Count Tolstoï traces his ancestry back to Count Piotr Andreyévitch
Tolstoï, a friend and companion of Peter the Great. In all probability
the unnamed _atavus_ who lurks in the patronymic _Andreyévitch_ was
merely distinguished by his size,--Andrew the Stout. Many Russian
family names, just as is the case with our own English appellations,
are derived from characteristics or resemblances. The great Speransky
was a hopeful foundling; Soloviéf recalls our nightingales;
Pobyedonovtsof means “of the victorious;” the name of Katkof may refer
to the proverbial rolling stone; Gogol is a species of duck called the
golden eye; the report of cannon may be heard in Pushkin’s name; the
ancestor of Griboyédof was probably an eater of mushrooms.
Tolstoï’s father was a retired lieutenant-colonel, who died in 1839.
His mother, the Princess Marya Nikolayevna Volkonskaïa, died when
Count Lyof was only two years old, and he was brought up by a distant
relative, Mme. Yergolskaïa. At Yasnaïa Polyana his education was
desultory. In 1840 the five children were taken in charge by a relative
of their mother, Pelagia Ilinishna Yushkovaïa, who lived at Kazan.
It was thus that Lyof Tolstoï happened to enter the university of
that city in 1843. After a few years of study, he suddenly determined
to leave the university without graduation. The _rektor_ and the
professors argued with him, but in vain; and he went back to his
ancestral estate, where he lived till 1851, very rarely visiting
the capital. A visit from his beloved brother Nikolaï, who was an
officer in the army of the Caucasus, inspired him to see “cities of
men and manners, climates, councils,” though least of all the cities
of men. Especially strong was his desire to be with his brother in
the _Kavkaz_, where Russia’s greatest poets had won their proudest
laurels. The impressions made on him by the splendid scenery of the
‘white mountains,’ and by the rough, half-savage life, were so strong
that in 1851 he entered the service, like Olénin, as a _yunker_, or
ensign-bearer in the Fourth Battery of the Twentieth Artillery, the
same in which his brother was an officer.
Here in the Caucasus Count Tolstoï first began to write fiction. He
planned to weave his recollections of family life and old traditions
into a great novel. Fragments of this work were written and afterwards
published in the “Sovremennik.” “Infancy” (_Dyetstvo_) came out in
1852. “Adolescence” (_Otrotchestvo_) was also written then, and several
of his brilliant sketches of wild life,--“The Invasion,” “The Felling
of the Forest,” and, as has been said, “The Cossacks.” “The Cossacks”
is translated into English by Mr. Eugene Schuyler. A very little
polishing would make it a brilliant piece of literary work: in its
present form it is crude and rough.
Count Tolstoï lived two years in the Caucasus, taking part in various
guerilla expeditions, and enduring in common with the soldiers all the
hardships of frontier warfare. Here on the spot he made his powerful
and life-like studies of the Russian soldier, which are seen in his
“War Sketches” (_Voyennuié Razskazui_). At the breaking out of the
Crimean War, Count Tolstoï was transferred to the army of the Danube,
and served on Prince M. D. Gortchakof’s staff. At Sevastópol, whither
he went after the Russian army was driven from the principalities,
he was attached to the artillery. His literary work had attracted
attention in high quarters, and orders were sent to the front to see
that he was not exposed to danger. In May, 1855, he was appointed
division commander: he took part in the battle of the Tchernaïa, was in
the celebrated storming of Sevastópol, and after the battle was sent
as special courier to Petersburg. At the end of the campaign Count
Tolstoï retired, and the next winter he spent at Moscow and Petersburg.
This was a period of great literary activity. Besides his stories,
“Sevastópol in December,” and “Sevastópol in May,” there appeared in
the magazines “Youth” (_Yunost_), “Sevastópol in August,” “Two Hussars”
(_Dva Gusári_), and “Three Deaths” (_Tri Smerti_).
After the liberation of the serfs, Count Tolstoï, like many
conscientious Russian proprietors, felt it his duty to live on his
estate. He was profoundly interested in agronomic questions, and in
the application to the Slavic commune of Occidental methods, which he
studied abroad for himself. He was still more interested in popular
education; and a school journal, called “Yasnaïa Polyana,” which he
established, discussed all pedagogical questions. He also published a
series of primers, readers, spellers, in paper covers and large type.
It was about this time that a Russian journalist met Count Tolstoï; and
his account of the interview is interesting, as showing the novelist’s
views a quarter of a century ago. He says,--
“In 1862 I became acquainted with him in Moscow. I saw before me a
tall, wide-shouldered, thin-waisted man, about thirty-five years
old, with a mustache, but without a beard, with a serious, even
gloomy expression of face, which, however, was softened by a gleam
of kindliness whenever he laughed. Our conversation turned on the
occurrences which at that time were exciting Russian life. Count
Tolstoï immediately showed that he lived outside of this life, that the
interests of the class which regards itself as cultured were foreign
to him. He seemed to be opposed to progress, which, in his opinion, was
only advantageous for the smaller portion of society, having plenty of
time to spend, and which was absolutely injurious for the majority,
for the people; and for them it was just as disadvantageous as it was
profitable for the minority.... Those present argued angrily with him:
he himself sometimes was drawn away, sometimes he spoke ironically.
I listened more than I spoke. At the time when all were infatuated
with progress, such original boldness of thought was remarkable; and I
felt an involuntary sympathy for this Rousseau, who began to contrast
the products of nature with the products of civilization,--forests,
wild creatures, rivers, physical development, purity of morals, and
other such things. It seemed that this man was living the life of the
peasantry, sharing their views, that he was devoted to the welfare of
the people with all the strength of his soul, though he understood the
people in different way from others. The proof was his school,--those
_maltchiks_, of whom he spoke with evident love, praising their
talents, their powers of comprehension, their artistic sense, their
moral virginity, which was so far from being the case with children of
other nationalities.”
The latter years of Count Tolstoï’s life, since the publication of
“War and Peace” and “Anna Karénina,” are somewhat wrapped in mystery.
Various wild stories, founded on the evident bias of “My Confession”
and “My Religion,” have assumed almost the proportions of myth. It may
be that at the present day, that we of the calm, rational, sceptical,
Western world are granted the privilege of seeing the actual evolution
of a myth, as a boy may see a chrysalis unfold.
The Russian race, standing with its Janus face towards the sunset and
the more mystical sunrise, a link, as it were, between Occidental fact
and Oriental fancy, might well allow us the spectacle. “My Religion”
declares that titles, emoluments, dignities, and all such things,
are vain. Next we hear that Count Tolstoï is only a _muzhik_. No
man has a right to wealth. We hear that the opulent aristocrat has
stripped himself to give to the poor. All must earn their bread by
the sweat of the brow. The young sons of the count are next heard of
as crossing-sweepers. The truth probably is, that Count Tolstoï has in
reality changed little from the Olénin of “The Cossacks,” praying for
occasion of self-sacrifice, for chance of renunciation, changed little
from the threefold manifestation of himself in “War and Peace,” working
for the same end, or from the twofold and simpler manifestation of
himself, morally in Levin, socially in Vronsky, of “Anna Karénina.” The
little picture of him given by the Russian journalist casts a flood of
light on the man; and therefore it was but a fulfilment of prophecy to
read that Count Tolstoï, instead of beggaring his children, instead of
deserting the pen of the writer for the awl of the cobbler, was brave
and cheerful and healthy in body and mind, superintending his schools,
cultivating his ancestral _desyatins_, and writing stories when the
mood was on him.
This brief sketch of Count Tolstoï’s life may fitly come to a
conclusion with an acute bit of criticism from a Russian writer. It
is very possible that his marriage to Sofia Andreyevna Beers, the
daughter of a Muscovite professor, which took place in 1862, may have
cast a back gleam, and inspired the thought of creating the gracious
forms that move through Count Tolstoï’s later novels. At all events,
this is what the critic said when “War and Peace” appeared, at the end
of 1860, “It is remarkable, that in all Tolstoï’s works, until the
appearance of “_Voïna i Mir_,” there is not a single female figure
brought out in strong relief; but here were seen a whole _pleiad_,
wonderfully clear, psychologically true, and beautifully described.
The richness and variety in the figures of the men, the splendid
description of the battles, a perfect mass of marvellously described
scenery, in which persons of all classes appear, beginning with
emperors, and ending with _muzhiks_ and _babas_, make this work one of
the greatest ornaments of our literature.”