Gymnastics were fashionable in Moscow in those days, and any one wishing to find Tolstoy between one and two o'clock in the afternoon, could do so at the Gymnasium on the Great Dmítrovka Street, where, dressed in gymnastic attire, he might be seen intent on springing over the vaulting-horse without upsetting a cone placed on its back. He always was expert at physical exercises: a first-rate horseman, quick at all games and sports, a swimmer, and an excellent skater.
Among the visitors Fet met at Tolstoy's house we note the name of Saltykóf, who under the pseudonym of Stchedrín is known as one of the keenest and most powerful of Russia's satirists, and who during the last seven years of the reign of Nicholas I had lived in banishment in the far-off town of Vyátka. Another guest was B. N. Tchitchérin, philosopher and jurist, and author of works on Science and Religion, Property and the State, and other subjects Tolstoy dealt with three or four decades later. Katkóf, editor of the Moscow Gazette and monthly Russian Messenger, was another acquaintance; and in his magazine some of Tolstoy's chief works appeared.
In January 1858 Tolstoy's aunt, who had been a friend of his boyhood, the Countess Alexandra A. Tolstoy, Maid of Honour to the Grand Duchess Márya Nikoláyevna, came to Moscow. Through this aunt (who lived to a great age, and died only a few years ago) Tolstoy used to receive information of what went on at Court, and was sometimes able indirectly to exert influence 'in the highest circles.' When she returned to Petersburg Tolstoy accompanied her as far as the town of Klin, on the Nicholas railway, and took the opportunity to visit the Princess Volkónsky (a cousin of his mother's), who had a small estate in those parts. He remained some weeks with this affectionate old lady, who told him much about his mother and her family, and he greatly enjoyed his quiet stay with her. At her house he wrote Three Deaths, which appeared the following January in The Reading Library. It is an admirably written study of the deaths of a rich lady, a poor post-horse driver, and a tree.
In February he returned to Yásnaya Polyána; then again visited Moscow, and in March spent a fortnight in Petersburg. His love of music reasserted itself strongly at this period; and in conjunction with V. P. Bótkin, Perfílief, Mortier (his late rival in love) and others, he founded the Moscow Musical Society, which ultimately resulted in the formation of the Moscow Conservatoire of which Nicholas Rubinstein became Director.
One of Tolstoy's most intimate acquaintances at this period was S. T. Aksákof, author of stories and memoirs, lover of hunting and fishing, and father of two famous sons, both prominent Slavophil leaders.
The invigorating influence of spring shows itself in a letter Tolstoy wrote about this time to his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy (whom he calls 'Grandma'):
Grandma!—Spring!
For good people it is excellent to live in the world; and even for such men as me, it is sometimes good. In Nature, in the air, in everything, is hope, future—an attractive future.... Sometimes one deceives oneself and thinks that happiness and a future await not only Nature but oneself also, and then one feels happy. I am now in such a state, and with characteristic egotism hasten to write to you of things that interest only me. When I review things sanely, I know very well that I am an old, frozen little potato, and one already boiled with sauce; but spring so acts on me that I sometimes catch myself in the full blaze of imagining myself a plant which with others has only now blossomed, and which will peacefully, simply and joyfully grow in God's world. The result is that at this time of year, such an internal clearing-out goes on in me, such a cleansing and ordering, as only those who have experienced this feeling can imagine. All the old—away! All worldly conventions, all idleness, all egotism, all vices, all confused indefinite attachments, all regrets, even repentances—away with you all!... Make room for the wonderful little flowers whose buds are swelling and growing with the spring!...
After much more he concludes:
Farewell, dear Grandma, do not be angry with me for this nonsense, but answer with a word of wisdom, imbued with kindness, Christian kindness! I have long wished to say that for you it is pleasanter to write French, and I understand feminine thoughts better in French.
In April he was again at Yásnaya where, in spite of repeated visits to Moscow, he spent most of the summer. There was at this time no railway from Moscow southward to Toúla; and the serfs' belief concerning the new telegraph posts which stood by the side of the highroad, was that when the wire had been completed, 'Freedom' would be sent along it from Petersburg. Even Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky did not understand these new-fangled things, and, when driving along the road one day, asked Tolstoy to explain how letters were written by telegraph. He told her as simply as he could how the telegraphic apparatus works, and received the reply: 'Oui, oui, je comprends, mon cher!' How much she had really understood was however shown half an hour later when, after keeping her eye on the wire all that time, she inquired: 'But how is it, mon cher Léon, that during a whole half-hour I have not seen a single letter go along the telegraph?'
Fet and his wife used to stay a day or two at Yásnaya when journeying to and from Moscow, and Fet's account of Aunt Tatiána accords with Tolstoy's own affectionate recollections of that lady. Fet says that he and his wife 'made the acquaintance of Tolstoy's charming old aunt, Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky, who received us with that old-world affability which puts one at once at one's ease on entering a new house. She did not devote herself to memories of times long past, but lived fully in the present.'
Speaking of them all by their pet names, she mentioned that 'Seryózhenka Tolstoy had gone to his home at Pirogóvo, but Nikólenka would probably stay a bit longer in Moscow with Máshenka, but Lyóvotchka's friend Dyákof had recently visited them,' and so on.
Many years later, Tolstoy jotted down his memories of the long autumn and winter evenings spent with Aunt Tatiána to which, he says, he owed his best thoughts and impulses. He would sit in his arm-chair reading, thinking, and occasionally listening to her kindly and gentle conversation with two of the servants: Natálya Petróvna (an old woman who lived there not because she was of much use, but because she had nowhere else to live) and a maid Doúnetchka.
The chief charm of that life lay in the absence of any material care; in good relations with those nearest—relations no one could spoil; and in the leisureliness and the unconsciousness of flying time....
When, after living badly at a neighbour's in Toúla, with cards, gipsies, hunting, and stupid vanity, I used to return home and come to her, by old habit we would kiss each other's hand, I her dear energetic hand, and she my dirty, vicious hand; and also by old habit, we greeted one another in French, and I would joke with Natálya Petróvna, and would sit down in the comfortable arm-chair. She knew well all I had been doing and regretted it, but never reproached me, retaining always the same gentleness and love.... I was once telling her how some one's wife had gone away with another man, and I said the husband ought to be glad to be rid of her. And suddenly my aunt lifted her eyebrows and said, as a thing long decided in her mind, that that would be wrong of the husband, because it would completely ruin the wife. After that she told me of a drama that had occurred among the serfs. Then she re-read a letter from my sister Máshenka, whom she loved if not more, at least as much as she loved me, and she spoke of Másha's husband (her own nephew) not to condemn him, but with grief for the sorrow he inflicted on Máshenka.... The chief characteristic of her life, which involuntarily infected me, was her wonderful, general kindliness to every one without exception. I try to recall a single instance of her being angry, or speaking a sharp word, or condemning any one, and I cannot recall one such instance in the course of thirty years. She spoke well of our real aunt, who had bitterly hurt her by taking us away from her.... As to her kindly treatment of the servants—that goes without saying. She had grown up in the idea that there are masters and servants, but she utilised her authority only to serve them.... She never blamed me directly for my evil life, though she suffered on my account. My brother Sergéy, too, whom also she loved warmly, she did not reproach even when he took a gipsy girl to live with him. The only shade of disquietude she showed on our account was that, when he was very late in returning home, she would say: 'What has become of our Sergius?' Only Sergius instead of Seryósha.... She never told us in words how to live, never preached to us. All her moral work was done internally; externally one only saw her deeds—and not even deeds: there were no deeds; but all her life, peaceful, sweet, submissive and loving, not troubled or self-satisfied, but a life of quiet, unobtrusive love.... Her affectionateness and tranquillity made her society noticeably attractive and gave a special charm to intimacy with her. I know of no case where she offended any one, and of no one who did not love her. She never spoke of herself, never of religion or of what we ought to believe, or of how she believed or prayed. She believed everything, except that she rejected one dogma—that of eternal torment. 'Dieu, qui est la bonté même, ne peut pas vouloir nos souffrances.'[38]... She often called me by my father's name (Nicholas) and this pleased me very much, because it showed that her conceptions of me and of my father mingled in her love of us both.
It was not her love for me alone that was joyous. What was joyous was the atmosphere of love to all who were present or absent, alive or dead, and even to animals....
After telling of her goodness and her affection Tolstoy says in his Memoirs that, though he appreciated his happiness with her, he did not at the time nearly realise its full value; and he adds:
She was fond of keeping sweets: figs, gingerbreads and dates, in various jars in her room. I cannot forget, nor remember without a cruel pang of remorse, that I repeatedly refused her money she wanted for such things and how she, sighing sadly, remained silent. It is true I was in need of money, but I cannot now remember without horror that I refused her.
Again in another place, after mentioning her self-devotion, he says:
And it was to her, to her, that I refused the small pleasure of having figs and chocolate (and not so much for herself as to treat me) and of being able to give a trifle to those who begged of her.... Dear, dear Aunty, forgive me! Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait [if youth but knew, if age but could], I mean not in the sense of the good lost for oneself in youth, but in the sense of the good not given and the evil done to those who are no more.
Of Leo's life at Yásnaya at this time, his brother Nicholas gave Fet the following humorous account:
Lyóvotchka is zealously trying to become acquainted with peasant life and with farming, of both of which, like the rest of us, he has till now had but a superficial knowledge. But I am not sure what sort of acquaintance will result from his efforts: Lyóvotchka wants to get hold of everything at once, without omitting anything—even his gymnastics. So he has rigged up a bar under his study window. And of course, apart from prejudice, with which he wages such fierce war, he is right: gymnastics do not interfere with farming; but the steward sees things differently and says, 'One comes to the master for orders, and he hangs head downward in a red jacket, holding on by one knee to a perch, and swings himself. His hair hangs down and blows about, the blood comes to his face, and one does not know whether to listen to his orders or to be astonished at him!'
Lyóvotchka is delighted with the way the serf Ufán sticks out his arms when ploughing; and so Ufán has become for him an emblem of village strength, like the legendary Michael; and he himself, sticking his elbows out wide, takes to the plough and 'Ufanizes.'
In May 1858 Tolstoy wrote to Fet:
Dearest little Uncle [as we might say, Dear old Boy]!—I write two words merely to say that I embrace you with all my might, have received your letter, kiss the hand of Márya Petróvna [Fet's wife] and make obeisance to you all. Aunty thanks you very much for your message and bows to you, so also does my sister. What a wonderful spring it has been and is! I, in solitude, have tasted it admirably. Brother Nicholas must be at Nikólsk. Catch him and do not let him go. I want to come to see you this month. Tourgénef has gone to Winzig till August to cure his bladder.
Devil take him. I am tired of loving him. He deserts us, and won't cure his bladder.
Now good-bye, dear friend. If you have no poem ready for me by the time I come, I shall proceed to squeeze one out of you.—Your
Count L. Tolstoy.
Another letter to Fet runs:
Ay, old fellow, ahoy! First, you give no sign, though it is spring and you know we are all thinking of you, and that I, like Prometheus, am bound to a rock, yet thirst for sight or sound of you. You should either come, or at least send us a proper invitation. Secondly, you have retained my brother, and a very good brother, surnamed 'Firdusi' [an allusion to Nicholas's Oriental wisdom]. The chief culprit in this matter, I suspect, is Márya Petróvna, to whom I humbly bow, requesting her to return us our own brother. Jesting apart, he bids me let you know that he will be here next week. Drouzhínin will also come, so mind you come too, old fellow.
The first record of any participation by Tolstoy in political affairs relates to the preparations for the Emancipation of the serfs. Immediately after the conclusion of the Crimean war Alexander II, addressing the Marshals of the Nobility, in Moscow, had said: 'The existing manner of possessing serfs cannot remain unchanged. It is better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the time when it will begin to abolish itself from below. I request you, gentlemen, to consider how this can be done, and to submit my words to the Nobility for their consideration.' Some time passed without any definite response to this appeal, and meanwhile the Polish nobility of the Lithuanian Provinces, dissatisfied with certain regulations enacted in the previous reign, incautiously asked to have them revised. The Government grasped the opportunity, and treating this as the expression of a wish for Emancipation, replied that 'the abolition of serfdom must be effected not suddenly, but gradually,' and authorised the Nobility to form Committees for the preparation of definite projects to that end. Four days later the Minister of the Interior, acting on secret orders from the Emperor, sent a circular to all the Governors and Marshals of the Nobility in Russia proper, stating that the Lithuanian nobles 'had recognised the necessity of liberating the peasants,' and that 'this noble intention' had afforded peculiar satisfaction to His Majesty, and explaining the principles to be observed in case the nobles of other Provinces should express a similar desire. A few weeks later the Emperor publicly expressed a hope that, with the co-operation of his nobles, the work of Emancipation would be successfully accomplished. It therefore became quite evident that, whether the nobles liked it or not, Emancipation was at hand; since the Emperor had, at last, definitely ranged himself on the side of the Emancipationists. By accepting the invitation to co-operate in the preparation of the scheme, there appeared to be a chance that the nobles might so shape the measure that their interests would not suffer; and consequently, during 1858, a Committee was chosen in almost every Province of Central Russia. Among the rest a Meeting of the Nobility of the Government of Toúla was fixed for the first of September, to elect Deputies to the Committee for the Improvement of the Condition of the Peasants. Tolstoy attended this meeting, and together with one hundred and four fellow-nobles signed a document stating that 'with the object of improving the condition of the peasants, preserving the property of the landowners, and securing the safety of both the one and the other, we consider it necessary that the peasants should be liberated not otherwise than with an allotment of a certain amount of land in hereditary possession, and that the landowners should receive for the land they give up, full, equitable, pecuniary recompense by means of such financial measures as will not entail any obligatory relations between peasants and proprietors,—relations which the Nobility consider it necessary to terminate.'
There is no indication that Tolstoy took any prominent part in this meeting; and the resolution just quoted, while approving of Emancipation, seems to attach at least equal importance to securing full compensation for the landowners. Explain it how one may, the fact remains that while the Contemporary, and all that was progressive in Russian literature, was preoccupied with the effort to help to shape the reforms so that they might really attain the ends aimed at, Tolstoy almost retired from the scene, and hardly appeared aware of the movement going on around him. The battle for freedom was fought in the press by Tchernyshévsky, Kosheléf, and N. Samárin, by Herzen, and by many others, including Nekrásof and Saltykóf; and Tolstoy's indifference helps to explain the fact, already alluded to, that during these years the critics ignored him, though his artistic power continued to increase. His friend Fet also took no part in the Emancipation movement; being in fact rather opposed to it.
On 24th October 1858 Tolstoy writes to Fet:
To write stories is stupid and shameful. To write verses—well, write them; but to love a good man is very pleasant. Yet perhaps, against my will and intention, not I, but an unripe story inside me, compels me to love you. It sometimes seems like that. Do what one will amid the manure and the mange, one somehow begins to compose. Thank heaven, I have not yet allowed myself to write, and will not do so.... Thank you exceedingly for your trouble about a veterinary. I have found one in Toúla and have begun the cure, but I do not know what will come of it.—And, may the devil take them all,—Drouzhínin is appealing to me as a matter of friendship to write a story. I really want to. I will spin such a yarn that there will be no head or tail to it.... But joking apart, how is your Hafiz getting on? [Fet was translating some poems by Hafiz.] Turn it which way you will, the height of wisdom and fortitude for me is to enjoy the poetry of others, and not to let my own in ugly garb loose among men, but to consume it myself with my daily bread. But at times one suddenly wishes to be a great man, and it is so annoying that this has not yet come about! One even hurries to get up quicker or to finish dinner in order to begin.... Send me a poem, the healthiest of those you have translated from Hafiz, me faire venir l'eau à la bouche,[39] and I will send you a sample of wheat. Hunting has bored me to death. The weather is excellent, but I do not hunt alone.
In company, Tolstoy was however a keen sportsman, and in December 1858 nearly lost his life while out bear-shooting. He has told the story, with some embellishments, in one of the tales for children contained in the volume. Twenty-three Tales.[40] The real facts were these:
Tolstoy and his brother Nicholas had made the acquaintance of S. S. Gromeka, a well-known publicist who shared their fondness for hunting—a sport very different in Russia from what it is in England, as readers of Tolstoy's descriptions well know.
Gromeka having heard that a she-bear with two young ones had her lair in the forest near the railway at Volotchók, half-way between Petersburg and Moscow, arranged matters with the peasants of that locality, and invited the Tolstoys and other guests to a hunt. The invitation was accepted, and on 21st December Leo Tolstoy shot a bear. On 22nd the members of the party, each armed with two guns, were placed at the ends of cuttings running through the forest in which the big she-bear had been surrounded. These paths or cuttings divided the wood like the lines of a chess-board. Peasants employed as beaters were stationed to prevent the animal escaping except by approaching one or other of the sportsmen. Ostáshkof, a famous professional huntsman, supervised the proceedings. The guests were advised to stamp down the snow around them, so as to give themselves room to move freely; but Tolstoy (with his usual objection to routine methods) argued that as they were out to shoot the bear and not to box with her, it was useless to tread down the snow. He therefore stood with his two-barrelled gun in his hand, surrounded by snow almost up to his waist.
Tile bear, roused by the shouts of Ostáshkof, rushed down a cutting directly towards one of the other sportsmen; but, perceiving him, she suddenly swerved from her course and took a cross path which brought her out on to the cutting leading straight to Tolstoy. He, not expecting her visit, did not fire until the beast was within six yards, and his first shot missed. The bear was only two yards from him when his second shot hit her in the mouth. It failed to stop her rush, and she knocked Tolstoy over on to his back in the snow. Carried past him at first by her own impetus, the bear soon returned; and the next thing Tolstoy knew was that he was being weighed down by something heavy and warm, and he then felt that his face was being drawn into the beast's mouth. He could only offer a passive resistance, by drawing down his head as much as possible between his shoulders and trying to present his cap instead of his face to the bear's teeth. This state of things lasted only a few seconds, yet long enough for the bear, after one or two misses, to get her teeth into the flesh above and below his left eye. At this moment Ostáshkof, armed with a small switch, came running up, shouting: 'Where are you getting to? Where are you getting to?' At which the beast promptly took fright, and rushed off. Next day she was followed up and killed. Owing to the amount of blood and torn flesh, Tolstoy's wound at first appeared serious; but when it had been washed with snow, and he had been taken to the nearest town and had had it sewn up, it turned out to be superficial. He long retained a very noticeable scar however as a memento of the encounter; and the bear's skin may still be seen at Yásnaya.
Family Happiness, written partly in 1858, was published early in 1859. It grew out of the unsuccessful love affair mentioned in the last chapter, and is Tolstoy's imaginative description of what might have been.
The first months of 1859 he spent in Moscow, and here on the occasion of joining the Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, on 4th February, he for the first time made a public speech: a task for which, he once told me, he had no aptitude, and which he much disliked. He wrote it out, and it was to have appeared in the Proceedings of the Society, but for some reason never got printed. Its subject was 'The Supremacy of the Artistic Element in Literature,' and in it he maintained a position almost the opposite of the one he advocated so ardently and with such full conviction in What is Art? forty years later.
He was answered by the Slavophil A. S. Homyakóf, who presided at the meeting, and who in the course of his remarks said:
Allow me to remark that the justice of the opinion you have so skilfully stated is far from destroying the legitimacy of the temporary and exceptional side of literature. That which is always right, that which is always beautiful, that which is as unalterable as the most fundamental laws of the soul, undoubtedly holds, and should hold, the first place in the thoughts, the impulses, and therefore in the speech of man. It, and it alone, will be handed on by generation to generation and by nation to nation as a precious inheritance. But on the other hand, in the nature of man and of society there is continual need for self-indictment. There are moments, moments important in history, when that self-indictment acquires a special and indefeasible right, and manifests itself in literature with great definiteness and keenness....
The rights of literature, the servant of eternal beauty, do not destroy the rights of the literature of indictment, which always accompanies social deficiencies and sometimes appears as the healer of social evils....
Of course, Art is perfectly free: it finds its justification and its aim in itself. But the freedom of Art in the abstract, has nothing to do with the inner life of the artist. An artist is not a theory—a sphere of thought and mental activity—but a man, and always a man of his own times, usually its best representative, completely imbued with its spirit and its defined or nascent aspirations. By the very impressionability of his nature, without which he could not be an artist, he, even more than others, receives all the painful as well as joyous sensations of the society to which he is born....
So the writer, a servant of pure art, sometimes becomes an accuser even unconsciously, and despite his own will. I allow myself, Count, to cite you as an example. You consciously follow a definite road faithfully and undeviatingly; but are you really completely alien to the literature of indictment? Were it but in the picture of a consumptive post-boy, dying on top of a stove amid a crowd of comrades apparently indifferent to his sufferings [this refers to Three Deaths] have you not indicated some social disease, some evil? When describing that death, is it possible that you did not suffer from the horny indifference of good but unawakened human souls? Yes, you too have been and will be an involuntary indicter!
This question of the true position of literary art and its relation to the rest of life, was one which occupied Tolstoy for many years, and on which before the century closed he expressed himself in a book which must be reckoned with by all who may hereafter deal with the subject. The attitude he maintained at the time he entered the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, was in striking contrast with that of the Slavophils, such as Homyakóf, and of the great majority of the leading Russian writers of that day, who were fired with the hope of Emancipation, just as in America at the same time, Lowell, Emerson, Whittier, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Longfellow, Channing, Lloyd Garrison, and others, were stirred by the Anti-Slavery movement.
In April Tolstoy went to Petersburg and spent ten days very pleasantly with his aunt the Countess A. A. Tolstoy. By the end of the month he was back at Yásnaya. In July, Tourgénef, from France, wrote Fet a long letter in blank verse, a few lines of which indicate the relation between Leo Tolstoy and himself at this time:
During this winter Tolstoy devoted much time to an attempt to organise schools on and near his estate. The education of its peasant children was one of the things Russia most needed, and most terribly neglected. Tolstoy recognised this, and set himself strenuously and eagerly to show how the great need could be met. The work he did at this time was, however, only preliminary to what he undertook after his next visit to Western Europe, and he was far from being mentally at peace. At the commencement of the New Year he noted in his Diary: 'The burden of the estate, the burden of bachelor life, and all sorts of doubts and pessimistic feelings agitate my mind.'
One mention of the serfs (who were now nearing freedom) occurs in a letter Tolstoy wrote to Fet on 23rd February 1860, in reply to a note in which the latter had expressed a wish to buy an estate, settle down in the country, and devote himself to farming. Tolstoy replies that there is an estate for sale adjoining his own, containing:
Four hundred desyatíns of good land with, unfortunately, seventy souls of bad serfs. But that does not matter; they will gladly pay quit-rent [in lieu of personal service] as mine do, at the rate of Rs. 30 a tyaglo [man and wife with an allotment of land] or Rs. 660 for the twenty-two tyaglos, and you will get not less than that, if not more, at the Emancipation, and will have sufficient unexhausted land and meadow left to yield about Rs. 2000 a year, or over Rs. 2600 in all. The price asked for the estate is Rs. 24,000, besides a mortgage of about Rs. 5000.... At any rate it would be a good bargain to buy it for Rs. 20,000.... The seller is an old man who is ruined, and wants to sell it quickly in order to get rid of his son-in-law. He has twice sent to offer it me. The above calculation shows what the estate should yield in a couple of years' time if about Rs. 5000 be spent on improving it; but even in its present condition one can answer for a return of Rs. 1500, which is more than 7 per cent. on the cost.
In Russia to buy serfs was not then considered more discreditable than it is in England to-day to buy shares in a china or match factory; and in the same letter Tolstoy goes on to discuss literature:
I have read Tourgénef's On the Eve. This is my opinion: to write novels is undesirable, especially for people who are depressed and do not well know what they want from life. However, On the Eve is much better than A Nest of Gentlefolk, and there are in it excellent negative characters: the artist and the father. The rest are not types; even their conception, their position, is not typical, or they are quite insignificant. That however is always Tourgénef's mistake. The girl is hopelessly bad: 'Ah, how I love thee ... her eyelashes were long.' In general it always surprises me that Tourgénef, with his mental powers and poetic sensibility, should even in his methods not be able to refrain from banality. This banality shows itself most of all in his negative methods, which recall Gógol. There is no humanity or sympathy for the characters, but the author exhibits monsters whom he scolds and does not pity. This jars painfully with the tone and intention of Liberalism in everything else. It was all very well in the days of Tsar Goroh [a character in a fairy story] or of Gógol (though if one does not pity even the most insignificant of one's characters, one should scold them so that the heavens grow hot, or laugh at them so that one's sides split, and not as our splenetic and dyspeptic Tourgénef does). On the whole, however, there is now no one else who could write such a novel, though it will not meet with success.
Ostróvsky's The Storm is, in my opinion, a wretched work, but will be successful. Not Ostróvsky and Tourgénef are to blame, but the times.... Something else is now needed: not that we should learn and criticise, but that we should teach Jack and Jill at least a little of what we know.
This letter to Fet, who was in Moscow, ends with requests to procure some books, including a veterinary handbook, a veterinary instrument, and a lancet for use on human beings; to see about procuring six ploughs of a special make, and to find out the price of clover and timothy-grass, of which Tolstoy had some to sell.
At this time Tolstoy worked at his story The Cossacks, the plan of which he had sketched out in 1852, but which he did not complete till 1862.
One comes across notes in his Diary which indicate his state of mind at this period with regard to religion. After reading a book on Materialism he notes:
I thought of prayer. To what can one pray? What is God, imagined so clearly that one can ask him to communicate with us? If I imagine such an one, he loses all grandeur for me. A God whom one can beseech and whom one can serve—is the expression of mental weakness. He is God, because I cannot grasp his being. Indeed, he is not a Being, but a Law and a Force.
He was a great puzzle to his friends and acquaintances—always ready to take his own line strenuously, yet sometimes far from sure what that line was. Tourgénef wrote to Fet:
Leo Tolstoy continues his eccentricities. Evidently it was so decreed at his birth. When will he turn his last somersault and stand on his feet?
The fact that Tolstoy, like his friend Fet, was neglecting literature did not fail to call forth many remonstrances, one of the most urgent of which came to him from Drouzhínin, who wrote:
Every writer has his moments of doubt and self-dissatisfaction, and however strong and legitimate this feeling may be, no one on that account has yet ceased his connection with literature; every one goes on writing to the end. But all tendencies, good or bad, cling to you with peculiar obstinacy; so that you, more than others, need to think of this and to consider the whole matter amicably.
First of all, remember that after poetry and mental labour all other work seems worthless. Qui a bu, boira; and at the age of thirty to tear oneself away from authorship means losing half the interest of life. But that is only half the matter; there is something still more important.
On all of us lies a responsibility rooted in the immense importance of literature to Russian society. An Englishman or an American may laugh at the fact that in Russia not merely men of thirty, but grey-haired owners of 2000 serfs sweat over stories of a hundred pages, which appear in the magazines, are devoured by everybody, and arouse discussion in society for a whole day. However much artistic quality may have to do with this result, you cannot explain it merely by Art. What in other lands is a matter of idle talk and careless dilettantism, with us is quite another affair. Among us things have taken such shape that a story—the most frivolous and insignificant form of literature—becomes one of two things: either it is rubbish, or else it is the voice of a leader sounding throughout the Empire. For instance, we all know Tourgénef's weakness, but a whole ocean divides the most insignificant of his stories from the very best of Mrs. Eugene Tour's, with her half-talent. By some strange instinct the Russian public has chosen from among the crowd of writers four or five bell-men whom it values as leaders, refusing to listen to any qualifications or deductions. You—partly by talent, partly by the practical qualities of your soul, and partly owing simply to a concurrence of fortunate circumstances—have stepped into this favourable relation with the public. On that account you must not go away and hide, but must work, even to the exhaustion of your strength and powers. That is one side of the matter; but here is another. You are a member of a literary circle that is honourable (as far as may be), independent, and influential; and which for ten years, amid persecutions and misfortunes, and notwithstanding its members' vices, has firmly upheld the banner of all that is Liberal and enlightened, and has borne all this weight of abuse without committing one mean action. In spite of the world's coldness and ignorance and its contempt for literature, this circle is rewarded with honour and moral influence. Of course, there are in it insignificant and even stupid homunculi; but even they play a part in the general union, and have not been useless. In that circle you again, though you arrived but recently, have a place and a voice such as Ostróvsky for instance does not possess, though he has immense talent and his moral tendency is as worthy as your own. Why this has happened it would take too long to analyse, nor is it to the point. If you tear yourself off from the circle of writers and become inactive, you will be dull, and will deprive yourself of an important rôle in society....
At this time the state of health of his brother Nicholas—who (like Demetrius) had consumptive tendencies—began to disturb Leo Tolstoy. It was arranged that Nicholas should go to Germany for a cure. The following letter written by Leo Tolstoy to Fet, after Nicholas had started, refers to this and other matters:
... You are a writer and remain a writer, and God speed you. But that, besides this, you wish to find a spot where you can dig like an ant, is an idea which has come to you and which you must carry out, and carry out better than I have done. You must do it because you are both a good man and one who looks at life healthily.... However, it is not for me now to deal out to you approval or disapproval with an air of authority. I am greatly at sixes and sevens with myself. Farming on the scale on which it is carried out on my estate, crushes me. To 'Ufanize'[41] is a thing I only see afar off. Family affairs, Nicholas's illness (of which we have as yet no news from abroad) and my sister's departure (she leaves me in three days' time) also crush and occupy me. Bachelor life, i.e. not having a wife, and the thought that it is getting too late, torments me from a third side. In general, everything is now out of tune with me. On account of my sister's helplessness and my wish to see Nicholas, I shall at any rate procure a foreign passport to-morrow, and perhaps I shall accompany my sister abroad; especially if we do not receive news, or receive bad news, from Nicholas. How much I would give to see you before leaving, how much I want to tell you and to hear from you; but it is now hardly possible. Yet if this letter reaches you quickly, remember that we leave Yásnaya on Thursday or more probably on Friday.
Now as to farming: The price they ask of you is not exorbitant, and if the place pleases you, you should buy it. Only why do you want so much land? I have learned by three years' experience that with all imaginable diligence it is impossible to grow cereals profitably or pleasantly on more than 60 or 70 desyatíns [160 to 190 acres] that is, on about 15 desyatíns in each of four fields. Only in that way can one escape trembling for every omission (for then one ploughs not twice but three or four times) and for every hour a peasant misses, and for every extra rouble-a-month one pays him; for one can bring 15 desyatíns to the point of yielding 30 to 40 per cent. on the fixed and working capital; but with 80 or 100 desyatíns under plough one cannot do so. Please do not let this advice slip past your ears; it is not idle talk, but a result of experience I have had to pay for. Any one who tells you differently is either lying or ignorant. More than that, even with 15 desyatíns an all-absorbing industry is necessary. But then one can gain a reward—one of the pleasantest life gives; whereas with 90 desyatíns one has to labour like a post-horse, with no possibility of success. I cannot find sufficient words to scold myself for not having written to you sooner—in which case you would surely have come to see us. Now farewell.
Things meanwhile were not going very well with Nicholas, who wrote from Soden in Hesse-Nassau:
In Soden we joined Tourgénef, who is alive and well—so well that he himself confesses that he is 'quite' well. He has found some German girl and goes into ecstasies about her. We (this relates to our dearest Tourgénef) play chess together, but somehow it does not go as it should: he is thinking of his German girl, and I of my cure.... I shall probably stay in Soden for at least six weeks. I do not describe my journey because I was ill all the time.
Eventually Leo Tolstoy made up his mind to accompany his sister and her children abroad, and on 3rd July (old style) they took steamer from Petersburg for Stettin en route for Berlin. Besides anxiety on his brother's account, Tolstoy had another reason for going abroad: he wished to study the European systems of education, in order to know what had been accomplished in the line to which he now intended to devote himself.
On reaching Berlin he suffered from toothache for four days, and decided to remain there while his sister proceeded to join Nicholas at Soden. He consulted a doctor, as he was suffering also from headache and hemorrhoidal attacks, and he was ordered to take a cure at Kissingen.
He only stayed a few days in Berlin after getting rid of his toothache, and left on 14th July (old style), having however found time to attend lectures on History by Droysen, and on Physics and Physiology by Du Bois-Reymond, and having also visited some evening classes for artisans at the Handwerksverein, where he was greatly interested in the popular lectures, and particularly in the system of 'question-boxes.' The method of arousing the interest of the audience by allowing them to propound questions for the lecturer to reply to, was new to him, and he was struck by the life it brought into the classes, and by the freedom of mental contact between scholars and teacher. He noticed the same thing when he was in London a few months later, for he told me that nothing he saw there interested him more than a lecture he attended in South Kensington, at which questions were put by working men, and answered by a speaker who was master of his subject and knew how to popularise it.
In Berlin he visited the Moabit Prison, in which solitary confinement was practised. Tolstoy strongly disapproved of this mechanical attempt to achieve moral reformation. From Berlin he went to Leipzig, where he spent a day inspecting schools; but he derived little satisfaction from the Saxon schools he visited, as is indicated by a remark he jotted down in his Diary, 'Have been in school—terrible. Prayers for the King, blows, everything by rote, frightened, paralysed children....' He then proceeded to Dresden, where he called on the novelist Auerbach, whose story, Ein Neues Leben (A New Life), had much influenced him. The chief character in that story is Count Fulkenberg, who after being an officer in the army, gets into trouble, escapes from prison, buys the passport of a school-master, Eugene Baumann, and under that name devotes himself to the task of educating peasant children. When Auerbach entered the room in which his visitor was waiting, the latter introduced himself with the words: 'I am Eugene Baumann,' in such solemn tones and with so morose an appearance, that the German writer was taken aback and feared that he was about to be threatened with an action for libel. Tolstoy however hastened to add: '—not in name, but in character—' and went on to explain how good an effect Auerbach's Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (Village Tales of the Black Forest) had had on him.
After three days in Dresden, he went on to Kissingen, which was in those days about five hours' journey from Soden, where Nicholas was staying. Still intent on his educational inquiries, he read en route a history of pedagogics.
From Kissingen he wrote his Aunt Tatiána that he thought the cure was doing him good, and added:
Tell the steward to write me most minutely about the farming, the harvest, the horses and their illness. Tell the schoolmaster to write about the school: how many pupils come, and whether they learn well. I shall certainly return in autumn and intend to occupy myself more than ever with the school, so I do not wish its reputation to be lost while I am away, and I want as many pupils as possible from different parts.
While in Kissingen he read Bacon and Luther and Riehl, and made the acquaintance of Julius Froebel, author of The System of Social Politics and nephew of Froebel, the founder of the Kindergarten system. Julius Froebel was himself much interested in educational matters, and was a particularly suitable person to explain his uncle's ideas to Tolstoy.
The latter astonished his new acquaintance, with whom he used to go for walks, by the uncompromising rigidity of his views, which showed a considerable tinge of Slavophilism. Progress in Russia, declared Tolstoy, must be based on popular education, which would give better results in Russia than in Germany, because the Russian people were still unperverted, whereas the Germans were like children who had for years been subjected to a bad education. Popular education should not be compulsory. If it is a blessing, the demand for it should come naturally, as the demand for food comes from hunger.
Tolstoy visited the country round Kissingen, and travelling northward through a part of Germany rich both in scenery and in historic interest, reached Eisenach and visited the Wartburg, where Luther was confined after the Diet of Worms. The personality of the great Protestant reformer interested Tolstoy greatly, and after seeing the room in which Luther commenced his translation of the Bible, he noted in his Diary: 'Luther was great'! Twenty years later Tolstoy himself attempted to free the minds of men from the yoke of an established Church, and he too shaped his chief weapon against the Church by translating, not, it is true, like Luther, the whole Bible, but the Gospels.
Meanwhile Nicholas Tolstoy's health had been growing worse rather than better. Sergius, having been unlucky at roulette, decided to return to Russia, and visiting Leo at Kissingen en route, told him of his fears for Nicholas. On 9th August Sergius left Kissingen and Nicholas himself arrived there to visit Leo, but soon returned to Soden. Leo then spent a fortnight in the Harz Mountain district, enjoying nature and reading a great deal. On 26th August he rejoined Nicholas, his sister and her children, at Soden. The doctors had decided that Nicholas must winter in a warmer climate, and the place decided on was Hyères near Toulon, on the shores of the Mediterranean.
The first stage of the journey undertaken by the family party was to Frankfurt-on-Main, where their aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy, was staying. She tells the following story of Leo's visit to her on this occasion:
One day Prince Alexander of Hesse and his wife were calling on me, when suddenly the door of the drawing-room opened and Leo appeared in the strangest garb, suggestive of a picture of a Spanish bandit. I gasped with astonishment. Leo apparently was not pleased with my visitors, and soon took his departure.
[42]'Qui est donc ce singulier personnage?' inquired my visitors in astonishment.
'Mais c'est Léon Tolstoy.'
'Ah, mon Dieu, pourquoi ne l'avez vous pas nommé? Après avoir lu ses admirables écrits, nous mourions d'envie de le voir,' said they, reproachfully.
From Frankfurt the party proceeded to Hyères, where Nicholas, growing rapidly worse and worse, died on 20th September (new style).
Few men have been so admired and loved as he was by all who knew him. The only thing recorded against him is the fact that when serving in the Caucasus he, like many of his fellow-officers, gave way to some extent to intemperance; but after returning home he recovered his self-control. I have already told of his influence over Leo in the early days of the Ant-Brotherhood, and of the green stick, buried where Tolstoy himself wishes his body to lie. Such influence he retained all through life, and men and women of most different temperaments make equally enthusiastic mention of his charm and goodness. That Leo's judgment of what is good and bad has remained strongly influenced by his love for and memory of Nicholas, is plain enough to all who have the facts before them and read his works attentively.
Tourgénef once said:
The humility which Leo Tolstoy developed theoretically, his brother actually practised in life. He always lived in the most impossible lodgings, almost hovels, somewhere in the out-of-the-way quarters of Moscow, and he willingly shared all he had with the poorest outcast. He was a delightful companion and narrator, but writing was to him almost a physical impossibility, the actual process of writing being as difficult for him as for a labourer whose stiff hands will not hold a pen.
Nicholas did, however, as a matter of fact, contribute some Memoirs of a Sportsman to the Contemporary.
Never was any one's death more sincerely regretted. This is the letter Leo wrote to Aunt Tatiána, the night the event occurred.
Chère Tante!—The black seal will have told you all. What I have been expecting from hour to hour for two weeks occurred at nine o'clock this evening. Only since yesterday did he let me help him undress, and to-day for the first time he definitely took to his bed and asked for a nurse. He was conscious all the time, and a quarter-of-an-hour before he died he drank some milk and told me he was comfortable. Even to-day he still joked and showed interest in my educational projects. Only a few minutes before he died he whispered several times: 'My God, my God!' It seems to me that he felt his position, but deceived himself and us. Máshenka, only to-day, some four hours before, had gone three miles out of Hyères to where she is living. She did not at all expect it to come so soon. I have just closed his eyes. I shall now soon be back with you and will tell you all personally. I do not intend to transport the body. The funeral will be arranged by the Princess Golítsin, who has taken it all on herself.
Farewell, chère tante. I cannot console you. It is God's will—that is all. I am not writing to Seryózha now. He is probably away hunting, you know where. So let him know, or send him this letter.
On the day after the funeral he wrote to Sergius:
I think you have had news of the death of Nicholas. I am sorry for you that you were not here. Hard as it is, I am glad it all took place in my presence, and that it acted on me in the right way—not like Mítenka's [his third brother, Demetrius] death, of which I heard when I was not thinking at all about him. However, this is quite different. With Mítenka only memories of childhood and family feeling were bound up; but this was a real man both to you and to me, whom we loved and respected positively more than any one else on earth. You know the selfish feeling which came latterly, that the sooner it was over the better; it is dreadful now to write it and to remember that one thought it. Till the last day, with his extraordinary strength of character and power of concentration, he did everything to avoid becoming a burden to me. On the day of his death he dressed and washed himself, and in the morning I found him dressed on his bed. Only about nine hours before he died did he give way to his illness and ask to be undressed. It first happened in the closet. I went downstairs, and heard his door open. I returned and did not find him. At first I feared to go to him—he used not to like it; but this time he himself said, 'Help me!'
And he submitted and became different that day, mild and gentle. He did not groan, did not blame any one, praised everybody, and said to me: 'Thank you, my friend.' You understand what that meant between us. I told him I had heard how he coughed in the morning, but did not come to him from fausse honte [false shame]. 'Needlessly,' said he—'it would have consoled me.' Suffering? He suffered; but it was not until a couple of days before his death that he once said: 'How terrible these nights without sleep are! Towards morning the cough chokes one, unendingly! And it hurts—God knows how! A couple more such nights—it's terrible!' Not once did he say plainly that he felt the approach of death. But he only did not say it. On the day of his death he ordered a dressing-gown, and yet when I remarked that if he did not get better, Máshenka and I would not go to Switzerland, he replied: 'Do you really think I shall be better?' in such a tone that it was evident what he felt but for my sake did not say, and what I for his sake did not show; all the same, from the morning I knew what was coming, and was with him all the time. He died quite without suffering—externally, at all events. He breathed more and more slowly—and it was all over. The next day I went to him and feared to uncover his face. I thought it would show yet more suffering and be more terrible than during his illness; but you cannot imagine what a beautiful face it was, with his best, merry, calm expression.
Yesterday he was buried here. At one time I thought of transporting him, and of telegraphing for you; but I reconsidered it. It is no use chafing the wound. I am sorry for you that the news will have reached you out hunting, amid distractions, and will not grip you as it does us. It is good for one. I now feel what I have often been told, that when one loses some one who was what he was to us, it becomes much easier to think of one's own death.
On 13th October 1860 he notes in his Diary:
It is nearly a month since Nicholas died. That event has torn me terribly from life. Again the question: Why? Already the departure draws near. Whither? Nowhere. I try to write, I force myself, but do not get on, because I cannot attach enough importance to the work to supply the necessary strength and patience. At the very time of the funeral the thought occurred to me to write a Materialist Gospel, a Life of Christ as a Materialist.
One sees how bit by bit the seeds of the work Tolstoy was to do in later years planted themselves in his mind. In early childhood came the enthusiasm for the Ant-Brotherhood and the influence of his brother, of Aunt Tatiána, and of the pilgrims; then an acquaintance with the writings of Voltaire and other sceptics, undermining belief in the miraculous; then, in Sevastopol, the idea of 'founding a new religion: Christianity purged of dogmas and mysticism'; then a study of Luther's Reformation, and now the idea of a rationalist Life of Christ.