Crucible

by Charles Emmerson

  ADRIANOPLE–ISTANBUL: The exodus continues. ‘In a never-ending, staggering march the Christian population of Eastern Thrace is jamming the roads towards Macedonia’, Ernest writes, on his way back to Paris from the east.

  Shortly afterwards, another refugee leaves his homeland quite unobserved. Sultan Vahdettin, formally shorn of his political role by Ankara, decides Istanbul is no longer safe. The palace has emptied. He tries to pretend everything is normal when the British Ambassador comes to visit, making excuses for the absence of staff. He makes his own exit under a rainy sky a few days later. Two ambulances take the Sultan the short distance to the Bosphorus (one gets a puncture on the way). A British boat takes him into exile. It sets sail for Malta a little before nine in the morning.

  The Sultan is gone. His heir, a keen nationalist and quite capable painter, is made Caliph, leader of the world’s Muslims, a purely religious post. The Ottoman Empire has ceased to exist.

  WASHINGTON DC: The anti-lynching bill dies on the Senate floor, killed by a filibuster of Southern Democrats. Activists blame Republicans for not pushing the matter hard enough. Republicans declare the numbers were not there and the bill’s constitutionality was in doubt.

  Garvey blames the NAACP. The organisation is, he says, ‘nothing else but the trick of the white man to control the rising ambition of the Negro’. Hopes of democratic liberation can never be achieved in white America.

  DOORN: A letter arrives from England from a Mrs Frances Pelly, who claims skill as a fortune-teller. She has looked into Wilhelm’s future, she writes. She sees flowers and warns him to look after the seeds.

  The Kaiser’s entourage are not clear whether the message is intended as a good or bad omen. Are the flowers celebratory or funerary? Wilhelm has no doubts. He interprets the letter as meaning that his second marriage–symbolised by flowers, don’t you see?–brings with it the prospect of additional positive developments–seeds, obviously!–which can only mean his return to power in Germany. Italy has led the way. ‘Fascism will take over in Germany as well’, Wilhelm insists confidently; ‘that’s how we’ll get the monarchy back.’

  The next day, a private wedding ceremony takes place at Huis Doorn. The world’s paparazzi are kept at a safe distance. Some formal press photographs are released instead. Hermine wears a knowing expression and a mauve dress of her husband’s design. She leans towards the Kaiser proprietorially. Wilhelm, his face all steely self-righteousness, chooses to be photographed in the uniform he wore crossing into Holland in 1918. This is to show that he is still at war, Wilhelm says by way of explanation. It is not long before Hermine starts taking long trips back to Germany, leaving her husband to himself.

  MOSCOW: Vladimir speaks to a Comintern gathering, in German. One of his comrades from the train in 1917 prompts him with the right German word when he cannot find it.

  He blames the famine on the civil war. The Soviet state has been guilty of mistakes, but he blames them on sabotage, poor education and the machinery of state inherited from the Tsars. Anyhow, ‘I don’t think it will be an exaggeration to repeat that the foolish things we have done are nothing compared with those done in concert by the capitalist countries’, the Versailles Treaty in particular. He laughs off the notion that there is anything to worry about with all the money circulating in Russia now: ‘The noughts can always be crossed out.’ Lenin even recasts Benito’s coup as good news: ‘this will be very useful’, he believes, a wake-up call to the Italian proletariat. He declares the prospects for world revolution as ‘not only good, but excellent’. A bravura performance. Lenin’s shirt is drenched in sweat. He cannot remember a word he has said.

  Vladimir tries to convince his colleagues, Russia and the world that all is well. He is getting better, he is in charge. He gives interviews to foreign journalists, with the questions submitted in advance. Those who have not met him before think he is fine; others see a changed man. Lenin’s once-overflowing natural dynamism–the revolutionary in hobnail boots stomping around Zurich as if racing to some goal no one else can quite see–now seems forced: it is an act. His mind is more brittle than it used to be. It requires long prompting to get to where it needs to go. Lenin is quickly irritated by criticism that his policies to allow private trade to return have allowed a new class of small-time merchants to emerge in Russia, the so-called NEP-men, ‘New Economic Policy-men’. Only when talk turns to the subject of Mussolini does a flash of the old dog’s wit return. ‘A merry story’, Vladimir chuckles.

  A week later, he addresses a meeting at the Bolshoi. True socialism, he declares, ‘is no longer a matter of the distant future, or an abstract picture, or an icon’ but something which is now appearing in everyday life. But his words are hollow. His delivery is hesitant.

  Lenin’s doctors are never far away. The headaches are coming back. In Politburo meetings, Lenin loses his train of thought and repeats himself. Amongst the inner circle, Vladimir is fooling no one but himself. Around the Politburo table, his comrades look at him and see a man who is no longer the Lenin they used to know. Properly speaking, he is not Lenin at all.

  He is becoming plain old Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov again, a man like any other. A man who loses his temper too much. A man a little prone to ranting when things are not going his way. A man who, one day, will do what all men do eventually.

  His colleagues look at him with a mixture of pity, respect, fear, trepidation–and anticipation.

  BARCELONA, SPAIN–PARIS, FRANCE: In town for the opening of an exhibition by his friend Francis Picabia–Tristan Tzara’s host in 1920–André Breton gives a talk to a local group of Dadaists. They are eager to hear from one of the movement’s figureheads. They are disappointed. With great solemnity, André tells them that, after a short illness, Dada is now dead. They look at each other in horror, not sure what to make of it. Is he out-Dadaing Dada? Or is he serious?

  The next day there is a real death in the family. Two doctors are called to the Paris sickbed of author and one-time Breton supporter Marcel Proust. One of them is the neurologist Babinski, Breton’s former teacher, Freud’s colleague and Proust’s doctor on matters neurological. Obsessed with the vagaries of memory and mind, Marcel has been consulting him on and off since 1918. Proust’s sister asks for the doctor’s reassurance. Is everything being done to cure Marcel’s bronchitis? Babinski’s answer is blunt: ‘You must be brave’, he says. ‘It is all over.’

  The American Dadaist photographer Man Ray–another soul who has found that Paris is the place to be for art and life–takes a picture of Proust on his deathbed. Vladimir Mayakovsky, who is in Paris visiting the impresario Diaghilev, Picasso and a few others, attends his funeral. So does James Joyce.

  MARSEILLES, FRANCE: For six weeks, the sea will be Albert and Elsa Einstein’s daily view. And not the cold Baltic, but the warm Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific. In the autumn, Albert takes a leave of absence from his post in Germany, and heads east at the invitation of a publishing house in Japan. They consider him one of the two most significant people alive, the other being Lenin, who is unavailable.

  Given the situation in Germany, the trip could not have come at a better time. Albert will be gone for months. As the Japanese ship heads southward towards Suez and a warmer sun begins to beat down on him, Albert can feel, as he puts it, his ego and his id becoming reacquainted with one another. On board, he reads philosophy. One morning, he sketches the Italian volcano of Stromboli in his travel diary. He muses on the relationship between the climate in which a people live and their intellectual life. He spots sharks off the coast of Africa.

  Though travelling on a Swiss passport, Einstein is everywhere counted a German. (‘Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles’ is played whenever the Kitano Maru comes into port; German associations open their doors to him to show off their famous countryman.) But Chaim Weizmann ensures that Albert’s trip is useful to the Zionist cause as well. In Singapore, a banquet is given by the city’s business community, with a Malaysian band playing Vien
nese waltzes and American jazz in, as Albert notes, ‘the European schmaltzy coffee-house style’. At the end of the evening, an appeal is made for the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In Hong Kong, where Einstein notes the segregation of Europeans and Chinese in the funicular railway journey to The Peak, he visits the Jewish clubhouse, where he feels suddenly connected to a Middle Eastern tradition hardly present in Europe. ‘A sense of belonging together is strong’, he writes.

  In November, they reach Japan. Einstein visits the temples and the Kabuki theatres, and lectures about relativity. He is the centre of attention at the Tokyo chrysanthemum festival, where he is accosted by a Japanese admiral in full uniform. ‘I admire you’, the admiral tells the most famous man on the planet before respectfully withdrawing. In Osaka, Albert speaks in front of over two thousand. He takes the train to Hiroshima–a name he will recall in horror in 1945–and hikes on nearby Miyajima island. Albert immerses himself in Japanese culture. He visits poets and artists. He is particularly fascinated by Japanese music–so different from that of Europe–and by its stylised interpretations of birdsong or the beating of the waves. The German embassy follows the visit closely, hoping it will foster more positive political and economic relations. If Germany is to be frozen out by its neighbours in Western Europe, it must search for friendship elsewhere. In Japan, an apparent victor in the Great War, there is some sympathy with the German predicament. Japan, a major power, but a late arrival on the international scene, is also facing a sort of union of Western powers seemingly arrayed against it.

  While in Japan, in December, Einstein receives confirmation from Stockholm: at long last, he has been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. Better late than never. He is part of the establishment now. The Swedish Academy awards the prize retrospectively for the year 1921, to be handed out in 1922 alongside another award for the Danish physicist Niels Bohr. (Even then, the Academy tries to avoid the wrath of anti-relativists by awarding Albert his prize not for his theory of relativity but for a quite different contribution: the law of photoelectric effect.) There is a brief diplomatic tussle in Stockholm when the Swiss and German Ambassadors, both claiming Einstein as their own, demand the honour of representing him at the prize-giving ceremony.

  The whole Nobel saga leaves a bitter taste for Albert. But the money will be welcome. With the German exchange rate as it is, the prize is worth fifty times all Einstein’s German salaries combined. As per his divorce agreement with Mileva, the money will go to the children.

  LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND: Ernest Hemingway is off again. Switzerland, this time, to cover the latest international diplomacy: negotiations on a final deal with the Turks, now Kemal is in charge.

  There is plenty of bluster and grandstanding on display. The world has grown familiar with it all. İsmet Pasha, the Turkish representative at the conference, takes a leaf out of Trotsky’s playbook, pretending to be deaf when a subject comes up which he does not want to engage with and playing for time. The British, having dumped the Greeks, petulantly threaten to storm out of proceedings unless they get what they want, which is access to the Turkish Straits and control of the oil town of Mosul. The French talk about the historic role of France in the Near East–no change there. A delegation from Moscow turns up late and, ever conscious of the free publicity available whenever a few hundred journalists are gathered in one place and bored out of their minds, kicks up a fuss about not being invited for the entire conference. The Italians speechify at length about their historic rights to the Dodecanese islands in the Aegean, making clear their intention to hang on to them whatever anyone else might think.

  Hemingway, by now the seasoned foreign correspondent, tries to gather what he can. (Later he writes a scathing poem: ‘They All Made Peace–What is Peace?’) One evening he runs into İsmet Pasha in a jazz bar in Montreux, busily scoffing cakes, drinking tea and joking in bad French with the waitress. Another day he is summoned, along with the rest of the hungry press pack, to an audience with Italy’s new leader. Mussolini takes a theatrically long time to look up from the book he is reading before acknowledging the existence of anyone else in the room. Such is the choreography of power. Hemingway later identifies Benito’s book as a French–English dictionary held upside down–and begins to wonder whether the half-crazy Gabriele D’Annunzio might be the better option for Italy. He is annoyed to discover that his rival Clare Sheridan secures a private interview with Benito and accepts an invitation to follow him to Rome.

  Ernest is getting bored. When can he get back to being a writer? Or at least have some decent fun? ‘HUSTLE DOWN HERE SOON’, he telegraphs to Hadley, left back in Paris. She does. Before travelling down to Switzerland Hadley packs up a suitcase with everything she will need–riding breeches for the skiing they will do, and so forth. At the last minute, she decides to pack a smaller valise with her husband’s manuscripts–his unfinished novel, his short stories and his poems–so that he can work on them in the mountains. She so wants to be the good, supportive wife, even if Ernest is a bit of a beast sometimes. Then, on the platform at the Gare de Lyon, the suitcase is gone.

  LONDON–DUNDEE–CANNES, FRANCE: It is that season of British politics when MPs return to their constituencies to seek the renewal of their mandate, and at last the people’s voice is heard above the braying of the parliamentarians. Having got rid of that old Welshman Lloyd George, the Conservatives are now in power and expect the voters to confirm it. The venerable Liberal Party, of which Winston is one of the leading figures, is divided. The Labour Party, barely twenty years old, is growing stronger and stronger, drawing off Liberal support in industrial constituencies across the country.

  Winston is sick in bed in his London home following an operation for appendicitis. Clementine is up in Dundee campaigning on his behalf, with their seven-week-old baby in tow. It is several days before he is well enough to join her. He is not his normal, ebullient self. Some see Winston as yesterday’s man, from yesterday’s party–and a warmonger to boot. On election day he comes in fourth behind a Scottish Prohibitionist, the Labour candidate and a fellow Liberal. Nationally, the Conservatives are triumphant. Labour win four million votes and one hundred seats in parliament. They have become the main opposition party. Winston is bereft.

  ‘What bloody shits the Dundeans must be’, fumes T. E. Lawrence in a private letter to a friend, angry at the summary ejection of that great titan Churchill. Winston tries to be more forgiving. ‘If you saw the kind of lives the Dundee folk have to live, you would admit they have many excuses’, he writes. No one quite knows what the former Colonial Secretary will do next. One society lady tells everyone she knows that he is going to spend four months recuperating in Rome, where the British embassy is said to have rather good tennis courts. An immediate return to politics is not on the cards. ‘Mr Churchill has had as many lives as the proverbial cat’, notes the Daily Mail, ‘but the indictment against him is a long one.’

  In the end, Winston decides to go to France, where he has always felt himself at home. Clementine and Winston rent the villa Le Rêve d’Or, near Cannes, for six months. Before they go, Winston pays a visit to Buckingham Palace to see the King. ‘His Majesty was very sorry about the Dundee election’, the King’s secretary writes to Winston afterwards. ‘The Scotch electorate is rather an incomprehensible body!’

  Winston Churchill is out. Gone, but not forgotten.

  DUBLIN: The republican campaign, de Valera knows, is already lost. Militarily, the IRA are weak and isolated, constantly on the run. Politically, they are bereft. Assassinations are a dead end. ‘The policy of an eye for an eye is not going to win the people to us’, he writes in a letter to the IRA’s military leadership, ‘and without the people we can never win.’

  The Free State comes into official existence in December. (Yeats is made a Senator.) Its leaders are determined to end Ireland’s civil war by whatever means. The time for half-measures, pity or hope is gone. Four Irishmen–the leaders of the Four Courts’ occupation–are shot by firing squad in a
n Irish prison, on the orders of an Irish cabinet.

  One of the men shot was best man at the wedding of one of those who gives the order. Such wounds cut deep.

  MOSCOW–GORKI: One day in late November: Lenin spends five minutes in his office and dictates three letters down the telephone line. Then he collapses in the corridor. His doctors tell him he must rest for a week at least. He comes back to the office the same evening.

  The next day he is depressed. His legs feel weak. He receives medication from abroad. The doses are increased. A week or so later he goes to Gorki, taking his papers with him. He is there for five days. He sits on the terrace in a fur coat, sad and silent. He is having paralytic attacks every day. His limbs feel heavy. Over the telephone from Gorki, Vladimir issues new rules for the Politburo, to try to ensure that they do not meet without him, and that decisions are not taken late at night, when his health will not permit him to attend. He tries to follow up on a row he has been having with Stalin about rival Communist factions in Georgia.

  Back in Moscow in the middle of December, Vladimir Lenin dictates a message over the telephone: ‘Owing to a recurrence of my illness I must wind up all political work and take a holiday again’. His writing becomes illegible. A few days later, he has another stroke. Lenin is ordered by his colleagues in the Politburo–the dictator is ordered–to take a complete rest this time. Comrade Stalin is put in charge of his medical regime. Its primary rule is isolation.