Part 5
I asked how long he was in prison. “A quarter of my life, eleven years,” he answered. It was the Revolution that liberated him. Obviously it is not the abstract desire for power or for a political career that has made Revolutionaries of such men, but a fanatical conviction of the wrongs to be righted for the cause of humanity and national progress. For this cause men of sensitive intellect have endured years of imprisonment.
Being Monday there is no theatre, as that is the night the artists have free--on Sundays they work for the enjoyment of the people--so I dined with Mr. Vanderlip, who told me many things which I may not at this juncture write down or repeat. I have not sought his confidence, so I thought it rather unjustifiable when at the end of the evening, having found me a sympathetic listener, he said: “You know too much now, I shall see that you do not leave the country before I do.” Although he likes the people with whom he has come in business contact, he is frankly a capitalist, and glories in it. He is like the Englishman abroad who is conscious of being different to everyone else, and derives from it a smug feeling of superiority.
After dinner he was sent for by Tchicherin, and I spent the evening with Michael Borodin. Michael Markovitch, as Borodin is called, lives in our house. He is a man with shaggy black hair brushed back from his forehead, a Napoleonic beard, deep-set eyes, and a face like a mask. He talks abrupt American-English in a base voice. I have not seen much of him as he works half the day and all the night, like the other Foreign Office officials. He is usually late for meals, eats hurriedly and leaves before we have finished. As soon as Vanderlip had gone Borodin switched out all the drawing-room lights that Vanderlip had put on, except one. I asked him why he did this, and he looked round the garish room and gave a slight shudder: “It is parvenu,” he said; then sinking back into his chair he looked at me intently, and asked: “What is your economic position in the world?” It is the first time he has talked to me, and I found myself answering as if my life depended on my answers. Happily no one in this country knows anything about my family, up-bringing, or surroundings. I have not got to live down my wasted years. I can stand on my own feet and be accepted on my own merits. Borodin mystifies me, I cannot make out, when all his questions have been answered, what he thinks.
SEPTEMBER 28TH.
Dzhirjinsky came at 10 a.m. for an hour. He is leaving Moscow for a fortnight, so that I can get no more sittings, but seeing how keen I was, he stayed on and on, doling out ten minutes and quarter-hours as so much fine gold. He sits so well that two sittings are worth four of Zinoviev’s.
When the Savonarola of the Revolution left, I felt a real sadness that I may never see him again. Zinoviev sat again in the afternoon, and brought with him Bucharin and Bela Kun. They seemed to approve of Dzhirjinsky’s bust, and insisted on looking through all the photographs of my work. The “Victory” is what really interests them.
I was frightfully disappointed in Bela Kun. I had imagined a romantic figure, but he looks most disreputable. Bucharin is attractive with his trim, neat little beard and young face.
This afternoon, after all had left, three soldiers brought a gilt Louis XVI sofa and a Turkestan carpet to my workroom. These had been ordered to help to make it more habitable and to dispel the severity. I had to laugh, the sofa looked so absurdly refined and out of place. I wondered whose drawing-room it once furnished, and to what little tea-time gossips it had listened. At that moment a sculptor called Nicholas Andrev came in and introduced himself to me. He was sent by Kameneff and mercifully speaks French. A big man with small laughing eyes and a red-grey beard, typically Russian. After we had talked for awhile he described to me the difficulties
under which he had tried to do Lenin in his office, and while he was working. He said that portraiture was not Art. I could not but agree with him, as the difficulty always in doing portraits is that sittings are always too few and too short, but said that one had to put up with it, and do the best one could, breaking one’s heart over it all the time.
He said he had given up sculpture for the time being because of the difficult conditions, and had taken to drawing instead. I said that for the present I was intent on portraits, and that Art would have to wait until later. His attitude is characteristic of the sculptor species. They are all so d---- d proud, and if they cannot get all the sittings they need and work under ideal conditions, they do not think it worth while trying. I consider that there are a few people in the world who are worth any effort to do, even if they do not give one a chance to do one’s best work. Andrev laughed and said that that was journalism in Art.
When I got home I found that the water had been heated for baths. This was a great joy: I had not had one for eight days. Once a week is our allowance, and it should be on Saturdays, but something went wrong with the pipe, and we have been disappointed each evening, so that in fact I had given up hope. How one has learned to appreciate the most ordinary things that one never thought of being thankful for before. But since I have been here I have had to wash in cold water; nor am I called, but I wake up quite mechanically every morning at eight. It will be wonderful to have scrambled eggs one day for breakfast, but I am getting used to just black bread and butter, and sometimes cheese.
I wonder a good deal about my family and friends. It is so strange to have left them without a word, and to get no letters and not to be able to write any. Mamma especially--bless her, who always says “good-night” as if it were “good-bye-for-ever”--I wonder what she feels about my going off without telling her. I wonder if Papa is anxious about me, or indifferent and resentful! When I think about Dick and Margaret I feel a sadness. I can get on without most people in the world, but not without those two, and they must wonder why they do not get letters from me. It it rather dreadful to think that they might believe that my silence means forgetfulness.
This evening we went to the “Coq d’Or.” I thought I was back in London until I looked away from the stage.
SEPTEMBER 30TH.
Kameneff came to see me in the morning with his watch in his hand, he had twenty minutes. It was paralysing, one cannot talk under such conditions. I confined myself to presenting him with a list of things I want done! Small wonder he comes so seldom to see me. When he does come everyone in the house knows it, and one by one they come to my door and ask to see him, each wanting something of him, while his car which waits at the door is borrowed for an errand. It is very discouraging for him.
Borodin took me to “Prince Igor” this evening, it combined the opera with the ballet. In the box next to us was a party of Afghans and with them a Korean. Down in the stalls _one_ man was in a smoking coat and evening shirt, the first I have seen. He was very conspicuous.
OCTOBER 1ST.
Nicholas Andrev met me at the Kremlin at 1 o’clock. Kameneff had placed a car at our disposal for the afternoon. We went to several galleries, beginning with the Kremlin. The palace of a Grand Duchess (opposite the big bell) has been converted into a working people’s club. It was quite clean and cared for, but only the Empire Swan furniture suggested it had ever been a private habitation. We went downstairs to a private chapel, painted in black and gold. This had been made into a modelling school, and there were some very good things being done from life. The Spirit of the Holy Ghost descending as a dove from above, and the golden rays of a carved sun made a strange background. My bourgeois prejudice was just for a moment shocked, until I remembered that in our own old fourteenth century chapel at home Papa typewrites on the altar step. It has been longer in disuse it is true, but still, one must be consistent. From there we drove in the car to the house of Ostrouckof, who showed me his room full of Ikons, one of which came out of St. Sofia. Some date back to the fifth and sixth centuries. They were beautiful in design and colour, and most interesting when he explained them to me. Downstairs he had a modern motley collection. He showed us a Mattisse given to him by Mattisse himself; it was a curious contrast after Ikons.
We drifted into some art schools, where soldiers and sailors were working from life models, and the work they were doing was extremely good. One of these schools was in the large house of a rich merchant. The Soviet Government are pretty shrewd in the selection of houses for various purposes. Although some of the big houses are
often given over for clubs or workplaces, only a really vulgar, over-decorated house in impossibly bad taste is used for rough or dirty work.
The exhibitions of proletarian art are very interesting, and deeply imbued with the modern movement. There are crude drawings that show an appreciation of form, and there is sculpture in wood that is often very effective, and may lead to something good.
One of these exhibitions was in an exquisite house of beautiful architecture that stood back from the street, in a garden that had run to seed. The house had once belonged to the Princess Dolgorouki, but it had passed into the hands of a Countess somebody, who had died. The daughter _héritière_ had been turned out, but it was said that she was still living in the basement. The ground floor consisted of a series of small, beautifully proportioned rooms, with painted ceilings and carved doors. One was a Chinese room and all were in exquisite taste. There were some lovely Empire bronzes and old Dorée, and other objects of art.
The house seemed to be open to anyone who chose to come in. The old cherry-satin upholstery of the French chairs was in limbo. I never felt a place so small and full of ghosts. Perhaps, because it was so small, it had the feeling of having been someone’s intimate home, not a blatant place of entertaining.
As we wandered round a man joined us and, speaking to us in French, asked if we were from France. His cap was drawn well over his eyes, and the collar of his overcoat turned up over his ears. One could only see a well-bred nose pinched with cold. He knew about the house and its history, and which were the best bits of furniture. He was evidently a cultured man, and but for the presence of Andrev, who always laughs at me, I would have talked to him about himself. He was rather like a ghost haunting a place he knew, and I imagine he was no Bolshevik, but one who had known prosperous days.
I came away filled with sadness, and when Kameneff came to see me this evening, I tried to tell him about it, and begged him to have the house taken care of. He says that there is a committee that looks after all the houses, but I think they have passed this one by.
Coming back from our wanderings we passed, in one of the squares, a statue of Gogol, the Russian writer. I thought it a very fine piece of work. Gogol, half wrapped in a cloak, looks down scrutinizingly in bronze from his rough granite seat, and Andrev laughed at me for liking it, and said that in Moscow it was scorned and had brought coals of fire down on the artist’s head.
I was very surprised, and thought to myself that the standard of Russian art must be very high: but in spite of this ridicule, I stuck to my opinion. I even said that in London we had not a single statue as good as that one. Later he admitted that he was the author of it.
OCTOBER 2ND.
Hearing that there was a review of troops in the Red Square at 11 o’clock, I went to see what I could see. Everyone else seemed busy, and Michael Markovitch, whom I wanted, was not to be found. If he had come with me I should have taken my kodak, but I have not a permit and did not feel like risking a controversy alone. Arrived in the Red Square, I was not allowed to get anywhere near, and I did so want to see and hear Trotsky addressing the troops. Soldiers kept the onlookers absolutely out of the square, and I stood on the steps of the wonderful church of St. Basil. The soldiers certainly were very amiable, and, when I wandered rebelliously from my steps out into the road, a bayonet was levelled smilingly at me; I made a gesture of not understanding, and said helplessly in English “Where do you want me to go?” Whereupon the soldier laughed and allowed me to stand by his side. The crowd was very quiet and apathetic, one certainly was not near enough to get excited. In the dim distance one could hear Trotsky’s voice, punctuated by cheers from the soldiers. After awhile the crowd broke forward to where I stood with the soldier. Some mounted detachments came towards us, very decorative indeed with bright coloured uniforms and lances with fluttering pennons. Suddenly a man at my side said to me in French: “Madame, does this please you?” I was very glad to have someone to speak to; the man was young, and, though ill-shaved, was well-dressed in uniform. He could speak German also, but English he said he had forgotten, though he had at one time spent three months in England. Waving a hand contemptously towards the scene before us, he said: “_C’est du théâtre, Madame_--that is all it amounts to.” I ventured to say that a theatrical display was not much use unless there were spectators. In England, I assured him, we had our military pageants for the benefit of the people, but what was the use of this if we were not allowed anywhere near? He replied that it was a necessary precaution for the protection of Trotsky. I laughed: “We are three gunshots away, at least.” Then to my amazement the man began to discuss and criticise, and talk what seemed to me pure Counter-Revolutionary stuff. From all one has ever heard about Russian conditions (Tsarist as well as Revolutionary) it seemed to me that he was strangely indiscreet, and I asked him: “Are you not mad to talk like this in a crowd? Anyone may understand French.” He shrugged his shoulders: “One has lived so long now side by side with death that one has grown callous.” He then asked if I would care to go for a walk. I felt rather selfconscious of walking away in front of the crowd with a man whom they had seen me so obviously “pick-up.” However, in Russia there are no conventions, it was only my bourgeois blood rushing to the surface again that made it seem peculiar.
We went down to the river and leaned against the railing and talked for a long time. He was certainly very interesting and amazingly indiscreet. Happily I have nothing with which to reproach myself. I adopted a perfectly good Bolshevik point of view, and argued in my usual way about wars and blockades, and urged him to have imagination and to look further ahead than to-day and to-morrow. We talked about idealists, reviewed a few Tsarist items, and made comparisons, but everything I said provoked him to further extreme utterances. He wished finally that he might have an opportunity of showing me “the other side.” He invited me to go to a factory with him. I asked what use that would be as I cannot speak a word of Russian. He said he would like to present to me his father and his uncle, but as they were both “known” he would have to be very careful. Finally we exchanged my name and address for his telephone number. He said that if I would telephone him to-morrow, Sunday night, he would meet me outside my front gate at 11 on Monday morning, but he would not dare to come into the house.
At 1 o’clock a.m. (I have adopted the Russian habit of not going to bed) I saw Michael Markovitch, when he returned from the Commissariat, and told him about it. He said that he must be the queerest sort of Counter-Revolutionary he had ever heard of, and advised me to leave him alone.
OCTOBER 3RD.
I have been five days out of work. It seems much longer. I am told that there are people in Moscow who have been waiting six months to accomplish the business they came for. Lenin seems to me further away than he did in London. There is nothing to do here unless one has work. Never could one have imagined a world in which there is absolutely no social life and no shops. There are no newspapers (for me) and no letters, either to be received or written. There are no meals to look forward to, and comfort cannot be sought in a hot bath. When one has seen all the galleries, and they are open only half a day, and some of them not every day, and when one has walked over cobblestones until one’s feet ache, there is nothing more to be done. One _must_ have work to do. Perhaps I should be calmer if I had already accomplished Lenin, but my anxiety is lest I should have to wait weary weeks. Return to London without his head I cannot. Michael took me for a walk, and it was extremely cold. We went to St. Basil, as I wanted to see it inside, but it is locked after 3 o’clock. Outside it is wonderful, painted all over in various designs and colours. I cannot understand how it stands the climate. Inside I am told that there is not much to see; Napoleon stabled his horses in it. One has heard so much about Bolshevik outrages, but they have done nothing like that. Napoleon distinguished himself in several ways while he was here. For instance, he ordered the destruction of the beautiful Spassky Gate of the Kremlin; the barrels of powder were placed in position and the matches were lit as the last of the French rode out. The Cossacks galloped up in time to put the matches out at the risk of their lives.
On our way home we passed by St. Saviour’s church and looked in, really impelled to seek refuge from the cold. In a side chapel where the light was dim, a priest, with his long hair and beard and fine features, was preaching to a congregation which sat fervently absorbed. The heads of the women looked Eastern in their shawl swathings. I listened for some time to the strange musical tongue, of which I could not understand a word. The priest looked so amazingly like the traditional pictures of Christ that I felt I was listening to the great Master teaching in the Temple.
OCTOBER 4TH.
When I came down to breakfast at 10 my strange Counter-Revolutionary was sitting in the hall. How he ever got there or why he came as I had not telephoned to him, I shall never understand. I expressed my astonishment and told him I was sorry I could not go out with him, as I had someone coming to see me. I promised to telephone to him later. He seemed a little disappointed, said he was “_entièrement a mon service_,” and departed. In the dining-room I found Michael breakfasting and told him, and he got up quickly to see, but I laughed and said that naturally I had sent him away, before telling anyone he was there. Michael looked at me with a cold look. He is like the others, one feels instinctively that however much they may like one as a woman, they would sacrifice one in a minute if it were necessary for the cause.
At lunch time H. G. Wells arrived from Petrograd with his son; they are lodged in our house. It was a great pleasure to find an old friend and to be able to talk of things and people familiar to us. He was, as usual, laughing and extremely humorous about the condition of life in Petrograd. On his account we were a big party for lunch, and there was an effort to make a spread, but this was frustrated by Michael Borodin. When I asked for some of the beautiful apple cake I had seen on the side-table, Michael made grimaces at me: he had sent it back to the kitchen. The perfect Communist in him revolted against the inequality of H. G. having a special cake, considering that neither Vanderlip nor Sheridan had had one on arrival. The household call me Sheridan, like a man. One has quite lost the habit of prefixing Mr. or Mrs., in fact one cannot do it, it sounds so absurd and affected. I have not yet been honoured to the extent of being called Tovarisch (Comrade), but some people ball me Clara Moretonovna (Clare, daughter of Moreton).
After lunch I went for a walk with Michael; he had tip-toed out of the room at lunch time, and I asked him why. He was not very communicative, and said that he hated people collectively and he disliked H. G., though for no reason that I could make out. I sat up far into the night. One felt quite sleepless with excitement over the evening’s discussions.
OCTOBER 5TH.
H. G. had an hour’s interview with Lenin. He told me that he was impressed by the man, and liked him. Lenin apparently told him all about the Vanderlip business, the Kamschatka concessions and the Alliance against Japan. This will greatly upset Vanderlip, who did not want the news to leave the country until he did. But I expect Lenin’s indiscretion is the indiscretion of purpose. H. G. talked to me at some length about the advisability of my going home. He, too, is discouraging about my prospects of doing Lenin or Trotsky. He says that Kameneff has “let me down” badly. I could only say in Kameneff’s defence that he has not “let me down” yet. But H. G. had something else in the back of his head that he did not tell. I gathered that he thinks there will be trouble here in a few weeks. What the conditions are in Petrograd I do not know, but here one feels as safe as a mountain and as immovable. H. G. may learn a lot of facts about schools and factories and things, but it is only by living a life of dull routine and work, even of patient inactivity and waiting, that one absorbs the atmosphere. Inactivity is forced upon me, I _have_ to wait. I am waiting neither patiently nor calmly it is true, but all the while I realise that I am gaining something, and that some understanding is subconsciously flowing to me. I see no danger signals. A winter of hardship and sacrifice for these people, yes, but no disorder. The machine is slowly, very slowly, working with more competence and freedom. Of course one dislikes cold baths in cold weather, and bad food, and all the discomforts to which a pampered life has made one unaccustomed, but these need not blight one’s outlook. They are not necessarily indicative of a disruption.