The fourth paragraph, to which I wish to call particular attention,
contains a request to his next of kin to transfer the right of
publishing his writings to society at large, or, in other words, to
renounce the copyright of them.
"But I only request it, and do not direct it. It is a good thing to do.
And it will be good for you to do it; but if you do not do it, that is
your affair. It means that you are not yet ready to do it. The fact that
my writings have been bought and sold during these last ten years has
been the most painful thing in my whole life to me."
Three copies were made of this will, and they were kept by my sister
Masha, my brother Sergei, and Tchertkof.
I knew of its existence, but I never saw it till after my father's
death, and I never inquired of anybody about the details.
I knew my father's views about copyright, and no will of his could have
added anything to what I knew. I knew, moreover, that this will was not
properly executed according to the forms of law, and personally I was
glad of that, for I saw in it another proof of my father's confidence
in his family. I need hardly add that I never doubted that my father's
wishes would be carried out.
My sister Masha, with whom I once had a conversation on the subject, was
of the same opinion.
In 1909 my father stayed with Mr. Tchertkof at Krekshin, and there for
the first time he wrote a formal will, attested by the signature of
witnesses. How this will came to be written I do not know, and I do not
intend to discuss it. It afterward appeared that it also was imperfect
from a legal point of view, and in October, 1909, it had all to be done
again.
As to the writing of the third we are fully informed by Mr. F. Strakhof
in an article which he published in the St. Petersburg "Gazette" on
November 6, 1911.
Mr. Strakhof left Moscow at night. He had calculated on Sofya
Andreyevna, [28] whose presence at Yasnaya Polyana was highly
inexpedient for the business on which he was bound, being still in
Moscow.
The business in question, as was made clear in the preliminary
consultation which V. G. Tchertkof held with N. K. Muravyof,
the solicitor, consisted in getting fresh signatures from Lyoff
Nikolaievich, whose great age made it desirable to make sure, without
delay, of his wishes being carried out by means of a more unassailable
legal document. Strakhof brought the draft of the will with him, and
laid it before Lyoff Nikolaievich. After reading the paper through, he
at once wrote under it that he agreed with its purport, and then added,
after a pause:
"All this business is very disagreeable to me, and it is unnecessary. To
insure the propagation of my ideas by taking all sorts of measures--why,
no word can perish without leaving its trace, if it expresses a truth,
and if the man who utters it believes profoundly in its truth. But all
these outward means for insuring it only come of our disbelief in what
we utter."
And with these words Lyoff Nikolaievich left the study.
Thereupon Mr. Strakhof began to consider what he must do next, whether
he should go back with empty hands, or whether he should argue it out.
He decided to argue it out, and endeavored to explain to my father
how painful it would be for his friends after his death to hear people
blaming him for not having taken any steps, despite his strong opinion
on the subject, to see that his wishes were carried out, and for having
thereby helped to transfer his copyrights to the members of his family.
Tolstoy promised to think it over, and left the room again.
At dinner Sofya Andreyevna "was evidently far from having any
suspicions." When Tolstoy was not by, however, she asked Mr. Strakhof
what he had come down about. Inasmuch as Mr. Strakhof had other affairs
in hand besides the will, he told her about one thing and another with
an easy conscience.
Mr. Strakhof described a second visit to Yasnaya, when he came to attest
the same will as a witness.
When he arrived, he said: "The countess had not yet come down. I
breathed again."
Of his departure, he said:
As I said good-by to Sofya Andreyevna, I examined her countenance
attentively. Such complete tranquillity and cordiality toward her
departing guests were written on it that I had not the smallest doubt
of her complete ignorance of what was going on.... I left the house with
the pleasing consciousness of a work well done--a work that was destined
to have a considerable historic consequence. I only felt some little
twinge within, certain qualms of conscience about the conspiratorial
character of the transaction.
But even this text of the will did not quite satisfy my father's
"friends and advisers"; it was redrafted for the fourth and last time in
July, 1910.
This last draft was written by my father himself in the Limonovski
Forest, two miles from the house, not far from Mr. Tchertkof's estate.
Such is the melancholy history of this document, which was destined to
have historic consequences. "All this business is very disagreeable to
me, and it is unnecessary," my father said when he signed the paper that
was thrust before him. That was his real opinion about his will, and it
never altered to the end of his days.
Is there any need of proof for that? I think one need know very little
of his convictions to have no doubt about it.
Was Lyoff Nikolaievich Tolstoy likely of his own accord to have recourse
to the protection of the law? And, if he did, was he likely to conceal
it from his wife and children?
He had been put into a position from which there was absolutely no way
out. To tell his wife was out of the question; it would have grievously
offended his friends. To have destroyed the will would have been worse
still; for his friends had suffered for his principles morally, and some
of them materially, and had been exiled from Russia. He felt himself
bound to them.
And on the top of all this were his fainting fits, his increasing loss
of memory, the clear consciousness of the approach of death, and the
continually growing nervousness of his wife, who felt in her heart
of hearts the unnatural estrangement of her husband, and could not
understand it. If she asked him what it was that he was concealing from
her, he would either have to say nothing or to tell her the truth. But
that was impossible.
So it came about that the long-cherished dream of leaving Yasnaya
Polyana presented itself as the only means of escape. It was certainly
not in order to enjoy the full realization of his dream that he left his
home; he went away only as a choice of evils.
"I am too feeble and too old to begin a new life," he had said to my
brother Sergei only a few days before his departure.
Harassed, ill in body and in mind, he started forth without any object
in view, without any thought-out plan, merely in order to hide himself
somewhere, wherever it might be, and get some rest from the moral
tortures which had become insupportable to him.
"To fly, to fly!" he said in his deathbed delirium as he lay at
Astapova.
"Has papa considered that mama may not survive the separation from him?"
I asked my sister Sasha on October 29, when she was on the point of
going to join him at Shamerdino.
"Yes, he has considered all that, and still made up his mind to go,
because he thinks that nothing could be worse than the state that things
have come to here," she answered.
I confess that my explanation of my father's flight by no means exhausts
the question. Life is complex and every explanation of a man's conduct
is bound to suffer from one-sidedness. Besides, there are circumstances
of which I do not care to speak at the present moment, in order not to
cause unnecessary pain to people still living. It may be that if those
who were about my father during the last years of his life had known
what they were doing, things would have turned out differently.
The years will pass. The accumulated incrustations which hide the truth
will pass away. Much will be wiped out and forgotten. Among other things
my father's will will be forgotten--that will which he himself looked
upon as an "unnecessary outward means." And men will see more clearly
that legacy of love and truth in which he believed deeply, and which,
according to his own words, "cannot perish without a trace."
In conclusion I cannot refrain from quoting the opinion of one of my
kinsmen, who, after my father's death, read the diaries kept both by my
father and my mother during the autumn before Lyoff Nikolaievich left
Yasnaya Polyana.
"What a terrible misunderstanding!" he said. "Each loved the other with
such poignant affection, each was suffering all the time on the other's
behalf, and then this terrible ending!... I see the hand of fate in
this."