From Clare Sheridan’s Diary

SEPTMEBER 18TH, 1920, Saturday.
    At dawn we left Hongo, but there was such a wind blowing that the ship anchored just at the entrance of the harbor, and for a few hours we swung around. No one complained of delay, no one seemed to be in a hurry. . . .

The sun was shining brilliantly when we finally set out to sea, and I was having a most interesting conversation with Mr. Aschberg, a Swedish banker, who did me the compliment of talking political economy to me, of which I understood nothing. He told me interesting things about Bolshevik business transactions with Germany, in which it seemed that the Bolsheviks were alienating the German workers by negotiating with the German capitalists.

In my own mind I did not see how they could do otherwise but my ignorance on these things is so great that I try to learn all I can without giving myself away by asking too many questions. It is a slow process, but I have hopes. The mere fact of being under the wing of a man like Kamenev,* and bound to Russia, seems to make people talk to me as if I were a man. . . .

    * For a more sober appreciation of L. Rosenfeld (Kamenev) please see “Russia and History’s Turning Point” by Kerensky. — (WPT)

* * *

 

NOVEMBER 7TH, 1920. In the train.
Professor Lomonosoff is the Minister of Railways. We are carrying six and a half million pounds in gold, which he is taking to Germany to buy locomotives with. We are accompanied by an armed guard.

We were held up many hours last night because there was an accident on the line . . .

Our party consists besides Lomonosoff’s staff, which he is taking with him to Germany, of Vanderlip and Neuorteva, and a charming man called Dargone, who is a railway expert. . . .

Lomonosoff . . . had been a railway official in Tsarist days . . .

 

NOVEMBER 12TH, 1920.
We arrived at Reval late on Tuesday night the 9th.  . . ..

We are on our way now to Stockholm. . . . I find the same Swedish banker, Mr. Aschberg, on board who went across with us in September. He is in charge of a cabin full of gold. He takes good care of me . . .

Russian Portraits by Clare Sheridan
London : Jonathan Cape, 1921.
Or : Mayfair to Moscow — Clare Sheridan’s Diary.
New York : Boni and Liveright, 1921.