In the summer of 1916 Francis and chauffeur Phil were delighted to finally take delivery of the ambassador’s Model T Ford, specially shipped over from Missouri. They took great pride in riding around in it with ‘a three-foot Stars and Stripes wired to the radiator cap’, which made people wonder ‘whether the breeze of the car’s motion wave[d] the flag or the flag waving ma[de] the Ford go’.27 The US embassy was very well positioned at 34 Furshtatskaya, in a well-to-do district in the centre of the city populated by Russian civil servants and other foreign diplomats. It was also a short walk from the Duma, the tsarist State Assembly housed at the Tauride Palace on Shpalernaya, and beyond it the Smolny Institute, which would become the focus of Bolshevik activities during the October Revolution. Like the British embassy, it was rented from a Russian aristocrat – Count Mikhail Grabbe – and suffered from similar limitations. It was, recalled special attaché James Houghteling, ‘a disappointing two-story affair without dignity of façade, squeezed into the middle of a block with a big apartment building on one side and another modest residence on the other’.28 Its interior was in need of decoration and was poorly furnished, so much so that Francis thought it looked like a ‘warehouse’.29 He soon started looking for better premises but, much like Buchanan, was thwarted in his attempts to find anything that suited while there was a war on.
Francis’s office – from the balcony of which he could stand and observe the street below – was located on the second floor, along with a bedroom and sitting room. But the rooms were very cramped. The embassy was understaffed and in disarray; far worse, as far as Francis was concerned, the coffee was ‘not very good’, either.30 He liked to entertain and to dine out with fellow Americans, as he missed his large family back in St Louis. US businessmen – especially executives of the National City Bank that had recently set up in Petrograd – were often invited to join him for meals. He also struck up a friendship with the American socialite Julia Grant, a granddaughter of Ulysses S. Grant who had married into the Russian aristocracy as Princess Cantacuzène-Speransky (though her friends in the US colony somewhat crassly called her ‘Princess Mike’) and who had a suite at the Hotel d’Europe.* The Princess lavishly entertained Francis, as did other wealthy aristocrats, either in their Petrograd town houses or in private rooms at their favourite hotels.
From the outset, Phil Jordan had a strong sense of responsibility for ‘The Governor’, as everyone had customarily addressed Francis since his years in the post in Missouri. He acted as the ambassador’s minder whenever Francis ventured forth on the streets of Petrograd, and together they proceeded to muddle through the difficulties of becoming acquainted with all things Russian, notably its cuisine. As Francis told his son Perry: ‘Phil and I are still trying to get along with the Russian cook whom he is having great difficulty in instructing how to prepare a meal in the American way, as she does not understand a word of English, and he can’t speak a word of Russian.’31 Help was soon at hand in the guise of an acquaintance Francis had made on the ship to Russia: Madame Matilda de Cram, a Russian returning to Petrograd, who lived nearby and became a regular visitor at the embassy, volunteering also to teach Francis French and Jordan Russian. Francis’s friendship with Madame de Cram, which included taking her to the races on his day off, was conducted much to the consternation of his staff and of Allied counter-intelligence, who had her marked as a German spy, out to seduce the gullible new ambassador.32*
Nevertheless, thanks to Madame de Cram, the resourceful Jordan soon had adequate Russian to go shopping unaided, claiming that ‘I’m making out pretty well since I learned the language.’ So resourceful was he that Jordan was soon finding kitchen utensils and furnishings for the embassy, including a decent-sized dining table that could seat twenty.33 Having found their feet, Francis dispensed with the Russian cook and thereafter Jordan prepared his breakfast, until they managed to engage a ‘negro cook who is very black, a West India negro named Green’. Since his arrival, Jordan had been greatly struck by how ‘few negroes’ there were in Petrograd, and ‘none like our negroes’.34 Francis noticed, too, explaining to his wife that Phil, who was ‘relatively pale skinned’ and was ‘almost white enough to pass for a white man’, did not go out on the streets with the Trinidadian cook because he was ‘so black’.35 Jordan and Green seemed to spend most of their time ‘scheming to get food’, and somehow or other conjured dishes for the ambassador’s table despite the extreme shortages, for, armed with his pidgin Russian, Jordan turned out to be ‘fearless about roaming the streets and haggled at the markets, mixing in with the multicultural, polyglot crowd’.36† There was no doubting how much Francis missed his American luxuries: he waited months for the case of hams and bacon that he had ordered from New York to get to Russia, and even longer for two cases of Scotch whisky shipped from London that still hadn’t arrived, come October.37
The resourceful Phil Jordan had rapidly become ‘invaluable’ in all matters relating to the day-to-day running of the embassy.38 As embassy official Fred Dearing noted in his diary: ‘One sees in the instant that Phil is somebody. No one could be less obtrusive, but definitely somebody.’39 He was close at hand to assist Francis when, to celebrate the Fourth of July, Francis had bravely mounted a successful reception for over one hundred guests. ‘I engaged a first class orchestra of nine pieces,’ he told Jane, and ‘thanks to Phil we had a delicious punch in addition to the tea served from the samovar which we had recently bought. We had caviar sandwiches, tomato sandwiches, and what appeared to be unknown to the Russians, we had delicious ices.’40 The members of Petrograd’s American colony had greatly welcomed such a party and its culinary treats, but getting himself known on the snobbish Russian and diplomatic social circuit was quite another matter for the new ambassador. Francis admitted to Jane in July that ‘I have made comparatively few social acquaintances among the Russians.’41 He eschewed the genteel tea and cocktail parties of the British embassy and the incestuous chit-chat of the continental diplomatic corps, preferring a good game of poker. They in turn were somewhat disdainful of his diplomatic dinners. Sir George Buchanan, a man tainted by the social snobbery and racial prejudice of his generation and class, dreaded invitations from Francis. If asked to dine at the American embassy, Buchanan would lament, ‘Ah, we’re going to have a bad supper … cooked by a Negro.’42 And on most such occasions there was no orchestra, merely the loyal Phil, who as general factotum wound up the gramophone behind a screen, in between serving the guests.43
If the truth be told, neither Francis nor Buchanan particularly enjoyed the social round of Petrograd society. It was their flamboyant French counterpart, Maurice Paléologue, who was the most accomplished socialite in the diplomatic corps and who also ‘held the best dinner parties for the smartest and most frivolous set’.44 Indeed, the suave and gossipy Paléologue seemed to spend more time socialising than on diplomatic business. He was regularly seen at the ballet and opera – both of which were enjoying their heyday during the war. When not there, he seemed to be ‘forever in the grand ducal drawing rooms gossiping with the Princesses’, or dining out with the Petrograd glitterati.45
For members of the diplomatic community like Paléologue, as well as other foreign nationals in the city, war till now had not been so hard to bear. The hottest ticket in town was still a night at the ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre. All Petrograd society – Russian and expatriate – went to see and be seen at its Wednesday evening and Sunday afternoon performances, and all still dressed up for the occasion. Most seats were sold by private subscription and well in advance; people would pay up to 100 rubles to obtain one of the few made available for sale. Even at this time of food queues, you could still see crowds standing in line for tickets for the ballet. Ambassador Francis rated the autumn season at the Mariinsky the ‘best in the world’; together with most of the diplomatic community, he had sat ‘spellbound’ through a three-hour performance of Don Quixote starring prima ballerina Tamara Karsavina.46 The two other major Petrograd theatres were still flourishing: the Alexandrinsky, for straight theatre, and the Mikhailovsky, with its resident French troupe, which was the centre for French culture among the Russian intelligentsia and was where they all went to practise their French.