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