Chapter VI: Travels Abroad (1)

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.