later one of the count's daughters happened to inquire how much I had
paid for the carriage, probably in consequence of former experiences,
and informed me that I had given just twice as much as any cabman in
Tula would have been glad to take. (The boredom of those policemen must
have been relieved by another smile--behind our backs.) Then I repeated
my conversation with that delicately conscientious _izvostchik_,
nurtured on the "Tales," and mentioned my promise. Even the grave count
was forced to laugh, and I declared that I should be afraid to send the
set of books, for fear of the consequences.
When we were ready, being unfamiliar with the house, we asked the maid
to conduct us to the countess. She took this in its literal sense, and
ushered us into the bedroom where the countess was dressing, an
introduction to country life which was certainly informal enough.
We dined at a long table under the trees at a little distance from the
house. The breeze sifted the tiny papery birch seeds into our soup and
water. Clouds rolled up, and at every threat of the sky we grasped our
plates, prepared to make a dash for the house.
The count, who had been mowing, appeared at dinner in a grayish blouse
and trousers, and a soft white linen cap. He looked even more
weather-beaten in complexion than he had in Moscow during the winter, if
that were possible. His broad shoulders seemed to preserve in their
enhanced stoop a memory of recent toil. His manner, a combination of
gentle simplicity, awkward half-conquered consciousness, and
half-discarded polish, was as cordial as ever. His piercing
gray-green-blue eyes had lost none of their almost saturnine and withal
melancholy expression. His sons were clad in the pretty blouse suits of
coarse gray linen which are so common in Russia in the summer, and white
linen caps.
After dinner, on that first evening, the countess invited us to go to
the fields and see her husband at work. He had not observed the good old
recipe, "After dinner, rest awhile," but had set off again immediately,
and we had been eager to follow him. We hunted for him through several
meadows, and finally came upon him in a sloping orchard lot, seated
under the trees, in a violent perspiration. He had wasted no time,
evidently. He was resting, and chatting with half a dozen peasants of
assorted ages. It appeared that he had made a toilet for dinner, since
he now wore a blue blouse faded with frequent washing, and ornamented
with new dark blue patches on the shoulders. It was the same blouse with
which Repin's portrait of him engaged in plowing had already made us
familiar.
We talked with the peasants. They remained seated, and gave no greeting.
I do not think they would have done so on any other estate in Russia. It
is not that the count has inspired his humble neighbors with a higher
personal sense of independence and the equality of man; all Russian
peasants are pretty well advanced along that path already, and they
possess a natural dignity which prevents their asserting themselves in
an unpleasant manner except in rare cases. When they rise or salute, it
is out of politeness, and with no more servility than the same act
implies in an officer of the Guards in presence of a Court dame. The
omission on this occasion interested me as significant.
The conversation turned upon the marriage of one of the younger men,
which was to come off in a neighboring village two days later, at the
conclusion of the fast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul. A middle-aged
peasant took up the subject in a rather unpleasant and not very
respectful manner, saying that he saw no use for priests, who had
everything provided for them (_na gatovayu ruku_), and charged so high
for baptizing and marrying.
"They demand seven rubles for marrying this fellow," said he. "I'll do
it for a ruble, and be glad to."
"If it is so easy, go pass your examinations and become a priest at
once," replied the countess.
"I don't know enough for that."
"Then go hire yourself out as a clown. You are always making bad jokes."
The man was subdued. The count took no part in this conversation, and
looked somewhat disturbed when the other men joined disagreeably in the
laugh against their comrade. He turned the subject.
"Look at the oldest of these men," he said to us in English. "He has
lost the first joint of all the fingers on one hand from frost."
He was a weak-looking, withered little man, but when they began to mow
again, at the count's suggestion, he grasped his scythe as well as any
of them. The scythes were short, thick, straight, looked very heavy, and
were set on very long, straight handles, so that it was not necessary to
stoop in mowing.
We watched the party for a while. The count made good progress over the
uneven ground and thin grass, as though he were used to the work which
he has described so inimitably in "Anna Karenin." (Another reminder of
this book is the old nurse of Levin, who still lives on the place, has
charge of the dogs because she is fond of animals, and carries her mania
to the extent of feeding and petting the black beetles. The grave of
Karl Ivanovitch, the tutor in "Childhood, Boyhood, Youth," which lies in
the cemetery a mile or two distant, is another memento of his writings.)
As we strolled back to the house, we paused to look at the long white
stables, the thatched granary with walls of wattled tree boughs, and
other farm buildings. In the space between the house and the
dining-table we found the children, with their cousins, the French
tutor, and the English governess, engaged in a game of ball called
_wapta_, which involves much running and some skill.
To this table the _samovar_ was brought about half past seven, and the
early tea, the children's tea, was served at twilight in the open air
heavy with the perfume of the linden-trees. Late tea was always served
in the house, in the large hall, accompanied by various viands, and by
wild strawberries fetched by the peasant children.
That evening the count talked to me chiefly about the pamphlets on the
Hopedale community and the peace doctrines advocated by Adin Ballou,
which had been sent to him shortly before from America. He had then
learned for the first time that his principles in that direction had
been anticipated, and he seemed to be genuinely gratified to know that
this was the case. He prophesied that this movement in favor of
non-resistance would attract much more attention in the future than it
has attracted in the past. The fate of Mr. Ballou's community did not
seem to shake his faith.
Naturally, the house was the first point which engaged our attention. In
1860, Count Tolstoy, being then thirty-two years of age, made up his
mind unalterably that he would never marry. All the world knows that
when the count has irrevocably determined upon anything he immediately
furnishes substantial proof of his convictions. On this occasion his
demonstration took the form of selling the manor house, which was taken
down and set up again on another estate in the same government by the
purchaser. The wings of the former house alone remained, detached
buildings, such as were used in the olden days to accommodate the
embroiderers, weavers, peasant musicians and actors of the private
troupes kept by wealthy grandees, as a theatre, or as extra apartments.
The count occupied one of these wings.
Two years later, he changed his mind and married. He brought his
beautiful bride of half his age to this tiny wing,--it chanced to be
tiny in this case,--and there she lived for seventeen years. The
horrible loneliness of it, especially in winter, with not a neighbor for
miles, unless one reckon the village at the park gate, which could not
have furnished anything but human beings, and never a congenial
companion for her! Needless to say that she never had on a low-bodied
gown, never went to the theatre or a ball, in all her fair young life;
and to the loneliness of the country must be added the absolute
loneliness during the absences of the count, who had much reading to do
in Moscow for the historical portions of his great war drama. When he
got tired of his village school, of his experiments upon the infant
peasant mind, of things in general, he could and did go away for rest.
The countess did not. Decidedly, the Countess Sophia Tolstoy is one of
those truly feminine heroines who are cast into shadow by a brilliant
light close to them, but a heroine none the less in more ways than need
be mentioned. Her self-denial and courage gave to the world "War and
Peace" and "Anna Karenin;" and she declares that were it to do over
again she would not hesitate a moment. The public owes the count's wife
a great debt of gratitude, and not of reproaches, for bravely opposing
his fatal desire to live in every detail the life of a peasant laborer.
Can any one blessed with the faintest particle of imagination fail to
perceive how great a task it has been to withstand him thus for his own
good; to rear nine healthy, handsome, well-bred children out of the much
larger family which they have had; to bear the entire responsibility of
the household and the business?
She remarked, one day, that there was no crying need for the Russian
nobility to follow her husband's teachings and give away all their goods
in order to be on a level with the peasants. Plenty of them would soon
attain that blissful state of poverty in the natural course of things,
since they were not only growing poorer every year, but the distribution
of inheritances among the numerous children was completing the work, and
very many would be reduced to laboring with their hands for a living.
This is perfectly true. There is no law of primogeniture in Russia. The
one established by Peter the Great having produced divers and grievous
evils, besides being out of harmony with the Russian character, it was
withdrawn. All the male children share equally in the father's estate as
in title. The female children receive by law only an extremely small
portion of the inheritance, but their dowry is not limited.
Among the count's most ardent followers is one of his daughters. She
does everything for herself, according to his teachings, in a manner
which American girls, in even moderately well-to-do families, would
never dream of. She works for the peasants in various ways, and carries
out her father's ideas in other matters as far as possible. Her Spartan
(or Tolstoyan) treatment of herself may be of value in character-
building, as mortification of the flesh is supposed to be in
general. Practically, I think the relations between peasants and nobles
render her sacrifices unavailing. For example: one of the peasant women
having been taken ill,--there was a good deal of sickness in the
village,--she went to the hayfield to do the woman's work and prevent
the forfeit of fifteen or twenty cents, the price of the day's labor. We
strolled out to find her. The thermometer must have stood at 100 degrees
F., and although the dry inland heat can be better borne than the same
amount of damp heat, it was far from being comfortable weather even for
indolent persons. We found her under a tree, resting and drinking cold
tea, while she awaited the return, from some errand of their devising,
of the peasant women who had been at work with her. She looked
wretchedly ill, and we tried to prevail on her to go back to the house
with us. But the count (who was not well enough to work) happened along,
and as he said nothing she decided to stay and to resume labor at once,
since the women seemed to have been detained.
As we beat a retreat homeward under that burning sun, we discovered the
nature of the peasant women's urgent business. They were engaged in
stripping the count's bushes of their fruit and devouring it by the
handful. We could not persuade him to interfere. "They want it, or they
would not take it," he said. It was none of our business, to be sure,
but those strong, muscular women offered such a contrast, in physique
and conduct, to the fair, delicate young girl whom we had just left that
we felt indignant enough to attack them ourselves, if it would have done
any good. The next day his daughter was more seriously ill than the
peasant woman whose place she had taken. I should not have felt unhappy
to learn that those women had been uncomfortably ill in consequence of
their greediness.
The count has no longer a school for the peasant children, by the way.
The necessity for that is past. But he must have been an original
professor. A friend of mine in St. Petersburg, who was interested,
during the sixties, in the secular Sunday-schools for workingmen who
could not attend on week days, repeated to me the count's method as
imparted to her by himself while visiting the capital. He objected to
the rules which compelled the men to be regular in attendance, on the
ground that learning must not be acquired thus mechanically, under
compulsion, but when the scholar feels an inward impulse. He would not
listen to the suggestion that this method would hardly answer when study
must be prosecuted on specified days under penalty of eternal ignorance.
He said that when he found his peasant pupils indisposed to learn he
dismissed the school, went home, and occupied himself in his own
affairs. After an interval, more or less long, a scuffling of feet and a
rapping would become audible at the door, and small voices would plead:
"Please, Lyeff Nikola'itch, we want to study. Please, come and teach
us." He went, and they made rapid progress because all was purely
voluntary.
One of the whitened stone wings of the old manor house stands unchanged.
It is occupied in summer by the countess's sister and her family. She is
a handsome and clever woman, who translates, and who has written some
strong short stories. The wing used by the count has been enlarged to
meet the requirements of the large family, and yet it is not a great or
imposing house. At one end a stone addition, like the original building,
contains, on the ground floor, the count's two rooms, which open on an
uncovered stone terrace facing the hedge-inclosed lawn, with beds of
bright flowers bordering it, and the stately lindens of the grand
avenues waving their crests beyond in the direction of the ponds. Over
these rooms and the vestibule is the hall, indispensable as a
dining-room and a play-room for the small children in wet weather and in
winter. A wooden addition at the other end furnishes half a dozen rooms
for members of the family, the tutor and the maids. Near by stand
several log cottages,--the bakehouse, the servants' dining-room, and
other necessary offices.
The count's study is very plain. The walls are in part lined with
bookcases; in part they are covered with portraits of relatives and of
distinguished persons whom he admires. There are more bookcases in the
vestibule, for people are constantly sending him books of every
conceivable sort. I imagine that the first copies of every book,
pamphlet, and journal on any hobby or "ism," especially from America,
find their way to the address of Count Tolstoy. He showed me some very
wild products of the human brain. The hall upstairs has a polished wood
floor, as is usual with such rooms, and a set of very simple wicker
furniture. Portraits of ancestors, some of whom figure in "War and
Peace," hang upon the walls. A piano, on which the count sometimes
plays, and a large table complete the furniture. Everything in the house
is severely simple. If I take the liberty of going into these details,
it is in the interest of justice. The house has been described in print
--from imagination, it would seem--as "a castle luxuriously
furnished," and the count has been reproached with it. Cheap as the
furniture is, he grumbled at it when it was purchased; he grumbles at it
still, and to me spoke of it as "sinful luxury." But then he cannot be
regarded a fair judge of what constitutes luxury.
The whole house, outside and in, is modest in the extreme. The park with
its avenues of lindens, which were in full bloom during our visit, the
ponds and lawns and forest, must have been superb in the time of his
grandfather, and even of his mother, from whom he inherited it. A grove
and thicket now occupy the site of the former manor, and screen the view
of each wing from the other. Vegetable gardens and berry patches lie
near at hand, and beds of brilliant but not rare flowers enliven the
immediate vicinity of the house.
The estate is large and fertile, though it does not lie in the famous
"black-earth zone." This begins a few miles south of it.
Plain wholesome food, simple dress, an open-air life without fixed
programme, were what we found. In the morning, after drinking tea or
coffee, with bread and butter, in the hall, we usually strolled through
the lovely forest, filled with flowers and perfumes, to the little river
about a mile distant, for a bath. The unpainted board bath-house had
seats running along the walls, and steps leading down into the water. A
framework supporting thick screens of golden rye straw extended far out
over the stream. A door upstream swung open at will for ambitious
swimmers. It was a solitary spot. The peasant girls pitching hay in the
meadows beyond with three-pronged boughs stripped of their leaves were
the only persons we ever saw. Clad in their best scarlet cotton
_sarafani_ and head kerchiefs, they added greatly to the beauty of the
landscape. Haying is such easy work compared to the rest of the summer
labors, that the best gowns are donned as for a festival.
If the boys got ahead of us on those hot mornings, when we had dispensed
with every article of clothing not absolutely necessary, we lay in the
shadow of the fragrant birches at the top of the hill on the soft, short
sward, which seems in Russia to grow as thick in dense forests as in
open glades, and waited until they could tear themselves from the cool
embrace of the stream. Then we went in, great and small, but with no
bathing-dress. The use of such a garment on such an occasion would be
regarded as a sign that one was afflicted with some bodily defect which
one was anxious to conceal. By the time we had refreshed ourselves and
rambled back, searching for early mushrooms through the forest or the
great plantation of birches set out by the count's own hands a quarter
of a century before, and grown now to stout and serviceable giants, the
twelve o'clock breakfast was ready under the trees. At this informal
meal every one sat where he pleased, and helped himself. At dinner, on
the contrary, my place was always at the count's left hand. We sat on
whatever offered itself. Sometimes I had a wooden chair, sometimes a bit
of the long bench like a plasterer's horse. Once, when some one rose
suddenly from the other end of this, I tumbled over on the count and
narrowly escaped wrecking his dinner.
At no meal did the count ever eat a mouthful of meat, despite urgent
persuasion. Boiled buckwheat groats, salted cucumbers, black bread, eggs
with spinach, tea and coffee, sour _kvas_ (beer made from black bread),
and cabbage soup formed the staple of his diet, even when ill, and when
most people would have avoided the cucumbers and _kvas_, at least.
The family generally met as a whole for the first time at breakfast. The
count had been busy at work in the fields, in writing or reading in his
study; the boys with their tutor; the countess copying her husband's
manuscript and ordering the household. After breakfast every one did
what he pleased until dinner. There was riding, driving,--anything that
the heat permitted. A second bath, late in the afternoon, was indulged
in when it was very hot. The afternoon bathing party generally drove
down in a _lineika_, a sort of long jaunting-car with a central bench,
not too wide, on which the passengers sit back to back, their feet
resting on a narrow footboard which curves over the wheels as a shield.
This _lineika_ had also cross-seats at each end, and with judicious
packing could be made to hold sixteen persons. As it was upholstered in
leather and had no springs, there was some art in keeping one's seat
when the three horses were going at full speed over the uneven forest
road.
After breakfast I sometimes sat under the trees with the countess, and
helped her sew on baby Ivan's clothes, for the pleasure of her
conversation. Nothing could be more fascinating. This beautiful woman
has not rusted during her long residence in the country. There are few
better informed women than she, few better women of business, few women
who are so clever and practical.
One day, as I was sitting, armed with thimble and needle, waiting for
her, the count discovered a hole in his pocket, and asked his niece to
mend it for him. She had not her implements. I volunteered,--to do the
mending, not to lend the wherewithal. The pocket was of black silk, my
thread of white cotton, but that was of no consequence. I seated myself
comfortably on the sand, and speedily discovered not one hole, but a row
of holes such as wear along the seams of pockets. The count was greatly
annoyed at the trouble he was giving me, protested as I began on each
new hole, and was very restless. I was finally obliged to speak.
"Lyeff Nikola'itch," I said, "do me the favor to sit still. Your
reputation as well as mine is involved in this work. It must be done
thoroughly and neatly quite as much for your sake as for mine."
"How so?" he asked in surprise.
"My woman's reputation for neat mending trembles in the balance; and do
not you advocate the theory that we should help our fellow-men? You have
helped others; it is your turn now to be experimented on. And besides,
if the fellow-man obstinately refuses to be helped by others, how are we
to do our duty by him? How could you work for others, if they persisted
in following out the other half of your doctrine and doing everything
for themselves? 'Tis plain that you understand how to render services
far better than to receive them. Reform. Submit."
The count laughed, with a sort of grim bewilderment in his eye, and
behaved in an exemplary manner for the few remaining moments. I mentally
thanked Fate for providing me with an opportunity for suggesting an
object lesson on a point which had puzzled me not a little, and which I
had been pining to attack in some form. He did not explain away my
difficulties, it is true, but I was satisfied with having presented the
other side of the shield to his attention.
On another occasion, as we sat under the trees, a peasant came, scythe
on shoulder, to complain to the countess of his wrongs. No one ever went
to the count, knowing that his wife had full management. Peasants who
came in a deputation to parley about hiring or buying extra land, and so
on, applied directly to her. The comrades of this Vasily Alexei'itch had
got two buckets of _vodka_, and had forced him, who detested liquor, to
drink of it. Then they had become quarrelsome (he was peaceable), and
they had torn his shirt--so! Hereupon he flung back his coat, worn in
Russian fashion with the sleeves hanging, and let his faded red cotton
shirt fall from his muscular shoulders, leaving him nude to the waist,
save for the cheap little baptismal cross suspended round his neck by a
cord. The small boys set up a shout of laughter at his story and his
action. The countess rebuked him sharply for such conduct before the
children, and refused to interfere in the quarrel. The man pulled his
torn shirt over his body and slouched off. That evening, after tea, the
count happened to hit upon a couple of Mr. Rider Haggard's books for
discussion, and, for the benefit of those in the company who had not
read it, gave the chief points of "She" in particularly lively style,
which kept us all in laughter. In describing the heroine, he said that
"she was clothed in an airy garment, like Vasily Alexei'itch;" and again
that "she dropped her garment, and stood like Vasily Alexei'itch." He
pronounced "She" and other works of Haggard "the lowest type of
literature," and said that "it was astonishing how so many English
people could go wild over them." He seemed to read everything, good and
bad, and to possess not only an omnivorous literary appetite, but a
wonderful memory for books, even in small details.