Krassin arrived at 10 a.m., and found me reading the papers, sitting on
the seat outside the door. Like Kameneff, he stayed till 1 o’clock. He
has a beautiful head, and he sat almost sphinx-like, severe and
expressionless most of the time. We talked of course, but his French is
less good than Kameneff’s, and we broke into occasional German--it was a
good mix-up, but we said all we wanted to say.
Kameneff had talked to him about me, and had told him of the project of
my going to Moscow. I said nothing about it until he mentioned it.
What impresses me about these two men is their impassive
imperturbability, their calm, and their patience. I suppose it is the
race, or else that they learnt calm when they were prisoners in Siberia.
It is such a contrast to almost every other sitter, who is restless,
hurried and fidgety. Krassin is sphinx-like; he sits erect, his head up,
and his pointed, bearded chin sticking defiantly out at an angle, and
his mouth tightly shut. He has no smile like Kameneff, and his piercing
eyes just looked at me impassively while I worked. It was rather
uncanny.
Krassin is a Siberian. He explained to me that his father was a
Government local official when he married his mother who was a peasant,
and one of twenty-two children. He himself was the eldest of seven, and
was brought up in Siberia.
At 1 o’clock I thanked him profusely for sitting so long and so well,
and he seemed quite surprised at my stopping, and said: “You have done
with me?”
I explained that I had to catch a train, so, having swallowed a fish and
some plums, I rushed down the alley to my taxi, pursued by Rigamonti who
abandoned his marble chisel and carried my suit-case and hurled in some
last things to me. I just caught the 1.50 at Waterloo, for Godalming, to
stay two days with the Midletons.[1]