The Exile: A Life Of Ivy Litvinov

224 Pages·1983·6.152 MB·English

by  John Carswell

The Exile

by the same author
Lives and Letters 1906—1957
THE EXILE
A Life of Ivy Litvinov
JOHN CARSWELL
f f
faber and faber
LONDON BOSTON

First 'published in ig8g
by Faber and Faber Limited
g Queen Square London WCiNgAU
Typeset by
Wyvem Typesetting Limited, Bristol
Printed in Great Britain by
The Thetford Press Limited, Thetford, Norfolk
All rights reserved
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Carswell, John
The exile: a life of Ivy Litvinov
I. Litvinov, Ivy
I. Title
947.o84'2'c>924 DK268.L/
ISBN 0-571-13135-2
Library of Congress Data has been applied for
Contents
Preface page 13
Introduction 15
1 An Amalgam of Ancestors 21
2 The Unhappy Child 30
3 West and East 42
4 The Exiles 59
5 Ivy in Hampstead 69
6 The Revolution 82
7 To Moscow 93
8 The Moscow Mystery 104
9 Disarmament 113
10 High Places 123
11 Independence 133
12 Switchback 147
13 Widow of a Diplomat 158
14 Englishwoman Goes Home 170
15 The Eighth Decade 178
16 Hove 188
Appendix I: Copenhagen 1 gig—192c 204
Appendix II: Rose Cohen 206
Index 209
M

Illustrations
1 Maximilian Löwe, Ivy's grandfather, about
1880 facing page 64
2 Sidney and Frederick Low, about 1850 64
3 Ivy, aged 9, Harrow, 1899 64
4 Ivy with Misha, 1917 65
5 Ivy, 1919 65
6 Maxim reunited with his son, 1921 65
7 Ivy in Oslo with Misha and Tanya, 1921 65
8 Ivy with Misha and Tanya, 1928—9 96
9 The Litvinov family at home, Moscow, 1931 96
10 Litvinov and Salvador de Madariaga, Geneva, 1934 97
11 Tanya in the early 1930s 97
12 Misha in the early 1930s 97
13a and b Ivy as a teacher in Sverdlovsk, 1937 128
14 Ambassadress at large, Washington DC, 1934 129
15 Maxim reading the papers; drawing by Ivy 129
16 The Open Air Fair in Washington DC; drawing by Ivy 129
17 The diplomat—Maxim, 1943 160
18 Ivy as music teacher in the 1960s 160
19 The exile returns—Ivy in London, 1972 161
20 Ivy and Masha 161
21 Iw at home in Hove 161
w)
[9]
For many years I was obsessed with the idea that
God had sent me to Russia for the purpose of being
the only English subject in the Soviet Union who
could write. By writing I mean doing it so that
people wanted to read it all the time they were
reading it; they wanted to go on reading it simply for
pleasure.
Note written in New York in 1943