On 23rd January 1865, when Tolstoy had got over his accident, he wrote Fet another of those jocular letters which sometimes contain more of the real truth than will bear saying seriously:
Shall I tell you something surprising about myself? When the horse threw me and broke my arm, and when I came to after fainting, I said to myself: 'I am an author.' And I am an author, but a solitary, on-the-quiet kind of author.... In a few days the first part of 'The Year 1805' [so the first part of War and Peace was originally called] will appear. Please write me your opinion of it in detail. I value your opinion and that of a man whom I dislike the more, the more I grow up—Tourgénef. He will understand. All I have printed hitherto I consider but a trial of my pen; what I am now printing, though it pleases me better than my former work, still seems weak—as an Introduction must be. But what follows will be—tremendous!!!... Write what is said about it in the different places you know, and especially how it goes with the general public. No doubt it will pass unnoticed. I expect and wish it to do so; if only they don't abuse me, for abuse upsets one....
I am glad you like my wife; though I love her less than my novel, still, you know, she is my wife. Be sure you come to visit us; for if you and Márya Petróvna do not stay here on your return from Moscow it will really, without a joke, be too stupid!
In May 1865 one sees by a letter of Tolstoy's to Fet that one of the children had been ill and he himself had been in bed for three days and barely escaped a fever. His wife's younger sister, Tánya, she of the contralto voice who (with some admixture of his wife) served Tolstoy as model for Natásha in War and Peace, was spending the summer at Yásnaya, as she had done each year since her sister's marriage. The Countess Mary and her children were also there. The children, he says, were well, and out all day in the open air. He adds:
I continue to write little by little, and am content with my work. The woodcock still attract me, and every evening I shoot at them, that is, generally, past them. My farming goes on well, that is to say, it does not disturb me much—which is all I demand of it....
In reply to a suggestion from Fet, he goes on to say that he will not write more about the Yásno-Polyána school, but hopes some day to express the conclusions to which his three years' ardent passion for that work had brought him. Then comes a reference to the state of agricultural affairs after the Emancipation, and a passing allusion to the question of famine—a subject destined to make great demands on Tolstoy's attention in later years:
Our affairs as agriculturists are now like those of a share-holder whose shares have lost value and are unsaleable on 'Change. The case is a bad one. Personally I only ask that it should not demand of me so much attention and participation as to deprive me of my tranquillity. Latterly I have been content with my private affairs; but the general trend—with the impending misery of famine—torments me more and more every day. It is so strange, and even good and terrible. We have rosy radishes on our table, and yellow butter, and well-baked, soft bread on a clean tablecloth; the garden is green, and our young ladies in muslin dresses are glad it is hot and shady; while there that evil hunger-devil is already at work, covering the fields with goose-weed, chafing the hard heels of the peasants and their wives, and cracking the hoofs of the cattle. Our weather, the corn, and the meadows, are really terrible. How are they with you?
The letter closes with advice to Fet to transfer his chief attention from the land to literature, and a statement that Tolstoy himself has done so, and is finding life less difficult.
When Tolstoy went out hunting hares and foxes with borzoi dogs, Miss Tatiána Behrs (the Tánya alluded to above) used often to accompany him.
Between this lady and Count Sergius Tolstoy (Leo's elder brother) an attachment had grown up which caused great distress to them both, for, besides being twenty-two years older than the lady, Sergius was living with, and had a family by, the gipsy mentioned in a previous chapter, though he was not legally married. His affection for his family prevented his yielding completely to his love for Tánya and asking her to be his wife. The Behrs were quite willing that he should do so, and the young lady would have accepted him, and was much pained by the vacillation that resulted from the battle between his love for her and his affection for his family. Ultimately he resolved to be faithful to the union he had formed, and, in order to legitimise his children, went through the form of marriage with their mother in 1867. Almost at the same time, Tánya, having recovered from her disappointment, married a Mr. Kouzmínsky.
Here again one gets a slight glimpse of the experience of life which has led Tolstoy, contrary to the opinion general among the Russian 'intelligents,' to advocate faithfulness at all costs to the woman with whom one has once formed a union.
A knowledge of Tánya's story adds to the interest with which, in Tolstoy's great novel, one reads of Natásha Róstof's troubles and ultimate happiness.
Towards the end of May, Tolstoy visited the estate of Nikólsky (which after the death of his brother Nicholas had become his), and had the house there repaired. In June the whole family moved to Nikólsky, where they lived very quietly; Tolstoy continuing to write War and Peace. His friend D. A. Dyákof's estate was only ten miles away, and Tolstoy saw much of him at this time, besides having him at other times as a frequent visitor at Yásnaya. Dyákof was his chief adviser in agricultural matters, as well as in his efforts to improve the stock of his cattle, pigs and poultry. Almost the only other visitors at Nikólsky were the Fets; and the poet records meeting there the Countess's 'charming sister,' Tánya, and experiencing violent antipathy for the sour koumýs, about which Tolstoy was enthusiastic, and a large tub of which stood near the front door.
While living at Nikólsky Tolstoy was invited for a fortnight by a neighbouring landlord, Kiréyevsky, to a grand hunt, in which the huntsmen wore special costumes, and luxurious dinners were served in the woods. What interested Tolstoy most in all this was not the hunt, but the opportunity it afforded him of studying types of the old and new aristocracy.
At this period of his life one hears of his playing the guitar and singing passionate love-songs.
During the autumn of 1865 Tolstoy, accompanied by his eleven-year-old brother-in-law, visited the battlefield of Borodinó. They left Moscow in Dr. Behrs' carriage, with post-horses. When the time came for them to have something to eat, they found that the lunch basket had been left behind, and they had only a small basket of grapes. Thereupon Tolstoy remarked to his companion, 'I am sorry, not that we have left the basket of food behind, but because your father will be upset and will be angry with his man.' The journey took only one day, and they stayed at the monastery erected in memory of those who fell in the great fight. For two days Tolstoy investigated the scene of the conflict which he was about to describe in his novel, and he then drew the plan of the fight which appears in that work. Even in 1865 there were but few survivors of the campaign of 1812 to be found in the neighbourhood.
Tolstoy used at this time to spend whole days in the Roumyántsef Museum in Moscow, studying books and manuscripts relating to the times of Alexander I, and especially to the reformatory and Masonic movements which then sprang up in Russia, but were subsequently suppressed on political grounds.
S. A. Behrs tells us that Tolstoy
was always fond of children, and liked to have them about him. He easily won their confidence, and seemed to have found the key to their hearts. He appeared to have no difficulty in suiting himself to a strange child, and with a single question set it completely at ease, so that it began at once to chat away with perfect freedom. Independently of this, he could divine a child's thought with the skill of a trained educationalist. I remember his children sometimes running up to him, and telling him they had a great secret; and when they persisted in refusing to divulge it, he would quietly whisper in their ears what it was. 'Ah, what a papa ours is! How did he find it out?' they would cry, in astonishment.
He also says:
Gifted by nature with rare tact and delicacy, he is extremely gentle in his bearing and conduct to others. I never heard him scold a servant. Yet they all had the greatest respect for him, were fond of him, and seemed even to fear him. Nor, with all his zeal for sport, have I ever seen him whip a dog or beat his horse.
A servant who lived with him more than twenty years has said: 'Living in the Count's house from my childhood, I loved Leo Nikoláyevitch as though he were my father'; and in another place he remarks:
The Count had a stern appearance, but treated the servants excellently, and made things easy for all strangers whom he met. He has a very good heart, and when he was cross with me for anything, I, knowing his character, used at once to leave the room, and when next he called me, it was as though nothing unpleasant had happened.
Speaking of Tolstoy's later years the same servant says:
Leo Nikoláyevitch has now become quite a different man. From 1865 to 1870 he was active in managing the estate, and was fond of cows, bred sheep, looked after the property, and, in a word, attended to everything. At that time he was hot-tempered and impulsive. He would order the trap to be brought when he wanted to go hunting. His man, Alexis, would bring him his hunting-boots, and the Count would shout at him, 'Why have you not dried them? You are not worth your salt!' Alexis, knowing the Count's character, would take the boots away, and bring them back almost directly. 'There! now they're all right,' the Count would say, and would brighten up instantly.
His love of the country and his dislike of towns sprang partly from his keen appreciation of the charm and loveliness of Nature. He saw fresh beauty every day, and often exclaimed: 'What wealth God has! He gives each day something to distinguish it from all the rest.'
Sportsman and agriculturist himself, he maintains that sportsmen and agriculturists alone know Nature. To quote Behrs again:
No bad weather was allowed to interfere with his daily walk. He could put up with loss of appetite, from which he occasionally suffered, but he could never go a day without a sharp walk in the open air. In general, he was fond of active movement, riding, gymnastics, but particularly walking. If his literary work chanced to go badly, or if he wished to throw off the effects of any unpleasantness, a long walk was his sovereign remedy. He could walk the whole day without fatigue; and we have frequently ridden together for ten or twelve hours. In his study he kept a pair of dumb-bells, and sometimes had gymnastic apparatus erected there.
All luxury was distasteful to him; and much that ordinary people regard as common comforts, seemed to him harmful indulgences, bad for the souls and bodies of men. Nothing could well be more simple than the arrangement of his house at Yásnaya, substantial and solidly built as it was, with its double windows, and the Dutch stoves so necessary to warm a Russian house.
He was not at all particular about what he ate, but objected to a soft bed or spring mattress, and at one time he used to sleep on a leather-covered sofa.
He dressed very simply, and when at home never wore starched shirts or tailor-made clothes, but adapted to his own requirements the ordinary Russian blouse, having it made of woollen stuff for winter, and of linen for summer. His out-door winter dress was also an adaptation of the sheepskin shoúba and peasants' caftán, made of the plainest material; and these afforded such good protection from the weather that they were often borrowed by members of the household as well as by visitors.
During the writing of War and Peace Tolstoy generally enjoyed good spirits, and on days when his work had gone well, he would gleefully announce that he had left 'a bit of my life in the inkstand.' One of his chief recreations was to go out hare-hunting with borzoi dogs, and this he often did in company with a neighbouring landed proprietor, Bíbikof.
From October 1865 he ceased to keep his Diary, and did not renew it during the period covered by this volume.
On Twelfth Night a grand masquerade was held at Yásnaya, and the festivities were kept up till past two in the morning, and were followed by a troika drive next day.
That same January the family moved to Moscow, where they hired a six-roomed apartment for Rs. 155 a month (say about £23); and there they remained for six weeks while the second part of War and Peace was being printed for the Russian Messenger.
Among the friends Tolstoy saw most of at this time were Aksákof and Prince Obolénsky. He also attended the Moscow drawing school, and he tried his hand at sculpture—modelling a bust of his wife. It does not appear, however, that he continued this occupation long.
In May 1866 a second son, Ilyá, was born, and an English nurse introduced into the family.
During this summer an infantry regiment was stationed near Yásnaya, in which a young Sub-Lieutenant named Kolokóltsef was serving, whom the Countess Tolstoy had known in Moscow. He visited the Tolstoys, and introduced to them his Colonel Únosha, and his fellow-officer Ensign Stasulévitch (brother of the Liberal editor of the monthly magazine, The Messenger of Europe), who had been degraded to the ranks because, while he was on prison-duty, a prisoner had escaped. Ensign Stasulévitch was middle-aged, but he had only recently regained his rank as officer and joined the regiment commanded by his former comrade, Colonel Únosha.
One day Stasulévitch and Kolokóltsef called on Tolstoy and told him that a soldier, serving as secretary in one of the companies of the regiment, had struck his Company Commander, and was to be tried by court-martial. They asked Tolstoy to undertake the man's defence, and he, having always regarded capital punishment with abhorrence, readily agreed to do so.
The circumstances of the case were these. The soldier, Shiboúnin, was a man of very limited intelligence, whose chief occupation was writing out reports. When he had any money he spent it on solitary drinking. The Captain in command of his company, a Pole, apparently disliked him, and frequently found fault with his reports and made him rewrite them. This treatment Shiboúnin bitterly resented; and one day, when he had been drinking, on being told to rewrite a document he had prepared, he insulted and struck the Captain. By law the penalty for a private who strikes his officer is death. Tolstoy nevertheless hoped to save the man's life, and obtained permission to plead on his behalf. The trial took place on 6th June, and the members of the court-martial were Colonel Únosha, Stasulévitch, and Kolokóltsef; the latter being merely a light-headed youngster.
Tolstoy, when telling me of the incident, remarked that of the four occasions on which he has spoken in public, this was the time that he did so with most assurance and satisfaction to himself. He had written out his speech; the main point of which was that Shiboúnin was not responsible for his actions, being abnormal, and having from the combined effect of intemperance and the monotony of his occupation, become idiotic and obsessed by an idea that his Company Commander did not understand report writing, and unfairly rejected work faultlessly done. The law decrees a mitigation of sentence for crimes committed by those who are not in the full possession of their senses; and as this contradicts the paragraph allotting death as the sole punishment for a soldier who strikes his officer, Tolstoy argued that mercy should be extended to the prisoner.
The Court adjourned to consider its verdict, and (as Tolstoy subsequently learnt) Stasulévitch was in favour of mercy. The Colonel, who was more of a military machine than a human being, demanded the death sentence, and the decision therefore rested with the boyish Sub-Lieutenant, who (submitting to his Colonel) voted for death.
Tolstoy wished to appeal (through his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy) to Alexander II for a pardon; but with characteristic disregard of details, he omitted to mention the name of the regiment in which the affair had occurred, and this enabled the Minister of War, Milútin, to delay the presentation of the petition until Shiboúnin had been shot; which occurred on 9th August. Tolstoy's appeal never, therefore, reached the Emperor.
In contrast with the action of the Colonel and the Minister, was that of the peasants of the district, who flocked in crowds to see the prisoner; bringing him milk, eggs, home-made linen and all the gifts their poverty could afford. When the day of execution arrived, Shiboúnin went quite impassively to his death; to all appearance incapable of understanding what was happening. The people thronged around the post to which he was to be tied—the women weeping and some of them fainting. They fetched a priest to perform Masses at his grave, and paid for the service to be repeated all day. At night contributions of copper money, linen, and candles such as are burnt in Russian churches, were laid upon his grave. Next day the Masses were recommenced, and were continued until the local police forbade any more religious services, and levelled the grave that the people might not continue to visit it.
The knowledge of such a difference between the spirit of the governors and the governed, helps us once again to understand Tolstoy's ultimate conviction that Government and the administration of law are essentially evil things, always tending to make the world worse and not better. In later life we may be sure he would not have been content to base his plea for mercy on merely legal grounds.
From time to time he continued to be troubled with ill-health; for instance, in July 1866 he writes that he is confined to the house with pains in the stomach which make it impossible for him to turn quickly.
In November—contrary to what he had often said in the past and was to return to in later life—he expresses his sense of the importance of authorship. Fet, criticising something in War and Peace, had quoted the words, irritabilis poetarum gens, and Tolstoy, replying 'Not I,' welcomes the criticism, begs for more, and goes on to say:
What have you been doing? Not on the Zémstvo [County Council] or in farming (all that is compulsory activity such as we do elementally and with as little will of our own as the ants who make an ant-hill; in that sphere there is nothing good or bad), but what are you doing in thought, with the mainspring of your being, which alone has been, and is, and will endure in the world? Is that spring still alive? Does it wish to manifest itself? How does it express its wish? Or has it forgotten how to express itself? That is the chief thing.
By the autumn of this year the railway southwards from Moscow to Koursk had been constructed as far as Toúla, making it easier to get from Yásnaya to Moscow, and to the rest of Europe. Yet Tolstoy comparatively seldom felt tempted to leave his much-loved, tranquil, busy, country life, in which alone he found himself able to work with the maximum of efficiency.
About this time he undertook the planting of a birch wood, which has since grown up and become valuable.
During the summer of 1867 Tolstoy, despite the dislike and distrust of doctors—which he shares with Rousseau, and which he has again and again expressed in his works—was induced by the state of his health and by his wife's persuasion, to consult the most famous Moscow doctor of the time, Professor Zahárin, on whose advice he drank mineral water during several weeks.
Writing to Fet he says:
If I wrote to you, dear friend, every time I think of you, you would receive two letters a day from me. But one cannot get everything said, and sometimes one is lazy and sometimes too busy, as is the case at present. I have recently returned from Moscow and have begun a strict cure under the direction of Zahárin; and most important of all, I am printing my novel at Ris's, and have to prepare and send off MSS. and proofs every day under threat of a fine and of delayed publication. That is both pleasant and also hard, as you know.
He goes on to criticise Tourgénef's novel, Dym (Smoke), which had appeared that year:
About Smoke I meant to write long ago, and, of course, just what you have now written. That is why we love one another—because we think alike with the 'wisdom of the heart' as you call it. (Thank you very much for that letter also: 'the wisdom of the heart' and 'the wisdom of the mind' explain much to me.) About Smoke, I think that the strength of poetry lies in love; and the direction of that strength depends on character. Without strength of love there is no poetry; but strength falsely directed—the result of the poet's having an unpleasant, weak character—creates dislike. In Smoke there is hardly any love of anything, and very little poetry. There is only love of light and playful adultery, and therefore the poetry of that novel is repulsive. That, as you see, is just what you write about it. Only I fear to express this opinion because I cannot look soberly at the author, whose personality I do not like; but I fancy my impression is the general one. One more writer played out!
In November 1867 we find the whole family again established for a while in a lodging in Moscow, where they seem to have remained for a large part of the winter.
Here Fet visited Tolstoy and announced to him that he had decided to arrange a Literary Evening for the benefit of the famine-stricken peasants of Mtsensk, the district in which Fet's estate lay. Tolstoy met the suggestion with irony, maintaining that Fet had invented the famine; and in reply to a request that he would ensure the success of the evening by reading something, flatly refused to do so, declaring that he never had and never could do such a thing as read in public. Still, he lent Fet the chapter of War and Peace containing the wonderful description of the retreat of the Russian army from Smolénsk in fearful drought. This as yet existed only in proof, not having been published. (It forms Chapter V of Part X of Volume II in Mrs. Constance Garnett's version: the best English rendering of that novel.) Read by Prince Kougoúshef, the poet and dramatist, it evoked thunders of applause.
On 12th April 1868 Tourgénef, writing to Fet, said:
I have just finished the fourth volume of War and Peace. There are things in it that are unbearable, and things that are wonderful; and the wonderful things (they predominate) are so magnificently good that we have never had anything better written by anybody; and it is doubtful whether anything as good has been written.
About the same time V. P. Bótkin wrote from Petersburg: 'Tolstoy's novel is having a really remarkable success; every one here is reading it, and they not merely read it but become enthusiastic about it.'
The Epilogue was not completed till late in 1869. On 30th August Tolstoy writes: 'Part VI [i.e. Part II of the Epilogue] which I expected to have finished a month ago, is not ready'; and then in the next sentence, he goes into ecstasies over Schopenhauer:
Do you know what this summer has been for me? An unceasing ecstasy over Schopenhauer, and a series of mental enjoyments such as I never experienced before. I have bought all his works, and have read and am reading them (as well as Kant's). And assuredly no student in his course has learnt so much and discovered so much as I have during this summer. I do not know whether I shall ever change my opinion, but at present I am confident that Schopenhauer is the greatest genius among men. You said he had written something or other on philosophic subjects. What do you mean by 'something or other'? It is the whole world in an extraordinarily vivid and beautiful reflection. I have begun translating him. Won't you take up that work? We would publish it together. After reading him I cannot conceive how his name can remain unknown. The only explanation is the one he so often repeats, that except idiots there is scarcely any one else in the world....
He goes on to say that he was starting next day for the Government of Pénza to look at an estate he meant to buy 'in those out-of-the-way parts.' The servant who accompanied Tolstoy has told how they travelled third class from Moscow to Nízhni, and how Tolstoy chatted with his fellow-travellers, so that many of them took him 'for a common man.' The idea of buying the estate in Pénza was ultimately abandoned.
He had by then completed the last part of War and Peace, which was to appear complete in book form in November. Two volumes had been published in 1866, three more in 1868, and the sixth was not ready till this year, 1869. (In subsequent editions the book was rearranged, first into five and then into four volumes.)
Though he had so completely conquered the laziness of which he accused himself in early manhood as to have become a regular, indefatigable and extremely hard worker, yet after the completion of so gigantic a task he felt the need of recuperation and in summer wrote to Fet: 'It is now my deadest time: I neither write nor think, but feel happily stupid,' and he adds that he goes out shooting woodcock and has killed eight at an outing.
That at this time he already felt something of the strong repugnance he so strenuously expressed in later years for luxury and profuse expenditure, is indicated by his comment on the death of his acquaintance, the author V. P. Bótkin, which took place in 1869. The latter, a member of a wealthy family of tea-merchants, having lived with economy till he knew his death was approaching, then hired a splendid lodging in Petersburg, fitted it up with all possible comfort and luxury, engaged a chef from the kitchen of the Tsarévitch, paid daily attention to the dinner menu, and engaged famous musicians to perform quartets at his lodgings. To the magnificent feasts he gave every day (at which, owing to the state of his health, he himself participated chiefly as a spectator) he gathered a select circle of those friends whose conversation interested him. He told his brother that these arrangements for the close of his life gave him the keenest pleasure, and that 'birds of Paradise are singing in my soul.' On 4th October a quartet and a banquet had been arranged as usual, and many guests were expected—but V. P. Bótkin lay dead in his bed.
Tolstoy, hearing of this, wrote to Fet:
I was terribly shocked by the character of V. P. Bótkin's death. If what is told of it is true, it is terrible. How is it that among his friends not one was found to give to that supreme moment of life the character suitable to it?
Before War and Peace was finished, the Countess had borne four children, the fourth being a boy, born on 20th May 1869, and christened Leo—nursing them all herself, as she did her subsequent children, with two exceptions mentioned later on. Her willingness to do her duty in this respect was exceptional among women of her class, for the employment of wet-nurses was extremely common in Russia.
Up to the age of ten, the children were taught Russian and music by the Countess, and she even found time to make their clothes herself till they reached that age. Besides managing the household, her brother tells us that during the composition of War and Peace she found time to copy it out no less than seven times, a statement not to be taken literally: for greatly as Tolstoy believes in the proverb that 'Gold is got by sifting,' and indefatigably as he revises his work, not all the chapters of War and Peace will have been altered that number of times. With Tolstoy the children learnt arithmetic; and they learnt to read French out of illustrated volumes of Jules Verne.
In all that concerned the education of the children, his wife at this time willingly constituted herself the executant of her husband's decisions, which were based largely on J. J. Rousseau's Émile, and were relaxed only in so far as the Countess was unable to carry them out, and as Tolstoy found himself too much occupied with other affairs to attempt to do so. Later on there was less accord between the parents.
With the first child they tried to do without a nurse, but the attempt was unsuccessful, and subsequently Russian nurses and foreign bonnes were employed.
Toys were not allowed in the nursery, but much liberty was given to the children. No violent or severe punishments were inflicted on them, and none but their parents might award the punishments that were administered. They aimed at gaining their children's confidence by timely petting and kindly treatment.
If one of the children told a falsehood, this was treated as a serious matter, and the punishment usually consisted in the parents treating the child coldly. As soon, however, as it showed that it was really sorry, the punishment ceased; but a child was never persuaded to say it was sorry or to promise not to repeat its fault.
All the grown-up people in the house were expected to remember that children are apt to copy and imitate all that they see and hear; and the children were not kept away from the adults, except at lesson time. Consequently when eight o'clock came and the children went to bed, Tolstoy would often remark: 'Now, we are freer!'
Partly that they might learn English, partly because Tolstoy believed that education was freer in England than elsewhere, young English governesses were engaged to take charge of his children from the age of three to nine. He was extremely fortunate in his first choice, for the young lady remained with the Tolstoys for six years, and after her marriage continued in most friendly relations with the whole family.
He aimed at acquainting the children with Nature, and developing their love of it, of animals, and of insects. He liked to let them realise their impotence and their complete dependence on their elders, but he always did this with kindly consideration.
The children were not allowed to order the servants about, but had to ask them for anything they wanted; and that a good example might be set, every one in the house was expected to do the same. This was the more important, because the peasant servants in Russia, even after the Emancipation, were scarcely regarded as belonging to the same race of human beings as their masters, and a famous Russian author could say without any exaggeration, 'The balcony was rotten. Only servants went there; the family did not go there.' But, to avoid giving a wrong impression, I must here make a reservation. Just because there was no idea of the two classes overlapping, and because so wide a gap existed between them that they dressed quite differently (the peasants having their own costume and style of garments) very cordial and sincere good feeling often grew up between master and man, or between proprietress and servant, and real human interest, such as is shown in Tolstoy's descriptions of the servants in Childhood, and in his other stories. It was, and is, not at all unusual for Russian servants to intervene in the conversation of the family or visitors; and the whole relation between employers and employed was quite different to what it is in England, where on Sundays the maid might be mistaken for her mistress, except that she often looks more attractive than the latter.
The plan adopted in the Yásno-Polyána school, where no child was obliged to learn anything it did not care to learn, had to be abandoned in the family; but some scope was allowed to the children to reject what they had no capacity for, and they were never punished for neglecting to prepare lessons, though they were rewarded when they learnt well.
To illustrate Tolstoy's way of developing the minds of those about him, Behrs tells of his own case when, as a youth, he stayed at Yásnaya:
Regardless of my youth at the time, I remember that Tolstoy discussed quite seriously with me all the scientific and philosophic questions it came into my head to put to him. He always answered simply and clearly, and never hesitated to admit the fact if he himself did not understand this or that matter. Often my talk with him took the form of a dispute, on which I embarked in spite of my consciousness of his immense superiority.
The children were always eager to go for walks with their father, to answer his call to practise Swedish gymnastics, and to be on his side in any game he taught them. In winter they skated a good deal; but clearing the snow off the pond under his leadership was an even greater pleasure than the skating itself.
Before breakfast he would go for a walk with his brother-in-law, or they would ride down to bathe in the river that flows by one side of the estate. At morning coffee the whole family assembled, and it was generally a very merry meal, Tolstoy being up to all sorts of jokes, till he rose with the words, 'One must get to work,' and went off to his study, taking with him a tumbler full of tea. While at work in his room not even his wife was allowed to disturb him; though at one time his second child and eldest daughter, Tatiána, while still quite a little girl, was privileged to break this rule. The rare days (generally in summer) when he relaxed, were very welcome to the children, for their father's presence always brought life and animation with it. Generally after dinner, before resuming work, he would read a book not directly connected with the task he had in hand. It was often an English novel; and we hear of his reading Anthony Trollope with approval, Mrs. Henry Wood, who, he says, made a great impression on him, and Miss Braddon. His dislike of George Sand remained unshaken, and he considered Consuelo to be a mixture of the pretentious and the spurious. Goethe (especially Faust) he admired; while Molière's plays and Hugo's Les Misérables appealed to him very strongly indeed. In the evening he was fond of playing duets with his sister. He used to find it hard to keep up with her in playing long pieces with which he was not quite familiar, and when in difficulties he would say something to make her laugh, and cause her to play slower. If he did not succeed by means of this ruse, he would sometimes stop and solemnly take off one of his boots, as though that must infallibly help him out of the difficulty; and he would then recommence, with the remark, 'Now, it will go all right!'
During the early years of his married life few visitors came to Yásnaya, except the numerous members of the Tolstoy-Behrs families, who stayed there chiefly in summer. The poet A. A. Fet, D. A. Dyákof, whom he had known from boyhood and had described in Youth, N. N. Stráhof, the philosopher and critic, for whose judgment he had great respect and whom he frequently consulted throughout his literary career, and Prince L. D. Ouroúsof, a cousin of the Prince Ouroúsof he had known during the siege of Sevastopol, seem to have been almost the only friends who visited him in the years first following his marriage; and this suited Tolstoy very well, for to entertain many visitors would have seriously interrupted the absorbing work in which he was continually engaged.
Fet has so often been mentioned in this volume that it is time to devote a few lines to describing a man who has come in for much abuse on account of the anti-Emancipationist sympathies expressed in some of his writings. Like Tolstoy, he had grown up with no idea that it is incumbent on men of education and capacity to organise the society of which they are members, or by political action to remedy such abuses as inevitably arise among human beings who do not keep the task of systematic social organisation constantly in view. Of the impression Fet's political opinions made on the Liberals, one may judge by a remark Tourgénef addressed to him in a letter written in 1874: 'Twenty years ago, at the height of Nicholas I's régime, you dumbfounded me by announcing your opinion that the mind of man could devise nothing superior to the position of the Russian aristocracy of that day, nor anything nobler or more admirable.' The Liberals saw in Fet a political reactionary—and so he was; but any one who reads his Recollections may also see how large a measure of personal worth can be combined with political indifferentism—a quality many Russians of his generation were brought up to regard as a virtue. In private life he was a really worthy man, and Tolstoy once very truly remarked to him:
There are some people whose talk is far above their actual morality; but there are also some whose talk is below that level. You are one who is so afraid of his sermon being above his practice, that you intentionally talk far below your actual practice.
While still a young cavalry officer Fet began to write poetry, for which he had real talent; and after leaving the army he continued his literary career as an Art-for-Art's-sake-ist, producing verse translations of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and Persius, besides original works of his own in prose and verse, and (after Tolstoy's suggestion, already recorded) translations from the German of Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Idea, and Goethe's Faust.
In his dislike, or perhaps one should say ignorance, of politics, commerce, and that great industrial revolution of the Western world that has been the most conspicuous achievement of the last one hundred and fifty years, as well as in his love of pure art, chiefly literary, he had much in common with Tolstoy. They could talk with profound sympathy of all that related to art, and they were alike in their love of country life and in their relation to agriculture, as well as in the fact that the great problems of life centred for them round their own personality rather than around the community to which they belonged. Patriotic by instinct, it was no part of their philosophy to be so; at least they never dreamed of that newer patriotism which seeks to manage the production and distribution of the national wealth so that every member of the community may have an opportunity to live in decent conditions. They had therefore at this period much in common; and one sees by Tolstoy's letters how greatly they enjoyed each other's society, though a time was coming when their friendship would wane.
Tolstoy had a strong dislike of leaving home even for a few days. When it was absolutely necessary for him to go to Moscow he would grumble at his hard fate, and Behrs, when he accompanied him, noticed how town life depressed Tolstoy, making him fidgety and even irritable. When returning from a journey, or a hunting expedition, he would express his anxiety by exclaiming, 'If only all's well at home!' After he had been away from Yásnaya, Tolstoy never failed to give the home party full and amusing accounts of what he had seen and heard.
A distinguishing feature of Tolstoy, already remarked upon, but so strongly marked that it can hardly be insisted on too much, was the ardent and whole-hearted way in which he threw himself into whatever occupation he took up. On this point Prince D. D. Obolénsky says: 'I have seen Count L. N. Tolstoy in all phases of his creative activity.... Whatever his occupation, he did it with conviction, firmly believing in the value of what he was doing, and always fully absorbed by it. I remember him as a man of the world, and have met him at balls, and I remember a remark he once made, "See what poetry there is in women's ball-dresses, what elegance, how much thought, how much charm even in the flowers pinned to the dresses!" I remember him as an ardent sportsman, as a beekeeper, as a gardener; I remember his enthusiasm for farming, for tree planting, fruit culture, horse breeding, and much else.'
A housekeeper who was with him for nine years, said of him:
The Count himself looked after everything, and demanded extreme cleanliness in the cowhouse and in the pig-styes and in the sheep-cot. In particular he delighted in his pigs, of which he had as many as 300, paired off in separate styes.... There the Count would not allow the least dirt. Every day I and my assistants had to wash them all, and wipe the floor and walls of the styes; then the Count, on passing through the piggery of a morning, would be very pleased, and would remark aloud: 'What management!... What good management!' But God have mercy on us if he noticed the least dirt! That at once made him shout out angrily.... The Count was very hasty, and a doctor who used to come to Yásnaya said to him more than once in my presence: 'You must not get so angry, Count, it is very bad for your health....' 'I can't help it,' he would reply. 'I want to restrain myself, but can't do it. That, it seems, is the way I am made!'... His farming gave the Count a good revenue in those days. Besides the pigs and their litters, he had 80 cows, 500 good sheep, and very many fowls. We used to make excellent butter, which we sold in Moscow at 60 copecks [about 19 pence] a lb.
His management of property was characteristically personal. He never took shares in any joint-stock company, but he bought land, bred cattle and horses of good quality, planted a large apple-orchard, as well as a quantity of other trees, and in general he acquired property he could manage himself, or (for he entrusted the management of his Samára estates to stewards) over which he had full control. He has always been more alive to the dangers and evils of commercial companies and large engineering and industrial undertakings, than to the good they have achieved by irrigating arid lands, uniting distant realms, and lightening man's toil by making iron bear some of his burdens for him.
Tolstoy furnishes an example of the well-known fact that men of artistic temperament are often untidy. Though he acknowledges the advantages of neatness in general, he often remarked that it is a quality most frequently found in shallow natures. He himself simply could not, and therefore did not try to, keep his things in order. When he undressed he let his clothes or boots drop where he stood; and if he happened to be moving from place to place, his garments remained strewn about the room, and sometimes on the floor. Behrs remarks.
I noticed that to pack his things for a journey cost him great effort, and when I accompanied him I used very willingly to do it for him, and thereby pleased him very much. I remember that once, for some reason, I did not at all wish to pack for him. He noticed this, and with characteristic delicacy did not ask me to, but put his things into his portmanteau himself; and I can assert positively that no one else, were they to try, could have got them into such fearful disorder as they were in, in that portmanteau.
It was a peculiarity of Tolstoy's that he not only liked to have his own sleep out without being disturbed, but that he never could or would wake any one from sleep, and in cases of absolute necessity would ask some one else to relieve him of that disagreeable task.
Behrs recounts that when they sat up late, the man-servant sometimes fell asleep in his chair and omitted to serve up the cold supper. Tolstoy would never allow him to be disturbed on these occasions, but would himself go to the pantry to fetch the supper, and would do this stealthily, and with the greatest caution, so that it became a kind of amusing game. He would get quite cross with Behrs if the latter accidentally let the plates clatter or made any other noise.
Many years later, alluding in my presence to this peculiarity of his, Tolstoy remarked, 'While a man is asleep he is at any rate not sinning.'
On 4th February 1870 Tolstoy wrote to Fet:
I received your letter, dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch, on 1st February, but even had I received it somewhat sooner I could not have come. You write, 'I am alone, alone!' And when I read it I thought, What a lucky fellow—alone! I have a wife, three children, and a fourth at the breast, two old aunts, a nurse, and two housemaids. And they are all ill together: fever, high temperature, weakness, headaches, and coughs. In that state your letter found me. They are now beginning to get better, but out of ten people, I and my old aunt alone turn up at the dinner table. And since yesterday I myself am ill with my chest and side. There is much, very much, I want to tell you about. I have been reading a lot of Shakespear, Goethe, Poúshkin, Gógol, and Molière, and about all of them there is much I want to say to you. I do not take in a single magazine or newspaper this year, and I consider it very useful not to.
S. A. Behrs tells us that Tolstoy 'never read newspapers, and considered them useless, and when they contain false news, even harmful. In his humorous way he would some times parody a newspaper style when speaking of domestic affairs.' His attitude towards journalists and critics (except his friend Stráhof) was rather scornful, and he was indignant when any one classed them even with third-rate authors. He considered that it is a misuse of the printing-press to publish so much that is unnecessary, uninteresting, and worst of all, inartistic. He seldom read criticisms of his own work. 'His feeling towards periodicals in general had its source in his intense dislike of the exploitation of works of art. He would smile contemptuously at hearing it suggested that a real artist produces his works for the sake of money.'
Having said this much about his characteristics and peculiarities, let us note the extent to which his life and mode of thought at this time approximated to his later teaching. His humane relations towards the peasants, his condemnation of many of the manifestations of modern civilisation, his simplicity in household matters and dress, his exemplary family life, humane educational ideals, deep love of sincerity and of industry (including physical labour), his ardent search for truth and for self-improvement, his gradually increasing accessibility to and regard for others, his undoubted love of family and his hatred of violence—indicate that the ideals of his later life were not very far from him, even before the commencement of the conversion told of in his Confession.
On 17th February Tolstoy writes to Fet:
I hoped to visit you the night of the 14th, but could not do so. As I wrote you, we were all ill,—I last. I went out yesterday for the first time. What stopped me was pain in the eyes, which is increased by wind and sleeplessness. I now, to my great regret, have to postpone my visit to you till Lent. I must go to Moscow to take my aunt to my sister's, and to see an oculist about my eyes.
It is a pity that one can only get to your place after passing a sleepless, cigarette-smoky, stuffy, railway-carriage, conversational night. You want to read me a story of cavalry life.... And I don't want to read you anything, because I am not writing anything; but I very much want to talk about Shakespear and Goethe and the drama in general. This whole winter I am occupied only with the drama; and it happens to me, as it usually happens to people who till they are forty have not thought of a certain subject or formed any conception of it, and then suddenly with forty-year-old clearness turn their attention to this new untasted subject—it seems to them that they discern in it much that is new. All winter I have enjoyed myself lying down, drowsing, playing bézique, going on snowshoes, skating, and most of all lying in bed (ill) while characters from a drama or comedy have performed for me. And they perform very well. It is about that I want to talk to you. In that, as in everything, you are a classic, and understand the essence of the matter very deeply. I should like also to read Sophocles and Euripides.
There we see Tolstoy, as always, ardently devoting his attention to some great subject—which happens, this time, to be dramatic art. So keen is he, that his mind is full of it whatever else he may be doing; and so vivid is his imagination that the characters of the plays perform for him whether he is standing up or lying down. How real a grip he obtained of the subject with very little theatre-going, was shown seventeen years later, when he wrote one of the most powerful dramas ever produced, and followed it up by an excellent comedy: both pieces being so good that they are constantly revived in Russian theatres, besides having achieved success in other countries.
At the point we have reached there was no break in the manner of Tolstoy's life. He continued to live quietly at Yásnaya, and to concern himself chiefly with literature, and also with the management of his estates and the welfare of his family. Children continued to be born in rapid succession, and with the increasing family his means also increased. But we have come to the middle of that tranquil period of sixteen years which succeeded his marriage, and here, while—as one would say of another man—he was indefatigably studying the drama; or while—as one is inclined to say of him—he was resting and recuperating before undertaking his next great work, it is convenient to close this chapter.
Birukof.
Fet.
Behrs.
Bitovt.
Yasnaya Polyana, P. A. Sergeyenko: Niva, No. 34, 1908.
L. N. Tolstoy; Monografiya Andreevitcha: Petersburg, 1905.
For much information in this chapter as well as elsewhere I am indebted to Tolstoy himself, to the Countess S. A. Tolstoy, to his sister, and particularly to his daughter, Mary Lvovna, Princess Obolensky.
Information concerning the execution of the soldier is given in Pravo for 1903.
Prince D. D. Obolensky's Vospominaniya appeared in Roussky Arhiv, 1896.
See also, Graf L. N. Tolstoy, Vospominaniya S. P. Arbouzova: Moscow, 1908.
Arbouzof was in Tolstoy's service twenty-two years. He gives his master an excellent character; and though very inaccurate, his naive chatter is readable, and throws light on Tolstoy's character.
Fet's poem. Franco-Prussian war. Studies Greek. Effect on health. Railways. Koumýs cure in Samára. Mouhamet-Dzhan. An expedition. 'Milk-loving Scythians.' Buys estate. Molokáns. Tourgénef's interest. ABC Book. House enlarged. On future life. Re-starts school. Preparation of ABC Book. Astronomy. A Prisoner in the Caucasus. God Sees the Truth. Ceremonial rites. Stráhof and the ABC Book. Samára. Bull kills keeper. Teachers' Congress at Yásnaya. A letter in verse. Peter the Great. A suicide. Anna Karénina. Mouhamed Shah. Samára famine. Kramskóy's portrait. Death of son, Peter. Addresses Moscow Society of Literacy. A practical demonstration. Test schools. The Fatherland Journal: On the Education of the People. Mihaylóvsky. 'A University in bark shoes.' Toúla Zémstvo Education Committee. Tourgénef translates Tolstoy. Birth of a son. Death of Aunt Tatiána. ABC Book approved. Wife's health. Anna Karénina. Death of a son. Tourgénef on Tolstoy's writings. Samára. Primitive agriculture. Fête and horse races. Bashkír life. Education of his children. Exercises and playfulness. Croquet. 'Numidian cavalry.' Birth and death of a daughter. Aunt P. I. Úshkof dies. Letters to Fet. Nirvana and Sansara. Anna Karénina. 'Summer condition.' Horse-breeding. Loss of Gouneba. Music. P. I. Tschaikóvsky. At the Conservatoire. Folk-songs. Beethoven. Tolstoy on art. Approach of war. Rupture with Katkóf. The Evangelicals. An epitaph. Professor Boutleróf. The Deity. Óptin Monastery. A folk-story teller. Turkish prisoners. Son, Andrew, born. Ill-health. The Decembrists. 'Martha is troubled.' Reconciliation with Tourgénef. Samára. Tourgénef at Yásnaya. Their relations still not cordial. Pilgrims. N. Tchaykóvsky. Mihaylóvsky's forecast. V. I. Alexéyef.
As he grew older Tolstoy's love of outdoor exercise tended more towards activity serving a useful productive purpose, and one finds a hint of this in the following letter to Fet, dated 11th May 1870:
I received your letter, dear friend, when returning perspiring home from work, with axe and spade, and when therefore I was a thousand miles from things artistic in general, and from our business in particular. On opening the letter I first read the poem and felt a sensation in my nose. On coming home to my wife I tried to read it to her, but could not do so for tears of emotion. The poem is one of those rare ones in which not a word could be added or subtracted or altered: it is a live thing, and admirable....
I have just served for a week as juryman, and found it very interesting and instructive.
The next letter refers to the fact that Tolstoy did his best literary work in winter, when he often spent almost the whole day, and sometimes part of the night, at it; that was the time when his 'sap flowed':
2 Oct. 1870.
It is long since we met, and in my winter condition, which I am now entering, I am specially glad to see you. I have been shooting; but the sap is beginning to flow, and I am collecting it as it drips. Whether it be good or bad sap, it is pleasant to let it flow in these long wonderful autumn evenings.... A grief has befallen me; the mare is ill. The veterinary says her wind has been broken, but I cannot have broken it.
The Franco-Prussian war, which commenced at this time, interested Tolstoy keenly. He had come into contact with the French, in the Crimea, before the Napoleonic autocracy had long held sway; and he had visited France in 1857 and 1860, before the effect of that putrescent influence had become fully apparent. Neither the idea of German national unity, nor Bismarck's and Moltke's ideal of efficient organisation and discipline, were things that much appealed to Tolstoy. So it happened that not only were all his sympathies on the side of the French, but he also felt assured of their triumph. His friend Prince Ouroúsof used to write letters to Katkóf's Moscow Gazette demonstrating by analogies with games of chess, that the French were continually drawing the German armies into more and more desperate positions in which they must soon be quite destroyed. When, on the contrary, the French were utterly defeated, it came to him as a complete surprise; which all tends to illustrate the fact that men of great intellectual power, living isolated on their country estates, may at times go very considerably wrong in their estimate of the trend of some of the forces that influence the world.
On 12 February 1871 a daughter was born, who was christened Mary. In later life she, of all his children, was the one most deeply influenced by her father's teaching. The Countess, who, as already mentioned, made a point of nursing her own children, owing to the neglect of an attendant, became unable to do so in this instance before the child was many weeks old, and a wet-nurse was engaged; but as soon as the mother saw her child at a stranger's breast she burst into a flood of jealous tears, dismissed the nurse on the spot, and ordered the child to be fed with a bottle. Tolstoy, when he heard what had happened, declared that his wife had only shown the jealous affection natural to a true mother.
During that winter Tolstoy devoted himself strenuously to the study of Greek. On hearing of this, Fet felt so sure that Tolstoy would not succeed, that he announced his readiness to devote his own skin for parchment for Tolstoy's diploma of proficiency when the latter should have qualified himself to receive it. Accordingly, in December, Tolstoy wrote him as follows:
I received your letter a week ago, but have not answered because from morning to night I am learning Greek. I am writing nothing, only learning; and to judge by information reaching me through Borísof, your skin (to be used as parchment for my diploma in Greek) is in some danger. Improbable and astounding as it may seem, I have read Xenophon, and can now read him at sight. For Homer, a dictionary and some effort is still necessary. I eagerly await a chance of showing this new trick to some one. But how glad I am that God sent this folly upon me! In the first place I enjoy it; and secondly, I have become convinced that of all that human language has produced truly beautiful and simply beautiful, I knew nothing (like all the others who know but do not understand); and thirdly, because I have ceased to write, and never more will write, wordy rubbish. I am guilty of having done so; but by God I won't do it any more! Explain to me, for Heaven's sake, why no one knows Esop's fables, or even delightful Xenophon, not to mention Plato and Homer, whom I still have before me? In so far as I can as yet judge, our translations, made on German models, only spoil Homer. To use a banal but involuntary comparison: they are like boiled and distilled water, while he is like water fresh from the spring, striking the teeth with its sun-lit sparkle: even its specks only making it seem still clearer and fresher.... You may triumph: without a knowledge of Greek, there is no education. But what kind of knowledge? How is it to be got? What is the use of it? To this I have replies clear as daylight.
S. A. Behrs tells us, 'I know for a fact that he learnt the language and read Herodotus in three months.' While in Moscow that winter, he visited Leóntief, then Professor of Greek at the Katkóf Lyceum, to talk about Greek literature. Leóntief did not wish to believe in the possibility of his having learnt Greek so rapidly, and proposed that they should read something at sight. It happened that they differed as to the meaning of three passages; but after a little discussion the Professor admitted that the Count's interpretations were right.
Tolstoy felt the charm of the literary art of the ancient world, and so keen was his power of entering into the minds of those of whom he read, and so different to his own was the Greek outlook upon life, that the contradiction produced in him a feeling of melancholy and apathy profound enough to affect his health.
What clash of ideals it was that produced this result we may guess when we consider how from his earliest years he had been attracted by the Christian ideal of meekness, humility, and self-sacrifice, and how little this accords with the outlook on life of the ancient Greeks. In a book written nearly forty years later, Tolstoy tells us that 'If, as was the case among the Greeks, religion places the meaning of life in earthly happiness, in beauty and in strength, then art successfully transmitting the joy and energy of life, would be considered good art' [good, that is, in its subject-matter of feeling conveyed] but art transmitting the opposite feelings would be bad art.[51] Again in the same work he says that the esthetic theory he is combating, seeks to make it appear 'that the very best that can be done by the art of nations after 1900 years of Christian teaching, is to choose as the ideal of life the ideal held by a small, semi-savage, slave-holding people who lived 2000 years ago, imitated the nude human body extremely well, and erected buildings pleasant to look at.'[52]
To wean him from his absorption in Greek literature, his wife at first urged him to take up some fresh literary work; and finally, becoming seriously alarmed for his health, induced him to go eastward for a koumýs cure. He wrote to Fet at this time:
10 June 1871.
Dear Friend,—I have long not written to you, nor been to see you, because I was, and still am, ill. I don't myself know what is the matter with me, but it seems like something bad or good, according to the name we give to our exit. Loss of strength, and a feeling that one needs nothing and wants nothing but quiet, which one has not got. My wife is sending me to Samára or Sarátof for two months for a koumýs cure. I leave for Moscow to-day, and shall there learn where I am to go to.
In Moscow it was decided that he should go to the part of Samára he had visited before.
Railways have always been an affliction to Tolstoy. Civilisation has forced them on him without his wish, and, as he argued in his educational articles, to the detriment of the peasant population. Personally, he complained of disagreeable sensations he experienced when travelling by rail, and compared these discomforts with the pleasure of riding on horseback. He objected both to the officious politeness of the conductors and to the way in which the passengers suspiciously shun one another. (This latter complaint is not one a Westerner would bring against Russians, for they appear to us the most friendly and sociable of fellow-travellers.) He used to insist on his wife always travelling first class. He himself went either first or third, but seldom second. To travel third is a more serious matter in Russia than in England; and he used purposely to choose a car in which there were peasants, and talked to all whom he met.
On this outward journey he went third class, by rail to Nízhni Nóvgorod and by steamer down the Vólga to the town of Samára. On the boat he took the opportunity to study the manners and customs of his fellow-passengers, natives of the Vólga district, and displayed his remarkable gift of making friends with people of all kinds. Before he had been two days on the boat he was on the friendliest terms with everybody, including the sailors, among whom he slept each night in the fore part of the vessel. Even when he met reserved or surly characters, it was not long before he drew them out of their shells, and set them chatting at their ease. One secret of this success was the unaffected interest he took in learning about other people's lives and affairs.
From Samára Tolstoy went eastward for eighty miles on horseback, following the banks of the river Karalýk till he reached the village of that name. He had lived there in 1862, and was welcomed as an old acquaintance and friend by the Bashkírs, who always spoke of him as 'The Count.' The reader will remember that at the University Tolstoy had studied oriental languages. His knowledge of Tartar no doubt increased his popularity with the Bashkírs. He had with him a man-servant, and his brother-in-law, Stepán Andréyevitch Behrs, then a lad of about sixteen, who subsequently in his Recollections gave many particulars about this outing. They lived, not in the 'winter village' of Karalýk, but about one-and-a-half miles away, in a kotchévka on the open steppe. A kotchévka is a conical tent, made of a collapsible wooden frame covered with large sheets of felt. It has a small painted door, and is usually carpeted with soft feather grass. The one in which Tolstoy's party lived, was a very large one which he hired from the Mullah (priest). It had formerly been used as a mosque, but had the practical disadvantage of not being rain-proof. There were four kotchévki in the neighbourhood, one of which was occupied by the Mullah.
On first arriving at Karalýk, Tolstoy for some days felt very depressed and unwell. He complained that he lacked capacity to feel either mental or physical pleasure, and looked at everything 'as though he were a corpse': a characteristic usually most foreign to him, and which in other people always evoked his dislike. It was, however, not long before he recovered his spirits and energy.
There were other visitors at Karalýk, who had also come to benefit by a koumýs cure. They neither associated with the Bashkír nomads, nor adopted their customs; but Tolstoy was extremely fond of the Bashkírs, associated much with them, and strictly followed their diet: avoiding all vegetable foods and restricting himself to meat and animal products. Dinner every day consisted chiefly of mutton eaten with the fingers out of wooden bowls.
Some of the Russian visitors lived in one of the kotchévki, but most of them lodged in the 'winter village.' Tolstoy soon made friends with them all, and thanks to his genial influence the whole place grew gay and lively. A professor of Greek from a Seminary for the education of priests might be seen trying a skipping-rope match with him; a procureur's assistant discussed legal and other questions, and there was a young Samára farmer who became his devoted follower.
Among those who specially interested Tolstoy was Mouhamet-Dzhan, the Bashkír Elder, whom the Russian peasants called Michael Ivánovitch. This man was very nimble and active, full of humour, fond of a joke, and a very strong player at draughts.
Accompanied by Behrs and two of their new acquaintances, and taking a supply of guns and presents, Tolstoy went for a four days' drive through the neighbouring villages. The party had splendid duck-shooting by the lakes they passed; and they were entertained and treated to koumýs by the Bashkírs at the kotchévkas in which they rested. As opportunity presented itself, they made suitable acknowledgment for their entertainment by giving presents to their hosts. One serious drawback to the hospitality they enjoyed was the fact that their hosts insisted on feeding them with mutton and fat with their own hands, without the intermediacy of fork or spoon, and it was out of the question to insult them by refusing such well-meant though quite undesired attentions.
On one occasion Tolstoy happened to admire a horse that had separated from its herd, and remarked to Behrs, 'See what a beautiful specimen of milking mare that is.' When, an hour later, they were taking leave, their host tied this animal to their conveyance, thus presenting it to his visitor. Of course, on the return journey, Tolstoy had to make an equivalent present in return.
Another incident of this stay in the Government of Samára, was a visit to the Petróvsky Fair, which is held once a year at Bouzouloúk, a small town some fifty miles from Karalýk. Here Russians, Bashkírs, Oural Cossacks, and Kirghiz mingled with one another; and Tolstoy was soon on a friendly footing with them all. He would chat and laugh with them even when they were drunk; but when one in that condition took it into his head to embrace the Count, Tolstoy's look was so stern and impressive that the fellow drew back his hands and let them fall, saying, 'No, never mind, it's all right!'
The following letter of 18th July 1871, to Fet, relates to Tolstoy's experience of the nomadic Bashkírs:
Thank you for your letter, dear friend! It seems that my wife gave a false alarm when she packed me off for a koumýs cure and persuaded me that I was ill. At any rate now, after four weeks, I seem to have quite recovered. And as is proper when one is taking a koumýs cure, I am drunk and sweat from morn to night, and find pleasure in it. It is very good here, and were it not for family home-sickness, I should be quite happy. Were I to begin describing, I should fill a hundred pages with this country and my own occupations. I am reading Herodotus, who describes in detail and with great accuracy these same galactophagous [gluttonous-for-milk] Scythians among whom I am living.
I began this letter yesterday, and wrote that I was well. To-day my side aches again. I do not myself know in how far I am ill, but it is bad that I am obliged to think—and cannot help thinking—about my side and my chest. This is the third day that the heat has been terrible. In the kibítka [tent] it is as hot as on the shelf of a Russian bath, but I like it. The country here is beautiful—in its age just emerging from virginity, in its richness, its health, and especially in its simplicity and its unperverted population. Here as everywhere I am looking round for an estate to buy. This affords me an occupation, and is the best excuse for getting to know the real condition of the district.
After a six weeks' stay Tolstoy returned to Yásnaya, travelling first class on the return journey.
His search for an estate had been successful, and after persuading his wife that the investment was a sound one, he purchased two thousand acres on his return to Moscow.
The change of scene, or some other influence, weakened Tolstoy's absorption in Greek literature; and a huge dictionary he had taken with him, was used by his brother-in-law to press a collection of local wildflowers.
During his wanderings on the steppe, Tolstoy met many Molokáns, members of a kind of Bible-Christian peasant sect. They base their faith on the Bible, reject the Greek Church with its traditions, priesthood, dogmas, ritual, sacraments, and icons. The name Molokán, or Milk-Drinker, probably arose from the fact that, not observing the Russian fasts, these people do not scruple to drink milk in Lent. They are said to be distinguished by an honesty and industry not found among their Orthodox neighbours; and they abstain from all intoxicants.
It interested Tolstoy to mix with these people, and he liked to discuss their beliefs, especially with a venerable leader of theirs, named Aggéy. It so happened that in the neighbouring village of Pátrovka there was a very worthy young Russian priest, who was eager to convert the Molokáns, and occasionally arranged debates with them on religious subjects. Tolstoy sometimes attended these debates: his object being not so much to convert the Molokáns, as to understand the points on which they differed from the Russo-Greek Church. He also took an interest in the Mohammedan faith of his Bashkír friends, and on his return to Yásnaya read through a French translation of the Koran.