Part 10

_Podvig_ is a Russian word for holy exploits and victories, especially for those consisting in a denial of the world. See Chapter on _podvigs_, page 111.

Footnote 10:

_Podvizhnitchestvo_ = the life of going on doing _podvigs_, the continuance of denial of the world.

VII AT THE CONVENT OF MARTHA AND MARY

One Sunday I went to the convent of St. Martha and St. Mary in the Bolshaya Ordinka on the other side of the Moscow river. It is a wonderful institution, belonging to the new Russia and yet being part of the old, a young dainty stem with leaves sprung from the rugged many-wintered tree of the Russian Church. Like St. Vladimir’s Cathedral at Kief, its beauty lies not in any antiquity or ruin. It is a new institution; it is served by young people; and has new life, new interest, and ideals. It is the convent of which the Grand Duchess Elizaveta Federovna, the widow of the Grand Duke Sergius, whose murder was contrived by Azef the Jewish agent-provocateur during the revolutionary period, is the abbess.

The remains of the Grand Duke were deposited at the shrine of St. Alexey, and praying there, the grief-stricken widow promised herself, her life, and her estate to God. The beautiful sister of the Empress found her way from desolation and the tomb to a bright and spacious and yet devoted life, and she was consecrated and took the veil.

One of the first deeds of her new life was to purchase a building site in one of the poorer parts of the city, and to have it consecrated for the building of a convent and churches. A temporary church was put up and services took place from the first. The first plans were realised in 1907; the sisterhood was already formed and had begun work by February 1909. The Grand Duchess is the abbess and there are about a hundred sisters. Every one is young, every one is active. No woman over forty can enter the sisterhood, no one also who is weak physically or likely to be unable to perform the arduous labours for and among the poor which the sisters impose upon themselves.

The convent combines in its ideal the imitation of both Martha and Mary. Each sister dedicates herself to “God and her neighbour.” She would sit at Jesus’ feet like Mary, and be occupied with many things like Martha. But certainly the idea of Martha and service stands first in their minds. Their religion is the religion of good deeds. They visit, clothe, comfort, heal the poor, and all but work miracles, flowers springing in their footsteps where they go. They receive and consider thousands of letters and beggars. They perform work which is often left to the municipalities and Care committees in the West, but the work is much more fruitful since it is done in the Name of Christ rather than in the name of reason. In some convents the sisters are divided into Marthas and Marys, and there is a question when a new one takes her place—a Martha or a Mary? But in the Martha Marinskaya all have to be Marthas. Each sister has a specific calling and name, _e.g._ the letter-writer, the purchaser, the guest-receiver: there are medical sisters, church sisters, kitchen sisters, and so on.

The service in the convent church is open and free. All and sundry may go in. And yet necessarily one is in a way a guest, a visitor. It is a very gentle and delicate experience to stand on the stone flags of the wide church beside fifty or sixty maidens in white and avow allegiance to the same emblems, praise the same splendid Creator and God.

I came to the service, but I also wished to satisfy a desire to see the frescoes and wall-paintings by Nesterof. The rood-screen, the apse, and the sides have been painted by that great artist, and two or three of his most beautiful pictures are the surface of the walls.

There is a large picture, the whole width of the church, a presentment of Holy Russia at the margin of a birch forest; plains and folding valleys and uplands and broad acres in the distance. In the foreground bright green grass thick with purple labiate and yellow rattray, an opening in the forest, delicate silver birches on each side and tiny pine trees, seedlings of pine-trees. In the opening all manner of characteristic Russian “poor folk” gazing, praying, kneeling, crying. For a haloed Christ stands among the birch trees and receives all who will come to Him.

The Russian peasant believes that Christ wanders on his roads—

the heavenly King Our mother Russia came to bless And through our land went wandering;

and he is quite right, believing that. The thought, almost by itself, constitutes the idea of “Holy Russia.”

The most beautiful picture in the church is the dedicatory Martha and Mary—“The Master is here and calleth thee”[11]—a panel in front of which stood a sister all in white like a statue, little candles in front of her, a stout six-feet wax candle beside her.

A tall and portly priest with long hair, whimsical and gentle, took the service—Father Mitrophan; and he walked to and fro, now with the people, now behind the sacred gates. A score of sisters in black veils and with black crowns on their heads sang in the choir. A sister stood at a counter by the door and sold candles. A congregation of sisters, fashionable visitors, peasants, working-people, and beggars grouped themselves miscellaneously in the wide, open, light-filled body of the church. Of course there were no seats. It was pleasant to be there; there was good air, a fragrance occasionally of flowers, and a sense of young women in a certain mood towards God. We sang, assented, crossed ourselves, bowed. The sixty sisters all in white prostrated themselves, and there was a billowy flood of white linen on the floor. And the black choir sang, gently, pitifully, sweetly, exaltedly, with _pale_ voices. It was their church, their temple. They expressed themselves there as a maid expresses herself in her private room at home. The gentle Nesterof paintings pertained to them specially. They were chosen by them.

In the midst of the service in come the convent waifs, children of the childless, two dozen little boys in green blouses, two dozen little girls in blue frocks and drab pinafores. And they stand in the midst of the church. They are so small, they might be the children of dwarfs.

Father Mitrophan comes out to deliver his sermon, and we all move up closer towards the altar rails so as to hear him. He is higher than we, and looks a shepherd with a flock about him. A gentle sermon: “You have parents in the flesh, you have also parents in the Spirit. There are earthly families, there are also spiritual families; worldly intercourse and heavenly intercourse. Our parents bore us and then as soon as convenient brought us to the font to give us back to God. The parents were not present at the baptism because they were only parents of the flesh, but the guardian angels were present because they were parents of the Spirit. To-day is the day of St. Afanasief and of St. Sergey, spiritual fathers, to whom we must look for guidance and love. What do they teach us? Why, first of all, to do things, to work. What a worker was St. Paul, for instance, writing fourteen epistles. We mustn’t be lazy! We shan’t get anything without making effort. Fast day comes; we say it doesn’t matter much, we’ll eat ordinary fare. It’s time to go to church; you say to yourself, ‘No, no, don’t need to,’ and you take a stool and a book of church verses and sing to yourself pleasantly and comfortably. No, no, it won’t do. The Fathers of the Church didn’t go lazy like that, or where should we be....” And so on, in a sententious manner and sing-song tone, nodding his head and pronouncing many of his dicta in a colloquial tone of voice like an old woman saying proverbs. He had an Orthodox voice. There is such a thing in Russia, a voice and manner in which the Church and the Church service are reflected. It communicates itself to the worshipper and is often a superadded grace of personality in a man or woman, a certain Byzantinism in expression, a holding oneself like a figure in a fresco.

Amen! A crossing of ourselves; the sermon is ended. The crowd about the altar breaks up, and we spread ourselves out in the fresher spaces of the church once more, and the _pale_ singing of the black-robed choir recommences as the conclusion of the liturgy is sung. The sixty sisters prostrate themselves together in a billowy mass once more. Worshippers cross themselves before the altar and go out. The Communion bread is taken and the service is over. The waifs march out; we all come out.

It is good to have been at prayers with the sisters, just as if one had spent a few hours in perfect mood in a garden. It took my mind back to a morning in an immense London church when I came in late and was taken up and put in a seat just underneath a picture of the Virgin. At the Virgin’s feet were armfuls of lilies. I had a sense, I have it now—all flowers are flowers at the feet of the Virgin.

Footnote 11:

The Frontispiece of this book.

VIII THE WAY OF MARTHA

The way of Russia is more the way of Mary, and yet no people are more given to working for their neighbours and being actively kind than the Russians. There are many Marthas among them. They visit the poor, bring food to the hungry, clothe the wretched. They work for the suffering people around them. Almost every cultured Russian of grace or character has some social or personal responsibility or care, the passion to put right the affairs of some unhappy family, the will to raise drunkards and law-breakers from spiritual death. It is national and natural, and it is strange that this should be the characteristic of a people who also have a passion for going into the desert and saving their souls.

But it is impossible for every one to go into the desert or take to a cell, and indeed the impulse to go away does not come to every one, and when it does come it is seldom sufficiently strong to break down the ties of everyday life and make a road of the affections—the narrow road that leads away from the world. Even among a mystical people the great majority remain behind in “the world” and have the normal life, serve man as well as God, marry, have children, work as well as pray, and live through six everydays to one of incense and song. The Church has its two aspects, that of Martha and of Mary, and it is with the way of Martha that we are generally more familiar, though many may look lingeringly towards the wilderness, feeling that perhaps after all the better part is to be found out there.

The way of Martha has come into some discredit in the West owing to the organisation of charity, the reliance on parliaments and philanthropical societies and committees rather than on individual volition. As a substitute for love towards one’s fellow-man have appeared many things—voting for a candidate, appeals to policemen and to magistrates, prison, sending a young man to the Colonies, trusting to the court-missionary ... that is the way of “the world” and not the way of the individual. However much “organisation” there may be, there will always remain as a fundamental idea of the Church personal love towards one’s neighbour and care for him. Such love when seen is something that convinces in itself, like the action of the good Samaritan.

There is a family I know in Russia, the V’s. To come into touch with them is to touch something that works miracles like the hem of the sacred garment. Yet all in the family are Marthas, they are all of the spirit of good deeds: there is nothing particularly contemplative about any of them. Most interesting of all is the youngest of the children, Lena. She is being brought up in an atmosphere of altruism. She is only twelve years old, and is like a plant springing up in a flower-garden; one can watch her growing more beautiful from day to day. She is gentle, quick, and tender. She has many desires and is eager, but when Julia her eldest sister tells her to do one thing or another, perfectly obedient and submissive. She is slender and wistful like a girl in one of Nesterof’s pictures. She has the intense pleasure of a child, and when we read _Alice in Wonderland_ together I wondered at the gladness of the little girl. Grown-up humans are often so constrained and polite when you read a paragraph to them. You can never be quite sure that they are not secretly bored. On her birthday Lena _gives_ presents to her sisters instead of receiving them, and has been brought up to feel that it is a joy and privilege to give. When distant relatives or friends from far away come to visit the family, Lena gives them presents. One day she was debating what was the very biggest present she could make to a lady who was staying at the house, and she decided to give away one of her little pet tortoises. Once Vassily Vassilitch brought her a present, a big book with pictures. How vexed Julia seemed! “You spoil the child bringing her presents without any special reason!” said she. She was sorry that he should be giving, and not Lena or she herself.

Julia is so self-denying that some years she goes without a greatcoat even for the coldest winter weather. All her money goes to other people. But she is not at all proud of her good works. She is just simple and cheerful, a quiet though impulsive woman. You never hear her laugh loudly, but there is always a sort of kind warmth and cheerfulness in her face. She will give up a book, her time, her means of making a living, her pleasure, to whatever appeals to her; and the whole house in which she lives is founded on altruism. Occasionally there comes to visit them a friend who is also extremely unselfish and altruistic. Then sometimes there are some amusing, even absurd scenes—contests in altruism.

The family is vegetarian, for no one in it would cause any animal pain. They have even scruples about killing flies and troublesome insects, and rather catch them and put them out of the window than destroy them. One day Julia showed me with horror an article from the _Russian Word_ on the fate of lost dogs. The State voted a certain amount of money for poison to destroy ownerless dogs, but the police, instead of killing them with poison in a humane way as intended, hired the worst type of criminals in the town gaols to beat them to death for a few copecks in order that they might peculate the greater part of the money voted. “Such ugly things are part of the background of our everyday life,” said I. “They are hidden from us, but they are always there, none the less.” Julia could not believe it.

One summer I spent some days with the family in a big country-house in the province of Kaluga. The estate was an island in a loop of a little river. I spent one morning watching the fish which swarmed in the water of the river, and I longed for a rod and a line. Not that I ever caught many fish in that way. But when I was seven years old some one gave me Izaak Walton and a fishing-rod, and I slept with _The Compleat Angler_ under my pillow. I had visions of great captures of fish. The one thing wanting was a grasshopper. Izaak was always talking of grasshoppers, and I had lost faith in worms and paste. But though I heard grasshoppers in many country banks I could never find one. Here at Dietchino were both grasshoppers and fish in manifest abundance.

In the little river were perch and gudgeon and chub, minnows, pike. I watched the sinister shadows of the pike. They moved about like sharks, and every now and then there would be a splash as if a branch had dropped into the water, and I would see six or seven little fish jumping bodily out of the water as a murderous pike rushed at them, and they fled in terror. The fish seemed pretty hungry. I caught several grasshoppers and rather cruelly threw them on to the surface of the lake and watched the perch snatch them away. A sad end for the grasshoppers, but a better luncheon for the fish. Lena and her next sister, Olya, were much horrified at my action, though they were too kind and well-trained to say more than “Oh!” when I mentioned it. Later Olya told me how one evening she had seen that on one of the lines left by the village boys a fish was caught and struggling, and how she came next morning and the fish was still on the hook and not taken in, and she thought it so cruel, and wrote a letter to the boy and pinned it on a tree near by.

Some time after that we went out one day and watched the fish. Little Lena had three biscuits in her coat pocket in case she should be hungry. But she broke up two of them and threw the bits to the fish, and we saw them come and eat the fragments with as much avidity as they had taken the grasshoppers I provided. We were out for a walk; Lena and I went on, and she kept one remaining biscuit in case she should be hungry. Presently along the road came a familiar dog and fawned around us ingratiatingly. “Poor dog!” said Lena, “it’s just had puppies, it is very hungry,” and she took out her last biscuit and gave it to the dog.

The little girl has an almost perfect character, and the fact that she will never do or think anything unkind has a constraining effect on elders in her presence; and yet she is an open-air little girl, and rows and bathes and plays games and goes long walks, as any boy might wish his sister to do.

Each of the four sisters has inherited consumption, and though not actually in consumption they have all a certain fragility and slenderness. Their only brother died of consumption, a clever boy, who never for a moment permitted grief to enter the hearts of those who were tending him. All was mirth and laughter at his death-bed. Joke after joke, idea after idea put forward. All agreed that it would be absurd to wear black for such a one. And the sisters and near friends went to the funeral in bright summer dresses. They were of those who hope all things, believe all things.

This winter Julia was chiefly engaged arranging popular lectures on the Oriental religions—“in order to give an interest in religion to those who had fallen away from Orthodoxy and had now no religion at all.” She had set a room apart for meetings and given it the atmosphere of a church, and there was a library of several hundred volumes to which visitors referred frequently. She kept open house, and I have often been there in the evening when there were more than a dozen visitors sitting at the long table of the dining-room having tea. There would be all sorts of people, some real seekers, others of a friendly gossipy type. Many of them were really foreign to Julia’s nature and temperament, wrapped up in themselves and consequently not able to realise what a sweet and wise and wonderful woman their hostess was. But all were welcome.

Julia’s grandmother, a very gentle and simple old lady of eighty, always presided on these occasions, and if she were not drinking tea, a space would be cleared on the tablecloth and _patience_ would be laid out. She is always in black, has large eyes and fine brow and a magnificent Roman nose, regards the cards intently, and puts them one upon another deliberately and solemnly as if she knew all their secrets and were the Queen of Spades herself. But she listens to all that is said, and can repeat almost the whole of the conversation after the people are gone. She is of the old Orthodox Russian type and dwells under the ikons. No meal is ever begun without her grace being said. And she also has the gentle spirit of altruism. Every other Sunday night a rather obstinate old lady who belongs to the Evangelical Christians comes and sits beside her and reads in a loud distinct voice a volume of Spurgeon’s sermons in translation. And the old lady asks no questions, always seems to be pleased, and goes on putting out her cards and making up her patience pack in sympathetic silence.

* * * * *

Julia has lived in France and England, and she especially likes the English. “They have learned to be so kind,” she would say. “They take care not to injure people’s feelings when they talk. They are gentle, and they are not unjust, they are fair. They are centuries in front of us Russians in that way.”

That observation struck me very forcibly when I heard it; for Julia has herself an English manner. She is like an English lady of quality of the best type. She has that something which she admires in us expressed in herself.

It is good that the standard notion of an Englishman which one finds in Russia is something which corresponds to this praise which Julia gave us. The Russians see us at our best, that is, as we really are, and they admire us. They like our quiet kindness and fairness. They admire our passion for social reform and “putting the world right.”

Julia also is “helping to build the kingdom of heaven upon earth,” helping to make the world really ready for the Master when He comes again. She is an _Eager-Heart_, who would even give up her chance of sheltering the heavenly Babe and wondrous Mother in order to take in a human babe and earthly mother homeless in the snow.

That is the way of Martha, the finding of Christ in the suffering human being in the world, the realisation of “Inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of these ye did it unto Me” as contrasted with the way of Mary—the denial of the world and of the reality of the suffering in it, the pouring of the ointment on the feet of Christ instead of selling it and giving the proceeds to the poor.

The way of Martha implies a great number of workers and the consequent necessary organisation—a church. It has its priests, its temples and buildings, its ceremonies and sermons. The hermit needs no church, no temple or priest, but the worker in the world needs everything.

Hence the pomp and splendour of the Church is associated with the way of Martha. Its faith is carried like a great banner wherein is depicted a world set free, a kingdom of heaven upon earth. The ranks of the world are understood as grades of authority in the great business of well-doing, and kings and men are consecrated with solemn rites to the service of God. We are enrolled as soldiers of the heavenly King and need a religious music which is military, and appeals of sound and colour which stir the heart.

So in Nesterof’s picture of Martha and Mary,[12] Martha is painted in resplendent rose and is in the forefront, whilst the mystical-faced Mary is darkly robed and stands behind her sister. So in Christianity all that is visibly and obviously splendid is associated with the way of Martha—the wonderful cathedrals, the soul-stirring processions, holy wars, solemn rites and pageants. Martha is always to the fore and splendid, and goes to meet Christ, whilst her sister Mary remains in the background at home in faith.

Footnote 12:

The frontispiece of this book.

IX MARTHA’S TRUE WAY

The view I take of the miracles is this, that no one _met_ Jesus or _saw_ Him who was not miraculously affected in some way or other. The deaf began to hear, those who had never spoken in their lives had their lips unsealed, the cripples found out that they had the souls of men, the sick were as if they were well, scales fell from the eyes of the blind, and he who never saw anything in his life was suddenly awake to beauty. The outcast and the vile learned to believe in themselves; even the dead became alive. When John asked, “Art thou He who should come, or do we look for another?” it was sufficient to answer, “The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.”

And the miracles never cease. As they happened two thousand years ago, so they happen to-day. We have the vision, and our infirmities fall away: we see, we hear, we praise. Christ is ...

The subtle alchemist who in a trice Life’s barren metal into gold transmutes.