PRAYER AND LABOR.
But if the hours given up to prayer at Solovetsk are many, the hours
given up to toil are more. This convent is a hive of industry, not
less remarkable for what it does in the way of work than for what it
is in the way of art and prayer.
"Pray and work" was the maxim of monastic houses, when monastic houses
had a mission in the West. "Pray and work," said Peter the Great to
his council. But such a maxim is not in harmony with the existing
system; not in harmony with the Byzantine Church; and what you find at
Solovetsk is traceable to an older and a better source. No monk in
this sanctuary leads an idle life. Not only the fathers who are not
yet popes, but many of those who hold the staff and give the
benediction, devote their talents to the production of things which
may be useful in the church, in the refectory, and in the cell. A few
make articles for sale in the outer world; such articles as bread,
clothes, rosaries and spoons. All round these ramparts, within the
walls, you find a row of workshops, in which there is a hum of labor
from early dawn until long after dark; forges, dairies, salting-rooms,
studies, ship-yards, bake-houses, weaving-sheds, rope-walks,
sewing-rooms, fruit-stores, breweries, boot-stalls, and the like,
through all the forms which industry takes in a civilized age. These
monks appear to be masters of every craft. They make nearly every
thing you can name, from beads to frigates; and they turn out every
thing they touch in admirable style. No whiter bread is baked, no
sweeter quass is brewed, than you can buy in Solovetsk. To go with
Father Hilarion on his round of inspection is to meet a dozen
surprises face to face. At first the whole exhibition is like a dream;
and you can hardly fancy that such things are being done by a body of
monks, in a lonely islet, locked up from the world for eight months in
the twelve by storms of sleet and deserts of ice.
These monks make seal-skin caps and belts; they paint in oil and carve
in wood; they cure and tan leather; they knit woollen hose; they cast
shafts of iron; they wind and spin thread; they polish stones; they
cut out shoes and felts; they mould pewter plates; they dry fruit;
they fell and trim forest trees; they clip paper flowers; they build
carts and sledges; they embroider capes and bands; they bake bricks;
they weave baskets and panniers of silver bark; they quarry and hew
blocks of stone; they paint soup-ladles; they design altar-pieces,
chapels, and convents; they refine bees'-wax; they twist cord and
rope; they forge anchors and marling-spikes; they knit and sew, and
ply their needles in every branch of useful and decorative art. In all
these departments of industry, the thing which they turn out is an
example of honest work.
Many of the fathers find a field for their talents on the farm: in
breeding cattle, in growing potatoes, in cutting grass, in shearing
sheep, in rearing poultry, in churning butter, and making cheese. A
few prefer the more poetic labor of the garden: pruning grapes,
bedding strawberries, hiving bees, and preserving fruit. The honey
made at Mount Alexander is pure and good, the wax is also white and
fine.
The convent bakehouse is a thing to see. Boats run over from every
village on the coast to buy convent bread; often to beg it; and every
pilgrim who comes to pray takes with him one loaf as a parting gift.
This convent bread is of two sorts--black and white--leavened and
unleavened--domestic and consecrated. The first is cheap, and eaten at
every meal; the second is dear, and eaten as an act of grace. Both
kinds are good. A consecrated loaf is small, weighing six or eight
ounces, and is stamped with a sacred sign and blessed by a pope. The
stamp is a cross, with a legend running round the border in old
Slavonic type. These small white loaves of unleavened bread are highly
prized by pious people; and a man who visits such a monastery as
either Solovetsk, St. George, or Troitsa, can not bring back to his
servants a gift more precious in their eyes than a small white loaf.
The brewery is no less perfect in its line than the bakehouse. Quass
is the Russian ale and beer in one; the national drink; consumed by
all classes, mixed with nearly every dish. Solovetsk has a name and
fame for this Russian brew.
Connected with these good things of the table are the workshops for
carving platters and painting spoons. The arts of life are simple in
these northern wilds; forks are seldom seen; and knives are not much
used. The instrument by which a man mostly helps himself to his dinner
is a spoon. Nearly all his food is boiled; his cabbage-soup, his
barley mess, his hash of salt-cod, his dish of sour milk. A deep
platter lies in the centre of his table, and his homely guests sit
round it, armed with their capacious spoons. Platter and spoon are
carved of wood, and sometimes they are painted, with skill and taste;
though the better sorts are kept by pilgrims rather as keepsakes than
for actual use.
A branch of industry allied to carving spoons and platters is that of
twisting baskets and panniers into shape. Crockery in the forest is
rude and dear, and in a long land-journey the weight of three or four
pots and cups would be a serious strain. From bark of trees they weave
a set of baskets for personal and domestic use, which are lighter than
cork and handier than tin. You close them by a lid, and carry them by
a loop. They are perfectly dry and sweet; with just a flavor, but no
more, of the delicious resin of the tree. They hold milk. You buy them
of all sizes, from that of a pepper-box to that of a water-jar;
obtaining a dozen for a few kopecks.
The panniers are bigger and less delicate, made for rough passage over
stony roads and through bogs of mire. These panniers are fitted with
compartments, like a vintner's crate, in which you can stow away
bottles of wine and insinuate knives and forks. In the open part of
your pannier it is well (if you are packing for a long drive) to have
an assortment of bark baskets, in which to carry such trifles as
mustard, cream, and salt.
Among the odds and ends of workshops into which you drop, is that of
the weaving-shed, in one of the turrets on the convent wall; a turret
which is noticeable not only for the good work done in the looms, but
for the part which it had to play in the defense of Solovetsk against
the English fleet. The shot which is said to have driven off the
"Brisk" was fired from this Weaver's Tower.
Peering above a sunny corner of the rampart stands the photographic
chamber, and near to this chamber, in a new range of buildings, are
the cells in which the painters and enamellers toil. The sun makes
pictures of any thing in his range; boats, islets, pilgrims, monks;
but the artists toiling in these cells are all employed in devotional
art. Some are only copiers; and the most expert are artists only in a
conventional sense. This country is not yet rich in art, except in
that hard Byzantine style which Nikon the Patriarch allowed in private
houses, and enforced in convent, shrine, and church.
But these fathers pride themselves, not without cause, on being
greater in their works by sea than even in their works by land. Many
of them live on board, and take to the water as to their mother's
milk. They are rich in boats, in rigging, and in nets. They wind
excellent rope and cord. They know how to light and buoy dangerous
points and armlets. They keep their own lighthouses. They build
lorchas and sloops; and they have found by trial that a steamship can
be turned off the stocks at Solovetsk, of which every part, from the
smallest brass nail to the mainmast (with the sole exception of her
engines), is the produce of their toil.
That vessel is called the "Hope." Her crew is mainly a crew of monks;
and her captain is not only a monk--like Father John--but an actual
pope. My first sight of this priestly skipper is in front of the royal
gates where he is celebrating mass.
This reverend father takes me after service to see his vessel and the
dock in which she lies. Home-built and rigged, the "Hope" has charms
in my eyes possessed by very few ships. A steamer made by monks in the
Frozen Sea, is, in her way, as high a feat of mind as the spire of
Notre Dame in Antwerp, as the cathedral front at Wells. The thought of
building that steamer was conceived in a monkish brain; the lines were
fashioned by a monkish pen; monks felled the trees, and forged the
bolts, and wove the canvas, and curled the ropes. Monks put her
together; monks painted her cabin; monks stuffed her seats and
pillows. Monks launched her on the sea, and, since they have launched
her, they have sailed in her from port to port.
"How did you learn your trade of skipper?"
The father smiles. He is a young fellow--younger than Father John; a
fellow of thirty or thirty-two, with swarthy cheek, black eye, and
tawny mane; a man to play the pirate in some drama of virtuous love.
"I was a seaman in my youth," he says, "and when we wanted a skipper
in the convent, I went over to Kem, where we have a school of
navigation, and got the certificate of a master; that entitled me to
command my ship."
"The council of that school are not very strict?"
"No; not with monks. We have our own ways; we labor in the Lord; and
He protects us in what we do for Him."
"Through human means?"
"No; by His own right hand, put forth under all men's eyes. You see,
the first time that we left the convent for Archangel, we were weak in
hands and strange to our work. A storm came on; the 'Hope' was driven
on shore. Another crew would have taken to their boats and lost their
ship, if not their lives. We prayed to the Most Pure Mother of God: at
first she would not hear us on account of our sins; but we would not
be denied, and sang our psalms until the wind went down."
"You were still ashore?"
"Yes; grooved in a bed of sand; but when the wind veered round, the
ship began to heave and stir. We tackled her with ropes and got her
afloat once more. Slava Bogu! It was her act!"
The dock of which Father John spoke with pride turns out to be not a
dock only, but a dry dock! Now, a dock, even where it is a common
dock, is one of those signs by which one may gauge--as by the strength
of a city wall, the splendor of a court of justice and the beauty of a
public garden--the height to which a people have attained. In Russia
docks are extremely rare. Not a dozen ports in the empire can boast a
dock. Archangel has no dock; Astrachan has no dock; Rostoff has no
dock. It is only in such cities as Riga and Odessa, built and occupied
by foreigners, that you find such things. The dry dock at Solovetsk is
the only sample of its kind in the whole of Russia Proper! Cronstadt
has a dry dock; but Cronstadt is in the Finnish waters--a German port,
with a German name. The only work of this kind existing on Russian
ground is the product of monkish enterprise and skill.
Priests take their share in all these labors. When a monk enters into
orders he is free to devote himself, if he chooses, to the Church
service only, since the Holy Governing Synod recognizes the right of a
pope to a maintenance in his office; but in the Convent of Solovetsk,
a priest rarely confines his activity to his sacred duties. Work is
the sign of a religious life. If any man shows a talent for either art
or business, he is excited by the praise of his fellows and superiors
to pursue the call of his genius, devoting the produce of his labor to
the glory of God. One pope is a farmer, a second a painter, a third a
fisherman; this man is a collector of simples, that a copier of
manuscripts, and this, again, a binder of books.
Of these vocations that of the schoolmaster is not the least coveted.
All children who come to Solovetsk are kept for a year, if not for a
longer time. The lodging is homely and the teaching rough; for the
schools are adapted to the state of the country; and the food and
sleeping-rooms are raised only a little above the comforts of a
peasant's home. No one is sent away untaught; but only a few are kept
beyond a year. If a man likes to remain and work in the convent he can
hire himself out as a laborer, either in the fishing-boats or on the
farms. He dines in summer, like the monks, on bread, fish and quass;
in winter he is provided with salt mutton, cured on the farm--a luxury
his masters may not touch. Many of these boys remain for life, living
in a celibate state, like the monks; but sure of a dinner and a bed,
safe from the conscription, and free from family cares. Some of them
take vows. If they go back into the world they are likely to find
places on account of their past; in any case they can shift for
themselves, since a lad who has lived a few years in this convent is
pretty sure to be able to fish and farm, to cook his own dinner, and
to mend his own boots.