Below is an extract from a letter in the London Review of Books (March 4th 2021). It refers to Robert Henderson’s important recently published book on Lenin in London. It refers specifically to a period when Lenin was researching in the old Round Reading Room of the British Museum, where I, many years later, researched labour history before the current British Library opened.
I’m pleased to see that Lenin was ‘fully bearded’ while he researched as indeed was I..
an Icelander, Jón Stefánsson, was researching in the reading room at the same time as Lenin. His memoir, Úti í heimi (‘Out in the World’), was published in 1949. My rough translation:
Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (i.e. Lenin), 1870-1924, sat, in the first years of the 20th century, sometimes next to me in the British Museum reading room. I recognised him from pictures in the papers. He had a high, convex forehead, almost completely bald, with traces of ruddy hair, and was fully bearded. He spoke to no one and no one dared speak to him. He arrived every day before the reading room opened and always sat in the same seat, L13. I often sat at L14. He worked all day until closing time. When he went out to eat, he put all his papers in a bag and took it with him. He left his books behind to keep the seat. Once he dropped a page of writing on the floor. I picked it up and handed it to him. He said: ‘Thanks.’ His pronunciation of the ‘th’ in ‘thanks’ was as if he were German and, indeed, he called himself Richter when he applied for a ticket to the reading room. That is what Ellis, the head of the reading room told me.
Ingólfur Gíslason
University of Iceland, Reykjavík
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