Slowly he sped across the snowy fields of Holy Russia on his selfimposed spiritual mission to unite the Churches … It was like a dream in the Apocalypse … With morning he stood in the holy city of Moscow … The Kremlin! Edward staggered amid fantastic golddomed cathedrals, gigantic bells hanging in the clouds, cyclopean ramparts … From the other side of the city he watched the sunset illumine the grandiose dome of the Cathedral erected to the Saviour God, saviour of Moscow from Napoleon … The doom of the Grand Army haunted Edward from the pages of Tolstoy's War and Peace … Edward decided to leave that night for Yasnaya Polyana, the home of Tolstoy.

At the next station we were in Russia! Truly the stately amenities of a Russian customs-house afforded an unlikely introduction to a reputedly semi-barbarous land … It was midnight before we set out again by the broader-gauged Russian railway through dark leagues of birch and pine en route to St. Petersburg … We chanced to arrive on the evening of Easter Day … The blaze of a thousand sacred candles, the gorgeous vestments of metropolitan and priests, the awed ecstasy on the faces of that superstitious Slavonic mob as those mysterious, complex and colourful rites were enacted … I knew that, in spite of everything, this novel and unpredictable world was going to be full of interest, and here moreover was fresh food for art.

Played for house-prayers, hymn no. 218 (Russian nat[ional]- an[them]). The boys said I took it too slowly. They gabble everything!

The prospect of going on Monday to Russia, with all these concerts – conducting & playing, – on crutches, is a bit scaring! … However it will be exciting I'm sure, & lovely to see where Slava [Rostropovich] & Galya [Vishnevskaya] live, & what goes on in that mammoth extraordinary country – so different from ours, & yet with so many sympathetic links.