Chapter VI: Travels Abroad (2)

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.

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_.