January: beginning of journey to Russia; boat from Newcastle to Bergen; account of her travelling companion [a stranger]. Explores Bergen then travels on by train. Verbatim accounts of encounters with fellow passengers, including the 'Manchester Warehouseman' and 'the Scotch Engineer'; food shortages - at one point they are without food for twelve hours.
1 Feb: by sleigh to 'Tornea, the Finnish frontier town' in severely cold weather; much on customs and examination of luggage - 'My typewriter was an object of great suspicion'; 'We had to fill in papers and give one's father's Christian name, which was quite beyond me'; a sailor on his way back to Russia staggers in and faints on the floor from hunger, cold and exhaustion.
2 Feb: desperate cold crossing Finland; description of conditions on a troop train which they encounter.
3 Feb: is met by a Captain Scale and explores Petrograd.
4 Feb: meets Mme Resanoff for the first time and sees a picture of the daughter [Maroosa] - 'a grown-up young lady with hair elaborately coiffed'.
5 Feb: visits the Church of the Resurrection - 'a glorious building'; hears news of the Battle of the Somme - 'Things too tragic to write'.
Dines regularly with Captain Scale and friends while in Petrograd; train to Rostov with a Siberian woman for company, arrives on 8 Feb - 'The approach to Rostov was perfectly hideous - it is evidently a purely commercial town'; met by 'the Resanoffs governess' and taken to the house; describes her room; 'La Vie en Russe - Tragedy in Two Shocks' (spoof drama on being shown round by the governess); is introduced to Mr Resanoff and their daughter, Maroosa.
9 Feb: 'La Vie en Russe (suite)'.
11 Feb: scarcity and expense of food.
12 Feb: Mr and Mrs R's bedroom - 'It is vast and filled with atrocities' - she describes the eikons in particular.
13 Feb: free hours are 9-11 and 5-6; 'we dine at 3.30 which is impossible after a luncheon at 1 o'clock!'.
14 Feb: beginning to explore Rostov - 'Rostov gives me the same impressions as a picture by a cubist painter. It is all higgledy-piggledy'.
16 Feb: not impressed by Russian cinema, mostly 'futile or disgusting, chiefly disgusting'. A story in RP's hand is taped in here, about a Russian woman named Anna Ivanovna who is dying of hunger and exhaustion after 10 hour night shifts in a tobacco factory, 4-5 hours daily standing outside the bakery waiting to exchange her bread ticket and wartime shortages worsening daily.
18 Feb: bemoans the lack of availability of English literature and newspapers.
20 Feb: 'Maroosa - - is boredom personified. She has absolutely no interests beyond a thirst for gaiety - - often whimpering like a small child, because she finds it dull.'
21 Feb: diatribe on the ten servants, 'each one as lazy as the other'.
28 Feb: first mention of the possibility of revolution.