The Abbess Magdalena.
When I was being introduced to the Ekaterinburg deacon, my friend and interpreter whispered to me, “He gave up the opera to come here.” I thought, in my ignorance, that he had left the world for religion, and full of sympathetic interest said:—
“Ask him if he has ever regretted it!” and was rather disconcerted when he said in an off-hand way:—
“Oh! well of course I missed things at first, but I’m gradually getting used to it.”
The Abbess confided to us that sometimes from the way he offered the incense she thought he must be thinking he was on the stage still.
He was a remarkably good-looking man with a wonderfully rich voice, and as none of the clergy ever cut hair or beard after Ordination, and his was just getting full, he looked a most picturesque and interesting figure. I should like to meet him again, and put the same question, in the hope of a somewhat more encouraging answer.
The Abbess, as well as managing and inspiring her sisters, superintends a really remarkable work. Her revenue is a very large one, and she gives a portion of it to the Bishop of Ekaterinburg for the work of his diocese—he is a young and energetic prelate whom I greatly liked when I knew him later—and out of the remainder she supports an Orphanage for six hundred girls in the Convent. The remarkable thing, however, about her management is its essentially practical, sensible, and considerate character. The girls do not wear a uniform, but can consult and improve their own taste in dress. They are carefully studied individually, and, while all are educated in school in the same way, special preparation is given for different callings in life according to the inclination and aptitude shown by the girls. Many, of course, prefer domestic service as being simpler and perhaps more in keeping with what they have known before coming there; but the more enterprising and competent can be, and are, taught all sorts of things which these very modern nuns do with such great ability themselves. They play, sing, do all sorts of “white work” for Russian and French purchasers, and are well up in modern photography. They carve, paint, make ikons, illuminate pictures, and do wonderful embroidery. There is a wide choice, therefore, for the girls under their charge, and they avail themselves of it to the full. Just before I was there a girl with a wonderful voice, after having been trained, had been launched, at the age of twenty-six, upon her career as a member of the Russian Imperial Opera.
I described this very modern work as carried out by the nuns of a very ancient convent, on my return, to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who remarked significantly, as I daresay many of my readers will, “And that is in Siberia!”
From Abbess let me pass to Abbot, but to a very different community. At Tiumen, the farthest point I reached in North Siberia, and where I had been to give services to a family living alone there, and from Scotland originally, I went out in the afternoon to see an old church outside the town where there had formerly been a fairly large monastery. It is very small and humble now, I am sure, from the few we saw there, and their neglected appearance as they went about their work in old and well-worn habits. The church was locked, but one of their number fetched the keys and showed us over the church, explaining their oldest ikons. As we walked towards the gate and our little carriage, he was full of curiosity about ourselves and our Church, and at last, as he questioned me rather closely, my friend could keep it in no longer, and explained:—