Hearing I was not he asked: “But you are English and I hope a good Communist?” I did not answer, I just pressed his hand.
We went to the Musée Alexandre III, the garden of which is strewn with large bronze eagles thrown down from the pediment. They are very emblematic of the mighty who are fallen.
The Museum contains replicas of classics of which the originals are in many cases in the British Museum. But the arrangement and the backgrounds are so good, that it gives one more pleasure to look at the Greek and Assyrian replicas here than to see the originals in London.
A school of boys and girls, extremely well fed and well dressed, was being shown round, and there was also a magnificent old peasant with long hair and aquiline nose, who told us that he wanted before he died to see what a museum was like. Both he and the schoolmaster asked us if we could explain things to them as there were no guides. Even had I been able to speak the language, I should have been at a loss to explain the Parthenon Temple which we were facing at that moment. The children probably, and the peasant surely, had never heard of the Parthenon, nor of Greek mythology; where would one begin? One could only have said: “Isn’t it beautiful, don’t you see how beautiful it is?” and hope that they did see it. Since I heard a guide explaining Rodin at South Kensington to Australian soldiers, I have felt sure that Art can be felt, but not explained.
In the end we procured a guidebook and sent the old peasant off with the children’s school, and left the master to do his best. When I got back it was to find no one at home. I ate some food, as I was hungry, and concluded that I was still to be a guest at the Kremlin. Late in the afternoon I found my way alone through the maze of corridors and staircases, out into the grounds alone. I wandered about, still hypnotised by the beauty of the sun-reflecting domes, and by the dead stillness which seemed to protest from the Royal stones. Over the Tsar’s palace crows pecked at the flagstaff where once the Royal Standard had flown. There is a clock in a tower at the Kremlin Gate and it has a complaining and depressing chime. It complains once at the quarter, four times at the hour. It seemed to say, “My people are gone! and I am sad, and I am sad.” It doubtless complained when Napoleon took possession, and again in Tsarist days, and probably will always lament; some people are never satisfied.
I have a sort of feeling that I am staying at Versailles just after Louis XVI. My emotions and impressions are too deep, too many, and too bewildering to be measured in words.
In the evening Alexandre took me to a play at the Théâtre des Arts. A big theatre and well filled. The piece was very well staged. The play, which is adapted from an old Polish legend called “Corrodine,” was well acted, so that without understanding a word I gathered some of the sense. In front of us sat Madame Zinoviev with a Comrade and I was glad when they talked to me in French. It was not until afterwards that I learnt who she was, much to my amusement, remembering that I had told her my errand, and that Zinoviev was among the heads promised to me. She asked me if I would not have to go to Petrograd to do him, but I said that I thought not, as he was in Moscow at the moment, and that if I could only find a place to work in, he would sit to me at once. I wondered why she laughed.
September 22nd. Moscow, The Guest House.
Mrs. Kameneff went to her work as usual at 10 a.m. At breakfast half an hour later Leo Borisvitch, as he is called, promised not to do any work or keep any engagement until he had taken me to my new headquarters in a