CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY MANHOOD

Yásnaya Polyána. Aunt Tatiána. The German Tutor. The brothers:

Nicholas, Sergius and Demetrius. Doúnetchka. The house-serfs. A

family scene. Pilgrims and saints. Death of father and grandmother.

Flying. Personal appearance. Corporal punishment. Originality. Riding

lessons. The Countess Osten-Saken. Aunt P. I. Úshkof. Books. Abstract

speculations. Kazán University. Imprisonment. Diary. Demetrius. Books:

Dickens and Rousseau. Yásnaya again. Petersburg. Consistency. Rudolph

the Musician. Women. Gambling. Gipsy girls. Money difficulties. The

liberty of Russian nobles.

YÁSNAYA POLYÁNA (Bright Glade), where Tolstoy was born, had been

an ancestral estate of the Volkónskys and belonged to his mother,

the Princess Marie. It is situated ten miles south of Toúla, in a

pleasantly undulating country. The estate, which is enclosed by an

old brick wall, is well wooded and has many avenues of lime-trees, a

river and four lakes. In Tolstoy's grandfather's time, sentinels kept

guard at the small, round, brick towers, which now stand neglected at

the entrance of the main birch avenue leading to the house. Something

of the great confidence in himself and readiness to despise others,

which despite all his efforts to be humble, characterise Tolstoy, may

be due to the fact that he was born and grew up on an estate where for

generations his ancestors had been the only people of importance.

'Aunty' Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky had been brought up by his

grandmother on an equality with her own children. She (Tatiána) was

resolute, self-sacrificing, and, says Tolstoy,

must have been very attractive with her enormous plait of crisp,

black, curly hair, her jet-black eyes, and vivacious, energetic

expression. When I remember her she was more than forty, and I

never thought about her as pretty or not pretty. I simply loved

her eyes, her smile, and her dusky broad little hand, with its

energetic little cross vein.

We had two aunts and a grandmother; they all had more right to us

than Tatiána Alexándrovna, whom we called Aunt only by habit (for

our kinship was so distant that I could never remember what it

was), but she took the first place in our upbringing by right of

love to us (like Buddha in the story of the wounded swan), and we

felt her right.

I had fits of passionately tender love for her.

I remember once, when I was about five, how I squeezed in behind

her on the sofa in the drawing-room and she caressingly touched me

with her hand. I caught it and began to kiss it, and to cry with

tender love of her....

Aunty Tatiána had the greatest influence on my life. From early

childhood she taught me the spiritual delight of love. She taught

me this joy not by words; but by her whole being she filled me with

love. I saw, I felt, how she enjoyed loving, and I understood the

joy of love. This was the first thing.

Secondly, she taught me the delights of an unhurried, quiet life.

Another, though a much less important, influence was that of the tutor,

Theodore Rössel (who figures as Karl Ivánovitch Mauer in Tolstoy's

early sketch, _Childhood_). Tolstoy owes his excellent knowledge of

German and French to the fact that his father, following a custom

common among well-to-do Russians, engaged foreign teachers and let his

children learn languages not so much from books as by conversation,

while they were still quite young. Rössel's 'honest, straightforward,

and loving nature' helped to develop the boy's good qualities.

Tolstoy got on well, too, with his brothers, who were five-and-a-half,

two, and one year older than himself, as well as with his little sister

Marie, his junior by a year-and-a-half.

He not only loved, but deeply respected, his eldest brother Nicholas

(pet name, Nikólenka), whose influence lasted until, and even after,

his death in 1860. Of him Tolstoy says:

He was a wonderful boy, and later a wonderful man. Tourgénef used

to say of him very truly, that he only lacked certain faults

to be a great writer. He lacked the chief fault needed for

authorship--vanity, and was not at all interested in what people

thought of him. The qualities of a writer which he possessed were,

first of all, a fine artistic sense, an extremely developed sense

of proportion, a good-natured gay sense of humour, an extraordinary

inexhaustible imagination, and a truthful and highly moral view of

life; and all this without the slightest conceit. His imagination

was such that for hours together he could tell fairy-tales or

ghost-stories, or amusing tales in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe,

without a pause and with such vivid realisation of what he was

narrating that one forgot it was all invention.... When he was not

narrating or reading (he read a great deal) he used to draw. He

almost invariably drew devils with horns and twisted moustaches,

intertwined in the most varied attitudes and engaged in the most

diverse occupations. These drawings were also full of imagination.

It was he who, when I was five and my brothers, Dmítry six and

Sergéy seven, announced to us that he possessed a secret by means

of which, when disclosed, all men would become happy: there would

be no more disease, no trouble, no one would be angry with anybody,

all would love one another, and all would become 'Ant-Brothers.'...

We even organised a game of Ant-Brothers, which consisted in

sitting under chairs, sheltering ourselves with boxes, screening

ourselves with handkerchiefs, and cuddling against one another

while thus crouching in the dark.... The Ant-Brotherhood was

revealed to us, but not the chief secret: the way for all men

to cease suffering any misfortune, to leave off quarrelling and

being angry, and become continuously happy; this secret he said

he had written on a green stick, buried by the road at the edge

of a certain ravine, at which spot (since my body must be buried

somewhere) I have asked to be buried in memory of Nikólenka.

Besides this little stick, there was also a certain Fanfarónof

Hill, up which he said he could lead us, if only we would fulfil

all the appointed conditions. These were: first, to stand in a

corner and not think of a white bear. I remember how I used to get

into a corner and try (but could not possibly manage) not to think

of a white bear. The second condition was to walk without wavering

along a crack between the boards of the floor; and the third was,

for a whole year not to see a hare, alive or dead or cooked; and

it was necessary to swear not to reveal these secrets to any one.

He who fulfilled these, and other more difficult conditions which

Nikólenka would communicate later, would have one wish, whatever it

might be, fulfilled.

Nikólenka, as I now conjecture, had probably read or heard of the

Freemasons--of their aspirations toward the happiness of mankind,

and of the mysterious initiatory rites on entering their order; he

had probably also heard about the Moravian Brothers [in Russian

_ant_ is _mouravéy_].

Writing when he was over seventy, Tolstoy adds:

The ideal of ant-brothers lovingly clinging to one another, though

not under two arm-chairs curtained by handkerchiefs, but of all

mankind under the wide dome of heaven, has remained the same for

me. As I then believed that there existed a little green stick

whereon was written the message which could destroy all evil in

men and give them universal welfare, so I now believe that such

truth exists and will be revealed to men, and will give them all it

promises.

It was, however, Tolstoy's second brother, Sergius (or Sergéy: pet

name, Seryózha), whom Tolstoy in his young days most enthusiastically

admired and wished to imitate. Sergius was handsome, proud,

straightforward, and singularly sincere. Of him Leo Tolstoy says:

I loved and wished to be like him. I admired his handsome

appearance, his singing (he was always singing), his drawing,

his gaiety and especially (strange as it may seem to say so) the

spontaneity of his egotism. I myself was always aware of myself

and self-conscious; I always guessed, rightly or wrongly, what

other people thought or felt about me, and this spoilt my joy in

life. This probably is why in others I specially liked the opposite

feature--spontaneity of egotism. And for this I specially loved

Seryózha. The word _loved_ is not correct. I loved Nikólenka; but

for Seryózha I was filled with admiration as for something quite

apart from and incomprehensible to me.

Of the third brother, Demetrius (or Dmítry: pet name, Mítenka), only a

year older than himself, Tolstoy tells us:

I hardly remember him as a boy. I only know by hearsay that as a

child he was very capricious. He was nearest to me in age and I

played with him oftenest, but did not love him as much as I loved

Seryózha, nor as I loved and respected Nikólenka. He and I lived

together amicably. I do not recollect that we quarrelled. Probably

we did, and we may even have fought.... As a child I remember

nothing special about Mítenka except his childish merriment.

Tolstoy says he was 'afraid of beggars, and of one of the Volkónskys,

who used to pinch me; but, I think, of no one else.'

A girl, Doúnetchka Temeshóf, was adopted as a member of the family. She

was a natural daughter of a wealthy bachelor friend of Tolstoy's father.

I remember how, when I had already learnt French, I was made to

teach her that alphabet. At first it went all right (we were both

about five years old), but later she probably became tired, and

ceased to name correctly the letters I pointed out. I insisted. She

began to cry. I did the same, and when our elders came, we could

say nothing owing to our hopeless tears.

In his later recollections of her he says:

She was not clever, but was a good, simple girl; and, above all, so

pure that we boys never had any but brotherly relations with her.

By which he means that there was no flirtation.

The relations between the family and its servants, who were serfs

(and of whom there were about thirty), were, as in many a Russian

family, often really affectionate. One instance of a serf's devotion

has already been quoted; and such cases were not rare. In _Childhood_

mention is made of the old housekeeper, Praskóvya Isáyevna, who was

completely devoted to the welfare of the family, and Tolstoy says: 'All

that I there wrote about her was actual truth.'

Here is another example illustrating both kindly toleration of minor

offences committed by a serf, and the family affection which sweetened

life:

My pleasantest recollections of my father are of his sitting with

grandmother on the sofa, helping her to play Patience. My father

was polite and tender with every one, but to my grandmother he was

always particularly tenderly submissive. They used to sit--Grandma

playing Patience, and from time to time taking pinches from a

gold snuff-box. My aunts sit in arm-chairs, and one of them reads

aloud. We children come in to say good-night, and sometimes sit

there. We always take leave of Grandma and our aunts by kissing

their hands. I remember once, in the middle of a game of Patience

and of the reading, my father interrupts my aunt, points to a

looking-glass and whispers something. We all look in the same

direction. It was the footman Tíkhon, who (knowing that my father

was in the drawing-room) was going into the study to take some

tobacco from a big leather folding tobacco-pouch. My father sees

him in the looking-glass, and notices his figure carefully stepping

on tip-toe. My aunts laugh. Grandmama for a long time does not

understand, but when she does, she too smiles cheerfully. I am

enchanted by my father's kindness, and on taking leave of him kiss

his white muscular hand with special tenderness.

An important feature of the life in which Tolstoy grew up was furnished

by the half-crazy saints who swarmed in Russia in those days, and are

still occasionally to be met with. Readers of _Childhood_ will remember

Grísha, an admirable specimen of that class, about whom Tolstoy makes

the following characteristic note in his memoirs:

Grísha is an invented character. We had many of these half-crazy

saints at our house, and I was taught to regard them with profound

respect, for which I am deeply grateful to those who brought me

up. If there were some among them who were insincere, or who

experienced periods of weakness and insincerity, yet the aim of

their life, though practically absurd, was so lofty that I am glad

I learned in childhood unconsciously to understand the height of

their achievement. They accomplished what Marcus Aurelius speaks

of when he says: 'There is nothing higher than to endure contempt

for one's good life.' So harmful and so unavoidable is the desire

for human glory which always contaminates good deeds, that one

cannot but sympathise with the effort not merely to avoid praise,

but even to evoke contempt. Such a character was Márya Gerásimovna,

my sister's godmother, and the semi-idiot Evdokímoushka, and some

others in our house.

How deeply these early impressions were engraved on Tolstoy's mind

is obvious from his earliest as well as his latest writings. Take,

for instance, the lines from _Childhood_ referring to Grísha's prayer

overheard by the children.

Much water has flowed away since then, many recollections of the

past have lost for me their meaning and become blurred fancies;

even the pilgrim Grísha himself has long since finished his last

pilgrimage; but the impression he produced on me and the feeling he

evoked, will never die out of my memory.

In Tolstoy's later life we shall again and again find this medieval

note recurring (with whatever of truth or falsity it contains), and the

assertion that it is not the usefulness or uselessness of a man's life

that matters, so much as his self-abnegation and the humility of his

soul.

To complete the picture of Tolstoy's early boyhood at Yásnaya Polyána,

we must think of him as interested in his father's dogs and horses

and hunting (in _Childhood_ he tells the true story of how he hunted

his first hare), and also in the games and masquerades with which

the family and visitors, as well as the servants, amused themselves,

especially at New Year.

In spite of his sensitive introspective nature, Tolstoy's childhood was

a happy one; and to it he always looks back with pleasure. He speaks

of 'that splendid, innocent, joyful, poetic period of childhood, up to

fourteen,' and he tells us that the impressions of early childhood,

preserved in one's memory, grow in some unfathomable depth of the soul,

like seeds thrown on good ground, till after many years they thrust

their bright, green shoots into God's world.

1837

When Tolstoy was eight years old the family moved to Moscow for his

elder brothers' education. The following summer they lost their father,

who, having gone to Toúla on business, fell down in the street on his

way to visit his friend Temeshóf, and died of apoplexy. What money he

had with him was stolen, but some unnegotiable bonds were brought back

to the Tolstoys in Moscow by an unknown beggar. The funeral took place

at Yásnaya Polyána; and Leo, who did not attend it, long fancied that

his father was not really dead. Looking at the faces of strangers in

the streets of Moscow, he felt almost certain he might at any moment

meet him alive again.

This event brought the problems of life and death vividly to the boy's

mind, and nine months later the impression was intensified by the

death of his grandmother, who never recovered from the shock of her

son's death. Hers was the first death Tolstoy witnessed, and he never

forgot the horror he felt when, as she lay dying of dropsy, he was

admitted to kiss her swollen white hand and saw her, dressed in white,

lying motionless on a high white bed. But he says:

I remember that new jackets of black material, braided with white,

were made for all of us. It was dreadful to see the undertakers'

men hanging about near the house, and then bringing in the coffin,

with its lid covered with glazed brocade, and my grandmother's

stern face, with its Roman nose, and her white cap and the white

kerchief on her neck, lying high in the coffin on the table; and

it was sad to see the tears of our aunts and of Páshenka; but yet

the new braided jackets and the soothing attitude adopted towards

us by those around, gratified us.... I remember how pleasant it

was to me to overhear during the funeral the conversation of some

gossiping female guests, who said, 'Complete orphans; their father

only lately dead, and now the grandmother gone too.'

Some time after this, an event occurred that is recorded on the first

page of Tolstoy's _Confession_:

I remember how, when I was about eleven, a boy Vladímir Milútin

(long since dead), a Grammar School pupil, visited us one Sunday

and announced as the latest novelty a discovery made at his School.

The discovery was that there is no God, and all that we are taught

about Him is a mere invention. I remember how interested my elder

brothers were in this news. They called me to their council and

we all, I remember, became animated, and accepted the news as

something very interesting and fully possible.

Various stories have been preserved relating to Tolstoy's boyhood, and

some of them are sufficiently characteristic to be worth repeating.

One incident which made a strong impression on the lad, keenly

sensitive as he always was to any shade of injustice, was the following:

Soon after the death of their father and grandmother, the orphan

Tolstoys, then living in rather straitened circumstances (owing to the

property being left in trust), were invited to a Christmas Tree at the

house of an acquaintance, and the young Princes Gortchakóf, nephews of

the then Minister of War, were also among the guests. All the children

received presents; but whereas the Gortchakófs had expensive ones, the

Tolstoys, to their annoyance, received cheap common ones.

Another occurrence that clung to his recollection through life, was

the friendly welcome they received one day when they made their way

uninvited into a private garden in Moscow; and the sad disappointment

they experienced when, returning a few days later unaccompanied by

a pretty and attractive girl who had been with them on the former

occasion, they were coldly informed that it was private ground, not

open to the public.

Other stories, told by Tolstoy himself or by the family, illustrate his

impulsive, imaginative, strenuous and rather erratic nature at this

period.

When he was about seven or eight years old he had an ardent desire to

fly, and persuaded himself that it was possible to do so. It was only

necessary to sit down tight on your heels, clasping your arms firmly

round your knees, and the tighter you held them the higher you would

fly. As Tolstoy was always ardent to put his beliefs into practice, it

is not very surprising that one day, soon after the family had moved

to Moscow, he stayed behind in the class-room when he should have come

down to dinner, and climbing out on the window-sill, some six yards

from the ground, threw himself out. He was picked up unconscious.

The ill results of his fall were fortunately confined to a slight

concussion of the brain; and after sleeping for eighteen hours on end

he woke up again quite well.

It would be a mistake to take his story, _Childhood_, as strictly

autobiographical; but it contains many passages which one knows from

other sources to be true of his own life, and one such is the passage

in which (speaking in the character of Nikólenka) he says:

I knew very well that I was plain, and therefore every reference

to my appearance was painfully offensive to me.... Moments of

despair frequently came over me: I imagined that there could be no

happiness on earth for a man with so broad a nose, such thick lips,

and such small grey eyes as mine. I asked God to perform a miracle

and change me into a handsome boy, and all I then had and all I

could ever possess in the future, I would have given for a handsome

face.

In fact, his personal appearance caused the sensitive lad much concern,

but his efforts to improve it were unsuccessful. On one occasion he

clipped his eyebrows, and the unsatisfactory results of that operation

occasioned him great grief.

He records in his Reminiscences the following incident, which certainly

intensified his lifelong antipathy to corporal punishment:

I do not remember for what, but for something quite undeserving of

punishment, St. Thomas [the resident French tutor who succeeded

Rössel] first locked me into a room, and secondly threatened to

flog me. I thereupon experienced a dreadful feeling of anger

indignation and disgust, not only towards St. Thomas himself, but

towards the violence with which I was threatened.

When quite a small boy he conceived an attachment for the nine-year-old

daughter of his father's friend, Islényef, and being jealous of her for

daring to talk to others, he angrily pushed her off a balcony, with

the result that she limped for a long time afterwards. A quarter of a

century later, when he married this lady's daughter, his mother-in-law

used laughingly to remind him of the incident, and say, 'Evidently

you pushed me off the balcony in my childhood that you might marry my

daughter afterwards!'

His sister relates that once when they were driving in a troika (_i.e._

three horses abreast) to Yásnaya, Leo got down during a break in the

journey and went forward on foot. When the carriage started again and

began to overtake him he took to running, and when the horses went

faster he also increased his speed, racing as hard as he could. He

was not overtaken till he had gone about two miles and was completely

tired out. He was lifted back into the carriage gasping for breath,

perspiring and quite exhausted. Any one not endowed with the remarkable

physical vigour that, in spite of frequent attacks of ill-health, has

characterised Tolstoy through life, would probably have done themselves

serious injury had they taxed their vital resources as recklessly as he

often did.

All accounts agree in representing him as an original and odd little

fellow, unwilling to do things like other people. He would for instance

enter a drawing-room and, carefully placing his feet together and

bending his head, would make his bow backwards, saluting each of the

company in turn.

Two incidents are recorded relating to the love of riding which has

remained a characteristic of his through life.

When his brothers were sent to a riding-school, Leo (in spite of his

father's assurances and those of the riding-master that he was too

small to begin and would tumble off) also obtained permission to learn

to ride. At his first lesson he duly tumbled off, but begged to be

replaced in the saddle; and he did not fall off again, but became an

expert horseman. In one of the short stories he wrote many years later

for the use of school-children, he tells how he once wished to ride

the old horse Raven after his brothers had each had a turn on it; and

how Raven being too tired to move from the stables, he beat it till he

broke his switch on its sides. He then demanded a stouter switch from

the serf in charge, but the man replied:

'Ah, master, you have no pity! Why do you beat him? He is twenty

years old, and is tired out; he can hardly breathe. Why, for a

horse, he is as old as Timoféyitch [a very old peasant living at

the place]. You might as well get on Timoféyitch's back, and drive

him beyond his strength like that, with a switch. Would you feel no

pity for him?'

I thought of Timoféyitch, and hearkened to the man. I got off

the horse's back; and when I noticed how its steaming sides were

working, and how heavily it breathed through its nostrils, swishing

its thin tail, I understood how hard it was for it. Till then I

had thought that it was as happy as I was myself. And I felt so

sorry for Raven that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and to beg his

pardon for having beaten him.

Since then I have grown up, but I always have pity on horses, and

always remember Raven and Timoféyitch when I see horses ill-treated.

He does not appear to have been very good at his lessons, and himself

somewhere mentions the dictum of a student who used to coach his

brothers and himself, and said of their aptitude for learning:

'Sergéy both wishes and can, Dmítry wishes but can't' (this was

not true), 'and Leo neither wishes nor can.' (This, I think, was

perfectly true.)

On the other hand, St. Thomas, the French tutor already referred to

(he figures in _Childhood_ as St. Jérôme), must have noticed the lad's

capacity, for he used to say, '_Ce petit a une tête: c'est un petit

Molière_' (This little one has a head: he is a little Molière).

1837

After the father's death the family property passed under the control

of the Court of Wards, and expenses had to be cut down. It was

therefore decided that, though the two elder brothers had to remain

in Moscow for the sake of their education, the three younger children

should return to Yásnaya Polyána, where living was cheaper, in charge

of their much loved Aunty Tatiána. Their legal guardian, the Countess

Alexandra ('Aline') Ilýnishna Osten-Saken, remained in Moscow with the

elder boys.

This lady had made what seemed a brilliant marriage with the wealthy

Count Osten-Saken, whose family was among the first in the Baltic

Provinces; but her married life was a terrible one. Her husband went

out of his mind and tried to kill her. While he was confined in an

asylum, the Countess gave birth to a still-born child. To save her from

this fresh shock, a girl born of a servant, the wife of a Court cook,

was substituted for the still-born baby. This girl, Páshenka, lived

with the Tolstoy family, and was already grown up when Tolstoy was

quite a child. Subsequently the Countess Alexandra lived first with her

parents and then with her brother, Tolstoy's father. Though she was a

devotee of the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church of which Tolstoy eventually

became so fierce an opponent, much in her character and conduct accords

with the precepts laid down in his later writings; and it is evident

that certain aspects of his understanding of the Christian character,

which strike most Englishmen as peculiar, far from being invented out

of his own head, are derived from a deeply-rooted Russian and family

tradition. He tells us:

My aunt was a truly religious woman. Her favourite occupation

was reading the Lives of the Saints, conversing with pilgrims,

half-crazy devotees, monks and nuns, of whom some always lived

in our house, while others only visited my aunt.... She was not

merely outwardly religious, keeping the fasts, praying much, and

associating with people of saintly life, but she herself lived

a truly Christian life, trying not only to avoid all luxury and

acceptance of service, but herself serving others as much as

possible. She never had any money, for she gave away all she had

to those who asked. A servant related to me how, during their life

in Moscow, my aunt used carefully on tip-toe to pass her sleeping

maid, when going to Matins, and used herself to perform all the

duties which it was in those days customary for a maid to perform.

In food and dress she was as simple and unexacting as can possibly

be imagined. Unpleasant as it is to me to mention it, I remember

from childhood a specific acid smell connected with my aunt,

probably due to negligence in her toilet: and this was the graceful

poetic Aline with beautiful blue eyes, who used to love reading and

copying French verses, who played on the harp, and always had great

success at the grandest balls! I remember how affectionate and kind

she always was, and this equally to the most important men and

women and to the nuns and pilgrims.

Tolstoy goes on to tell how pleasantly she bore the jests and teasing

that her devotion to the priests brought upon her.

I remember her dear good-natured laugh, and her face shining with

pleasure. The religious feeling which filled her soul was evidently

so important to her, so much higher than anything else, that she

could not be angry or annoyed at anything, and could not attribute

to worldly matters the importance others attach to them.

1840

In the summer of 1839 the whole family assembled at Yásnaya Polyána.

The next year, 1840, was a famine year. The crops were so poor that

corn had to be bought to feed the serfs, and to raise funds for this

purpose one of the Tolstoys' estates had to be sold. The supply of

oats for the horses was stopped, and Tolstoy remembers how he and his

brothers, pitying their ponies, secretly gathered oats for them in the

peasants' fields, quite unconscious of the crime they were committing.

1841

In the autumn of that year the whole family moved to Moscow, returning

to Yásnaya for the following summer. The next autumn their guardian,

the kind good Countess Alexandra Osten-Saken, died in the Convent

or 'Hermitage' founded by Óptin (a robber chief of the fourteenth

century) in the Government of Kaloúga, to which she had retired.

After her death her sister, Pelagéya Ilýnishna Úshkof, became their

guardian. She was the wife of a Kazán landowner. Aunty Tatiána and she

were not on friendly terms; there was no open quarrel between them,

but V. I. Úshkof (Pelagéya's husband) had been a suitor for Tatiána's

hand in his youth, and had been refused. Pelagéya could not forgive her

husband's old love for Tatiána.

The change of guardianship led to the removal of the family to Kazán,

and to the children being separated from Aunty Tatiána, much to her

grief.

The books which up to the age of fourteen, when he went to Kazán, had

most influenced Tolstoy were, he tells us, the Story of Joseph from the

Bible, the _Forty Thieves_ and _Prince Kamaralzaman_ from the _Arabian

Nights_, various Russian folk-legends, Poúshkin's _Tales_ and his poem

_Napoleon_, and _The Black Hen_ by Pogorélsky. The influence the story

of Joseph had on him, he says, was 'immense.'

In his aptitude for abstract speculation, as in other respects,

the boy was truly father to the man; and in a passage, certainly

autobiographical, in _Boyhood_, he says:

It will hardly be believed what were the favourite and most common

subjects of my reflections in my boyhood--so incompatible were

they with my age and situation. But in my opinion incompatibility

between a man's position and his moral activity is the surest sign

of truth....

At one time the thought occurred to me that happiness does not

depend on external causes, but on our relation to them; and that

a man accustomed to bear suffering cannot be unhappy. To accustom

myself therefore to endurance, I would hold Tatíshef's dictionaries

in my outstretched hand for five minutes at a time, though it

caused me terrible pain; or I would go to the lumber room and flog

myself on my bare back with a cord so severely that tears started

to my eyes.

At another time suddenly remembering that death awaits me every

hour and every minute, I decided (wondering why people had not

understood this before) that man can only be happy by enjoying the

present and not thinking of the future; and for three days, under

the influence of this thought, I abandoned my lessons, and did

nothing but lie on my bed and enjoy myself, reading a novel and

eating honey-gingerbreads, on which I spent my last coins....

But no philosophic current swayed me so much as scepticism, which

at one time brought me to the verge of insanity. I imagined that

except myself no one and nothing existed in the world, that

objects are not objects but apparitions, appearing only when I pay

attention to them and disappearing as soon as I cease to think of

them. In a word, I coincided with Schelling in the conviction that

what exists is not objects, but only my relation to them. There

were moments in which under the influence of this fixed idea, I

reached such a stage of absurdity that I glanced quickly round

hoping to catch Nothingness by surprise, there where I was not.

The philosophical discoveries I made greatly flattered my vanity:

I often imagined myself a great man, discovering new truths for

the benefit of humanity, and I looked on other mortals with a

proud consciousness of my own dignity; yet, strange to say, when

I came in contact with these mortals I grew timid before each of

them. The higher I stood in my own opinion the less was I able to

show any consciousness of my own dignity before others, or even to

avoid being ashamed of every word or movement of my own--even the

simplest.

At the time of the move to Kazán, a serf lad of about his own age was

presented to each of the young Tolstoys to attend on him. Alexis, the

one given to Leo Tolstoy, remained in his service all his life, and

died at Yásnaya a few years ago.

1841

For five and a half years, from the autumn of 1841 to the spring of

1847, the brothers lived at Kazán, returning each summer to Yásnaya for

the vacation. They all entered Kazán University. The aunt who was their

guardian, and with whom they lived the greater part of the time, was a

kind but not particularly clever woman. Her house was the centre of

much hospitality and gaiety.

1844

Leo Tolstoy prepared to enter the faculty of Oriental Languages, in

which a knowledge of Arabic and Turco-Tartar was required. He worked

hard, and matriculated in May 1844 before he was sixteen, passing in

French (for which he received the mark 5+; 5 being in an ordinary

way the highest mark, and the + indicating exceptional distinction),

German, Arabic, and Turco-Tartar very well, and in English, Logic,

Mathematics and Russian Literature, well; but he did indifferently

in Latin, and failed completely in History and Geography, getting

the lowest mark, a 1, for each of them. Of History he says, 'I knew

nothing,' and of Geography 'still less'; adding, 'I was asked to name

the French seaports, but I could not name a single one.' At the end of

the summer vacation he was admitted for re-examination in the subjects

in which he had failed, and passed successfully.

1844-1845

The winter season when Tolstoy, as a student at the University and a

young man of good position, entered Kazán society, was a particularly

gay one. He attended many balls, given by the Governor of the Province,

by the _Maréchal de la Noblesse_, and by private people, as well as

many masquerades, concerts, tableaux-vivants, and private theatricals.

He is still remembered by old inhabitants as having been 'present at

all the balls, soirées, and aristocratic parties, a welcome guest

everywhere, and always dancing, but, far from being a ladies' man, he

was distinguished by a strange awkwardness and shyness.' At Carnival

time in 1845 he and his brother Sergius took parts in two plays given

for some charitable object. His performance was a great success.

As to the nature of Kazán society and of his surroundings there,

accounts are contradictory. On the one hand, we have his own statement

that (imitating his brother Sergius in this as in other matters)

he became 'depraved.' Birukóf, too, speaks of 'the detestable

surroundings of Tolstoy's life in Kazán,' and another writer,

Zagóskin, a fellow-student of Tolstoy's at the University, says that

the surroundings in which the latter moved were demoralising and must

have been repellent to him. On the other hand, on seeing Zagóskin's

remarks, Tolstoy (in whom there is often observable a strong spirit of

contradiction) replied:

I did not feel any repulsion, but was very glad to enjoy myself

in Kazán society, which was then very good. I am on the contrary

thankful to fate that I passed my first youth in an environment

where a young man could be young without touching problems

beyond his grasp, and that I lived a life which, though idle and

luxurious, was yet not evil.

The explanation of these contradictions, no doubt, is that the family

circle in which Tolstoy lived was an affectionate one, and that he

himself not only enjoyed his life, but formed friendships and made

efforts at which in later years he looked back with satisfaction.

Yet there was assuredly much in his life and in the life around him

which (except when others were severe on it) he recalled with grave

disapproval, a disapproval he has plainly expressed in his _Confession_.

To come as near as we may to the truth, we must allow for the personal

equation which, in Tolstoy's case, is violent and fluctuating.

With constant amusements going on around him, it is not surprising that

at the end of his first University year he failed in his examinations.

The failure does not however appear to have been entirely his fault,

for he tells us:

Ivanóf, Professor of Russian History, prevented me from passing

to the second course (though I had not missed a single lecture

and knew Russian History quite well) because he had quarrelled

with my family. The same Professor also gave me the lowest mark--a

'one'--for German, though I knew the language incomparably better

than any student in our division.

1845

Instead of remaining for a second year in the first course of Oriental

Languages, Tolstoy preferred to leave that faculty, and in August

1845 he entered the faculty of Law. During the first months of this

new course he hardly studied at all, throwing himself more than ever

into the gay life of Kazán society. Before midwinter however he began

for the first time, as he tells us, 'to study seriously, and I even

found a certain pleasure in so doing.' Comparative Jurisprudence and

Criminal Law interested him, and his attention was especially arrested

by a discussion on Capital Punishment. Meyer, Professor of Civil Law,

set him a task which quite absorbed him; it was the comparison of

Montesquieu's _Esprit des Lois_ with Catherine the Second's _Great

Nakaz_. The conclusion to which he came was, that in Catherine's

_Nakaz_ one finds Montesquieu's Liberal ideas mixed with the expression

of Catherine's own despotism and vanity, and that the _Nakaz_ brought

more fame to Catherine than good to Russia.

1846

He passed his examinations successfully in May 1846, and was duly

admitted to the second year's course of Jurisprudence. Some time

previously Tolstoy and another student had disputed which of them had

the better memory, and to test this, each of them learnt by heart the

reply to one examination question in History. Tolstoy's task was to

learn the life of Mazeppa, and as luck would have it that was just the

question he happened to draw at his examination, so that he naturally

obtained a 5, the highest mark.

From the autumn of 1846 the three brothers, Sergius Demetrius and Leo,

ceased to live at their aunt's, and settled in a flat of their own,

consisting of five rooms.

A fellow-student, Nazáryef, has given us his impression of Tolstoy as a

student. He says:

I kept clear of the Count, who from our first meeting repelled me

by his assumption of coldness, his bristly hair and the piercing

expression of his half-closed eyes. I had never met a young man

with such a strange and, to me, incomprehensible air of importance

and self-satisfaction....

At first I seldom met the Count, who in spite of his awkwardness

and bashfulness had joined the small group of so-called

'aristocrats.' He hardly replied to my greetings, as if wishing to

intimate that even here we were far from being equals, since he

drove up with a fast trotter and I came on foot....

It so happened that Nazáryef and Tolstoy were both late for a lecture

on History one day, and were incarcerated together by order of the

Inspector.

One gathers that Tolstoy was in those days particularly careful of

his personal appearance, his clothes indicating his aristocratic

pretensions. But though externally the Tolstoy of 1846 differed greatly

from the Tolstoy of forty years later, his conversation ran on much

the same lines as in later life, and was uttered with the intensity of

conviction and the flashes of dry humour which have since made even the

most didactic of his writings so readable.

Their conversation in their place of confinement having led to some

mention of Lérmontof's poem, _The Demon_, Tolstoy took occasion to

speak ironically of verse generally, and then, noticing a volume his

companion had of Karamzín's _History of Russia_, he

attacked History as the dullest and almost the most useless of

subjects. A collection of fables and useless details, sprinkled

with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.... Who wants

to know that the second marriage of John the Terrible, with

Temrúk's daughter, took place on 21st August 1562; and his fourth

marriage, with Anna Alexéyevna Koltórsky, in 1572? Yet they expect

me to grind all this, and if I don't, the examiner gives me a 'one.'

Later on, says Nazáryef, 'the, to me, irresistible force of Tolstoy's

doubts fell upon the University, and on University teaching in general.

The phrase, "The Temple of Science," was constantly on his lips.

Remaining perfectly serious himself, he portrayed our professors

in such a comical light that, in spite of all my efforts to appear

indifferent, I laughed like one possessed.... "Yet," said Tolstoy, "we

both had a right to expect that we should leave this temple useful

men, equipped with knowledge. But what shall we really carry away from

the University?... What shall we be good for, and to whom shall we be

necessary?"

Nazáryef says that in spite of the feeling half of dislike, half of

perplexity, that Tolstoy evoked in him, he well remembers that he was

dimly conscious of something remarkable, exceptional, and at the same

time inexplicable, about him.

From the educational articles Tolstoy wrote sixteen years later, we

know that he disapproved of examinations, of the restricted groove of

studies marked out for the students in each faculty, and of the system

which made it necessary for the professors to deliver original lectures

of their own, and obliged the students to listen to those lectures and

to study them, however incompetent the professors might be.

1847

The fact that his brother Sergius had finished his studies and was

leaving, strengthened Tolstoy's dissatisfaction with the University;

and finally, without waiting for the May examinations at which he might

have qualified for the third year's course, we find him, soon after

Easter 1847, applying to have his name removed from the University roll

'on account of ill-health and family affairs.' He really had been in

hospital in March, but the plea of ill-health was a mere excuse.

His failure to take a degree was a source of great annoyance and

disappointment to him, and it must not be supposed that he left Kazán

with any idea of taking life easily or neglecting further study.

From the time he was a boy he had kept a diary of every little sin

he had committed, and especially of any offence against the Seventh

Commandment, in order that he might repent, and if possible refrain

for the future, and his diary shows how full he was at this time of

strenuous resolutions. During the last year of his life at Kazán

he made close friends with a student named Dyákof (the Nehlúdof of

_Boyhood_), and under his influence had developed

an ecstatic worship of the ideal of virtue, and the conviction

that it is man's destiny continually to perfect himself. To put

all mankind right and to destroy all human vices and misfortunes,

appeared a matter that could well be accomplished. It seemed quite

easy and simple to put oneself right, to acquire all the virtues,

and to be happy.

Here are some rules he set himself at that time:

1. To fulfil what I set myself, despite all obstacles.

2. To fulfil well what I do undertake.

3. Never to refer to a book for what I have forgotten, but always

to try to recall it to mind myself.

4. Always to make my mind work with its utmost power.

5. Always to read and think aloud.

6. Not to be ashamed of telling people who interrupt me, that they

are hindering me: letting them first feel it, but (if they do not

understand) telling them, with an apology.

Deciding to settle at Yásnaya for two years, he drew up a list of

studies he intended to pursue for his own mental development, and to

qualify for a University degree; and this list was, as the reader will

see, appalling in its scope.

1. To study the whole course of law necessary to get my degree.

2. To study practical medicine, and to some extent its theory also.

3. To study: French, Russian, German, English, Italian, and Latin.

4. To study agriculture, theoretically and practically.

5. To study History, Geography, and Statistics.

6. To study Mathematics (the High School course).

7. To write my [University] thesis.

8. To reach the highest perfection I can in music and painting.

9. To write down rules (for my conduct).

10. To acquire some knowledge of the natural sciences, and,

11. To write essays on all the subjects I study.

Such rules and resolutions abound in Tolstoy's Diary. After failing to

act up to them, he again and again gathers his energies and maps out

for himself plans of life and courses of study sufficient to tax the

energies of an intellectual giant.

As to his religious opinions at this time, he tells us:

I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I

was taught it in childhood and all through my boyhood and youth.

But before I left the University, in my second year, at the age

of eighteen, I no longer believed anything I had been taught.

(_Confession._)

His Diary nevertheless shows that he prayed frequently and earnestly;

the fact no doubt being, that though intellectually he discarded

the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church, in times of trouble or distress he

instinctively appealed to God for help. His opinions were wavering and

immature, as he himself tells us in another passage:

The religious beliefs taught me in childhood disappeared... and as

from the time I was fifteen I began to read philosophic works, my

rejection of those beliefs very soon became a conscious one. From

the age of sixteen I ceased going to Church and fasting of my own

accord. I did not believe what had been taught me from childhood,

but I believed in something. What it was I believed in, I could not

at all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny

God; but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny

Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching consisted in I

could also not have said.

Looking back on that time now, I see clearly that my faith--my only

real faith, that which apart from my animal instincts gave impulse

to my life--was a belief in perfecting oneself. But in what this

perfecting consisted and what its object was, I could not have

said. I tried to perfect myself mentally--I studied everything

I could: anything life threw in my way; I tried to perfect my

will, I drew up rules which I tried to follow; I perfected myself

physically, cultivating my strength and agility by all sorts of

exercises and accustoming myself to endurance and patience by all

kinds of privations. And all this I considered to be perfecting

myself. The beginning of it all was, of course, moral perfecting;

but that was soon replaced by perfecting in general: by the desire

to be better, not in one's own eyes or those of God, but in the

eyes of other people. And very soon this effort again changed

into a desire to be stronger than others: to be more famous, more

important and richer than others. (_Confession._)

When speaking of Tolstoy's relations with women, it should be borne in

mind that incontinence for young men was then considered so natural

that few of them in his position would have felt any serious qualms of

conscience about such visits to houses of ill-fame as he lets us know

that he began to pay at this time. His brother Dmítry however led a

chaste life, and alternating with gross lapses of conduct, we find Leo

noting down for his own guidance such resolutions as the following:

To regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of

social life, and to keep away from them as much as possible.

From whom indeed do we get sensuality, effeminacy, frivolity in

everything, and many other vices, if not from women? Whose fault is

it, if not women's, that we lose our innate qualities of boldness,

resolution, reasonableness, justice, etc.? Women are more receptive

than men, therefore in virtuous ages women were better than we; but

in the present depraved and vicious age they are worse than we are.

During his years at the University, Tolstoy saw much of his brother

Dmítry, of whom he says:

I remember also at the University that when my elder brother

Dmítry, suddenly in the passionate way natural to him devoted

himself to religion and began to attend all the Church services,

to fast, and to lead a pure and moral life, we all, and even our

elders, unceasingly held him up to ridicule and called him, for

some unknown reason, 'Noah.' I remember that Moúsin-Poúshkin (then

Curator of Kazán University), when inviting us to a dance at his

house, ironically remonstrated with my brother, who had declined

the invitation, and used the argument that even David danced before

the Ark. I sympathised with these jokes my elders made, and deduced

from them the conclusion that though it is necessary to learn the

catechism and go to church, one must not take such things too

seriously. (_Confession._)

Again we read of this brother:

His peculiarities became manifest, and are impressed on my mind

from the time of our life at Kazán. Formerly in Moscow I remember

that he did not fall in love, as Seryózha and I did, and was not

fond of dancing or of military pageants, but studied well and

strenuously.... At Kazán I, who had always imitated Seryózha, began

to grow depraved.... Not only at Kazán, but even earlier, I used

to take pains about my appearance. I tried to be elegant, _comme

il faut_. There was no trace of anything of this kind in Mítenka.

I think he never suffered from the usual vices of youth; he was

always serious thoughtful pure and resolute, though hot-tempered,

and whatever he did, he did to the best of his ability.... He wrote

verses with great facility. I remember how admirably he translated

Schiller's _Der Jüngling am Bache_, but he did not devote himself

to this occupation.... He grew up associating little with others,

always--except in his moments of anger--quiet and serious. He was

tall, rather thin, and not very strong, with long, large hands and

round shoulders. I do not know how or by what he was attracted at

so early an age towards a religious life, but it began in the very

first year of his University career. His religious aspirations

naturally directed him to Church life, and he devoted himself to

this with his usual thoroughness.

In Mítenka there must have existed that valuable characteristic

which I believe my mother to have had, and which I knew in

Nikólenka, but of which I was altogether devoid--complete

indifference to other people's opinion about oneself. Until quite

lately (in old age) I have never been able to divest myself of

concern about people's opinion; but Mítenka was quite free from

this. I never remember on his face that restrained smile which

involuntarily appears when one is being praised. I always remember

his serious quiet sad, sometimes severe, almond-shaped hazel eyes.

Only in our Kazán days did we begin to pay particular attention to

him, and then merely because, while Seryózha and I attached great

importance to what was _comme il faut_--to externalities--he was

careless and untidy, and we condemned him for this.

We others, especially Seryózha, kept up acquaintance with our

aristocratic comrades and other young men. Mítenka on the contrary

selected out of all the students a piteous-looking, poor,

shabbily dressed youth, Poluboyárinof [which may be translated

Half-noble]--whom a humorous fellow-student of ours called

Polubezobédof [Half-dinnerless]--and consorted only with him, and

with him prepared for the examinations.... We brothers, and even

our aunt, looked down on Mítenka with a certain contempt for his

low tastes and associates; and the same attitude was adopted by our

frivolous comrades.

After their University days were over, Tolstoy saw little of his

brother Demetrius; so it will be convenient here to sacrifice

chronological sequence and say what more there is to tell of the

latter's life and death. The material is again supplied by Tolstoy's

Reminiscences.

When we divided up the family property, according to custom the

estate where we lived, Yásnaya Polyána, was given to me. Seryózha,

as a lover of horses and according to his wish, received Pirogóvo,

where there was a stud. To Mítenka and Nikólenka were given the

two other estates: to Nikólenka, Nikolsky; to Mítenka, the Kursk

estate, Sher-batchóvka. I have kept a note of Mítenka's, showing

how he regarded the possession of serfs. The idea that it is

wrong, and that serfs ought to be liberated, was quite unknown in

our circle in the 'forties. The hereditary possession of serfs

seemed a necessary condition of life, and all that could be done

to prevent its being an evil, was to attend not only to their

material but also to their moral welfare. In this sense Mítenka

wrote very seriously naïvely and sincerely. Thinking he could not

do otherwise, he, a lad of twenty, when he left the University

took it upon himself to direct the morality of hundreds of peasant

families, and to do this (as Gógol recommended in his _Letters to a

Landowner_) by threats of punishments and by punishments.... But,

besides this duty to his serfs, there was another duty which at

that time it seemed impossible not to fulfil: namely, Military or

Civil service. And Mítenka decided to enter the Civil Service.

Tolstoy proceeds to tell how his brother, desiring to be useful to his

country, chose legislation as his speciality, and going to Petersburg

astonished the Head of the Department as well as certain aristocratic

acquaintances by asking where he could find a place in which he could

be _useful_. The friend to whom he went for advice, regarded the

service of the State merely as a means of satisfying ambition, and

'such a question had probably never occurred to him before.' Eventually

we find Demetrius returning home discouraged, and taking up some local

work. All this, to some extent, helps us to understand Leo Tolstoy's

sceptical attitude towards the institution of Government, and his

strong belief that men in Government service are solely actuated by

selfish motives.

Tolstoy continues:

After we had both left the University, I lost sight of him. I

know he lived the same severe, abstemious life, knowing neither

wine tobacco nor, above all, women, till he was twenty-six, which

was very rare in those days. I know also that he associated with

monks and pilgrims.... I think I was already in the Caucasus when

an extraordinary change took place. He suddenly took to drinking

smoking wasting money and going with women. How it happened I do

not know; I did not see him at the time. I only know that his

seducer was a thoroughly immoral man of very attractive appearance,

the youngest son of Islényef [an uncle of the lady Leo Tolstoy

subsequently married].

In this life Mítenka remained the same serious religious man he

was in everything. He ransomed from the brothel a prostitute named

Másha, who was the first woman he knew, and took her into his

house. But this life did not last long. I believe it was less the

vicious and unhealthy life he led for some months in Moscow, than

his mental struggle and his qualms of conscience, that suddenly

destroyed his powerful organism. He became consumptive, went to

the country, was doctored in the provincial town, and took to his

bed in Orél, where I saw him for the last time just after the

Crimean war. He was in a dreadful state of emaciation: one could

even see how his enormous hand joined on to the two bones of his

lower arm; his face was all eyes, and they were still the same

beautiful serious eyes, with a penetrating expression of inquiry

in them. He was constantly coughing and spitting, but was loth to

die, and reluctant to believe he was dying. Poor pockmarked Másha,

whom he had rescued, was with him and nursed him. In my presence,

at his own wish, a wonder-working icon was brought. I remember the

expression of his face when he prayed to it.... He died a few days

later!

Students of the didactic writings of Tolstoy's later years will notice

how closely his injunctions to a man to keep to the first woman,

whoever she be, with whom he has had intimate relations, correspond

with the line actually followed by his brother Demetrius.

When Tolstoy left the University, however, these things were still

unthought of. Let us, before returning to the events of his own life at

that time, notice some books which he read between the ages of fourteen

and twenty-one. They included:

The Sermon on the Mount from St. Matthew's Gospel,

Rousseau's _Confession_ and _Émile_, and

Dickens's _David Copperfield_,

which all had an 'immense' influence on him.

In another category came works which he says had 'very great'

influence. These were:

Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_,

Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_,

Poúshkin's _Eugene Onégin_,

Schiller's _The Robbers_,

Gógol's _Dead Souls_,

Tourgénef's _A Sportsman's Sketches_,

Drouzhínin's _Pólenka Sax_,

Grigoróvitch's _Antón Goremýka_, and the chapter _Tamán_ from

Lérmontof's _A Hero of Our Times_.

In a third category he mentions some of Gógol's Shorter Stories, and

Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, as having had 'great' influence.

In these works one finds many ideas which have been congenial to

Tolstoy throughout his life, and his adhesion to which has only become

firmer with age. In illustration of this, take a couple of passages

from Dickens which many readers may have passed without much attention,

but which to Tolstoy represented the absolute truth of the matters they

touch on. David Copperfield says of Parliament:

...I considered myself reasonably entitled to escape from the

dreary debates. One joyful night, therefore, I noted down the music

of the parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have never

heard it since; though I still recognise the old drone in the

newspapers without any substantial variation (except, perhaps, that

there is more of it) all the livelong session.

To most Englishmen with memories of Pym and Hampden, or personal

knowledge of the lives of men who have devoted themselves

disinterestedly to public affairs, Parliamentary or local, Dickens's

sneer at Parliament seems but a paradox or a joke; but to Tolstoy,

with his inherited dislike of Government, this testimony from a great

English writer (who had served as a Parliamentary reporter) seemed

irrefutable evidence of the futility of Parliaments.

Take, again, a passage in which Dickens hits a nail adroitly on the

head:

Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words, which,

however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say, not

at all peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the course of my

life, in numbers of men. It seems to me to be a general rule. In

the taking of legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy

themselves mightily when they come to several grand words in

succession, for the expression of one idea--as, that they utterly

detest, abominate, and abjure, and so forth--and the old anathemas

were made relishing on the same principle. We talk about the

tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannise over them too. We are

fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait

upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds

well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on

State occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so the

meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if

there be but a great parade of them.

No modern writer has ever more carefully eschewed the practice Dickens

here attacks than Tolstoy has done throughout his career. Indeed, he is

far stricter than Dickens in this respect.

But much more important than the influence of Dickens was that of

Rousseau, of whom Tolstoy once remarked:

I have read the whole of Rousseau--all his twenty volumes,

including his _Dictionary of Music_. I was more than enthusiastic

about him, I worshipped him. At the age of fifteen I wore a

medallion portrait of him next my body instead of the Orthodox

cross. Many of his pages are so akin to me that it seems to me that

I must have written them myself.

Another writer who influenced Tolstoy, though to a very much smaller

extent, was Voltaire, of whom he says:

I also remember that I read Voltaire when I was very young, and his

ridicule (of religion) not only did not shock me, but amused me

very much.

Everything Tolstoy has done in his life he has done with intensity; and

that this applies to the way in which he read books in his youth, is

shown by the fact that we find him as an old man, in 1898, in _What is

Art?_ according the highest praise to books he had read before he was

twenty-one, or even before he was fourteen.

It was in the spring of 1847 that Tolstoy, who was not yet nineteen,

returned to his estate of Yásnaya Polyána, to live with his dear Aunty

Tatiána; to 'perfect' himself, to study, to manage his estate, and to

improve the condition of his serfs. The last part of this programme, at

any rate, was not destined to have much success. Though one must never

treat Tolstoy's fiction as strictly autobiographical, yet _A Squire's

Morning_ gives a very fair idea of his own efforts to improve the lot

of his serfs, and of the difficulties and failures he encountered in

the course of that attempt. In that story Prince Nehlúdof decides to

leave the University and settle in the country, and writes to his aunt:

As I already wrote you, I found affairs in indescribable disorder.

Wishing to put them right, I discovered that the chief evil is the

truly pitiable, wretched condition of the serfs, and this is an

evil that can only be remedied by work and patience. If you could

but see two of my serfs, David and Iván, and the life they and

their families lead, I am sure the sight of these two poor wretches

would convince you more than all I can say in explanation of my

intention.

Is it not my plain and sacred duty to care for the welfare of

these seven hundred people for whom I must account to God? Will it

not be a sin if, following plans of pleasure or ambition, I abandon

them to the caprice of coarse Elders and stewards? And why should

I seek in any other sphere opportunities of being useful and doing

good, when I have before me such a noble brilliant and intimate

duty?

Not only is this letter just such as Tolstoy himself may have written,

but the difficulties Nehlúdof encounters when he tries to move his

peasants from the ruts to which generations of serfdom had accustomed

them, are just those Tolstoy himself met with: the suspicion shown by

the serfs towards any fresh interference on the part of the master,

and the fact that ways to which a community have grown accustomed are

not easily changed by the sudden effort of a well-intentioned but

inexperienced proprietor.

After spending the summer of 1847 at Yásnaya, Tolstoy went to

Petersburg, where we find him settled in autumn; and early next year he

entered for examination at the University of that city.

1848

On the 13th of the following February he wrote to his brother Sergius:

I write you this letter from Petersburg, where I intend to remain

_for ever_.... I have decided to stay here for my examinations and

then to enter the service....

In brief, I must say that Petersburg life has a great and food

influence on me: it accustoms me to activity and supplies the place

of a fixed table of occupations. Somehow one cannot be idle; every

one is occupied and active; one cannot find a man with whom one

could lead an aimless life, and one can't do it alone....

I know you will not believe that I have changed, but will say,

'It's already the twentieth time, and nothing comes of you--the

emptiest of fellows.' No, I have now altered in quite a new way. I

used to say to myself: 'Now I will change,' but at last I see that

I _have_ changed, and I say, 'I have changed.'

Above all, I am now quite convinced that one cannot live by

theorising and philosophising, but must live positively, _i.e._

must be a practical man. That is a great step in advance and a

great change; it never happened to me before. If one is young and

wishes to live, there is no place in Russia but Petersburg for

it....

[Illustration: TOLSTOY IN 1848, AFTER HE HAD LEFT THE UNIVERSITY.]

On the 1st of May he wrote again to his brother, in a very different

strain:

Seryózha! I think you already say I am 'the emptiest of fellows,'

and it is true. God knows what I have done! I came to Petersburg

without any reason, and have done nothing useful here, but have

spent heaps of money and got into debt. Stupid! Insufferably

stupid! You can't believe how it torments me. Above all, the

_debts_, which I _must_ pay _as soon as possible_, because if I

don't pay them soon, besides losing the money, I shall lose my

reputation.... I know you will cry out; but what's to be done?

One commits such folly once in a lifetime. I have had to pay for

my freedom (there was no one to thrash me, that was my chief

misfortune) and for philosophising, and now I have paid for it.

Be so kind as to arrange to get me out of this false and horrid

position--penniless and in debt all round.

He goes on to mention that he had passed two examinations at the

University, but that he had altered his mind, and now, instead of

completing his examinations, wanted to 'enter the Horse Guards as a

Junker.' (A Junker was a young man who volunteered for the army as a

Cadet. Before receiving a commission, a Junker lived with the officers,

while preparing to become one of them.)

God willing, I will amend and become a steady man at last, I

hope much from my service as a Junker, which will train me to

practical life, and _nolens-volens_ I shall have to earn the rank

of officer. With luck, _i.e._ if the Guards go into action, I may

get a commission even before the usual two years are up. The Guards

start for the front at the end of May. At present I can do nothing:

first, because I have no money (of which I shall not need much,

I fancy), and secondly, because my two birth-certificates are at

Yásnaya. Have them sent on as soon as possible.

Before long, Tolstoy was again writing to his brother:

In my last letter I wrote much nonsense, of which the chief item

was that I intended to enter the Horse Guards; I shall act on that

plan only in case I fail in my examinations, and if the war is a

serious one.

The war in question was Russia's share in quelling the Hungarian

rebellion of 1849. Not a thought of the justice or otherwise of the

cause seems at that time to have crossed the mind of him who in later

life became so powerful an indicter of war.

This is Tolstoy's own summary, written many years later, of the period

we are now dealing with:

It was very pleasant living in the country with Aunty Tatiána, but

an indefinite thirst for knowledge drew me away to a distance.

This was in 1848, and I was still uncertain what to undertake. In

Petersburg two roads were open to me. I could either enter the

army, to take part in the Hungarian campaign, or I could complete

my studies at the University, to enter the Civil Service. My

thirst for knowledge conquered my ambition, and I again began to

study. I even passed two examinations in Law, but then all my good

resolutions broke down. Spring came, and the charm of country life

again drew me back to my estate.

Of the two examinations he passed at this time he says:

In 1848 I went to pass the examinations for my degree at Petersburg

University, knowing literally nothing, and reading up during only

one week. I worked day and night; and passed with Honours in Civil

and Criminal Law.

But in spite of this success he did not take the remaining

examinations, and returned to Yásnaya without having obtained a

degree--finally abandoning the attempt to do so.

In later times, when Tolstoy's reputation was world-wide, critics

often amused themselves by detecting inconsistencies in his conduct

and questioning his sincerity. But the proof of his sincerity is writ

large in the story of his life. Time after time, from the earliest

pages of his Diary, we find him vehemently resolving never more to do

certain things, but always to do other things, and again and again

confessing in the greatest tribulation, that he had failed to carry

out his intentions; yet in spite of everything he returns, and again

returns, to his earliest ideals and gradually shapes his life into

accord with them, and eventually forms habits which, when he first

extolled them, appeared utterly beyond his reach. Not insincerity

but impetuosity, retrieved by extraordinary tenacity of purpose, has

always characterised him. It was the same with his thirst for knowledge

as with his yet deeper thirst after righteousness. Often as he was

swayed by the lures of life, each of those two great desires found its

satisfaction at last.

The letters quoted above show some consciousness of the fact that there

is a practical side to life not to be mastered by theorising; but the

duty of learning by experience as well as by ratiocination is one

Tolstoy has very seldom dwelt on, and never, I think, realised at all

fully.

Another characteristic matter alluded to in these letters is the

difficulty he found himself in for lack of his birth-certificates

and other papers. Russia has long suffered from a superabundance of

red tape, which contrasts strongly with the slipshod habits of its

people, and promotes the hatred of officialism that is there so common.

The fact that Tolstoy has on several occasions been put to great

inconvenience for lack of certificates, which it was not in his nature

methodically to keep in readiness, is a small matter, but it has

probably had its share in increasing his strong dislike of governments.

From Petersburg he brought back with him to Yásnaya a gifted but

drunken German musician named Rudolph, with whom he had chanced to make

acquaintance, and whose talent he had discerned. For some time Tolstoy

devoted himself passionately to music, acquiring sufficient skill on

the piano to become an excellent and sympathetic accompanist. He was

always very susceptible to the influence of music, and in music, as in

literature, he had strong sympathies and antipathies. Rudolph supplies

the principal figure in Tolstoy's story _Albert_, written several years

later.

Aunt Tatiána, who had played the piano excellently in youth, but had

quite given it up for nearly thirty years, and who was now fifty-three

years of age, resumed its practice and, Tolstoy tells us, played duets

with him, and often surprised him by the accuracy and beauty of her

execution.

For the next three years he lived partly at Yásnaya and partly in

Moscow, and led a life alternating between the asceticism of his

brother Demetrius and the self-indulgence of his brother Sergius;

with dissipation, hunting, gambling, and the society of gipsy-girl

singers. These were among the wildest and most wasted years of his

life; but even here we find him, in the summer of 1850, resuming his

Diary with penitence and self-reproach, and drawing up a time-table of

how his days are in future to be spent: estate management, bathing,

diary-writing, music, dinner, rest, reading, bathing, and again estate

business to close the day. This curriculum was, however, neglected.

Gusts of passion again swept away his good resolutions.

1849

At this time he made his first attempt to start a school for the

peasant children of Yásnaya; but it was closed again two years later

when he was in pecuniary difficulties; and it was not till 1862 that

he discovered that he had infringed the law by opening it without

official permission.

In relation to women, Tolstoy's ideal was a regular and affectionate

family life. Women were for him divided into two groups: those sacred

ones who could be looked on as possible wives or sisters, and those

who, like the gipsy singers, could be paid for and possessed for short

periods. To try to wipe out by a money payment any obligation arising

from intimate relations, seems to have been his fixed rule. His animal

passions were very strong, and late in life I have heard him say that

neither drinking, cards, smoking, nor any other bad habit, had been

nearly so hard for him to overcome as his desire for women. But he

never doubted that that desire was a bad one. To judge him fairly, it

must be remembered how loose was the general tone of the society in

which he lived, and that the advice given him at this critical time of

his life by those who were his natural guides, was not that he should

live a chaste life, but that he should attach himself to a woman of

good social position. In his _Confession_ he tells us:

The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings,

always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as

that I should have relations with a married woman: '_Rien ne forme

un jeune homme, comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut_'

[Nothing so forms a young man, as an intimacy with a woman of

good breeding]. Another happiness she desired for me was that I

should become an aide-de-camp, and if possible aide-de-camp to the

Emperor. But the greatest happiness of all would be that I should

marry a very rich girl and become possessed of as many serfs as

possible.

We never find Tolstoy involved in any family scandal, or called on to

fight a duel about women; but his Diary at this period contains many

traces of his struggles and his falls; as when he writes:

Men whom I consider morally lower than myself, do evil better

than I.... I live an animal life, though not quite debauched. My

occupations are almost all abandoned, and I am greatly depressed in

spirit.

His pecuniary affairs became disordered, owing to his gambling and

other bad habits, and towards the end of 1850 he thought of trying to

earn money by taking on a contract to run the post-station at Toúla,

which before railways were built was an undertaking of some importance.

Varied however as Tolstoy's abilities unquestionably are, Nature never

intended him to be a man of business, and this plan fortunately came to

nothing.

1850-1851

The winter of 1850-51 he passed for the most part in Moscow, and as

a foretaste of the simplification of life which was to be such a

prominent feature of his later years, we find him writing to his aunt

at Yásnaya: '_Je dîne à la maison avec des stchi et kasha dont je me

contente parfaitement_' [I dine at home on cabbage soup and buckwheat

porridge, with which I am quite contented]; and he goes on to say that

he only awaits the preserves and home-made liqueurs (which she no doubt

sent him) to have everything as he was accustomed to have it in the

country.

We find Aunty Tatiána warning him against card-playing. Tolstoy replies

in French:

[3]Tout ce que vous me dîtes au sujet de la perversité du jeu est

très vrai et me revient souvent à l'esprit. C'est pourquoi je crois

que je ne jouerai plus.... 'Je crois,' mais j'espère bientôt vous

dire pour sûr.

[3] All that you say about the perversity of play is very

true, and I often think about it, and that is why I believe

that I shall gamble no more.... 'I believe,' but I hope soon

to tell you for certain.

1851

In March 1851 he returned to Moscow after visiting Yásnaya, and he

notes in his Diary that he went there with the treble aim of playing

cards, getting married, and entering the Civil Service. Not one of

these three objects was attained. He took an aversion to cards. For

marriage he considered a conjunction of love, reason, and fate to be

necessary, and none of these was present. As to entering the service,

it was again the fact that he had not brought the necessary documents

with him that barred the way.

In March he writes to Aunty Tatiána and says he believes it to be true

that spring brings a moral renovation. It always does him good, and he

is able to maintain his good intentions for some months. Winter is the

season that causes him to go wrong.

Next came a period of religious humility: he fasted diligently and

composed a sermon, which of course was never preached. He also tried

unsuccessfully to write a gipsy story and an imitation of Sterne's

_Sentimental Journey_.

This period of his life was brought to a close by the return from the

Caucasus, on leave of absence, of his eldest brother Nicholas, who was

by this time an artillery officer.

Anxious to economise and pay off the debts he had contracted at cards,

especially one of Rs. 4000 to Ogaryóf, a gendarme officer, who owned

a small estate not far from Yásnaya, Leo resolved to accompany his

brother on the latter's return to the Caucasus. He entrusted his estate

to the care of his brother-in-law (Mary's husband), who was to pay his

debts and allow him only Rs. 500 (then equal to about £80) a year to

live on, and he gave his word not to play cards any more.

Tolstoy had another reason for wishing to escape from his accustomed

surroundings. His brother Sergius was very fond of the gipsy choirs,

famous in Russia for their musical talent. These choirs used to visit

Yásnaya, and Leo Tolstoy, who shared his brother's susceptibility to

the fascinations of the gipsy girls, saw a means of safety in flight to

the Caucasus.

Before closing this chapter, let us note the extraordinary freedom

enjoyed by young men of Tolstoy's class in those days of serfdom.

Economically, serfdom supplied them with means, at the expense of a

class deprived of almost all rights and absolutely dependent on their

owners. Even if a member of the aristocracy ruined himself, family

interest or a prudent marriage often retrieved the position for

him. Religious restraint counted for little, for side by side with

superstition, scepticism was common among the educated. The standard

of morals expected of a young man was elastic and ill-defined. No

irksome sense of public duty pressed on his attention. Politics, in

our sense of the word, were forbidden; and though he had to enter the

State service (civil or military), this was regarded either as a way of

making a career for himself, or as a mere formality.

The detachment from the real business of life in which young Russians

grew up, and the comparative isolation in which they lived on their

country estates, explain the extremely radical conclusions often

arrived at by those of them who wished to make the world better. Chain

a man to the heavily laden car of social progress, and he can only

advance very slowly, though any advance he does accomplish represents

much effort and is of practical importance. Detach him from that car,

and he may easily and pleasantly fly away on the winds of speculation

to the uttermost realm of the highest heaven, without its producing

any immediately perceptible result on the lives of his fellow-men.

What I mean is, that the less a man is involved in practical work, the

easier and pleasanter it is for him to take up extreme positions; I

do not mean to deny that activity in the realm of thought and feeling

exerts an unseen yet potent influence on other minds, and ultimately on

practical affairs.

A knowledge of the social surroundings in which Tolstoy grew up makes

it easier to understand the doctrines he subsequently taught. It was

partly because he grew up in a detached and irresponsible position that

the state of his own mind and soul were to him so much more important

than the immediate effect of his conduct on others, and the same cause

led him to remain in ignorance of lessons every intelligent man of

business among us learns of necessity.

His independent position made easier the formation of that state of

mind free from intellectual prejudice which enabled him later on to

examine the claims of the Church, of the Bible, of the economists, of

governments, and the most firmly established manners and customs of

society, untrammelled by the fear of shocking or hurting other people,

though all the time his feelings were so sensitive that it has never

been possible for him to doubt or question the goodness of those lines

of conduct which he had admired and approved when in childhood he saw

them practised by those near and dear to him.

Contrasting his moral attitude with that of a young Englishman anxious

to do right in our day, I should say that Tolstoy had no adequate sense

of being a responsible member of a complex community with the opinions

and wishes of which it is necessary to reckon. On the contrary, his

tendency was to recognise with extraordinary vividness a personal duty

revealed by the working of his own conscience and intellect apart from

any systematic study of the social state of which he was a member.

He thus came to see things in a way we do not see them, while he

remained blind to some things with which we are quite familiar. That is

one reason why he is so extraordinarily interesting: he puts things in

a way no Englishman would ever dream of putting them, and yet we feel

how near akin we of the Western twentieth-century world are to this

nineteenth-century Russian noble, who has so much in common with the

medieval saint and the Oriental fatalist; and this helps us to realise

that all nations and classes of men are, indeed, of one blood.

Later on, in the sequel to this work, when we have to deal with

Tolstoy's peaceful anarchism and his conviction that no external

regulation of society is necessary, but that all men would naturally

do right were they not hampered by man-made laws, it will be useful to

bear in mind that his own strength grew through having to steer unaided

through the stormy seas of passion, and from finding his own way to a

haven the lights of which had first shone on him in childhood. Like the

rest of mankind, he judges others by himself.

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER II

Birukof.

Behrs.

_Novy Mir._

_Education and Instruction_, and _On the Education of the People_, in

vol. iv. of Tolstoy's collected works: Moscow, 1903.

_Confession._ Published by the _Svobodnoe Slovo_, Christchurch, 1901.

Prof. Zagoskin, _Stoudentcheskie gody gr. Tolstogo_, in _Istoritchesky

Vestnik_: January 1894.

V. N. Nazaryef, _Zhizn i ludi bylogo vremeni_, in _Istoritchesky

Vestnik_: November 1900.

Tolstoy's talk with Pogodin, quoted in Mihaylovsky's _Literary

Recollections_: Petersburg, 1900.

_L. N. Tolstoy._ By E. Solovef: Petersburg, 1897.

Light is also thrown on this period by Tolstoy's _Childhood_,

_Boyhood_, and _Youth_, _The Memoirs of a Billiard Marker_, _Two

Hussars_, _A Squire's Morning_, and _Albert_ (which, however, are not

autobiographies), as well as by stories included in Tolstoy's Readers

for School-children--_The Old Horse_ and _How I Learned to Ride_.