Petersburg. Tourgénef. The Contemporary. Death of his brother Demetrius. Drouzhínin. The Behrs. Love affairs. Engagement with V.V.A. Illness. Leaves the army. Engagement broken off. Correspondence with Tourgénef. Writings. Drouzhínin's criticism of Youth and of Tolstoy's style. Books that influenced him. Emancipation of serfs. Poúshkin. Self-condemnation in his Confession.
A number of distinguished writers have recorded their opinions of the talented young officer who appeared in Petersburg before the war was quite over, and immediately entered the fraternity then supporting the Contemporary. From their memoirs one sees what Tolstoy was like at this, perhaps the stormiest and least satisfactory period of his life.
The Contemporary was a monthly review founded by Poúshkin and Pletnéf in 1836. It passed in 1847 to Panáef and the poet Nekrásof, and when Tolstoy began to write, was recognised as the leading and most progressive Russian literary periodical. Its chief contributors formed an intimate group, united by close personal acquaintance, by sympathy with the Emancipation movement then making itself felt, and also by a common agreement (not it is true very strictly or very permanently observed) to write exclusively for the Contemporary. The point to be noticed is that the circle Tolstoy entered consisted of a friendly, sociable group of people who considered themselves ardent reformers; and that though Tolstoy's talent and his wish to have his works published, threw him and them together, he never appears to have had the least inclination to co-operate on that footing of mutual give-and-take toleration which is so essential in public life. Certainly he never became friendly with the more advanced men, Tchernyshévsky, Miháylof, and the ultra-democratic Dobrolúbof, who were intent on spreading democratic and socialistic ideas in Russia.
It has been suggested that this was due to the fact that he was an aristocrat and that they were democrats; but one has to go deeper than that for the explanation, which lies, to a considerable extent, in the fact that the advanced Russian Radicals were, for the most part, admirers of Governmental Jacobinism, whereas Tolstoy has from the very start tended to be a No-Government man, an Anarchist, and has objected to linking himself closely with any group, since such alliance always implies some amount of compromise, and some subordination of one's own opinions.
The poet Fet, himself a young officer, made Tolstoy's acquaintance at this time. A couple of years later he purchased an estate at no very great distance from Yásnaya Polyána, and became a friend of Tolstoy's—one in fact of the very few people, not of his own family, with whom the latter ever formed a close personal friendship.
His first acquaintance with Tolstoy was however hardly auspicious. Calling on Tourgénef in St. Petersburg at ten o'clock one morning, he saw an officer's sword hanging in the hall, and asked the man-servant whose it was. 'It's Count Tolstoy's sword,' replied the man. 'He is sleeping in the drawing-room. Iván Sergéyevitch [Tourgénef] is having breakfast in the study.' During Fet's visit of an hour's duration, he and his host had to converse in low tones for fear of waking Tolstoy. 'He is like this all the time,' said Tourgénef. 'He came back from his Sevastopol battery; put up here, and is going the pace. Sprees, gipsy-girls and cards all night long—and then he sleeps like a corpse till two in the afternoon. At first I tried to put the break on, but now I've given it up, and let him do as he likes.'
Fet tells us that as soon as he met Tolstoy he noticed his instinctive defiance of all accepted opinions; and at Nekrásof's lodgings, the first time he saw Tolstoy and Tourgénef together, he witnessed the desperation to which the former reduced the latter by his biting retorts.
'I can't admit,' said Tolstoy, 'that what you say expresses your convictions. If I stand at the door with a dagger or a sword, and say, "While I am alive no one shall enter here," that shows conviction. But you, here, try to conceal the true inwardness of your thoughts from one another, and call that conviction!'
'Why do you come here?' squeaked Tourgénef, panting, his voice rising to a falsetto (as always happened when he was disputing). 'Your banner is not here! Go! Go to the salon of Princess B——!'
'Why should I ask you, where I am to go? Besides, empty talk won't become conviction, merely because I am, or am not here,' replied Tolstoy.
Though he cared little for politics, Fet's sympathies inclined to the Conservative side, and he found himself in accord with Tolstoy rather than with Tourgénef and the other Contemporarians; but Fet's stay in Petersburg at this time was a short one, and he therefore saw little of Tolstoy. D. V. Grigoróvitch, the novelist, however, reported to him another scene which also occurred at Nekrásof's lodging.
You can't imagine what it was like! Great Heavens! said Grigoróvitch. Tourgénef squeaked and squeaked, holding his hand to his throat, and with the eyes of a dying gazelle whispered: 'I can stand no more! I have bronchitis!' and began walking to and fro through the three rooms.—'Bronchitis is an imaginary illness,' growls Tolstoy after him: 'Bronchitis is a metal!'
Of course Nekrásof's heart sank: he feared to lose either of these valuable contributors to the Contemporary. We were all agitated, and at our wits' end to know what to say. Tolstoy, in the middle room, lay sulking on the morocco sofa; while Tourgénef, spreading the tails of his short coat and with his hands in his pockets, strode to and fro through the three rooms. To avert a catastrophe, I went to the sofa and said, 'Tolstoy, old chap, don't get excited! You don't know how he esteems and loves you!'
'I won't allow him to do anything to spite me!' exclaimed Tolstoy with dilated nostrils. 'There! Now he keeps marching past me on purpose, wagging his democratic haunches!'
The rest of the evidence is of much the same nature. Of desire to agree, there was hardly a trace in Tolstoy, who never doubted his own sincerity and seldom credited that quality to others. The aristocratic influences that surrounded his upbringing never induced him to be lenient to men of his own class, such as Tourgénef; but they led him to judge harshly and unsympathetically new men who were pushing their way to the front by their own ability. Fet, in his Mémoires, speaks with regret of the fact that the educated classes ('the Intelligents') attracted by Liberal ideas which made for the Emancipation of the serfs, formed so strong a current of opinion that even the literature produced by the nobility (and he claims that the nobles supplied all the truly artistic literature) advocated changes which struck at the root of the most fundamental privileges of their class. This tendency, he tells us, revolted 'Tolstoy's fresh, unwarped instinct.'
Grigoróvitch, in his Literary Memoirs, tells us that, knowing how out of sympathy Tolstoy was with Petersburg, and how evident it was that everything in Petersburg irritated him, he was surprised to find that the latter took permanent lodgings there. Grigoróvitch, himself a Contemporarian, had met Tolstoy in Moscow, and coming across him again in Petersburg, and hearing that he was invited to dine with the staff of the Contemporary, but did not yet know any of the members intimately, agreed to accompany him.
On the way I warned him to be on his guard about certain matters, and especially to avoid attacking George Sand, whom he much disliked, but who was devoutly worshipped by many Contemporarians. The dinner passed off all right, Tolstoy being rather quiet at first, but at last he broke out. Some one praised George Sand's new novel, and he abruptly declared his hatred of her, adding that the heroines of the novels she was then writing, if they really existed, ought to be tied to the hangman's cart and driven through the streets of Petersburg. He had, adds Grigoróvitch, already then developed that peculiar view of women and of the woman-question, which he afterwards expressed so vividly in Anna Karénina.
With all the curious convolutions of Tolstoy's character, there is a remarkable tenacity of conviction running through his whole life, and a remark in Resurrection, written nearly half a century later, throws a flood of light on the fact of his so detesting George Sand's emancipated heroines while he was himself living a loose life. In that book, the hero has been attracted as well as repelled first by Mariette, the General's wife, and then by a handsome demi-mondaine he passes in the street, and this is his reflection:
The animalism of the brute nature in man is disgusting, thought he; but as long as it remains in its naked form we observe it from the height of our spiritual life and despise it; and, whether one has fallen or resisted, one remains what one was before. But when that same animalism hides under a cloak of poetry and esthetic feeling, and demands our worship—then we are swallowed up by it completely, and worship animalism, no longer distinguishing good from evil. Then it is awful!
Grigoróvitch in another place speaks of Tolstoy's 'readiness to contradict.' It did not matter what opinion was being expressed; and the more authoritative the speaker appeared to be, the more eager was Tolstoy to oppose him and to begin a verbal duel. 'Watching how he listened to the speaker and pierced him with his eyes, and noticing how ironically he pressed his lips together, one conjectured that he was preparing not a direct reply, but such an expression of opinion as would perplex his opponent by its unexpectedness.'
Danílevsky, the novelist, confirms this impression of Tolstoy's eagerness to oppose. They met at the house of a well-known sculptor. Tolstoy entered the drawing-room while a new work of Herzen's was being read aloud, and quietly took up a position behind the reader's chair. When the reading was over, he began, at first gently and with restraint, then hotly and boldly, to attack Herzen and the enthusiasm then current for his revolutionary and emancipatory works; and he spoke so convincingly and with such sincerity, that Danílevsky says he never afterwards saw one of Herzen's publications in that house.
Tourgénef once said: 'In Tolstoy the character which afterwards lay at the base of his whole outlook on life early made itself manifest. He never believed in people's sincerity. Every spiritual movement seemed to him false, and he used to pierce those on whom his suspicion fell with his extraordinarily penetrating eyes'; and Tourgénef went on to say that personally he had never encountered anything more disconcerting than that inquisitorial look, which, accompanied by two or three biting words, was enough to goad to fury any man who lacked strong self control.
The different sides of men's characters do not always advance simultaneously or harmoniously; and it frequently happens that those awakening to a sense of public duty remain self-indulgent in respect to wine or women, while others become abstainers or respectable husbands while remaining oblivious of the political duties they owe to the community. Among the reformers whose acquaintance Tolstoy made in Petersburg, there was unfortunately a great deal of gluttony, drinking, gambling and loose living, and Tolstoy—though he was often remorseful and repentant about his own excesses with wine, women, and cards—with his innate propensity for demanding all or nothing, bitterly resented this in others. He would no doubt have considered it hypocritical had he himself come forward as a reformer before obtaining mastery over his own appetites, and he judged others by the same standard.
The ill success of the Crimean war had dealt a blow to the prestige of the Tsardom, and a series of wide-reaching reforms were being prepared at this time—among which the most important were the abolition of serfdom, the reform of civil and criminal law, the introduction of trial by jury and of oral proceedings in the law courts, the establishment of a system of Local Government somewhat resembling our County Councils, and some relaxation of the insensate severity of the press censorship. But though Tolstoy reached Petersburg at a moment when Russia was entering on this hopeful and fruitful period of internal reform, neither in his published writings nor in any private utterance we know of, does he express much sympathy with those reforms, or show any perception of the advantage that accrues to a nation whose inhabitants interest themselves in public affairs. He never realised that even if a people make for themselves bad laws, the very fact of being invited to think about large practical matters, and being allowed to test their own conclusions in practice, fosters a habit of not fearing to think and to act in accord with one's thought; and that this habit of applying thought to the guidance of practical affairs, overflows into a nation's commerce and industry and agriculture, and ultimately causes the difference between the comparative material security of our Western world and the chronic fear of famine that oppresses many Eastern lands.
But complex problems of public policy—which are always difficult, and call for patience, tolerant co-operation, and a willingness to accept half-loaves when whole ones are unobtainable—never were to Tolstoy's taste. He hankers after simple, clear-cut solutions, such as are obtainable only subjectively, in the mind.
A few years later than the time of which we are speaking, Tolstoy commenced a novel called The Decembrists, which begins with a description of these reform years. The passage shows how scornfully he regarded the whole movement for the liberation of the people and the democratisation of their institutions. These are his words:
This happened not long ago, in the reign of Alexander II, in our times of civilisation, progress, problems, re-birth of Russia, etc. etc.; the time when the victorious Russian army returned from Sevastopol which it had surrendered to the enemy; when all Russia was celebrating the destruction of the Black Sea fleet; and white-walled Moscow greeted, and congratulated on that auspicious event, the remainder of the crews of that fleet, offering them a good old Russian goblet of vódka, and in the good old Russian way bringing them bread and salt and bowing at their feet. This was the time when Russia, in the person of her far-sighted virgin politicians, wept over the destruction of her dream of a Te Deum in the Cathedral of St. Sophia, and the deep-felt loss to the fatherland of two great men who had perished during the war (one who, carried away by impatience to hear the Te Deum referred to above, had fallen on the fields of Wallachia, not without leaving there two squadrons of Hussars; and the other an invaluable man who distributed tea, other people's money, and sheets, to the wounded without stealing any of them); in that time when from all sides, in all departments of human activity in Russia, great men sprang up like mushrooms: commanders, administrators, economists, writers, orators, and simply great men without any special calling or aim; in that time when at the Jubilee of a Moscow actor, public opinion, fortified by a toast, appeared and began to punish all wrongdoers; when stern Commissioners galloped from Petersburg to the South and captured, exposed, and punished the commissariat rascals; when in all the towns dinners with toasts were given to the heroes of Sevastopol, and to those of them whose arms and legs had been torn off, coppers were given by those who met them on the bridges or highways; at that time when oratorical talents were so rapidly developed among the people that one publican everywhere and on all occasions wrote, printed, and repeated by heart at dinners, such powerful speeches that the guardians of order were obliged to undertake repressive measures to subdue his eloquence; when even in the English Club in Moscow a special room was set apart for the consideration of public affairs; when periodicals appeared under the most varied banners; journals developing European principles on a European basis but with a Russian world-conception, and journals on an exclusively Russian basis, developing Russian principles but with a European world-conception; when suddenly, so many journals appeared that it seemed as if all possible titles had been used up: 'The Messenger,' 'The Word,' 'The Discourse,' 'The Eagle,' and many others; when nevertheless fresh titles presented themselves continually; at that time when pleiades of new author-philosophers appeared, proving that Science is national and is not national and is international, and so on: and pleiades of writer-artists, who described woods and sun-rises, and thunders, and the love of a Russian maiden, and the idleness of one official, and the misconduct of many officials; at that time when from all sides appeared problems (as in the year '56 every concourse of circumstances was called of which nobody could make head or tail); the problem of the Cadet Schools, the Universities, the Censor, oral tribunals, finance, the banks, the police, the Emancipation, and many others; everybody still tried to discover new questions, and everybody tried to solve them; they wrote, and read, and talked, and drew up projects, and all wished to amend, destroy and alter, and all Russians, as one man, were in an indescribable state of enthusiasm. That was a condition which has occurred twice in Russia in the nineteenth century: the first time was in the year '12 when we thrashed Napoleon I, and the second time was in '56 when Napoleon III thrashed us. Great, unforgettable epoch of the re-birth of the Russian people! Like the Frenchman who said that he had not lived at all who had not lived during the Great French Revolution, so I make bold to say that he who did not live in Russia in '56, does not know what life is. The writer of these lines not merely lived at that time, but was one of the workers of that period. Not merely did he personally sit for some weeks in one of the casemates of Sevastopol, but he wrote a work about the Crimean War which brought him great fame, and in which he clearly and minutely described how the soldiers in the bastion fired off their muskets, how in the hospitals people were bound up with bandages, and how in the cemetery they were buried in the earth.
Having performed these exploits, the writer of these lines arrived at the heart of the Empire, at a rocket-station, where he reaped his laurels. He witnessed the enthusiasm of both capitals and of the whole people, and experienced in his own person how Russia can reward real service. The great ones of the earth sought his acquaintance, pressed his hands, offered him dinners, persistently invited him to come and see them, and in order to hear from him particulars about the war, narrated to him their own sensations. Therefore the writer of these lines knows how to appreciate that great and memorable time. But that is not what I want to tell about.
The very day he reached Petersburg from Sevastopol, in September 1855, Tolstoy called on Tourgénef, who pressed him to stay with him and introduced him to all that was most interesting in Petersburg literary and artistic circles, watching over his interests 'like an old nurse,' as Tourgénef himself once expressed it. Tourgénef fully appreciated Tolstoy's artistic genius, but was strangely blind to the specially Tolstoyan side of Tolstoy's complex nature. As we have already seen, friction soon arose between the two men, and though they again and again made friends, their friendship was very unstable and easily upset.
Early in 1856 Tolstoy's third brother, Demetrius, died in Orél. His history has been told in Chapter II. Tolstoy says: 'I was particularly horrid at that time. I went to Orél from Petersburg, where I frequented society and was filled with conceit. I felt sorry for Mítenka, but not very sorry. I paid him a hurried visit, but did not stay at Orél, and my brother died a few days after I left.' On 2nd February the news reached Leo; but he says: 'I really believe that what hurt me most, was that it prevented my taking part in some private theatricals then being got up at Court, and to which I had been invited.'
In March the war ended, and Tolstoy obtained furlough. On 25th March he wrote to his brother Sergius:
I want to go abroad for eight months, and if they give me leave I shall do so. I wrote to Nikólenka about it, and asked him to come too. If we could all three arrange to go together it would be first-rate. If each of us took Rs. 1000, we could do the trip capitally.
Please write and tell me how you like The Snow Storm. I am dissatisfied with it—seriously. But I now want to write many things, only I positively have no time in this damned Petersburg. Anyway, whether they let me go abroad or not, I intend to take furlough in April and come to the country.
On 13th May he was still in Petersburg, and we find him noting in his Diary:
The powerful means to true happiness in life, is to let flow from oneself on all sides, without any laws, like a spider, a cobweb of love, and to catch in it all that comes to hand: women old or young, children, or policemen.
Among his literary acquaintances at this time the one for whom he seems to have felt most sympathy and respect was Drouzhínin, a critic, writer of stories, and translator of Shakespear. Before long we find Drouzhínin leading a revolt against the Contemporary and attracting some of the contributors to the Reading Library, a rival magazine, to which Tolstoy contributed an article in December 1856.
It was not till the end of May that he got away from Petersburg; and on his road home he stopped in Moscow and visited the family of Dr. Behrs, a Russian of German origin, who had married Miss Islényef. The first mention one gets of Tolstoy's future wife is a note in his Diary relating to this visit to the Behrs's country house near Moscow. He says: 'The children served us. What dear, merry little girls! Little more than six years later, the second of these 'merry little girls' was Countess Tolstoy!
Three days later he writes to his brother Sergius: 'I spent ten days in Moscow ... very pleasantly, without champagne or gipsies, but a little in love—I will tell you later on with whom.' The object of his affection at that time was of course not Dr. Behrs's twelve-year-old daughter.
From Yásnaya he made a round of visits to see his married sister and other neighbours; among them Tourgénef, at whose house a gathering of the Tolstoys took place. Special honour was paid to Leo, who comically posed as the hero of a Triumph. He was being crowned and almost covered with flowers, leaves, grass, and anything that came handy, when the approach of an unwelcome guest—a lady neighbour of Tourgénef's—was announced. Thereupon the host seized his head in despair; the triumpher, with a howl, began to turn rapid catherine-wheel somersaults through the rooms; and his sister's husband was quickly bandaged up as an invalid, to be used as an excuse and a protection from the unwelcome intruder.
The letter to Sergius, quoted above, contains an allusion to Tolstoy's first serious matrimonial project.
He had in childhood been much attached to a certain Sónitchka Kalóshina. While at the University, he had had a sentimental love affair with a certain Z. M., who seems hardly to have been aware of his devotion. Then there was the Cossack damsel who figures in The Cossacks, and subsequently he much admired a society lady, Madame Sch., who may also have been scarcely aware of his feelings, for Tolstoy was shy and timid in these matters—which were quite different from his affairs with gipsy girls and other hireable women.
The present affair with V. V. A. was more serious than any of its predecessors. It led to a long correspondence, and even to their engagement being announced among relations and friends. The lady was the good-looking daughter of a landowner in the neighbourhood of Yásnaya Polyána.
In August she accompanied her family to Moscow for the Coronation of Alexander II. At these festivities she enjoyed herself greatly, and described her feelings in a letter which dealt the first blow to Tolstoy's admiration. He at once assumed towards her the rôle which more than twenty-five years later he assumed towards mankind in general, and upbraided her with the insignificant and unworthy nature of her interests and enjoyments, besides indulging in scathing sarcasms about the fashionable circles with which she was so enraptured.
The young lady did not reply. Tolstoy then begged pardon—which was granted.
Meanwhile he had fallen ill; and early in September he wrote to his brother Sergius:
Only now, at nine o'clock on Monday evening, can I give you a satisfactory reply, for till now things went worse and worse. Two doctors were sent for, and administered another forty leeches, but only now have I had a good sleep and, on waking up, feel considerably better. All the same, there can be no question of my leaving home for five or six days yet. So au revoir; please let me know when you go (shooting) and whether it is true that your farming has been seriously neglected; and do not kill all the game without me. I will send the dogs, perhaps, to-morrow.
He recovered. The young lady returned to her family's estate at Soudakóva, and his visits being renewed, Tolstoy's intimacy with her continued and grew closer.
Yet to 'test himself,' he started for a visit to Petersburg, and as soon as he had got as far as Moscow, wrote a letter to the young lady in which he dwelt on the importance of the mutual attraction of the sexes, the serious nature of his and her relation to one another, and the necessity of testing themselves by time and distance.
While living in Petersburg, he learnt the particulars of a flirtation the young lady had carried on at the time of the Coronation with a French music-master, Mortier; and he wrote her a letter full of reproaches. Instead of posting it, however, he wrote her another—telling her of the one he had written, which he intended to show her when they met.
After once breaking off relations with Mortier, the young lady allowed them to be again renewed, and what Tolstoy learned of the matter caused him seriously to reconsider his position. For some time his feelings evidently wavered. The very day after posting his remonstrance, he wrote another letter in a conciliatory tone, and though no reply came, he assumed that all was well, and continued the correspondence by sending her a detailed plan of the life they might hope to live together: its surroundings, circle of acquaintance, and the arrangement of their time. He also tried to interest her in the most serious problems of life.
No answer reaching him for a long time, he became agitated and perplexed. Then several letters, delayed in the post, arrived all at once, and cordial intercourse was re-established between the lovers. But though the engagement and correspondence continued, and expressions of affection were interchanged, it gradually became more and more evident that there was something artificial and unsatisfactory in their relation to one another.
Meanwhile Tolstoy was having other difficulties in Petersburg. On 10th November 1856 he writes to his brother Sergius:
Forgive me, dear friend Seryózha, for only writing two words—I have no time for more. I have been most unlucky since I left home; there is no one here I like. It seems that I have been abused in the Fatherland Journal for my war stories—I have not yet read the attack; but the worst is that Konstantínof [the General under whose command was the battery to which Tolstoy was attached] informed me as soon as I got here that the Grand Duke Michael, having learnt that I am supposed to have composed the Soldiers' Song, is displeased, particularly at my having (as rumour says) taught it to the soldiers. This is abominable. I have had an explanation with the Head of the Staff. The only satisfactory thing is that my health is good, and that (Dr.) Schipoulínsky says my lungs are thoroughly sound.
On 20th November 1856 Tolstoy left the army, in which he had never secured promotion though he had private influence enough to enable him, about this time, to save from trial by Court Martial the Commander of the battery in which he had served in the Crimea.
Early in December he left Petersburg for Moscow. From there, on 5th December, he writes to Aunt Tatiána:
When I first went away and for a week after, I thought I was 'in love' as it is called; but with an imagination such as mine that was not difficult.
Now, however, especially since I have set to work diligently, I should like—and very much like—to be able to say that I am in love, or even that I love her; but it is not the case. The only feeling I have for her is gratitude for her love of me, and the thought that of all the girls I have known or know, she would have made me the best wife, as I understand family life. And that is what I should like to have your candid opinion about. Am I mistaken or not? I should like to hear your advice because, in the first place, you know both her and me; and chiefly because you love me, and those who love are never wrong. It is true that I have tested myself very badly, for from the time I left home I have led a solitary rather than a dissipated life, and have seen few women; but notwithstanding that, I have had many moments of vexation with myself for having become connected with her, and I have repented of it. All the same, I repeat that if I were convinced that she is of a steadfast nature, and would love me always—even though not as now, yet more than any one else—then I should not hesitate for a moment about marrying her. I am confident that then my love of her would increase more and more and that through that feeling she would become a good woman.
The young lady in question visited Petersburg for part of the winter season, but Tolstoy does not appear to have met her there, being himself away in Moscow for several weeks. The correspondence was largely didactic on his side, and was so unsatisfactory to the young lady that she finally forbade him to write again. He disobeyed the injunction, asking her pardon, telling her he was going abroad, and begging that she would write to him once more, to an address in Paris.
He wrote to Aunt Tatiána from Moscow, on 12th January 1857, a letter in which Russian and French alternate.
[31]Chère Tante!—J'ai reçu mon passeport pour l'étranger et je suis venu à Moscou pour y passer quelques jours avec Marie arranger mes affaires et prendre congé de vous.
But now I have reconsidered the matter, especially on Máshenka's advice, and have decided to remain with her here a week or two and then to go straight through Warsaw to Paris. You no doubt understand, chère tante, why I do not wish and why it is not right for me to come now to Yásnaya, or rather to Soudakóva. I, it seems, have acted very badly in relation to V., but were I to see her now, I should behave still worse. As I wrote you, I am more than indifferent to her, and feel that I can no longer deceive either her or myself. But were I to come, I might perhaps, from weakness of character, again delude myself.
Vous rappelez-vous, chère tante, comme vous vous êtes moquée de moi, quand je vous ai dit que je partais pour Pétersbourg 'pour m'éprouver,' et cependant c'est à cette idée que je suis redevable de n'avoir pas fait le malheur de la jeune personne et le mien, car ne croyez pas que ce soit de l'inconstance ou de l'infidélité; personne ne m'a plu pendant ces deux mois, mais tout bonnement j'ai vu que je me trompais moi-même; que non seulement jamais je n'ai eu, mais jamais je n'aurais pour V. le moindre sentiment d'amour véritable. La seule chose qui me fait beaucoup de peine c'est que j'ai fait du tort à la demoiselle et que je ne pourrai prendre congé de vous avant de partir....
After reaching Paris (an event belonging properly to the next chapter) he received a last communication from V. V. A. and wrote her a friendly letter in reply, speaking of his love as of something past, thanking her for her friendship, and wishing her every happiness.
His Aunt Tatiána—generally the mildest of critics where he was concerned—appears to have blamed him for his conduct; and the friends of V. V. A., including a French governess, Mlle. Vergani, did so yet more severely. In one of his letters, which contains indications of an agitation too strong to allow him to complete the construction of the opening sentence, he says:
[32]Si Mlle. V. qui m'a écrit une lettre aussi ridicule, voulait se rappeler toute ma conduite vis-à-vis de V. V. A., comment je tâchais de venir le plus rarement possible, comment c'est elle qui m'engageait à venir plus souvent et à entrer dans des relations plus proches. Je comprends qu'elle soit fâchée de ce qu'une chose qu'elle a beaucoup désirée ne s'est pas faite (j'en suis fâché peut-être plus qu'elle) mais ce n'est pas une raison pour dire à un homme qui s'est efforcé d'agir le mieux possible, qui a fait des sacrifices de peur de faire le malheur des autres, de lui dire, qu'il est un pig [this one word is in Russian in the original] et de le faire accroire à tout le monde. Je suis sûr que Toúla [the town nearest his estate] est convaincu que je suis le plus grand des monstres.
Turning from love to literature and friendship, we have two letters of this period from Tourgénef. The first is dated Paris, 16th November 1856, and is as follows:
Dearest Tolstoy,—Your letter of 15 October took a whole month crawling to me—I received it only yesterday. I have thought carefully about what you write me—and I think you are wrong. It is true I cannot be quite sincere, because I can't be quite frank, with you. I think we got to know each other awkwardly and at a bad time, and when we meet again it will be much easier and smoother. I feel that I love you as a man (as an author it needs no saying); but much in you is trying to me, and ultimately I found it better to keep at a distance from you. When we meet we will again try to go hand in hand—perhaps we shall succeed better; for strange as it may sound, my heart turns to you when at a distance, as to a brother: I even feel tenderly towards you. In a word, I love you—that is certain; perchance from that, in time, all good will follow. I heard of your illness and grieved; but now, I beg you, drive the thought of it out of your head. For you too have your fancies, and are perhaps thinking of consumption—but, God knows, you have nothing of the sort....
You have finished the first part of Youth—that is capital. How sorry I am to be unable to hear it read! If you do not go astray (which I think there is no reason to anticipate) you will go very far. I wish you good health, activity—and freedom, spiritual freedom.
As to my Faust, I do not think it will please you very much. My things could please you and perhaps have some influence on you, only until you became independent. Now you have no need to study me; you see only the difference of our manners, the mistakes and the omissions; what you have to do is to study man, your own heart, and the really great writers. I am a writer of a transition period—and am of use only to men in a transition state. So farewell, and be well. Write to me.
On 8th December 1856 he writes again:
Dear Tolstoy,—Yesterday my good genius led me past the post-office, and it occurred to me to ask if there were any letters for me at the poste-restante (though I think that all my friends ought long ago to have learnt my Paris address) and I found your letter, in which you speak of my Faust. You can well imagine how glad I was to read it. Your sympathy gladdened me truly and deeply. Yes, and from the whole letter there breathes a mild, clear and friendly peacefulness. It remains for me to hold out my hand across the 'ravine' which has long since become a hardly perceptible crack, about which we will speak no more—it is not worth it.
I fear to speak of one thing you mention: it is a delicate matter,—words may blight such things before they are ripe, but when they are ripe a hammer will not break them. God grant that all may turn out favourably and well. It may bring you that spiritual repose which you lacked when I knew you.
You have, I see, now become very intimate with Drouzhínin—and are under his influence. That is right, only take care not to swallow too much of him. When I was your age, only men of enthusiastic natures influenced me; but you are built differently, and perhaps also the times are changed.... Let me know in which numbers of the Contemporary your Youth will appear; and by the way, let me know the final impression made on you by Lear, which you probably have read, if only for Drouzhínin's sake.
About the same time Tourgénef wrote to Drouzhínin:
I hear that you have become very intimate with Tolstoy—and he has become very pleasant and serene. I am very glad. When that new wine has finished fermenting, it will yield a drink fit for the Gods. What about his Youth, which was sent for your verdict?
The allusion to Drouzhínin's translation of King Lear is worth noticing because fully fifty years later it was this play that Tolstoy selected for hostile analysis in his famous attack on Shakespear. One gathers from a letter written by V. P. Bótkin, that Drouzhínin's rendering impressed Tolstoy favourably at the time.
Before quoting Drouzhínin's criticism of Youth, it will be in place to mention other works by Tolstoy, not yet enumerated, which appeared at this period. Memoirs of a Billiard Marker, giving a glimpse of temptations Tolstoy had experienced, was published in January 1855, while he was in Sevastopol. In January 1856 came Sevastopol in August. In March 1856 appeared The Snow Storm. In May 1856 came a rollicking tale, with flashes of humour like that of Charles Lever, entitled Two Hussars. It is the only story Tolstoy ever wrote in that vein; and in it are introduced gipsy singers such as those of whom repeated mention occurs in his letters. In December, before he went abroad, two more tales were published: one of these, entitled Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment, containing a scathing portrayal of the cowardice a man, who had passed muster in 'good society,' displayed when circumstances put him to the test. The other story, A Squire's Morning, is closely drawn from Tolstoy's own experience when on first leaving the University he settled on his estate and attempted to better the condition of his serfs. Their stolidity, their distrust, and the immense difficulty of introducing any changes, are all brought out.
In a letter to Drouzhínin, Tourgénef wrote:
I have read his Squire's Morning, which pleased me exceedingly by its sincerity and almost complete freedom of outlook. I say 'almost' because in the way he set himself the task, there still is hidden (without his perhaps being aware of it) a certain amount of prejudice. The chief moral impression produced by the story (leaving the artistic impression aside) is that so long as the state of serfdom exists, there is no possibility of the two sides drawing together, despite the most disinterested and honourable desire to do so; and this impression is good and true. But beside it, like a horse cantering beside a trotter, there is another: namely, that in general to try to enlighten or improve the condition of the peasants leads to nothing; and this impression is unpleasant. But the mastery of language, the way it is told, and his character-drawing, are grand.
In January 1857 appeared Youth, the continuation of Childhood and Boyhood.
How great Drouzhínin's influence was with Tolstoy at this time, may be judged by the tone of his letter to him, giving an opinion on Youth. He writes:
About Youth one ought to write twenty pages. I read it with anger, with yells and with oaths—not on account of its literary quality, but because of the quality of the notebooks in which it is written, and the handwritings. The mixing of two hands, a known and an unknown, diverted my attention and hindered an intelligent perusal. It was as though two voices shouted in my ear and purposely distracted my attention, and I know that this has prevented my receiving an adequate impression. All the same I will say what I can. Your task was a terrible one, and you have executed it very well. No other writer of our day could have so seized and sketched the agitated and disorderly period of youth. To those who are developed, your Youth will furnish an immense pleasure; and if any one tells you it is inferior to Childhood and Boyhood you may spit in his physiognomy. There is a world of poetry in it—all the first chapters are admirable; only the introduction is dry till one reaches the description of spring.... In many chapters one scents the poetic charm of old Moscow, which no one has yet reproduced properly. Some chapters are dry and long: for instance all the stipulations with Dmítry Nehlúdof.... The conscription of Semyónof will not pass the Censor.
Do not fear your reflections, they are all clever and original. But you have an inclination to a super-refinement of analysis which may become a great defect. You are sometimes on the point of saying that so-and-so's thigh indicated that he wished to travel in India. You must restrain this tendency, but do not extinguish it on any account. All your work on your analyses should be of the same kind. Each of your defects has its share of strength and beauty, and almost every one of your qualities carries with it the seed of a defect.
Your style quite accords with that conclusion: you are most ungrammatical, sometimes with the lack of grammar of a reformer and powerful poet reshaping a language his own way and for ever, but sometimes with the lack of grammar of an officer sitting in a casemate and writing to his chum. One can say with assurance that all the pages you have written with love are admirable,—but as soon as you grow cold, your words become entangled, and diabolical forms of speech appear. Therefore the parts written coldly should be revised and corrected. I tried to straighten out some bits, but gave it up; it is a work which only you can and must do. Above all, avoid long sentences. Cut them up into two or three; do not be sparing of full-stops.... Do not stand on ceremony with the particles, and strike out by dozens the words: which, who, and that. When in difficulties, take a sentence and imagine that you want to say it to some one in a most conversational way.
As a translator I may testify that Tolstoy never fully learned the lesson Drouzhínin here set him, and that to the very last he continued occasionally to intermingle passages of extraordinary simplicity and force with sentences that defy analysis and abound in redundances.
Nearly fifty years later Tolstoy himself criticised the subject-matter of Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth as follows:
I have re-read them and regret that I wrote them; so ill, artificially and insincerely are they penned. It could not be otherwise: first, because what I aimed at was not to write my own history but that of the friends of my youth, and this produced an awkward mixture of the facts of their and my own childhood; and secondly, because at the time I wrote it I was far from being independent in my way of expressing myself, being strongly influenced by two writers: Sterne (his Sentimental Journey) and Töpffer (his Bibliothèque de Mon Oncle).
I am now specially dissatisfied with the two last parts. Boyhood and Youth, in which besides an awkward mixture of truth and invention, there is also insincerity: a desire to put forward as good and important what I did not then consider good and important, namely, my democratic tendency.
Before concluding this chapter it will be in place to give a list of books Tolstoy mentions as having influenced him after he left the University and before his marriage. They were: Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea; Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris; Plato's Phaedo and Symposium (in Cousin's French translation); and the Iliad and Odyssey in Russian versions. All these, he says, had a 'very great' influence on him, while the poems of his compatriots, Tútchef, Kóltsof, and his friend Fet, had 'great' influence.
He tells us that artistic talent in literature influenced him more than any political or social tendency; and this is quite in accord both with his highly artistic nature and with his general apathy towards public affairs. There was a Slavophil theory (built to justify things as they were) which proclaimed it natural for a Slavonic people to leave the task of governing to its rulers, while retaining its intellectual freedom to disapprove of what was done amiss; and though Tolstoy never joined the Slavophils, this has been very much his own attitude on the matter.
Even in early childhood he had appreciated some of Poúshkin's poems, such as To the Sea and To Napoleon, and had learned them by heart and recited them with feeling; but curiously enough it was the perusal of Mérimée's French prose translation of Poúshkin's Gipsies that, after he was grown up, aroused Tolstoy's keen admiration of Poúshkin's mastery of clear, simple, direct language. Later in life Tolstoy used to say that Poúshkin's prose stories, such as The Captain's Daughter, are his best works; but he never lost his appreciation of Poúshkin's power of expression in verse. In his Diary (4th January 1857) he wrote:
I dined at Bótkin's with Panáef alone; he read me Poúshkin; I went into Bótkin's study and wrote a letter to Tourgénef, and then I sat down on the sofa and wept causeless but blissful tears. I am positively happy all this time, intoxicated with the rapidity of my moral progress.
Despite his headstrong outbursts and many vacillations, he seems to have been always a welcome guest in almost any society he cared to frequent, and none of his critics has spoken as harshly of him as he speaks of himself when describing these
terrible twenty years of coarse dissipation, the service of ambition, vanity, and above all of lust.... It is true that not all my life was so terribly bad as this twenty-year period from fourteen to thirty-four; and it is true that even that period of my life was not the continuous evil that during a recent illness it appeared to me to be. Even during those years, strivings towards goodness awoke in me, though they did not last long, and were soon choked by passions nothing could restrain.
In his Confession, written more than twenty years later, when speaking of his religious beliefs at this time, Tolstoy tells us:
With all my soul I wished to be good; but I was young, passionate, and alone, completely alone when I sought goodness. Every time I tried to express my most sincere desire, namely, to be morally good, I met with contempt and ridicule; but as soon as I yielded to nasty passions I was praised and encouraged.
Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger and revenge—were all respected.... I cannot think of those years without horror, loathing and heartache. I killed men in war, and challenged men to duels in order to kill them; I lost at cards, consumed the labour of the peasants, sentenced them to punishments, lived loosely and deceived people. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, murder—there was no crime I did not commit, and people approved of my conduct, and my contemporaries considered and consider me to be a comparatively moral man.
So I lived for ten years.
During that time I began to write from vanity, covetousness and pride. In my writings I did the same as in my life. To get fame and money, for the sake of which I wrote, it was necessary to hide the good and to show the evil. And I did so. How often in my writings did I contrive to hide under the guise of indifference or even of banter, those strivings of mine towards goodness, which gave meaning to my life! And I succeeded in this, and was praised.
At twenty-six years of age[33] I returned to Petersburg after the war, and met the writers. They received me as one of themselves and flattered me. And before I had time to look round I had adopted the class views on life of the authors I had come among, and these views completely obliterated all my former strivings to improve. Those views furnished a theory which justified the dissoluteness of my life. The view of life of these people, my comrades in authorship, consisted in this: that life in general goes on developing, and in this development we—men of thought—have the chief part; and among men of thought it is we—artists and poets—who have the chief influence. Our vocation is to teach mankind. And lest the simple question should suggest itself: What do I know, and what can I teach? it is explained in this theory that this need not be known, and that the artist and poet teach unconsciously. I was considered an admirable artist and poet, and therefore it was very natural for me to adopt this theory. I, artist and poet, wrote and taught, without myself knowing what. For this I was paid money; I had excellent food, lodging, women and society; and I had fame, which showed that what I taught was very good.
This faith in the meaning of poetry and in the development of life, was a religion, and I was one of its priests. To be its priest was very pleasant and profitable. And I lived a considerable time in this faith without doubting its validity. But in the second, and especially in the third year of this life, I began to doubt the infallibility of this religion and to examine it. My first cause of doubt was that I began to notice that the priests of this religion were not all in accord among themselves. Some said: We are the best and most useful teachers; we teach what is wanted, but the others teach wrongly. Others said: No! we are the real teachers, and you teach wrongly. And they disputed, quarrelled, abused one another, cheated, and tricked one another. There were also many among them who did not care who was right and who was wrong, but were simply bent on attaining their covetous aims by means of this activity of ours. All this obliged me to doubt the validity of our creed.
Moreover, having begun to doubt the truth of the authors' creed itself, I also began to observe its priests more attentively, and I became convinced that almost all the priests of that religion, the writers, were immoral, and for the most part men of bad, worthless character, much inferior to those whom I had met in my former dissipated and military life; but they were self-confident and self-assured as only those can be who are quite holy or who do not know what holiness is. These people revolted me, and I became revolting to myself, and I realised that that faith is a fraud.
But strange to say, though I understood this fraud and renounced it, yet I did not renounce the rank these people gave me: the rank of artist, poet, and teacher. I naïvely imagined that I was a poet and artist and could teach everybody without myself knowing what I was teaching, and I acted on that assumption.
From my intimacy with these men I acquired a new vice: abnormally developed pride, and an insane assurance that it was my vocation to teach men, without knowing what.
To remember that time, and my own state of mind and that of those men (though there are thousands like them to-day) is sad and terrible and ludicrous, and arouses exactly the feeling one experiences in a lunatic asylum.
We were all then convinced that it was necessary for us to speak, write, and print as quickly as possible and as much as possible, and that it was all wanted for the good of humanity. And thousands of us, contradicting and abusing one another, all printed and wrote—teaching others. And without remarking that we knew nothing, and that to the simplest of life's questions: What is good and what is evil? we did not know how to reply, we all, not listening to one another, talked at the same time, sometimes backing and praising one another in order to be backed and praised in turn, sometimes getting angry with one another—just as in a lunatic asylum.
Thousands of workmen laboured to the extreme limit of their strength day and night setting the type and printing millions of words which the post carried all over Russia, and we still went on teaching and could nohow find time to teach enough, and were always angry that sufficient attention was not paid to us.
It was terribly strange, but is now quite comprehensible. Our real innermost consideration was, that we wanted to get as much money and praise as possible. To gain this end we could do nothing except write books and papers. So we did that. But in order to do such useless work and feel assured that we were very important people, we required a theory justifying our activity. And so among us this theory was devised: 'All that exists develops. And it all develops by means of Culture. And Culture is measured by the circulation of books and newspapers. And we are paid money and are respected because we write books and newspapers, and therefore we are the most useful and the best of men.' This theory would have been all very well if we had been unanimous, but as every thought expressed by one of us was always met by a diametrically opposed thought expressed by some one else, we ought to have been driven to reflection. But we ignored this; people paid us money, and those on our side praised us; so each one of us considered himself justified.
Birukof.
Behrs.
A. Fet (Shenshin): Moi Vospominaniya, Moscow, 1890. These Recollections contain much authentic information about Tolstoy, as well as a large number of his letters to Fet, which I have quoted in subsequent chapters.
Bitovt.
Golovatcheva-Panaeva, Rousskie Pisateli i Artisty: Petersburg, 1890.
D. V. Grigorovitch, Literatourniya Vospominaniya: vol. xii. p. 326.
G. P. Danilevsky, Istoritcheskii Vestnik: March 1886.
P. A. Sergeyenko, Tourgenef i Tolstoy: Niva, No. 6, 1906.
Tolstoy's Confession.
See also, in Tolstoy's works. The Decembrists, chap. i.
Paris. Relations with Tourgénef. Albert. An execution. Switzerland. Lucerne. Yásnaya again. The Iliad and the Gospels. Moscow: gymnastics. Three Deaths. Musical Society. Aunty Tatiána. 'Ufanizing.' Emancipation. Bear-hunting. Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. Attitude towards Art in 1859. Tourgénef. Farming. Fet. Drouzhínin. Nicholas's illness. Goes abroad again. Germany. Educational studies. Auerbach. Nicholas dies. Life at Hyères: children. Italy. Marseilles. Paris. Paul de Kock. London. Herzen. Proudhon. Polikoúshka. Auerbach again. Returns home.
Since he took part in the Turkish war in 1854, Tolstoy has only twice been out of Russia. The first time was at the period we have now reached. On 10th February 1857 (new style) he left Moscow by post-chaise for Warsaw, from whence a railway already ran westward. He reached Paris on 21st February. There he met Tourgénef and Nekrásof, with the former of whom he was still unable to get on smoothly. Tourgénef writes: 'With Tolstoy I still cannot become quite intimate; we see things too differently'; and in some moment of anger Tolstoy even challenged his fellow-writer to a duel.[34] Nekrásof appears to have patched matters up, and in March Tolstoy and Tourgénef went to Dijon together, and spent some days there. During this trip Tolstoy commenced his story Albert, founded on his experience with the talented but drunken musician Rudolf, already mentioned in Chapter III. After he had returned to Paris, he was present at an execution, and made the following jotting in his Diary:
I rose at seven o'clock and drove to see an execution. A stout, white, healthy neck and breast: he kissed the Gospels, and then—Death. How senseless.... I have not received this strong impression for naught. I am not a man of politics. Morals and art I know, love, and can (deal with). The guillotine long prevented my sleeping and obliged me to reflect.
Tolstoy has a gift of telling the essential truth in few words, and never did he sum himself up better than in the sentences, 'I am not a man of politics. Morals and art I know, love, and can.' There is hardly any possible room for doubt about the second sentence, and there is certainly none about the first, as his whole life shows.
Many years later, he wrote of this event in his Confession:
When I saw the head separate from the body, and how they both thumped into the box at the same moment, I understood, not with my mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness of our present progress can justify this deed; and that though everybody from the creation of the world, on whatever theory, had held it to be necessary, I know it to be unnecessary and bad; and therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people say and do, and is not progress, but is my heart and I.
It was probably during this visit to Paris that Tolstoy witnessed and admired Chevet's popularisation of music by an easy system of instruction, of which he says:
I have seen hundreds of horny-handed working men sitting on benches (under which lay the tool-bags they brought from their work) singing at sight, and understanding and being interested in the laws of music.
This experience he utilised later on in his school at Yásnaya.
In spring he went to Switzerland, and from Geneva he wrote to his Aunt Tatiána:
[35]J'ai passé un mois et demi à Paris, et si agréablement que tous les jours je me suis dit, que j'ai bien fait de venir à l'étranger. Je suis très peu allé ni dans la société, ni dans le monde littéraire, ni dans le monde des cafés et des bals publics, mais malgré cela j'ai trouvé ici tant de choses nouvelles et intéressantes pour moi, que tous les jours, en me couchant, je me dis, quel dommage que la journée est passée si vite; je n'ai même pas eu le temps de travailler, ce que je me proposais de faire.
Le pauvre Turgenef est très malade physiquement et encore plus moralement. Sa malheureuse liaison avec Madame Viardot, et sa fille, le retiennent ici dans un climat qui lui est pernicieux et il fait pitié de voir. Je n'aurais jamais cru qu'il put aimer ainsi.
Tolstoy's friends Drouzhínin and V. P. Bótkin visited Geneva at this time, and they all three went on a walking tour into Piedmont together. After that he settled at Clarens on the lake of Geneva, from whence he again wrote to Aunt Tatiána:
18 Mai 1857.
[36]Je viens de recevoir votre lettre, chère tante, qui m'a trouvée comme vous devez le savoir d'après ma dernière lettre, aux environs de Genève à Clarens dans ce même village, où a demeuré la Julia de Rousseau.... Je n'essaierai pas de vous depeindre la beauté de ce pays, surtout à présent, quand tout est en feuilles et en fleurs; je vous dirai seulement, qu'à la lettre il est impossible de se détacher de ce lac et de ces rivages et que je passe la plus grande partie de mon temps à regarder et à admirer en me promenant, ou bien en me mettant seulement à la fenêtre de ma chambre.
Je ne cesse de me féliciter de l'idée que j'ai eu de quitter Paris et de venir passer le printemps ici, quoique cela m'ait mérité de votre part le reproche d'inconstance. Vraiment, je suis heureux, and begin to feel the advantage of having been born with a caul.
Il y a ici société charmante de russes: les Poúshkins, the Karamzíns and the Mestchérskys; and they have all, Heaven knows why, taken to liking me; I feel it, and the month I have spent here I have been so nice and good and cosy, that I am sad at the thought of leaving.
From Clarens he took steamer to Montreux, and from there went on foot, taking with him as companion a ten-year-old lad named Sásha, the son of some Russians whose acquaintance he had made at Clarens. They crossed the Pass of Jamon and, after changing their minds as to the direction they would take, finally made for Château d'Oex, from whence they proceeded by diligence to Thun. From that town Tolstoy went on to Lucerne, which he reached in July 1857.
Again and again in his Diary and letters Tolstoy's vivid delight in Nature shows itself in descriptions of the scenery: 'It is wonderful,' he writes, 'but I was at Clarens for two months, and every time—when in the morning, and especially after dinner towards evening—I opened the shutters on which the shadows were already falling, and glanced at the lake and the distant blue of the mountains reflected in it, the beauty blinded me and acted on me with the force of a surprise.' But together with this keen appreciation, comes now and then a sort of protest that this grandiose Swiss mountain scenery is, after all, not the Nature that most appeals to him—a yearning for the vast steppes and forests of his native land. After ascending the Pass of Jamon and describing the magnificent scenery and the pleasure of the climb, he adds:
It was something beautiful, even unusually beautiful, but I do not love what are called magnificent and remarkable views: they are, as it were, cold.... I love Nature when, though it surrounds me on all sides and extends unendingly, I am part of it. I love it, when on all sides I am surrounded by hot air, and that same air rolls away to unending distance, and those same sappy leaves of grass which I crush as I sit on them, form the green of the boundless meadows; when those same leaves which, fluttering in the wind, run their shadows across my face, form also the dark blue of the distant forests; while the same air one breathes makes the deep, light blue of the immeasurable sky; when you do not exult and rejoice alone in Nature, but when around you myriads of insects buzz and whirl, and beetles, clinging together, creep about, and all around you birds overflow with song.
But this is bare, cold, desolate, grey plateau; and somewhere afar there is something beautiful veiled with mist. But that something is so distant that I do not feel the chief delight of Nature—do not feel myself a part of that endless and beautiful distance: it is foreign to me.
From Lucerne he writes:
[37]Je suis de nouveau tout seul, et je vous avouerai que très souvent la solitude m'est pénible, car les connaissances qu'on fait dans les hôtels et en chemin de fer ne sont pas des ressources; mais cet isolement a du moins le bon côté de me pousser au travail. Je travaille un peu, mais cela va mal, comme d'ordinaire en été.
It was here that the incident occurred described in Lucerne, a sketch published in the September number of the Contemporary that same year, and one which in its fierce castigation of the rich is a precursor of much that he wrote thirty years later. Especially the conduct of the wealthy English tourists roused his ire. The particular incident the story deals with is this:
On 7 July 1857, in Lucerne, in front of the Schweizerhof Hotel, where the richest people stay, an itinerant mendicant-singer sang songs and played his guitar for half-an-hour. About a hundred people listened to him. Three times the singer asked them to give him something, but not one of them did so, and many laughed at him.
This is not fiction, but a positive fact, which any one who cares may verify by asking the permanent inhabitants of the Schweizerhof, and by looking up the newspaper lists of foreign visitors at the Schweizerhof on 7 July.
It is an event which the historians of our times should inscribe in indelible letters of fire.
In the story, Prince Nehlúdof, indignant at such treatment of a man who was a real artist and whose songs all had enjoyed, brought the singer into the hotel and treated him to a bottle of wine. He goes on to ask himself:
Which is more a man, and which more a barbarian: the lord who, on seeing the singer's worn-out clothes, angrily left the table, and for his service did not give him a millionth part of his property, and who now sits satiated, in a well-lit, comfortable room, calmly discussing the affairs of China and approving the murders that are being committed there—or the little singer who with a franc in his pocket, risking imprisonment, has tramped over hill and dale for twenty years, harming no one but cheering many by his songs, and whom they insulted to-day and all but turned out, leaving him—weary, hungry and humiliated—to make his bed somewhere on rotting straw?
After passing a few weeks at Lucerne, Tolstoy returned to Russia viâ Stuttgart, Berlin, and Stettin, from which port he took steamer to Petersburg, and after staying a week there to see Nekrásof and meet his colleagues of the Contemporary, he went through Moscow to Yásnaya, where he arrived in August. In his Diary we find this note:
This is how, on my journey, I planned my future occupations: first, literary work; next, family duties; then, estate management. But the estate I must leave as far as possible to the steward, softening him and making improvements, and spending only Rs. 2000 a year [then equal to about £270], and using the rest for the serfs. Above all, my stumbling-block is Liberal vanity. To live for oneself and do a good deed a day, is sufficient.
Further on he says: 'Self-sacrifice does not lie in saying "Take what you like from me," but in labouring and thinking, and contriving how to give oneself.'
At this time he read (in translation) the Iliad and the Gospels, which both impressed him greatly. 'I have finished reading the indescribably beautiful end of the Iliad,' he notes, and expresses his regret that there is no connection between those two wonderful works.
In October he first accompanied his brother Nicholas and his sister Mary to Moscow, and then spent a few days in Petersburg, where he found that he had been forgotten by a world absorbed in the great measures of public reform then in course of preparation. Here is a sentence from his Diary:
Petersburg at first mortified me and then put me right. My reputation has fallen and hardly gives a squeak, and I felt much hurt; but now I am tranquil. I know I have something to say and strength to say it strongly; and the public may then say what it will. But I must work conscientiously, exerting all my powers; then ... let them spit upon the altar.
By the end of October (old style) he was back in Moscow, established in furnished apartments in the Pyátnitsky Street, with his sister and his brother Nicholas. His friend Fet was also in Moscow at this time, and in his Recollections makes frequent mention of the Tolstoys. He tells us that the Countess Mary (who was an exceedingly accomplished pianist) used to come to his house for music in the evenings, accompanied sometimes by both her brothers and sometimes by Nicholas alone, who would say:
'Lyóvotchka has again donned his evening clothes and white necktie, and gone to a ball.'
Tolstoy's elegance in dress was very noticeable at this period. We read of the grey beaver collar of his overcoat, of a fashionable cane he carried, and of the glossy hat he wore placed on one side, as well as of his curly, dark-brown hair.