particularly to name those whom one should know above the others.
Pictures cannot easily be made so accessible as books, and the contents
of a picture does not permit of being told at all. And so I content
myself with mentioning again the names of Ryepin, Schischkin, Levitan,
and Aiwasowsky, and then those of the portrait-painter Kramskoi, the
landscape-painter Gay, and the master of genre painting, Makowski. And
to any one whose path ever leads him to Moscow, a visit to the Tretyakov
Gallery is most urgently recommended. A people which produces such
artists in every field as the Russian has not only the right to the
strongest self-consciousness, and to the general sympathy of people of
culture, but, above all, it has the right to be respected by its rulers
and not to be handled like a horde of slaves.
But, in spite of it all, light has not dawned upon those in power. You
may resolve as often as you will in Russia not to bother, for the space
of a day, with the everlasting police, but, in spite of all, you will be
continually coming into contact with them. Our path from the Tretyakov
Gallery to the hotel leads past a long, barrack-like building. We ask
our companion its object. He at once tells us something of interest.
First, the giant building is the manége, the drill-room for the soldiers
in bad weather. Its arched roof lies upon the walls without any interior
support. The weight of the roof is so great that already the walls in
many places have sagged and have had to be reinforced. Architects had
suggested alterations, which, however, would have cost countless
thousands. Such an expenditure could not be tolerated, and in the mean
time the evil increased. Already they were about to take a costly bite
from the sour apple, when a small peasant appeared and promised for a
hundred rubles to arrange matters in a single night. He simply bored, in
the top of the leaden roof, a hole, through which the air could
circulate, and immediately the roof lay like a feather upon the walls
without endangering them any longer by its weight. Such is the story of
the Moskvich. Whether or not it is true, or is held to be so by people
who know about such things, I do not venture to judge. But it seemed to
me interesting enough to be told. But what interested me still more was
the subsidiary use to which the building is put. It is near the
university. Now if a student disorder arises, they manage to surround
the students by Cossacks and drive them into this manége, where they are
held behind lock and key, by thousands, until the worshipful officials
have sought out those which may most to their purpose be called
revolutionists. Chance wills that generally the Jews are held, since
Herr von Plehve needs statistical proof for his theory of a purely
Jewish opposition.
His accusations may have served him among those above him, but not among
those below him. I found that in Moscow itself dealings between the
intelligent Christians and the few Jews who are allowed upon the street
were most hearty. The political bitterness, the desperate fight against
the régime, unites them all; after the Russian custom they exchange,
embrace, and kiss at every meeting, Jew or Christian, provided they only
be friends. It was for me, a Westerner, an interesting and mortifying
sight to see how young Russian nobles with world-famous names kissed on
the mouth and cheek in welcome and in farewell their Jewish friends.
With this impression I took my departure from Moscow. Terrible as the
political pressure may be, the people have preserved one thing in this
prison--their humanity. And thus they will one day attain happiness,
just as they are in many things already happier than we, because they
have remained human. For a well-known authoress, who begged me to write
a few words in her album, I wrote the words which I shall here repeat,
because they contain the sum of my Russian impressions, particularly
after the pleasing days in Moscow: "Russia is a sack, but it is
inhabited by human beings. The West is free, but it knows almost none
but business-men. I often almost believe that we ought to envy them...."
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Referring to a modern independent art movement in Europe.
[13] Ubermenschenthum. Cf. philosophy of Nietzsche
XXVIII
A VISIT TO TOLSTOÏ
From Moscow an accommodation train goes in one night to Tula, capital of
the government of the same name. The infallible _Baedeker_ advises the
traveller to leave the train there, because it is hard to get a team at
the next station, Kozlovka, though Kozlovka is nearer to Yasnaya
Polyana, the estate of the poet, than is Tula. I follow my _Baedeker_
blindly, because I have always had to repent when I departed from its
advice. The German _Baedeker_ deserves the highest credit for taking the
trouble to give this information to the few travellers that make the
pilgrimage to Leo Tolstoï. For it is not to be supposed that Tolstoï is
overrun. His family guard his retirement, and do not grant admittance to
every one. I was, in fact, the only stranger who found his way there
during the entire week. It was, indeed, a very special introduction
which opened the gates to me.
The train reaches Tula at eight in the morning. Thoughtful friends had
given me a card in Russian to the station-master to help me to find a
driver who knew the way. The station-master could not, however,
decipher the card, and did not understand my French. A colonel of
Cossacks then helped me out. He had already been talking with the
official, and now asked me if I could not speak German a little. When I
assented he immediately played the interpreter. In a few minutes a
muzhik was found who, with his small sleigh and shaggy, big-boned pony,
had made the journey many times. The amiable Cossack then accepted an
invitation to breakfast in the clean station, and we chatted for a while
over our tea. He was a tall, fair-haired man, with kindly blue eyes and
the short Slavonic nose. His conversation, however, emphatically
contradicted his appearance. He was on his way to the Ural, where he was
to meet his regiment, and talked about the bayonets of his Cossacks
being bent because the men spit the "Kakamakis" (Japanese) and threw
them over their shoulders. He was delighted that I was a German, for the
Russians think the Germans very good fellows at present. Only the
English are a bad lot--"Jew Englishmen!" Leo Tolstoï, he said, was a man
of great genius, but it wasn't nice that he was an atheist. I
interrupted him, laughing:
"I don't wish to be personal, colonel, but Leo Tolstoï is a much better
Christian than you."
"How's that?"
I explained to him that Tolstoï wishes to reestablish the primitive
Christianity and is the enemy only of the church and of the priests. The
good fellow was immediately satisfied. If it were nothing worse than
that--no Russian could endure the priests. They were all rascals. The
missionaries in China had turned all their girls' schools into harems.
Only the dissenting priests led a moral life.
It was the talk of a big, thoroughly lovable child, in whom even the
thirst for fighting was not unbecoming. Who knows whether the bullets of
the "Kakamakis" have not already found him out! I spoke later to the
good Tolstoï of this conversation. He also is persuaded that only right
teaching is needed to turn these essentially good-hearted people from
the business of murder. At present war is merely a hunting adventure for
them. They form no conception of the sufferings of the defeated.
Deeply buried in furs and robes, we glided at last over the glittering
snow. The city of Tula, which would have been interesting at another
time on account of its metal industry, was a matter of indifference at
the moment. We quitted it on the left and struck at once into the road
to Yasnaya Polyana. The distance before us was almost fifteen versts
(ten miles); our pony had, therefore, to make good time if it was to
bring us, over all the hills covered with soft snow, to our destination
before noon. A Russian horse, however, can stand a good deal, so I did
not need to interrupt by inopportune consideration for animals the
thoughts which surged through my brain more and more as we came near
the end of the journey. A meeting with Tolstoï is such an incomparable
privilege for me--will fate permit me thoroughly to enjoy the moments?
And if he is not the man I expect to find, if one of the great again
unmasks before me as a _poseur_--who appears great and admirable only at
a distance--how many illusions have I still to lose? May not his
apostleship be merely a self-suggested idea obstinately clung to? Is not
his tardy religious bent, perhaps, mere hypochondria, fear of the next
world, preparation for death? A look with his eyes must show me. I must
learn from the sound of his voice whether my inner ear deceives me when
I hear the ring of sincerity in the primeval force of his diction. I
know I cannot deceive myself. If the concept I have formed of him is
corrected even in the least point by the reality, that is the end of my
secret worship.
We turned in at last between two stone pillars at the park of Yasnaya
Polyana. Below, beside the frozen pond, we saw a youthful figure
advancing with the light step of an officer surrounded by a pack of
baying and leaping dogs. Yet, if my eyes did not deceive me, a gray
beard flowed over the breast of this slender, boyish figure. He stopped,
shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked towards our sleigh. Then he
turned back. It was he.
We had hardly reached the house and been unwrapped from our furs and
overshoes by the servants, when the door of the low vestibule opened,
and there, in muzhik smock and fur, high boots and tall fur cap, as we
knew him from a thousand pictures, Leo Tolstoï stood before us and held
out a friendly hand.
While he, motioning away the servants, pulled off his knee-high felt
overshoes, I had opportunity to look at him. That is to say, my eyes at
first were held by the head alone, with its softly curling gray hair,
which flows, parted, to the neck. Thick, bushy, gray brows shade the
deep-set, blue eyes and sharply define an angular, self-willed forehead.
The nose is strong, slender above, broad and finely modelled in the
nostrils. The long, gray mustache completely covers the mobile mouth. A
waving white beard, parted in the middle, flows from the hoary cheeks to
the shoulders. The head is not broad--rather, it might be called
narrow--wholly unslavonic, and is well poised. The broad, strongly built
shoulders have a military erectness. The powerful body is set on slender
hips. A narrow foot is hidden in the high Russian boot and moves
elastically. The step and carriage are youthful. An irony of fate will
have it that the bitterest foe of militarism betrays in his whole
appearance the former officer. The man in the peasant's dress is in
every movement the _grand seigneur_.
We were still standing in the vestibule, which serves also as a
cloak-room. The count thrust both hands in his belt--well-shaped,
powerful hands--and asked in faultless German my plan for the day. I
felt the gentle eyes on my face as he spoke. The look is beaming and
kindly. One is not pierced, only illuminated. Yet one feels distinctly
that nothing is hidden from those quiet, kindly eyes. I answered that I
should return to Moscow at midnight, and until then would under no
consideration disturb him in his work. He told me, thereupon, to send
back my sleigh, since he would have us driven at night to the station in
his own. He would have no refusal to our eating breakfast before we
withdrew to the room assigned us. The countess, he said, was in Moscow
at the time, but the youngest daughter would soon return from the
village school, where she taught. He would leave her to entertain us
until luncheon. I should say here that my wife accompanied me on this
wintry journey, as on the whole journey of investigation. Tolstoï
himself would keep to his usual programme--would look over his mail,
write a promised article, rest a little in the afternoon, then ride, and
from dinner--that is, from six o'clock--until midnight would be at my
disposal. Then he led us to a large room on the first floor. Here stood
a long table, which remains spread all day. Tea and eggs were brought.
Before withdrawing, however, the count sat with us awhile, asked with
the tact of a man of the world about personal matters--the number of our
children and how they were cared for in our absence, and the friends in
Moscow who had introduced us to him--all in a low, musical voice which
banished all embarrassment. Then he rose with a slight bow and walked to
his room. At the door, however, he turned and came back to ask whether
we brought any news of the war. It was just in the pause after the first
catastrophe at Port Arthur. We were obliged, therefore, to say no. Then
the servant appeared and led us back to the ground floor, where we were
shown into two connecting rooms. We had time to record our first
impressions.
The worst was over. There was no fear of disillusion. That was gone like
a cloud of smoke. The infinite kindliness of his eyes, the gentleness of
his hand-shake, the beauty of the silvery head exert a fascination.
There can be no doubt of his complete sincerity. The mind is filled with
an entirely new feeling, that of astonishment at the unpretentious
peacefulness of this fighter, who, from the stern seriousness of his
latest writings, and from his current portraits, might be taken for a
philosophizing pessimist. Whatever titanic thoughts may work in this
head, which looks like one of Michael Angelo's, all that is visible is a
glow of serene and holy peace, which gently relaxes the tension of our
own souls also. The ever-disturbing thought that we might find in the
count a recluse and an eccentric--if one may use such profane
expressions in connection with this illustrious man--a fanatic on the
subject of woollen underclothing and a return to nature in foods, was
set at rest from the first moment of meeting. The count is no eccentric,
but a polished man in spite of the convenient dress of the muzhik. The
peasant dress is simply the one that has proved best for his intercourse
with the country people. Moreover, there is a noticeable difference
between the well-cut and well-fitting coat of Tolstoï and that of the
ragged peasant. I must confess that the setting at rest of even this
little misgiving was of value to me. For, as people are in this world,
they will not take even a saint seriously if he wraps himself in
external eccentricities--if he has not good taste. Leo Tolstoï decidedly
has good taste. Only he is great enough and strong enough not to submit
to the tyranny of fashion. I should like, however, to see the man who
felt the least suggestion of worldly superiority in talking with him.
Truly the count is not the man whom any fop in the consciousness of his
English tailor would presume to patronize. Perhaps, unconsciously to
himself, and certainly against his will, it is unmistakably to be seen
in him that he once had the idea of being _comme il faut_, as he tells
in his _Childhood and Youth_. However insignificant this circumstance
may be in the worldwide fame of Leo Tolstoï, it must be mentioned,
simply because the legend of the muzhik's smock may too easily create an
entirely false impression of the personality of the poet. In spite of
all the kindly simplicity of his bearing, no one can for a moment
escape the impression that here speaks a distinguished man in every
sense of the term.
The rooms allotted to us were parts of his large library. On a shelf I
found the carefully kept catalogue of the fourteen cases, with each book
on a separate slip. A glance through one of the glass doors showed me
English, French, German, and Russian books; my eye even fell on a Danish
grammar. There stood side by side a work on Leonardo da Vinci,
Björnson's _Über unsere Kraft_, Marcel Prévost's _Vierges Fortes_, Jules
Verne's _Journey to the Centre of the Earth_, Spinoza, Renan, a book of
travel by Vámbéry, a book of entomology, Buffon--the most different
sorts of books, and obviously much used. The count is able to accomplish
such an achievement in reading only by a careful division of the day,
not to say a military exactness and thoroughness, pushed perhaps to
pedantry, in all his doings. Later, in speaking with me, he used the
familiar phrase, "Genius is eternal patience." He has this patience. It
is well known how he works--that he has his first conception copied on
the type-writer, then corrected, then copied again, and so on until the
work satisfies him. On the day of my visit this man of seventy-five took
an early morning walk of an hour and a half, looked over his large mail,
wrote an English article upon the war, rode two full hours in the
afternoon with the thermometer at six, worked again, and remained in
almost uninterrupted conversation with us from six o'clock until
midnight. He spoke German most of the time, rarely French. At the end of
the exceedingly intense conversation he was just as youthfully elastic
as at the beginning; indeed, in the late night hours his eyes first
began to glow with a light of inspiration which no one who has once seen
it can ever forget. In addition to the great thoroughness of all his
action and the strict division of the day, a vital energy which must be
called truly phenomenal is also most essentially characteristic of his
personality. Leo Tolstoï is a giant in psychical and intellectual
strength, as he must once have been in physical strength also. It is not
purely accidental that the two heroes in whom he has pictured himself
most unmistakably--Peter, in _War and Peace_, and Levin, in _Anna
Karenina_--are large, strong men of unusual productive capacity.
XXIX
A VISIT TO TOLSTOÏ--_CONTINUED_
It was not yet noon when the door opened and a supple, laughing creature
burst in like a whirlwind and ran up the stairs, filling the house with
music. Soon afterwards the servant summoned us to luncheon. When we went
up-stairs the laughing singer with the voice like a silver bell met us
at the door of the dining-room. It was the Countess Alexandra Lvovna,
or, as she is known in the house, Sasha, a blooming, beautiful blonde,
with her father's brows above great, wide-open, blue eyes. The Countess
Sasha does not speak German. She did the honors of the luncheon in the
absence of her father, who did not appear, since it is his custom not to
interrupt his work at this time. Therefore another inmate of the house
was present, a Circassian, a talented artist who had nursed the count in
the Crimea and since then has remained in the family. She makes herself
useful now by filing the count's correspondence. She speaks only
Russian, however, so that she could take no part in the conversation.
Naturally, we spoke only of the countess's father. His health the
preceding year had been very weak from attacks of malaria and typhus,
and even now the family were constantly anxious about him. For he does
not spare himself in the least, and will not take his advanced years
into consideration at all. For twenty years he has not eaten a morsel of
meat. What appeared to be cutlets, which I saw him eat later, were made
of baked rice. I cautiously led the conversation to a former inmate of
the house, who, in an indiscreet book upon the family of the count, made
the assertion that the count was only nominally a vegetarian, but
occasionally made up for his abstinence by secretly eating tender
beefsteaks. It would mean nothing in and of itself if a habitual
meat-eater, after going over to vegetarianism in a general way, should
now and then indulge the craving for meat. The secrecy of the
indulgence, however, would be a piece of that hypocrisy of which the
count is accused by his most obstinate enemies. We received from the
countess, however, an explanation of the circumstances in regard to the
German woman's book. Since the Tolstoï family, however, have long since
pardoned the repentant authoress, it would be indelicate of me to
publish the ancient history. Leo Tolstoï is no hypocrite. He does not
even consider it a duty to be a vegetarian. All the rest of his family,
including the Countess Sasha, eat meat. Tolstoï finds, however, that a
vegetable diet agrees with him, and he therefore adheres to it without
wishing to convert anybody else to the same belief, as vegetarians are
accustomed to do. The count, in general, does not try to make any
converts, brings no pressure to bear on any one. Everybody may live
exactly as he chooses, even in the bosom of the count's family. The
Countess Sasha said, touchingly, "The only thing we can learn from him
is whether a thing pleases him or not. That is enough, however, at least
for me."
Nothing could be more touching than the relations between this last
child remaining at home and her father. She hangs on his words. Every
wish of his, spoken half aloud, is quickly and silently fulfilled by
her. Since the marriage of the Countess Tatyana she has been his
secretary, and her white hands operate the typewriter like those of the
oldest amanuensis. She trills a little French song at the same time, and
blushes to the neck when any one catches her at it and speaks of her
sweet voice and accurate ear. Work for her father is a higher
satisfaction to her. She subordinates herself completely to his
thoughts. She used to be, like every one else, a lover of Shakespeare,
but since she copied the latest work of her father upon, or rather
against, Shakespeare, she has been convinced and converted by his
arguments. She said this without any affectation, with the sincerity of
a child. It is to be seen that the deep tenderness of her love for her
father springs from her care of him. She trembles for him. Perhaps she
exerts herself, too, to replace all the brothers and sisters who have
gone out from the home. Of nine living children--there were originally
thirteen--she is the last. It is easy to see, too, how much the careful
precautions of this daughter please the count. When his eyes rest on her
face, beautiful with the distinction of race and maidenhood, it is as if
a ray of light passed over his face. He does this, however, as if by
stealth. His love is shy, as is hers.
Soon after luncheon the count sent me an invitation to join him. He had
paused in his work to eat a few mouthfuls. Meanwhile we might chat. We
again sat at the same table. The talk turned on the war, against which
the count was just writing an article. He made the observation that the
right-minded Russian was in a remarkable position. He contradicted all
human feelings in wishing a defeat for his own nation. The bitterest
misfortune that Russia could meet, however, would be the continuance of
the present criminal régime, which demands so many victims, inflicts so
much suffering upon Russia, and which, in case of victory, would only be
strengthened. Quite recently he had received a letter from a highly
gifted writer, a certain Semionov, whom he himself had discovered and
taught. Semionov, a peasant, had been a janitor in Moscow, but on
Tolstoï's advice had returned to his father, and had written a little
volume of stories, which Tolstoï rates higher than those of Gorki. Now
the gendarmes have confiscated everything he has, and, if I am not
mistaken, have even arrested the writer. The pressure, the count says,
is unendurable. I told him of my meeting with the Cossack colonel in
Tula and of the hotel servants in Moscow, who one and all wished to go
to the scene of war for the sake of plunder. "Certainly," answered the
count. "The soldier must rejoice over every war, for war gives him for
the first time a kind of title to existence in his own eyes. As to these
house-servants and waiters, however, who are so ready to take part in
the war, their love of fighting is nothing but common love of stealing.
The Europeans have rioted and plundered shamefully in China. The people
of the lower classes suffer from these things, and thus all their evil
instincts are awakened."
I told the count of the officially arranged patriotic demonstrations in
St. Petersburg, of which I had been a witness, and in which alcohol had
played its part.