Part 10
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 with Professor 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.
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 blessings flow. 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.
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 a _coup d’état_ for 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
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 stand _c’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 explain that 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 of Professor 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 we stop 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’s _entourage_ deserted 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 who kept 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 taken care 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 a half 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.