Gorky’s life, Wells’ life and her own life – they were all history now, the stuff of museums. Doors closing, curtains coming down . . . nothing left but memories and secrets.
One set of memories, one avenue of life, the one that outshone and outlived the rest, reached its end in 1970.
In 1948, after living briefly with ‘Tommy’ Rosslyn, Lockhart had married his wartime secretary, Mollie Beck. She was a sensible woman who set about trying to sort out his finances. She took him out of London and they lived for many years in Edinburgh and then Falmouth in Cornwall. But he still couldn’t stay away from Moura. Whenever he was in London he would meet up with her, and he would often make the long journey to the capital for that sole purpose.
They were growing old – sometimes together, more often apart. In March 1953 she wrote to remind him that she would soon become ‘The Great Sixty’ and they arranged to meet up for a celebratory meal.31 She was still his darling Moura, and he was still her Baby. As they aged, they grew ill and infirm. As in every other aspect of their lives, it was Moura who proved the more resilient. She survived breast cancer, while during the 1960s Lockhart’s health, which had been shaky ever since his return from Russia in 1918, and worsened by his habits throughout his life, began to break down badly. By the late 1960s he had begun to suffer from dementia. His brilliant mind and his compelling, quixotic personality were crumbling. His son and daughter-in-law nursed him at home in Hove, until he was admitted to a local nursing home.
Moura visited him there, and was with him in his final hours.32
Sir Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart died in his sleep on 27 February 1970. He was eighty-two years old.
His obituary in The Times made a sketch of his life’s adventures and noted that ‘he was twice married’,33 but made no mention anywhere of the woman who had meant most to him, the woman who had shared his darkest dangers, who had sold herself to save his life, and who had loved him with a fierce passion that was stronger than death.
Two days after his funeral in Hove, Moura held a memorial service for him at the Russian Orthodox church in Ennismore Gardens, Kensington, close to her former home.34
The service began at noon, and as she had stipulated, there was a choir, and incense, and all the ceremonial of an Orthodox requiem under the hallowed gilt dome of the church. The only thing missing was the congregation. Moura had placed an announcement in The Times, but she was the only participant. His relatives disapproved strongly, and his friends stayed away out of respect for them. It suited Moura well enough – this service was not for them; it was for herself and her Baby-Boy, for the memory of their love, for the memory of little Peter who never was, for the man Moura had loved as she believed no other woman had ever loved a man. At last, in death, she had him to herself.
Moura made her last trip to Moscow in 1973. Her health was failing. Arthritis had been dogging her for years, and she had had two hip-replacement operations. She could scarcely function without a drink to stimulate her.
Her time was coming; all the doors had closed, there was little now to live for. Her children she loved, and her grandchildren; but they were the future. Moura was of an age where all that really mattered was the past.
In 1974 Moura left London for Italy. She was going to visit Paul; now in his early sixties, he had retired from farming in the Isle of Wight, and he and his wife had settled in Tuscany. Hamish Hamilton believed that Moura had quite deliberately ‘decided to go away to die’.35 She booked a room in a small country hotel close to Paul’s home, and set off.
Another of her close friends, the poet Michael Burn, wrote a poem for her entitled ‘Moura Budberg: on her proposed departure from England’.36 He loved Moura. He had been introduced into her circle by Guy Burgess, who had been his boyfriend; later he married an old friend of Moura’s, and he was moved by Moura’s kindness to her in her last illness, when Moura herself was unwell. She had the ‘power to solace’, he recalled.37 Of all Moura’s friends in her last years, Michael Burn was possibly the one who loved her most keenly and sincerely.
In his poem he gently satirised the myths that Moura and everyone she knew had built up around her.
Isn’t it a fact
That Talleyrand adored you,
And that for your want of tact
In the Commune of eighteen-seventy
Marx praised and Eugenie deplored you?
Brilliant balloons
Of fantasy and gossip
Inflate to legends,
. . . How well did you know Solomon?
And was he wise? In Berlin, certainly,
The Kaiser took you for the Queen of Sheba.
That you were born
Is also sure, and bred
In deepish purple
You preferred red.
Grey’s not your wear,
London not yours to nest in,
Not now, not any more.
Too many rats. Where to then, citizen
Baroness, what fresh fields to rest in?38
There were no fresh fields for Moura – she had been everywhere, done everything, seen it all. Italy had been the land of Gorky for a while. They had both loved it. It would do as a final place to rest, if not nest in.
A story was told that when she left London in 1974, she took with her a certain suitcase. Somewhere between the Italian border and Paul’s home, the trailer in which her belongings were being transported caught fire. The cause was a mystery. Equally mystifying was the elderly Baroness’s refusal to allow the flames to be extinguished.39
Gorky’s papers, the letters, the diary jottings, the photographs, everything she had withheld from Stalin and Yagoda – all went up in a column of smoke over the Italian countryside. Everything else went with it – all the papery minutiae of her life. Lockhart’s letters, H. G.’s, Gorky’s, the manuscript of her ‘Mêlée’ probably, if it still existed. Nobody, if Moura had anything to do with it, would ever penetrate the mysteries of her life. She had given instructions to her children that they were to destroy all that they had of hers. All that would remain would be the traces she had left in the possession of others – in letters, in their memories and in their hearts.
On 31 October 1974 Baroness Moura Budberg died in Italy. Paul and Tania were with her in her last days. She was eighty-two years old.
Moura had called in a priest when she realised that the end was close. She asked for a personal requiem mass to be given for herself on the theme of contrition.40
Her body was taken back to England, the country she had come to with such hope and ambition on that distant day in the late summer of 1929. Her funeral was held at the Russian Orthodox church in Kensington. The building was packed. Her children and grandchildren – all grown up now and most married. Kira and her son Nicholas were also there. The list of friends was long – the French Ambassador, Baron Bob Boothby, Lady Diana Cooper, Hamish Hamilton, Alan Pryce-Jones, Tom Driberg, Kenneth Tynan, Alan Moorehead, Carol Reed . . . She was buried in Chiswick New Cemetery. Her gravestone was inscribed:
MARIE BUDBERG
née ZAKREVSKY
(1892 – 1974)
СПАСИ И СОХРАНИ*
The person who had meant more to her than any other wasn’t there. He had gone before her. He had brought her to life in the frosts of Russia, loved her and abandoned her, but she had loved him and gone on living for him. In the cruel winter in early 1919, when firewood could hardly be bought and the people of Petrograd struggled to eat, Moura wrote a letter to him.
My dearest Babykins
Do you remember how you used to say: ‘Our love must stand a 6 months’ test.’ Well – do you think yours is going to stand it? As to mine – it needs no test, it is there – linked with me until death – and perhaps – Beyond.
It would seem strange to me to hear you say ‘Do you still love me?’ just as if you were to ask me: ‘Are you still alive?’ And these months of waiting – how beautiful they could be . . . for there is beauty in parting, rapture in the tho
ught that the day shall come, when one shall be able to offer a soul, purified by suffering and longing and by the ardent desire of perfection . . . Oh Baby-Boy – what I would give to have you here, near me, with your arms round me, and have you comfort me and cuddle me and make me forget all the nightmare . . .
. . . Sleep well, my Baby – may God protect you.
I kiss your dear lips.
Goodnight.
Your Moura.41
Notes
* Save and preserve.
Notes
Preface
1 Wells, H. G. Wells in Love, p. 162.
2 Lord Ritchie Calder, letter to Andrew Boyle, Jun./Jul. 1980, CUL Add 9429/2B/85.
3 Andrew Boyle, ‘Budberg Outline’, CUL Add 9429/2B/127 (i).
4 Moura Budberg, Preface to Gorky, Fragments from My Diary, p. ix.
Chapter 1: The Eve of Revolution
1 Moura’s exact birthdate is a matter of doubt. Her official documents give the date as 3 March, although she celebrated her birthday on 6 March. The change from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar does not account for the discrepancy. Furthermore, Moura’s daughter Tania stated that her mother’s year of birth was 1893 (Alexander, An Estonian Childhood); in all other sources, including her passport applications, it is given as 1892.
2 Now spelled Berezova Rudka, the house has survived, but in a sad state of repair. The bright paint has faded and peeled, the gardens are desolate and the fountain is corroded and dried up.
3 Russian surnames have male and female forms. Zakrevskaya is the female form of Zakrevsky.
4 Alexander, Estonian Childhood, p. 37.
5 Alexander, Estonian Childhood, p. 27.
6 Figes, A People’s Tragedy, p. 158.
7 The First World War was known by various names in Russia. It was occasionally called the Second Fatherland War (the first being the war against Napoleon in 1812), but more commonly the Patriotic War or Great Patriotic War. These latter terms had also been used in 1812, and were revived again in 1941, and are nowadays mostly associated with the Second World War.
8 Sir Michael Postan, interview with Andrew Boyle, CUL Add 9429/2B/123.
9 Keane, Séan MacBride, p. 3.
10 White & Jeffares, The Gonne–Yeats Letters, p. 9.
11 Maud narrated this story in her own memoir, wherein she referred to Margaret by the pseudonym ‘Eleanor Robbins’ (Ward, Maud Gonne, p. 13). Maud herself was unmarried at this time, having turned down many proposals from her lover W. B. Yeats. In 1894 Maud gave birth to an illegitimate daughter of her own, named Iseult. She managed to bring up both girls. Eventually in 1904 Maud married an army officer called MacBride, who was subsequently discovered to have had an affair with the teenage Eileen Wilson (Toomey, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography).
12 Alexander, Estonian Childhood, pp. 16–17.
13 It is not impossible that Micky was Moura’s mother. She had previously had an affair with a married older man and borne a child. And it is suggestive that Moura was born so soon after Micky’s arrival. But there is no evidence to support this conjecture.
14 Berberova, Moura, pp. 165–6.
15 Berberova, Moura, p. 359. The matter is also referred to in her MI5 file (visa application and related letter from E. T. Boyce). Some of the claims about Moura’s sexual conduct in this period come from H. G. Wells, and could be the products of mere gossip filtered through his own jealous imagination. He alleged that she had in fact been briefly married to Engelhardt (Wells, H. G. Wells in Love, p. 164; Wells, suppressed pages from H. G. Wells in Love).
16 Quoted in Alexander, An Estonian Childhood, p. 31.
17 Alexander, Estonian Childhood, p. 33.
18 Buchanan, Recollections of Imperial Russia, p. 46.
19 This recollection was told to the young Michael Korda, nephew of film-maker Alexander Korda, at one of his uncle’s functions (Korda, Charmed Lives, p. 214).
20 Alexander, Estonian Childhood, p. 17.
21 Yakov Peters, who was head of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police, with whom Moura became involved in 1918, claimed in a memoir that ‘according to the confession of [a] detainee and to documents found with Prince P., [Moura] had been a German spy during the Imperialist war’ (Peters, ‘Memoirs of Cheka Work During the First Year of the Revolution’, in the journal Proletarian Revolution, 1925, quoted in Berberova, Moura, p. 128).
Chapter 2: Choosing Sides
1 Buchanan describes this visit in some detail in his memoir My Mission to Russia, pp. 42–52. He gives the date as 12 January 1917 (NS).
2 Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, p. 117.
3 Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, p. 41.
4 Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, p. 143.
5 Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, p. 20; Benckendorff, Last Days at Tsarskoe, translator’s introduction, gives Paul’s title as Grand Marshal of the Court. Counts Paul and Alexander were distant cousins of Djon.
6 Sir George Buchanan’s attempt to warn the Tsar about the danger to Rasputin, which he said was based on ‘idle gossip’ (My Mission to Russia, p. 48), has contributed to a theory that the assassination was actually orchestrated by Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. An English friend of Prince Felix Yusupov (the principal conspirator, in whose palace Rasputin was killed), Oswald Rayner, was implicated in the murder, and may have supplied the revolver that was used. Sir George made inquiries about this allegation, but was assured by the head of the Petrograd division of the SIS that it was ‘incredible to the point of childishness’ (Milton, Russian Roulette, pp. 25–6). However, a case has been made that SIS agents were deeply involved if not wholly responsible (Cullen, Rasputin). One does wonder why Buchanan would try to warn the Tsar if his worry really was based on nothing more than ‘idle gossip’. Also, the Tsar himself became convinced that a British conspiracy had been responsible.
7 Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, p. 49.
8 Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, p. 51.
9 Sir Michael Postan, interview with Andrew Boyle, CUL Add 9429/2B/123. Sir Michael Postan was born in Bessarabia, but left Russia after the Revolution. One wonders about the credibility of the claim. If there was reason to believe that she was both a German spy and a woman of such easy virtue, it seems unlikely that a man such as Sir George Buchanan, who was a very long way from being a fool, would have let his daughter be so friendly with her, or tolerated the Embassy’s military attachés having such an extensive social involvement with her.
10 Meriel Buchanan (Petrograd, p. 93) writes that the night was ‘moonless’, but on 26 February 1917 (OS) there was a full moon which would have been low in the sky at the time of the departure from Yendel (www.timeanddate.com/calendar/moonphases.html?year=1917&n=242; wwp.greenwichmeantime.co.uk/time-gadgets/moonrise/index.htm).
11 Buchanan, Petrograd, p. 94.
12 The Baltic station was sometimes known as Tsarskoye Selo station, as that was originally the main destination of trains travelling from it. It was (and still is) the main station for routes to the Baltic states. It is now called Vitebsky station.
13 An ambassador’s chasseur was a combination of aide, manservant, butler and shield-on-shoulder. The job had a ceremonial element, and William was often required to wear a uniform, carry a sword and don a feathered hat (Buchanan, The Dissolution of an Empire, p. 5; Cross, ‘Corner of a Foreign Field’, p. 348).
14 Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, p. 145. Knox had only recently been promoted from colonel to brigadier general (Burke’s Peerage vol. 3, p. 3271). Captain Francis Cromie, commander of the Royal Navy’s Baltic submarine flotilla, stationed at Reval, was also present at this encounter, having travelled to Petrograd on the same train to begin a week’s leave (Cromie, letter to Adm. Phillimore, Mar. 1917, in Jones, ‘Documents on British Relations’ II, p. 357). Cromie was a friend of Meriel and Moura, but despite writing that he ‘arrived with Miss Buchanan’, he must have been merely on the same train rather than travelling with them, as he is not mentioned in any other sour
ces.
15 Knox, With the Russian Army, p. 553.
16 Buchanan, Petrograd, pp. 94–5. Capt. Cromie, who was present at the arrival, wrote that Knox ‘considered the disorders as quite minor affairs’ (letter to Adm. Phillimore, Mar. 1917, in Jones, ‘Documents on British Relations’ II, p. 357). Since Knox considered them no such thing, this confirms that he was talking down the situation so as not to alarm the ladies.
17 Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, pp 146–7; Recollections, pp. 267–8.
18 Buchanan, Recollections, pp. 267–8.
19 Buchanan, Petrograd, pp. 94–7.
20 Figes, A People’s Tragedy, pp. 312–13. Znamenskaya Square was renamed Vosstaniya Square (‘Uprising Square’) after the Revolution.
21 Some foreign observers, including Meriel Buchanan and her father, seem to have misunderstood the calls for a republic headed by a ‘Tsar’; they thought the simple workers had failed to grasp the concept of democracy (e.g. Buchanan, Petrograd, p. 107).
A Very Dangerous Woman: The Lives, Loves and Lies of Russia's Most Seductive Spy Page 41
