Chapter IX: Marriage

The Behrs visit Yásnaya. Proposal by thought-reading. The Diary. Marriage. Ministers on magazine. The school closed and the magazine stopped. Family happiness. Health. Fet's visit. Sergius born. Children. _The Cossacks_ and _Polikoúshka_. Bees. Plays. _Confession._ Saving the hay. _Decembrists._ Samára. Preparations for _War and Peace_. Collected edition. Translations. Dislocates arm. Tatiána born. Fears of famine. Sergius (brother) and Tánya Behrs. Nikólsky. Visits Borodinó. Tolstoy at home and with the children. Relations with servants. Masquerade. Moscow. Drawing school. Sculpture. Ilyá born. Pleads at court-martial. Dr. Zahárin. _Smoke._ Fet's Literary Evening. _War and Peace._ Schopenhauer. Pénza. Death of V. P. Bótkin. The Countess and the children's education. English nurse. Tolstoy's habits. Visitors. Fet. Tolstoy's ardour. Property. Untidiness. Respect for sleep. Newspapers. Characteristics. Studies the drama.

TO one who admires Tolstoy's educational work, it is somewhat disconcerting to see how scornfully he spoke of it sixteen years later in his _Confession_. But that is always his way: the old is useless and worthless and bad; only the new, the unachieved, the fresh ideal, is admirable. For it, he decries all that the past has produced--including himself and his former work. He makes his points broadly and powerfully, but to understand, we must discriminate, and allow for an artistic temperament tempting him to exaggerate. Let him however speak for himself, that the reader may judge:

On returning from abroad I settled in the country, and happened to
occupy myself with peasant schools. This work was particularly to
my taste, because in it I had not to face the falsity which had
become obvious to me and stared me in the face when I tried to
teach people by literary means. Here, also, I acted in the name
of Progress, but I already regarded Progress itself critically.
I said to myself: 'In some of its developments Progress has
proceeded wrongly; and with primitive peasant children one must
deal in a spirit of perfect freedom, letting them choose what
path of Progress they please.' In reality I was ever revolving
round one and the same insoluble problem, which was: How to teach
without knowing what? In the higher spheres of literary activity
I had realised that one could not teach without knowing what;
for I saw that people all taught differently, and by quarrelling
among themselves succeeded only in hiding their ignorance from one
another. But here, with peasant children, I thought to evade this
difficulty by letting them learn what they liked. It amuses me now,
when I remember how I shuffled in trying to fulfil my desire to
teach, while in the depth of my soul I knew very well that I could
not teach anything needful, for I did not know what was needful.

After spending a year at school work, I went abroad a second time,
to discover how to teach others while myself knowing nothing.

And it seemed to me that I had learnt this abroad, and in the year
of the peasants' Emancipation I returned to Russia armed with
all this wisdom; and having become an Arbiter, I began to teach
both the uneducated peasants in schools, and the educated classes
through a magazine I published. Things appeared to be going well,
but I felt I was not quite sound mentally, and that matters could
not long continue in that way. And I should perhaps then have come
to the state of despair at which I arrived fifteen years later, had
there not been one side of life still unexplored by me, and which
promised me happiness: that was marriage.

For a year I busied myself with Arbitration work, the schools, and
the magazine; and I became so worn-out--as a result especially of
my mental confusion--and so hard was my struggle as Arbiter, so
obscure the results of my activity in the schools, so repulsive my
shuffling in the magazine (which always amounted to one and the
same thing: a desire to teach everybody, and to hide the fact that
I did not know what to teach) that I fell ill, mentally rather than
physically, and threw up everything, and went away to the Bashkírs
in the steppes, to breathe fresh air, drink _koumýs_, and live an
animal life.

1862

Tired of and dissatisfied with his work, and thinking he detected in himself signs of the malady that had carried off two of his brothers, he set off in May 1862 (accompanied by his servant Alexis and two of his pupils) to undergo a koumýs (soured and fermented mares' milk) cure in the Samára steppes east of the Vólga.

He went first to Moscow, and his friend Raévsky has told how Tolstoy came up to him in the Club there, and mentioned with great indignation and vexation that his brother was playing cards and had lost Rs. 7000 in a few hours. 'How can men do such things?' said Tolstoy. Half-an-hour later Raévsky saw Leo Tolstoy himself playing Chinese billiards (a game something like bagatelle, played on a board with wire impediments) and learnt that he had lost Rs. 1000 to the stranger with whom he was playing! This was, I believe, the last occasion on which Tolstoy played any game for stakes he found it difficult to pay. The occurrence led to the premature publication of his novel _The Cossacks_, which he had had in hand for several years, but to which he still intended to add a second part. Not having Rs. 1000 (then about £150) available, he let Katkóf, the well-known publicist, editor of the _Moscow Gazette_ and of the monthly _Russian Messenger_, have the story for that sum paid in advance. This 'Tale of the Year 1852,' as the sub-title runs, is based on Tolstoy's Caucasian experiences. The circumstances which led to its premature publication made the work repugnant to him, and he never completed it.

Among those to whom he mentioned the occurrence were the Behrs, of whom Miss Sophie was already so interested in him that she wept at the news. At their home he was always a welcome and intimate guest, and as time went on he saw more and more of that family.

From Moscow he proceeded to Tvér by rail, and thence by steamer down the Vólga to Samára.

At Kazán he stopped to visit his relation V. I. Úshkof: and from Samára he wrote to Aunt Tatiána:

_27 May 1862._

To-day I shall start to drive ninety miles from Samára to
Karalýk....

I have had a beautiful journey; the country pleases me very much;
my health is better, _i.e._ I cough less. Alexis and the boys are
alive and well, as you may tell their relations. Please write
me about Sergéy, or let him do so. Greet all my dear comrades
[probably the masters in the schools] for me, and request them to
write me of what goes on, and of how they are getting on....

In another letter, dated 28th June 1862, he wrote:

It is now a month since I had any news of you or from home;
please write me about everybody: first, our family; secondly,
the (University) students [who acted as masters in the schools]
etc. Alexis and I have grown fatter, he especially, but we still
cough a little, and again he especially. We are living in a
Tartar tent; the weather is beautiful. I have found my friend
Stolýpin--now Atamán in Ourálsk--and have driven over to see him;
and have brought back from there a secretary; but I dictate and
write little. Idleness overcomes one when drinking koumýs. In
two weeks' time I intend to leave here, and I expect to be home
by St. Elijah's day [20 July, old style]. I am tormented in this
out-of-the-way place by not knowing what is going on, and also by
the thought that I am horribly behind-hand with the publication of
the magazine. I kiss your hand....

Just when Tolstoy was leaving Karalýk a most unexpected event was occurring at Yásnaya, where his sister Mary was staying with Aunt Tatiána. Owing to the denunciation of a police spy who, among other lies, pretended to have discovered a secret door in Tolstoy's house, the police authorities decided to search his estate; and one morning--to the immense astonishment of the neighbouring peasants--police, watchmen, officials, and gendarmes, under the command of a Colonel, appeared upon the scene! In the school-house a photographic apparatus was found: a thing sufficiently rare in a Russian village in those days to evoke the suspicious inquiries of the gendarme officer, to whom one of the student-teachers chaffingly volunteered the information that it was kept to photograph Herzen (the celebrated exile, then living in London); but nowhere were any secret doors found.

The floors of the stables were broken up with crowbars to see if anything was hidden there. The pond was dragged, but nothing more incriminating than crayfish and carp was found. All the cupboards, drawers, boxes and desks in the house were opened and searched, and the ladies were frightened almost to death. A police-officer from Toúla would not even allow Tolstoy's sister to leave the library till he had finished reading aloud in her presence and in that of two gendarmes, Tolstoy's Diary and letters, which contained the most intimate secrets of his life and which he had kept private since he was sixteen years old.

Finding nothing incriminating at Yásnaya, the representatives of law and order next betook themselves to the other schools working in conjunction with Tolstoy, and there also they turned tables and cupboards upside down, seized exercise-books and primers, arrested the teachers, and spread the wildest suspicions abroad among the peasants, to whom school education was still a novelty held somewhat in suspicion.

On receiving news of this event Tolstoy at once wrote to his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy, asking her to speak to those who knew him well and had influence, and on whose aid he could rely. Said he:

I cannot and will not let this affair pass. All the activity in
which I found solace and happiness, has been spoilt. Aunty is so
ill from fright that she will probably not recover. The peasants
no longer regard me as an honest man--an opinion I had earned in
the course of years--but as a criminal, an incendiary, or a coiner,
whose cunning alone has enabled him to escape punishment.

'Eh, man, you've been found out! Don't talk to us any more about
honesty and justice--you've hardly escaped handcuffs yourself!'

From the landed proprietors I need not say what a cry of rapture
went up. Please write to me as soon as possible, after consulting
Peróvsky [Count V. A. P.] and Alexéy Tolstoy [Count A. T., the
dramatist and poet] and any one else you like, as to how I am to
write to the Emperor and how best to present my letter. It is too
late to prevent the injury the thing has done, or to extricate
myself, and there is no way out except by receiving satisfaction as
public as the insult has been; and this I have firmly resolved on.
I shall not join Herzen; he has his way, I have mine. Neither will
I hide.... But I will loudly announce that I am selling my estate
and mean to leave Russia, where one cannot know from moment to
moment what awaits one....

At the end of an eight-page letter he mentions that the Colonel of gendarmes, on leaving, threatened to renew his search till he discovered 'if anything is hidden'; and Tolstoy adds, 'I have loaded pistols in my room, and am waiting to see how this matter will end.'

He also remarked: 'I often say to myself, How exceedingly fortunate it was that I was not at home at the time! Had I been there, I should certainly now be awaiting my trial for murder!'

Soon after this, Alexander II spent some time at Petróvsky Park, near Moscow. There Tolstoy presented a letter claiming reparation, which an aide-de-camp undertook to give to the Emperor; and some weeks later the Governor of Toúla transmitted to Tolstoy the Emperor's expression of regret for what had occurred.

It is easy to imagine the effect such an outrage as this police-search would have on a man of Tolstoy's acute self-esteem, and how it would intensify his hatred of Government.

After his return from Samára, he saw more of the Behrs than ever. Fet, whom he introduced to them, thus records his impressions of the family:

I found the doctor to be an amiable old gentleman of polite
manners, and his wife a handsome, majestic brunette who evidently
ruled the house. I refrain from describing the three young ladies,
of whom the youngest had an admirable contralto voice. They all,
notwithstanding the watchful supervision of their mother and their
irreproachable modesty, possessed that attractive quality which the
French designate by the words _du chien_ [lively, full of go]. The
service and the dinner were admirable.

Madame Behrs was on very friendly terms with Tolstoy's sister, the Countess Mary; and before he went abroad Tolstoy had frequently, at the house of the latter, played with the children of both families. In 1862 he often visited the Behrs at Pokróvskoe-Glébovo, where they lived in a _dátcha_ (country house) they occupied every summer. He nearly always walked the eight miles from Moscow, and often took long rambles with the family besides. The girls had been educated at home, but Sophia Andréyevna, the second daughter, had passed a University examination entitling her to the diploma qualifying to teach both in private and in State schools.

We may judge of Tolstoy's state of mind at this time by an entry in his Diary, dated 23rd August: 'I am afraid of myself. What if this be only a _desire_ for love and not real love? I try to notice only her weak points, but yet I love.' And again, 'I rose in good health, with a particularly clear head, and wrote easily, though the matter was feeble. Then I felt more sad than I have done for a long time. I have no friends at all. I am alone. I had friends when I served Mammon, but have none when I serve truth.'

On 26th August he notes that Sónya (Miss Sophia Behrs) gave him a story to read, written by herself, and her description of the hero as a man of 'unusually unattractive appearance, and changeable convictions' hit him hard; but he was relieved to find that it was not meant for him.

On his thirty-fourth birthday, 28th August 1862 (old style) he jotted down in his Diary the words: 'Ugly mug! Do not think of marriage; your calling is of another kind.'

About this time the Behrs paid a two weeks' visit to Madame Behrs' father's estate of Ívitsa, some thirty miles from Yásnaya, and _en route_ they stopped a couple of days at Yásnaya to visit the Countess Mary. The day after their arrival a picnic party was arranged with some neighbours. It was haymaking time, and there was much haystack climbing by the picknickers. The general impression was that Tolstoy was in love with Lisa, the eldest Miss Behrs: this opinion being fostered by the idea, then common in Russia, that an elder daughter should be disposed of before a younger daughter may be courted.

A few days later Tolstoy followed the Behrs to Ívitsa; and here the scene occurred which he has utilised in _Anna Karénina_ when describing Lévin's proposal to Kitty--a scene in which something approaching thought-reading takes place.

Sitting at a card-table with Miss Sophia Behrs, Tolstoy wrote the initial letters of the sentence:

'In your family a false opinion exists about me and your sister Lisa; you and Tánitchka should destroy it.'

Miss Sophia read the letters, understood what words they stood for, and nodded her head.

Tolstoy then wrote the initial letters of another sentence:

'Your youth and need of happiness, to-day remind me too strongly of my age and the impossibility of happiness.'

The nature of the Russian language (with its inflections instead of particles, and the absence of articles) somewhat diminishes the miracle; but the test was a very severe one, and again the girl guessed the words aright. The two understood one another, and their fate was practically sealed.

The Behrs returned to Pokróvskoe-Glébovo in September. Tolstoy accompanied them on the carriage-journey back to Moscow and visited them every day, bringing music for the young ladies, playing the piano for them, and accompanying the youngest--whom he nicknamed 'Madame Viardot' after the famous singer.

On the 17th of that month (the name's day of Sophia) Tolstoy handed his future wife a letter containing a proposal of marriage, which she gladly accepted. Her father, displeased that the second daughter should be preferred to the eldest, at first refused his assent. But Tolstoy was strenuously insistent--I have even heard that he threatened to shoot himself--and the doctor soon yielded to the united persuasion of daughter and suitor.

The bridegroom's sense of honour led him to hand his future wife the Diary, in which, mingled with hopes, prayers, self-castigations and self-denunciations, the sins and excesses of his bachelorhood were recorded. To the girl, who had looked upon him as a personification of the virtues, this revelation came as a great shock; but after a sleepless night passed in weeping bitterly over it, she returned the Diary and forgave the past.

To get married it was necessary first to confess and receive the eucharist. Tolstoy's own experiences in this matter are narrated in