The Henson Journals

[171]

Wednesday, August 5th, 1925.

The night had been wet, and the morning broke very dismally, but the day improved as it advanced, and the afternoon was fine, save for the sultriness of the air, and the occasional rumbling of thunder. After lunch we all motored to Purleigh and had tea with Canon and Mrs Macdonald. The church is a pleasant building, but has no outstanding features. The Vicarage is a commodious modern house. Macdonald looks well, & seems contented with his lot. Freddie had gone to Oxford to take his degree. He only gained a 3rd class in the Final School of Lit: Hum:, but, as he has secured appointment as an assistant master at Fettes College, his father appears to be contented. On our homeward journey, we stopped to visit the Cathedral of Chelmsford. It is no more in appearance than what it was originally meant to be, a large parish church. I recalled the time when I used to preach there not rarely at the invitation of the Rector, afterwards Bishop Suffragan of Colchester, Frank Johnston, who was much attached to me, and showed me no small kindness.

To dinner there came a lady (Miss Keeleigh) who had been governess to some members of the Russian Royal House, & had considerable knowledge of Russian life under the late régime. Her conversation was interesting, intelligent, and informing in no common degree.

[172] [symbol]

We spoke of the collapse of the Russian church, & I expressed my surprise that in a state of society comparable with that of 13th century England the Church should have been so powerless. Miss K. replied that the extreme ignorance of the Russian clergy explained their helplessness before Revolution. The medieval clergy in England had all the knowledge of the age, but not so in modern Russia, where the clergy were rather conspicuous by their ignorance. She gave an illustration which had come within her own knowledge while living with her pupils on the estate of a great landowner. In an epidemic of black fever the parish pope had insisted on communicating all the infants from the same spoon, which became a potent instrument of infection, so that almost all the infants in the parish perished. When rebuked for his folly, he stood stiffly on his spiritual rights, and refused to alter his practice until an order from Podiedonortzeff was obtained, by which time the mischief had been done. The same pope was as greedy as he was ignorant. On one occasion he refused to bury a corpse until the fees were paid, which was done by the said landowner, who, however, "got his own back" by cutting off the supply of firewood from his estate which the pope had been wont to receive. While the ignorance of the Russian clergy alienated the upper classes, & all the intelligentsia, their exorbitant greed bred hostility in the peasants. So when the stroke of Revolution fell, they had no friends.

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