ABNORMAL TCHICHERIN.

Auckland Star, Volume LI, Issue 292, 7 December 1920, Page 5

ABNORMAL TCHICHERIN.

NO IDEA OF TIME. WORKS ALL NIGHT LONG. LONDON, December 1. Mrs. Clare Sheridan, who recently returned to London from Russia after executing busts of the Bolshevik leaders Lenin and Trotsky, describes her meeting with a little man in brown trousers not matching his coat, shuffling hurriedly along the corridors of the Foreign Office. It might have been the night watchman, but it was Tchicherin, the Bolshevik Commissary of Foreign Affairs.

Mrs. Sheridan describes Tchicherin as an abnormal personage, living from month to month at the Foreign Office and never going out. He works all night long, and if a telegram comes in the daytime while he is asleep he is awakened.

He has no idea of time, and does not realise that others live differently. Hβ telephones hi? comrades at ungodly hours on trivial matters. He wanted to arrange a sitting with the sculptress at 4 o'clock in the morning because the day's rush was then easing off. Mrs. Sheridan adds: —"With all its discomforts, I was happy there in Russia. I -was sometimes frightened at the way I took root, and if childless I would have remained there. I know thoee men are idealists and selfless."