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  This led, as the letter to Reverend Green suggests, to Reynolds almost becoming a monk himself. In this period he travelled throughout Britain forging close and lasting links with monastic orders, in particular the Benedictines. Records remain of his visit to monks at Milton Abbas in Dorset in the summer of 1899 and Caldey Island, off the coast of Wales, in 1901. Reynolds stayed on the island for a week, saying Mass each day in Latin. He was moving closer, month-by-month, to taking up the monk’s life for good.

  There was one order of monks to which he was especially close. Seventy miles south of Darlington, in Painsthorpe, Yorkshire, dwelt a group of Anglo-Catholic monks led by Abbot Aelred Carlyle. This band of Benedictine monks had been a leading Anglo-Catholic community and emphasised the Catholic heritage of the Anglican Church.28 They had been the first Benedictine monastic order accepted into the Church of England. But times were difficult. The monks were under pressure over the question of how smoothly their Anglo-Catholicism fitted within Anglicanism. In 1913 the dam broke and they were received into the Roman Catholic faith.

  The order’s struggle over the question mirrors the internal conflict faced by Reynolds, who was closely connected to the group. One contribution he made to the Painsthorpe monks stands out. In 1904 he played an instrumental role in founding Pax, a new quarterly magazine for their community that is still produced today. Reynolds was thirty-two at the time and it was the first time he had been published.

  Some years later, Carlyle’s monks – who were to settle permanently at Prinknash Abbey in Gloucestershire in 1928, where they remain today – discovered the anonymous editorial in the first issue of Pax was authored by Reynolds. The article demonstrates the affection Reynolds felt for the order and his closeness to it. ‘The community, now living at Painsthorpe, has been in existence for more than ten years, and its circle of friends is continually increasing,’ he wrote. ‘The difficulty of keeping in touch with so many is great, and we have come to the point reached by so many communities, when a magazine becomes a necessity.’

  Reynolds then turned to Benedict, the patron saint of Europe who inspired the founding of the order, and explained why the magazine had been named after the Latin word for peace. ‘St Benedict is, above all, the Saint who proclaimed Christ’s message of peace in an age of unrest and social upheaval,’ he wrote. ‘The title given to the present publication is not, then, due to fancy or caprice, but has been adopted because it represents the spirit which those fighting under the rule of St Benedict desire to cultivate in themselves and to propagate among others.’

  Reynolds was a campaigning Christian – which would prove important during his time in Nazi Germany. He believed religion could cure social ills. To him, monks of the order were not living but ‘fighting’ under the rule of St Benedict. ‘We have spoken of fighting, and with reason, for the Christian paradox must never be forgotten, that peace comes through war,’ he wrote. ‘It was after the din of battle that the St Benedict emerged the Saint of the Placid Countenance.’

  ‘Alfred Rothay Reynolds was a great friend of the Prinknash Community in the early years of the twentieth century’, according to Aelred Baker, who serves as archivist for the order. In the decades that followed, Reynolds found time to write several articles for Pax on subjects ranging from Russia’s ‘Festival of Summer’ in 1916 to ‘Poles at Prayer’ in 1939. Such was his closeness to Carlyle’s order of monks that he seriously considered joining them and pursuing a monastic life. But he never followed through on promises to do so, retreating for the third and final time in July 1902. A monk’s life of seclusion and contemplation was not for Reynolds. Faith was central to his life but the outside world was just too interesting. Reynolds was not forgotten by Carlyle’s order, which regards him highly over a century later. He remembered them in his will, leaving his collection of books to the order.

  The years after university were busy for Reynolds. Even in the midst of his time serving English churches and communing with monks he found the time to return to Cambridge and obtain a Master’s degree in 1901. He lasted longer in Nottingham than Darlington but the two churches and his monastic diversions could not sate his yearning for new experiences. He visited Carlyle’s order again in August 1904 before leaving quietly. Planning was well-advanced for his next religious appointment, one that few people could have anticipated. He left his position with the church in Nottingham and agreed to relocate to the Russia of Tsar Nicholas II. He moved to St Petersburg in 1904 as an assistant chaplain to the Anglican church attached to the British Embassy. Still feeling unready to serve as a priest, moving to such an exotic location offered him the new opportunities in languages and culture that he craved. It was a decision that would change his life forever. His years in Russia would prove decisive to the restive curate’s future course.

  - CHAPTER II -

  LAND OF THE TSARS

  Standing as dusk falls in the centre of St Petersburg’s Dvortsovaya Ploshchad – Palace Square – is a strangely paradoxical experience. It is remarkable because of the awe-inspiring scale and impressive grandeur of the Winter Palace, which dominates the open space before it. Yet it is also unsettling – mainly because the people are missing. As a landmark it is comparable to Trafalgar Square in London or St Peter’s Square in Rome, yet those places would be filled with tourists. St Petersburg has the attractions to compete with those tourist hubs, but recent events had led to a sharp fall in visitors when I travelled to the city in October 2014.

  I landed almost 110 years to the day after Reynolds’s first arrival in Russia. My trip was easier than his. While Reynolds faced a long journey over land and sea, the ease of modern air travel meant I could fly from London to St Petersburg in under four hours. There were similarities, though, in the political situation. Vladimir Putin’s decision to annex the Crimean region and covertly spread unrest in Ukraine had sent relations plunging to Cold War levels a few months before my arrival.

  It meant the atmosphere of uneasy relations between Russia and the West was comparable to when Reynolds arrived. At the start of the twentieth century, Russia and Britain were far from the best of international friends. Russia was seen as a mysterious land peopled by strange and rather untrustworthy souls. This situation improved with the Anglo-Russian entente of 1907, and again when the two countries were allies in the First World War. But when Reynolds arrived in 1904, such comradeship would have felt an extremely distant notion.

  St Petersburg was founded early in the eighteenth century by Peter the Great, one of the most important leaders in Russia’s history. He was a close follower of the West’s traditions and fashions and St Petersburg is known as Russia’s ‘window on the west’ for being its city most open to non-Russian influences. But with its onion domes and Cyrillic symbols, St Petersburg felt an alien place to English travellers at the beginning of the twentieth century – and it felt that way even in the twenty-first.

  The Winter Palace in St Petersburg, home to Russia’s royal family until the 1917 revolution. (Photograph by the author)

  Reynolds would have disapproved of the timing of my trip. He thought the country was ‘detestable in Autumn’ because of the cold and grey weather, which was suitably drab on my visit. St Petersburg boasts some amazing sights, none more so than the Winter Palace, but is a disorienting place for a non-Russian speaker. On one occasion I stood outside Kazan Cathedral as worshippers streamed out after a service. Steady rain fell as a saxophonist busked in the shadow of the formidable ninety-six-column colonnade. A remote-controlled drone flew high above. It felt an immensely strange atmosphere – the modern-day equivalent of the disorientation Reynolds may have experienced as he settled into Russian life.

  The Church of the Savior on Spilled Blood was built on the site of Emperor Alexander II’s assassination in 1881. It was completed while Reynolds was living in Russia. (Photograph by the author)

  His decision to move there in 1904, at the age of thirty-two, was a move of extraordinary bravery, driven by his desire for new experienc
es and challenges (and learning the language was certainly that, even for a linguist like him). He grew to love the city and developed an affinity for Russia and its people that led him later to write two books about the country. Reynolds’s religious ardour was also an important factor in his decision to move. His posting as assistant chaplain to the British Embassy church was the perfect way for him to experience Russian culture. Religion exerted a heavy influence on life in the country he now called home. As soon as he arrived he was struck by how religion ‘forces itself on the attention’ in Russia.29 ‘God and His Mother, saints and angels, seem near; men rejoice or stand ashamed beneath their gaze,’ he admiringly wrote. ‘The people of the land have made it a vast sanctuary, perfumed with prayer and filled with the memories of heroes of the faith. Saints and sinners, believers and infidels, are affected by its atmosphere.’30

  If religion was the first thing Reynolds observed in St Petersburg, the city’s scale and distinctive character was a close second. He was mesmerised and said it was ‘a magnificent city, magical in the grip of winter, detestable in autumn, alluring in the spring-time. Its streets are broad, its squares and open places large, the size of its palaces and public buildings makes them imposing even when their architecture is poor.’ His imagination was particularly fired by the cathedral spire within the Fortress of St Peter and St Paul: a ‘tapering pillar of gold, rising high above the tower’. At sunset it becomes a ‘shaft of flame’, he wrote.31

  Reynolds did not enjoy his living quarters, a city centre flat in a barracks surrounding two large courtyards. ‘Nobody ever loved a flat,’ he remarked dismissively.32 But he enthusiastically involved himself in Russian culture and life. He learned to speak the language fluently and was impressed by the mother tongue of his new home country. ‘Russian is soft and melodious, and hard and nasal sounds, which remain in Polish, a language bearing a close resemblance to it, have been almost entirely eliminated.’33

  He arrived in Russia during the early stages of a tumultuous revolutionary period, which culminated in the Bolshevik Revolution and execution of the Tsar and his family in 1918. Few would have predicted such momentous events when Reynolds arrived in 1904, but signs of turbulence were growing. Chief among the country’s problems was the countryside, where years of poor agricultural policy had fuelled discontent among the peasantry. Politically, Tsar Nicholas II – the cousin of George V, to whom he bore a strong physical resemblance – ruled autocratically without a Parliament. He showed little appetite for change or reform despite his ‘Father of the Nation’ epithet. Minorities including Catholics and Jews were subjugated, while harsh ‘Russification’ policies incensed the Finns, who revolted at the forced imposition of the Russian language and disbandment of Finland’s army. Overseas, increasingly tense relations with Japan ignited in February 1904 when Russia’s Pacific fleet was targeted by a surprise attack in Port Arthur, which eventually fell to the Japanese the following January.34

  These pressures combined to trigger the revolution of 1905, a bout of unrest that put Nicholas II’s rule under unprecedented pressure. The fall of Port Arthur sparked demonstrations in the capital, and a petition signed by 135,000 people seeking better working conditions and wages was delivered to the Winter Palace. But the peaceful protestors were met not by concessions but rifle fire. On the ‘Bloody Sunday’ of 22 January 1905 more than a hundred were killed, causing outrage throughout the Russian Empire and beyond. Intermittent strikes and unrest in the cities and countryside grew in the ensuing months, leading to Nicholas II’s ‘October Manifesto’, which promised a new State Parliament or ‘Duma’. Its arrival appeared to usher in a constitutional monarchy, but within months many of the concessions had been reversed.

  The year 1905 was significant for Reynolds personally, as well as for Russia. It was the year of his conversion to Catholicism, which, though years in the making, remained an important personal event. Diving into his new life in Russia had been an exciting and energising experience, but it had caused him to question deeply his Anglicanism. He loved the rich tone of religious life in Russia, which was ‘perfumed with prayer’ in a way the staid Church of England was most certainly not. Russians were devoted to the Eastern Orthodox faith, which regards Constantinople (Istanbul) and not Rome as its spiritual home. The experiences nonetheless elevated the Catholicism that had lain dormant within him.

  Russia was not a uniformly welcoming place for followers of the Catholic faith when Reynolds arrived. Nicholas II, having inherited the throne from his father Alexander in 1894, continued the old policy of hostility towards the Catholic church. Symptomatic of this were his ‘Russification policies’ towards Catholic Poland and other countries within the Russian sphere of influence, which he tried to make ‘Orthodox minions’.35 However, the first Russian revolution in 1905 led to his decision to issue a decree of religious toleration that allowed Catholics more freedom to practise their faith. It was in this environment that Reynolds, after years of painful internal contemplation, finally decided to follow his brothers and convert to the Catholic church. For the remaining years of his life in Russia he worshipped happily at the Catholic Church of St Catherine in the heart of St Petersburg.

  More everyday matters pressed. Reynolds’s departure from the English church left him in need of a new source of income. He was inspired by his new life in Russia and had no desire to return to Britain so soon. Realising how interesting the events of 1905, and the accompanying political and social changes afoot in Russia, were to people back in Britain, he sought work as a writer and won his first job in journalism as St Petersburg correspondent for the Daily News. The newspaper, which is no longer printed, launched in Britain in 1846 under the editorship of Charles Dickens. It was positioned as a liberal alternative to The Times and enjoyed a successful period of increasing sales and influence in the early twentieth century under the editorship of the young and dynamic Alfred George Gardiner.36

  During those fevered months of violent upheaval in 1905, when an incendiary public mood led to industrial and political upheaval, Reynolds’s reporting instincts were stirred as never before. He had the journalistic luck to be living in a city undergoing great change and was never far from a potential story or situation of interest. He was well aware he was living through historic times, in which the lower orders were politicised by events as never before. ‘The echoes of heated political debate used to float to me from the kitchen,’ he wrote, ‘especially on those days when the washerwoman took tea there and added the weight of her influence to the arguments of the cook.’37

  In short, St Petersburg at that time was an ideal place to be a foreign correspondent. Reynolds took to it quickly. Within a couple of years in Russia he was able to gain access to events at which more seasoned foreign correspondents were expected, including the first meeting of the new Duma in April 1906. Reynolds described the fevered atmosphere of the revolutionary era in dramatic terms. ‘What a chance for a revolutionist to blow up the whole lot of them!’ he recalled a friend saying during a party attended by Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin and other leading politicians.38 The febrile environment in St Petersburg meant newsworthy events seemed to come his way with regularity. He rarely had to look for them. ‘A bomb has just gone off in the street,’ Reynolds wrote on one occasion, as if such an event outside his flat was an everyday occurrence.39 One evening Reynolds was present during an incident in a restaurant when a student was murdered after an argument sparked by his refusal to stand during the national anthem.40

  Reynolds’s pieces for the Daily News provided vivid portraits of life in revolutionary Russia. In 1906, for one of his first articles, he interviewed a nineteen-year-old woman, Nadejda, about her participation in the revolution. ‘It is going very badly,’ she told Reynolds, ‘and numbers of revolutionists are in prison. I see in the paper today that a great friend of mine has been arrested. She had thrown a bomb at one of the enemies of the people, and had not time to shoot herself when her work was done.’41

  The revolut
ion was a time of personal as well as professional opportunity for Reynolds – in its fires he forged the closest friendship of his life. In September 1904, the English writer Hector Hugh Munro, better known by the pen-name of ‘Saki’, arrived in St Petersburg as a correspondent for the right-wing Morning Post newspaper. The two men were of similar age and enjoyed similar pursuits; like Reynolds, Munro was a keen swimmer and tennis player. As two members of a limited pool of foreign correspondents working in St Petersburg, who arrived at a similar time, their friendship is not surprising.

  Munro differed from Reynolds in one key respect. He was no fledgling journalist but an emerging author, whose short stories parodied the upper classes of Edwardian England. While in Russia he split his time between reporting on the country and developing his own fictional works. His writing style was informed by figures such as Oscar Wilde and Lewis Carroll, and Munro in turn was an influence on comic writers of the next generation, such as A. A. Milne, Noël Coward and P. G. Wodehouse.42 Munro had yet to achieve that level of fame while working as a foreign correspondent, his foremost years of prominence beginning on his return to Britain in 1909.

  During the revolution of 1905, Munro’s sister Ethel was visiting him in St Petersburg and she was present for the drama and carnage of Bloody Sunday. The protest was led by Father Georgy Gapon, a Ukrainian priest in the Russian Orthodox church, who had discovered socialism after the death of his wife. His speeches persuaded masses of Russia’s industrial workforce to strike and on Sunday 9 January (the twenty-second by Western calendars) he delivered a petition to the gates of the Winter Palace setting out their demands. Hector and Ethel Munro took up a position in the Hotel de France, located in the heart of the city, to observe proceedings.43 It was not long before Hector had left his sister and ventured outside for a closer look; and not long again before he was chased back, having become part of a Russian crowd beaten away from the Winter Palace by cavalry forces. Having then sought a different vantage point, the Munros narrowly avoided death as they came under rifle fire. The assault had started. The next day Munro hired a sleigh to witness the aftermath and saw the many corpses that remained strewn on the icy streets. It was macabre work, but necessary to inform his dispatches.