Finding Kathleen ffrench continued....
The letters were folded neatly and stored in boxes, all the records written up by hand. We asked about the possibility of photocopies. “...impossible, I was a foreigner, permission would have to be obtained from Moscow, they didn’t have any photocopying paper, and so on and so on..”. We weren’t getting anywhere and decided to leave.
We took a tram and had a look at the prison were Kathleen ffrench had been locked up. From where Kathleen and a handful of friends looked and looked across the bridge to Onfa waiting in vain for the British to arrive. I thought of her working in the yard as the cook’s assistant in an effort to get some fresh air and pass the days. We had a look at her town house, now a recruitment centre for the red army!
This visit to Simbirsk in 1991 brought me to the cemetery where Kathleen had taken her beloved companion and governess Jenny’s body late at night, to save the body being violated in the mausoleum at Kindiakovka.
…The strain, suspense and anxiety for all I care for is telling rapidly. ..They even broke into the vault where my dear old English governess is buried and wished to do away with my faithful old horse instead of letting him die in peace. …..All I hope to achieve is to steal my dear old friend’s body tomorrow night and bury her in the cemetery in town and avoid her remains any further insult.
In Russia, graves are usually among birch trees with a gilded domed church near by. In winter, the trees take the weight of the snow, and the winter sun glistens on the metal crosses, the railings and the head stones. Tracks are worn among the trees leading to the graves most visited by relatives.
The taxi dropped us off at the entrance. Towering above us was a statue of Lenin’s father, a local school teacher, with a child at his knee. This statue had been erected in Lenin’s time, to celebrate his birth place and his family. It was intended to dominate this cemetery, to show this man as a caring man of the people “the narod”, at the entrance to this Catholic and Protestant cemetery.
We were told that the Bolsheviks drove bulldozers in to flatten and destroy the graves, and dumped earth on them to cover up the grave stones of the wealthy society. Their families dared not visit.
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An Irish Woman in Czarist Russia
by Jean Lombard