Is it possible, I wonder that he is right, and that the “little select circle” do not count as much as I have all my life taken for granted that they did?
September 23rd.
I wasted a lot of time this morning trying to fix things up without the help of Kameneff. As things have turned out I might have saved myself the trouble. John Reed told me that I never would begin work unless I arranged everything for myself, and depended on no one here. On the other hand Mr. Vanderlip told me to keep calm, as his experience was that everything came in time. Thoroughly impatient however, I got hold of Mr. Rosenfeld who arrived simultaneously with Alexandre Kameneff and a motor. Rosenfeld took me studio hunting. The Art Schools seemed to be very far away from the parts of Moscow that are familiar to me, and although everyone was willing to help, there seemed to be little accommodation available. In the Academia, which I believe is only just re-opening, they offered me a place to work in—a gallery which obviously was not suitable. We went on to the Strogonoff School, where Mr. Konenkoff, one of their most distinguished sculptors, offered me of his best. It was like an empty kitchen looking into a bleak courtyard. The two students who followed us round were not very sympathetic. No doubt they thought it presumptuous of me to come to Russia and expect to model Lenin! They certainly did not seem to think he would sit to me. Kameneff had warned me that most of the artists I should meet would not be Bolsheviks, so that probably the students I met were not, but thought that I was. One of them, a girl and more friendly than the rest, said to me in French: “If you are a friend of those in power I suppose you will get some food; we are expected to work here all day from 9 in the morning till 6 at night without any.” I asked why she did not bring her food with her, and received some jumbled explanation about rations and distribution and State Control and no shops, which was so bewildering that I avoided further discussion. It was obvious that I did not understand the
BRONZE EAGLE AT THE MUSÉE ALEXANDRE III.
condition of things, and that I looked rather stupid in consequence. Another one said to me: “Madame, we are waiting for deliverance. For two years we have waited. We do not know how it is to come, but we just hope that some morning we may wake up to find the nightmare over.” I said feebly that there had been six years of war, and a blockade, but I felt it was no business of mine to put up a defence for their system. I came home thoroughly depressed and disheartened, having accomplished nothing. At 10 p.m. I was sitting in the gilded drawing-room with Mr. Vanderlip when the telephone rang: it was Kameneff. He announced that he had a room for me at the Kremlin and that I must work there because all the people I had to model were there, and that it was the only way to get them as they were very busy. He promised to send someone for me in the morning to take me there. He asked if I were lonely, resentful, or bored, and pleaded his inability to get to me owing to stress of work. He begged me to be patient and good, and promised that all would come right. I went to bed feeling really better.
September 24th.