CHAPTER VI

TRAVELS ABROAD

Paris. Relations with Tourgénef. _Albert._ An execution. Switzerland.

_Lucerne._ Yásnaya again. The _Iliad_ and the Gospels. Moscow:

gymnastics. _Three Deaths._ Musical Society. Aunty Tatiána.

'Ufanizing.' Emancipation. Bear-hunting. Moscow Society of Lovers of

Russian Literature. Attitude towards Art in 1859. Tourgénef. Farming.

Fet. Drouzhínin. Nicholas's illness. Goes abroad again. Germany.

Educational studies. Auerbach. Nicholas dies. Life at Hyères: children.

Italy. Marseilles. Paris. Paul de Kock. London. Herzen. Proudhon.

_Polikoúshka._ Auerbach again. Returns home.

1857

SINCE he took part in the Turkish war in 1854, Tolstoy has only

twice been out of Russia. The first time was at the period we have

now reached. On 10th February 1857 (new style) he left Moscow by

post-chaise for Warsaw, from whence a railway already ran westward. He

reached Paris on 21st February. There he met Tourgénef and Nekrásof,

with the former of whom he was still unable to get on smoothly.

Tourgénef writes: 'With Tolstoy I still cannot become quite intimate;

we see things too differently'; and in some moment of anger Tolstoy

even challenged his fellow-writer to a duel.[34] Nekrásof appears to

have patched matters up, and in March Tolstoy and Tourgénef went to

Dijon together, and spent some days there. During this trip Tolstoy

commenced his story _Albert_, founded on his experience with the

talented but drunken musician Rudolf, already mentioned in Chapter III.

After he had returned to Paris, he was present at an execution, and

made the following jotting in his Diary:

[34] See Golovátcheva-Panáeva's _Rousskie Pisateli i Artisty_.

I rose at seven o'clock and drove to see an execution. A stout,

white, healthy neck and breast: he kissed the Gospels, and

then--Death. How senseless.... I have not received this strong

impression for naught. I am not a man of politics. Morals and art I

know, love, and can (deal with). The guillotine long prevented my

sleeping and obliged me to reflect.

Tolstoy has a gift of telling the essential truth in few words, and

never did he sum himself up better than in the sentences, 'I am not a

man of politics. Morals and art I know, love, and can.' There is hardly

any possible room for doubt about the second sentence, and there is

certainly none about the first, as his whole life shows.

Many years later, he wrote of this event in his _Confession_:

When I saw the head separate from the body, and how they both

thumped into the box at the same moment, I understood, not with my

mind but with my whole being, that no theory of the reasonableness

of our present progress can justify this deed; and that though

everybody from the creation of the world, on whatever theory, had

held it to be necessary, I know it to be unnecessary and bad; and

therefore the arbiter of what is good and evil is not what people

say and do, and is not progress, but is my heart and I.

It was probably during this visit to Paris that Tolstoy witnessed

and admired Chevet's popularisation of music by an easy system of

instruction, of which he says:

I have seen hundreds of horny-handed working men sitting on benches

(under which lay the tool-bags they brought from their work)

singing at sight, and understanding and being interested in the

laws of music.

This experience he utilised later on in his school at Yásnaya.

In spring he went to Switzerland, and from Geneva he wrote to his Aunt

Tatiána:

[35]J'ai passé un mois et demi à Paris, et si agréablement que

tous les jours je me suis dit, que j'ai bien fait de venir à

l'étranger. Je suis très peu allé ni dans la société, ni dans le

monde littéraire, ni dans le monde des cafés et des bals publics,

mais malgré cela j'ai trouvé ici tant de choses nouvelles et

intéressantes pour moi, que tous les jours, en me couchant, je me

dis, quel dommage que la journée est passée si vite; je n'ai même

pas eu le temps de travailler, ce que je me proposais de faire.

Le pauvre Turgenef est très malade physiquement et encore plus

moralement. Sa malheureuse liaison avec Madame Viardot, et sa

fille, le retiennent ici dans un climat qui lui est pernicieux et

il fait pitié de voir. Je n'aurais jamais cru qu'il put aimer ainsi.

[35] I spent a month-and-a-half in Paris, and so agreeably

that every day I said to myself that I had done well to come

abroad. I went very little either into society or into the

literary world, or into the world of _cafés_ and public balls;

but in spite of that I found so many things that were new and

interesting to me, that every day on going to bed I said to

myself, 'What a pity the day has passed so quickly.' I have

not even had time to work, which I intended to do.

Poor Tourgénef is very ill physically, and still more so

morally. His daughter, and especially his unfortunate

_liaison_ with Madame Viardot, keep him here in a climate

which is bad for him, and it makes one sad to see him. I

should never have believed that he could be so in love.

Tolstoy's friends Drouzhínin and V. P. Bótkin visited Geneva at this

time, and they all three went on a walking tour into Piedmont together.

After that he settled at Clarens on the lake of Geneva, from whence he

again wrote to Aunt Tatiána:

_18 Mai 1857._

[36]Je viens de recevoir votre lettre, chère tante, qui m'a

trouvée comme vous devez le savoir d'après ma dernière lettre, aux

environs de Genève à Clarens dans ce même village, où a demeuré

la Julia de Rousseau.... Je n'essaierai pas de vous depeindre la

beauté de ce pays, surtout à présent, quand tout est en feuilles

et en fleurs; je vous dirai seulement, qu'à la lettre il est

impossible de se détacher de ce lac et de ces rivages et que je

passe la plus grande partie de mon temps à regarder et à admirer en

me promenant, ou bien en me mettant seulement à la fenêtre de ma

chambre.

Je ne cesse de me féliciter de l'idée que j'ai eu de quitter Paris

et de venir passer le printemps ici, quoique cela m'ait mérité de

votre part le reproche d'inconstance. Vraiment, je suis heureux,

and begin to feel the advantage of having been born with a caul.

Il y a ici société charmante de russes: les Poúshkins, the

Karamzíns and the Mestchérskys; and they have all, Heaven knows

why, taken to liking me; I feel it, and the month I have spent here

I have been so nice and good and cosy, that I am sad at the thought

of leaving.

[36] I have just received your letter, dear Aunt, which found

me, as you must know from my last letter, at Clarens, in the

neighbourhood of Geneva, in the same village where Rousseau's

Julie lived.... I will not try to depict the beauty of this

country, especially at present when all is in leaf and flower;

I will only say that it is literally impossible to detach

oneself from this lake and from these banks, and that I spend

most of my time gazing and admiring while I walk, or simply

sit at the window of my room.

I do not cease congratulating myself on the thought which made

me leave Paris and come to pass the spring here, though I

have thereby deserved your reproach for inconstancy. Truly I

am happy, and begin to feel the advantage of having been born

with a caul.

There is some charming Russian society here: les Poúshkins,

the Karamzíns and the Mestchérskys; and they have all, Heaven

knows why, taken to liking me; I feel it, and the month I have

spent here I have been so nice and good and cosy, that I am

sad at the thought of leaving.

From Clarens he took steamer to Montreux, and from there went on foot,

taking with him as companion a ten-year-old lad named Sásha, the son of

some Russians whose acquaintance he had made at Clarens. They crossed

the Pass of Jamon and, after changing their minds as to the direction

they would take, finally made for Château d'Oex, from whence they

proceeded by _diligence_ to Thun. From that town Tolstoy went on to

Lucerne, which he reached in July 1857.

Again and again in his Diary and letters Tolstoy's vivid delight in

Nature shows itself in descriptions of the scenery: 'It is wonderful,'

he writes, 'but I was at Clarens for two months, and every time--when

in the morning, and especially after dinner towards evening--I opened

the shutters on which the shadows were already falling, and glanced at

the lake and the distant blue of the mountains reflected in it, the

beauty blinded me and acted on me with the force of a surprise.' But

together with this keen appreciation, comes now and then a sort of

protest that this grandiose Swiss mountain scenery is, after all, not

the Nature that most appeals to him--a yearning for the vast steppes

and forests of his native land. After ascending the Pass of Jamon and

describing the magnificent scenery and the pleasure of the climb, he

adds:

It was something beautiful, even unusually beautiful, but I do not

love what are called magnificent and remarkable views: they are, as

it were, cold.... I love Nature when, though it surrounds me on all

sides and extends unendingly, I am part of it. I love it, when on

all sides I am surrounded by hot air, and that same air rolls away

to unending distance, and those same sappy leaves of grass which I

crush as I sit on them, form the green of the boundless meadows;

when those same leaves which, fluttering in the wind, run their

shadows across my face, form also the dark blue of the distant

forests; while the same air one breathes makes the deep, light blue

of the immeasurable sky; when you do not exult and rejoice alone in

Nature, but when around you myriads of insects buzz and whirl, and

beetles, clinging together, creep about, and all around you birds

overflow with song.

But this is bare, cold, desolate, grey plateau; and somewhere afar

there is something beautiful veiled with mist. But that something

is so distant that I do not feel the chief delight of Nature--do

not feel myself a part of that endless and beautiful distance: it

is foreign to me.

From Lucerne he writes:

[37]Je suis de nouveau tout seul, et je vous avouerai que très

souvent la solitude m'est pénible, car les connaissances qu'on fait

dans les hôtels et en chemin de fer ne sont pas des ressources;

mais cet isolement a du moins le bon côté de me pousser au travail.

Je travaille un peu, mais cela va mal, comme d'ordinaire en été.

[37] I am again all alone, and I confess that very often the

solitude is painful to me, for the acquaintanceships one makes

in hotels and on the railways are not a resource. But there is

at least this much good in this loneliness--it prompts me to

work. I am working a little, but it goes badly, as usual in

summer.

It was here that the incident occurred described in _Lucerne_, a sketch

published in the September number of the _Contemporary_ that same year,

and one which in its fierce castigation of the rich is a precursor of

much that he wrote thirty years later. Especially the conduct of the

wealthy English tourists roused his ire. The particular incident the

story deals with is this:

On 7 July 1857, in Lucerne, in front of the Schweizerhof Hotel,

where the richest people stay, an itinerant mendicant-singer sang

songs and played his guitar for half-an-hour. About a hundred

people listened to him. Three times the singer asked them to give

him something, but not one of them did so, and many laughed at him.

This is not fiction, but a positive fact, which any one who cares

may verify by asking the permanent inhabitants of the Schweizerhof,

and by looking up the newspaper lists of foreign visitors at the

Schweizerhof on 7 July.

It is an event which the historians of our times should inscribe in

indelible letters of fire.

In the story, Prince Nehlúdof, indignant at such treatment of a man who

was a real artist and whose songs all had enjoyed, brought the singer

into the hotel and treated him to a bottle of wine. He goes on to ask

himself:

Which is more a man, and which more a barbarian: the lord who, on

seeing the singer's worn-out clothes, angrily left the table, and

for his service did not give him a millionth part of his property,

and who now sits satiated, in a well-lit, comfortable room, calmly

discussing the affairs of China and approving the murders that are

being committed there--or the little singer who with a franc in

his pocket, risking imprisonment, has tramped over hill and dale

for twenty years, harming no one but cheering many by his songs,

and whom they insulted to-day and all but turned out, leaving

him--weary, hungry and humiliated--to make his bed somewhere on

rotting straw?

After passing a few weeks at Lucerne, Tolstoy returned to Russia _viâ_

Stuttgart, Berlin, and Stettin, from which port he took steamer to

Petersburg, and after staying a week there to see Nekrásof and meet his

colleagues of the _Contemporary_, he went through Moscow to Yásnaya,

where he arrived in August. In his Diary we find this note:

This is how, on my journey, I planned my future occupations: first,

literary work; next, family duties; then, estate management.

But the estate I must leave as far as possible to the steward,

softening him and making improvements, and spending only Rs. 2000

a year [then equal to about £270], and using the rest for the

serfs. Above all, my stumbling-block is Liberal vanity. To live for

oneself and do a good deed a day, is sufficient.

Further on he says: 'Self-sacrifice does not lie in saying "Take what

you like from me," but in labouring and thinking, and contriving how to

give oneself.'

At this time he read (in translation) the _Iliad_ and the Gospels,

which both impressed him greatly. 'I have finished reading the

indescribably beautiful end of the _Iliad_,' he notes, and expresses

his regret that there is no connection between those two wonderful

works.

In October he first accompanied his brother Nicholas and his sister

Mary to Moscow, and then spent a few days in Petersburg, where he found

that he had been forgotten by a world absorbed in the great measures of

public reform then in course of preparation. Here is a sentence from

his Diary:

Petersburg at first mortified me and then put me right. My

reputation has fallen and hardly gives a squeak, and I felt much

hurt; but now I am tranquil. I know I have something to say and

strength to say it strongly; and the public may then say what it

will. But I must work conscientiously, exerting all my powers; then

... let them spit upon the altar.

By the end of October (old style) he was back in Moscow, established in

furnished apartments in the Pyátnitsky Street, with his sister and his

brother Nicholas. His friend Fet was also in Moscow at this time, and

in his _Recollections_ makes frequent mention of the Tolstoys. He tells

us that the Countess Mary (who was an exceedingly accomplished pianist)

used to come to his house for music in the evenings, accompanied

sometimes by both her brothers and sometimes by Nicholas alone, who

would say:

'Lyóvotchka has again donned his evening clothes and white necktie, and

gone to a ball.'

Tolstoy's elegance in dress was very noticeable at this period. We read

of the grey beaver collar of his overcoat, of a fashionable cane he

carried, and of the glossy hat he wore placed on one side, as well as

of his curly, dark-brown hair.

Gymnastics were fashionable in Moscow in those days, and any one

wishing to find Tolstoy between one and two o'clock in the afternoon,

could do so at the Gymnasium on the Great Dmítrovka Street, where,

dressed in gymnastic attire, he might be seen intent on springing over

the vaulting-horse without upsetting a cone placed on its back. He

always was expert at physical exercises: a first-rate horseman, quick

at all games and sports, a swimmer, and an excellent skater.

Among the visitors Fet met at Tolstoy's house we note the name of

Saltykóf, who under the pseudonym of Stchedrín is known as one of the

keenest and most powerful of Russia's satirists, and who during the

last seven years of the reign of Nicholas I had lived in banishment

in the far-off town of Vyátka. Another guest was B. N. Tchitchérin,

philosopher and jurist, and author of works on _Science and Religion_,

_Property and the State_, and other subjects Tolstoy dealt with three

or four decades later. Katkóf, editor of the _Moscow Gazette_ and

monthly _Russian Messenger_, was another acquaintance; and in his

magazine some of Tolstoy's chief works appeared.

1858

In January 1858 Tolstoy's aunt, who had been a friend of his boyhood,

the Countess Alexandra A. Tolstoy, Maid of Honour to the Grand Duchess

Márya Nikoláyevna, came to Moscow. Through this aunt (who lived to

a great age, and died only a few years ago) Tolstoy used to receive

information of what went on at Court, and was sometimes able indirectly

to exert influence 'in the highest circles.' When she returned to

Petersburg Tolstoy accompanied her as far as the town of Klin, on

the Nicholas railway, and took the opportunity to visit the Princess

Volkónsky (a cousin of his mother's), who had a small estate in those

parts. He remained some weeks with this affectionate old lady, who

told him much about his mother and her family, and he greatly enjoyed

his quiet stay with her. At her house he wrote _Three Deaths_, which

appeared the following January in _The Reading Library_. It is an

admirably written study of the deaths of a rich lady, a poor post-horse

driver, and a tree.

In February he returned to Yásnaya Polyána; then again visited Moscow,

and in March spent a fortnight in Petersburg. His love of music

reasserted itself strongly at this period; and in conjunction with V.

P. Bótkin, Perfílief, Mortier (his late rival in love) and others,

he founded the Moscow Musical Society, which ultimately resulted in

the formation of the Moscow Conservatoire of which Nicholas Rubinstein

became Director.

One of Tolstoy's most intimate acquaintances at this period was S. T.

Aksákof, author of stories and memoirs, lover of hunting and fishing,

and father of two famous sons, both prominent Slavophil leaders.

The invigorating influence of spring shows itself in a letter Tolstoy

wrote about this time to his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy (whom he

calls 'Grandma'):

GRANDMA!--Spring!

For good people it is excellent to live in the world; and even

for such men as me, it is sometimes good. In Nature, in the

air, in everything, is hope, future--an attractive future....

Sometimes one deceives oneself and thinks that happiness and a

future await not only Nature but oneself also, and then one feels

happy. I am now in such a state, and with characteristic egotism

hasten to write to you of things that interest only me. When I

review things sanely, I know very well that I am an old, frozen

little potato, and one already boiled with sauce; but spring so

acts on me that I sometimes catch myself in the full blaze of

imagining myself a plant which with others has only now blossomed,

and which will peacefully, simply and joyfully grow in God's

world. The result is that at this time of year, such an internal

clearing-out goes on in me, such a cleansing and ordering, as

only those who have experienced this feeling can imagine. All the

old--away! All worldly conventions, all idleness, all egotism,

all vices, all confused indefinite attachments, all regrets, even

repentances--away with you all!... Make room for the wonderful

little flowers whose buds are swelling and growing with the

spring!...

After much more he concludes:

Farewell, dear Grandma, do not be angry with me for this nonsense,

but answer with a word of wisdom, imbued with kindness, Christian

kindness! I have long wished to say that for you it is pleasanter

to write French, and I understand feminine thoughts better in

French.

In April he was again at Yásnaya where, in spite of repeated visits to

Moscow, he spent most of the summer. There was at this time no railway

from Moscow southward to Toúla; and the serfs' belief concerning the

new telegraph posts which stood by the side of the highroad, was that

when the wire had been completed, 'Freedom' would be sent along it

from Petersburg. Even Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky did not understand

these new-fangled things, and, when driving along the road one day,

asked Tolstoy to explain how letters were written by telegraph. He told

her as simply as he could how the telegraphic apparatus works, and

received the reply: '_Oui, oui, je comprends, mon cher!_' How much she

had really understood was however shown half an hour later when, after

keeping her eye on the wire all that time, she inquired: 'But how is

it, _mon cher Léon_, that during a whole half-hour I have not seen a

single letter go along the telegraph?'

Fet and his wife used to stay a day or two at Yásnaya when journeying

to and from Moscow, and Fet's account of Aunt Tatiána accords with

Tolstoy's own affectionate recollections of that lady. Fet says that

he and his wife 'made the acquaintance of Tolstoy's charming old aunt,

Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky, who received us with that old-world

affability which puts one at once at one's ease on entering a new

house. She did not devote herself to memories of times long past, but

lived fully in the present.'

Speaking of them all by their pet names, she mentioned that

'Seryózhenka Tolstoy had gone to his home at Pirogóvo, but Nikólenka

would probably stay a bit longer in Moscow with Máshenka, but

Lyóvotchka's friend Dyákof had recently visited them,' and so on.

Many years later, Tolstoy jotted down his memories of the long autumn

and winter evenings spent with Aunt Tatiána to which, he says, he

owed his best thoughts and impulses. He would sit in his arm-chair

reading, thinking, and occasionally listening to her kindly and gentle

conversation with two of the servants: Natálya Petróvna (an old woman

who lived there not because she was of much use, but because she had

nowhere else to live) and a maid Doúnetchka.

The chief charm of that life lay in the absence of any material

care; in good relations with those nearest--relations no one could

spoil; and in the leisureliness and the unconsciousness of flying

time....

When, after living badly at a neighbour's in Toúla, with cards,

gipsies, hunting, and stupid vanity, I used to return home and

come to her, by old habit we would kiss each other's hand, I her

dear energetic hand, and she my dirty, vicious hand; and also by

old habit, we greeted one another in French, and I would joke with

Natálya Petróvna, and would sit down in the comfortable arm-chair.

She knew well all I had been doing and regretted it, but never

reproached me, retaining always the same gentleness and love....

I was once telling her how some one's wife had gone away with

another man, and I said the husband ought to be glad to be rid

of her. And suddenly my aunt lifted her eyebrows and said, as a

thing long decided in her mind, that that would be wrong of the

husband, because it would completely ruin the wife. After that she

told me of a drama that had occurred among the serfs. Then she

re-read a letter from my sister Máshenka, whom she loved if not

more, at least as much as she loved me, and she spoke of Másha's

husband (her own nephew) not to condemn him, but with grief for

the sorrow he inflicted on Máshenka.... The chief characteristic

of her life, which involuntarily infected me, was her wonderful,

general kindliness to every one without exception. I try to recall

a single instance of her being angry, or speaking a sharp word,

or condemning any one, and I cannot recall one such instance in

the course of thirty years. She spoke well of our real aunt, who

had bitterly hurt her by taking us away from her.... As to her

kindly treatment of the servants--that goes without saying. She

had grown up in the idea that there are masters and servants, but

she utilised her authority only to serve them.... She never blamed

me directly for my evil life, though she suffered on my account.

My brother Sergéy, too, whom also she loved warmly, she did not

reproach even when he took a gipsy girl to live with him. The only

shade of disquietude she showed on our account was that, when he

was very late in returning home, she would say: 'What has become of

our Sergius?' Only _Sergius_ instead of _Seryósha_.... She never

told us in words how to live, never preached to us. All her moral

work was done internally; externally one only saw her deeds--and

not even deeds: there were no deeds; but all her life, peaceful,

sweet, submissive and loving, not troubled or self-satisfied, but

a life of quiet, unobtrusive love.... Her affectionateness and

tranquillity made her society noticeably attractive and gave a

special charm to intimacy with her. I know of no case where she

offended any one, and of no one who did not love her. She never

spoke of herself, never of religion or of what we ought to believe,

or of how she believed or prayed. She believed everything, except

that she rejected one dogma--that of eternal torment. '_Dieu, qui

est la bonté même, ne peut pas vouloir nos souffrances._'[38]...

She often called me by my father's name (Nicholas) and this pleased

me very much, because it showed that her conceptions of me and of

my father mingled in her love of us both.

[38] God, who is goodness itself, cannot desire our pain.

It was not her love for me alone that was joyous. What was joyous

was the atmosphere of love to all who were present or absent, alive

or dead, and even to animals....

After telling of her goodness and her affection Tolstoy says in his

Memoirs that, though he appreciated his happiness with her, he did not

at the time nearly realise its full value; and he adds:

She was fond of keeping sweets: figs, gingerbreads and dates, in

various jars in her room. I cannot forget, nor remember without

a cruel pang of remorse, that I repeatedly refused her money she

wanted for such things and how she, sighing sadly, remained

silent. It is true I was in need of money, but I cannot now

remember without horror that I refused her.

Again in another place, after mentioning her self-devotion, he says:

And it was to her, to her, that I refused the small pleasure of

having figs and chocolate (and not so much for herself as to

treat me) and of being able to give a trifle to those who begged

of her.... Dear, dear Aunty, forgive me! _Si jeunesse savait, si

vieillesse pouvait_ [if youth but knew, if age but could], I mean

not in the sense of the good lost for oneself in youth, but in the

sense of the good not given and the evil done to those who are no

more.

Of Leo's life at Yásnaya at this time, his brother Nicholas gave Fet

the following humorous account:

Lyóvotchka is zealously trying to become acquainted with peasant

life and with farming, of both of which, like the rest of us, he

has till now had but a superficial knowledge. But I am not sure

what sort of acquaintance will result from his efforts: Lyóvotchka

wants to get hold of everything at once, without omitting

anything--even his gymnastics. So he has rigged up a bar under his

study window. And of course, apart from prejudice, with which he

wages such fierce war, he is right: gymnastics do not interfere

with farming; but the steward sees things differently and says,

'One comes to the master for orders, and he hangs head downward

in a red jacket, holding on by one knee to a perch, and swings

himself. His hair hangs down and blows about, the blood comes to

his face, and one does not know whether to listen to his orders or

to be astonished at him!'

Lyóvotchka is delighted with the way the serf Ufán sticks out his

arms when ploughing; and so Ufán has become for him an emblem of

village strength, like the legendary Michael; and he himself,

sticking his elbows out wide, takes to the plough and 'Ufanizes.'

In May 1858 Tolstoy wrote to Fet:

DEAREST LITTLE UNCLE [as we might say, Dear old Boy]!--I write

two words merely to say that I embrace you with all my might,

have received your letter, kiss the hand of Márya Petróvna [Fet's

wife] and make obeisance to you all. Aunty thanks you very much

for your message and bows to you, so also does my sister. What a

wonderful spring it has been and is! I, in solitude, have tasted it

admirably. Brother Nicholas must be at Nikólsk. Catch him and do

not let him go. I want to come to see you this month. Tourgénef has

gone to Winzig till August to cure his bladder.

Devil take him. I am tired of loving him. He deserts us, and won't

cure his bladder.

Now good-bye, dear friend. If you have no poem ready for me by the

time I come, I shall proceed to squeeze one out of you.--Your

COUNT L. TOLSTOY.

Another letter to Fet runs:

Ay, old fellow, ahoy! First, you give no sign, though it is

spring and you know we are all thinking of you, and that I, like

Prometheus, am bound to a rock, yet thirst for sight or sound

of you. You should either come, or at least send us a proper

invitation. Secondly, you have retained my brother, and a very good

brother, surnamed 'Firdusi' [an allusion to Nicholas's Oriental

wisdom]. The chief culprit in this matter, I suspect, is Márya

Petróvna, to whom I humbly bow, requesting her to return us our own

brother. Jesting apart, he bids me let you know that he will be

here next week. Drouzhínin will also come, so mind you come too,

old fellow.

The first record of any participation by Tolstoy in political affairs

relates to the preparations for the Emancipation of the serfs.

Immediately after the conclusion of the Crimean war Alexander II,

addressing the Marshals of the Nobility, in Moscow, had said: 'The

existing manner of possessing serfs cannot remain unchanged. It is

better to abolish serfdom from above than to await the time when it

will begin to abolish itself from below. I request you, gentlemen, to

consider how this can be done, and to submit my words to the Nobility

for their consideration.' Some time passed without any definite

response to this appeal, and meanwhile the Polish nobility of the

Lithuanian Provinces, dissatisfied with certain regulations enacted

in the previous reign, incautiously asked to have them revised. The

Government grasped the opportunity, and treating this as the expression

of a wish for Emancipation, replied that 'the abolition of serfdom must

be effected not suddenly, but gradually,' and authorised the Nobility

to form Committees for the preparation of definite projects to that

end. Four days later the Minister of the Interior, acting on secret

orders from the Emperor, sent a circular to all the Governors and

Marshals of the Nobility in Russia proper, stating that the Lithuanian

nobles 'had recognised the necessity of liberating the peasants,'

and that 'this noble intention' had afforded peculiar satisfaction

to His Majesty, and explaining the principles to be observed in

case the nobles of other Provinces should express a similar desire.

A few weeks later the Emperor publicly expressed a hope that, with

the co-operation of his nobles, the work of Emancipation would be

successfully accomplished. It therefore became quite evident that,

whether the nobles liked it or not, Emancipation was at hand; since

the Emperor had, at last, definitely ranged himself on the side of

the Emancipationists. By accepting the invitation to co-operate in

the preparation of the scheme, there appeared to be a chance that

the nobles might so shape the measure that their interests would not

suffer; and consequently, during 1858, a Committee was chosen in

almost every Province of Central Russia. Among the rest a Meeting of

the Nobility of the Government of Toúla was fixed for the first of

September, to elect Deputies to the Committee for the Improvement of

the Condition of the Peasants. Tolstoy attended this meeting, and

together with one hundred and four fellow-nobles signed a document

stating that 'with the object of improving the condition of the

peasants, preserving the property of the landowners, and securing

the safety of both the one and the other, we consider it necessary

that the peasants should be liberated not otherwise than with an

allotment of a certain amount of land in hereditary possession, and

that the landowners should receive for the land they give up, full,

equitable, pecuniary recompense by means of such financial measures

as will not entail any obligatory relations between peasants and

proprietors,--relations which the Nobility consider it necessary to

terminate.'

There is no indication that Tolstoy took any prominent part in

this meeting; and the resolution just quoted, while approving of

Emancipation, seems to attach at least equal importance to securing

full compensation for the landowners. Explain it how one may, the fact

remains that while the _Contemporary_, and all that was progressive

in Russian literature, was preoccupied with the effort to help to

shape the reforms so that they might really attain the ends aimed at,

Tolstoy almost retired from the scene, and hardly appeared aware of

the movement going on around him. The battle for freedom was fought

in the press by Tchernyshévsky, Kosheléf, and N. Samárin, by Herzen,

and by many others, including Nekrásof and Saltykóf; and Tolstoy's

indifference helps to explain the fact, already alluded to, that

during these years the critics ignored him, though his artistic

power continued to increase. His friend Fet also took no part in the

Emancipation movement; being in fact rather opposed to it.

On 24th October 1858 Tolstoy writes to Fet:

To write stories is stupid and shameful. To write verses--well,

write them; but to love a good man is very pleasant. Yet perhaps,

against my will and intention, not I, but an unripe story inside

me, compels me to love you. It sometimes seems like that. Do what

one will amid the manure and the mange, one somehow begins to

compose. Thank heaven, I have not yet allowed myself to write, and

will not do so.... Thank you exceedingly for your trouble about

a veterinary. I have found one in Toúla and have begun the cure,

but I do not know what will come of it.--And, may the devil take

them all,--Drouzhínin is appealing to me as a matter of friendship

to write a story. I really want to. I will spin such a yarn that

there will be no head or tail to it.... But joking apart, how is

your Hafiz getting on? [Fet was translating some poems by Hafiz.]

Turn it which way you will, the height of wisdom and fortitude for

me is to enjoy the poetry of others, and not to let my own in ugly

garb loose among men, but to consume it myself with my daily bread.

But at times one suddenly wishes to be a great man, and it is so

annoying that this has not yet come about! One even hurries to get

up quicker or to finish dinner in order to begin.... Send me a

poem, the healthiest of those you have translated from Hafiz, _me

faire venir l'eau à la bouche_,[39] and I will send you a sample of

wheat. Hunting has bored me to death. The weather is excellent, but

I do not hunt alone.

[39] To make my mouth water.

In company, Tolstoy was however a keen sportsman, and in December 1858

nearly lost his life while out bear-shooting. He has told the story,

with some embellishments, in one of the tales for children contained in

the volume. _Twenty-three Tales_.[40] The real facts were these:

[40] Included in the _World's Classics_.

Tolstoy and his brother Nicholas had made the acquaintance of S.

S. Gromeka, a well-known publicist who shared their fondness for

hunting--a sport very different in Russia from what it is in England,

as readers of Tolstoy's descriptions well know.

Gromeka having heard that a she-bear with two young ones had her

lair in the forest near the railway at Volotchók, half-way between

Petersburg and Moscow, arranged matters with the peasants of that

locality, and invited the Tolstoys and other guests to a hunt. The

invitation was accepted, and on 21st December Leo Tolstoy shot a bear.

On 22nd the members of the party, each armed with two guns, were placed

at the ends of cuttings running through the forest in which the big

she-bear had been surrounded. These paths or cuttings divided the wood

like the lines of a chess-board. Peasants employed as beaters were

stationed to prevent the animal escaping except by approaching one or

other of the sportsmen. Ostáshkof, a famous professional huntsman,

supervised the proceedings. The guests were advised to stamp down the

snow around them, so as to give themselves room to move freely; but

Tolstoy (with his usual objection to routine methods) argued that as

they were out to shoot the bear and not to box with her, it was useless

to tread down the snow. He therefore stood with his two-barrelled gun

in his hand, surrounded by snow almost up to his waist.

Tile bear, roused by the shouts of Ostáshkof, rushed down a cutting

directly towards one of the other sportsmen; but, perceiving him,

she suddenly swerved from her course and took a cross path which

brought her out on to the cutting leading straight to Tolstoy. He, not

expecting her visit, did not fire until the beast was within six yards,

and his first shot missed. The bear was only two yards from him when

his second shot hit her in the mouth. It failed to stop her rush, and

she knocked Tolstoy over on to his back in the snow. Carried past him

at first by her own impetus, the bear soon returned; and the next thing

Tolstoy knew was that he was being weighed down by something heavy and

warm, and he then felt that his face was being drawn into the beast's

mouth. He could only offer a passive resistance, by drawing down his

head as much as possible between his shoulders and trying to present

his cap instead of his face to the bear's teeth. This state of things

lasted only a few seconds, yet long enough for the bear, after one or

two misses, to get her teeth into the flesh above and below his left

eye. At this moment Ostáshkof, armed with a small switch, came running

up, shouting: 'Where are you getting to? Where are you getting to?'

At which the beast promptly took fright, and rushed off. Next day she

was followed up and killed. Owing to the amount of blood and torn

flesh, Tolstoy's wound at first appeared serious; but when it had been

washed with snow, and he had been taken to the nearest town and had had

it sewn up, it turned out to be superficial. He long retained a very

noticeable scar however as a memento of the encounter; and the bear's

skin may still be seen at Yásnaya.

_Family Happiness_, written partly in 1858, was published early in

1859. It grew out of the unsuccessful love affair mentioned in the last

chapter, and is Tolstoy's imaginative description of what might have

been.

1859

The first months of 1859 he spent in Moscow, and here on the occasion

of joining the Moscow Society of Lovers of Russian Literature, on

4th February, he for the first time made a public speech: a task for

which, he once told me, he had no aptitude, and which he much disliked.

He wrote it out, and it was to have appeared in the Proceedings of

the Society, but for some reason never got printed. Its subject was

'The Supremacy of the Artistic Element in Literature,' and in it he

maintained a position almost the opposite of the one he advocated so

ardently and with such full conviction in _What is Art?_ forty years

later.

He was answered by the Slavophil A. S. Homyakóf, who presided at the

meeting, and who in the course of his remarks said:

Allow me to remark that the justice of the opinion you have so

skilfully stated is far from destroying the legitimacy of the

temporary and exceptional side of literature. That which is always

right, that which is always beautiful, that which is as unalterable

as the most fundamental laws of the soul, undoubtedly holds, and

should hold, the first place in the thoughts, the impulses, and

therefore in the speech of man. It, and it alone, will be handed on

by generation to generation and by nation to nation as a precious

inheritance. But on the other hand, in the nature of man and of

society there is continual need for self-indictment. There are

moments, moments important in history, when that self-indictment

acquires a special and indefeasible right, and manifests itself in

literature with great definiteness and keenness....

The rights of literature, the servant of eternal beauty, do not

destroy the rights of the literature of indictment, which always

accompanies social deficiencies and sometimes appears as the healer

of social evils....

Of course, Art is perfectly free: it finds its justification and

its aim in itself. But the freedom of Art in the abstract, has

nothing to do with the inner life of the artist. An artist is not

a theory--a sphere of thought and mental activity--but a man, and

always a man of his own times, usually its best representative,

completely imbued with its spirit and its defined or nascent

aspirations. By the very impressionability of his nature, without

which he could not be an artist, he, even more than others,

receives all the painful as well as joyous sensations of the

society to which he is born....

So the writer, a servant of pure art, sometimes becomes an accuser

even unconsciously, and despite his own will. I allow myself,

Count, to cite you as an example. You consciously follow a definite

road faithfully and undeviatingly; but are you really completely

alien to the literature of indictment? Were it but in the picture

of a consumptive post-boy, dying on top of a stove amid a crowd of

comrades apparently indifferent to his sufferings [this refers to

_Three Deaths_] have you not indicated some social disease, some

evil? When describing that death, is it possible that you did not

suffer from the horny indifference of good but unawakened human

souls? Yes, you too have been and will be an involuntary indicter!

This question of the true position of literary art and its relation

to the rest of life, was one which occupied Tolstoy for many years,

and on which before the century closed he expressed himself in a book

which must be reckoned with by all who may hereafter deal with the

subject. The attitude he maintained at the time he entered the Society

of Lovers of Russian Literature, was in striking contrast with that

of the Slavophils, such as Homyakóf, and of the great majority of the

leading Russian writers of that day, who were fired with the hope of

Emancipation, just as in America at the same time, Lowell, Emerson,

Whittier, Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Longfellow, Channing, Lloyd Garrison,

and others, were stirred by the Anti-Slavery movement.

In April Tolstoy went to Petersburg and spent ten days very pleasantly

with his aunt the Countess A. A. Tolstoy. By the end of the month he

was back at Yásnaya. In July, Tourgénef, from France, wrote Fet a long

letter in blank verse, a few lines of which indicate the relation

between Leo Tolstoy and himself at this time:

'Kiss Nicholas Tolstoy on my behalf

And to his brother Leo make my bow,

--As to his sister also.

He rightly says in his postscriptum:

"There is no cause" for me to write to him,

Indeed, I know he bears me little love

And I love him as little. Too differently

Are mixed those elements of which we're formed.'

1859-1860

During this winter Tolstoy devoted much time to an attempt to organise

schools on and near his estate. The education of its peasant children

was one of the things Russia most needed, and most terribly neglected.

Tolstoy recognised this, and set himself strenuously and eagerly to

show how the great need could be met. The work he did at this time was,

however, only preliminary to what he undertook after his next visit to

Western Europe, and he was far from being mentally at peace. At the

commencement of the New Year he noted in his Diary: 'The burden of

the estate, the burden of bachelor life, and all sorts of doubts and

pessimistic feelings agitate my mind.'

One mention of the serfs (who were now nearing freedom) occurs in a

letter Tolstoy wrote to Fet on 23rd February 1860, in reply to a note

in which the latter had expressed a wish to buy an estate, settle down

in the country, and devote himself to farming. Tolstoy replies that

there is an estate for sale adjoining his own, containing:

Four hundred desyatíns of good land with, unfortunately, seventy

souls of bad serfs. But that does not matter; they will gladly pay

quit-rent [in lieu of personal service] as mine do, at the rate of

Rs. 30 a _tyaglo_ [man and wife with an allotment of land] or Rs.

660 for the twenty-two _tyaglos_, and you will get not less than

that, if not more, at the Emancipation, and will have sufficient

unexhausted land and meadow left to yield about Rs. 2000 a year,

or over Rs. 2600 in all. The price asked for the estate is Rs.

24,000, besides a mortgage of about Rs. 5000.... At any rate it

would be a good bargain to buy it for Rs. 20,000.... The seller is

an old man who is ruined, and wants to sell it quickly in order to

get rid of his son-in-law. He has twice sent to offer it me. The

above calculation shows what the estate should yield in a couple of

years' time if about Rs. 5000 be spent on improving it; but even

in its present condition one can answer for a return of Rs. 1500,

which is more than 7 per cent. on the cost.

In Russia to buy serfs was not then considered more discreditable than

it is in England to-day to buy shares in a china or match factory; and

in the same letter Tolstoy goes on to discuss literature:

I have read Tourgénef's _On the Eve_. This is my opinion: to write

novels is undesirable, especially for people who are depressed

and do not well know what they want from life. However, _On the

Eve_ is much better than _A Nest of Gentlefolk_, and there are in

it excellent negative characters: the artist and the father. The

rest are not types; even their conception, their position, is not

typical, or they are quite insignificant. That however is always

Tourgénef's mistake. The girl is hopelessly bad: 'Ah, how I love

thee ... her eyelashes were long.' In general it always surprises

me that Tourgénef, with his mental powers and poetic sensibility,

should even in his methods not be able to refrain from banality.

This banality shows itself most of all in his negative methods,

which recall Gógol. There is no humanity or sympathy for the

characters, but the author exhibits monsters whom he scolds and

does not pity. This jars painfully with the tone and intention of

Liberalism in everything else. It was all very well in the days of

Tsar Goroh [a character in a fairy story] or of Gógol (though if

one does not pity even the most insignificant of one's characters,

one should scold them so that the heavens grow hot, or laugh at

them so that one's sides split, and not as our splenetic and

dyspeptic Tourgénef does). On the whole, however, there is now no

one else who could write such a novel, though it will not meet with

success.

Ostróvsky's _The Storm_ is, in my opinion, a wretched work, but

will be successful. Not Ostróvsky and Tourgénef are to blame, but

the times.... Something else is now needed: not that we should

learn and criticise, but that we should teach Jack and Jill at

least a little of what we know.

This letter to Fet, who was in Moscow, ends with requests to procure

some books, including a veterinary handbook, a veterinary instrument,

and a lancet for use on human beings; to see about procuring six

ploughs of a special make, and to find out the price of clover and

timothy-grass, of which Tolstoy had some to sell.

1860

At this time Tolstoy worked at his story _The Cossacks_, the plan of

which he had sketched out in 1852, but which he did not complete till

1862.

One comes across notes in his Diary which indicate his state of mind

at this period with regard to religion. After reading a book on

Materialism he notes:

I thought of prayer. To what can one pray? What is God, imagined

so clearly that one can ask him to communicate with us? If I

imagine such an one, he loses all grandeur for me. A God whom one

can beseech and whom one can serve--is the expression of mental

weakness. He is God, because I cannot grasp his being. Indeed, he

is not a Being, but a Law and a Force.

He was a great puzzle to his friends and acquaintances--always ready to

take his own line strenuously, yet sometimes far from sure what that

line was. Tourgénef wrote to Fet:

Leo Tolstoy continues his eccentricities. Evidently it was so

decreed at his birth. When will he turn his last somersault and

stand on his feet?

The fact that Tolstoy, like his friend Fet, was neglecting literature

did not fail to call forth many remonstrances, one of the most urgent

of which came to him from Drouzhínin, who wrote:

Every writer has his moments of doubt and self-dissatisfaction, and

however strong and legitimate this feeling may be, no one on that

account has yet ceased his connection with literature; every one

goes on writing to the end. But all tendencies, good or bad, cling

to you with peculiar obstinacy; so that you, more than others, need

to think of this and to consider the whole matter amicably.

First of all, remember that after poetry and mental labour all

other work seems worthless. _Qui a bu, boira_; and at the age of

thirty to tear oneself away from authorship means losing half

the interest of life. But that is only half the matter; there is

something still more important.

On all of us lies a responsibility rooted in the immense importance

of literature to Russian society. An Englishman or an American may

laugh at the fact that in Russia not merely men of thirty, but

grey-haired owners of 2000 serfs sweat over stories of a hundred

pages, which appear in the magazines, are devoured by everybody,

and arouse discussion in society for a whole day. However much

artistic quality may have to do with this result, you cannot

explain it merely by Art. What in other lands is a matter of

idle talk and careless dilettantism, with us is quite another

affair. Among us things have taken such shape that a story--the

most frivolous and insignificant form of literature--becomes one

of two things: either it is rubbish, or else it is the voice of

a leader sounding throughout the Empire. For instance, we all

know Tourgénef's weakness, but a whole ocean divides the most

insignificant of his stories from the very best of Mrs. Eugene

Tour's, with her half-talent. By some strange instinct the Russian

public has chosen from among the crowd of writers four or five

bell-men whom it values as leaders, refusing to listen to any

qualifications or deductions. You--partly by talent, partly by

the practical qualities of your soul, and partly owing simply to

a concurrence of fortunate circumstances--have stepped into this

favourable relation with the public. On that account you must not

go away and hide, but must work, even to the exhaustion of your

strength and powers. That is one side of the matter; but here is

another. You are a member of a literary circle that is honourable

(as far as may be), independent, and influential; and which for ten

years, amid persecutions and misfortunes, and notwithstanding its

members' vices, has firmly upheld the banner of all that is Liberal

and enlightened, and has borne all this weight of abuse without

committing one mean action. In spite of the world's coldness and

ignorance and its contempt for literature, this circle is rewarded

with honour and moral influence. Of course, there are in it

insignificant and even stupid homunculi; but even they play a part

in the general union, and have not been useless. In that circle you

again, though you arrived but recently, have a place and a voice

such as Ostróvsky for instance does not possess, though he has

immense talent and his moral tendency is as worthy as your own. Why

this has happened it would take too long to analyse, nor is it to

the point. If you tear yourself off from the circle of writers and

become inactive, you will be dull, and will deprive yourself of an

important rôle in society....

At this time the state of health of his brother Nicholas--who (like

Demetrius) had consumptive tendencies--began to disturb Leo Tolstoy.

It was arranged that Nicholas should go to Germany for a cure. The

following letter written by Leo Tolstoy to Fet, after Nicholas had

started, refers to this and other matters:

... You are a writer and remain a writer, and God speed you. But

that, besides this, you wish to find a spot where you can dig like

an ant, is an idea which has come to you and which you must carry

out, and carry out better than I have done. You must do it because

you are both a good man and one who looks at life healthily....

However, it is not for me now to deal out to you approval or

disapproval with an air of authority. I am greatly at sixes and

sevens with myself. Farming on the scale on which it is carried

out on my estate, crushes me. To 'Ufanize'[41] is a thing I only

see afar off. Family affairs, Nicholas's illness (of which we have

as yet no news from abroad) and my sister's departure (she leaves

me in three days' time) also crush and occupy me. Bachelor life,

_i.e._ not having a wife, and the thought that it is getting too

late, torments me from a third side. In general, everything is now

out of tune with me. On account of my sister's helplessness and

my wish to see Nicholas, I shall at any rate procure a foreign

passport to-morrow, and perhaps I shall accompany my sister abroad;

especially if we do not receive news, or receive bad news, from

Nicholas. How much I would give to see you before leaving, how

much I want to tell you and to hear from you; but it is now hardly

possible. Yet if this letter reaches you quickly, remember that we

leave Yásnaya on Thursday or more probably on Friday.

[41] To work like a peasant. The origin of this word is given

on p. 179.

Now as to farming: The price they ask of you is not exorbitant,

and if the place pleases you, you should buy it. Only why do you

want so much land? I have learned by three years' experience that

with all imaginable diligence it is impossible to grow cereals

profitably or pleasantly on more than 60 or 70 desyatíns [160 to

190 acres] that is, on about 15 desyatíns in each of four fields.

Only in that way can one escape trembling for every omission (for

then one ploughs not twice but three or four times) and for every

hour a peasant misses, and for every extra rouble-a-month one pays

him; for one can bring 15 desyatíns to the point of yielding 30

to 40 per cent. on the fixed and working capital; but with 80 or

100 desyatíns under plough one cannot do so. Please do not let this

advice slip past your ears; it is not idle talk, but a result of

experience I have had to pay for. Any one who tells you differently

is either lying or ignorant. More than that, even with 15 desyatíns

an all-absorbing industry is necessary. But then one can gain

a reward--one of the pleasantest life gives; whereas with 90

desyatíns one has to labour like a post-horse, with no possibility

of success. I cannot find sufficient words to scold myself for not

having written to you sooner--in which case you would surely have

come to see us. Now farewell.

Things meanwhile were not going very well with Nicholas, who wrote from

Soden in Hesse-Nassau:

In Soden we joined Tourgénef, who is alive and well--so well that

he himself confesses that he is 'quite' well. He has found some

German girl and goes into ecstasies about her. We (this relates to

our dearest Tourgénef) play chess together, but somehow it does not

go as it should: he is thinking of his German girl, and I of my

cure.... I shall probably stay in Soden for at least six weeks. I

do not describe my journey because I was ill all the time.

Eventually Leo Tolstoy made up his mind to accompany his sister and

her children abroad, and on 3rd July (old style) they took steamer

from Petersburg for Stettin _en route_ for Berlin. Besides anxiety on

his brother's account, Tolstoy had another reason for going abroad: he

wished to study the European systems of education, in order to know

what had been accomplished in the line to which he now intended to

devote himself.

On reaching Berlin he suffered from toothache for four days, and

decided to remain there while his sister proceeded to join Nicholas at

Soden. He consulted a doctor, as he was suffering also from headache

and hemorrhoidal attacks, and he was ordered to take a cure at

Kissingen.

He only stayed a few days in Berlin after getting rid of his toothache,

and left on 14th July (old style), having however found time to attend

lectures on History by Droysen, and on Physics and Physiology by Du

Bois-Reymond, and having also visited some evening classes for artisans

at the _Handwerksverein_, where he was greatly interested in the

popular lectures, and particularly in the system of 'question-boxes.'

The method of arousing the interest of the audience by allowing them to

propound questions for the lecturer to reply to, was new to him, and he

was struck by the life it brought into the classes, and by the freedom

of mental contact between scholars and teacher. He noticed the same

thing when he was in London a few months later, for he told me that

nothing he saw there interested him more than a lecture he attended

in South Kensington, at which questions were put by working men, and

answered by a speaker who was master of his subject and knew how to

popularise it.

In Berlin he visited the Moabit Prison, in which solitary confinement

was practised. Tolstoy strongly disapproved of this mechanical attempt

to achieve moral reformation. From Berlin he went to Leipzig, where he

spent a day inspecting schools; but he derived little satisfaction from

the Saxon schools he visited, as is indicated by a remark he jotted

down in his Diary, 'Have been in school--terrible. Prayers for the

King, blows, everything by rote, frightened, paralysed children....' He

then proceeded to Dresden, where he called on the novelist Auerbach,

whose story, _Ein Neues Leben_ (_A New Life_), had much influenced

him. The chief character in that story is Count Fulkenberg, who after

being an officer in the army, gets into trouble, escapes from prison,

buys the passport of a school-master, Eugene Baumann, and under that

name devotes himself to the task of educating peasant children. When

Auerbach entered the room in which his visitor was waiting, the latter

introduced himself with the words: 'I am Eugene Baumann,' in such

solemn tones and with so morose an appearance, that the German writer

was taken aback and feared that he was about to be threatened with an

action for libel. Tolstoy however hastened to add: '--not in name, but

in character--' and went on to explain how good an effect Auerbach's

_Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten_ (_Village Tales of the Black Forest_)

had had on him.

After three days in Dresden, he went on to Kissingen, which was in

those days about five hours' journey from Soden, where Nicholas was

staying. Still intent on his educational inquiries, he read _en route_

a history of pedagogics.

From Kissingen he wrote his Aunt Tatiána that he thought the cure was

doing him good, and added:

Tell the steward to write me most minutely about the farming, the

harvest, the horses and their illness. Tell the schoolmaster to

write about the school: how many pupils come, and whether they

learn well. I shall certainly return in autumn and intend to

occupy myself more than ever with the school, so I do not wish its

reputation to be lost while I am away, and I want as many pupils as

possible from different parts.

While in Kissingen he read Bacon and Luther and Riehl, and made the

acquaintance of Julius Froebel, author of _The System of Social

Politics_ and nephew of Froebel, the founder of the Kindergarten

system. Julius Froebel was himself much interested in educational

matters, and was a particularly suitable person to explain his uncle's

ideas to Tolstoy.

The latter astonished his new acquaintance, with whom he used to go

for walks, by the uncompromising rigidity of his views, which showed

a considerable tinge of Slavophilism. Progress in Russia, declared

Tolstoy, must be based on popular education, which would give better

results in Russia than in Germany, because the Russian people were

still unperverted, whereas the Germans were like children who had

for years been subjected to a bad education. Popular education should

not be compulsory. If it is a blessing, the demand for it should come

naturally, as the demand for food comes from hunger.

Tolstoy visited the country round Kissingen, and travelling northward

through a part of Germany rich both in scenery and in historic

interest, reached Eisenach and visited the Wartburg, where Luther

was confined after the Diet of Worms. The personality of the great

Protestant reformer interested Tolstoy greatly, and after seeing the

room in which Luther commenced his translation of the Bible, he noted

in his Diary: 'Luther was great'! Twenty years later Tolstoy himself

attempted to free the minds of men from the yoke of an established

Church, and he too shaped his chief weapon against the Church by

translating, not, it is true, like Luther, the whole Bible, but the

Gospels.

Meanwhile Nicholas Tolstoy's health had been growing worse rather than

better. Sergius, having been unlucky at roulette, decided to return to

Russia, and visiting Leo at Kissingen _en route_, told him of his fears

for Nicholas. On 9th August Sergius left Kissingen and Nicholas himself

arrived there to visit Leo, but soon returned to Soden. Leo then spent

a fortnight in the Harz Mountain district, enjoying nature and reading

a great deal. On 26th August he rejoined Nicholas, his sister and her

children, at Soden. The doctors had decided that Nicholas must winter

in a warmer climate, and the place decided on was Hyères near Toulon,

on the shores of the Mediterranean.

The first stage of the journey undertaken by the family party was to

Frankfurt-on-Main, where their aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy, was

staying. She tells the following story of Leo's visit to her on this

occasion:

One day Prince Alexander of Hesse and his wife were calling on me,

when suddenly the door of the drawing-room opened and Leo appeared

in the strangest garb, suggestive of a picture of a Spanish bandit.

I gasped with astonishment. Leo apparently was not pleased with my

visitors, and soon took his departure.

[42]'Qui est donc ce singulier personnage?' inquired my visitors in

astonishment.

'Mais c'est Léon Tolstoy.'

'Ah, mon Dieu, pourquoi ne l'avez vous pas nommé? Après avoir lu

ses admirables écrits, nous mourions d'envie de le voir,' said

they, reproachfully.

[42] Who is that singular person?--inquired my visitors in

astonishment.

Why, it is Leo Tolstoy!

Ah, good heavens! Why did you not tell us who it was?

After reading his admirable writings, we were dying to see

him.--said they, reproachfully.

From Frankfurt the party proceeded to Hyères, where Nicholas, growing

rapidly worse and worse, died on 20th September (new style).

Few men have been so admired and loved as he was by all who knew him.

The only thing recorded against him is the fact that when serving in

the Caucasus he, like many of his fellow-officers, gave way to some

extent to intemperance; but after returning home he recovered his

self-control. I have already told of his influence over Leo in the

early days of the Ant-Brotherhood, and of the green stick, buried where

Tolstoy himself wishes his body to lie. Such influence he retained all

through life, and men and women of most different temperaments make

equally enthusiastic mention of his charm and goodness. That Leo's

judgment of what is good and bad has remained strongly influenced by

his love for and memory of Nicholas, is plain enough to all who have

the facts before them and read his works attentively.

Tourgénef once said:

The humility which Leo Tolstoy developed theoretically, his brother

actually practised in life. He always lived in the most impossible

lodgings, almost hovels, somewhere in the out-of-the-way quarters

of Moscow, and he willingly shared all he had with the poorest

outcast. He was a delightful companion and narrator, but writing

was to him almost a physical impossibility, the actual process of

writing being as difficult for him as for a labourer whose stiff

hands will not hold a pen.

Nicholas did, however, as a matter of fact, contribute some _Memoirs of

a Sportsman_ to the _Contemporary_.

Never was any one's death more sincerely regretted. This is the letter

Leo wrote to Aunt Tatiána, the night the event occurred.

CHÈRE TANTE!--The black seal will have told you all. What I have

been expecting from hour to hour for two weeks occurred at nine

o'clock this evening. Only since yesterday did he let me help him

undress, and to-day for the first time he definitely took to his

bed and asked for a nurse. He was conscious all the time, and a

quarter-of-an-hour before he died he drank some milk and told me

he was comfortable. Even to-day he still joked and showed interest

in my educational projects. Only a few minutes before he died he

whispered several times: 'My God, my God!' It seems to me that he

felt his position, but deceived himself and us. Máshenka, only

to-day, some four hours before, had gone three miles out of Hyères

to where she is living. She did not at all expect it to come so

soon. I have just closed his eyes. I shall now soon be back with

you and will tell you all personally. I do not intend to transport

the body. The funeral will be arranged by the Princess Golítsin,

who has taken it all on herself.

Farewell, _chère tante_. I cannot console you. It is God's

will--that is all. I am not writing to Seryózha now. He is probably

away hunting, you know where. So let him know, or send him this

letter.

On the day after the funeral he wrote to Sergius:

I think you have had news of the death of Nicholas. I am sorry for

you that you were not here. Hard as it is, I am glad it all took

place in my presence, and that it acted on me in the right way--not

like Mítenka's [his third brother, Demetrius] death, of which I

heard when I was not thinking at all about him. However, this is

quite different. With Mítenka only memories of childhood and family

feeling were bound up; but this was a real man both to you and to

me, whom we loved and _respected_ positively more than any one else

on earth. You know the selfish feeling which came latterly, that

the sooner it was over the better; it is dreadful now to write it

and to remember that one thought it. Till the last day, with his

extraordinary strength of character and power of concentration,

he did everything to avoid becoming a burden to me. On the day

of his death he dressed and washed himself, and in the morning I

found him dressed on his bed. Only about nine hours before he died

did he give way to his illness and ask to be undressed. It first

happened in the closet. I went downstairs, and heard his door open.

I returned and did not find him. At first I feared to go to him--he

used not to like it; but this time he himself said, 'Help me!'

And he submitted and became different that day, mild and gentle.

He did not groan, did not blame any one, praised everybody, and

said to me: 'Thank you, _my friend_.' You understand what that

meant between us. I told him I had heard how he coughed in the

morning, but did not come to him from _fausse honte_ [false shame].

'Needlessly,' said he--'it would have consoled me.' Suffering? He

suffered; but it was not until a couple of days before his death

that he once said: 'How terrible these nights without sleep are!

Towards morning the cough chokes one, unendingly! And it hurts--God

knows how! A couple more such nights--it's terrible!' Not once did

he say plainly that he felt the approach of death. But he only did

not _say_ it. On the day of his death he ordered a dressing-gown,

and yet when I remarked that if he did not get better, Máshenka and

I would not go to Switzerland, he replied: 'Do you really think I

shall be better?' in such a tone that it was evident what he felt

but for my sake did not say, and what I for his sake did not show;

all the same, from the morning I knew what was coming, and was with

him all the time. He died quite without suffering--externally, at

all events. He breathed more and more slowly--and it was all over.

The next day I went to him and feared to uncover his face. I

thought it would show yet more suffering and be more terrible than

during his illness; but you cannot imagine what a beautiful face it

was, with his best, merry, calm expression.

Yesterday he was buried here. At one time I thought of transporting

him, and of telegraphing for you; but I reconsidered it. It is no

use chafing the wound. I am sorry for you that the news will have

reached you out hunting, amid distractions, and will not grip you

as it does us. It is good for one. I now feel what I have often

been told, that when one loses some one who was what he was to us,

it becomes much easier to think of one's own death.

On 13th October 1860 he notes in his Diary:

It is nearly a month since Nicholas died. That event has torn me

terribly from life. Again the question: Why? Already the departure

draws near. Whither? Nowhere. I try to write, I force myself,

but do not get on, because I cannot attach enough importance to

the work to supply the necessary strength and patience. At the

very time of the funeral the thought occurred to me to write a

Materialist Gospel, a Life of Christ as a Materialist.

One sees how bit by bit the seeds of the work Tolstoy was to do in

later years planted themselves in his mind. In early childhood came the

enthusiasm for the Ant-Brotherhood and the influence of his brother,

of Aunt Tatiána, and of the pilgrims; then an acquaintance with the

writings of Voltaire and other sceptics, undermining belief in the

miraculous; then, in Sevastopol, the idea of 'founding a new religion:

Christianity purged of dogmas and mysticism'; then a study of Luther's

Reformation, and now the idea of a rationalist Life of Christ.

[Illustration: TOLSTOY IN 1860, THE YEAR HIS BROTHER NICHOLAS DIED.]

On 17th October Tolstoy writes to Fet:

I think you already know what has happened. On 20 September he

died, literally in my arms. Nothing in my life has so impressed

me. It is true, as he said, that nothing is worse than death. And

when one reflects well that yet _that_ is the end of all, then

there is nothing worse than life. Why strive or try, since of

what was Nicholas Tolstoy nothing remains his? He did not say that

he felt the approach of death, but I know he watched each step

of its approach and knew with certainty how much remained. Some

moments before his death he drowsed off, but awoke suddenly and

whispered with horror: 'What is that?' That was when he saw it--the

absorption of himself into Nothingness. And if he found nothing

to cling to, what can I find? Still less! And assuredly neither I

nor any one will fight it to the last moment, as he did. Two days

before, I said to him: 'We ought to put a commode in your room.'

'No,' said he, 'I am weak, but not yet so weak as that; I will

struggle on yet awhile.'

To the last he did not yield, but did everything for himself,

and always tried to be occupied. He wrote, questioned me about

my writings, and advised me. But it seemed to me that he did all

this not from any inner impulse, but on principle. One thing--his

love of Nature--remained to the last. The day before, he went into

his bedroom and from weakness fell on his bed by the open window.

I came to him, and he said with tears in his eyes, 'How I have

enjoyed this whole hour.'

From earth we come, and to the earth we go. One thing is left--a

dim hope that there, in Nature, of which we become part in the

earth, something will remain and will be found.

All who knew and saw his last moments, say: 'How wonderfully

calmly, peacefully he died'; but I know with what terrible pain,

for not one feeling of his escaped me.

A thousand times I say to myself: 'Let the dead bury their dead.'

One must make some use of the strength which remains to one, but

one cannot persuade a stone to fall upwards instead of downwards

whither it is drawn. One cannot laugh at a joke one is weary of.

One cannot eat when one does not want to. And what is life all

for, when to-morrow the torments of death will begin, with all

the abomination of falsehood and self-deception, and will end

in annihilation for oneself? An amusing thing! Be useful, be

beneficent, be happy while life lasts,--say people to one another;

but you, and happiness, and virtue, and utility, consist of truth.

And the truth I have learned in thirty-two years is, that the

position in which we are placed is terrible. 'Take life as it is;

you have put yourselves in that position.' How! I take life as it

is. As soon as man reaches the highest degree of development, he

sees clearly that it is all nonsense and deception, and that the

truth--which he still loves better than all else--is terrible. That

when you look at it well and clearly, you wake with a start and say

with terror, as my brother did: 'What is that?'

Of course, so long as the desire to know and speak the truth lasts,

one tries to know and speak. That alone remains to me of the moral

world; higher than that I cannot place myself. That alone I will

do, but not in the form of your art. Art is a lie, and I can no

longer love a beautiful lie.

I shall remain here for the winter because I am here, and it is

all the same where one lives. Please write to me. I love you as my

brother loved you, and he remembered you to his last moment.

A month later we find him writing in a different state of mind:

A boy of thirteen has died in torment from consumption. What for?

The only explanation is given by faith in the compensation of a

future life. If that does not exist, there is no justice, and

justice is vain, and the demand for justice--a superstition.

Justice forms the most essential demand of man to man. And man

looks for the same in his relation to the universe. Without a

future life it is lacking. Expediency is the sole, the unalterable

law of Nature, say the naturalists. But in the best manifestations

of man's soul: love and poetry--it is absent. This has all existed

and has died--often without expressing itself. Nature, if her one

law be expediency, far o'erstepped her aim when she gave man the

need of poetry and love.

Nearly twenty years later, in his _Confession_, Tolstoy referred to his

brother's death in the words:

Another event which showed me that the superstitious belief in

progress is insufficient as a guide to life, was my brother's

death. Wise, good, serious, he fell ill while still a young man,

suffered for more than a year and died painfully, not understanding

why he had lived, and still less why he had to die. No theories

could give me, or him, any reply to these questions during his slow

and painful dying.

Any one who has read the works Tolstoy wrote during the quarter of a

century which succeeded his brother's death, will be aware how long he

remained in doubt on this matter of a future life, and how he expressed

now one, and now another view.

At Hyères he continued to study the question of education, and for that

purpose made many visits to Marseilles. He also wrote: continuing _The

Cossacks_ and commencing an article on Popular Education. We get a

glimpse of him at this period from his sister, who tells us that they

had been invited to an At Home at Prince Doundoukóf-Korsákof's; but

Tolstoy, who was to have been the lion of the occasion, failed to put

in an appearance. The company, which included all the 'best' people,

were getting dull, despite everything the hostess could devise for

their amusement, when at last, very late, Count Tolstoy was announced.

The hostess and her guests immediately brightened up; but what was

their astonishment to see him appear in tourist garb and wearing wooden

_sabots_! He had been for a long walk, and returning late, had come to

the party without calling at his lodgings; and no sooner was he in the

room than he began assuring everybody that wooden _sabots_ were the

very best and most comfortable of foot-gear, and advising every one to

adopt them. Even in those days he was a man to whom all things were

allowed, and the evening, instead of being spoilt, became all the gayer

from his eccentricity. There was a great deal of singing, and it fell

to Tolstoy's lot to accompany the singers.

At Hyères, after his brother's death, Tolstoy lived with his sister

and her three children in a _pension_ where the only other lodgers

were a Madame Pláksin and her delicate nine-year-old son Sergéy, whose

lungs were thought to be affected, but who lived to become a poet

and to publish his recollections of Tolstoy. Pláksin describes him

as having been at that time a strongly built, broad-shouldered man,

with a good-natured smile on his face, which was fringed by a thick,

dark-brown beard. Under a large forehead, still bearing a deep scar

from the wound inflicted by the bear two years before, wise, kind eyes

shone out of very deep sockets. 'Tolstoy,' says Pláksin, 'was the soul

of our little society, and I never saw him dull; on the contrary, he

liked to amuse us with his stories, which were sometimes extremely

fantastic.' Tolstoy rose early, and while he was at work the children

were not allowed to disturb him beyond running in for a moment to say

'good-morning.' Being himself an indefatigable walker, Tolstoy used to

plan out excursions for the company, constantly discovering new places

to visit: the salterns on the peninsula of Porquerolle; the holy hill

where the chapel with the wonder-working image of the Madonna stands;

or the ruins of the castle called _Trou des Fées_. They used to have

with them on these excursions, a small ass carrying provisions, fruit

and wine.

On the way Tolstoy used to tell us various tales; I remember one

about a golden horse and a giant tree, from the top of which all

the seas and all towns were visible. Knowing that my lungs were

delicate, he often took me on his shoulder and continued his tale

as he walked along. Need I say that we would have laid down our

lives for him?

At dinner-time Tolstoy used to tell the French proprietors of the

_pension_ the strangest stories about Russia, which they never knew

whether or not to believe until the Countess or Madame Pláksin came to

their rescue by separating the truth from the fiction.

After dinner, either on the terrace or indoors, a performance

commenced, opera or ballet, to the sound of the piano: the children

'mercilessly tormenting the ears of the audience' (which consisted of

the two ladies, Tolstoy, and Pláksin's nurse). Next came gymnastic

exercises, in which Tolstoy acted as professor. 'He would lie at full

length on the floor, making us do the same, and we had then to get up

without using our hands.' He also contrived an apparatus out of rope,

which he fixed up in the doorway; and on this he performed somersaults,

to the great delight of his juvenile audience.

When the latter became too turbulent and the ladies begged Tolstoy to

subdue the noise, he would set the children round the table, and tell

them to bring pens and ink.

The following is an example of the sort of occupation he provided:

'Listen,' said he one day; 'I am going to give you a lesson.'

'What on?' demanded bright-eyed Lisa.

Disregarding his niece's question, he continued:

'Write...'

'But what are we to write, uncle?' persisted Lisa.

'Listen; I will give you a theme...!'

'What will you give us?'

'A theme!' firmly replied Tolstoy. 'In what respect does Russia

differ from other countries? Write it here, in my presence, and

don't copy from one another! Do you hear?' added he, impressively.

In half an hour the 'compositions' were ready. Pláksin had to read his

own, as his lines were so irregular that no one else could decipher

them. In his opinion Russia differed from other countries in that, at

carnival time, Russians eat pancakes and slide down ice-hills, and at

Easter they colour eggs.

'Bravo!' said Tolstoy, and proceeded to make out Kólya's MS., in which

Russia was distinguished by its snow, and Lisa's, in which 'troikas'

(three-horse conveyances) played the chief part.

In reward for these evening exercises, Tolstoy brought water-colour

paints from Marseilles and taught the children drawing.

He often spent nearly the whole day with the children, teaching them,

taking part in their games, and intervening in their disputes, which he

analysed, proving to them who was in the right and who in the wrong.

There was at this time some mutual attraction between Tolstoy and a

young Russian lady, Miss Yákovlef, who was staying at Hyères; but, like

many other similar affairs, it came to nothing.

On leaving Hyères, Tolstoy, his sister, and her children, went to

Geneva, and from thence he proceeded alone to Nice, Leghorn, Florence,

Rome, and Naples. In Italy he says he experienced his first lively

impression of antiquity; but very little record remains of this

journey, and it is nowhere reflected in his writings.

He returned to Paris _viâ_ Marseilles, the schools and other

institutions of which he observed closely, trying to discover how man's

intelligence is really best developed.

He was very unfavourably impressed by the popular schools of

Marseilles. The studies, he says, consisted in learning by heart the

Catechism, sacred and general History, the four rules of Arithmetic,

French spelling and Book-keeping--the latter without sufficient

comprehension of the use of arithmetic to enable the children to deal

sensibly with the simplest practical problems requiring addition and

subtraction, though they could do long multiplication sums quickly and

well when only abstract figures were given. Similarly, they answered

well by rote questions in French History, but, when asked at hazard,

they would give such answers as that Henry IV was killed by Julius

Cæsar.

He observed the instruction given by the Churches, and visited the

adult schools of the town, as well as its _Salles d'Asile_, in which,

he says:

I saw four-year-old children perform like soldiers, evolutions

round benches to orders given by whistle, and raise and cross their

arms to the word of command, and with strange trembling voices

sing hymns of praise to God and their benefactors; and I became

convinced that the educational establishments of Marseilles were

extremely bad.

Any one seeing them would naturally conclude that the French people

must be ignorant, coarse, hypocritical, full of superstition and

almost savage.

Yet one need only come in contact with and chat with any of the

common people, to convince oneself that on the contrary the French

people are almost what they consider themselves to be: intelligent,

clever, sociable, freethinking, and really civilised. Take a

workman of, say, thirty years of age: he will write a letter

without such mistakes as at school, sometimes even quite correctly;

he has some idea of politics, and therefore of recent history and

geography; he knows some history from novels, knows something of

natural history, and he very often draws, and is able to apply

mathematical formulae to his trade. Where did he get all this?

I recently discovered the answer in Marseilles, by wandering about

the streets, drink-shops, _cafés chantants_, museums, workshops,

wharves and book-stalls. The very boy who told me that Henry IV was

killed by Julius Cæsar, knew the history of _The Three Musketeers_

and of _Monte Cristo_ very well.

In Marseilles Tolstoy found that everybody had read Dumas' works, of

which there were twenty-eight cheap editions. He estimated that each

week, in the _cafés chantants_, at least one-fifth of the population

received oral education, as the Greeks and Romans used to do. Comedies

and sketches were performed, verses declaimed, and the influence for

good or evil of this unconscious education far outweighed that of the

compulsory education given in schools.

1861

In January he reached Paris, where he spent a large part of his time

in omnibuses, amusing himself by observing the people. He declares

he never met a passenger who was not represented in one or other

of Paul de Kock's stories. Of that writer, as of Dumas _père_, he

thinks highly. 'Don't talk nonsense to me,' he once said, 'about

Paul de Kock's immorality. He is, according to English ideas,

somewhat improper. He is more or less what the French call _leste_

and _gaulois_, but never immoral. In everything he says, and despite

his rather free jests, his tendency is quite moral. He is a French

Dickens.... As to Dumas, every novelist should know him by heart. His

plots are admirable, not to mention the workmanship. I can read and

re-read him, though he aims chiefly at plots and intrigue.'

In Paris he again met Tourgénef; and from France he went on to London,

where he remained six weeks, not enjoying his visit much as he suffered

severely from toothache nearly all the time. It is characteristic

of Tolstoy that though he has often been a victim to toothache and

has also been much tried by digestive troubles, he never appears to

have had his teeth properly attended to by a dentist. A dentist's

establishment seems to him so unnatural and artificial that it must

be wrong. Moreover, dentists do not always do their work well; and

toothache--if one endures it long enough--cures itself, and in the past

the majority of mankind have got along without dentists. So he has been

inclined to put up with toothache as one of the ills it is best to bear

patiently.

During his stay he, and Tourgénef who had also come to London, saw

a great deal of Alexander Herzen, who was editing _Kólokol_ (_The

Bell_)--the most influential paper ever published by a Russian exile.

I have already remarked on the fact that the Reform movements of that

time left Tolstoy curiously cold; and here again it may be noted that

though Tourgénef contributed to Herzen's prohibited paper, Tolstoy

never wrote anything for it.

Herzen's little daughter, who had read and greatly enjoyed _Childhood_,

_Boyhood_, and _Youth_, hearing that the author was coming to see her

father, obtained permission to be present when he called. She ensconced

herself in an arm-chair in a corner of the study at the appointed time,

and when Count Tolstoy was announced, awaited his appearance with

beating heart; but she was profoundly disillusioned by the entrance

of a man of society manners, fashionably dressed in the latest style

of English tailoring, who began at once to tell with gusto of the

cock-fights and boxing-matches he had already managed to witness in

London. Not a single word with which she could sympathise did she

hear from Tolstoy throughout that one and only occasion on which she

was privileged to listen to his conversation; and in this she was

particularly unlucky, for Tolstoy saw Herzen very frequently during his

stay in London, and the two discussed all sorts of important questions

together.

One of Herzen's closest friends and co-workers during his long

exile from Russia, was the poet N. P. Ogaryóf, who had been his

fellow-student at the Moscow University. Ogaryóf, besides being a man

of ability, possessed a very amiable character that greatly endeared

him to his friends; but in an essay entitled _The First Step_[43]

written in 1892, we get a glimpse of what alienated Tolstoy's sympathy

from the progressive movement these men represented. He there says:

[43] In the volume _Essays and Letters_, included in the

_World's Classics_.

I have just been reading the letters of one of our highly educated

and advanced men of the forties, the exile Ogaryóf, to another

yet more highly educated and gifted man, Herzen. In these letters

Ogaryóf gives expression to his sincere thoughts and highest

aspirations, and one cannot fail to see that--as was natural to

a young man--he rather shows off before his friend. He talks

of self-perfecting, of sacred friendship, love, the service of

science, of humanity, and the like. And at the same time he calmly

writes that he often irritates the companion of his life by, as he

expresses it, 'returning home in an unsober state, or disappearing

for many hours with a fallen, but dear creature.'...

Evidently it never even occurred to this remarkably kind-hearted,

talented, and well-educated man that there was anything at all

objectionable in the fact that he, a married man, awaiting the

confinement of his wife (in his next letter he writes that his

wife has given birth to a child) returned home intoxicated, and

disappeared with dissolute women. It did not enter his head that

until he had commenced the struggle, and had at least to some

extent conquered his inclination to drunkenness and fornication, he

could not think of friendship and love, and still less of serving

any one or any thing. But he not only did not struggle against

these vices--he evidently thought there was something very nice in

them, and that they did not in the least hinder the struggle for

perfection; and therefore instead of hiding them from the friend in

whose eyes he wishes to appear in a good light, he exhibits them.

Thus it was half a century ago. I was contemporary with such men.

I knew Ogaryóf and Herzen themselves and others of that stamp, and

men educated in the same traditions. There was a remarkable absence

of consistency in the lives of all these men. Together with a

sincere and ardent wish for good, there was an utter looseness of

personal desire, which, they thought, could not hinder the living

of a good life, nor the performance of good and even great deeds.

They put unkneaded loaves into a cold oven, and believed that bread

would be baked. And then, when with advancing years they began to

remark that the bread did not bake--_i.e._ that no good came of

their lives--they saw in this something peculiarly tragic.

This was written twenty years later; but it was latent in his mind at

the time, and furnishes a clue to the fact that he never really made

friends with these men.

Of Herzen as a writer Tolstoy ultimately came to have a very high

opinion, and admitted that he exerted a very considerable influence on

the mind of educated Russia.

In England, as elsewhere, Tolstoy saw as much as he could of the

educational methods in vogue. He also visited the House of Commons and

heard Palmerston speak for three hours; but he told me he could form no

opinion of the oration, for 'at that time I knew English with my eyes

but not with my ears.'

While in London, he received news that he had been nominated Arbiter of

the Peace for his own district, near Toúla. The duties of the office

were to settle disputes between the serfs and their former proprietors.

Except a short service on the Zémstvo in 1874, this was the only

official position in which Tolstoy ever took much active part after

leaving the army.

On 3rd March (new style), the day of Alexander II's famous Manifesto

emancipating the serfs, Tolstoy left London for Russia _viâ_ Brussels.

In that city he made the acquaintance of Proudhon (the author of

_Qu'est-ce que la Propriété?_ and a _Système des Contradictions

Économiques_) to whom Herzen had given him a letter of introduction.

Proudhon impressed Tolstoy as a strong man who had the courage of

his opinions; and though Proudhon's theories had no immediate effect

on Tolstoy's life, the social political and economic views expounded

by the latter a quarter of a century later, are deeply dyed with

Proudhonism. Both writers consider that property is robbery; interest

immoral; peaceful anarchy the desirable culmination of social progress,

and that every man should be a law unto himself, restrained solely by

reason, conscience and moral suasion. Another writer whose acquaintance

Tolstoy made in Brussels was the Polish patriot Lelewel, who had

taken a prominent part in the rebellion of 1830, and had written on

Polish history and on many other subjects. He was at this time a

decrepit old man living in great poverty. While in Brussels Tolstoy

wrote _Polikoúshka_, almost the only story of his (besides _A Squire's

Morning_) that implies a condemnation of serfdom.

Passing through Germany, Tolstoy stopped at Weimar, where he stayed

with the Russian Ambassador, Von Maltitz, and was introduced to the

Grand Duke Carl Alexander. Tolstoy (who had been reading Goethe's

_Reineke Fuchs_ not long before) visited the house in which Goethe had

lived, but was more interested in a Kindergarten conducted by Minna

Schelholm, who had been trained by Froebel. From another school he

visited, we hear of his collecting and carrying off the essays the

pupils had written, explaining to the master that he was much concerned

with the problem, 'How to make thought flow more freely.'

At Jena he made acquaintance with a young mathematician named Keller,

whom he persuaded to accompany him to Yásnaya to help him in his

educational activities. He also stopped at Dresden, where he again

visited Auerbach, concerning whom he jots down in his Diary:

_21 April, Dresden_: Auerbach is a most charming man. Has given me

a light.... He spoke of Christianity as the spirit of humanity,

than which there is nothing higher. He reads verse enchantingly.

Of Music as _Pflichtloser Genuss_ (dutyless pleasure).... He is 49

years old. Straightforward, youthful, believing, not troubled by

negation.

On another occasion Tolstoy expressed surprise at never having seen

Auerbach's _Village Tales of the Black Forest_ in any German peasant's

house, and declared that Russian peasants would have wept over such

stories.

From Dresden he wrote to his Aunt Tatiána:

[44] Je me porte bien et brûle d'envie de retourner en Russie.

Mais une fois en Europe et ne sachant quand j'y retournerai,

vous comprenez que j'ai voulu profiter, autant que possible, de

mon voyage. Et je crois l'avoir fait. Je rapporte une si grande

quantité d'impressions, de connaissances, que je devrai travailler

longtemps, avant de pouvoir mettre tout cela en ordre dans ma tête.

I am bringing with me a German from the University, to be a teacher

and clerk, a very nice, well-educated man, but still very young and

unpractical.

[44] I am in good health and burn with desire to return to

Russia. But once in Europe and not knowing when I shall

return, you understand that I wanted to benefit as much as

possible by my travels. And I think I have done so. I am

bringing back such a great quantity of impressions and facts,

that I must work a long time before I can get it all in order

in my head.

I am bringing with me a German from the University, to be a

teacher and clerk, a very nice, well-educated man, but still

very young and unpractical.

He adds that he intends to return to Yásnaya _viâ_ St. Petersburg, as

he wants to obtain permission to publish an educational magazine he is

projecting.

On 22nd April he was already in Berlin, where he made the acquaintance

of the head of the Teachers' Seminary, the son of the celebrated

pedagogue Diesterweg, whom, to his disappointment, he found to be 'a

cold, soulless pedant, who thinks he can develop and guide the souls of

children by rules and regulations.'

On 23rd April (old style) he re-entered Russia, after a stay abroad of

nearly ten months.

He brought with him complete editions of the works of several of the

greatest European writers. They were kept at the Custom House to be

submitted to the Censor, and, as Tolstoy plaintively remarked nearly

half a century later, 'he is still reading them!'

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER VI

Birukof.

Bitovt.

Fet, _Moi Vospominaniya_: Moscow, 1890.

Tolstoy's _Confession_.

Golovatcheva-Panaeva, _Rousskie Pisateli i Artisty_.

Tourgenef, _Letters_.

S. Plaksin, _Graf L. Tolstoy sredi detey_.

Tolstoy's works, vol. iv.: Moscow, 1903.

R. Löwenfeld, _Leo N. Tolstoj_.

R. Löwenfeld, _Gespräche über und mit Tolstoy_.