“His appearance with his long grey hair was altogether like that of an
Old Testament prophet. What a pity I spoke so little to him then, when
I need him so much now! He was a wonderful old man, the flower of the
Petersburg aristocracy both by birth and by his position at Court. And
then in Siberia, after he had already served hard labour, and his wife
had something like a salon, he worked with the peasants; all sorts of
tools for peasants’ work were in his room.”
Tolstoi does not believe the story about the affair between Poggio and
Princess Volkonsky.
He said:
“I do not want to believe it: such scandals are so often invented and
people’s memory spoilt. Moreover, Poggio loved Volkonsky so much that
when later (Volkonsky’s wife being already dead) he felt the approach
of death himself, he came to Volkonsky to die there.”
Tolstoi went on to say:
“I made Volkonsky’s acquaintance in Florence at Dolgorukov’s, Koko
Dolgorukov, the doctor. At that time it was rare for an aristocrat
to become a doctor. It was when Nicolas I. limited the number of
university students to three hundred, and Dolgorukov could not be
admitted to any other faculty. He was a wonderfully capable man: he
wrote poems, was a superb musician, painted pictures. He was married
to (?). When I visited them for the first time in Florence, this was
the scene I found: his wife and the well-known Marquis de Rogan were
playing an extraordinary game: they made a mark on the wall and tried,
by lifting their feet, to touch the mark; each tried to lift his or her
leg higher and higher.
“There was also present the very gifted painter Nikitin. He drew
wonderfully in pencil. I remember he had an album and drew Volkonsky’s
portrait in it. He also drew mine. I wonder where the album is. If some
collector were to get hold of it now!”
Then at dinner Tolstoi told us two anecdotes from his life. The first
was how he ate some earth-worms (Tolstoi told it because Alexandra
Lvovna and Ilya Lvovich’s children were going fishing). Tolstoi said he
was carrying the worms in one hand, and a loaf of black bread in the
other. He had finished eating the bread, and, thinking of something
else, put the worms in his mouth and began chewing them, and for some
time could not think what mess he had put in his mouth.
Tolstoi said:
“I remember the taste of them as if I were eating them now.”
My wife asked him if it was very unpleasant.
“The taste of earth; but I don’t advise you to taste it.”
Some one sneezed and Tolstoi told another story.
“I used to sneeze very loudly; once at night I woke and felt I was
going to sneeze immediately, and as Sophie Andreevna was going to have
a baby, I was afraid to frighten her by sneezing. Half asleep I cried
out: ‘Sonia, I am going to sneeze!’ Sophie Andreevna of course woke up
and was frightened, and I instantly fell asleep without having sneezed.”
Tolstoi also talked about Belogolovy’s _Reminiscences_.[9] He seemed to
Tolstoi a narrow-minded man. Speaking of the terrible impression made
by his description of the diseases and deaths of Nekrasov, Turgenev,
and Saltikov, Tolstoi said:
“How they dreaded death! And then there were those horrible disgusting
details of their illnesses, particularly Nekrasov’s.”
Last winter my wife and I stayed at Yasnaya Polyana, and, when we had
to leave, Tolstoi was sitting in his room with P. A. Boulanger. We
came into the room to say good-bye, and probably they were talking of
Boulanger’s family affairs.
We entered just as Tolstoi was saying:
“ ... if people only said more often: ‘Do you remember?’ People should
make it a rule that if one person says or does something wrong in the
heat of a quarrel, or when one is angry, the other should say: ‘Do you
remember?’”
Tolstoi noticed my wife and me and said:
“Now, you young people, you ought to make that your rule! No one can be
such a friend as one’s wife, a real friend. In marriage it is either
paradise, or simple hell; there is no ‘purgatory.’”
Boulanger said that generally it was a case of purgatory.
Tolstoi thought for a time and then said with a sigh:
“Yes, perhaps, unfortunately.” ...
That same evening, looking at Andrey Lvovich’s little girl, Sonechka,
playing on the floor, Tolstoi said:
“Faust speaks of the rare moment of which one can say: ‘Verweile doch,
du bist so schön!’ Now there it is, that moment!” (Tolstoi pointed
to the little girl.) “There is a perfectly happy, pure, and innocent
moment.”
_June 20th._ Some time ago, in May, Tolstoi said:
“Religions are usually based on one of these three principles: on
sentiment, reason, or illusion. Stoicism is an example of the religion
of reason; Mormonism of illusion; Muhammadanism of sentiment. I have
lately received many letters from Muhammadans. I had a letter from
Cairo from a representative of the Baptist sect, it is an example of
the religion of sentiment. I also had a letter from India, written by
a wonderful and very religious man. He writes that true Muhammadanism
is a perfectly different thing from what people usually think it to be.
Indeed, I know some very religious Moslems. And how movingly simple and
lofty is their worship!”
To-day at sunset we walked in the garden. We talked of Gorky and his
feeble “Man.” Tolstoi was saying that to-day on his walk he met on
the road (he likes to go out on to the road, and sit down on a little
stone, a milestone, and to observe or to speak to the passers-by) a man
who turned out to be a rather well-educated working-man.
Tolstoi said:
“His outlook on the world agrees perfectly with Gorky’s so-called
Nietzscheism and the cult of the personality. It is evidently the
spirit of the time. Nietzsche did not say anything new--his is now a
very popular world-conception.”
Then Tolstoi said:
“When I was a Justice of the Peace, there lived in Krapivna a merchant
called Gurev, who used to say about young people of education: ‘Well,
I look at your students--they are all scholars, they know everything,
only they have no invention.’ Turgenev, I remember, liked this
expression very much.”
Recently a party of gypsies camped on the road near Yasnaya Polyana.
Gypsies often roam about Yasnaya Polyana. The party usually stay for
two or three days, and in the evenings the Yasnaya Polyana household
comes out to hear the gypsy songs and enjoy their dances.
Tolstoi, looking at the gypsies, became a changed man, and
involuntarily began to dance to their tunes, and to cry out again and
again approvingly.
“What a wonderful people!”
The old gypsies all know Tolstoi and always enter into conversation
with him. Tolstoi from his youngest days loved and knew the gypsies and
their peculiar life.
When we left the house, it was drizzling. Soon the rain got worse, and
we returned.
Andrey Lvovich said:
“Now we have come to the house, the rain will stop.”
And, indeed, on our way home the rain stopped, and we went back to the
gypsies.
Tolstoi said:
“Yes, it is always like that: as soon as you turn to go home the rain
stops. Something like this happens in Moscow too. When you have to
find some one in a large building and ring for the porter, he is never
there. But no sooner do you go into the yard to make water than the
porter is sure to catch you. So I advise you that if you have to find
some one, don’t ring for the porter, but do the second thing first.”
When Andrey Lvovich was made an aide-de-camp, Tolstoi said to him:
“My only comfort is that you are sure not to kill a single Japanese.
An aide-de-camp is always exposed to great danger, but seldom takes
part in the fighting. I spent a great deal of time on the fourth
bastion at Sevastopol when I was in the army on the Danube. I was
aide-de-camp, and I believe I had not to fire even once. I remember
once on the Danube, near Silistria, we were on our side of the river,
but there was also a battery on the other side, and I was sent across
with some order. The commander of the battery, Schube, on seeing me,
thought: ‘Well, there’s that little Count, I’ll give him a lesson!’
And he took me across the whole line under fire, and with deadly
slowness on purpose. I passed that test well outwardly, but my
feelings were not pleasant. I also remember how one of the highest
officers--Kotsebu--visited the bastion in Sevastopol, and some one,
I think it was Novosilzev, wanted to put him to the test, and began
saying perpetually: ‘Look, Your Excellency, just there at their line,’
forcing him to put his head out from behind the fortifications. He put
his head out once or twice, and then, realizing what was up, he, as the
superior officer, began in his turn to order the other man to look at
the firing, and, after teasing him for some time, he said: ‘Next time I
advise you not to doubt the courage of your superiors.’”
Tolstoi recalled Lichtenberg’s[10] aphorism to the effect that mankind
will finally perish when not a single savage is left.
Tolstoi added:
“I first turned to the Japanese, but they have already successfully
adopted all the bad sides of our culture. The Kaffirs are the only hope
remaining.”
Tolstoi said:
“I do not remember during any previous war such depression and
anxiety as are now in Russia. I think it is a good sign, a proof that
a realization of the evil and uselessness and absurdity of war is
permeating deeper and deeper the social consciousness; so that perhaps
the time is coming when wars will be impossible--nobody will want to go
to war. Now Lisanka, who always sees the good in things, was telling me
about a peasant--a porter, I think--who was called up and, before going
to the front, took off his cross. That is a truly Christian spirit!
Although he is not able to resist the general will and has to yield to
it, yet he clearly realizes that it is not God’s doing.”
Tolstoi described with horror how a priest marched with his cross in
his hand in front of the soldiers.
_June 26th._ Last week I reached Yasnaya in the evening. The Sukhotins
were there. During tea Misha Sukhotin began to tell Tolstoi that on
completing his studies at the School of Jurisprudence he would like
to go to Paris to continue his studies; and he began to argue with
Tolstoi. I did not hear the beginning of the argument. I came in when
Tolstoi was saying:
“ ... Every man is a perfectly individual being, who has never existed
before and will never happen again. It is just the individuality, the
singularity of him, which is valuable; but school tries to efface all
this and to make man after its own pattern. The pupils of the Tula
secondary school came to me lately and asked what they should do. I
said to them: above all, try to forget everything you have been taught.”
Tolstoi thinks the Russian University in Paris perfectly useless and
good-for-nothing. He said:
“The best educational institution that I know is the Kensington Museum
in London. There is a large public library where many people work, and
they have professors of various special subjects. Every one who works,
if he has a question to ask, gives notice of it, and, when several such
questions have accumulated, the professor issues a notice to say that
he will lecture on such and such subjects, and those who wish may come
and hear him. Such an arrangement is most in keeping with the true
object of teaching--to answer the questions which arise in the minds
of the students. But in every other institution, lectures which are of
no use to the student are read by professors who are for the most part
entirely without gift. None of these lecturers would dare to publish
their lectures. Goethe said:
“‘When I speak it turns out better than when I think; I write better
than I speak; and what I publish is better than what I write.’ He
meant by this that what a man publishes is usually the cream of his
thought, the thing he most believes in. Instead of going to Paris to
attend lectures, go to the public library, and you won’t come out for
twenty years, if you really wish to learn. One ought not to talk about
oneself, but I must say this: when I was at the University in Kazan
I did practically nothing the first year. The second year I began to
work. There was a Professor Mayer who took an interest in me and gave
me, as a subject, to compare the code of Catherine the Great with
Montesquieu’s _Esprit des lois_. And, I remember, I became infatuated
with the work. I went into the country and began to read Montesquieu;
this reading opened up endless horizons; I began reading Rousseau, and
left the University for the simple reason that I wanted to work; for at
the University I should have to occupy myself with subjects that did
not interest me and were of no use to me.”
Sergey Lvovich asked Tolstoi why he did not go in for his examinations
at Petersburg University.
Tolstoi said:
“I began to work hard, passed two examinations, was awarded two marks
of distinction, but then it was spring; it drew me to the country;
well, I gave it up and went away.” ... Speaking of the good effects
upon men of having received no education, Tolstoi said:
“I know two musicians who never went to school, and yet they are very
well-educated men, who, whatever subject you talk about, know it
thoroughly,--G. and Sergey Ivanovich Taneev.”