Phil Jordan in Petrograd 1917 by Helen Rappaport

These are just a few of so many forgotten stories; the last echoes of a generation of lost voices. But if I had to single any one, there is one voice above all the others that strikes a nerve in its own inimitable way: the utterly truthful, ingenuous voice an obscure African American, Phil Jordan. An unlettered man and political innocent, and a loyal servant of US diplomacy, who lived to tell the tale. His glorious letters, written in his vivid vernacular style, and reflecting an enduring sense of being ‘a stranger in a strange land’, remain the only known published account of the revolution by an African American. They provider us with an unforgettable sense of exactly what it was like to be caught, in Petrograd, in the Russian Revolution of 1917.

 

The new American Ambassador to Petrograd in 1916 was a genial Democrat from Kentucky, David Rowland Francis, a self-made millionaire who had made his money in St. Louis from grain-dealing and investments in railway companies. He had served as the governor of Missouri (1889-93) and had lobbied for St. Louis to stage the highly successful Louisiana Purchase Exposition of 1904 –better known as the St. Louis World’s Fair. – as well as the summer Olympics later that same year. His ambassadorial experience was, however, nil, although in 1914 he had been offered and had declined an ambassadorship in Buenos Aires. Nevertheless, the choice of Francis for Petrograd seemed logical: he was a man of proven business acumen, whose primary goal would be to renegotiate the US trade treaty with Russia that had been broken off in December 1912 in response to the tsarist government’s anti-Semitic policies. Russia, as Francis well knew, was eager to buy US grain, cotton and armaments.

On 21 April 1916 Francis sailed from Hoboken in New Jersey on a Swedish steamship Oscar II with his private secretary, Arthur Daily, and his devoted black valet-cum-chauffeur, Philip Jordan. His wife Jane stayed home in St. Louis in the care of the couple’s six sons, due to her poor health and her dread of facing thhe legendary freezing Russian winters; Francis had not insisted on her accompanying him, knowing full well that his wife ‘would not like it’ in Petrograd. In her absence, and reticent about embracing the social life of the city (like his British counterpart Buchanan, he spoke no Russian), Francis relied very heavily on the protective ‘Phil’, as he like to call him: a man he respected as ‘loyal, honest and efficient and intelligent withal.’

Jordan, whose African American origins are unclear, was a small, wiry man who had grown up in Hog Alley – a squalid slum district of Jefferson, Missouri, notorious (much like New York’s Bowery) as a haunt of thieves, prostitutes and drunks. His early life had been spent as a hard drinker and gang member, regulary caught up in  street fights. Later he worked on riverboats along the Missouri, before, in 1889 – and now ostensibly a reformed character- he had been recommended to Francis, the newly elected governor of Missouri. After a brief period working for the subsequent governor, Jordan returned to the Francis family’s grand mansion in St. Louis’s prosperous West End in 1902, serving as valet or, as American’s then termed it, ‘body servant.’ Here he had seen four US presidents – Cleveland, Roosevelt, Taft and Wilson- come and go as visitors, and had been taught to read and write by Mrs. Francis, who was considerably more tolerant than her husband of Jordan’s occasion lapses into heavy drinking, and to whom Jordan became devoted.

The culture shock awaiting Francis and Jordan- freshly arrived from the balmy American South to cold, wartime Petrograd was enormous. During their crossing Francis’s  Russian interpreter, a young Slavist named Samuel Harper, had done his best to give the inexperienced ambassador ‘a crash course on what he might expect in Russia.’ Harper came to the conclusion that Francis was a ‘very blunt, outspoken American, who believed in speaking his mind regardless of the rules of diplomacy.’ The contrast with the buttoned-up and immaculately school Sir George Buchanan could not have been clearer; the two ambassadors were to have little in common.

As others in the diplomatic community put it; ‘Old Francis was  a hick from St. Louis with no understanding of Russian politics who did not know a Left Social Revolutionary from a potato’, ‘an old fool, a stuffed shirt and a dumb head.’ But to the Russians, who saw in America the prospect of lucrative and much needed commercial relations, the new ambassador was ‘easily the most popular diplomat in Petrograd. Francis, moreover, was socially engaging in away that his British counterpart was not. He made no bones about his enjoyment of the finest Kentucky bourbon and fat cigars; he chewed plugs of tobacco and was able to ‘ring’ the spittoon at a distance of several feet. Unlike the dithering Buchanan at his games of bridge, Francis’s amiable simplicity did not extend to cards; he was ‘no child at poker’, regularly cleaning his opponents out.

[The situation in Petrograd, as can be imagined, was desperate.  Though the productive capacities of the Russian economy we certainly adequate even in times of war, administration and transport were a mess, leading to severe and chronic shortages in Petrograd]

The resourceful Phil Jordan, soon armed with pidgin Russian, rapidly became ‘invaluable’ in all matters relating to the day-to-day running of the embassy; fearless about roaming the streets and haggling at markets, mixing in with the multicultural, polyglot crowd. An embassy official Fred Dearing noted in his diary: ‘One sees in an instant that Phil is somebody. No one could be less obtrusive, but definitely somebody.’ Jordan was close at hand, for example, 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’. Florence Harper recalled that the only time she saw good food during her nine months in Russia was when she was invited to a reception at the US embassy on Furshtatskaya ,’when I had real white bread and real ice cream,’ both, no doubt, obtained thanks to the persistence and scheming of the wily Phil Jordan.

In the beginning, Ambassador Francis and his aide J.Butler Wright were optimistic about Russia’s post-revolutionary future, but an incident on the night of 9 April confirmed how volatile the Petrograd mobs still were. Francis had been entertaining guests that Sunday evening when Phil Jordan hurried in with a message warning that a mob waving black anarchist flags was on its way to attack the ‘American imperialists’ at the embassy. They had apparently been incited to do so in protest at the recent conviction and sentence to death of the American trade-union organizer and political activist Thomas J. Mooney, at  a rigged trial in which he had been accused of involvement in a bomb plot during a San Francisco labor rally. In Phil Jordan’s vernacular ( later ‘sanitized’ for publication):

‘ebery night th ambassador takes a walk with only me, I tol’ him he oughtn’t do it. To-night we had some guests still here when de militia telephone. Jes’ think if we’d been a-walking and dose fellas wid de black flag had come along. Ambassador Francis only knows two words in Russian ‘Amerikanski Posol’[America Ambassador].If dose fellas as’ed him anything he’s have said ‘Amerikanski posol’. Wouldn’t they ‘a’ rubbed their han’s an’ said, Look wa’at de good Lord has gone and brought us.’

That night, preparing for his own dramatic Last Stand, Francis immediately instructed Jordan to load his revolver and bring it to his as he waited for a detachment of government militia to come and defend him. Francis vowed to shoot anyone who tried to get into the embassy, but as things turned out, the mob never got that far and was dispersed soon after setting off. Exaggerated stories were later circulated that Francis had single-handedly seen them off, which amused him greatly: ‘Everyone seemed to prefer the more sensational story so I suppose I will have to resign myself to this heroic role,’ He later wrote. Phil was intensely relieved: the ambassador ‘had never fired a gun in his life, so far as I know, and I knew if he fired at that crowd, it would probably be the end of us both.’

As for the numbers killed and wounded during July, official figures published by the Central Executive Committee of the Soviets talked of four hundred, central first-aid services estimated in excess of seven hundred and on 90 July Novoe vremya claimed that more than one thousand were killed during the riots of 2 and 3 July alone. The evening of 6 July ‘we went to bed wondering what would happen next,’ wrote Lady Georgina Buchanan to her family in England ‘All night there was shooting so sleep was nearly impossible.’ She was grateful to be safely tucked in bed, but over at the American embassy, when the guns and cannons had begun roaring again around midnight, the irrepressible Phil Jordan had ‘jumped out of bed and rushed to the Winter Palace Bridge to see what was going on:

The Bolscheviks had Started to come on this Side of town and the Soldiers was waiting for them at the foot of the bridge. Just as they was about the middle of the bridge the soldiers opened fired with machine guns and cannon. it was one grand Sight. The Sky was full of the prettiest fire works you Ever saw. You know during a Revolution or any kind of fighting every body has to lay flat on your Stomach. I as lying flat behind the man that was pumping the machine Gun.

Later, when Francis was dictating his own version of events in a letter to Jane (Phil’s accounts were also in letters to Jane), musing when he might return home, he observed that Phil rather hoped they would not leave too soon, as he had told him, ‘we are having so many revolutions here now that it is too interesting for us to think of leaving.’

Ten days after the July fighting was over , a day of mourning was set aside for the lavish funeral rites of seven of the twenty Cossacks killed in the street fighting. In stark contrast to the secular funerals for the victims of the February Revolution, the ceremonial on 15 July was an intensely Orthodox one designed to rebuke to the socialist groups that had organized the Field of Mars burials without any religious ceremony . . .Never one to miss such a spectacle, Phil Jordan was always close by, awestruck by the immensity of the occasion: ‘the press SAID  OVER one million people . . .think of such a larger crowd and all frightened half to death. Every time the man would strike his base drum the crowd would Shiver.

On 17 November, Phil Jordan sat down to write one of his long anecdotal letters describing recent events. It had been a harrowing time; the Bolsheviks, he told Mrs. Francis’s cousin Annie Pulliam, had ‘shot Petrograd to pieces. We are all seting on a bomb Just waiting for someone to touch a match to it,’ he added with his usual vivid sense of drama. ‘If the Ambassador gets out of this Mess with our life we will be lucky’. For once the redoubtable Phil was anxious: ‘These crazy people are Killing each other Just like we Swat flies at home .Even the boss was admitting to his son Perry, ‘I never knew of  a place where human life is as cheap as it is now in Russia.’ But sad to say, murder and robbery and acts of violent retribution were now so commonplace that he found himself becoming ‘accustomed’ to it. Wrote Phil Jordan:

Streets are full of all the cut throats and robbers that  are in Russia, you can hear the machine guns and cannons roaring all night and day. Thousands are beng killed. why we are alive I can not tell .they break into private homes and rob and kill all the people. In a house not very far from the embassy they killed a little girl and 12 rifle baynets found struck through her body. Sights that have to be seen . . .I have fond out the best thing to do right now is to keep your mouth shut and look as much like an American as you can . . .All the thugs that have been turned out of prison was armed with a rifle . . .we cant tell what minute the Germans will take Petrograd. If they come right at this time I don’t know what we would do because we cant get out. we are like a rat in a trap. the Bolsheviks have torn up all the railroads. I cant tell but this Ford might be a life Saver. All the business houses and banks are closed. The city is pitch dark. At times we only have tallow candles for light, the plants have no coal and Very little wood. The Banks are in charge of the Boshevicks and escaped convicts and thieves are on guard with machine guns and rifles, the food question is growing worse every day. . .the Ambassador told me two days ago to be packed with as little as possible because we might have to go and leave it all behind.

Phil Jordan had constantly risked his safety going out in the ambassador’s Ford to distant street markets and outlying villages to try and find food. ‘After living in a wild country like this for 18 months it makes you feel like there are only two decent places to live, one is heaven the other is America’. Just recently, while out shopping, he had been gathering up his purchases ready to leave when ‘about three hundred Bulsheviks rushed into the market with cocked rifles.’ One of them tol him no one was allowed to buy anything in the market any more because ‘we are going to take it all for our friends. You get out of here and be am quick about it. I Said I will not leave this place until my money is returned. He then tol the Clerk to give me my money. they then began . . .shootin to frighten the people and took everything in the market.

One night Phil had heard an ‘awful thumping’ and breaking of glass three doors down from the embassy, and went to discover that eight or nine soldiers had battered their way into a wine store and had ‘all got drunk as they could’. The temperature was 18-20 degrees below zero, and yet ‘the next morning the Street for one block was full of drunken Soldiers Some Sleeping in the Snow Just as you could in bed,. And Mrs. Francis think’ he added, ‘No law not a policeman or any one to say Stop.’

On 26 February 1918 the American diplomats left Petrograd by special train for Vologda. Here Francis and Phil settled in surprisingly happily, making themselves at home in a simple but ‘dandy’ two-story wooden house on the main high street where, for the next five months, visitors could enjoy the informal ‘clubhouse atmosphere’ and the stranded diplomats spent their evenings playing poker and smoking cigars. They drank bourbon when they could get it or otherwise ‘plumped for vodka’ They had taken the good old Model T Ford with them and Francis used to drive it around seeking potential sites for a golf course in the area. But in 1918, with the civil war raging in Russia, Francis fell ill with a severe infection of the gall bladder and had to be evacuated by US cruiser from Murmansk. Phil nursed him through a high fever during an extremely stormy sea crossing.

After recovering at a naval hospital in Scotland, Francis was transferred to London. Shortly after Christmas 1918 the proud Phil Jordan accompanied him as valet to a dinner with King George and Queen Mary at Buckingham Palace. When they finally returned to the States in February 1919, Phil was again accorded the ultimate accolade – an invitation to the White House. ‘I was born in Hog Alley,’ he later remarked, ‘and I think you know that a kangaroo can jump further than any other animal, but I don’t believe he could jump from Hog Alley to the White House –that was some jump.’

In 1922 Francis suffered a stroke and never really recovered his health. He died in St. Louis in January 1927, having ensured that his sons would take care of the ever-present Phil, who was provided with rent free accommodation and a small trust fund until his death from cancer in Santa Barbara in 1941.