LIFE OF TOLSTOY (_continued_)--JOURNEY ABROAD--PEASANT SCHOOLS--"TALES
FOR CHILDREN"--MARRIED LIFE--RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTIES--CONVERSION
Soon after the capitulation of Sebastopol, Tolstoy, disgusted, with the
mere idea of military glory, left military service and returned to St.
Petersburg. He was received into the chief literary society of the
day, introduced to Turgénief and the poet Fet, who became his most
intimate friend. Tolstoy, however, never cared much for literary
society; he spoke of it afterwards very slightingly and even
scornfully, and he soon left.
In January 1857 he started on a tour in Europe; he visited Paris, and,
while there, witnessed an execution which gave him his life-long horror
of capital punishment. He declares that he had previously accepted it
as a necessity, but, when he saw the ghastly preparations, when he
heard the dull sound made by the head falling into the basket, he
realised suddenly that, no matter what laws or customs countenanced
this act, it was wrong and would always remain wrong. Even the horrors
of war did not inspire him with an aversion quite so sickening; what he
so disliked was the cold-blooded, premeditated violence wreaked upon a
bound and helpless man.
Tolstoy also visited Switzerland--Geneva and Lucerne. At the latter
place he was disagreeably impressed by the arrogance of the English
tourists. One of the most charming of his minor tales--a little sketch
entitled _Albert_--tells the story of a wandering {26} musician treated
with haughty severity by the English and, as the candid narrator
admits, entertained by Tolstoy himself, with a somewhat exaggerated and
theatrical kindness. It shows Tolstoy's habit of digging down to the
very foundations of social life in seeking a remedy for the simplest
injustice.
In 1860 consumption declared itself in Nicolas Tolstoy and he was soon
seriously ill; he went in search of health to Soden and afterwards to
Hyères.
Leo went to help in nursing him, and, on September 20th, Nicolas died
in his brother's arms.
This event made a deep and tragic impression upon Tolstoy: it was not
only the personal loss, though he loved Nicolas more than any other
human being, but the worst horror lay in his brother's fear of death,
and in the unavailing struggle against it. The circumstances are
described in the death of Nicolas Levin in _Anna Karénina_.
Tolstoy next studied elementary education in France, Germany, and
England.
In February 1861 the Russian serfs were liberated, and a new era in
Russian history began; Tolstoy tried to play his part by starting
peasants' schools upon his estate. In his theories of education he was
largely influenced by Rousseau; it was from Rousseau that he obtained
his ideas of "freedom," and of permitting unchecked development to the
child; he organised his schools in a very original manner, and his
theories seem to have had a far-reaching effect on Russian education in
making it more free and flexible than that of Western Europe.
The tales he wrote for his peasant children, and embodied in various
school-readers, form a charming portion of his work; they are
exquisitely simple, and full of that fresh observation of the ways of
animals and plants and the ways of children themselves which the young
so love.
Among the best are stories of his dogs, Milton and Bulka; tales of
bear-hunting and its perils; there is an unforgettable study of the
hare and its timid ways, {27} another which tells how mother-wolves
train their young to hunt. Nor does Tolstoy limit his sympathies to
animals--he can make the trees live for us in the same vivid and
forcible way; thus he tells how hundreds of young poplars sprang up
around an old poplar which was decaying, and how he ordered the young
trees to be cut down since he could see that they were taking the sap
from the old one. The young trees resisted stoutly: "Sometimes four of
us would try to pull up the roots of some young poplar that had been
cut down, and found it impossible; it would resist with all its might
and would not die." However he persists in destroying them; the old
tree itself dies and Tolstoy comments: "He had been long dying, and was
conscious of it, and was giving all his life to his shoots. That was
the reason why they had grown so rapidly, and I, who had wished to help
him, had only killed all his children."
Perfectly charming also are the little studies of peasant children,
such as the boy "Filipok," who is passionately eager to go to school
but, when he gets there, cannot say a word through shyness; however
they leave him alone, and he comes to himself and makes one of the best
scholars.
Tolstoy's own educational experiments were not permitted to continue
for long; the officials became jealous of his schools, and they were
accordingly closed.
In dividing out the land between the nobles and the peasants many
disputes occurred, and Tolstoy offered his services as arbitrator; he
incurred a good deal of odium among his aristocratic neighbours because
he so often took the part of the poor; he saw how the peasants were
steadily cheated out of their fair share of land. It is this unfair
division which explains the terrible severity of the Russian famines;
the peasant has never been allowed sufficient land to support himself,
and he cannot, with his best efforts, keep any reserve for bad times.
Tolstoy perceived this and, to the best of his ability, struggled
against it; like the heroism of the common soldier at Sebastopol, it
served its purpose in making him the ardent champion of the poor.
{28}
In the year 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Behrs, with whose family he had
been for some time acquainted; he was thirty-four and his bride
eighteen.
There ensued a period of great family happiness and of powerful
creative work. It was, in the ordinary sense, the happiest time of
Tolstoy's life, though he himself, with his ever-progressing moral
development and his ever-increasing idealism, later on condemned its
happiness as selfish and enervating.
Tolstoy managed his own estate and, by the testimony of many observers,
was exceedingly successful with his stock, his buildings, and his
crops; he succeeded also in making his peasants happy and contented.
His family was large, and his wife proved herself an admirable mother,
devoting herself passionately to her children.
It was during this period that Tolstoy achieved his European reputation
as a novelist by producing his two great works of _War and Peace_,
1864-9, and _Anna Karénina_, 1873-6.
Tolstoy was a most conscientious and exacting literary artist. Before
writing _War and Peace_, he made careful historical studies; it is his
longest and most ambitious work, and might be termed a prose epic
rather than a novel.
Tolstoy also planned a novel on the period of Peter the Great, but the
more he studied this subject the less he liked it; he found the whole
epoch unsympathetic, and declared that Peter's so-called reforms were
not really intended for the good of the people, but mainly for his own
personal profit, and that what he really desired was freedom for a life
of immorality.
Tolstoy's next great novel, _Anna Karénina_, was based on an event
which had occurred in real life--the suicide of a young lady who, owing
to an unhappy love affair, flung herself before a train. Tolstoy chose
as a motto for his book the biblical saying: "Vengeance is mine, I will
repay," the fundamental idea being that people have no right to judge
others, and that for human relations there is but one law--the law of
mercy. Among all Tolstoy's critics Dostoïevsky appears to have been
{29} the only one who understood him in this sense; most readers seem
to have interpreted the motto in the narrowest possible way as meaning
the punishment of Anna for her breach of the marriage vow.
During all this period of literary activity Tolstoy was greatly aided
by his wife; she served as his amanuensis, she alone being able to
interpret his crabbed and difficult handwriting with its endless
corrections, and one of her relatives records that she seven times
re-copied the enormous MS. of _War and Peace_.
It was, as he himself tells us, about his fiftieth year that a great
change came over Tolstoy. His life had been one of brilliant success;
he had achieved great distinction, he had an excellent property, a
congenial wife, a happy family, but he became profoundly dissatisfied.
Merejkovsky, the most severe of Tolstoy's critics, ascribes this
condition mainly to the ebb of vitality natural at his age, and
considers it to be, in its origin, essentially physical and egoistic;
but Merejkovsky surely forgets the intense interest in moral and
religious problems which Tolstoy had always taken even in his youth; in
_The Cossacks_, and in _War and Peace_, Tolstoy's heroes are
continually searching for "the meaning of life."
The truth would appear to be that Tolstoy, in his youth greatly
perplexed by philosophical and religious doubts, had never solved his
problems, but had done what so many men do--evaded them by taking
refuge in the joys and duties of practical life; but to most really
thoughtful natures there comes a crisis when these duties will no
longer serve as anodynes, and the old questionings, ten times stronger
for their repression, return once more.
This was really the "Sturm und Drang" period of Tolstoy's life; it came
unnaturally late, and its severity was proportioned to its delay. In
the book entitled _My Confession_, Tolstoy has given a most sincere,
graphic, and terrible account of his sufferings at this period. He
traces its inception (surely with accuracy!) to the lack of any true
religious faith in his youth. He tells {30} how he had momentary
gleams of revelation which showed him what a true religion might be,
but his faith soon became merely conventional. Moreover, the new
scientific materialism was spreading over Russia, and reaching the
intellectual _élite_ in the schools and colleges; the ceremonial,
superstitious religion of the Greek Church, so essentially mediæval in
all its methods of thought, could not stand against this dry,
scientific determinism. Tolstoy gave way to scepticism and
dissipation, and afterwards forgot and buried deep down his longings
for a higher life.
After, as we shall see later, a desperate and almost overwhelming
struggle, Tolstoy emerged from his darkness convinced that the true
faith lay in a literal obedience to the precepts of the Gospel and
especially to the Sermon on the Mount. He thought the precepts of the
Gospel were realised more completely in the life of the Russian
peasants than in that of any other human beings, and, taking their life
as his model, he built up his creed: that the great essentials of life
are labour and love, that man should be simple, laborious, and kind,
that he ought to give more than he receives, to contribute to the
common stock more than he takes from it, that he should rejoice in
service; in this life he will find health and happiness, and he will
not fear death because if he banishes egoism, the loss of his own
personality--even to its total extinction--will not appear to him an
evil.
This, stated in its essence, is the "solution" at which Tolstoy
arrived, and from the year 1879 onwards we find him devoting his life
almost entirely to moral and religious teaching.
Taking peasant life always as his model, he himself lived very frugally
and simply; he partook only of the plainest food--vegetarian; he
dressed like a peasant, he waited upon himself and did the work of his
own room, and he "paid" even for this simple sustenance with the labour
of his own hands; he worked at haymaking and reaping in the fields, at
woodcutting in the woods, and in the winter he made shoes. He spent a
portion {31} of each day in manual labour, giving himself appetite to
enjoy his simple diet; his temperance and toil kept him strong and
vigorous, and he declared that he had as much time as ever to devote to
intellectual work. Tolstoy, had, in fact, returned to the passionate
and practical faith of the Middle Ages; his life was the life of a
mediæval monk when monasticism was at its best--ascetic, laborious,
intellectual--but his nineteenth century scepticism had caused him to
omit and reject mediæval dogmas and superstitions.
Tolstoy, like so many other religious mystics, wished to yield up his
property entirely and strip himself of all worldly goods. It was here
that, as with others before him, he came into conflict with his own
family.
Another, though a much less reformer of our own time, General Booth,
was able to interest all the members of his own family, and to find in
them his best and most willing helpers, but he had the advantage of a
wife who was, from the beginning, on his side.
Tolstoy was in a different position: the Countess proved herself an
admirable wife so long as he devoted himself to adding lustre and
aggrandisement to his family; she helped him in the management of his
estates, she understood his literary work and gloried in his renown,
but further she could not go; she could not comprehend his moral and
religious crisis, and her great terror was lest her children should be,
in any degree, impoverished. It is painful to hear that at one time
she contemplated appealing to the authorities to have her husband
declared insane and incapable of managing his own property.
The truth was that Tolstoy's idealism had come in conflict with that
maternal egoism which is the dark side of maternal altruism, and one of
the strongest forces of the world. This experience helps us to
understand the curious bias against maternity which occurs in much of
Tolstoy's later work. With regard to this situation Tolstoy ultimately
compromised and, in the year 1888, renounced his estates in favour of
his family.
He continued to produce religious works: _The Four {32} Gospels
Harmonised and Translated_, 1881-2; _My Religion_, 1884; _The Kingdom
of God is Within You_, 1893, &c.
Political events in Russia more and more grieved and distressed him.
The Revolutionary Executive Committee condemned Alexander II to death,
and carried out their sentence. This event shook the whole nation.
Tolstoy was horrified by the crime but he profoundly pitied the
criminals; he addressed an open letter to the new emperor, Alexander
III, imploring him in the name of Christ to forgive the culprits, and
declaring that the only way to Russia's salvation lay in following the
precepts of Jesus; the other possible methods--cruel repression and
liberal reforms--had both been tried and found wanting. No answer was
made, and the regicides were put to death.
Throughout Tolstoy's later work we perceive a horror of violence in all
its forms, whether legal or illegal: to him all violent death is
murder, and, no matter whether it is inflicted by the sentence of
revolutionary committees or by the sentence of the law, it is equally
criminal.
Tolstoy went for a time to reside in Moscow, and was, more than ever,
startled and dismayed by the great contrasts between the extremes of
poverty and of wealth.
In 1882 a census was taken; Tolstoy volunteered his help, and was thus
enabled to plumb to the very depths the miseries of Moscow. A full
account of this census is given in the book entitled _What to Do?_ It
is a most clear, graphic, and ruthless study of the miseries of poverty
and vice; Tolstoy shows with ironic completeness the total
insufficiency of charity to compete with the evil, and asks what
remedies are possible.
He arrives at the same conclusion as Mr. Bernard Shaw: "What is wrong
with the rich is idleness; what is wrong with the poor is poverty."
He shows how the honest and hard-working toiler is defrauded of his
comforts because the results of his labour are appropriated to find
luxuries for his masters; {33} he shows how the work of the community
is distracted from the production of the necessities required by all to
luxuries available only for a few and enervating even to them; moreover
the rich themselves, corrupted by their idleness, spread corruption
around them which disseminates itself through all classes and creates a
race of idlers, parasitic upon the labour of others; the analysis of
social conditions given in this little book is acute and keen.
Tolstoy found the city too artificial, and returned to the country,
where he resumed his simple life. He composed much popular literature;
it was printed by a special press in the form of very cheap booklets,
which were carried round by pedlars and sold to the people. Tolstoy
henceforth regarded his former literary work as bad and selfish,
considering it as being in essence a luxury intended for the
entertainment of a limited class. His booklets achieved the purpose he
had in view; they were greatly loved by the common people, and have
penetrated, in the most remarkable way, to every corner of Russia. So
great was the demand that each pamphlet was printed in an edition of
twenty-four thousand copies, and of most there were five editions in a
single year; towards the end of the fourth year the number of copies
sold amounted to twelve millions. The first publications were taken
from his reading books for children, and included such tales as _The
Prisoner of the Caucasia_, _God Sees the Truth_, _Where Love Is God
Is_, &c.
It is interesting to note that other distinguished Russian authors have
since followed Tolstoy's example. During an illness he wrote _The
Power of Darkness_, which was, however, prohibited for a number of
years.
In 1891-2 he was occupied in relieving the dreadful Russian famine,
procuring assistance by his appeals to Western Europe and, with the
money obtained, organising relief-works in different districts.
Tolstoy became greatly interested in the Doukbobors: they were a
Russian Nonconformist sect, many of whose principles--condemnation of
violence, of taking life and of all church-ritual--were closely akin to
his {34} own. They were cruelly persecuted, and Tolstoy did his utmost
to aid them; at length they received permission to emigrate to Canada,
but were without money for the passage, and, in order to provide it,
Tolstoy finished and published his last great novel, _Resurrection_, in
1899; it had been begun some time previously but abandoned.
In March 1901 Tolstoy was formally excommunicated by the Russian
Church, as the unorthodox character of his writings and teachings was
undeniable, while their great and ever-increasing influence made them
too powerful to be ignored.
But this excommunication had the opposite effect to the one intended;
the Russian people seemed to awaken suddenly to the fact that this man
was indeed their great prophet, and the noblest moral teacher they had
ever possessed; he was treated with an ever-growing reverence and
sympathy; incessant deputations were sent to express the national
admiration.
Tolstoy's influence grew, not only in his own country but abroad: he
continued to work at his literary labours, and, even at his death, left
a considerable amount of MS. which is still in process of publication.
His old age was far from peaceful; the unhappy condition of his country
tore his heart.
Silent for long on political matters, the cruel repression of the
revolution was too much for him; he published in the leading organs of
the European press the mournful and tragic letter beginning, "I can
keep silence no longer." He declares that his unhappy country is so
given over to crimes of violence, both legal and illegal, that, if men
had their way, there would be literally not one human being left
uncondemned, but all would perish. He summons all parties, as their
only way of salvation, to cease from hatred and revenge, and he tells
the Government that, if they must have victims, he offers his "own old
throat," as an expiation: but little of his life is left, and that
little is made unendurable by the sight of sufferings so terrible.
Tolstoy was also distressed by the luxury of his wife {35} and family;
he longed to leave them, but it was against his principles to grieve
anyone wilfully. At length, however, he felt that he must have a time
of peace for the end. He fled from his home on a snowy autumn night in
company with one trusted friend, but the chill and the exposure were
too much for him; he was compelled to relinquish his journey at a
little wayside station, and he died there in the house of the
station-master, a man belonging to the peasant class whom he so loved,
and who touchingly and simply received him. The date was November 20,
1910. He was buried on his own estate without, of course, any ceremony
from the Church which had repudiated him; the service was conducted
mainly by the peasants who had loved him like a father. The Russian
Government, which had not dared to touch him, kept over his followers
to the last the iron hand of repression; thousands who had wished to
attend his funeral were prohibited from doing so; many of his works are
still censored, and his disciples still persecuted.
{36}