View source for Mrs. Clare Sheridan Talks About Russia and Her Art

''Mrs. Clare Sheridan Talks About Russia and Her Art'' is an article written by [[Mary Louise Conan Doyle|Mary Conan Doyle]], the first daughter of [[Arthur Conan Doyle]], first published in the [[Waterloo Evening Courier]] on 19 february 1921.


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== Editions ==

* in ''[[Waterloo Evening Courier]]'' (19 february 1921 [US]) as ''Mrs. Clare Sheridan Talks About Russia and Her Art''
* in ''[[St. Louis Globe-Democrat]]'' (6 march 1921 [US]) as ''A Talk with Mrs. Clare Sheridan About Russia and Her Art'', 1 ill. by Rohl



== Mrs. Clare Sheridan Talks About Russia and Her Art ==
[[File:waterloo-evening-courier-1921-02-19-p3-mrs-clare-sheridan-talks-about-russia-and-her-art.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[Waterloo Evening Courier]]<br />(19 february 1921, p. 3)]]
[[File:st-louis-globe-democrat-1921-03-06-mag-p6-a-talk-with-mrs-clare-sheridan-about-russia-and-her-art.jpg|thumb|250px|right|[[St. Louis Globe-Democrat]]<br />(6 march 1921, magazine section, p. 6)]]

'''One woman, at least, likes the Bolshevists.'''

'''She is a cousin of Winston Churchill, the noted English statesman.'''

'''Mrs. Clare Sheridan, famous as a sculptress, has arrived in America.'''

'''Trotsky, Lenin and other Russian leaders sat for busts by her in Russia. No other Englishwoman has had an equal opportunity of closely observing the Red officials.'''

'''What she learned while in Moscow and her impression of the present Russian regime are told in the following remarkable interview; unusual because of the fact that it was written by Mary Conan Doyle, the daughter of the creator of Sherlock Holmes.'''

'''"The Bolshevists are not what popular opinion paints them," says Mrs. Sheridan. "I love the life in Moscow and in some ways wished I had never come away."'''

'''Her boy, who is the grandson of the poet Sheridan, has accompanied Mrs. Sheridan to America.'''

"Where's the gold key of my crocodile?"

"I don't know, Dickie boy — look for it!"

The searcher after the golden key was small Dick Sheridan playing around his mother's studio; while she, absorbed and intent, pointing out to a young assistant certain errors in a cast of one of her heads, paid no heed to the child.

"Don't you see it's horrible? The head should be straight — and tilted forward — not hack — like that — can't think what they've done to it——"

"I like that——" came the cooing voice of the small boy standing with his feet apart gazing up at the bust. Instantly her long white fingers slipped under his chin, in a little sweet caress: "My most appreciative critic, aren't you?"

Clare Sheridan, smiling down at him was a striking figure, with her unusual slender height, and her small proud face framed in a shiny mist of fine gold hair.

"It's Russia you want to hear about, of course," said she, looking up at me. "No, the Bolshevists are not what popular opinion paints them; naturally, there are unpleasant people in every community. Those I met were charming to me. I was there as an artist, and did not touch politics. That makes all the difference — the people who disliked them were those who got put in prison by them!"

"What sort of types are they?" I asked.

"Most interesting and individual," with a twist of her head. "Look at Trotzky's rugged face, with his hair sticking straight up off his forehead! The Russian types are really more interesting than the Western because there is such a variety."

She showed me the busts of the four big Russian leaders — Zinoviev, Trotzky, Lenin and Dzherzinsky. They are remarkable looking men, all fine types with the exception of Lenin. Zinoviev is the dreamy poet, Trotzky looks like an orator, or a musician — a fiery, intense sort of face; Lenin might be somebody in a bank, while Dzherzinsky is the philosopher and recluse.

"I loved the life in Moscow," she went on, "It is a great artistic and intellectual center, and there is a richness of ideas out there that one can form no conception of over here. It is the very heart of the Old World allied to the most modern thought. It's all intensely interesting, and I mean to go back there. In some ways, I wish I had never come away!"

"It will probably mean even more to you, when you have the American tour sandwiched in, to add piquant contrast," I suggested.

"Ah! America, — yes, but how I dread the headlines and the publicity. It is wonderful to think of Russia and America so alike in being the outposts of the new world's progress, while so different in all else..."

"I wonder what they'll think of the Bolshevists?"

"Well, I can't abuse my hosts' hospitality. I can only take them as I found them. The reason of my success with them I put down to my just being an artist. Art, you see, is cosmopolitan, and has nothing to lose by political and social upheavals. I found them extraordinarily sensitive and with an inborn taste and understanding for art. It spoils one utterly."

"What is their own work like?"

"Fine! Very strong, original, somewhat barbaric. Their music is the same thing. It's full of force."

"It must be a peculiar temperament. Surely the conception of wholesale slaughter, and a sensitiveness for art, are a queer combination!"

"Yes, they combine dreaminess and violence in a bewildering manner. Yet it is not lust for power that drives these men to excesses, it is the sense of unbearable wrong committed."

"The swing of the pendulum?"

"Quite so. One extreme must give place to another till the even balance is found. As Trotsky said to me: 'It is easy to see the squalor and the suffering — and to see nothing else,' but there is truth and mate justice there."

"It is hard, though, for people this side to take that view, against the tide of the press."

"That's just it! People think one must be pro-Bolshevist, if one is not violently anti-so!"

She told me there had been less "excitement" about her whole venture than she had expected and that her one regret was missing the chance of going to the front with Trotsky! He had actually volunteered to take her, and suggested it the evening she finished his bust!

Looking at her keen, high-spirited face while she talked, it was impossible not to be struck by its utter fearlessness — perhaps the rarest characteristic ever seen, for it renders courage superfluous! Next to that, one is impressed by a singular absence of self-consciousness. When starting to work on Trotsky's head, the light was bad, "so," she says. "I went across, knelt down in front of the massive writing table, rested my chin on his papers and took a long steady look at him!"

It was all in the day's work, but of course when he looked up and gazed back, the humor of the situation struck her, and there was nothing for it but to laugh! Only an artist, or a child, could have acted like that naturally!

Russian influence is very strong in Mrs. Sheridan's tastes and surroundings. She wore a straight-cut, loose coat with fur collar, and a beautiful, heavy embroidery on it, over a short kilted black skirt. This, completed by "bobbed" hair, gave quite the foreign Bohemian touch! Her studio is a very businesslike room — before all things designed for work! But there are also beautiful books and a low divan in one corner covered with gorgeous tawny draperies. The sight of an ash tray filled with cigarette stumps indicated leisure after strenuous hours of work.

One feels in seeing and talking to her that the mainsprings of her life are her children and her work.

There is a great deal of the artist-recluse about her, and it is that which shrinks inevitably from the thought of publicity. As, she said to me: "I am used to working hours and hours a day concentrated and absorbed — I adore my work, it's my natural environment."

Yet, as her "diary" states, she does not think she looks like a sculptor. No, she doesn't, at first glance. Not till one sees her hands — but then — one knows! They are magnificent. Large, white, sensitive.

What one might term all-embracing hands. Wide-palmed, with the strength of a man, tine fingered, with the delicacy of a woman. And she has a trick of locking them together, making the muscles undulate just as pianists often do.

Altogether the twin arts seem to predominate in the family, for when I asked if "Dickie could sculp, too," she, replied: "No. He's musical. Same thing!"

Her work is full of that vitality and vision which stamps the true creative artist. I saw studies of Winston Churchill, Father Bernard Vaughn, Lady Patricia Ramsey and Weedon Grossmith — all had that quality of character truly perceived and recorded. She has the big conception of the modern school, without the tendency to lose hold of anatomy so often attendant on big ideas!

In keeping with the whole trend of the times she veers in the socialistic direction — but chiefly theoretically, as the refined always will. Roughness, bad manners, grubbiness and the "brother-idea" gets knocked out pretty quickly! There is, and always has been, the freemasonry of fine minds and sensitive understandings, but it isn't socialism all the same. 

We talked a good deal about the American tour. A few doubts, and a great many hopes, then, as we walked down the graveled path of her rural London quarters, we heard a high piping voice through the window:

"And I shall take my crocodile, and my submarine when we go 'Merica!"

"That's your loveliest work!" I said.

"Good-by!" 






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* [[Sir Arthur Conan Doyle|Back to Conan Doyle]]