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 <strong>[12]</strong> if only a few kopeks, Khristi radi!" [13] 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.
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, [14] 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.
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.
The service ended, and the chief treasure of the monastery, the miraculous image of the Assumption of the Virgin,-the Falling Asleep of the Virgin is the Russian name,-was let slowly down on its silken cords from above the Imperial Gate, where a twelve-fold silver lamp, with glass cups of different colors, has burned unquenched since 1812, in commemoration of Russia's deliverance from "the twelve tribes," as the French invasion is termed. The congregation pressed forward eagerly to salute the venerated image. Tradition asserts that it was brought from Constantinople to Kieff in the year 1073, with the Virgin's special blessing for the monastery. By reason of age and the smoke from conflagrations in which the monastery has suffered, the image is so darkened that one is cast back upon one's imagination and the copies for comprehension of this treasure's outlines. What is perfectly comprehensible, however, is the galaxy of diamonds, brilliants, and gems thickly set in the golden garments which cover all but the hands and feet of the personages in the picture, and illuminate it with flashes of many-hued light. After a few minutes, the image was drawn up again to its place,-a most unusual position for a valued holy image, though certainly safe, and one not occupied, so far as I am aware, by any other in the country.
It occurred to us that it might prove an interesting experiment to try the monastery inn for breakfast, and even to sojourn there for a day or two, and abandon the open sewers and other traces of advanced civilization in the town. Our way thither led past the free lodgings for poor pilgrims, which were swarming with the devout of both sexes, although it was not the busiest season for shrine-visiting. That comes in the spring, before the harvest, at all monasteries, and, in this particular monastery, on the feast of the Assumption, August 15 (Russian style), 27 (European style). But there was a sufficient contingent of the annual one million pilgrims present to give us a very fair idea of the reverence in which this, the chief of all Russian monasteries, is held, and of the throngs which it attracts. But, as usual in Russia, sight alone convinced us of their existence; they were chatting quietly, sitting and lying about with enviable calmness, or eating the sour black bread and boiled buckwheat groats provided by the monastery. I talked with several of them, and found them quite unconscious that they were not comfortably, even luxuriously, housed and fed.
The inn for travelers of means was a large, plain, airy building, with no lodgers, apparently. The monks seemed frightened at the sight of us. That was a novelty. But they escorted us over the house in procession. We looked at a very clean, very plain room, containing four beds. It appeared, from their explanations, that pilgrims have gregarious tastes, and that this was their nearest approach to a single room. I inquired the price. "According to your zeal," was the reply. How much more effective than "What you please" in luring the silver from lukewarm pockets! The good monks never found out how warm our zeal was, after all, for the reason that their table was never furnished with anything but fish and "fasting food," they said, though there was no fast in progress. The reason why, I could not discover; but we knew our own minds thoroughly on the subject of "fasting food," from mushroom soup, fish fried in sunflower oil, and coffee without milk to that most insipid of dessert dishes, kisel, made of potato flour, sweetened, and slightly soured with fruit juice. They told us that we might have meat sent out from town, if we wished; but as the town lay several versts distant, that did not seem a very practical way of coquetting with the Evil One under their roof. Accordingly, we withdrew; to their relief, I am sure. As we had already lived in a monastery inn, it had not occurred to us that there could be any impropriety in doing so, but that must have been the cause of their looks of alarm. I believe that one can remain for a fortnight at this inn without payment, unless conscience interferes; and people who had stayed there told me that meat had been served to them from the monastery kitchen; so that puzzle still remains a puzzle to me.
We went to see the brethren dine in the refectory, an ancient, vaulted building of stone, near the cathedral. Under a white stone slab near the entrance lie the bodies of Kotchubey and Iskra, who were unjustly executed by Peter the Great for their loyal denunciation of Mazeppa's meditated treachery. Within, the walls of the antechamber were decorated with dizzy perspective views of Jerusalem, the saints, and pious elders of the monastery. At the end of the long dining-hall, beyond an ikonostas, was a church, as is customary in these refectories. Judging from the number of servitors whom we had met hurrying towards the cells with sets of porcelain dinner-trays, not many monks intended to join the common table, and it did not chance to be one of the four days in the year when the Metropolitan of Kieff and other dignitaries dine there in full vestments.
At last, a score of monks entered, chanted a prayer at a signal from a small bell, and seated themselves on benches affixed to the wall which ran round three sides of the room. The napkins on the tables which stood before the benches consisted of long towels, each of which lay across four or five of the pewter platters from which they ate, as the table was set in preparation. If it had been a festal day, there would have been several courses, with beer, mead, and even wine to wash them down. As it was, the monks ate their black bread and boiled buckwheat groats, served in huge dishes, with their wooden spoons, and drank kvas, brewed from sour black bread, at a signal from the bell, after the first dish only, as the rule requires. While they ate, a monk, stationed at a desk near by, read aloud the extracts from the Lives of the Saints appointed for the day. This was one of the "sights," but we found it curious and melancholy to see strong, healthy men turned into monks and content with that meagre fare. Frugality and dominion over the flesh are good, of course, but minds from west of the Atlantic Ocean never seem quite to get into sympathy with the monastic idea; and we always felt, when we met monks, as though they ought all to be off at work somewhere,-I will not say "earning money," for they do that as it is in such great monasteries as that of Kieff, but lightening the burden of the peasants, impossible as that is under present conditions, or making themselves of some commonplace, practical use in the world.
The strongest point of the Lavra, even equal to the ancient and venerated ikona of the Assumption in the great cathedral, is the catacombs, from which the convent takes its name.
In the days of the early princes of Kieff, the heights now occupied by the Lavra were covered with a dense growth of birch forest, and entirely uninhabited. Later on, one of the hills was occupied by the village of Berostovo, and a palace was built adjoining the tiny ancient "Church of the Saviour in the Birch Forest," which I have already mentioned. It was the favorite residence of Prince-Saint Vladimir, and of his son, Prince Yaroslaff, after him. During the reign of the latter, early in the eleventh century, the priest of this little church, named Ilarion, excavated for himself a tiny cave, and there passed his time in devout meditation and solitary prayer. He abandoned his cave to become Metropolitan of Kieff. In the year 1051, the monk Antony, a native of the neighboring government of Tchernigoff, came to Kieff from Mount Athos, being dissatisfied with the life led in the then existing monasteries. After long wanderings over the hills of Kieff, he took possession of Ilarion's cave, and spent his days and nights in pious exercises. The fame of his devout life soon spread abroad, and attracted to him, for his blessing, not only the common people, but persons of distinction. Monks and worldlings flocked thither to join him in his life of prayer. Among the first of these to arrive was a youth of the neighborhood, named Fedosy. Antony hesitated, but at last accepted the enthusiastic recruit.
The dimensions of holy Antony 's cave were gradually enlarged; new cells, and even a tiny church, were constructed near it. Then Antony, who disliked communal life, retreated to the height opposite, separated from his first residence by a deep ravine, and dug himself another cave, where no one interfered with him. This was the origin of the caves of Fedosy, known at the present day as the "far catacombs," and of the caves of Antony, called the "near catacombs." The number of the monks continued to increase, and they soon erected a small wooden church aboveground, in the name of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin, as well as cells for those who could not be contained in the caverns. At the request of holy Antony, the prince gave the whole of the heights where the catacombs are situated to the brethren, and in 1062 a large new monastery, surrounded by a stockade, was erected on the spot where the Cathedral of the Assumption now stands. Thus was monastic life introduced into Russia.
The venerated monastery shared all the vicissitudes of the "Mother of all Russian Cities" in the wars of the Grand Princes and the incursions of external enemies, such as Poles and Tatars. But after each disaster it waxed greater and more flourishing. Restored, after a disastrous fire in 1718, by the zeal of Peter the Great and his successors, enriched by the gifts of all classes, the Lavra now consists of six monasteries,-like a university of colleges,-four situated within the inclosure, while two are at a distance of several versts, and serve as retreats and as places of burial for the brethren. The catacombs, abandoned as residences on the construction of the cells above ground, have not escaped disasters by caving in. Drains to carry off the percolating water, and stone arches to support the soil, have been constructed, and a flourishing orchard has been planted above them to aid in holding the soil together. Earthquakes in the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries permanently closed many of them, and when the Tatars attacked the town, in the thirteenth century, the monks boarded up all the niches and filled in the entrances with earth. Some of these boards were removed about a hundred years ago; some are still in place. The original extent of the caves cannot now be determined.
The entrance to the near catacombs of St. Antony is through a long wooden gallery supported on stone posts, at a sharp slope, as they are situated twenty-four fathoms below the level of the cathedral, and twenty-two fathoms above the level of the Dnyepr.
A fat merchant, with glowing black eyes and flowing, crisp, black beard, his tall, wrinkled boots barely visible beneath his long, full-skirted coat of dark blue cloth, hooked closely across his breast, descended the gallery with us. Roused to curiosity, probably, by our foreign tongue, he inquired, on the chance of our understanding Russian, whence we came.
I had already arrived at the conclusion that the people at Kieff, especially the monks and any one who breathed the atmosphere within their walls, were of an enterprising, inquisitive disposition. My last encounter had been with the brother detailed, for his good looks and fascinating manners, to preside over the chief image shop of the monastery.
"Where do you come from?" he had opened fire, with his most bewitching glance.
"From the best country on earth."
"Is it Germany?"
The general idea among the untraveled classes in Russia is, that all of the earth which does not belong to their own Emperor belongs to Germany, just as nyemetzky means "German" or "foreign," indifferently.
"No; guess again," I said.
" France?"
"No; further away."
" England, then?"
"No."
" Hungary?"
Evidently that man's geography was somewhat mixed, so I told him.
" America!" he exclaimed, with great vivacity. "Yes, indeed, it is the best land of all. It is the richest!"
So that is the monastic as well as the secular standard of worth! This experience, repeated frequently and nearly word for word, had begun to weary me. Consequently I led the fat merchant a verbal chase, and baffled him until he capitulated with, "Excuse me. Take no offense, I beg, sudarynya. I only asked so by chance." Then I told him with the same result.
This was not the last time, by many, that I was put through my national catechism in Kieff. Every Kievlyanin to whom I spoke quizzed me. Of course I was on a grand quizzing tour myself, but that was different, in some way.
Over the entrance to these catacombs stands a church. The walls of the vestibule where my mother, the merchant, and I waited for a sufficient party to assemble, were covered with frescoes representing the passage of the soul through the various stages of purgatory. Beginning with the death scene (which greatly resembled the ikona of the Assumption in the cathedral) in the lower left-hand corner, the white-robed soul, escorted by two angels, passed through all the halting-places for the various sins, each represented by the appointed devil, duly labeled. But the artist's fancy had not been very fruitful on this fascinating theme. The devils were so exactly alike that the only moral one could draw was, that he might as well commit the biggest and most profitable sin on the list, and make something out of it in this life, as to confine himself to the petty peccadilloes which profit not here, and get well punished hereafter. The series ended with the presentation of the soul before the judgment seat, on the fortieth day after death. Round the corner, Lazarus reclining in Abraham's bosom and the rich man in the flames were conversing, their remarks crossing each other in mid-air, in a novel fashion.
When the guide was ready, each of us bought a taper, and the procession set out through the iron grating, down a narrow, winding stair, from which low, dark passages opened out at various angles. On each side of these narrow passages, along which we were led, reposed the "incorruptible" bodies of St. Antony and his comrades, in open coffins lacquered or covered with sheets of silver. The bodies seemed very small, and all of one size, and they were wrapped in hideous prints or plaid silks. At the head of each saint flickered a tiny shrine-lamp, before a holy picture (ikona) of the occupant of the coffin. It was a surprise to find the giant Ilya of Murom, who figures as the chief of the bogatyri (heroes) in the Russian epic songs, ensconced here among the saints, and no larger than they. Next to the silk-enveloped head of St. John the Great Sufferer, which still projects as in life, when he buried himself to the neck in the earth,-as though he were not sufficiently underground already,-in order to preserve his purity, the most gruesome sight which we beheld in those dim catacombs was a group of chrism-exuding skulls of unknown saints, under glass bells.
On emerging from this gloomy retreat, we postponed meditating upon the special pleasure which the Lord was supposed to have taken in seeing beings made to live aboveground turning into troglodytes, and set out for the Fedosy, or far catacombs, in the hope that they might assist us in solving that problem.
We chose the most difficult way, descending into the intervening ravine by innumerable steps to view the two sacred wells, only to have our raging thirst and our curiosity effectually quenched by the sight of a pilgrim thrusting his head, covered with long, matted hair, into one of them. The ascent of more innumerable steps brought us to the cradle of the monastery, Ilarion's caverns.
In the antechamber we found a phenomenally stupid monk presiding over the sale of the indispensable tapers, and the offerings which the devout are expected to deposit, on emerging, as a memento of their visit. These offerings lay like mountains of copper before him. The guide had taken himself off somewhere, and the monk ordered us, and the five Russians who were also waiting, to go in alone and "call to the monk in the cave." We flatly declined to take his word that there was any monk, or to venture into the dangerous labyrinth alone, and we demanded that he should accompany us.
"No guide-no candles, no coppers," we said.
That seemed to him a valid argument. Loath to leave his money at the mercy of chance comers, he climbed up and closed the iron shutters of the grated window,-the cliff descended, sheer, one hundred and two feet to the Dnyepr at that point,-double-locked the great iron doors, and there we were in a bank vault, with all possible customers excluded. Luckily, the saints in these caverns, which differed very little from those in the former, were labeled in plain letters, since the monk was too dull-witted to understand the simplest questions from any of us. At intervals we were permitted a hasty glimpse of a cell, about seven feet square, furnished only with a stone bench, and a holy picture, with a shrine-lamp suspended before it. Ugh! There were several sets of chrism-dripping saintly skulls in these catacombs, also,-fifteen of the ghastly things in one group. I braced my stomach to the task, and scrutinized them all attentively; but not a single one of them winked or nodded at me in approval, as a nun from Kolomna, whom I had met in Moscow, asserted that they had at her. I really wished to see how an eyeless skull could manage a wink, and hoped I might be favored.
After traversing long distances of this subterranean maze, and peering into the "cradle of the monastery," St. Antony's cell, the procession came to a halt in a tiny church. There stood a monk, actually, though we might have wandered all day and come out on the banks of the Dnyepr without finding him, had we gone in without a guide. Beside him, denuded of its glass bell, stood one of the miraculous skulls. The first Russian approached, knelt, crossed himself devoutly, and received from the priest the sign of the cross on his brow, administered with a soft, small brush dipped in the oil from the skull. Then he kissed the priest's hand, crossed himself again, and kissed the skull. When we beheld this, we modestly stood aside, and allowed our companions, the other four Russian men, to receive anointment in like manner, and pass on after the monk, who was in haste to return to his bank vault. As I approached the priest, he raised his brush.
"We are not Orthodox Christians, batiushka," [15] I said. "But pray give us your blessing."
He smiled, and, dropping his brush, made the sign of the cross over us. I was perfectly willing to kiss his pretty, plump hand,-I had become very skillful at that sort of thing,-but I confess that I shrank from the obligatory salute to the skull, and from that special chrism. Nevertheless, I wished the Russians to think that I had gone through with the whole ceremony, if they should chance to look back. I felt sure that I could trust the priest to be liberal, but I was not so certain that our lay companions, who were petty traders and peasants, might not be sufficiently fanatical to construe our refusal into disrespect for their church, and resent it in some way.
Though we returned to the monastery more than once after that, we were never attracted to the catacombs again, not even to witness the mass at seven o'clock in the morning in that subterranean church. The beautiful services in the cathedral, the stately monks, the picturesque pilgrims, with their gentle manners, ingenuous questions, and simple tales of their journeys and beliefs, furnished us with abundant interest in the cheerful sunlight aboveground.
Next to the Catacombs Monastery, the other most famous and interesting sight of Kieff is the Cathedral of St. Sophia. Built on the highest point of the ancient city, with nine apses turned to the east, crowned by one large dome and fourteen smaller domes,-all gilded, some terminating in crosses, some in sunbursts,-surrounded by turf and trees within a white wall, with entrance under a lofty belfry, it produces an imposing but reposeful effect. The ancient walls, dating from the year 1020, are of red brick intermixed with stone, stuccoed and washed with white. It has undergone changes, external and internal, since that day, and its domes and spires are of the usual degenerate South Russian type, without a doubt of comparatively recent construction. So many of its windows have been blocked up by additions, and so cut up is its space by large frescoed pillars, into sixteen sections, that one steps from brilliant sunshine into deep twilight when he enters the cathedral. It is a sort of church which possesses in a high degree that indefinable charm of sacred atmosphere that tempts one to linger on and on indefinitely within its precincts. Not that it is so magnificent; many churches in the two capitals and elsewhere in Russia are far richer. It is simply one of those indescribable buildings which console one for disappointments in historical places, as a rule, by making one believe, through sensations unconsciously influenced, not through any effort of the reason, that ancient deeds and memories do, in truth, linger about their birthplace.
Ancient frescoes, discovered about forty years ago, some remaining in their original state, others touched up with more or less skill and knowledge, mingle harmoniously with those of more recent date. Very singular are the best preserved, representing hunting parties and banquets of the Grand Princes, and scenes from the earthly life of Christ. But they are on the staircase leading to the old-fashioned gallery, and do not disturb the devotional character of the decoration in the church itself.
From the wall of the apse behind the chief of the ten altars gazes down the striking image of the Virgin, executed in ancient mosaic, with her hands raised in prayer, whom the people reverently call "The Indestructible Wall." This, with other mosaics and the frescoes on the staircase, dates from the eleventh century.
I stood among the pillars, a little removed from the principal aisle, one afternoon near sunset, listening to the melodious intoning of the priest, and the soft chanting of the small week-day choir at vespers, and wondering, for the thousandth time, why Protestants who wish to intone do not take lessons from those incomparable masters in the art, the Russian deacons, and wherein lies the secret of the Russian ecclesiastical music. That simple music, so perfectly fitted for church use, will bring the most callous into a devotional mood long before the end of the service. Rendered as it invariably is by male voices, with superb basses in place of the non-existent organ, it spoils one's taste forever for the elaborate, operatic church music of the West performed by choirs which are usually engaged in vocal steeplechases with the organ for the enhancement of the evil effects. My meditations were interrupted by the approach of a young man, who asked me to be his godmother! He explained that he was a Jew from Minsk, who had never studied "his own religion," and was now come to Kieff for the express purpose of getting himself baptized by the name of Vladimir, the tenth century prince and patron saint of the town. As he had no acquaintances in the place, he was in a strait for god-parents, who were indispensable.
"I cannot be your godmother," I answered. "I am neither pravoslavnaya nor Russian. Cannot the priest find sponsors for you?"
"That is not the priest's place. His business is merely to baptize. But perhaps he might be persuaded to manage that also, if I had better clothes."
He wore a light print shirt, tolerably clean, belted outside his dark trousers, and his shoes and cap were respectable enough.
I recalled instances which I had heard from the best authority-a priest-of priests finding sponsors for Jews, and receiving medals or orders in reward for their conversion. I recalled an instance related to me by a Russian friend who had acted, at the priest's request, as godmother to a Jewess so fat that she stuck fast in the receptacle used for the baptism by immersion; and I questioned the man a little. He said that he had a sister living in New York, and gave me her name and address in a manner which convinced me that he knew what he was saying. He had no complaint to make of his treatment by either Russians or Jews; and when I asked him why he did not join his sister in America, he replied,
"Why should I? I am well enough off here."
Perhaps I ought to state that he was a plumber by trade. On the other hand, justice demands the explanation that Russian plumbing in general is not of a very complicated character, and in Minsk it must be of a very simple kind, I think.
He intended to return to Minsk as soon as he was baptized. How he expected to attend the Russian Church in Minsk when he had found it inexpedient to be baptized there was one of the points which he omitted to explain.
I was at last obliged to bid him a decisive "good-day," and leave the church. He followed, and passed me in the garden, his cap cocked jauntily over his tight bronze curls, and his hips swaying from side to side in harmony. Under the long arch of the belfry-tower gate hung a picture, adapted to use as an ikona, which set forth how a mother had accidentally dropped her baby overboard from a boat on the Dnyepr, and coming, disconsolate, to pray before the image of St. Nicholas, the patron of travelers, she had found her child lying there safe and sound; whence this holy picture is known by the name of St. Nicholas the Wet.
Before this ikona my Jew pulled off his cap, and crossed himself rapidly and repeatedly, watching me out of the corner of his eye, meanwhile, to see how his piety impressed me. It produced no particular effect upon me, except to make me engage a smart-looking cabby to take me to my hotel, close by, by a roundabout route. Whether this Jew returned to Minsk as Vladimir or as Isaac I do not know; but I made a point of mentioning the incident to several Russian friends, including a priest, and learned, to my surprise, that, though I was not a member of a Russian Church, I could legally have stood godmother to a man, though I could not have done so to a woman; and that a godmother could have been dispensed with. Men who are not members of the Russian Church can, in like manner, stand as godfathers to women, but not to men. Moreover, every one seemed to doubt the probability of a Jew quitting his own religion in earnest, and they thought that his object had been to obtain from me a suit of clothes, practical gifts to the godchild being the custom in such cases. I had been too dull to take the hint!
A few months later, a St. Petersburg newspaper related a notorious instance of a Jew who had been sufficiently clever to get himself baptized a number of times, securing on each occasion wealthy and generous sponsors. Why the man from Minsk should have selected me, in my plain serge traveling gown, I cannot tell, unless it was because he saw that I did not wear the garb of the Russian merchant class, or look like them, and observation or report had taught him that the aristocratic classes above the merchants are most susceptible to the pleasure of patronizing converts; though to do them justice, Russians make no attempt at converting people to their church. I have been assured by a Russian Jew that his co-religionists never do, really, change their faith. Indeed, it is difficult to understand how they can even be supposed to do so, in the face of their strong traditions, in which they are so thoroughly drilled. Therefore, if Russians stand sponsors to Jews, while expressing skepticism as to conversion in general, they cannot complain if unscrupulous persons take advantage of their inconsistency. I should probably have refused to act as godmother, even had I known that I was legally entitled to do so.
Our searches in the lower town, Podol, for rugs like those in the monastery resulted in nothing but amusement. Those rugs had been made in the old days of serfdom, on private estates, and are not to be bought.
By dint of loitering about in the churches, monasteries, catacombs, markets, listening to that Little Russian dialect which is so sweet on the lips of the natives, though it looks so uncouth when one sees their ballads in print, and by gazing out over the ever beautiful river and steppe, I came at last to pardon Kieff for its progress. I got my historical and mythological bearings. I felt the spirit of the Epic Songs stealing over me. I settled in my own mind the site of Fair-Sun Prince Vladimir's palace of white stone, the scene of great feasts, where he and his mighty heroes quaffed the green wine by the bucketful, and made their great brags, which resulted so tragically or so ludicrously. I was sure I recognized the church where Diuk Stepanovitch "did not so much pray as gaze about," and indulged in mental comments upon clothes and manners at the Easter mass, after a fashion which is not yet obsolete. I imagined that I descried in the blue dusk of the distant steppe Ilya of Murom approaching on his good steed Cloudfall, armed with a damp oak uprooted from Damp Mother Earth, and dragging at his saddle-bow fierce, hissing Nightingale the Robber, with one eye still fixed on Kieff, one on Tchernigoff, after his special and puzzling habit, and whom Little Russian tradition declares was chopped up into poppy seeds, whence spring the sweet-voiced nightingales of the present day.
The "atmosphere" of the cradle of the Epic Songs and of the cradle of Pravoslavnaya Russia laid its spell upon me on those heights, and even the sight of the cobweb suspension bridge in all its modernness did not disturb me, since with it is connected one of the most charming modern traditions, a classic in the language, which only a perfect artist could have planned and executed.
The thermometer stood at 120 degrees Fahrenheit when we took our last look at Kieff, the Holy City.
<a l:href="#_ftnref12">[12]</a> Madam.
<a l:href="#_ftnref12">[13]</a> For Christ's sake.
<a l:href="#_ftnref14">[14]</a> Image screens.
<a l:href="#_ftnref15">[15]</a> Little father.