It was to visit the frozen sea and the miracle-working saint that I had come, and of the few passers-by who struggled against the snow I asked for Father John. At first I feared that the saint’s European fame had hardly yet reached Kronstadt, where he lives, and from which he takes his title. But after a time we were directed to a largish modern house, which he has fitted up as a refuge, partly, I think, for the poor, partly for the sick, or other unhappy people, who stand in need of miracles. The rooms inside are large and very clean, all filled with narrow iron bedsteads, covered with browny-grey blankets, as in our barracks or superior doss-houses. A notice on the door gave the price of a bed for the night at thirty kopecks—say sevenpence halfpenny. That is about threepence halfpenny higher than the average London doss, but it seems fair that those who seek a miracle should pay something extra for it, and the tariff in our common lodging-houses is not inclusive.
I had not time to make further observations when I was seized by an eager crowd of women who thronged the rooms and passages—peasant women from the mainland and work-people from the dockyards, all muffled up in shawls and hoods and blankets. Excited benevolence shone in their faces, as with cries and exhortations they clutched my clothing and hurried me through one large dormitory, which appeared to be a lying-in ward, into another where the crowd was thicker still. Being thrust eagerly among the worshippers—for there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth—I perceived a small altar beneath a large and brilliant icon hanging on the wall. The altar was made of a deal table with a white cloth over it, and on the cloth stood a large enamelled-iron soup-tureen. It was white with a blue edge, and filled with a yellowish liquid, which I supposed to be holy. In front of the altar, with his back towards us, stood a short, grey-haired figure, in a robe of black flowered damask or brocade, with a crimson border round the neck and halfway down the back.
He was just raising his hands in some act of adoration, when, becoming aware of the religious tumult of my entrance, he faced smartly round, abandoned the altar, and came, as it were, bounding in my direction. Uncertain how to receive him, I stood my ground and held out my hand; but entirely disregarding that, he sprang upon me, and raising himself lightly upon his toes—for the top of his head did not reach to my chin—with uplifted arm he began fumbling about in my hair with his fingers. It was so sudden. In five seconds I had received his blessing. He had blessed me by assault. For all I know, he had accomplished a miracle upon me. The women stood round and sighed their pleasure. “He never treats us to a blessing like that, never!” they murmured with admiring envy.
When he came to rest before me, I perceived that he was a little grey-bearded old gentleman, trim and lean and ruddy. He looked about sixty, but his followers say he is seventy-seven, so that his very activity is miraculous. One side of his forehead bulged with some disease, but from his pale grey eyes looked a healthy spirit. Kindly and innocent, practical, or even housewifely, I should say, rather than intellectual or inspired. There was nothing of the rapt mystic about him, nothing of the divine seer contemplating eternity. Indeed, I was told that he himself makes no claim to prophetic vision, and his gift of foretelling distant events must be unconscious. One of his chief attributes in sanctity appears to be that he lived with the same wife for fifty years, I believe all the time at Kronstadt; and I see no cause to question his miraculous powers, especially as I have known other people similarly endowed, though for qualifications of a different kind.
He stood there, smiling up at me for a moment with innocent good will, and I then perceived that the crimson border of his robe reached halfway down his chest, as well as down his back, and that round his neck, by a heavy silver chain, hung a large silver cross—the Russian Orthodox cross, with a short bar nailed low down upon the shaft for the feet of the Crucified to rest upon, and placed slantingly, so that one end might be higher than the other, because by Eastern tradition Christ was lame on the right foot. I also perceived that the saint’s hand, though fine in itself, was worn, as though by the labour of continual benediction. But observing that my eyes rested upon it, he smiled, more benignly than ever, and did what is perfectly natural to any Russian saint or lady—he held it up for me to kiss. It is a peril one is sure to encounter among the priests of the Orthodox Church, and over and over again I have resolved to go through with it manfully. But when the final moment comes, the stubborn British blood begins to jib and swerve, like a horse that cannot be brought up to his fences, and grasping his hand in mine I shook it warmly. I am afraid the women were grieved to think I should remain a heretic, in spite of all the advantages they had so eagerly procured me, but there was no help.
The little saint then turned back to the altar and took up the service where he had left off, just as a wood-pigeon takes up his comfortable cadence at the note where last it was broken. The people renewed their interrupted crossings and prostrations, and a young peasant beside me, his dark red hair covering his shoulders, and his single outer garment gathered round his waist with a rope, displayed incredible activity in striking his forehead against the bare boards and springing up again repeatedly almost without pause. I should like to have known for what favour he was so urgent, and willingly would I have granted it if it had been in my power, for no human being could have remained obdurate to such importunity. But the service ended, and with a throng accompanying him the saint, putting his great-coat over his robes and his goloshes over his boots, departed down the street to some other scene of hallowed beneficence.
It was hard to realize that this was Father John of Kronstadt, regarded by revolutionists as among the most dangerous enemies of the Movement. In the political cartoons he almost always figures among the leaders of reaction. One sees pictures of him in his vestments standing beside a cannon trained upon the crowd, or with the other Ministers admiring a huge Christmas tree hung with skulls. His saying, at the time of Father Gapon’s procession, that “only a sinner could strive against his Tsar,” is well known. He is believed, perhaps truly, to possess great influence in the Tsar’s family, especially over the women, such as the Dowager Tsarina. According to rumour, his advice is invariably given against every proposal of change or advancement, and the enthusiastic women who procured me his blessing, are identified with the mothers and wives of the most violent and merciless gang of the Black Hundred. That is all very possible, and the recent scandals about a certain Virgin of Kronstadt, who saw her way to making money out of the situation by vicarious sanctitude, are only such as seem to arise inevitably around a fellow mortal of much belauded virtue, whether they are true or not. It is very probable also that the mothers of the Black Hundred secure comparatively honest half-crowns by arranging special interviews and privileges for visitors to the saint. To be sure, I had not to pay a penny for my blessing, but I have known others, less favoured by Heaven, who expended as much as two pound ten for very inferior advantages. When all is said, the detraction of his opponents, and his own abhorrence of progress appear to me the least miraculous things about him. Take a man in youth, train him for years in a seminary where he meets no one but young priests like himself, and hears no one but old priests such as he is intended to become; give him no kind of knowledge but ritual and dogma, which he must accept unquestioned or perish; let him live many years with one woman in one small place, among people who never contradict him, but either regard his words as divine, or ignore them as parsonic; add a kindly simplicity to the blank of ignorance; expose a rather small and finikin personality to feminine adulation; and if you do not produce the very model of priesthood as exemplified in Father John of Kronstadt, there will be a miracle indeed.
I struggled back again across the frozen sea, where the storm raged with increased violence, and on reaching St. Petersburg, I hastened to a remarkable gathering in the great hall of the Conservatorium. It was a concert given by a body which, with intentional vagueness, called itself the Committee of the Working People, and its purpose was to raise funds for the assistants at the Workmen’s Dining Rooms. The performance was announced for eight o’clock, but I need not have hastened; for, as I have already noticed, there is no pedantic and inconsiderate punctuality in Russian affairs, and when I arrived, some three quarters of an hour late, I found the huge audience still pouring in, and I might have waited another half-hour without missing any of the programme. But at concerts the audience is usually the most interesting part, at all events to a foreigner, and I found myself in the midst of the very people who, until quite lately, have been the real revolutionists of Russia. Not very many actual work-people were there, for the prices of seats kept them away; but the vast concert-hall was soon packed with the educated, the professional men and women, the “proletariat of intellect”—writers, journalists, barristers, doctors, crowds of students, and a good many officers in uniform, though I think that perhaps most of them were army doctors. The scene was a fine example of the frank democracy that distinguishes the Russian people—the enviable disregard of all the weary old distinctions of rank, profession, wealth, or dress. It arises, perhaps, from the ancient village communism, as I have already suggested, and from the common use of Christian names and diminutives, which spreads a brotherly feeling among all classes. Perhaps also from the comparative unimportance of commercial people until lately; for in most countries it is the commercial classes that maintain inequality. In no society, outside savagedom, have I found such indifference to the nature and distinctions of dress as in Russia. At this concert every class and fashion of costume was to be seen, and no one was regarded as a queer and dubious character if he dressed to please himself. It is quite possible, no doubt, that the brains of many there stood above the freezing point of British social sanity, but in all that I have seen of Russian life, I have observed the same democratic ease, the same disregard of the dress that marks a class distinction. It is this sense of the equality of men that brings the Russians and the French together and makes the monstrous alliance of their Governments appear almost natural.
Of course, the whole audience was revolutionary, but in Russia revolution is not thought to imply insanity so much as intelligence, and large numbers had determined there should be no doubt as to their opinions. Many of the students, with long hair all on end, wore the Russian tunic, and no one stared. Some girl-students—those indomitable “Kursistki,” on whom the soldiers have no mercy—were dressed in the loose black blouse, fitting closely to the throat and buttoned along the top of the shoulder instead of down the front or back. A few gentler spirits had yielded to a tiny edge of white collar above the black. But the blouse of the violent shone red, all gules from throat to waist, and the more revolutionary a girl is by nature, the thicker is her hair, and the lower it hangs over her eyes and ears. Her little fur cap also has no brim, as others use, but is plain like a man’s; for a brim is compromise, and at the bottom of the slope of compromise lies ignoble peace.
In course of time the concert began. Perhaps concert is hardly the right word, for I suppose no human soul in all that mass of people had gone to hear music or singing, or cared very much what musical sounds were made. Certainly, the musical performers were good, but the interest lay with others—with the well-known young actress who in a voice only slightly more emotional than common speech recited some short poem which all could hear, while the piano played a hardly perceptible accompaniment; or with the famous author who just sat in a chair upon the stage, and read some vivid scene or parable from his own works or another’s. As often as not he read it badly, but that made no difference. This was no shrine of art for art’s sake. Behind those quiet and halting words burned the whole fire of the revolution, and the applause was not kept for the best performance, but for the most daring passage, or for the hero who had been longest imprisoned for the cause. Such applause as that I have never heard. There was a vital intensity in the enthusiasm that no art could inspire. Time after time the man or woman was recalled. Four times or five times the same piece would be repeated, and still the applause seemed as if it could not end. Eleven times one man was recalled, the whole audience standing up and shouting his name in a tumult of admiration. Not that he recited well, but it was his own work that he recited, and he had only just come out of gaol.