In the UK I am deeply indebted to my friend and fellow Russianist, Richard Davies, archivist of the Leeds Russian Archive for his considerable and unflagging support in this project, and for his patience and good humour in sorting out a long request list of sources that I wished to consult when I visited, and for his continuing sage advice. Richard’s dedicated work at the LRA over many years has ensured that this wonderful resource now holds a unique place in the UK for those researching the British in Russia before the revolution, and I would like to take this opportunity to urge anyone holding such family papers to consider donating them to it. All LRA sources quoted are with the kind permission of rights owners, where it has been possible to trace them. My thanks also must go to the Arthur Ransome Literary Estate; to Bridget Gillies and the University of East Anglia for the use of material from the wonderful Jessie Kenney archive; to the John Rylands Library and the University of Manchester; the National Library of Wales for Sir George Bury’s 1917 report; Peter Rogers at the Stewart Museum, Burnby Hall; and the National Archives and the Imperial War Museum for access to manuscripts that they hold. There is a wealth of untapped material in the BBC Radio 4 archives dating back to the 1950s, and in its TV archives as well. I am grateful to Vicky Mitchell and to the BBC Radio Archives for permission to quote from the Louisette Andrews TV interview. I should also like to make a particular point of singling out the valuable leads I gained from Lyubov Ginzburg’s fascinating thesis ‘Confronting the Cold War Legacy: The Forgotten History of the American Colony in St Petersburg’ (University of Kansas, 2010), which pointed me in the direction of one of the heroes of my book – Leighton Rogers.
My thanks are also due to David Mould for sharing photographs of Donald Thompson; to Amanda Claunch at the Missouri History Museum for providing photographs of David R. Francis and Philip Jordan; to Ulysses Dietz for a photograph of his great-aunt Julia Cantacuzène-Speransky and to Bruce Kirby at the Library of Congress for seeking out and providing a scan of a much sought-after photograph of Leighton Rogers.
As always, dedicated editorial and publicity teams were involved in the production of this book on both sides of the Atlantic. In the UK, Jocasta Hamilton, Sarah Rigby, Najma Finlay, Richard T. Kelly and the team at Hutchinson all offered unfailing commitment to, and encouragement in, the research and writing of this book. Richard has been a first-class editor and I am most grateful for his sensitive response to the manuscript and to what I was trying to achieve. My thanks also go to my diligent copy editor Mandy Greenfield and proof reader Mary Chamberlain.
In New York, my dear friend Charlie Spicer at St Martin’s Press has remained a stalwart ally and advocate of my work. This has been our fifth book together and I truly value his guiding hand. I am also grateful to April Osborn, Karlyn Hixson, Kathryn Hough and the tremendously hard-working PR and marketing team at St Martin’s Press for their commitment and indomitable energy.
Throughout the research and writing of Caught in the Revolution I had the unfailing encouragement of my family and also a wonderful agent, to whom this book is dedicated. Caroline Michel at Peters, Fraser & Dunlop has been a true friend, wise counsel and advocate from the moment I joined the agency and I count myself enormously lucky to have her representing my work. But I also enjoy the valuable support of Rachel Mills, Alexandra Cliff, Marilia Savvides and the Foreign Rights team at PFD, who work so hard at selling my books in other markets. Jon Fowler and James Carroll have also been great friends and supporters of my public speaking and my work in broadcast media.
I always find it very difficult to let go of my subjects at the end of any book. The colourful cast of characters in Caught in the Revolution has lived in my head for the last three years – some of them for far longer – and they have left an indelible impression on me. They have also left me frustrated, because I want to find out more about their time in Russia and their lives after they left. With this is mind, I would be delighted to hear from any descendants or relatives of any of my subjects, who might hold letters, photographs or other material relating to their time in Petrograd in 1917. I can be contacted via my agents, Peters, Fraser & Dunlop at www.petersfraserdunlop.com or my own website, www.helenrappaport.com.
It goes without saying that I would also be thrilled to hear from anyone with material relating to this story, written by people who were there, but about whom I do not know! Finally, and most particularly, I would dearly love to see any other letters written from Russia by Philip Jordan, or to hear from anyone with further memories of him or his life. The ultimate serendipity would be to rediscover a complete copy of Donald Thompson’s 1919 silent film The German Curse in Russia, which I fear has, sadly, long since been lost. But I live in hope.
Helen Rappaport
West Dorset, 2016
Notes
ABBREVIATIONS
Anet Claude Anet, Through the Russian Revolution
Barnes Harper Barnes, Standing on a Volcano
Beatty Bessie Beatty, The Red Heart of Russia
Bryant Louise Bryant, Six Red Months in Russia
Crosley Pauline Stewart Crosley, Intimate Letters from Petrograd
Dissolution Meriel Buchanan, Dissolution of an Empire
Fleurot Arno Dosch-Fleurot, Through War to Revolution
Francis David R. Francis, Russia from the American Embassy
Harper Florence Harper, Runaway Russia
Heald Edward Heald, Witness to Revolution
Houghteling James Houghteling, Diary of the Russian Revolution
Mission Sir George Buchanan, My Mission to Russia, vol. 2
Paléologue Maurice Paléologue, An Ambassador’s Memoirs, 1914–1917
Patouillet Patouillet, Madame [Louise]: TS diary, October 1916–August 1918, 2 vols
Petrograd Meriel Buchanan, Petrograd, The City of Trouble
Reed John Reed, Ten Days that Shook the World
Robien Louis de Robien, The Diary of a Diplomat in Russia 1917–18
Rogers Leighton Rogers Papers, ‘Czar, Revolution, Bolsheviks’
Stinton Jones James Stinton Jones, Russia in Revolution
Stopford Anon. [Albert Stopford], The Russian Diary of an Englishman
Thompson Donald Thompson, Donald Thompson in Russia
Williams Albert Rhys Williams, Journey into Revolution
Wright J. Butler Wright/William Thomas Allison, Witness to Revolution: The Russian Revolution Diary and Letters of J. Butler Wright
Prologue: ‘The Air is Thick with Talk of Catastrophe’
1. Violetta Thurstan, Field Hospital and Flying Column, 94. Thurstan, like many visitors to Petrograd at the time, was overwhelmed by Petrograd’s scale and seductive power: ‘It is one of those cities whose charms steal upon you unawares. It is immense, insistent, arresting, almost thrusting itself on your imagination . . . everything is on such an enormous scale, dealt out in such careless profusion . . . the palaces grandiose, the very blocks of which they are fashioned seem to have been hewn by Titans’. Rogers, Box 3: Folder 7, 12–13 (hereafter styled as 3:7, etc.).
2. Dearing, unpublished MS memoirs, 88.
3. Almedingen, I Remember St Petersburg, 120–2; see also an atmospheric evocation of Petrograd in 1916 in Walpole, The Secret City, 98–9, 134, and in Leighton Rogers, Wine of Fury.
4. Almedingen, Tomorrow Will Come, 76.
5. Steveni, Things Seen in Russia, London: Seeley, Service & Co., 1913, 80. Steveni’s Petrograd Past and Present, published in 1915, has an excellent Chapter XXXI on the history of the British colony; see also Cross, ‘A Corner of a Foreign Field’ and ‘Forgotten British Places in Petrograd’.
6. Lombard, untitled TS memoirs, section headed ‘Things I Can’t Forget’, 64.
7. Ibid., untitled TS memoirs, section VII, n.p.
8. Stopford, 18.
9. Farson, Way of a Transgressor, 150.
10. Nathaniel Newnham-Davis, The Gourmet’s Guide to Europe, Edinburgh: Ballantyne, Hanson & Co., 1908, ‘St Petersburg Clubs’, 303.
11.
Farson, Way of a Transgressor, 95.
12. Dissolution, 9.
13. Ibid., 5–7.
14. Bruce, Silken Dalliance, 174, 159; Pares, My Russian Memoirs, 424. For a profile of Sir George by a contemporary in Petrograd, see Pares, ‘Sir George Buchanan in Russia’, Slavonic Review, 3 (9), March 1925, 576–86.
15. Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, 121.
16. Farson, Way of a Transgressor, 95.
17. Blunt, Lady Muriel Paget, 62; Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, 118.
18. Meriel Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 130.
19. Barnes, 182, 206.
20. Francis to Senator William J. Stone, 13/26 February 1917, quoted in Ginzburg, ‘Confronting the Cold War Legacy’, 86.
21. See Barnes, 406–7; ‘D. R. Francis Valet Dies in California’, St Louis Post Dispatch, 1941; Bliss, ‘Philip Jordan’s Letters from Russia’, 140–1; Barnes, 69.
22. Barnes, 186; Samuel Harper, The Russia I Believe In, 91–2; Harper, 188.
23. Francis, 3.
24. Salzman, Reform and Revolution, 228.
25. Dorr, Inside the Russian Revolution, 41.
26. Saul, Life and Times of Charles Richard Crane, 134; Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, 281–2.
27. Rogers, 3:9, 153.
28. Houghteling, 5.
29. Barnes, 194.
30. Ibid., 195.
31. Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy, 23.
32. For a discussion of allegations that Matilda de Cram was a spy, see e.g. Allison, American Diplomats in Russia, 66–7. General William V. Judson’s report to the US Secretary of War, in Salzman, Russia in War and Revolution, 267–70, is a contemporary evaluation from the point of view of someone working at the US embassy. Barnes (passim) also discusses their relationship.
33. Barnes, 199, 200–1.
34. ‘Missouri Negro in Russia is “Jes a Honin” for Home’, Wabash Daily Plain Dealer, 29 September 1916.
35. Ibid., 207.
36. Ibid.
37. Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy, 56.
38. Wright, 4.
39. Dearing, unpublished memoirs, 219.
40. Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy 32.
41. Ibid., 31.
42. Quoted in Noulens, Mon Ambassade en Russie Soviétique, 243.
43. Kennan, Russia Leaves the War, 38.
44. Lindley, untitled memoirs 5.
45. Dearing, unpublished memoirs, 144.
46. Heald, 25; Barnes, 207; Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy, 70; Wright, 10.
47. Farson, Way of a Transgressor, 94; Steveni, Petrograd Past and Present, Chapter XIII, ‘The Modern City and the People’.
48. According to Louise Patin, Journal d’une institutrice française, 19, French residents were given special permits to obtain wine.
49. Suzanne Massie, Land of the Firebird: The Beauty of Old Russia, Blue Hill, Maine: Heart Tree Press, 1980, 407.
50. http://thegaycourier.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/legendary-hotel-celebrates-100-years.html
51. Vecchi, Tavern is My Drum, 96.
52. Rogers, 3:7, 21–2.
53. Ibid., 23.
54. Farson, Way of a Transgressor, 180.
55. Ibid., 181.
56. See the memoirs of Ella Cordasco (née Woodhouse), which are only available online at: https://web.archive.org/web/20120213165523/ http://www.zimdocs.btinternet.co.uk/fh/ella2.html
57. Farson, Way of a Transgressor, 180.
58. Dearing, unpublished memoirs, 87.
59. Oudendyk, Ways and By-Ways in Diplomacy, 208.
60. Garstin, ‘Denis Garstin and the Russian Revolution’, Walpole 589.
61. Grand Duke Nikolay Nikolaevich, quoted in Pipes, Russian Revolution, 256; Memorandum to Foreign Office 18 [5], August 1916, Mission, 19.
62. Petrograd, 78.
63. Salisbury, Black Night, White Snow, 311; Petrograd, 70.
64. Paléologue, 733.
65. Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, 158.
66. Arthur Bullard, Russian Pendulum, London: Macmillan, 1919, 21; see also Houghteling, 4–5.
67. Rogers 3:7, 17, 7–8.
68. Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 138.
69. Petrograd, 50.
70. Gordon, Russian Year, 35.
71. Ibid., 40.
72. Figures in many sources vary, but see: http://rkrp-rpk.ru/content/view/10145/1/
73. Cockfield, Dollars and Diplomacy, 69.
74. Wright, 15.
75. Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, 119.
76. Dissolution, 151; Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 141.
77. Stopford, 94.
78. Barnes, 213.
79. Paléologue, 755.
80. Christie, ‘Experiences in Russia’, 2; MacNaughton, My Experiences in Two Continents, 194.
81. http://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/police-conditions-in-petrograd-1916/
1 ‘Women are Beginning to Rebel at Standing in Bread Lines’
1. Fleurot, 96.
2. Ibid., 99, 100; Hawkins, ‘Through War to Revolution with Dosch-Fleurot’, 20. Dosch-Fleurot finally left in March 1918.
3. Fleurot, 99, 100.
4. Ibid., 101.
5. Hawkins, ‘Through War to Revolution with Dosch-Fleurot’, 22; Fleurot, 103–4.
6. Thompson, 30. For Thompson’s wartime career prior to Petrograd, see Mould, ‘Donald Thompson: Photographer at War’, and Mould, ‘Russian Revolution’, 3.
7. Heald, 23.
8. Thompson, 17.
9. Harper, 19.
10. Houghteling, 14, 4.
11. Cahill, Between the Lines, 217, 221.
12. Ibid., 218.
13. Ibid., 219.
14. Mason, ‘Russia’s Refugees’, 142.
15. Ibid.
16. Petrograd, 48.
17. For details of her life and career, see Blunt, Lady Muriel, and Sybil Oldfield, Women Humanitarians, London: Continuum, 2001, 160–3; Powell, Women in the War Zone, 296–7.
18. Blunt, Lady Muriel, 59.
19. Jefferson, So This Was Life, 85.
20. Several of the other diplomatic communities funded hospitals in Petrograd during the war: the US colony’s hospital was at 15 Spasskaya; the Belgians had one named for their King Albert; the Dutch had a hospital at 68 English Embankment; the Danes ran two hospitals, one at 11 Sergievskaya and another for lower ranks named after the Danish-born dowager Maria Feodorovna, at 13 Pochtamskaya. There were also French, Swiss and Japanese hospitals for the wounded. See Yuri Vinogradov, ‘Lazarety Petrograda’, http://www.proza.ru/2010/01/30/984
21. Lady Georgina Buchanan, letter 16 December 1916, Glenesk-Bathurst papers.
22. Novoe vremya, 6 February 1917.
23. Lady Georgina Buchanan, letters of 7 October 1916 and 20 January 1917, Glenesk-Bathurst papers.
24. Jefferson, So That Was Life, 84–6; Harmer, Forgotten Hospital, 67–8.
25. Letter to mother, 19 [6] September, quoted in Wood, ‘Revolution Outside Her Window’, 74; Powell, Women in the War Zone, 301.
26. Wood, ‘Revolution Outside Her Window’, 75; letter 23 [10] September, Powell, Women in the War Zone, 301.
27. Seymour, MS diary for 4 October [22 September], IWM; Powell, Women in the War Zone, 301; Moorhead, Dunant’s Dream, 64.
28. Blunt, Lady Muriel, 66.
29. Farson, ‘Aux Pieds de l’Impératrice’, 17.
30. Harmer, Forgotten Hospital, 57; Powell, Women in the War Zone, 302.
31. Harmer, Forgotten Hospital, 25; Powell, Woman in the War Zone, 303.
32. Violetta Thurstan’s view of the three women, quoted in Moorhead Dunant’s Dream, 235.
33. Jefferson, So That Was Life, 92. Lady Sybil Grey’s diary, quoted in Harmer, Forgotten Hospital, 67. It is regretted that Lady Sybil’s diary is in private hands and is not yet available for research.
34. Harmer, Forgotten Hospital, 118.
35. Cordasco (Woodhouse), online memoir.
36. Wright, 21.
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37. Armour, ‘Recollections’, 7. For his account of the reception, see 7–9.
38. Chambrun, Lettres à Marie, 42.
39. Wright, 21, 22.
40. Armour, ‘Recollections’, 8.
41. Chambrun, Lettres à Marie, 42.
42. Francis, 49.
43. Wright, 22; Paléologue, 764.
44. Weeks, American Naval Diplomat, 106.
45. Francis, 50–1.
46. Chambrun, Lettres à Marie, 43.
47. Paléologue, 764; Chambrun, Lettres à Marie, 42; Wright, 22.
48. Wright, 26.
49. Ibid.
50. Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 141; Petrograd, 89–90; Stopford, 100.
51. Paléologue, 776.
52. Nostitz, Romance and Revolutions, 178; see also Wright, 33.
53. Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, 163; Paléologue, 783.
54. Lockhart, Memoirs of a British Agent, 162–3; Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 142.
55. Paléologue, 793.
56. Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 142; Mission, 57; Buchanan, Ambassador’s Daughter, 138.
57. Salisbury, Black Night, White Snow, 321; Bury, ‘Report Regarding the Russian Revolution’, II.
58. Wharton, ‘Russian Ides of March’, 22.
59. Ibid. Chadbourn published his valuable account of the February Revolution under the pseudonym Paul Wharton.
60. Emily Warner Somerville, ‘A Kappa in Russia’, 123.
61. Wright, 33, 34.
62. Thompson, 334.
63. Almedingen, I Remember St Petersburg, 186–7.
64. Wright, 34.
65. Ibid.; Thompson, 37; Salisbury, Black Night, White Snow, 322.
66. Mission, 59. The Whishaws were an old established family in the British colony, whose company Hills & Whishaw was involved in the exploitation of oilfields at Baku. Stella Arbenina (aka Baroness Meyendorff), who features in this book, was a member of the Whishaw family.
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