organization of society are always waiting for some one of warmer zeal
to lead them. Such persons perceive the ideal side of every argument,
interpret doctrines with their hearts, not with their heads, and are
fired by the newest conception of social relations. As one of the most
marked characteristics of Count Tolstoy lies in infusing his own
personality into every word he writes, it is only natural that these
people should adopt him as their guide. It is not the fault of any one
in particular that he has abandoned a doctrine by the time others have
mastered it. The only refuge is in the cry of Hamlet:--
"The time is out of joint; O cursed spite! That ever I was born to set
it right."
Thus much I think I may say of the home life of the famous Russian
writer without sinning against the duties imposed by the frank and
cordial hospitality for which we are indebted to the family. It has
seemed time to enter a protest against various misrepresentations and
misconceptions in regard to them which are current. In conclusion, I beg
leave to explain that my spelling of the name is that used by themselves
when writing in English, and in print upon their French cards.
IX.
A RUSSIAN HOLY CITY.
It was close on midnight when we left Yasnaya Polyana. A large and merry
party of Count Tolstoy's children and relatives escorted us: some in the
baggage cart, perched on our luggage; some in the jaunting-car-like
_lineika_ with us, on our moonlight drive to the little station where we
were to join the train and continue our journey southward.
We should have preferred to travel by daylight, as we were possessed of
the genuine tourist greed for seeing "everything;" but in this case, as
in many others in Russia, the trains were not arranged so that we could
manage it.
There is very little variety along the road through central Russia, but
the monotony is of a different character from that of the harsh soil and
the birch and pine forests of the north. The vast plains of this
_tchernozyom_--the celebrated "black earth zone"--swell in long, low
billows of herbage and grain, diversified only at distant intervals by
tracts of woodland. But the wood is too scarce to meet the demands for
fuel, and the manure of the cattle, well dried, serves to eke it out, a
traveling native in our compartment told us, instead of being used, as
it should be, to enrich the land, which is growing poor. Now and then,
substantial brick cottages shone out amidst the gray and yellow of the
thatched log huts in the hamlets. We heard of one landed proprietor who
encouraged his peasant neighbors to avoid the scourge of frequent
conflagrations by building with brick, and he offered a prize to every
individual who should comply with the conditions. The prize consisted of
a horse from the proprietor's stables, and of the proprietor's presence,
in full uniform and all his orders, at the house-warming. The advantages
of brick soon became so apparent to the peasants that they continued to
employ it, even after their patron had been forced to abolish the
reward, lest his horses and his time should be utterly exhausted.
Minor incidents were not lacking to enliven our long journey. In the
course of one of the usual long halts at a county town, a beggar came to
the window of our carriage. He was a tall, slender young fellow, about
seven-and-twenty years of age. Though he used the customary forms,--
"Give me something, _sudarynya_* if only a few kopeks, _Khristi
radi!_"** there was something about him, despite his rags, there was an
elegance of accent in his language, to which I was not accustomed in the
"poor brethren" generally.
* Madam. ** For Christ's sake.
I pretended ignorance of Russian and the sign language, but watched him
as I continued my conversation in English. Thereupon my man repeated his
demands in excellent French, with a good accent. I turned on him.
"This is unusual," I said in Russian, by way of hinting that I belonged
to the category of the willfully deaf. "Accept my compliments on your
knowledge of French and of Russian. But be so good as to explain to me
this mystery before I contribute."
"Madam," he retorted, "I'd have you know that I am a gentleman,--a
gentleman of education."
"Then pray solve the other mystery,--why you, strong, young, healthy,
handsome, are a professional beggar."
He stalked off in a huff. Evidently he was one of that class of "decayed
nobles" of whom I had heard many curious tales in Moscow; only he had
decayed at a rather earlier age than the average.
As we proceeded southward, pretty Little Russian girls took the place of
the plainer-featured Great Russian maidens. Familiar plants caught our
eyes. Mulleins--"imperial sceptre" is the pretty Russian name--began
to do sentinel duty along the roadside; sumach appeared in the thickets
of the forests, where the graceful cut-leaved birch of the north was
rare. The Lombardy poplar, the favorite of the Little Russian poets,
reared its dark columns in solitary state. At last, Kieff, the Holy
City, loomed before us in the distance.
I know no town in Russia which makes so picturesque and characteristic
an impression on the traveler as Kieff. From the boundless plain over
which we were speeding, we gazed up at wooded heights crowned and dotted
with churches. At the foot of the slope, where golden domes and crosses,
snowy white monasteries and battlemented walls, gleamed among masses of
foliage punctuated with poplars, swept the broad Dnyepr. It did not seem
difficult then to enter into the feelings of Prince Oleg when he reached
the infant town, on his expedition from unfertile Novgorod the Great, of
the north, against Byzantium, and, coveting its rich beauty, slew its
rulers and entered into possession, saying, "This shall be the Mother of
all Russian Cities." We could understand the sentiments of the pilgrims
who flock to the Holy City by the million.
The agreeable sensation of approach being over, our expectations, which
had been waxing as the train threaded its way through a ravine to the
station, received a shock. It was the shock to which we were continually
being subjected whenever we made pious pilgrimages to places of historic
renown. On each occasion of this sort we were moved to reflect deeply on
the proverbial blessings of ignorance. It makes a vast difference in
one's mental comfort, I find, whether he accepts the present
unquestioningly, with enthusiasm, and reconstructs the historic past as
an agreeable duty, or whether he already bears the past, in its various
aspects, in his mind, in involuntary but irrational expectation of
meeting it, and is forced to accept the present as a painful task! Which
of these courses to pursue in the future was the subject of my
disappointed meditations, as we drove through the too Europeanized
streets, and landed at a hotel of the same pattern. It is easy to
forgive St. Petersburg, in its giddy youth of one hundred and
seventy-five winters, for its Western features and comforts; but that
Kieff, in its venerable maturity of a thousand summers, should be so
spick and span with newness and reformation seemed at first utterly
unpardonable. The inhabitants think otherwise, no doubt, and deplore the
mediaeval hygienic conditions which render the town the most unhealthy
in Europe, in the matter of the death-rate from infectious diseases.
Our comfortable hotel possessed not a single characteristic feature,
except a line on the printed placard of regulations posted in each room.
The line said, "The price of this room is four rubles [or whatever it
was] a day, except in Contract Time." "Contract Time," I found, meant
the Annual Fair, in February, when the normal population of about one
hundred and sixty-six thousand is swelled by "arrivers"--as travelers
are commonly designated on the signboards of the lower-class hotels--
from all the country round about. When, prompted by this remarkable
warning, I inquired the prices during the fair, the clerk replied
sweetly,--no other word will do justice to his manner,--"All we can
get!" Such frankness is what the French call "brutal."
The principal street of the town, the Krestchatik, formerly the bed of a
stream, in front of our windows, was in the throes of sewer-building.
More civilization! Sewage from the higher land had lodged there in
temporary pools. The weather was very hot. The fine large yellow bricks,
furnished by the local clay-beds, of which the buildings and sidewalks
were made, were dazzling with heat. It is only when one leaves the
low-lying new town, and ascends the hills, on which the old dwellers
wisely built, or reaches the suburbs, that one begins thoroughly to
comprehend the enthusiastic praises of many Russians who regard Kieff as
the most beautiful town in the empire.
The glare of the yellow brick melts softly into the verdure of the
residence quarter, and is tempered into inoffensiveness in the Old Town
by the admixture of older and plainer structures, which refresh the eye.
But the chief charm, unfailing, inexhaustible as the sight of the ocean,
is the view from the cliffs. Beyond the silver sweep of the river at
their feet, animated with steamers and small boats, stretches the
illimitable steppe, where the purple and emerald shadows of the sea
depths and shallows are enriched with hues of golden or velvet brown and
misty blue. The steppe is no longer an unbroken expanse of waving
plume-grass and flowers, wherein riders and horses are lost to sight as,
in Gogol's celebrated tale, were Taras Bulba and his sons, fresh from
the famous Academy of Kieff, which lies at our feet, below the cliffs.
Increasing population has converted this virgin soil into vast
grainfields, less picturesque near at hand than the wild growth, but
still deserving, from afar, of Gogol's enraptured apostrophe: "Devil
take you, steppe, how beautiful you are!"
Naturally, our first pilgrimage was to the famous Kievo-Petcherskaya
Lavra, that is, the First-Class Monastery of the Kieff Catacombs, the
chief monastic institution and goal of pilgrims in all the country, of
which we had caught a glimpse from the opposite shore of the river, as
we approached the town. Buildings have not extended so densely in this
direction but that a semblance of ascetic retirement is still preserved.
Between the monastery and the city lies the city park, which is not much
patronized by the citizens, and for good reasons. To the rich wildness
of nature is added the wildness of man. Hordes of desperadoes, "the
barefoot brigade," the dregs of the local population, have taken up
their residence there every spring, of late years, in the ravines and
the caves which they have excavated, in humble imitation of the holy men
of the monastery of old. From time to time the police make a skirmish
there, but an unpleasant element of danger is still connected with a
visit to this section of the city's heart, which deters most people from
making the attempt.
Beyond this lie the heights, on which stand the fortress and the
Catacombs Monastery. Opposite the arsenal opens the "Holy Gate;" all
Russian monasteries seem to have a holy gate. "The wall, fourteen feet
in height, and more in some places, surrounding the principal court, was
built by Hetman Mazeppa," says the local guide-book. Thus promptly did
we come upon traces of that dashing Kazak chieftain, who would seem,
judging from the solid silver tombs for saints, the churches, academy,
and many other offerings of that nature in Kieff alone, to have spent
the intervals between his deeds of outrageous treachery and immorality
in acts of ostentatious piety. In fact, his piety had an object, as
piety of that rampant variety usually has. He meditated betraying Little
Russia into the power of Poland; and knowing well how heartily the
Little Russians detested the Poles because of the submission to the Pope
of Rome in those Greek churches designated as Uniates, he sought to
soothe their suspicions and allay their fears by this display of
attachment to the national church. His vaingloriousness was shown by his
habit of having his coat of arms placed on bells, _ikonostasi_,* and
windows of the churches he built. In one case, he caused his portrait to
be inserted in the holy door of the _ikonostas_,--a very improper
procedure,--where it remained until the middle of the last century.
Highly colored frescoes of the special monastery saints and of
historical incidents adorned the wall outside the holy gate. Inside, we
found a monk presiding over a table, on which stood the image of the
saint of the day, a platter covered with a cross-adorned cloth, for
offerings, and various objects of piety for sale.
* Image screens.
The first thing which struck us, as we entered the great court, was the
peculiar South Russian taste for filling in the line of roof between the
numerous domes with curving pediments and tapering turned-wood spirelets
surmounted by golden stars and winged seraphs' heads surrounded by rays.
The effect of so many points of gold against the white of the walls,
combined with the gold of the crosses, the high tints of the external
frescoes, and the gold of the cupolas, is very brilliant, no doubt; but
it is confusing, and constitutes what, for want of a better word, I must
call a Byzantine-rococo style of architecture. The domes, under Western
influence, during the many centuries when Kieff was divorced from
Russia, under Polish and Lithuanian rule, assumed forms which lack the
purity and grace of those in Russia proper. Octagonal cupolas supported
on thick, sloping bases involuntarily remind one of the cup-and-ball
game. Not content with this degenerate beginning, they pursue their
errors heavenward. Instead of terminating directly in a cross, they are
surmounted by a lantern frescoed with saints, a second octagonal dome, a
ball, and a cross. These octagons constitute a feature in all South
Russian churches.
Along the sides of the court leading to the great Assumption Cathedral
stood long, plain one and two story buildings, the cells of the monks.
Rugs of fine coloring and design were airing on the railings in front of
them. I examined their texture, found it thick and silky, but could not
class it with any manufacture of my acquaintance. I looked about for
some one to question. A monk was approaching. His long, abundant hair
flowed in waves from beneath the black veil which hung from his tall,
cylindrical _klobuk_, resembling a rimless silk hat. His artistically
cut black robe fell in graceful folds. I should describe him as
dandified, did I dare apply such an adjective to an ecclesiastical
recluse. I asked him where such rugs were to be found. He answered that
they were of peasant manufacture, and that I could probably find them in
Podol, the market below the cliffs. These specimens had been presented
to the monastery by "zealous benefactors."
Then he took his turn at questioning. I presume that my accent was not
perfect, or that I had omitted some point of etiquette in which an
Orthodox Russian would have been drilled, such as asking his blessing
and kissing his hand in gratitude, by way of saying "good-morning," or
something of that sort. His manner was that of a man of the world,
artistically tinged with monastic conventionality, and I wondered
whether he were not an ex-officer of the Guards who had wearied of Court
and gayeties. He offered to show us about, and took us to the
printing-house, founded in the sixteenth century. It is still one of the
best and most extensive in the country, with a department of
chromo-lithography attached for the preparation of cheap pictures of
saints. One of the finest views in town is from the balcony at the rear
of this building, and the monk explained all the points to us.
There was an air of authority about our impromptu guide, and the
profound reverences bestowed upon him and upon us by the workmen in the
printing-house, as well as by all the monks whom we met, prompted me to
inquire, as we parted from him, to whom we were indebted for such
interesting guidance and explanations.
"I am _otetz kaznatchei_," he replied, with a smile, as he not only
offered his hand, but grasped mine and shook it, with an expression of
his cordial good wishes, instead of bestowing upon me a mechanical cross
in the air, and permitting me to kiss his plump little fingers in
return, as he would undoubtedly have done had I been a Russian. I
understood the respect paid, and our reflected importance, when I
discovered that the "Father Treasurer" occupies the highest rank next to
the permanent head of the monastery officially, and the most important
post of all practically.
Shortly after, the question fever having attacked me again, I accosted
another monk, equal in stateliness of aspect to the Father Treasurer. He
informed me that from seven hundred to one thousand persons lived in the
monastery. Not all of them were monks, some being only lay brethren.
Each monk, however, had his own apartments, with a little garden
attached, and the beautiful rugs which I had seen formed part of the
furnishings of their cells. A man cannot enter the monastery without
money, but fifty rubles (about twenty-five dollars) are sufficient to
gain him admittance. Some men leave the monastery after a brief trial,
without receiving the habit. "In such a throng one comes to know many
faces," he said, "but not all persons."
I inquired whether it were not a monotonous, tiresome life.
"It seems so to you!" he replied, when he had recovered from his
amazement; and when I mentioned the liturgy which is peculiar to the
monastery cathedral, and famed throughout Russia as "the Kieff-Catacombs
singing," all he found to say was, "It is very long."
He took advantage of the chance presented by a trip to his cell to get
us some water, to remove his tall _klobuk_. He must have read in our
glances admiration of his beauty mingled with a doubt as to whether it
were not partly due to this becoming cowl and veil, and determined to
convince us that it was nature, not adventitious circumstances, in his
case. I think he must have been content with the expression of our
faces, as he showed us the way to the most ancient of all the churches
in Kieff,--in Russia, in fact,--built by Prince-Saint Vladimir
immediately after his return from the crusade in search of baptism.
The church door was locked. The wife of the deacon in charge was
paddling about barefooted, in pursuit of her fowls, in the long grass of
the dooryard. She abandoned the chickens and hunted up her husband, who
took a peep at us, and then kept us waiting while he donned his best
cassock before escorting us.
It is a very small, very plain church which adjoined Prince Vladimir's
summer palace, long since destroyed, and still preserves its gallery for
women and servants, and a box for the ladies of the household.
Everything about it is nine hundred years old, except the roof and the
upper portion of the walls. The archaic frescoes of angels in the
chancel, which date from the same period, and are the best in Kieff,
were the only objects which the deacon could find to expound, to enhance
the "tea-money" value of his services in putting on his best gown and
unlocking the door, and he performed his duty meekly, but firmly. We did
ours by him, and betook ourselves to the principal church, the Cathedral
of the Assumption, where less is left to the imagination.
There, very few of the frescoes are more than a hundred and sixty years
old, the majority dating back less than sixty years, and being in a
style to suit the rococo gilt carving, and the silver-gilt Imperial Gate
to the altar. In the _papert_, or corridor-vestibule, a monk who was
presiding over a Book of Eternal Remembrance invited us to enter our
subscriptions for general prayers to be said on our behalf, or for
special prayers to be said before the "wonder-working image" of the
Assumption so long as the monastery shall exist.
"We are not _pravoslavny_" (Orthodox Christians), I said. But, instead
of being depressed by this tacit refusal, he brightened up and plied us
with a series of questions, until he really seemed to take a temporary
interest in life, in place of his permanent official interest in death
alone, or chiefly.
Service was in progress, in accordance with the canons of the Studieff
monastery, adopted by St. Fedosy in the eleventh century. The singers,
placed in an unusual position, in the centre of the church, were as
remarkable for their hair as for their voices and execution. The
russet-brown and golden locks of some of them fell in heavy waves to
their waists. In fact, long, waving hair seemed to be a specialty with
the monks of this monastery, and they wore it in braids when off duty. I
had seen priests in St. Petersburg who so utterly beyond a doubt frizzed
their scanty hair on days of grand festivals, that the three tufts
pertaining to the three too slender hair pins on which they had been
done up stood out in painfully isolated disagreement. What would they
not have given for such splendid manes as these Kieff singers possessed!
We ascended to the gallery, to obtain a better view of the scene.
Peasant men in sheepskins (_tulupi_),--the temperature verged on 100
degrees Fahrenheit,--in coats of dark brown homespun wool girt with
sashes which had once been bright; female pilgrims in wadded coats girt
into shapelessness over cotton gowns of brilliant hues, knelt in prayer
all about the not very spacious floor. Their traveling-sacks on their
backs, the tin tea-kettles and cooking paraphernalia at their belts,
swayed into perilous positions as they rocked back and forth, striking
the floor devoutly with their brows, rising only to throw back their
long hair, cross themselves rapidly, and resume the "ground
salutations," until we were fairly dizzy at the sight. Some of them
placed red, yellow, or green tapers--the first instance of such a taste
in colors which we had observed--on the sharp points of the silver
candelabra standing before the holy pictures in the _ikonostas_, already
overcrowded. A monk was incessantly engaged in removing the tapers when
only half consumed, to make way for the ever-swelling flood of fresh
tapers. Another monk was as incessantly engaged in receiving the
_prosfori_. A _prosfora_ is leavened bread in the shape of a tiny double
loaf, which is sold at the doors of churches, and bears on its upper
surface certain symbolic signs, as a rule. The Communion is prepared
from similar loaves by the priest, who removes certain portions with a
spear-shaped knife, and places them in the wine of the chalice. The wine
and bread are administered with a spoon to communicants. From the loaves
bought at the door pieces are cut in memory of dead friends, whose souls
are to be prayed for, or of living friends, whose health is prayed for
by the priest at a certain point of the service, in accordance with the
indications sent up to the altar with the loaves on slips of paper, such
as "For the soul of Ivan Vasilievitch," "For the health of Tatiana
Pavlovna." Thus is preserved the memory of early Christian times, when
the Christians brought wine and oil and bread for their worship; and the
best having been selected for sacred use, portions were taken from the
remainder in memory of those who sent or brought them, after the rest
was used to refresh the congregation during a pause in the all-night
service between vespers and matins. After the service, in our modern
times, the _prosfori_ are given back to the owners, who cross themselves
and eat the bread reverently on the spot or elsewhere, as blessed but
not sacramental. At this monastery, the _prosfori_ prepared for memorial
use had a group of the local saints stamped on top, instead of the usual
cross and characters. It is considered a delicate attention on the part
of a person who has been on a pilgrimage to any of the holy places to
bring back a _prosfora_ for a friend. It is very good when sliced and
eaten with tea, omitting the bottom crust, which may have been dated in
ink by the pilgrim. Some of the peasants at this monastery church sent
in to be blessed huge packages of _prosfori_ tied up in gay cotton
kerchiefs.