Chapter IV: Part 4

He then ordered a fire to be lit because he thought it was cold for me. It was not cold, it was overheated, but the sound and sight of the fire were nice. A matronly peasant-woman with a handkerchief tied round her head came and lit it. He said he liked her because she walked softly, and had a musical voice. Curious that he should admire in another what is so characteristic of himself; his voice is unusually melodious.

Seeing that he was prepared to be amiable, I asked him if I could bother him with measurements. “_Tout ce que vous voudrez_,” he said, and pointed out to me how unsymmetrical his face is. He opened his mouth and snapped his teeth to show me that his underjaw is crooked, and as he did so he reminded me of a snarling wolf. When he talks his face lights up and his eyes flash. Trotsky’s eyes are much talked of in Russia, and he is called “the wolf.” His nose also is crooked and looks as though it had been broken. If it were straight he would have a very fine line from the forehead. Full-face he is Mephisto. His eyebrows go up at an angle, and the lower part of his face tapers into a pointed and defiant beard. As I measured him with calipers, he remarked: “_Vous me caressez avec des instruments d’acier._” He talks very rapid, and very fluent French, and could easily be mistaken for a Frenchman. I dragged my modelling stand across the room to try for a better light on the other side. He watched me with a weary look, and said: “Even in clay you make me travel, and I am so tired of travelling.” He explained to me that he is not as desperately busy as usual because there is Peace with Poland, and good news from the South. I told him that I had nearly gone to the Southern front with Kalinin, who wanted to take me, but that Kameneff wouldn’t let me go because it was a troop train. Without hesitating a moment he answered:

“Do you want to go to the front? You can come with me.”

He was thoughtful for awhile, and then asked me: “Are you under the care here of our Foreign Office?”

I said I was not.

“But who are you here with? Who is responsible for you?”

“Kameneff,” I said.

“But Kameneff is at the front.”

“Yes.”

“Then you are alone? H’m, that is very dangerous in a revolutionary country. Do you know Karahan, Tchicherin’s secretary?”

“Yes; he is living in our house, so is Litvinoff.”

“Ah, Litvinoff, I will ring him up.”

He did ring him up, but what he said I could not understand. Litvinoff told me later that Trotsky had asked him if I was all right, and if it would be indiscreet or not to show me the front. Litvinoff gave me a good character.

At 4 o’clock he ordered tea, and had some with me. He talked to me about himself, and of his wanderings in exile during the war, and how, finally, at the outbreak of the Revolution, he sailed on a neutral ship from the United States to return to Russia; how the British arrested him and took him to a Canadian concentration camp. He was detained a few months, until the Russian Government succeeded in obtaining his release.

He was particularly incensed at the British interfering with the movements of a man who was not going to Britain, nor from a British colony, nor by a British ship: “But I had a good time in that camp,” he said. “There were a lot of German sailors there, and I did some propaganda work. By the time I left they were all good revolutionaries, and I still get letters from some of them.”

At 5 I prepared to leave. He said that I looked tired. I said I was tired from battling with my work in such a bad light. He suggested trying by electric light, and we agreed on 7 o’clock the next evening. He sent me home in his car.

OCTOBER 19TH.

Trotsky’s car came at 6.30. Nicholas Andrev had been having tea with me, and I offered to give him a lift, as he lives somewhere near the War Ministry. It was snowing hard and there was a driving wind, which lifted up the frozen snow and blew it about like white smoke. The car had a hood, but no sides. In the Red Square we punctured. For some time we sat patiently watching the passers-by falling down on the slippery pavement, and the horse-carts struggling up the hill. Winter has come very suddenly and one month too soon. The horses have not yet been shod for the slippery roads, consequently they can hardly stand up. This morning I counted four down all at the same moment. In London a fallen horse attracts a good deal of attention, and a crowd collects, but here no one even turns his head to look. I have been much laughed at because I stop to watch, but the method of getting the horse up amuses me. The driver (man or woman, as the case may be) gets behind and pushes the cart. The horse, so weak that he has no resisting power, impelled forward by the shafts, struggles to his feet in spite of himself. No unharnessing is necessary. This evening, when I became too cold to be interested any longer by the passers-by falling in the square, I asked the chauffeur if he had nearly finished. He answered “_Sichas_” which literally translated is “immediately,” but in practice means to-morrow, or next week! So I pulled up the fur collar of my inadequate cloth coat, put my feet up lengthways on the seat, and let Andrev sit on them to keep them warm. I arrived at Trotsky’s at 7.30. He looked at me and then at the clock. I explained what had happened. “So that is the reason of your inexactitude,” he said; an inexactitude which could not in the least inconvenience him as he did not have to wait for me. He kissed my frozen hand, and put two chairs for me by the fire, one for me and one for my feet. When I had melted and turned on all the lights of the crystal candelabra he said: “We will have an agreement, quite businesslike; I shall come and stand by the side of your work for five minutes every half hour.” Of course the five minutes got very enlarged, and we talked and worked and lost all track of time. When the telephone rang he asked: “Have I your permission?” His manners are charming. I said to him: “I cannot get over it, how amiable and courteous you are. I understood you were a very disagreeable man. What am I to say to people in England when they ask me: ‘What sort of a monster is Trotsky?’” With a mischievous look he said: “Tell them in England, tell them----” (but I cannot tell them!) I said to him: “You are not a bit like your sister.” The shadow of a smile crossed his face, but he did not answer.

I showed him photographs of my work and he kept the ones of the “Victory.” Among the portraits he liked “Asquith” best, and said that that one was worked with more feeling and care than any of the others. He took for granted that Asquith must like me, which is not necessarily the case, and said half-laughingly: “You have given me an idea--if Asquith comes back into office _soon_ (there is a rumour that he might bring in a Coalition with Labour, and recognise Russia) I will hold you as a hostage until England makes peace with us.” I laughed: “What you are saying humorously is what a British official told me seriously, only he said it à propos of Winston. As a matter of fact, I’d be proud if I could be of any use in the cause of Peace. But if you said you would shoot me, Winston would only say ‘shoot,’”--which is, to my mind, the right spirit, and exactly the spirit that prevails among the Bolsheviks. They would not hesitate to shoot me (some of them have told me so) if it were necessary, even if they liked me as a woman. Winston is the only man I know in England who is made of the stuff that Bolsheviks are made of. He has fight, force and fanaticism.

Towards the end of the evening, as Trotsky said nothing more about the project of my going to the front, I asked him if he had decided to take me or not. He said: “It is for you to decide if you wish to come--but I shall not start for three or four days.” It was getting late and he looked very tired. He was standing in front of the clay with his back to it, so that I had the two profiles exactly in line. His eyes were shut and he swayed. For a moment I feared he was going to faint. One does not think of Trotsky as a man who faints, but anything may happen to a man who works as he does. My thought was of my work, and I said to him: “Do not fall backward, or you fall on my work.” He answered quickly: “_Je tombe toujours en avant!_” I asked him to order the motor, having realised that unless he sends for it I have to wait outside in the cold or look for it in the garage. While the car was coming round he sent for a reproduction of a portrait of himself by an artist friend of his, to show me that the same difficulties that I am having with his jaw and chin, were experienced also by the draughtsman who only succeeded in this, the last of a great many sketches. It is evidently one that Trotsky likes, for it is reproduced in colour in almost every office one goes into. I told him I wanted it and he wrote upon it “Tovarisch,” which means Comrade “Clare Sheridan,” and signed it. This has its effect on the Bolsheviks who have been into my room and seen it.

OCTOBER 20TH.

Comrade Alexandre telephoned that he would fetch me at 1 o’clock to go to the fur store. I suppose the intense cold had at last moved either his pity or his anxiety for me. Before I left Vanderlip said that if there were any choice, and I was fool enough not to choose a sable coat, he would never speak to me again. The threat left me unmoved. It is only on occasions of necessity, when we exchange valuable presents (say a new tooth brush for a box of pills), that we have an armistice. On the way to the fur store Alexandre picked up another man, unknown but very nice, with whom I talked a mixture of English and German. We went to one of the biggest store-houses in Moscow, which, like all the rest, had been a private firm, but has been requisitioned by the Government. It was a cave-like building, dark and stone cold. We went up in a cage lift to what seemed to be the attic. It was low and long and dark, and an arc-light barely lit up the corner. Coats hung from the ceiling like so many hundred Bluebeard wives.

I took off mine to try on. An old man who looked like Moses and spoke German showed me the best and told me to make my choice. Alexandre looked on with a grim smile, and asked if I were the proverbial woman, or whether I would make my choice within reasonable limits of time. It was not easy. The coats dated back three years, and some were even too old-fashioned for Moscow. I liked a brown Siberian pony lined with ermine, but the moth had got into the pony. I liked a broadtail, but it was thin as cloth; they offered to have it fur-lined for me, but my need was immediate. There was a mink, but it had an old-fashioned flounce. There were astrachans, but everyone in Moscow has astrachan, it seemed too ordinary. I felt bewildered. My attention then wandered to a row of shubas: big sleeveless cloaks of velvet, that wrap around one, and descend to one’s feet. There was a dream lined with blue fox, and another with white. My friends put one round my shoulders, it was lined with sable: light as a feather, and warm as a nest. I despairingly voiced the fact that I could not walk about the streets of Moscow in a wine coloured velvet and sable cape. They said I could, but then they were wrong. “I look much too bourgeoise, I shall be shot!”

“You won’t be shot, and sable is good enough for a good worker.” I showed a sable stole to Alexandre and told him it was the blackest and most beautiful bit of sable one could find. He shrugged his shoulders with perfect indifference, and said he knew nothing about it. Finally I walked out in a very practical black Siberian pony lined with grey squirrel, divinely warm, though rather heavy, and Alexandre said to me: “Now you can say that you have shared in the Government distribution of bourgeois property to the people.”

At 7.30 pm. Trotsky sent his car for me, but a soldier stopped us before we even reached the block where the War Ministry is. The whole bit of road was being especially guarded. The reason for this is that foreign papers have announced an impending counter-Revolution, but if there is any such plot their warning has been given most obligingly in time, and steps have been taken to deal with it. The town is placarded with notices that inhabitants must not be out after midnight. It gave one just a small thrill, and there have been none so far. This evening when I arrived Trotsky stood by the fire while I was warming, and I asked him for news. He says that the German workers have voted in favour of joining the Moscow International which is very important. “England is our only real and dangerous enemy,” he said. “Not France?” I asked. “No, France is just a noisy, hysterical woman, making scenes: but England--that is different altogether.” He talked about the persistence of the foreign Press in decrying the stability of the Soviet Government. All the governments of Europe, he said, had undergone changes in the last three years, he pointed to France, Italy, the Central Powers, Turkey, and finally Poland. The British Government was holding out longer than any other, but that was pretty rocky, and its ministers were constantly changing their posts. The Soviet Government was the oldest government in Europe, and the only one in which the ministers retained their posts and displayed any unity, and this is spite of every effort on the part of the world to dislodge them.

He then busied himself at his table with papers. I worked for an hour and we never spoke, but he never disregarded me as Lenin did. I could walk round Lenin and look at him from all sides, he remained absorbed in his reading, and apparently oblivious of my presence. Whenever I go near Trotsky he looks up from his work sharply with piercing eyes and I forget which part of his face I was intent upon. Towards the end of the evening, when even my tiptoe stalking had aroused him, he asked me: “_Avez vous besoin de moi_.” I replied yes, as always. He came and stood by the clay, but he is very critical, and watches it and me all the time, and makes me nervous. I undid and did over again a good deal. The room was hot, and the clay got dry, it was uphill work. Never have I done anyone so difficult. He is subtle and irregular. At one moment the bust looked like Scipio Africanus, and I could see he was dissatisfied, then when I had altered it and asked him what he thought he stood for some time in silence with a suppressed smile before he let himself go: “It looks like a French bon bourgeois, who admires the woman who is doing him, but he has no connection with Communism.”

Happily the peasant woman came in with tea, and I sat down wearily with my head in my hands, utterly dispirited and discouraged. Only the fierce determination to make it come right roused me and I went at it again. He said, as he watched me: “When your teeth are clenched and you are fighting with your work, _vous êtes encore femme_.” I asked him to take off his pince-nez, as they hampered me. He hates doing this, he says he feels _désarmé_ and absolutely lost without them. It seemed akin to physical pain taking them off--they have become part of him and the loss of them completely changes his individuality. It is a pity, as they rather spoil an otherwise classical head.

While he was standing there helplessly with half-closed eyes, he remarked on my name being

spelt in the same way as that of the playwright. I explained that I had married a direct descendant. He was interested and said, “The School for Scandal” and “The Rivals,” had been translated and were occasionally acted here in Russian. He then got on to Shakespeare. I wish I could recall the words in which he described his appreciation, exclaiming finally: “If England had never produced anything else, she would have justified her existence.” We disagreed as to Byron and Shelley. He, like others I have met here, preferred Byron, and insisted in spite of my assertions to the contrary that Byron was the greater Revolutionary of the two. He was surprised that I loved Swinburne. He said he would have thought me too much of this world to love the spirituality of Swinburne. I said: “One has one’s dreams.” He gave a sigh. “Yes,” he said, “we all have our dreams----”

When, at the end of the evening, I was dissatisfied with my work and feeling suicidal I asked him:

“May I come back and work to-morrow night?”

“And the night after,” he answered, and added laughing, that he would rig the place up as a studio for me, and that I could do General Kameneff after I’d finished him. General Kameneff (who is no relation to Leo Kameneff) is the Commander-in-Chief, and was a very distinguished Tsarist officer. I hear that he strongly warned the War Ministry against advancing too far towards Warsaw, and foretold the débâcle that has since been fulfilled. But he was not listened to, perhaps because of his Tsarist tradition. Probably his opinion is more respected now. Trotsky asked me if I would like to do Tchicherin, and I explained that never before had I worked under such difficult conditions, and that although I had made efforts for Lenin and himself I did not feel like doing it again for anyone else. He was quite indignant and said: “What difficulty have you had in working here?” True it was a perfectly good room and excellent light, but Tchicherin would not move out of his Commissariat and that would mean new conditions to adapt oneself to, nor does anyone understand the difficulties of moving the finished work back to the Kremlin. Trotsky swept my excuses aside: “Of course you must do Tchicherin--it is almost a diplomatic obligation on his part to be done.”

It was a quarter to midnight when I prepared to stop work and looked desperately at the clock: “What about this order--how am I to be home

_p. 147._]

at midnight?” I asked. He said, “I will take you myself.” At about half after midnight we left. A man in uniform joined us and sat next to the driver. He had in his hands a very big leather holster. We started off by going in the opposite direction to the right one, and I had to try and describe the way to them. We turned back, and crossing the bridge we were stopped by five soldiers. The man with the holster had to show our papers by the light of the car lamp. It delayed us several minutes. I said to Trotsky: “Put your head out of the window and say who you are.” “_Taisez-vous_,” said Trotsky peremptorily. I sat rebuked and silent until we were able to pass on unrecognised. He explained afterwards that he did not want them to hear a woman’s voice in the car talking English. I was talking French as we always do together, and did not see that it mattered to anyone in this country whether there is a woman in a Government car or not--but I did not argue.

OCTOBER 21ST.

I did very little during the day, so as to be fresh for my night’s work, though I went to see my friend the plaster-moulder who is working for so many thousand roubles a day in my studio. He is making piece moulds of the busts, so that I can leave duplicates when I go. I asked Andrev why he had to be paid so much. Andrev explained that he is the only moulder in Moscow, so he can ask what he likes: “He says he will work for this and not for that,” and Andrev held a thousand rouble note in one hand and a hundred rouble note in the other. “But it is all the same really, only it is a different pattern,” and he laughed. Certainly money has no value here, and no meaning. At 8 o’clock I went back again to the War Commissariat in Trotsky’s car. On arrival I told him that I had got to get this work right to-night, and that he was not to be critical and look at it all the time and make me nervous.

He was surprised; said that he had no idea that he had that effect on me, that all he wanted was to help: “_Je veux travailler cela avec vous_.” His criticism, he said, was caused by intense interest, and that for nothing in the world would he be discouraging. He promised, however, to be good, and offer no opinion until asked. It was a better night for work; I felt calmer and it went pretty well.

The worst difficulties were surmounted. Trotsky stood for me in a good light and dictated to his stenographer. That was excellent. His face was animated and his attention occupied. I got all one side of his face done. Then came the question of the other side. He laughed, suggested another dictation, offered to stand in another position, and called back his stenographer. When we were alone again he came and stood close beside the clay and we talked while I went on working. We talked a little about myself.

He said I should remain in Russia awhile longer, and do some big work, something like my “Victory.” An emaciated and exhausted figure, but still fighting; that is the allegory of the Soviet.

I answered him that I could get no news of my children, and therefore must go back.

“I must return to my own world, to my own conventional people whose first thought is always for what the world will think. Russia with its absence of hypocrisy and pose, Russia with its big ideas, has spoilt me for my own world.”

“Ah! that is what you say now, but when you are away----” and he hesitated.

Then suddenly turning on me, with clenched teeth and fire in his eyes, he shook a threatening finger in my face: “If, when you get back to England, _vous nous calomniez_ as the rest have, I tell you that I will come to England _et je vous_----” He did not say what he would do, but there was murder in his face.

I smiled: “That is all right. Now I know how to get you to England.” Then (to fall in with his mood): “How can I go back and abuse the hospitality and the chivalrous treatment I have received?”

He said: “It is not abusing, but there are ways of criticising even without abuse. It is easy enough here to be blinded _par les saletés et les souffrances_ and to see no further than that, and people are apt to forget that there is no birth without suffering and horror, and Russia is in the throes of a great _accouchement_.”

He talks well, he is full of imagery and his voice is beautiful.

We paused for tea, and I talked to him of things I had heard about the schools. In reply he said he had heard no adverse reports of the co-education scheme for boys and girls. There might be an individual case of failure, though even of such a case he had not heard. He then compared the present system with that of boy colleges of his own day, and he said that his own boy of fourteen had nicer ideas about girls, and far less cynicism, than he had at the same age. The boy apparently confides in his mother, so he knows something about it.

To-night he sent me home alone in his car; he excused himself, saying it was the only time it was possible for him to walk. He kissed my dirty hand and said that he would always preserve a memory of “_une femme avec une auréole de cheveux et des mains très sales_.”

OCTOBER 22ND.

Finished!

I worked until half after midnight. I think it is a success. He said so; but it has been such a struggle.

About half way through the evening, the electric lights went out. A secretary lit four candles. On the telephone Trotsky learnt that the lights had gone out all over the town.

I asked him hopefully if it could possibly be the outburst of a counter-Revolution.

He laughed and asked if that was what I wanted.

I said that I thought it would break the monotony.

Until the lights went on I read the leading article on Bolshevism in _The Times_ of, I think, October 4th. He had several English papers on his desk and we read together with much amusement that he (Trotsky) had been wounded, and that General Budienny had been court-martialled. There were even descriptions of barricades in the streets of Moscow: someone must have mistaken the stacks of fuel that the tramcars are bringing in and unloading every day. When the lights went on I worked hectically until half after midnight, with the desperation of knowing it was the last sitting.

At midnight he was standing by the side of the work, rather tired and very still and patient, when suddenly I had the thought of asking him to undo his collar for me. He unbuttoned his tunic and the shirt underneath, and laid bare a splendid neck and chest. I worked like a fury for half an hour which was all too short. I tried to convey into my clay some of his energy and vitality. I worked with the desperation that always accompanies last moments. When I left he said to me: “_Eh bien! on ira ensemble au front?_” But something tells me that we shall never meet again. I feel that it is almost worth while to preserve the impression of our hours of individual work, collaboration and quietude, silently guarded by a sentry with fixed bayonet outside the door. To let in the light of day would be to spoil it.

There is a French saying: “_On n’est pas toujours né dans son pays_.” It equally follows that all are not born in their rightful sphere. Trotsky is one of these. At one time, in his youth, what was he? A Russian exile in a journalist’s office. Even then I am told he was witty, but with the wit of bitterness. Now he has come into his own and has unconsciously developed a new individuality. He has the manner and ease of a man born to a great position; he has become a statesman, a ruler, a leader. But if Trotsky were not Trotsky, and the world had never heard of him, one would still appreciate his very brilliant mind. The reason I have found him so much more difficult to do than I expected, is on account of his triple personality. He is the cultured, well-read man, he is the vituperative fiery politician, and he can be the mischievous laughing school-boy with a dimple in his cheek. All these three I have seen in turn, and have had to converge them into clay interpretation.

OCTOBER 23RD.

I went in the morning to fetch away the bust and take it to my room in the Kremlin. I went at 11, before Trotsky had got there. His motor was at my disposal and three men to convey the precious work away. These are the moments that take years off my life! It arrived, however, undamaged, which was little short of a triumph. When my plaster-moulder saw it he exclaimed with pleasure. Apparently it is very like, and everyone is pleased. As Trotsky is adored, I take it as a great compliment to my work that it is considered good enough.

The relief of having accomplished him as well as Lenin is indescribable. I wake up in the night and wonder if it is true or a dream. Now I am completely happy. I have achieved my purpose. I have proved myself to these people, and they in return have proved their belief in me by their trouble and courteousness. I am no longer harassed by anxieties and fears. Those who discouraged me in the early days treat me now with respect, consideration and even admiration. I am happy, I am happy! I sing when I wake in the morning, I sing when I wash in cold water, I come down to my breakfast of black bread with a lighter step!

I breakfast every morning with Litvinoff. By coming down at 11 the others have finished, so we can talk. If Rothstein is present the conversation becomes Russian. If Vanderlip is there he talks all the time about America (he usually leaves the room with boredom if conversation is on any other subject). It is the fashion in Europe to vilify Litvinoff and to regard him as a terribly dangerous man. I suppose that he is an astute diplomatist. Whatever he is, he is better than he pretends, and though he gets no credit for it, he has done a good deal for the British prisoners here. He has unfortunately an abrupt manner, and a way of refusing to do things by pretending that they are no concern of his, but straightway he will go off and do a kindness to the very people who are damning him for having refused. To me he is charming, frank, outspoken, and always ready to help.

OCTOBER 24TH.

We have all been very much saddened by the death from typhus of John Reed, the American Communist. Everyone liked him and his wife, Louise Bryant, the War Correspondent. She is quite young and had only recently joined him. He had been here two years, and Mrs. Reed, unable to obtain a passport, finally came in through Murmansk. Everything possible was done for him, but of course there are no medicaments here: the hospitals are cruelly short of necessities. He should not have died, but he was one of those young, strong men, impatient of illness, and in the early stages he would not take care of himself.

I attended his funeral. It is the first funeral without a religious service that I have ever seen. It did not seem to strike anyone else as peculiar, but it was to me. His coffin stood for some days in the Trades’ Union Hall, the walls of which are covered with huge revolutionary cartoons in marvellously bright decorative colouring. We all assembled in that hall. The coffin stood on a daïs and was covered with flowers. As a bit of staging it was very effective, but I saw, when they were being carried out, that most of the wreaths were made of tin flowers painted. I suppose they do service for each Revolutionary burial.

There was a great crowd, but people talked very low. I noticed a Christ-like man with long, fair curly hair, and a fair beard and clear blue eyes; he was quite young. I asked who he was. No one seemed to know. “An artist of sorts,” someone suggested. Not all the people with wonderful heads are wonderful people. Mr. Rothstein and I followed the procession to the grave, accompanied by a band playing a Funeral March that I had never heard before. Whenever that Funeral March struck up (and it had a tedious refrain), everyone uncovered; it seemed to be the only thing they uncovered for. We passed across the Place de la Révolution, and through the sacred gate to the Red Square. He was buried under the Kremlin wall next to all the Revolutionaries his Comrades. As a background to his grave was a large Red banner nailed upon the wall with the letters in gold: “The leaders die, but the cause lives on.”

When I was first told that this was the burying ground of the Revolutionaries I looked in vain for graves, and I saw only a quarter of a mile or so of green grassy bank. There was not a memorial, a headstone or a sign, not even an individual mound. The Communist ideal seemed to have been realised at last: the Equality, unattainable in life, the Equality for which Christ died, had been realisable only in death.

A large crowd assembled for John Reed’s burial and the occasion was one for speeches. Bucharin and Madame Kolontai both spoke. There were speeches in English, French, German and Russian. It took a very long time, and a mixture of rain and snow was falling. Although the poor widow fainted, her friends did not take her away. It was extremely painful to see this white-faced, unconscious woman lying back on the supporting arm of a Foreign Office official, more interested in the speeches than in the human agony.

The faces of the crowd around betrayed neither sympathy nor interest, they looked on unmoved. I could not get to her, as I was outside the ring of soldiers who stood guard nearly shoulder to shoulder. I marvel continuously at the blank faces of the Russian people. In France or Italy one knows that in moments of sorrow the people are deeply moved, their arms go round one, and their sympathy is overwhelming. They cry with our sorrows, they laugh with our joys. But Russia seems numb. I wonder if it has always been so or whether the people have lived through years of such horror that they have become insensible to pain.

Happily no salute was fired. The last time the machine guns rattled at a burial I heard them in my studio, which is just the other side of the wall. On that occasion the old porter who takes care of me at the Kremlin told me that his wife nearly died of heart failure--she thought the “Whites” had come. Probably it affects other jumpy people in the same way.

Here the terror of the Whites is as great as is, on the other side, the terror of the Reds! The poor people do not want any more fighting. I think they are quite indifferent as to who rules them, they want only Peace.

When I got back I found Maxim Litvinoff, who also had been at the funeral and had looked for me in the crowd in vain. He says that he has arranged with Tchicherin that I am to begin him to-morrow. I have not asked to do him, but if it is all arranged for me I am only too delighted. But I do not look forward to working at the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. It is the Hotel Metropole, in the Place de la Révolution, and although it will not be necessary to have a pass, and there will be none of the sentry difficulties as with Lenin and Trotsky, the drain-smells are such that one climbs the stairs two at a time holding one’s breath! There are bits of the Kremlin that are enough to kill the healthiest person, but the Metropole baffles all description. Inside the offices it is all right, but the double windows everywhere are hermetically sealed for the winter, and I wonder that people do not die like flies. Litvinoff tells me that a new building is almost ready and that the next time I come to Moscow there will be a beautiful Commissariat. It is curious that in Moscow, which was one of the richest cities in the world and contained more rich merchants than almost any other, something more was not done for sanitation. Last year owing to lack of fuel most of the pipes in the town burst. No wonder there was an epidemic of typhus. This year things are better organised, and if there is Peace on the two fronts, conditions may be enormously improved.

This evening Comrade Alexandre took me to a play. He gave me my choice, and I decided that “La Fille de Madame Angot,” being an Operetta, would be more amusing that “Twelfth Night” in Russian. It was at the Théâtre des Arts, where Tchekov’s plays used to be produced. Tchekov is no longer acted; he wrote for a class that is temporarily extinct; the workers and peasants would not understand it. Afterwards, coming home in the motor, I noticed a tremendous glare in the sky, it obviously meant a fire, and I insisted on going to look for it. If the fire, when found, was disappointing, at least the search for it was interesting, and revealed to me the unsuspected size of Moscow. We drove through miles of deserted streets, where we met only a few soldiers wearily trudging through the mud. We shouted to them: “Tovarischi, where is the fire?” There is something very pleasant in hailing a complete stranger as a Comrade--one feels at once a link of friendship. The Tovarischi, however, only waved vaguely onwards, which is the only instruction one ever gets in Moscow when one asks the way. On we bumped and jolted and skidded. There was an icy wind blowing and we had no rug. We seemed to cross two rivers, or they may have been river branches. Everything looked very beautiful in the twilight. There was no parapet to the river edge, only some tortuous tree-stems.

Finally we arrived upon the scene to find that some building in a big clearing had burnt to the foundations, and was still burning brightly. Having got out of the car and waded through the mud, I could not get anywhere near, and abandoned the quest. A party of men returning from the fire, surprised at our having a motor, asked Alexandre for his identification papers. Happily he is a member of the Communist party. On the way home he was anxious lest the bad road should cause some damage to the car. If it broke down, he explained cheerfully, there was no other car to be had in these parts, and no telephone to call one up, and it was too far to walk home. It was snowing and we got back at 1 a.m. after losing the way many times.

In the hall I was met by Litvinoff, who, while I was having supper, told me that he had had a message from Trotsky who asked if I would be ready to go off to the front on the morrow at 4 p.m. I had to make up my mind. We discussed the plan in all its aspects. Litvinoff was splendid, he advised me neither way, he merely said he would make all arrangements if I decided to go. I knew that going would involve cold and discomfort and I guessed that I should not really see much of the front, and as the only woman I should be most conspicuous. Yet--what a temptation. Finally about 3 a.m. for various reasons I decided to preserve Trotsky as a memory. Then for the first time Litvinoff said: “I am so glad.”

OCTOBER 25TH.

Litvinoff was most kind and helped me to move my clay and stand from the Kremlin to the Foreign Office. I would have liked a snapshot of our procession--the moulder carrying the clay block, Litvinoff, in his fur-lined coat and sealskin cap armed with the modelling stand, and I following with the bucket of clay and cloths.

On arrival at the Foreign Office we were greeted by the Chinese General in uniform and all his staff. Litvinoff, who is likely to be the Soviet representative in China, was rather taken aback by this _rencontre_ but the Chinese were enormously amused.

Later, at 9 p.m. I returned with Litvinoff to Tchicherin’s office to begin work. While Litvinoff went inside I waited in the secretary’s room, and while I was waiting a man hurried through the office. He was a little man in brown trousers and a coat which did not match. With small steps he shuffled hastily along. It might have been a night watchman; it was Tchicherin.

Still I waited, and the length of my wait began to annoy me, and then I began to feel that

_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, but runs 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 reeks of 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 covered with 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 the bare 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 big _coup_ which 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, and we 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 in Florence 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.