got no further than the doorway.
There Tchicherin confronted me, and in hurried and confused tones said: “To-night it is impossible, quite, quite impossible,” and disappeared. He had not even allowed me to cross his threshold.
Litvinoff and I looked at each other and walked out. We went upstairs to Litvinoff’s office. He was obviously upset and at a perfect loss to explain or excuse. I sat and talked until the car arrived to take me home, and from what Litvinoff said and from what I had seen in that flash, I have learned something of the personality of Tchicherin.
He is an abnormal man, living month after month in that Foreign Office with closed windows and never going out. He insists on having a bedroom there, as he says he has not time to go home to sleep. He works all night, and if a telegram comes in the day he has to be awakened. His nights are days and his days are not entirely nights. He has no idea of time and does not realise that other people live differently. He will ring up a Comrade on the telephone at 3 or 4 o’clock in the morning for the most trivial information. He does all his own work, and will not ring for a secretary or messenger, butruns himself with papers to other departments. He lives on his nerves and the slightest thing throws him off his pivot.
I had been told he was an angel and a saint. What I found was a fluttering and agitated bird. The joke is that he is looked upon as the “gentleman” of the party. He is by origin well-born and propertied. His property he gave away to the people. To-day was a particularly unfortunate one for me. It happened to be the first day for months that Tchicherin had gone out. He went to the dentist. Someone watching him from an office window described to me the phenomenon of Tchicherin in the street. He did not go in a car, but on foot. He stood at the corner of the kerb, looked at the street hesitatingly, much as one might look into a river on a cold day before plunging in. When he did finally decide to get across, he got half way and then ran back. What with the traffic, the fresh air, and the dentist, it must have been a thoroughly unnerving day for him, and no wonder he received me so ill!
October 26th.
Tchicherin sent me a message through Litvinoff, inviting me to start at 4 o’clock in the morning, as that is his quietest time, but it is unfortunately my quietest time too.
October 29th.
I have had four inactive days, but the sense of work completed is a great relief. I am prepared to enjoy the holiday. I have drifted about with Andrev, and in his spare moments with Maxim Litvinoff. On his way to work at midday he first takes me in his car to the place I want to photograph. At 5 o’clock he comes back and has tea with me, brings his portfolio and works in my room till 7. Then he starts out again to meetings. I have interesting talks with him and learn a good deal. He smiles tolerantly when my bourgeois breeding breaks out. But he says I am getting better. Even Rothstein has grown to treat me more seriously.
To-day my fourth day of rest began to rouse in me a fresh energy. I long to fill in this interim of waiting with some new work. I have offered to do Litvinoff, and he suggests that I should work in his office; this is so difficult that I have asked him to let me do it at home, in odd moments when he is free. Between the two, nothing gets decided. Meanwhile the sentries at the Kremlin gate have fired my enthusiasm. They are magnificent, wrapped around in goatskin coats with collars that envelop their entire heads. My efforts to get such an one to sit to me have at last been successful.
Andrev and I wandered from building to building this morning to accomplish this purpose. Andrev is great fun to explore with; with a “Je m’en fiche” air, he opens all the doors he comes to, and walks in everywhere. I see all sorts of places that I would never dare to investigate alone.
We walked boldly into the barracks; I doubt if a woman had been in before, but I did not attract much attention. A few soldiers gathered round us to hear our explanation to the officer in charge. One or two smiled, the rest looked at me blankly. What Andrev said of course I do not know, except that I understood the officer to ask if we were Bolshevik. Apparently if we were not Bolsheviks we must get permission from the Commandant of the Kremlin before a soldier could be sent to me. Off we went in search of the Commandant. Oh! the dark passages and the stuffy offices; they smelt as if the air belonged to bygone ages. I am sure no fresh air ever leaks in. From there to the military store to obtain an overcoat. They lent me a new one; it was an enormous goatskin. More smells! No living goat ever could have smelt stronger. Andrev, staggering under the weight and the unwieldy size, carried it to my studio to await the soldier’s arrival to-morrow. The room reeksof it. My idea is a statuette—only in Russia could one find such a silhouette.
It was still early and I did not want to go home, so we wandered to the Palace, opened more doors, and after a little conversation with some men in an office, one of them took us to see the Museum and the Armoury. This was a great revelation, and I regretted not having seen it before so that I could have had time to go often again. Our guide spoke French, and knew all the things intimately. He talked of them with pride and almost with love. Everything was beautifully arranged. There were glass cases full of Romanoff crowns, jewel studded, and sceptres and harness and trappings set with precious stones. One really got quite dazzled by them. The armour is very fine, I believe, but that I know nothing about and it does not interest me. What I loved were the old coaches. There was one given by Queen Elizabeth of England, the most beautiful bit of painted carving I have ever seen. The French Louis XV and XVI coaches looked vulgar next to it. There was a room full of silver and gold cups. I believe that this contains the finest collection of English Charles II silver in the world. Moreover so many cups had been collected recently from the churches that there were long wooden trestles coveredwith them, and they were in process of being catalogued. In the last room were exhibited all the old costumes, church vestments and beautiful brocades. The Coronation robe of Catherine the Great was there, and others that had been wedding and Coronation robes of various other Tsarinas. It is wonderful that these things should have remained unhurt throughout the Revolution.
It is acutely cold, and the river is completely frozen over. Children skate and toboggan everywhere. The side walks have become slides, and are very difficult for the pedestrian who is not equipped with skates. Children here seem to be born able to skate. They strap skates on to any kind of footgear, even on to big, loose felt boots, and they skate everywhere at breakneck speed.
It is a relief not to see people wearily carrying their bundles over their shoulders. Now everyone seems to have put his burden on to a little wooden sledge, and grown-up people look like big children pulling toys on the ends of strings. I have borrowed clothes and Jaegers from my friends. One’s nostrils freeze and the breath crystallises on one’s fur collar.
The town with its white pall is indescribably beautiful. At dusk the sky is darkened by a flight of grey-backed crows. They settle on thebare tree branches with the effect of great black leaves silhoueted against a coloured evening sky.
At 8.30 this evening, Kameneff unexpectedly walked into my room. It is nearly three weeks since he went to the front. I had almost forgotten about him. He was in tremendous spirits, much thinner, quite unshaved, and with his hair long. He was interesting about the spirit of the Red Army. He says they are wonderfully enthusiastic, and anxious to finish Wrangel and have peace. It is just possible there may be a bigcoupwhich would obviate a winter campaign.
More than ever do I regret not having gone with Trotsky. They met at Kharkof, and I could have come back with Kameneff.
October 31st.
I went to the Kremlin, and tried to work on my soldier who came to sit to me, but the clay gets so cold and my fingers so numbed, I find I cannot do anything. I built up such a big fire in the stove to keep myself warm, that the unfortunate soldier in the overcoat got nearly apoplectic. Moreover, the hot goatskin smells stronger and stronger. Even the soldier seems to be affected by it. We cannot open the windows and let the cold in. These conditions make work very discouraging. Andrev fetched me at 12.30, andwe went to the house of Shucken, who was a cotton-king, and who had the biggest collection of modern French pictures in existence. It is now taken over by the Government, and open on several days a week to the public. Madame Shucken is, I believe, allowed to occupy her rooms in the house. There is no such modern collection in France. There were represented all the artists I have been wanting to see. The first room was full of Claude Monet, and there were three little Whistlers in the doorway leading to a room full of Dégas, Renoir, and Cézanne.
To-day for the first time I can appreciate Mattisse; there were twenty-one in a room. Next to this was another room containing twenty Goguins. In a further gallery there was a motley collection, including a couple of Brangwyns, which held their own well. There was also the big William Morris tapestry of Burne-Jones’ “Nativity,” which one could hardly bear to look at after the modern French.
Coming out, we passed by a doorway in the snow, rudely painted in blotches of green and yellow; a sentry stood by, and I pointed it out to Andrev who agreed that it was pure Mattisse. One has but to borrow the eyes of another and the same old world appears quite different. I remember that when I had been inFlorence a few days, everyone looked like a painted Madonna.
This evening Litvinoff gave a banquet for the departing Chinese General. It was a great event. The dishes as they appeared were like things we have seen in dreams. The party consisted, besides the General and three of his staff, of two interpreters (one being the professor of Chinese at the University of Petrograd), Tchicherin, Karahan, his secretary, Mrs. Karahan, Vanderlip, Rothstein and myself.
We were invited for 9 p.m., but it was half-past eleven before we began, true Russian fashion, two hours and a half late. It was for Tchicherin we had to wait: he has no idea of time.
The hours preceding were rather tedious, as conversation through an interpreter is not a success. One Chinaman talked French. He was the President of the Union of Chinese Workers.
Karahan is Armenian; he speaks some strange Eastern language, but nothing that I understand. His wife can only talk Russian. They live in our house, but one seldom sees them as they have their meals in their own apartments. His face is very beautiful, like carved ivory. He is a great mystery; he lives in a better way than anyone else, smokes the best cigars, drives to his office in a limousine, and looks like the most prosperousgentleman in Europe in his astrachan coat and hat. He must do some very good work for the Government, or he would not be tolerated. I believe Lenin once asked what was the use of him, and he was told that Karahan was most important, for was he not the only man amongst them who could wear evening clothes? Mrs. Karahan was on the stage and is the prettiest woman I have seen in Moscow.
At dinner I sat between the President of the Union of Chinese Workers and Litvinoff, who did host extremely well, and was clever in placing us all. He created so many places of honour that everyone was gratified. He put Tchicherin at the head of the table, so that the General and Vanderlip on either side of him felt that they were guests of honour. He put me on one side of him and Mrs. Karahan at the end of the table opposite Tchicherin.
I ate so many excellenthors d’œuvres, thinking I was never going to eat again, and that nothing else was coming, that I had little room left for what followed. It was a joy even to look at a fresh salad and a cauliflower.
Our old manservant was awfully happy. He had on a collar and tie and was washed, and had organised everything beautifully. He had got out the Sèvres salt-cellars, and the cut-glass decanters,and I suppose he just felt that he was back in the old pre-Revolution days and serving his master’s friends. He took intense pride in it all.
We had our jokes with him as he went by. Handing me a dish ofbœuf à la mode, he said: “Magnifique!” Litvinoff was reprimanded by him for using his knife for his vegetables, and was told that he would not get another. When the apple dumplings came round I was done. I said to the old man: “Zafter” (to-morrow). I do hope we shall get some remains. I asked Litvinoff where all the food had come from. He explained to me that there is some food to be had, but that the best is sent to the hospitals and the children.
Then followed speeches. Anything more deplorable to listen to without understanding than Russian being translated into Chinese andvice versâis hard to imagine. Tchicherin spoke for quite a long time. The Chinese General’s face was immovable. After the Professor had translated, the General replied with much the same sort of face.
After dinner we adjourned to the Karahans’ big rooms opposite. Tchicherin was evidently embarrassed at meeting me again. I had no feeling on the subject, and merely laughed.
I said jokingly, “Comrade Tchicherin, you have treated me very badly.”
He was again quite flustered. Litvinoff told me à propos of Tchicherin that he had advised him to get someone extra into his office to help to get his papers straight. Tchicherin agreed, and said that he had already heard of a young man who would do very well because “he works during the day, so that he is free at night.” Litvinoff asked when the man should sleep; Tchicherin looked surprised, he had forgotten about that.
November 2nd.
Felt ill. Symptoms of abdominal typhus. Panic on the part of my friends. They say they do not want to lay my body under the Kremlin wall. If they do, I have told them I don’t mind speeches, but I would like a prayer. The answer to that was: “Are you reallycroyante?”
“Well,” I said, “there are two children praying every night that I may return safe and soon, and the thought of that gives me a certain security.”
“What, you teach your children to pray?”
“But surely they must have something to guide them as they start life?”
“You should teach them reality, and not fantasy.”
“It is not fantasy to believe in a Divine power.”
“You should believe only in your own power.”
That is a conversation I have had as a result of my slight indisposition. It was a conversation that confirms the general idea I have met in others since I have been here. I know these men are idealists and selfless. I did not know these qualities could go hand in hand with atheism.
On this point, Litvinoff corrected me. He did not even want to be regarded as an idealist. That was too unpractical. “We are idealistic materialists,” he said. To prove their tolerance of religious thought, the churches are all open. But to enter the sacred gateway which leads to the Red Square it was necessary, in pre-Revolution days, for men to pass uncovered. A tablet has now been inserted in the wall engraved with the inscription, “Religion is the opiate of the people.” Hardly ever have I passed that by without having it pointed out to me with great pride. I never quite understood the spirit of it.
As for the people, they seem to disregard it, to judge by the many who cross themselves as they pass. The shrine seems to be always full of devotees, who pause to pray. The religious feeling of the people will not easily be obliterated and, after all, they need all the comfort and hope they can get, even if the intellectuals do not.
My stay in Russia is nearing its end. AlreadyI see my departure in the near distance. People at home will think I am a Bolshevik, on account of my associations, but I am much too humble to pretend that I understand anything about it.
The more I hear, the clearer it seems to me that economics are the basis of all these arguments, and when it is a question of political economy something happens to my mind, just as it used to when I was a child and had to learn arithmetic. A Bolshevik who can be defeated by argument is not worthy of the name. Therefore I am not a Bolshevik.
But I have tried to understand the spirit of Communism and it interests me overwhelmingly. There are little incidents I like to recall that in no way lessen my love of the people. For example, when the weather began to get cold, before Borodin went away, being unable to explain in Russian what I wanted, I went myself to the back garden to fetch an armload of logs for my fire.
I had to make a long journey through the kitchen, down the corridor and finally through the drawing-room. I have never minded carrying my own wood, but I did think that one of the two men—Borodin who was telephoning, or Boris, who was idling in a Louis XVI chair as I passed through the drawing-room, might have opened the doors for me.
Because they did not I most unforgivably lost my temper, and said I was glad that I was an English woman and not a Russian man. The effect of my attack was different on each of them.
Boris said, “But it is quite right you should carry your own wood. Communism means that each should help himself.”
I replied that that was nothing new, that self-help was the oldest deep-rooted feeling in the world, and that if Communism wanted to be original, it must teach the doctrine of helping one another.
Borodin followed me to my room in a state of apology and distress. He brought me two apples and a cigarette, and told me that if I peeled the birch bark off the logs, it made an excellent substitute for kindling. With his advice he did much to help me light my fire. I have never quite made out in my own mind if they were typically Russian or typically Communist. I am still wondering.
I was much laughed at once because I made Vanderlip in the street shoulder a woman’s burden and carry it for her to her house. She was a frail well-dressed woman, obviously exhausted by a long walk over cobblestones, and was utterly incompetent to carry the bundle containingher rations. I would have taken it for her myself if I had been alone, but as Vanderlip was champion-in-chief of the frail and the well-dressed, I thought he might as well do it. Litvinoff was amused when he heard about it, and said that one might really find a good deal of work to do in Moscow on those lines.
Vanderlip has told me with great concern that a weak little bourgeoise friend of his, once rich, but now a stenographer, has received a paper ordering her to enlist her services among those who are to shovel the street clear of snow in front of their doors.
“Terrible,” he said.
“Why, terrible?” I asked.
“Terrible that a woman, well-bred and unused to manual labour, should be called upon to shovel snow.”
“But,” I argued, “she had better food and care when young than the working classes, and ought, therefore, to be physically stronger and more able to do this work than many another.” (I thought of some of my friends in England who made most efficient railway porters during the strike a year ago.)
I said that I should take a pride if I were a Russian bourgeoise in showing people here that I could do as good a day’s work as anyone else,and that I was not just useless and helpless as they imagined.
Vanderlip disagreed. He said (and I wonder if it is the American point of view) that women ought not to work at all, they ought to be worked for.
It was quite useless to talk to him about co-operation or the economic independence of women. Besides, it was not about women, it was about Communism that I wanted to talk.
How long and how rambling this is as the result of no occupation and an enforced stay within doors! It is useless to write letters home, and this is a sort of unburdening. I often wonder about my family—whether they are anxious about me (knowing nothing of the peaceful truth), or whether they are too disapproving to be anxious.
I love the bedrock of things here, and the vital energy. If I had no children, I should remain and work. There may be no food for the body, but there is plenty of food for the soul, and I would rather live in discomfort in an atmosphere of gigantic effort, than in luxury among the purposeless. I find I no longer dream of home, and have grown used to conditions which at first seemed hard. I am thankful for the peace which I once mistook for dullness, and appreciate the absence of all the pretty tyrannies of civilised life. My mode of living suits me very well.I am glad not to have to take any part in the management of a house. I prefer bad food than to be consulted about it. What the housemaid breaks is not mine, nor any concern of mine. There are no boredoms such as gas bills, taxes, rent and rates, nor Income Tax returns. I never have to sign a cheque, nor to go out with a purse. The obliteration of all social life is a boon. There are no invitations by telephone to accept, refuse, or make decisions about. There is no perplexity about the choice of apparel, nor letters by post that have to be answered. There is leisure to read, leisure to think, leisure to observe. The big ideas, wide horizons and destruction of all the conventions have taken hold of me. Of course I realise that, as a guest of the Government, I am judging things from a personal point of view, and not the point of view of the Russian people. (Few of us are big enough to be purely impersonal.) I like living in this way. It may seem a strange taste to those people who have the sense of possession, the collectors’ instinct, or the love of home. I have none of these; so long as I have a place to work in, and plenty of work to do, and leisure in which to think about it, I ask little more.
My ear has accustomed itself to the language of Communism, I have forgotten the English ofmy own world. I do not mean that I am a Communist, nor that I think it is a practical theory, perhaps it is not, but it seems to me, nevertheless, that the Russian people get gratis a good many privileges, such as education, lodging, food, railways, theatres, even postage, and a standard wage thrown in. If the absence of prosperity is marked, the absence of poverty is remarkable. The people’s sufferings are chiefly caused by lack of food, fuel and clothing. This is not the fault of the Government. The Soviet system does not do it to spite them, or because it enjoys their discomfiture. Only peace with the world can ameliorate their sufferings, and Russia is not at war with the world, the world is at war with Russia. Why am I happy here, shut off from all I belong to? What is there about this country that has always made everyone fall under its spell? I have been wondering. My mind conjures up English life and English conditions, and makes comparisons. Why are these people, who have less education, so much more cultured than we are? The galleries of London are empty. In the British Museum one meets an occasional German student. Here the galleries and museums are full of working people. London provides revues and plays of humiliating mediocrity, which the educated classes enjoy and applaud. Herethe masses crowd to see Shakespeare. At Covent Garden it is the gallery that cares for music, and the boxes are full of weary fashion, which arrives late and talks all the time. Here the houses are overcrowded with workers and peasants who listen to the most classical operas. Have they only gone as someone might with a new sense of possession to inspect a property they have suddenly inherited? Or have they a true love of the beautiful and a real power of discrimination? These are the questions I ask myself. Civilisation has put on so many garments that one has trouble in getting down to reality. One needs to throw off civilisation and to begin anew, and begin better, and all that is required is just courage. What Lenin thinks about nations applies to individuals. Before reconstruction can take place there must be a revolution to obliterate everything in one that existed before. I am appalled by the realisation of my upbringing and the futile view-point instilled into me by an obsolete class tradition. Time is the most valuable material in the world, and there at least we all start equally, but I was taught to scatter mine thoughtlessly, as though it were infinite. Now for the first time I feel morally and mentally free, and yet they say there is no freedom here. If a paper pass or an identification card hampers one’s freedom, then it istrue. There may be restrictions to the individual, and if I were a Russian subject I might not be allowed to leave the country, but I seem to have been obliged to leave England rather clandestinely.
Freedom is an illusion, there really is not any in the world except the freedom one creates intellectually for oneself.
My work is ended, but I am loth to go. I love this place and all the people in it. I love the people I have met, and the people who pass by me in the street. I love the atmosphere laden with melancholy, with sacrifice, with tragedy. I am inspired by this Nation, purified by Fire. I admire the dignity of their suffering and the courage of their belief.
I should like to live among them for ever, or else work for them outside, work and fight for the Peace that will heal their wounds.
November 5th.
A message has arrived at third hand from Kalinin, offering to sit to me. He promised to a long time ago before he went to the front. He got back from the front on October 30th, with Kameneff, and had he given me the chance then there would have been plenty of time. Now everything is settled for me to go to-morrow withProfessor Lomonosoff in his special train. I am very disappointed, Kalinin has a head that interests me. I have wanted to do a Russian peasant type, and he is one. But if I do not get away in Lomonosoff’s train I may delay a long time. England seems so very far away, and the children will think I have forgotten them. Perhaps if I could work without my fingers getting frozen I would stop and do him, and do Litvinoff too. But I have made a failure of my soldier, and it is not encouraging. An appointment was made for me with Kalinin at 1 o’clock to see him in his office. Litvinoff kindly took me there. It was in some building facing the Kremlin. We went in and after some searching and inquiry, found the outer rooms of his office. There seemed to be two or three of these, and they were full of people sitting on benches round the wall. Some looked miserable, and were curled up in a heap with shawls over their heads, others were sleeping in corners, or huddled up by the stove. They spat on the floor, smoked and were perfectly silent. These were all people who came with a grievance to lay before their President. Litvinoff, when he went in, asked whether it was Kalinin’s office—a nod and a grunt assented that it was. Litvinoff, who is impatient, went from room to room, but we could find no trace of Kalinin.
[Image available.]LITVINOFF AT MOSCOW.
LITVINOFF AT MOSCOW.
LITVINOFF AT MOSCOW.
Finally he opened a door that proved to be the private office, and a short haired girl secretary looked up and said Kalinin might return in half an hour. So he might, but with an experience of Russian official appointments, it seemed likely that he might not appear for a couple of hours. We left messages and retreated. On our way out someone, rousing himself from a corner, asked whether Kalinin was really in his room or not. Perhaps they thought we were privileged people, while they were kept waiting; I was rather glad that we could say he was not there. I came away with a melancholy impression of the place, but Kalinin, with his kindly face, must be the best sort of man to whom the people can tell their troubles.
We then drove to the statue of Dostoievsky, which is a beautiful bit of work in granite and which I wanted to photograph. In the same square there is another granite statue by the same artist, which is usually known as “The Thinker.” It is, if anything, better than the Dostoievsky.
From there I went to the Kremlin to see how the packing of my heads was progressing. I was surprised to find that the wooden cases had been delivered, owing, no doubt, to the combined efforts of Kameneff, Litvinoff, Andrev, and my kind Comrade Ynachidse, from whom all blessingsflow. Moreover the heads were packed, so that there was nothing for me to do. I said good-bye very sadly to my nice moulder, whom I like so much. He is intelligent, well-mannered, and efficient. He bent down and kissed my hand with the simplicity and dignity of a prince. I gave him a woollen jersey, as he feels the cold, and with all his thousands of roubles that he earns he cannot buy such a thing. I gave one last look round the grim room to which I have become attached, and, with a lump in my throat, departed down the long stone passage, through which my footsteps re-echoed for the last time.
Then I crossed the courtyard and went to lunch at the Kremlin table d’hôte. This table d’hôte, which is the Communist restaurant reserved for all the Commissars and workers in the Kremlin, was unusually full to-day. I was lucky to get my place. Lunarcharsky sat opposite me. He has just returned to Moscow and I regretted there was no one present who could introduce us.
My neighbours observed me reading an English guide-book to the Kremlin, and attempted odd bits of conversation, but their English completely broke down. It is a great loss not being able to understand a word of Russian, as the general conversation at the long table was very animated and must have been interesting.
[Image available.]STATUE OF DOSTOIEVSKY.p. 181.
STATUE OF DOSTOIEVSKY.p. 181.
STATUE OF DOSTOIEVSKY.
p. 181.
[Image available.]STATUE “THE THINKER.”p. 181.
STATUE “THE THINKER.”p. 181.
STATUE “THE THINKER.”
p. 181.
The interest for me was in the faces of the men themselves, who were of the most varied type it would be possible to collect. One could not say they were typically Russian or typical of any race or of any particular character, and yet there was some invisible link that bound all these men together in one common thought.
After lunch Andrev fetched me, and an official showed us all over the Tsar’s palace. There were exquisite small rooms with vaulted ceilings and frescoed walls, from which it was evident that the stage scenery in the Russian operas had been copied. There were still traces of red bunting and appeals to the workers of the world to unite in the colossal room, over-decorated with gold, which was the Throne Room of the Romanoffs, and in which the Third International had its last meeting.
The modern apartments in the new wing are bad architecture and in bad taste, but everything is left undisturbed. Even the photographs of the Tsar’s Coronation are still hanging in their frames in some of the rooms. The Royal Family scarcely came to Moscow, so that the place must have always had an uninhabited feeling. One did not feel the ghosts of former times as in some of the older parts of the building.
My last evening was spent with Andrev,Litvinoff and Kameneff, who came and sat in my room. Kameneff brought me a sheepskin hat, such as I had seen at the Sukharefski market and wanted so much, also the £100 I had entrusted to his care when we started, which I have never had occasion to spend. He then told me that my departure was most ill-timed. To-morrow is the eve of the Anniversary of the Revolution. There are going to be great celebrations. A big meeting will be held at the Opera House, at which Lenin and Trotsky are going to speak. It is only on very rare occasions that Lenin appears in public, and it would be interesting to hear him. The meeting is called for 4 o’clock, but it will be three or four hours late, and my train leaves at 8. If only Lomonosoff would delay his train I could attend. The next day, on the 7th, there will be a ball, and on the 8th a banquet at our house for the Foreign Office. Moreover, the Entente papers promise acoup d’étatfor the 7th and Litvinoff suggested that I should wait and “see the show.” But I know by experience that I should only wait in vain. When I was alone with Kameneff he said to me: “Well, did I keep my promises?” I told him that everything had been fulfilled, and had exceeded even my expectations. I told him I was overwhelmed by the kindness I had received “considering I am an
[Image available.]THE SUKHAREFSKI MARKET.p. 184.
THE SUKHAREFSKI MARKET.p. 184.
THE SUKHAREFSKI MARKET.
p. 184.
enemy Englishwoman.” He would not listen to any words of appreciation, he smiled in his genial, kindly way: “Of course we were glad to receive you, and to have you among us,une femme artiste, what did it matter to us, your nationality, or your relations. There is only one thing,que nous ne pouvons pas supporter,” and for the first time in all the months I have known him, a hard look passed over his face, and he set his teeth: “The only thing we cannot standc’est l’espionage,” and the way he said it gave me a shiver down my spine. It was only a passing shadow, and the next moment he was telling me that he really regarded me as a woman of courage for coming just on his word, adding that when he saw me on the departure platform “with two small handbags, I knew in that moment that you were not any ordinary woman!” We looked back on our London days and laughingly discussed the first sitting when he invited me to come to Moscow. I told him “I did not believe that you were serious when you asked me,” and he said, “neither did I believe you were serious when you accepted.” He then proceeded to outline for me exactly what the effect of my Moscow visit would have on my friends, on my family, in the Press, and on my career. His accuracy remains to be seen.
November 6th.
Off at last—what a hectic day. Litvinoff telephoned to me in the morning from the Commissariat to say that my big wooden cases (my coffins I call them, they are the same shape) were going to be conveyed from my studio to the station, and that I need not concern myself about them. It was not until midday that I learnt for certain that Professor Lomonosoff was going to start to-night. In Russia one makes no plans, things happen when they happen! With a rashness that nearly proved reckless, I distributed my few belongings among my friends. To a lady doctor-friend of Andrev who had been nice to me, I left all my stockings, a box of soap, a skirt, a jersey and my cloth overcoat. To the maids in the house, my shoes and goloshes, workbag, jersey, fur-lined dressing jacket, pair of gloves, and hat. To Rothstein, as a parting gift, my hot-water bottle and medicine case. I started on my journey in the clothes I stood up in. The maids, to my intense embarrassment, kissed my hands and nearly wept. I nearly kissed them in return. I started off with Litvinoff, and Rothstein came to the front door to see the last of me. He overwhelmed me with compliments: “You have been a brick, you have played up splendidly, you have never complained.” I tried to explainthat I hadn’t played up, and that I had not been anything except very happy. I might have added that living Communistically had proved to me that one must either love or hate the people one sees every day for any length of time. Hate may be tempered into dislike, and Love may be more appropriately termed friendship or affection, but it was certainly affection that I had grown to feel for Rothstein. He seemed somehow to belong to our environment, we should have missed him if he hadn’t been there. Just occasionally he said things about England that roused opposition in me. I feel about England as most people do about their relations, that I may abuse my own, but no one else may. I realised, when I got to know him better, that his attitude was not so much one of hostility to England as of intense pride in Russia, and so I forgave him. During my first days in Moscow, Rothstein unfailingly cross-questioned me at supper as to how I had spent my day, where I had lunched, whom I had seen, and what time I had come home. At last I said to him: “Don’t ask me, try and find out,” and I chaffed him so that he had to give up asking. I never knew whether there was a motive in his curiosity or not. At all events, he never was anything but a kindly and helpful friend to me. I drove away from No. 14,Sofiskaya Naberezhnaya in an open car in the bright light of a full moon, glittering stars, and hard frost. Litvinoff, observing that I looked back at it rather sentimentally, said: “That is your Moscow home, the next time you come you will bring your children,” and I felt that I did not look upon it for the last time. We drove first to the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, as he had some packages of papers to pick up there which he had taken away in the morning to have sealed up for me. I waited outside in the car for some time. When he rejoined me he was agitated, my “coffins,” he had just learnt, were still at the Kremlin. Organisation had miscarried, it was “somebody’s” fault. The lorry had waited for them three hours, but the sentry at the building had refused to deliver them up. What could have happened? Everyone was at the big Opera House meeting, so all telephoning efforts to get hold of responsible help had been in vain. We had three-quarters of an hour before the train was due to start. I suggested driving to the Kremlin to see what we could do. Happily I still had my pass on me, so we got in by the sentry. The building, ever before so busy, was now utterly deserted and resonant. I unlocked the door of my studio, and there were the two coffins lying packed and sealed and unmoved.I lifted one end of one, it was far beyond our combined strengths to carry, and the motor could not have taken them. We gave it up in despair. Down in the courtyard our car refused to move, the chauffeur was tinkering at it. It seemed to have a real congested chill. Train time was drawing near. The station was some way off. “Stay,” said Litvinoff. I had visions of staying, perhaps indefinitely, having parted with all except what I stood up in.
I looked round at the beloved Kremlin, to which I had already said good-bye not expecting to see it again. It seemed more beautiful than ever, more still, more dignified, more impassive. The clock in the old Spassky tower complainingly chimed three times, it was a quarter to seven. At last the car breathed, pulsed, started, then stopped. Then pulsed, grunted, and started again. We were off, and, as the road lay down hill, it seemed possible that the car, which was misfiring badly, might just get there. It seemed to be an evening of mishaps, and I felt fated not to leave Moscow. However, we reached the station at exactly 7, and I gathered up all I could in each hand, and ran towards a crowd that stood by the only train in the station. Litvinoff shouted to me “you needn’t run.” Indeed, I need not, as the only train in the station was not the train ofProfessor Lomonosoff. His special came in at another platform about half an hour later, and never went out till after 9. Had we known, something could have been done in the time to get the cases to the train, also I could have gone to the meeting and heard Lenin. No one was more frantic than Lomonosoff, who prided himself on his train being punctual. But it could not be helped, the train had just returned from the Urals, and was in a state of disorder.
Litvinoff, when he said good-bye to me, promised to send on my cases by courier to Reval in time to catch the Stockholm boat. He then aroused my curiosity by telling me that he had been a better friend to me than I should ever know. I begged him to explain, but he said that I must wait ten years or so.
November 7th.In the train.
Professor Lomonosoff is the Minister of Railways. We are carrying six and a half million pounds in gold, which he is taking to Germany to buy locomotives. We are accompanied by an armed guard.
We were held up many hours last night because there was an accident on-the line and it took a long time to clear. Periodically the axle of the gold car breaks or the oil-box takes fire, and westop perpetually: but we are steadily nearing our goal. It really does not matter how long we take so long as we catch next Thursday’s boat from Reval.
Besides Lomonosoff’s staff, which he is taking with him to Germany, our party consists of Vanderlip and Neuroteva, and a charming man called D——, who is a railway expert. He was once a very rich man and in the Tsar’s entourage. He seemed anxious to tell me as quickly as possible that he was a Monarchist, as if to be mistaken for a Bolshevik were more than he could bear. He looked anæmic and well bred, with deep-set, sad eyes and a calm and resignation that were almost tragic.
He differed bitterly and openly in his views from Lomonosoff, and said: “I am a Russian. I am working for Russia, not for the Bolsheviks,” and then called them robbers. Professor Lomonosoff sat back in his chair and chuckled. He said: “You call us robbers, but we called you robbers.” It was just a question of which robber came out on top.
Afterwards, when Lomonosoff left us, I begged D—— not to indulge in any more political discussions. “I shall be over the frontier in a few hours, but you have to live here. Do take heed for yourself.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “One dies but once,” he said, laughing, and then explained: “They know my views well, but I can do good work for them, and they know that I am not in touch with counter-Revolutionary movements, and that I take no part in politics, so I am safe enough.”
Lomonosoff, who had been a railway official in Tsarist days, told us how he had accompanied the Tsar’s train to Tsarskoe-Selo. The Tsar, he said, had even up to that moment not realised the meaning of the Revolution. He probably thought he was retiring to Siberia until the storm had blown over. At the station, on his arrival, his bodyguard had by courtesy been drawn up to greet him. The Tsar alighted from the train, and went to inspect the guard with the usual greeting: “Good health to you, soldiers!” The answer is: “Good health to your Imperial Majesty,” but on this occasion the soldiers answered almost with one voice, “Good health to you, Colonel!” The Tsar seemed to realise for the first time the real situation. He became ashen white, turned the collar of his overcoat up, and shrank away.
Lomonosoff also gave us a vivid and thrilling account of the detailed organisation, in which he took part, with the purpose of wrecking the Tsar’s train while he was on his way to Siberia. Two runaway engines were to be despatched with no one on board to collide with the back of the Tsar’s train. These plans were only frustrated at the last second by news of the Tsar’s abdication.
When he proceeded to tell us how the Tsar’sentouragedeserted him as rats do a sinking ship, it was evidently very painful to D—— who sat grimly silent. I could not help feeling that they enjoyed his discomfiture a little bit.
Later, when we were again alone together, he said to me rather passionately: “It is not true that everyone deserted my Tsar, for my best friend followed him to Siberia to share his death, and there were devoted friends of the Tsarina who did the same.”
We are now nearing the frontier. The little country stations, decorated for the 7th with red bunting and pictures of Lenin, will soon be passed. Back we go to the old world of tips and restaurants and civilisation.
Good-bye, wonder world, good-bye—good-bye!
November 12th.Reval, Esthonia.
We arrived in Reval late on Tuesday night, the 9th. I was handed a package containing my two volumes of diary and all my kodak films, which thanks to Litvinoff had been sealed with Government seals and confided to a courier whokept them in his charge until we were over the frontier.
I have written my diary all these weeks as trustingly as though I were in my own home, never foreseeing any difficulties of departure. My trust in Providence is always justified.
The next day I went to the British Consulate. Mr. Leslie (no relation) made me extremely welcome. He said that he had heard of me from H. G. Wells, and that until then he had not known I was in Russia: I had (reproachfully) not addressed myself to the Consulate on my in-going journey. I found that he had a Henry James cult, and had read everything Henry James had written, including the two volumes of letters. He gave me his bathroom for an hour and a half, invited me to luncheon and then arranged for me to stay the remaining two days in Reval with a most hospitable English couple, Mr. and Mrs. Harwood, who lived in a beautiful villa on the seashore. There I was overwhelmed by kindness.
I also learned with some curiosity and interest the politics of Esthonia, the half-Bolshevik conditions of things, and the history of the Baltic Germans, their settlement in Reval and their forced departure. It is an amusing but complicated little side-show.
During my stay in Reval I had to go several times to the Soviet headquarters at the Hotel Petersburg. It amuses me to recall my bewildered impression of last September. This time when I went I felt thoroughly at home. Not only did Comrade Gai take a great deal of trouble for me, but Gukovski received me as a friend.
On Thursday morning the coffins arrived from Moscow by courier, as promised by Litvinoff, and I had a fine game of dodge. Gai sent them on a lorry to me at the British Consulate just when I had left, and they returned to the Hotel Petersbourg while I was chasing after them to the British Consulate. Finally I got them down to the quay, but they were not allowed on board because there was not the required official paper from Moscow. Had the ship left as she was supposed to leave at midday, they certainly would not have been on board, but there was a storm brewing so the ship delayed sailing a day. When Gai had finally sent me the necessary paper, I sought out the Captain and begged him to have my cases put somewhere especially safe. “They contain the heads of Lenin and Trotsky,” I exclaimed. The Captain looked awfully impressed and pleased, so pleased that I added “plaster heads—and breakable.”
“A plaster head of Trotsky—and breakable?Come on! let us break Trotsky’s head,” and he made towards it threateningly, much to the amusement of the onlookers.
My departure from Reval was most carefully and kindly superintended by my late Bolshevik hosts, whose representatives in Reval and also Professor Lomonosoff and his staff did everything in their power to be kind and attentive.
We are on our way now to Stockholm, I find the same Swedish banker, Mr. Aschberg, on board who went across with us in September. He is in charge of a cabin full of gold. He takes good care of me and I am glad to find a friend. I am told the food on board is very bad, but I think it is marvellous.
November 16th.Stockholm, Sweden.
I have lost all track of time. Storms forced our little boat to anchor under the shelter of an Aland isle for two days and a night.
On our arrival late at night at Stockholm we were met by Professor Lomonosoff’s representative with a car, and after we had all been submitted to a search, not for arms, but for insects, and declared fit to step on to Swedish soil, I was whirled off to the Hotel Anglais.
I had fully expected to be lost and forgotten on leaving Moscow, but here I am being takencare of in the third country away. If the Stockholm experiences foreshadow my coming reception in England, it promises to be hectic. I am not allowed breathing space, nor eating space.
Reporters besiege me. They even walk up to my room without being announced. I am so ignorant of the papers they represent that I say all the wrong things. One paper, a Conservative one, says that I declared Trotsky to be a perfect gentleman. This, if it gets back to Moscow, is most embarrassing. Never in my wildest moments would I use so mediocre a description to apply to Trotsky. I might say he was a genius, a superman, or a devil. Anyway, in Russia we talk of men and women and not of ladies and gentlemen. I dare say that the editor meant well, and that things get distorted in translation.
The experience of returning through Stockholm is rather unique. Because we have both come out of Russia together, Mr. Vanderlip and I have been entertained at the same parties, but for me Frederick Ström and the Russian Bolsheviks are invited and for Vanderlip the leading Swedish bankers. It is a queer amalgamation, but it works well.
The first evening I talked to Socialist Ström and a Conservative banker for an hour and ahalf in flowing but execrable German. They did not laugh at my grammar, but listened and spurred me on with questions. The German of my childhood slightly practised in Moscow has returned to me with a rush.
I have been invited to do a monument for a public square in Stockholm representing Peace uniting the workers of the Right and Left Wings. The money has been subscribed in kroner by the workpeople. It is an international thing, and they would be pleased if I would do it. It is a subject which rather lends itself to allegorical treatment and appeals to the imagination.
I am now in the night train for Göteborg. Before I left I went to tea with the children at the Palace. The Crown Prince unfortunately was in Rome. The children seemed lonely, but well. Princess Ingred looked sad, big-eyed and rather pale. The baby, Johnny, is adorable. He is a thing so sweet to woman, so much to be appreciated. One feels the maternal spirit-arms round him.
I also went to see the Comptroller of the Queen’s household, an artist and an old friend of many years. Here the impression I received of prejudice against my Russian friends was overwhelming, but I suppose, in Court circles, this is to be expected.
November 18th.Goteborg to Newcastle.
More delays, owing to storms. Always there are delays on this journey, do what one will it is impossible to hurry. In pre-war days it took two days to come from Russia. Now it takes two weeks.
November 23rd.London.
We arrived at Newcastle at midnight on the 19th. Steaming up the Tyne at night is wonderful, all the arc lights throwing into relief great machinery and construction. The activity and work looked colossal. How can Russia fight this iron industrialism? As soon as we had glided alongside the quay, and I had touched English soil once more, I was not left in doubt one moment as to the truth of Kameneff’s premonitions.
While the coffins were being opened with chisel and hammer at the Custom House, reporters, who declared they had come from London and had been waiting two days, clamoured for information. The head official of the Customs was very abrupt in his manner and subjected all my luggage to a most ruthless search. I did not declare the identity of my heads, but from the unpleasant official attitude I guessed that they were already known. One official beganexamining a large album of photographs. I said to him: “That isn’t contraband, they are photographs of my work; yes, that one is Mr. Churchill, if it interests you, you may look at it.” He nearly flung it down. “I’ve no scent and no tobacco, one doesn’t get those things in Russia,” I said. Unfortunately at that minute he came upon a packet of Soviet cigarettes, my last ration that I had carefully kept and brought back to England. But he said: “That is not what we are looking for.” Whatever he was looking for he didn’t find.
He then poked his arm up to the elbow in the straw and shavings that wrapped up Dzhirjinsky, until satisfied that it was not a Christmas bran pie. I then got it nailed down again, and accepted the newspaper reporters’ invitation to drive with them from the quay to the station. There another man met me armed with a kodak and a flashlight. I sympathise with professional keenness, but I will not be butchered to make a Roman holiday. The moment seemed inappropriate. There were inebriated young fellows shouting, singing, and falling about the stations to such an extent that the policeman, who had vainly tried to look the other way, had finally to take notice, but he had to knock one of them down before he could arrest him. It was arevolting sight to which one had grown unaccustomed. I was glad to get into my sleeper and shut out the sight and sound of Newcastle at midnight.
Since then my soul, my life, my time, has been no longer my own. I have been pursued, besieged, harassed, feasted, attacked, appraised in turn.
I have seen the anti-Bolshevik in all his glory of prejudice, hate and bitterness.
The Bolshevik is a new phenomenon, but the anti-Bolshevik is merely history repeating itself. We read of the same condition of mind in England after the Napoleonic wars; the same fear of French Revolutionary ideas, and same action and reactions.
Yet, if people would only realise it, Revolutions are not caused by propaganda, nor by plots. In Russia the Revolution failed every time it was organised. It was brought about by cause and effect at the very moment when the present leaders were in exile in the four corners of the globe.
Alexinsky says in his “Modern Russia”: “Seek for the cause of Revolution neither in the ardent propaganda of the Revolutionists—nor in the bad qualities of monarchs and their advisers, but in the deep and silent operation of certain forces, which lead new social classesupon the stage of history.” It is futile to waste hate upon these forces, or to call them Lenin and Trotsky, when really it is the law of evolution and change that is demonstrating in certain parts of the earth.
THE END.
THE BOTOLPH PRINTING WORKS,8, GATE STREET, KINGSWAY, W.C.2.